Deleuze in the Age of Algorithms: Virtuality, Conditional Consciousness, and the Ontology of Digital Individuation

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Independent Researcher and Lecturer in English Literature, Tbilisi, Georgia.

Abstract

Objective: This study examines how Gilles Deleuze's ontology of the virtual can be reinterpreted within the philosophical conditions of twenty-first-century algorithmic culture. It argues that the contemporary identification of the virtual with digital simulation obscures Deleuze's distinction between the virtual and the possible, thereby limiting current theories of digital subjectivity.
Methods: The research adopts a philosophical-hermeneutic methodology based on close textual analysis of Deleuze's Difference and Repetition, The Logic of Sense, and A Thousand Plateaus, together with Gilbert Simondon's theory of individuation. These texts are critically integrated with contemporary philosophy of technology through conceptual analysis rather than empirical investigation.
Results: The paper develops the original concept of conditional consciousness, defined as the mode of subjectivity emerging through the continuous transindividuation of human and technical assemblages. It demonstrates that Deleuze's three passive syntheses of time provide an ontological model for understanding algorithmic attention, machinic memory, and digital individuation, extending existing accounts of surveillance capitalism beyond behavioural prediction toward the production of subjectivity itself.
Conclusions: The study concludes that Deleuze's philosophy remains profoundly relevant to contemporary digital culture because it distinguishes the technical production of possibilities from the ontological production of difference. Conditional consciousness offers a new framework for explaining how algorithmic environments participate in the ongoing individuation of human experience without reducing subjectivity to either technological determinism or classical humanism.

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References

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 20, Issue 56 - Serial Number 56
Articles
Issue 56, Autumn 2026
October 2026
Pages 357-374

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