"Why does Husserl refuse to draw these conclusions from the same premises? The motive for full 'presence', the intuitionist imperative and the project of knowledge continue to govern -- at a distance, let us say -- the whole of the description"

This is argued on the basis that language's telos is the truth, and the truth of its comparison to an object. "If the 'possibilty' or the 'truth' happens to be lacking, the intention of the statement is obviously achieved only 'symbolically'"

"Authentic meaning is the wanting to say-the-truth."

That is, in Husserl, while "the circle is square" has a kind of sense, it is not the kind of sense which is good or authentic. Authentic sense, normalcy, is relagated to knowledge. And not just any knowledge, but the sort of knowledge which can be understood with the form "S is P" -- as opposed to signs like "green is or" or "abracadabra".

"the efficacy and the form of signs that do not obey these rules, that is, that promise no knowledge, can be determined as non-sense only if we have already...defined sense in general on the basis of truth as objectivity"

Why? Because if Husserl meant signification by sense, then poetry would be nonsensical. Husserl wouldn't deny signifcation, but would deny them sense, i.e. they do not want to say-the-truth, when truth is understood as truth as objectivity.

(That takes me to the asteriks on p. 85)

Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event. — csalisbury

A slight quibble in the scenario. You start with the person knowing he will be tortured, but then ask why it makes sense for them when they haven't been tortured yet, aren't being tortured now.

But if the person knows it to be true, then it will happen. The person will feel undesired pain, and knows that they will feel undesired pain.

Though maybe this isn't that important, actually -- what else is fear other than a product of desire, after all? One would only need to believe they will feel undesired pain tomorrow and the fear would seep in.

I think I would say that it makes sense because the person believes that an (intensely) undesired event will take place tomorrow. Perhaps they believe that torture will result in losses in other ways, too, like a lack of being able to walk. But let's take it a step further then -- the scenario is in some future society where people who are inclined towards sadistic torture are tortured, and then the conscious memory is wiped. Maybe the state has been convinced that this is how to combat sadism, by implanting visceral non-conscious impressions into the brain the sadist begins to feel empathy without realizing it (so the theory goes).

It would make sense, even in that scenario, to fear the pain. And I think that it makes sense because of the desires a person has.

Without the desire -- say the same future society, in developing the above experiment, decided to re-arrange the mind so that the desire for comfort was simply not able to be felt -- then there would not be fear.

Why do you say 'not any longer'? What has changed? — Wayfarer

I say "no longer" because it's institutionalized now. While there are those who disagree with an interp, and it's understood that the question of interpretation is not settled (and sometimes posited that it could not be settled), it's not offensive in the sense that it was before. I mean, as I noted, that's what I was taught. So it's not exactly a scientific controversy when it's textbook (even if it is acknowledged that the question is not settled)

I can think of two reasons why that might be the case.

One, scientific thought changes not just with experiments, but with the deaths of those who postulate scientific truths. Many a scientist has gone to their grave against the consensus when their "opponents" won the general agreement of scientists. So the proponents of CI, MWI, Bohm, etc. are dead, and therefore the arguments aren't carried with the same sort of conviction. And, in the meantime, none of them really won out. CI has enjoyed the most renown probably because it was first, more than anything.

Two, the cultural milieu of this particular scientific thread has changed. QM was developed on the continent, where philosophy enjoyed a higher degree of respect within academic institutions. A lot of the questions that drove QM were part of a philosophical concern (not strictly, but partially). They were interested in the nature of reality and the nature of, well, nature. But Americans aren't as patient with these sorts of questions. They tend to enjoy the results of technological progress more than questions about what a scientific theory might mean about the nature of the world. Where these were a part of the scientific tradition, the victors of the two world wars fractured that tradition and had it reborn elsewhere, with different cultural values and educational goals.

Finally made the time to watch the video. Also, this floated by me today and it briefly goes over anger in relation to a particular zen buddhist: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/01/only-dont-know-seung-sahn-anger/

I'm posting it as food for thought, as I just read it.

But I think - am I deceiving myself? - that it is possible to form an attachment to one's daughter, not just to an image of oneself being attached. — unenlightened

I don't think this is a deception. And after watching the video I think that we're actually talking about two different concepts with the same word (or two different experiences, perhaps).

Attachment here I would term "relationship" or "connection". I don't think it's a deception to say that we can form connections with others without being attached to an image.

There is a fairly respectable thread in psychology going back to Bowlby that holds attachment to be a crucial feature of the development of the child. Now such an attachment will be asymmetric; dependence on the child's part, and dependability on the parent's. Here is Gabor Mate talking about it, (and mentioning Buddhism). It takes a while to get to attachment.

Because the image of a loving father must have a real source, surely?

Yeah, I wouldn't want to deny that. Sorry for the delay. I just wanted to make time to listen to the talk before responding.


This is a bit off the cuff -- but perhaps the difference between these two kinds of attachment can be understood in terms of craving(or desire, though that could be too general too), and need. In the former I become angry, anxious, or fearful because I crave this or that but don't have, might not have it, or don't feel safe without it (respectively). In the latter we need attachment to others, and children need attachment to adults, to give us a sense of belonging and to give us a safe place to be vulnerable and develop (respectively).

79-83 makes a nice thought-bridge.


So the example of statements about perceptions, it seems to me, is meant to draw out how a statement means something even when it doesn't have an intuition which can, in principle, give the statement an object. Bedeutung without intuition -- "I see a person standing before me", "I have a perception of a person standing before me" are about how we see things, and so naturally can't be given over to the person I'm talking to -- yet we understand their meaning. This leads directly into the conversation "I" through the question, "In what way is writing...implied in the very movement of signification in general, in particular, in speech that is called 'live' ".

Husserl will make a special place for the use of the word "I". They are indicative when spoken to others, as is all communication. But "in solitary discourse, the Bedeutung of the 'I' is realized essentially in the immediate representation of our own personality..."

That is, the root of these expressions is the 'zero-point of the subjective origin, the "I," the "here," the "now" "

Derrida goes on to point out that "I" functions like any other word, in that it has a meaning regardless of who speaks it and that meaning is understood. That is we do not need to have a representation of our own personality -- "I" is repeatable, the Bedeutung (being ideal) remains the same, and it will keep its sense "even if my empirical presence is erased or is modified radically...even in soliatary discourse" the possible absence of the object is what gives "I" sense. "I am" is discourse only under the condition that, as with all expressions, that it is intelligible in the abscence of the object. "Therefore in this case, in the absence of myself"

Which is to say, the death of the speaker is a possibility of the statement having sense -- which seems to be how Derrida answers the original question. This is the manner in which writing is implied, even in speech -- even in 'the solitary life of the soul'.

"One has no need of knowing who is speaking in order to understand it ((me: that is the "I am")) or even to utter it. Once more, the border appears hardly certain between solitary discourse and communication, between the reality and the representation of the discourse"

I think Derrida just continues to elaborate this point up to the bottom of the first paragraph on 83, taking note that the distinction between "sense" and "object" reinforces the point that the meaning of the statement "I am" (and, likewise for other statements using this indexical) have no need of an object in order to mean, and must actually be able to mean without an object (and hence are forms of writing).

I tend to think the implications for causality are the most "offensive" aspects of CI -- well, at least they *were*; not any longer. It was that not just the complexity of a system giving rise to uncertainty, but even the most simple system, down at the smallest, is not deterministic, ala CI, but stochastic, which ran against a number of assumptions of physicists at the time.

So that's another way of saying the same, but I was trying to generalize to allow not just what's on the table, but even new ways of interpreting the postulates. It's good to be aware of that history, but no need to pin oneself down either. I'm not really overly committed to CI, it's just what I'm most familiar with, and makes sense of the postulates.


I could see your point on what motivated Everett, though.

The problem is more of a question -- while we can predict various phenomena using QM, what do the postulates and predictions of QM indicate about the nature of nature/reality?

Initially the equations developed in QM didn't predict anything as much as they resolved certain paradoxes. The structure of the atom was the question.

But the solution presented seemed to contradict a number of beliefs that one would draw from classical physics and thermodynamics. And, furthermore, seemed to border on the incoherent -- and certainly contradicted leading theories of the atom at the time.

I don't. Mostly because I don't see what it adds to Copenhagen interpretation, and Copenhagen interpretation is what we focused on several years back in the class where we learned about such things.

But I've been out of the loop on that for a long time, too.

Alrighty, I have today off and I'm making a second go at chapter 7. I think I'll go piecemeal as I switch between pages and tasks (laundry, phone calls, etc. )

The opening is a little confusing in an almost analogous way to the opening of Chapter 6. He introduces a concept at the end of Chapter 6 -- the originative supplement -- and briefly elucidates said concept in relation to Husserl at the opening, then switches topics to a closer reading of Husserl's distinction between intention and intuition, while questioning not the distinction itself, but rather that Husserl goes too far in the direction of intuition when the original argument should keep the meaning separate from intuition even if there is a "fulfilling object" within intuition.

That takes me up to just before the example of statements about perception to another person on the top of page 79.

Just restricting myself to the characterization of leftism, then: Even metaphorically -- this is what I mean by I think our experiences are just different. I can say I have seen what you describe. I can say I've participated in it, and will probably do so again.

But, in my experience, there's more than that, too.

Let's take capitalism. Do communists dream big dreams? Yes. Why not, after all? But do they recognize them as dreams? Well, depends on the communist. And, after all, an American communist is of course trained to live within a capitalist society, they just believe that communism -- whatever that happens to be -- is better than capitalism.

But how could that be unless they had some notion of how it functions and why? And wouldn't a self-critical communist also come to realize, at some point, they are very much part and parcel to the system of capitalism and they don't know how to survive in a communist system?

On that latter point, especially -- I mean, in my experience, leftists are poignantly aware of that fact.

Hence why I agree with Mike -- he's bringing his analysis of society back to the level of survival, which is in fact the sorts of things you would have to think about in any society. It doesn't have to be hunting, as you note, but just know-how to live in that society. And sometimes the better choice in the moment is to have "more lawyers" and fewer "revolutionaries", just to keep with the communist drift. (that wouldn't mean they are political revolutionaries if they are lawyers -- but they may still harbor communist sentiments, at least).


But, I'm willing to say that these are merely what I've seen, and isn't necessarily representative of the left. But I see leftists in not just idealist terms, but much more pragmatic and earthly terms too, just going off of what I have experienced.

I suppose on the points he makes I'd just say that my experience is different with the left. I'd say that Killer Mike is partially correct about leftists, depending on the leftist group. It's important to not get lost in rhetorical dreams in turning political beliefs into action. And there are people who won't necessarily draw out the conclusions of the words they are saying.

Of course you've said that your beliefs about the left are confirmed by experience too, and I'm more than willing to concede that experience is far from all encompassing or representative.

But when he listed those skills -- I was like, well, yes! (and it's actually very very hard to organize politically along those skills)


However, I tend to think of race, and the politics of race, as a different issue from left/right too. Leftists care about race, for sure, but I'd say it's a bit odd to frame the issues of race as strictly leftist issues. There's the dialogue of race within leftist circles, there's a dialogue of race within other circles, and there's a dialogue on race within different racial groups and within their own racial groups. The biggest lack of dialogue on race, by my lights, is actually between groups.

There are both liberal and conservative political proposals and beliefs about race, and at the end of the day black people organize regardless of party or political ideology in order to obtain power and pursue self-interest. I don't mean that in a negative way -- I tend to think that this is what politics not only is about but should be about (not always, but tend to). This is only to say that the politics of race, as I view them, are not strictly leftist, though race is certainly a part of leftist concerns in general (however that happens to manifest in a particular setting or group).

A brief note to the conversation on race:

There's a difference between ethnicity and race. An ethnicity can contain multiple races. And a race can contain multiple ethnicities.

For the former: Hispanic is an ethnicity. It includes people who are brown, black, mestizo.

For the latter: White is a race. It includes people of Jewish, Scottish, and Scandinavian ethnicities.


Ethnicities have to do with culture, heritage, country, origins. Race is a mark which designates certain character traits which then assign you a relative position within a social group.

Obviously both of these definitions aren't accepted by everyone, and I wouldn't even say they are the best on offer. But there's certainly a difference between the two.

I'd be fine with that at this point. I just finished 7 the first time last night.

On Chapter 6:

Stuff started clicking for me once I just decided to ignore the beginning of the chapter. I don't know what the lead-in about silence is supposed to be on about. It almost reads like it comes from another essay -- which, as I recall (though I don't remember where I read this) isn't too far from what Derrida does in these books published this year. After all it would only make sense, being a philosopher of writing, to question the dimensions of the book with a supplement.

But yeah, the stuff about the voice and it leading to auto-affection and securing the seat of ideal meaning and expression -- that all seemed to flow naturally from the last chapter. I just wanted to note that the beginning kept me stumped for awhile. I still don't know what it's about, except by way of some vague metaphorical connections (such as with the notion of hiatus, and the analogy with the trace).

On to chapter 7 then.

Heh. I don't know if I have a question yet, but the difference between, or lack thereof, metaphysics and epistemology is a concern I'm usually pretty sensitive to in reading philosophy -- just because it seems to happen often enough they co-define one another, not just among philosophers but even in common thinking (though the terms aren't the same or technical).

The only question I would have is that if I am correct in stating that there's a risk of bleed-through, then I'd be interested to see if there is a manner of differentiating the epistemology from metaphysics given said definition of metaphysics. (or if, in fact, this is not a concern worth having given said definition) -- I haven't read the book, but it's the question that your opening sparked.

I wasn't sure where you were going with it until you used the definition to mark a distinction between metaphysics and ontology. Then its value clicked for me. A question pops into my head though -- it seems that by saying 'selection' that you're also saying that metaphysics is a sort of procedure, but then it would seem to -- and perhaps this is unavoidable with any definition -- bleed into epistemology, no?

Heh. Honestly this last chapter was hard for me. But I'm still down for pushing on.

More often than not I don't absorb everything on a first reading and things start to click later, or on a 2nd reading after letting it sit for awhile.

I wonder if we are saying the same thing or not. — unenlightened

My guess is that we aren't, just to judge from similar conversations. :D I tend to think that we run parallel in some ways but there's a divergence somewhere in our thinking about emotion -- which, as you noted before to Mongrel, may just be a matter of what we feel we need to focus on for our own better living. (I certainly am not proposing a scientific theory here -- though something more universal than unique to myself, I'd guess)

I suppose compassion comes from empathy, whereas attachment comes from self image. So are you saying that my compassion for my daughter's suffering is necessary, but the extra 'weight' of pain that comes from my attachment is unnecessary and self inflicted? I'm not terribly happy with that analysis.

I wouldn't say necessary -- since compassion isn't necessary -- but that you can also cause unnecessary pain to yourself depending on your relationship to said suffering, or that you can relate to the suffering of others in such a way that you are not responding compassionately, but from a role or identity you hold dear (I really think that compassion runs contrary to identity, though I could be wrong on that). So, for instance, I think of myself as a loving father, and a loving father expresses outrage in these situations, so I then express outrage in such-and-such a manner to satisfy my self-image of a loving father vs. approaching the suffering of your daughter with an ear towards their suffering.

Also, I think I would flip your causal chain there in saying that empathy comes from compassion. Compassion is a state of mind in and through which which empathy (to feel as others feel) can grow.

Though "pain" here, I believe -- and generally I think this about pain -- is a bit of a weasel word. It seems comprehensive, but on the whole I tend to think that it's just a collection of similar experiences. Loss and anger feel different from one another, but are easily classified as "pain", just to elucidate where I'm going with that.


I think I'd disagree with @Wosret's characterization of "attachment is good, and pain is necessary" Attachment causes suffering, and I hazard it's unnecessary suffering. I can agree up to a point, if I understand at least. There's a sense in which emotions just are. You just feel what you feel, and there's no amount of storytelling to yourself which can change that. You can't really run from them or hide them or change them. But you can habituate your behaviors -- including mental behaviors -- so that you are happy more often than not. Pain doesn't go away magically, but the pain you cause yourself does.

Some pains only go away with death. So in some cases I would agree that pain is necessary. But I wouldn't say that this pain is the result of attachment, but is just a fact of life. (In which case -- why try altering it in the first place if it is necessary?)
Some pain isn't necessary. It's learned.

Heh. Rambly on my part. I'm trying to bite off too much.

Perhaps a more concise and better expressed version is: the question you ask inherits a lot of answers which I think, insofar that we are interested in knowledge and ideas, should be questioned. We've already accepted, by answering the question, what counts as innate, what an idea is, what experience is, and knowledge too when it's at least within the confines of reasonble inquiry to have beliefs on these topics which differ before we even come to the debate on whether or not there are innate ideas or a priori knowledge.

I was wondering when this would become an explicit question. It has been given answers in various comments that I have avoided responding to, and has hovered in the background of the discussion of the toddler video. One might look at infants or animals, one might look to evolutionary psychology. But I don't want to answer, because I don't want to start from there, I want to start from here.

So my only answer is that the primary feeling is the feeling I have before I make a judgement or have a feeling about my feeling. It may well be that such feelings do not even have a name of their own, because they are so universally masked. Or maybe it is some list - fear, disgust, curiosity, affection, or whatever. I don't want to preempt what anyone might uncover, or force feelings into categories. — unenlightened

Cool.

Can I say that to be attached is to be vulnerable to hurt? This immediately prompts one to see the benefit of detachment. But to me, detachment is a curse, it is a state of unreality in which my relationship to the world is denied. There is no feeling more destructive of the person and the other than indifference. — unenlightened

Well, I will say that I came to this terminology from Buddhists. Not that I am a Buddhist, but when hearing them speak it just made a lot of sense. This is important because the state of detachment isn't one of indifference, but rather a state of compassion. So detachment isn't to turn oneself into an emotional rock, but rather to calm the mind into a state of loving-kindness, as the terminology has it.

Of course there is an objective in such a phrasing -- it's not what I would consider something purely scientific, per se. But then, I don't mind that. I'm not sure if such a thing is possible anyways.

But, to directly answer your question -- I think you could say that, but that's not exactly what I mean. Attachment causes pain, but as I see it it is unnecessary pain. The sort of pain that you cause to yourself.

But then not all anger is like that, either. So perhaps there's more to it than that. Perhaps we could just say "being vulnerable" is something different from this way of talking.

I wouldn't say I believe in innate ideas. Not that the thought hasn't tempted me, but more like it strikes me -- when I try to believe in such things -- as a befuddled belief. I can't readily identify what would count as innate and what wouldn't. What would the difference between innateness and, say, simply a strongly held belief be? At least for the purposes of identifying what beliefs you hold to be one or the other?

But, likewise, I don't believe that all ideas arise from experience. Once we accept something like experience it seems clear to me that ideas permeate said experience -- experiences change with a change of thought, our perceptions are guided by what we usually classify as mental phenomena, and we organize said perceptions into and with ideas.

And then with respect to knowledge: granting the above it would suggest that there is such a thing as a priori knowledge insofar that knowledge and ideas overlap -- just using the bare-bones notion of a priori to mean "without experience". But here the same question rises: which ideas would count as knowledge, and which of the ideas which we count as innate would also count as knowledge?

The best guess I can give is knowledge not based upon what is sensible. But again this seems to take for granted so much to me. Why, for instance, do we consider mathematical statements non-sensible? Mostly because we are taught there are 5 senses, and we likewise then develop a notion of interiority and exteriority to classify these things. But there's not a justification for such a division, it's just the way we talk. There's something to be said for saying I have a sense of my own body, a sense of my mental state -- so why not also have a sense for what is mathematical? Not necessarily a separate sense where we just posit a sense for anything, but it doesn't seem implausible to me to reclassify our internal lives, our mental lives, as sensible. I don't know what use such a classification would have, and clearly it would be confusing to presume such a classification in conversation, but insofar that we are asking after the nature of ideas and knowledge then it seems worthwhile to question these sorts of presuppositions.

So I'm a bit late on re-reading 5, but I began to see your objection much better @The Great Whatever -- and I think I saw the response, too on the Husserl quote which spans page 55 through 56:

If we now relate the term perception with the differences in the way of being given which temporal objects have, the opposite of perception is then primary memory and primary anticipation (retention and protention) which here comes on the scene, so that perception and non-perception pass continuously into one another

So even granting that retention and protention are perceptive, it will still put a strike against the "solitary life of the soul" because there is non-perception passed continuously into this "blink of an eye".

At least, this reading brought that particular passage out for me. I'm saying something similar to what I said before (and I should note again that I'm not evaluating whether Derrida's claim is true or not, just trying to suss out how the argument works) -- but with a textual reference to back up what I was saying. I'm not sure if that actually persuades you or not. I would like to hear what you think.



Also, the last paragraph -- it was really confusing but I think I'm seeing what he's getting at with it. He's not just asserting the trace, which is what I kind of had as a take-away when I first read it, but claiming that the ideality which Husserl claims -- the Bedeutung of any signifier -- is fully granted, but possible only by repetition. That reptition is, in some sense, Bedeutung, or takes the place of Bedeutung once we see that the eternal now has differance inscribed into it through indication.


Yeah, this next chapter is a doozy. I have some notional ideas, but I'll wait to see what @Metaphysician Undercover says.

I guess I would ask -- what is a pragmatics vs. a supposed idealism?

It seems to me that such views are just principled in another way -- not that they sacrifice principles, but that they have different ones. Or, at the very least, as you have defined the terms no one would call themselves idealists including people who call themselves anarchists.

I'm not so sure jealousy is simpler. One could say that jealousy is the motivator of competition, and competition is the motivator of excellence. It seems to be concerned again with self image, and may or may not involve a component of anger. But whether it is felt to be good or bad, that feeling comes after the jealousy itself, and does not affect the complexity of the source of the feeling. — unenlightened

We can stay focused on anger then.

I want to hold clear the distinction between the feeling - anger, and the action - harming. So, although it is not always used quite this way, I define anger as the feeling that motivates harm. Now one can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, but breaking eggs isn't normally the motive. So to endorse harm is not necessarily to endorse anger. I support taxing the rich, not to damage them, but to help the poor. I can imagine not hating Hitler, but loving Jews enough to assassinate him. — unenlightened

My focusing on goodness and badness is that it seemed to me that anger is (generally) bad, in your characterization of anger. That's what gives me hesitancy.

But actually rereading your post -- anger is a secondary emotion to primary pain, either empathetic or egoistic.

What, then, are the primary emotions?



Also, I gather we're thinking about anger in a different way. I don't think of anger as egoistic. I agree with your approach that it is a result of an internal configuration, but I'm less prone to think of anger as attached to identity. I'm more prone, in general now and not just with anger, to think in terms of attachment. And this may just be a way of restating what you're getting at, but it's the verbal pattern I'm accustomed to.

I become (and, in some sense, am) attached to the world in various ways. This "I" is not an identity, but is that which identifies with an identity -- one might say becomes attached to an identity. But it is this attachment which usually results in anxiety and anger. Possibilities take on a kind of reality (may stop what I have become attached to), hence resulting in anxiety, or reality interferes with this attachment, hence causing anger.

But were I not attached in the first place -- or were I to detach ahead of time -- anxiety and anger would go away. (at least when it comes to things I have no control over, which will inevitably come and go, causing excitement and disappointment)

Which isn't to say one should always detach. While I do think anger is a nullity on compassion, I'm less certain about saying compassion is something we should always have.

I'm concerned to emphasise that whether anger is proper or improper, good or bad, harmful or not, is a feeling one has about one's anger (or about another's). The phrase 'consuming anger' is interesting; when one is consumed by anger, it has taken over, to the extent that in the moment, there is no judgement - no feeling about anger - one is anger itself, completely. To get carried away is to be for a moment undivided, single minded, and this is a wonderful state of no (internal) conflict. Afterwards, one may judge one's condition to have been proper or improper in the usual divided and conflicted way. This is part of the attraction of anger, that it liberates one from conflict. — unenlightened

Well, I think what I was getting at is a little different from what you're stating here. All consuming anger, as I meant to refer at least, is not something which is momentary or which you can't have divided internal conflicts about. It is all consuming precisely in the way that even if you have divided feelings you continue to feel the anger. It is an anger in the long-term, and is all consuming in that it centers your awareness of the world. Akin to hatred, but different too -- because it is easy to hate, but it is hard to hold anger. It is the sort of anger one desires revenge out of, because of the harm you are causing yourself.

Some more guess work.

My thoughts on that are that is that it's justified only insofar that we "open up" the sign. I get the distinct sense that Derrida is not trying to disprove Husserl, as much as inhabit his thoughts out of a kind of respect. Otherwise, wouldn't he just make a straightforward argument? Derrida seems more than capable on that point.

Though, since it's being mentioned, it could just be sympathies playing in Derrida's favor in my part. I don't mind the conclusion -- I tend to fall on the non-Cartesian side of things in my thinking.

But if the latter Husserl trips across indication in the now, by way of the interplay between the present and the absent found in what is all equally now (which is probably the closest to a succinct first reading I can muster at this point. I plan I re-reading the chapter on Thursday to see if I can suss anything else out of it), then the deconstruction is only against metaphysics -- the expression/indication distinction -- and not against phenomenology and Husserl. This "opens" the sign in the sense that the sign is not a modification of presence, but rather allows the "solitary life of the soul" to operate.

Which would mean that it has a kind of existence (existance?) -- it is the concept of the origin, and the sort of ideal meaning, and the notions of language, rather than all the conclusions of Husserl that are threatened.

Though, if that be the case, it is also hard to reconcile statements that Derrida makes like "the project is threatened" -- I suppose it depends on what the project was. If it was to secure a kind of point-like individual separate from the world then that would be the case -- the Cartesian core of a self as a metaphysical entity. But the Cartesian project wasn't predicated on those sorts of conclusions, and I don't know if I'd say anything I've read of Husserl's is actually threatened by this attempt to "drain the presence" out of the text. (of course, I am only passingly familiar with Husserl too -- what say you @The Great Whatever?)

Also, it'd be cool to read Time-Consciousness lectures directly after this. But in some sense, at least at this stage of reading, I'm not quite as invested in that project because it would be the more critical project of evaluating Derrida's claims. At this point I'd settle for a fair reading of what V&P is trying to get at more than anything -- not necessarily whether or not it is correct in its assertions. (as is my usual approach to reading phil)

Now, given all this, where are the teeth left in the criticism? Suppose that we can, as Husserl insists, perceive the past, and so Derrida's insistence that perception is strictly the form of the present (segun Husserl) is wrong in the strong sense he has maintained it so far. Suppose further, as he also insists, that non-perception lies at the end of protention and retention as a continuum. Given this picture, what is the appeal of placing Husserl within a 'metaphysics of presence?' — The Great Whatever

Isn't this actually all granted? It seems to me that these things aren't an issue on their face, but only when you consider the development of the expression/indication distinction -- and not just that distinction, but rather, the argument that goes into separating expression off from indication. What this picture paints is something very much other than the solitary life of the soul which gives us pure expression. Derrida has no problem with that unto itself -- actually, it seems, given what he states about the mixture of presence and absence, he rather favors the view -- but rather that this description of time consciousness does not square away with the now, as described to support the notion of pure expressivity, which is how the sign became subordinate to presence (hence the metaphysics of presence).

EDIT: At least, that's the gist I'm getting from reading -- the goal isn't so much a criticism for participating in the same metaphysical tradition in the sense that he ought not to do it, but rather, that in one case the sign is relegated to a modification of presence -- an eternal "now" outside of, or prior to, the sign, where the sign is produced as a series of exits -- but in the other case this "now" is disrupted in the sense defended in the LI as the basis for expression. Therefore, the enthymeme seems to be, Husserl should accept the subordination of expression to indication -- that Time Consciousness, as described by Husserl, actually takes advantage of this interplay between two positions without owning up to the more prominent role which the sign actually plays. The two sides structure one another, but the truth is somewhere in-between the two extremes that are seemingly contradictory.

I think the focus is more on Husserl's take on language than it is a critique in the sense of Husserl being in error, since that would open the door to the wider picture of language which Derrida wishes to advance.

If anyone participating think that's an entirely off reading please do say so.

I think it's often unexamined -- which is to say I share your uncertainty on what's being said in each case.

I think, since you mentioned philosophy of mind, this is especially the case in philosophy of mind. The mind and the world sort of define one another, it often seems. Not always. Sometimes these are rendered explicitly -- such as in Descartes. But in other renditions it's a sort of taking for granted -- why, after all, are emotions generally situated within the mind? Or perceptions? Why not the world? Or vice-versa?

That isn't to say that these are wrong categorizations, but the underlying reasons why I think are where we might be able to say our notion of "world" becomes examined.

Listened to this album for the first time today. I listened to it 4 more times.

Cool thread, un.

Just some initial thoughts here:

Anger, I think, is not the easier case. Jealousy, as a source of evil at least, would make more sense to me to focus on because I find it hard to think of a case where the motivation of jealousy is a good thing, even when the effects are good (say, donating to a charity out of jealousy because of a vain desire to appear better than someone else) ((although, then again, perhaps we don't need to mention the effects at all here -- because the conversation is already primarily focused on motivation, rather than the effects of our actions, as a locus of evil... or at least wrongdoing, if evil seems too strong a word)). But anger has so many layers to it that I find it hard to make sense of it in such declarative terms. Anger is a proper response in some cases, and in some ways, and not so in other cases or other ways. It's the way anger is expressed, I'd wager, that makes it bad or good. (indeed, I would hazard to say that unexpressed anger is itself not a good thing, though it makes sense to wait for the right context in which to express it)

For instance, I think there is a kind of anger that is harmful to the angry person. It doesn't matter if the anger is acted on or not, but it is a kind of consuming anger which causes harm to the person who is angry -- and if it is acted upon, harm to what that person directs their anger against.

But then there is justified anger. I agree with you in that it's not the state of the world which causes this anger, but I'm not sure I could say that it is a response to emotional pain. Couldn't anger just be emotional pain, for instance? Say I am attached to some thing in the world and I lose it -- loss and anger accompany this attachment. That is emotional pain.


Though (and this might be tangential -- depending on how much you were wanting to focus on the relationship between good motivation and good actions) I might be a bit at odds with the initial thoughts on goodness and badness, too, since harm to another is not something I would say is wrong, tout court. That isn't to say I endorse revenge -- revenge, I would agree, is a poor motivation. But I'm not so certain that harm is morally forbidden. Or, at least, that it both is and isn't -- there's a sense in which I would say harming another is always a shame, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done, in such and such a circumstance. (as in, a better world is one without harm to others, but in this world, harm in this case was the better option)

One sentence I want to highlight that I read and re-read and for the life of me find difficult to understand what it is saying -- I don't know if I'm just being dense, if I'm just not familiar enough with the referenced content, or if it is genuinely a difficult idea being expressed -- I wanted to post to see if others found it either difficult or really, really obvious. Page 53, paragraph 3, sentence begins on line 8:

It therefore prescribes the place of a problematic that puts phenomenology into confrontation with every thought of non-consciousness that would know how to approach the genuine stakes and profound agency where the decision is made: the concept of time

I gather that this means that the domination of the now prescribes the importance of the concept of time, which is the same metaphysic both of the greek world and the modern world where the idea is thought of as representation. Followed by saying that The phenomenolgoy of Internal Time-Consciousness is not some chance fluke, but rather very important to the point Derrida wants to make.

But that was some guess work on my part

There's some guess-work in this rendition so by all means please bring in your own thoughts on this chapter. This is just a first stab. I found it hard to follow at times.




I decided to reread 1-3. I think there's actually more argument going on in the first three chapters than I initially surmised. Especially in 2 and 3 -- which are linking indication and expression, respectively, to the metaphysics of presence. 1 still reads as a introduction to the problem Derrida wishes to explore along with a quick announcement of how he's going to tackle said problem. And 4 is a statement of Husserl's arguments in favor of the distinction between indication and expression in order to see how they likewise work in favor of presence and absence (and, also, against the sign -- or, rather, for the sign as a modification of presence); or, as Husserl would have it, the "solitary life of the soul" bears the weight for the distinction between expression and indication, and this -- according to Derrida's reading, at least -- is the reaffirmation of the metaphysics of presence which from this point onward never goes unquestioned by Husserl. Chapter five begins:

The sharp point of the instant, the identify of lived-experience present to itself in the same instant bears therefore the whole weight of this demonstration

If I'm correct in my reading then 1-4 are meant to justify this statement.

The introduction to this section is surmised a few paragraphs down:

If the punctuality of the instant is a myth, a spatial or mechanical metaphor, a metaphysical concept inherited, or all of that at once, if the present of the presence to self is not simple, if it is constituted in an originary or irreducible synthesis, then the principle of Husserl's entire argumentation is threatened

I read this as -- if a or b or c or (a and b and c), or d, or e, then p

Purely in a logical way, at least. I don't think the disjunctive language is meant to spell out a rather messy syllogism, but is meant to elucidate the meaning of the term

"the present of the prsence to self is not simple"

So that this can be read as --

if q, then p

And the remainder of the chapter is basically arguing for "q", thereby concluding that Husserl's entire argumentation is threatened. The interesting part about "q", from my standpoint at least, is that Derrida is attempting to make that argument primarily by way of citation of Husserl's texts. (note that I am certainly in no position to evaluate whether or not what Derrida states of Husserl's is a fair reading -- this is just my summation of how the argument works).




1. Punctuality plays a major role in Husserl's thought even while Husserl attempts to disavow this.

Although the flowing of time is "indivisible into fragments that could be by themselves, and indivisible into phases that could be by themselves, into points of continuity," the "mods of the flowing of an immanent temporal object have a beginning, a, so to speak, source-point This is the mode of flowing by which the immanent object begins to be. It is characterized as present" Despite all the complexity of its structure, temporality has a non-displaceable center, an eye or a living nucleus, and that is the puncutality of the actual now

Derrida goes on to claim that this domination of the now is characteristic of the metaphysics of presence. In contradistinction to said metaphysic Derrida here makes reference to Freud's unconscious (or similar constructions, one presumes) to elucidate in what way Husserl is committed to this metaphysics of presence, and goes on to quote Husserl rejection of the unconscious.


I must admit that part 2's argument is something I find difficult to evaluate because of my lack of familiarity with the content it's drawing from. But what I gather is the following

2. In LI Husserl utilizes punctuality. This allows him to make the distinction between expression and indication, which likewise is how Husserl is able to interpret language, at large, as a modification of presence (and, hence, non-expressive). However, in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness and elsewhere the content of the description forbids us from speaking of a simple self-identity of the present. So self-identity is not simple.

3. Here Derrida opens with a restatement of the conclusions of 1 and 2, to give what he calls their "apparent irreconcilable possibilities" -- and then what follows is a reconciliation of the two by way of repetition. i.e. the sign.

It seems to me that Derrida restates this on several fronts -- that what makes expression possible is the hiatus between these two irreconcialable possibilities -- at least, irreconcialable unless one accepts the sign as what allows these two possibilities to co-exist. So it is not so much that Husserl is even wrong in his analysis, but rather, in accord with his own philosophical project, we can reconcile what is apparently contradictory if we think of language not in terms of a modification of presence, but rather as what allows this original distinction to make sense.

Or, if that not be the case, then expression at least is not linguistic, but expressive language is "added on to an originary and pre-expressive stratus of sense. Expressive language itself would have to supervene on the absolute silence of the self-relation"

Yup, definitely. Just got up and am getting on it now. (One of the reasons I was willing -- I have today off so have enough time to put in :) )

Sounds about right to me.

There's definitely a reversal at work in VP -- but I don't think the claim is that Husserl intended this reversal. Chapter 1 makes this pretty clear -- I think the last sentence of that chapter is really important to the remainder of this text:

We have chosen to be interested in this relation in which phenomenology belongs to classical ontology

(emphasis mine)

Derrida's reading of Husserl isn't exclusive of the second reading he proposes at the end of chapter 1. Rather, he has chosen to hone in on this possible reading which, if he is correct at least, the text affords or allows. Not that his reading is fixed by Husserl's intent, but that the text allows this as a possible reading.

Also, the notion of choice here being important because it means you could also choose to read the text in a different way from the one presented here -- one governed by authorial intent, for instance.

I think that Signature, Event, Context might be of some use here. He's engaging with Austin and the concept of communication there, but he also lays out his arguments for repeatability there, and ties it into the concepts of death (once again, much later).

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/inc.pdf

Beginning on Page 7:

A written sign is proffered in the absence of the receiver. How to style this
absence? One could say that at the moment when I am writing, the receiver may
be absent from my field of present perception. But is not this absence merely a
distant presence, one which is delayed or which, in one form or another, is idealized
in its representation? This does not seem to be the case, or at least this
distance, divergence, delay, this deferral [differ-ance] must be capable of being
carried to a certain absoluteness of absence if the structure of writing, assuming
that writing exists, is to constitute itself. It is at that point that the differ-ance [difference
and deferral, trans. ] as writing could no longer (be) an (ontological)
modification of presence. In order for my "written communication" to retain its
function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute
disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication
must be repeatable-iterable-in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any
empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability-(iter, again,
probably comes from itara, other in Sanskrit, and everything that follows can be
read as the working out of the logic that ties repetition to alterity) structures the
mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved
(whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetiC, alphabetiC, to cite
the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable-iterable-beyond
the death of the addressee would not be writing. Although this would seem to be
obvious, I do not want it accepted as such, and I shall examine the final objection
that could be made to this proposition. Imagine a writing whose code would be
so idiomatic as to be established and known, as secret cipher, by only two "subjects."
Could we maintain that, following the death of the receiver, or even of
both partners, the mark left by one of them is still writing? Yes, to the extent that,
organized by a code, even an unknown and nonlinguistic one, it is constituted in
its identity as mark by its iterability, in the absence of such and such a person, and
hence ultimately of every empirically determined "subject." This implies that
there is no such thing as a code-Drganon of iterability-which could be structurally
secret. The possibility of repeating and thus of identifying the marks is
implicit in every code, making it into a network [une grille] that is communicable,
transmittable, deCipherable, iterable for a third, and hence for every possible
user in general. To be what it is, all writing must, therefore, be capable of functioning
in the radical absence of every empirically determined receiver in general.
And this absence is not a continuous modification of presence, it is a rupture
in presence, the "death" or the possibility of the "death" of the receiver inscribed
in the structure of the mark (I note in passing that this is the point where the
value or the "effect" of transcendentality is linked necessarily to the possibility of
writing and of "death" as analyzed). The perhaps paradoxical consequence of my
here having recourse to iteration and to code: the disruption, in the last analysis,
of the authority of the code as a finite system of rules; at the same time, the radical
destruction of any context as the protocol of code. We will come to this in a
moment.

What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or
the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine
which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle,
hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be
rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance" [disparition: also, demise,
trans.], it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I
ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in
general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful
[mon vouloir-dire, mon intention-de-signification], of my wish to communicate,
from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a
writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the
author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he
seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead
or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present
intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in
order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this
point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The
situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory,
trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader.
This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off
from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority,
orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is preCisely what
Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical
movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.

And starting on page 16:

Austin thus excludes, along with what he calls a "sea-change," the "non-serious,"
"parasitism," "etiolation," "the non-ordinary" (along with the whole general theory
which, if it succeeded in accounting for them, would no longer be governed
by those oppositions), all of which he nevertheless recognizes as the possibility
available to every act of utterance. It is as just such a "parasite" that writing has
always been treated by the philosophical tradition, and the connection in this
case is by no means coincidental.

I would therefore pose the following question: is this general possibility
necessarily one of a failure or trap into which language may fall or lose itself as in
an abyss situated outside of or in front of itself? What is the status of this parasitism?
In other words, does the quality of risk admitted by Austin surround language
like a kind of ditch or external place of perdition which speech [la locution]
could never hope to leave, but which it can escape by remaining "at home,"
by and in itself, in the shelter of its essence or telos? Or, on the contrary, is this
risk rather its internal and positive condition of possibility? Is that outside its
inside, the very force and law of its emergence? In this last case, what would be
meant by an "ordinary" language defined by the exclusion of the very law of
language? In excluding the general theory of this structural parasitism, does not
Austin, who nevertheless claims to describe the facts and events of ordinary language,
pass off as ordinary an ethical and teleological determination (the univocity
of the utterance [enonel?}--that he acknowledges elsewhere [pp. 72-73] remains
a philosophical "ideal"-the presence to self of a total context, the
transparency of intentions, the presence of meaning [vouloir-dire] to the absolutely
singular uniqueness of a speech act, etc.)?

For, ultimately, isn't it true that what Austin excludes as anomaly, exception,
"non-serious,"9 citation (on stage, in a poem, or a soliloquy) is the determined
modification of a general citationality-Dr rather, a general iterability-without
which there would not even be a "successful" performative? So that-a paradoxical
but unavoidable conclusion-a successful performative is necessarily an "impure"
performative, to adopt the word advanced later on by Austin when he
acknowledges that there is no "pure" performative.

I take things up here from the perspective of positive possibility and not simply
as instances of failure or infelicity: would a performative utterance be possible
if a citational doubling [doublure] did not come to split and dissociate from
itself the pure singularity of the event? I pose the question in this form in order to
prevent an objection. For it might be said: you cannot claim to account for the socalled
graphematic structure of locution merely on the basis of the occurrence of
failures of the performative, however real those failures may be and however
effective or general their possibility. You cannot deny that there are also
performatives that succeed, and one has to account for them: meetings are called
to order (Paul Ricoeur did as much yesterday); people say: "I pose a question";
they bet, challenge, christen ships, and sometimes even marry. It would seem
that such events have occurred. And even if only one had taken place only once,
we would still be obliged to account for it.

I'll answer: "Perhaps." We should first be clear on what constitutes the status
of "occurrence" or the eventhood of an event that entails in its allegedly present
and Singular emergence the intervention of an utterance [enonel?] that in itself
can be only repetitive or citational in its structure, or rather, since those two
words may lead to confusion: iterable. I return then to a point that strikes me as
fundamental and that now concerns the status of events in general, of events of
speech or by speech, of the strange logic they entail and that often passes unseen.
Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a
"coded" or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula I pronounce in
order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as
conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way
as a "citation"? Not that citationality in this case is of the same sort as in a theatrical
play, a philosophical reference, or the recitation of a poem. That is why there
is a relative specificity, as Austin says, a "relative purity" of performatives. But this
relative purity does not emerge in opposition to citationality or iterability, but in
opposition to other kinds of iteration within a general iterability which constitutes
a violation of the allegedly rigorous purity of every event of discourse or
every speech act. Rather than oppose citation or iteration to the noniteration of an
event, one ought to construct a differential typology of forms of iteration, assuming
that such a project is tenable and can result in an exhaustive program, a
question I hold in abeyance here. In such a typology, the category of intention
will not disappear; it will have its place, but from that place it will no longer be
able to govern the entire scene and system of utterance [l'enonciation]. Above
all, at that point, we will be dealing with different kinds of marks or chains of
iterable marks and not with an opposition between citational utterances, on the
one hand, and singular and original event-utterances, on the other. The first consequence
of this will be the following: given that structure of iteration, the intention
animating the utterance will never be through and through present to itself
and to its content. The iteration structuring it a priori introduces into it a dehiscence
and a cleft [brisure] which are essential. The "non-serious ," the oratio obliqua
will no longer be able to be excluded, as Austin wished, from "ordinary"
language. And if one maintains that such ordinary language, or the ordinary circumstances
of language, excludes a general citationality or iterability, does that
not mean that the "ordinariness" in question-the thing and the notion-shelter
a lure, the teleological lure of consciousness (whose motivations, indestructible
necessity, and systematic effects would be subject to analysis)? Above all, this
essential absence of intending the actuality of utterance, this structural unconsciousness,
if you like, prohibits any saturation of the context. In order for a
context to be exhaustively determinable, in the sense required by Austin, conscious
intention would at the very least have to be totally present and immediately
transparent to itself and to others, since it is a determining center [foyer] of
context. The concept of -Dr the search for-the context thus seems to suffer at
this point from the same theoretical and "interested" uncertainty as the concept
of the "ordinary," from the same metaphysical origins: the ethical and teleological
discourse of consciousness. A reading of the connotations, this time, of Austin's
text, would confirm the reading of the descriptions; I have just indicated its
principle.

Probably easier to read it in the pdf, but I wanted to highlight areas in that essay where he talks about repetition -- and he touches on some of the same themes which VP is talking about now with respect to consciousness, death, meaning, and communication.

'Post-modernism' is not a school of thought, but a period of history. — Wayfarer

I think that hits the nail on the head. It's more akin to "the Enlightenment" than, say, "Transcendental Idealism" -- the former being a historical period of philosophy (which we posit to understand the history of philosophy), and the latter being a particular kind of philosophy (of which there are a handful of self-described adherents).


So, one can believe narratives play a role within some philosophical works without also, thereby, labeling oneself as a post-modernist.

What do you think? Are we, should we, each just make up our own narrative about what is most important, are we, should we each just make up our own narrative about how to live the best life possible? — anonymous66

Can we just make up narratives about what is most important or how to live the best life possible?

I think that we narrativize because it's a way of thinking. We tell a story about our lives to ourselves and to others. There's a sense in which it's made up, but I don't know if I'd say it's just made up -- as in, off the top of my head, purely imaginative play, or that my statements are imbued with a kind of magical ability to make themselves true by speaking them.

I may be mistaken in this, so correct me if I'm wrong -- but isn't phenomenology supposed to side step metaphysics by focusing in on lived experience?

I thought that to be one goal of phenomenology. Hence, if one could show that the same dichotomies which (purportedly) dominate the history of metaphysics also dominate phenomenology, then something would be gained by that critique -- that these dichotomies are not so easily escaped as it would seem (that metaphysical thinking re-introduces itself everywhere -- "always already" as the phrase has it).

That, I think in part, is the reason for the elliptical stylistic choice too -- there's a sense in which the text we're reading, the works of Derrida that is, would become dominated by the same categories that have always dominated metaphysics.

In some way I think you have to agree with Heidegger -- at least to a certain degree -- about the history of metaphysics to make sense of Derrida. I remember reading Heidegger was the sort of "lynch pin" that helped me to begin to see what was going on years ago (or, at least, gave my mind handholds)

I'm just trying to understand how the first 3 chapters bring us to the themes of chapter 4. If, in chapter 4, the tight - tho oft-interrupted - analysis gives way totally to a freewheeling impressionistic meditation on various phenomenological themes, well, I feel a little disappointed. — csalisbury

I think something to keep in mind is that this is par for the course for Derrida's writing -- he will often place chapters in a non-linear fashion, as if they came from two different books or as if he cut his original essay in half and flipped around the ends.

Also, I don't think his writing hinges as much on argument -- in the sense that we have an assertion supported or refuted. While it has some academic prose -- such as the distinctions you mention -- I think he reads more like Nietzsche, in the sense that you have to think along with the writing. So when we read the first three chapters it's sort of like reading LI1 as Derrida.

Something that's been helping me in reading along is the thought that the act of deconstruction isn't set out, but is implied by the reading on offer. So while there is the text, there's also how the text upon which a reading is "parasitic" to, the text is being re-arranged in a way to attempt to show us the metaphysical thinking within the text.



Not that people aren't familiar with any of this. But it's worth noting, I think -- at the very least, to prepare ourselves for disappointment ;). (I haven't finished the book yet so not sure if you will be, but it's possible)

I cited a book and a study, I may as well go forth and cite Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World which explains the theory behind mimesis. — Agustino

There's a difference between an argument and a citation.

What's the argument?

I mean, heck. I can shoot a search on google to find something that vaguely seems to support what I'm saying any day of the week. But, at the end of the day, if I don't have an argument then I'm just appealing to authority.

And the idea that it had no effect on what people thought of adultery is equally laughable. It certainly influenced what some folks thought about it, and it would be quite extreme to deny that. Do you not see so many 10-12 year olds do exactly what they see Kim Kardashian and other celebrities do? The same pattern of miming behaviour that is perceived as cool, either because it comes from a well-known leader, or otherwise, exists in adults.

Are adults the same as 10-12 year olds? No.

Is Bill Clinton the same as a pop celebrity? Also no.

Surely you're not positing that some adults think Bill Clinton is cool and his cool-factor influenced them to think that adultery might be OK.

Although, hey, maybe you are. Let's just say exactly that.

Where are these adults who mime the coolness of Bill Clinton and become swayed and tempted to commit adultery because of them trying to mime that hip papa?