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Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics
In Contingent Computation, M. Beatrice Fazi offers a new theoretical perspective through which we can engage philosophically with computing. The book proves that aesthetics is a viable mode of investigating contemporary computational systems. It does so by advancing an original conception of computational aesthetics that does not just concern art made by or with computers, but rather the modes of being and becoming of computational processes. Contingent Computation mobilises the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead in order to address aesthetics as an ontological study of the generative potential of reality. Through a novel philosophical reading of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and of Turing’s notion of incomputability, Fazi finds this potential at the formal heart of computational systems, and argues that computation is a process of determining indeterminacy. This indeterminacy, which is central to computational systems, does not contradict their functionality. Instead, it drives their very operation, albeit in a manner that might not always fit with the instrumental, representational and cognitivist purposes that we have assigned to computing.
248 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 15, 2018
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July 28, 2026
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that Fazi is arguing in bad faith from all directions.
Beginning with an argument about the dual potentials of contingency of Gödel's incompleteness theorems and Turing's Halting problem, she reinterprets (read: misinterprets) their highly formal conclusions about digital and discrete mathematics. While I think maybe there is something to be said about computer designs that might see contingency in relation to Gödel that I've pointed to indirectly in the past, I cannot see anything related with the halting problem. Yet, it isn't clear to me that Fazi understands either of these formal logical conclusions particularly well.
For example, the halting problem isn't a question of the result of halting, which is a pretty determinant procedure and result for any particular discrete calculation as Fazi assumes for the necessity of contingency. The halting problem is a question of when the calculation will stop, of which Turing shows in some circumstances it never will without human intervention. That is to say, even if there is some possibility of contingency, it's still solidly in the meat space, and not in an abstracted computational umwelt.
After this misunderstanding, in order to reposition how this leads to computers with agency (what she refers to as "self-actualization") via contingency, she then reinterprets Deleuze, Whitehead, and others in respects that she acknowledges they would not agree with, giving little more than the excuse that if we alter the meanings of their terminology to something slightly more agreeable to the teleology of her argument, we will reach her conclusions that Deleuze, Whitehead, etc enable us to see mental "processes." That seems to be blatantly using these continental thinkers abusively in order to beg the question of "contingency" in digital computing.
Within a chapter, this book seems to admit that it's more rhetorical manipulation of prior theory, without understanding that theory well, than it is a genuine investigation. It's this sort of philosophy that sets the goals of continental thinking within exactly the realm of justifying analytic tradition's skepticism about it.
If the proposition is that it can be argued from within computing's analytic and formal foundations, as Fazi does, then one at least needs to know the boundary of what's "within" the analytic position before moving on to anything like continental metaphysics or aesthetic analysis. But also, maybe avoid continental philosophers that already disagree with some of the most basic premises of how they're being "reinterpreted." It seems like this argument attempted to pull the rug out from under itself before it even had a stable floor to put it on.
Beginning with an argument about the dual potentials of contingency of Gödel's incompleteness theorems and Turing's Halting problem, she reinterprets (read: misinterprets) their highly formal conclusions about digital and discrete mathematics. While I think maybe there is something to be said about computer designs that might see contingency in relation to Gödel that I've pointed to indirectly in the past, I cannot see anything related with the halting problem. Yet, it isn't clear to me that Fazi understands either of these formal logical conclusions particularly well.
For example, the halting problem isn't a question of the result of halting, which is a pretty determinant procedure and result for any particular discrete calculation as Fazi assumes for the necessity of contingency. The halting problem is a question of when the calculation will stop, of which Turing shows in some circumstances it never will without human intervention. That is to say, even if there is some possibility of contingency, it's still solidly in the meat space, and not in an abstracted computational umwelt.
After this misunderstanding, in order to reposition how this leads to computers with agency (what she refers to as "self-actualization") via contingency, she then reinterprets Deleuze, Whitehead, and others in respects that she acknowledges they would not agree with, giving little more than the excuse that if we alter the meanings of their terminology to something slightly more agreeable to the teleology of her argument, we will reach her conclusions that Deleuze, Whitehead, etc enable us to see mental "processes." That seems to be blatantly using these continental thinkers abusively in order to beg the question of "contingency" in digital computing.
Within a chapter, this book seems to admit that it's more rhetorical manipulation of prior theory, without understanding that theory well, than it is a genuine investigation. It's this sort of philosophy that sets the goals of continental thinking within exactly the realm of justifying analytic tradition's skepticism about it.
If the proposition is that it can be argued from within computing's analytic and formal foundations, as Fazi does, then one at least needs to know the boundary of what's "within" the analytic position before moving on to anything like continental metaphysics or aesthetic analysis. But also, maybe avoid continental philosophers that already disagree with some of the most basic premises of how they're being "reinterpreted." It seems like this argument attempted to pull the rug out from under itself before it even had a stable floor to put it on.
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