You offered a mere report of your feelings. So I razzed you for it.

Written language is different from spoken language. I don't see anything interesting about Derrida's observation. — Jackson

Should I find a journalist or will you?

Point being that you don't care about Derrida and I do a little and pretty much no one cares about those first two situations, not even a little.

Post-modernism is a corrosive substance; eating away at organic value systems and conceptual schemes at the foundations of Western civilisation — karl stone

Whenever I hear talk of culture 'organic value systems,' I release the safety catch on my Browning! Just kidding. Be well.
////////////////////

SCHLAGETER: Good old Fritz! (Laughing.) No paradise will entice you out of your barbed wire entanglement!

THIEMANN: That's for damned sure! Barbed wire is barbed wire! I know what I'm up against.... No rose without a thorn!... And the last thing I'll stand for is ideas to get the better of me! I know that rubbish from '18 ..., fraternity, equality, ..., freedom ..., beauty and dignity! You gotta use the right bait to hook 'em. And then, you're right in the middle of a parley and they say: Hands up! You're disarmed..., you republican voting swine!—No, let 'em keep their good distance with their whole ideological kettle of fish ... I shoot with live ammunition! When I hear the word culture ..., I release the safety on my Browning!"

SCHLAGETER: What a thing to say!

THIEMANN: It hits the mark! You can be sure of that.

SCHLAGETER: You've got a hair trigger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst

I don't think Saussure was referring only to spoken language. — Jackson

Of course he wasn't. He didn't only write of speech. But speech was the ideal and the focus. Yet Saussure can't help relying on the written 'face' of language to make sense of the clearly 'official' or 'proper' voice (this also occurs with other critics of writing who nevertheless resort to metaphors of writing at the crucial moment.) As mentioned above, Derrida reads the radical aspect of Saussure against still-phonocentric biases that are also in the text. Because language is a system of differences and a form without substance, it makes no sense to privilege the voice. Why should the ear have better access to pure, differential form?

I won't go to too much trouble to make the case for Saussure's phonocentrism, because it's not exactly hidden away in footnotes, but I'll do this much.

The subject matter of linguistics comprises all manifestations of human speech, whether that of savages or civilized nations, or of archaic, classical or decadent periods. In each period the linguist must consider not only correct speech and flowery language, but all other forms of expression as well. And that is not all: since he is often unable to observe speech directly, he must consider written texts, for only through them can he reach idioms that are remote in time or space. — Saussure

Derrida's idea that "presence" is the prevailing idea in Western philosophy is false. It barely makes sense. — Jackson

Personally I agree that presence in general is a tricky thing to gripe about. Hence the hint toward German Romanticism. Sartre also comes to mind...the desire of consciousness/nothingness to finally be something...

On the other hand, it makes excellent sense in the limited Saussurian context. A system of differences without positive elements. (Systematic) form not substance. This is why I try to speak only about the Derrida I've studied most and makes most sense to me.

That is not true. One of the weaker claims by Derrida. — Jackson

Well...I've read Saussure, and Saussure privileges speech.

But I am very open to the idea that Derrida whipped up a boogeyman or sniffed out a conspiracy, that he projected his private concerns on the tradition. Some great ideas, but he's not my guru, so hack away. If you've read his bios (maybe you have), you know he made some awkward moves (as do we all.)

How is it similar to Brandom? — Jackson

I'm new to Brandom, so buyer beware, but rationality is all about norms. Forget (or move to the background) all the ontological chatter about minds and matter. Think about practical human beings in the world holding one another accountable for propositions. There are proper ways to justify claims, proper ways to use a concept. Much of this propriety is tacit, down on the level of blind skill. But philosophers especially have made such skill explicit with their metacognitive vocabulary. We were always rational, but we could not always make claims about our claim making in general, etc.

Anyway, phonocentrism privileges speech over writing. Speech is (or was said to be) the proper example of a sign system, or the proper way to communicate sacred insights, just as reproductive sex has been understood as proper sex while homosexuality or just contraception in a heterosexual context was understood as secondary if not outright perverse.

I also mentioned tonal propriety in a post above. I think Derrida offends some with his playfulness. His 'Sarl' joke and many others in Limited Inc are not 'professional.' Is a seriousness of presentation essential to rationality? I don't think so. But the guy with the mohawk or face tattoo has more of a hill to climb. And so does the joker around solemn purveyors of science.

Sounds right. — Jackson

Anatole France's criticism strikes me as important, but its limitations (Derrida's contribution) seem just as important. 'Philosophy' is just the white European man's disavowed myth system. That's the accusation. All his master concepts are spooks, figments, fairy tales with the images rubbed off. It's a basically anti-intellectual belief that philosophers just worship fairy tales like everyone else without admitting it to themselves...that genuine rationality is impossible, so go have fun with your preferred meta-narrative.

To me it's noteworthy that the move often used against cartoon versions of Derrida is basically the move that Derrida himself uses against Anatole France's fictional anti-metaphysician of the The Garden of Epicurus. Cartoon pomo is understood (correctly) to contradict itself. Or, at least, to reduce itself to a mere hunch or preference that has no binding force.

I might add that usage doesn’t only become metaphorical. For Derrida there is no non-metaphorical usage. Also, one would not be able to separate ‘mind’ from ‘matter’ , form from content , the transcendental from the empirical, presence from absence except as poles of a singular event. — Joshs

I hear you, but I don't think we think can or should just jettison that very distinctions that make such exciting claims possible in the first place.

Let's imagine a set of concepts such that, starting from any privileged subset, we can use that subset to rhetorically hobble all the rest.

Along these lines, see how your latest claim above depends on the concepts of singularity, polarity, and eventhood. Which, according to your own claim, must be metaphorical usages. As I grok the white mythology (and I expect you'll agree), it's no good to simply point out the metaphorical origin or residue of master concepts. The most obvious objection is that metaphor is itself a metaphor being applied metaphysically in such a context. This is a problem in general with centers of structures/systems, both inside and outside problematically.

He does indeed place desire for pure presence at the heart of all desire. But pure presence for Derrida is death, so desire must always be thwarted or interrupted in order to continue to be. — Joshs

Like the face of God. There's maybe some German Romanticism in Derrida. And/or a certain slant of light, winter afternoons,...

Bennington turned me on the idea that Derrida was obsessed with what he criticized. To be rational about rationality is a complicated project. One criticizes the very condition of possibility of that criticism. But this is also just Nuerath's boat. We were always already doing it.

I'm familiar with Saussure so that'd be a good introduction i guess — Olivier5

Of Grammatology also has a great introduction, and lots of copies were printed, so one can get used copies pretty cheap from Amazon, etc.

A little more, without comment, and a link to the source: https://tfreeman.net/resources/Phil-480/derrida-white-mythology.pdf

If, for example, we tried to ascertain the diagram for the (supposedly) proper metaphorics of Descartes, even if we allow ourselves to suppose what is far from given, that we could rigorously delimit the metaphorical corpus belonging to his signature alone, we should have to bring to light, beneath the layer of metaphors which are apparently didactic (those reviewed in the psychological and empirical analysis of Spoerri: the ivy and the tree, the road, the house, the town, the machine, the foundation or chain), another less but equally systematic stratum which would not only beneath the first but also interwoven with it. There we should come upon the wax and the pen, dress and nakedness, the boat, the clock,t he seeds and the lodestone, the book, the stick, and so on. To reconstruct the grammar of these metaphors would be to relate its logic to what is taken to be nonmetaphorical writing, in this case to what is called the philosophical system, the meaning of concepts and the order of reasons; but also to relate it to longer sequences, to patterns of permanence and continuity, the "same" metaphor being able to function differently in one place and another. But if we put above all else our respect for the philosophical specificity of this syntax, we thereby also recognize its subordination to sense or meaning, to the truth of the philosophical concept, to what is signified in philosophy. And it is to that main item signified in onto-theology that the tenor of the dominant metaphor will always return: the circle of the heliotrope. Certainly, the metaphors of light and of the circle, so important in Descartes, are not organized as they are in Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, or Husserl. But if we turn to the most critical and most properly Cartesian point of the critical process, to the point of hyperbolic doubt, of the hypothesis of the Evil Genius, to the point at which doubt attacks not only ideas of sensible origin, but "clear and distinct" ideas, and the self-evident truths of mathematics, this point we know very well that what allows the work to start off again and to continue, its last resort, is designated as lumen naturale. The natural light, and all the axioms which it enables us to see, are never subjected to the most radical doubt. Indeed, that doubt is practised in that light. "For I cannot doubt that which the natural light causes me to believe to be true, as, for example, it has shown me that I am from the fact that I doubt"(Third Meditation). Among the axioms which the natural light causes me to believe to be true, there is, on each occasion, and with each step, what allows emergence from doubt, and progress in the order of reasons; in particular, what allows the proof of the existence of a God who is not a deceiver. ("Now it is manifest by the natural light that there must at least be as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect . . . so that the light of nature shows us clearly that the distinction between creation and conservation is solely a distinction of reason. . . . From this it is manifest that He cannot be a deceiver, since the light of nature teaches us that fraud and deception necessarily proceed from some defect," etc.) Prior to any determinate presence or any representative idea, natural light constitutes a kind of ether of thought and of the discourse proper to it. As something natural, it has its source in God, in the God whose existence has been put in doubt and then demonstrated thanks to it. "I have certainly no cause to complain that God has not given me an intelligence which is more powerful, or a natural light which is stronger than that which I have received from Him . . ." (Fourth Meditation). Precisely in breaking out of the logical circle which has so much preoccupied him, Descartes inscribes the chain of reasons in the circle of natural light which proceeds from and returns to God.This metaphorics no doubt has its own specific syntax; but as a metaphorics it belongs to a more general syntax, a more extensive system whose constraints are equally operative in Platonism; and everything becomes clear in this sun, sun of absence and presence, blinding and luminous, dazzling. This is the end of the Third Meditation, where the existence of God has just been proved for the first time thanks to the natural light which he himself has bestowed on us, in the pretence of disappearing and allowing us to seek the blinding source of its clarity: "It seems to me right to pause for a while in order to contemplate God Himself, to ponder at leisure His marvellous attributes, to consider, and admire, and adore, the beauty of this light so resplendent, at least as far as the strength of my mind, which is in some measure dazzled by the sight, will allow me to do so." Of course, the adoration here is that of a philosopher, and since the natural light is natural, Descartes does not take what he says to belike what a theologian would say:- for a theologian would be content with metaphor. And metaphor must be left to the theologian: "The author could give a satisfactory explanation, according to his philosophy, of the creation of the world, as described in Genesis ....The account of creation there is perhaps metaphorical; it must therefore be left to the theologians. . . . Why is it said, in fact, that darkness preceded light? . . . And as for the fountains of the great deep, there too is a metaphor, but this metaphor escapes us" .A presence disappearing in its own radiance, a hidden source of light, of truth and of meaning, an obliteration of the face of being-such would be the insistent return of that which subjects metaphysics to metaphor. To metaphors, we should say: for the word can only be in the plural. If there were only one possible metaphor (a dream at the basis of philosophy), if the play of metaphors could be reduced to a family circle or group of metaphors, that is, to a "central," "fundamental," or "principal" metaphor, there would no longer be any true metaphor: there would only be the guarantee of reading the proper sense in a metaphor that was true. Now it is because the metaphorical comes into play in the plural that it does not escape syntax; and that it gives rise, in philosophy too, to a text which is not exhausted by an account of its sense (a concept signified, or a metaphorical tenor: a thesis), nor by the visible or invisible presence of its theme (the meaning and truth of being). But it is because the metaphorical does not reduce syntax, but sets out in syntax its deviations, that it carries itself away, can only be what it is by obliterating itself, endlessly constructs its own destruction. — Derrida

Another aspect of Derrida that stays with me is his investigation of metaphor in philosophy (and therefore in the rational investigation of rationality itself.)

By definition, there is therefore no properly philosophical category to qualify a certain number of tropes which have conditioned the structuring of those philosophical oppositions which are called "fundamental," "structuring," "originating": being just so many "metaphors" which would be the basis of such a "tropology," the terms "twist" or "trope" or "metaphor" are themselves governed by this rule. We could only allow ourselves to ignore this sleep of philosophy by supposing that the meaning aimed at through these figures is an essence rigorously independent of that which carries it over, which is already a philosophical thesis, one might even say the sole thesis of philosophy, the thesis which constitutes the concept of metaphor, the opposition between what is proper and what is not, between essence and accident, between intuition and discourse, between thought and language, between the intelligible and the sensible, and so forth.
... — Derrida

I understand this 'sleep' in terms of ignoring the pictorial source of concepts/metaphors that always function synchronically/systematically. The etymological fallacy is legit. Usage can change, become abstract or metaphorical. Meaning inhering in a system of differences seems especially important as this happens. What 'matter' is, it isn't mind. And maybe that's 'all' matter is. One bit of information, a system of two categories (imagine a device that returns one bit of information about its environment.)

Every case in which a plurality of meanings is irreducible, in which there is not even a promise of unity of sense, is a case in which we are beyond language. And consequently beyond humanity. It is proper to man, no doubt, to be able to create metaphors, but that in order to express something, some one thing. In this sense, the philosopher, who always has just one thing to say, of all men is indeed a man. He who does not subject the equivocal to this law is already something less than a man: a sophist, who in the end says nothing that can be brought down to a sense.

This seems relevant to the cartoon version of Derrida. But perhaps what was most offensive about him was his laughter or inappropriate playfulness. He goofed off in a way that embarrassed his peers. He violated an essential norm. Philosophy is a serious business. Rigorous thinking is a solemn affair.

The appeal to criteria of clarity and obscurity would be enough to establish the point made above: that this whole philosophical delimitation of metaphor is already constructed and worked upon by "metaphors." How could a piece of knowledge or a language be clear or obscure properly speaking? Now all the concepts which have played a part in the definition of metaphor always have an origin and a force which are themselves "metaphorical," to use on this occasion a word which can no longer strictly be applicable in designating tropes whichare as much defining as defined. If we were to take each term of the definition suggested in the Poetics, we should detect in it the mark of a figure of speech (metaphora and epiphora also designate transferin space; eidos is also a visible figure, an outline and a form-the space of an aspect or a species; genos is also a line of consanguinity, the stock of a birth, an origin, a family, and so on). One sees everything thatt hese tropes maintain and sediment in the tangle of their roots. But our task is not to trace back the function of a concept along a line to the etymology of the word. Indeed it was to avoid this etymologism that we concerned ourselves with the inner, systematic, and synchronic articulation of Aristotelian concepts. 

Metaphor is therefore classified by philosophy as provisional loss of meaning, a form of economy that does no irreparable damage to what is proper, an inevitable detour, no doubt, but the account is in view, and within the horizon of a circular reappropriation of the proper sense. This is why the philosophical evaluation of metaphor has always been ambiguous: metaphor is menacing and foreign to the eyes ofintuition (vision or contact), of the concept (the grasping or proper presence of what is signified), of consciousness (the proximity of presence to itself); but it is an accomplice of that which it threatens, being necessary to the extent to which a de-tour is a return tour guided bythe function of resemblance (mimesis and homoiosis) under the law of sameness. At this point, the contrasts between intuition, concept, and consciousness become irrelevant. They are three meanings belonging to the order of sense and its movement. And so does metaphor. From this point, the whole teleology of sense, which constructs the philosophical concept of metaphor, directs it to the manifestation of truth as an unveiled presence, to the regaining of language in its fullness without syntax, to a pure calling by name: there would be no syntactic differentiation, or at least no properly unnamable articulation which could not be reduced to semantic "sublation" or dialectical interiorization.

I connect the concern with metaphor to the critique of of phonocentrism. The 'superstition' or rhetorical target is that some mind thing is perfectly present to itself as a fount of crystal clear vehicle-independent meaning. Ololon, perhaps, virgin in a snow-white dress untainted by 'writing,' symbol of all pollution by history and its stink of ambiguity and irony. The metaphor is only acceptable as a completely separate packaging, that can be harmlessly peeled-off the divine nectar of eternal insight. All of this seems highly related to the notion of the body as the prison of the soul. The basic fantasy is of some kind of stuff that's unstained by time and chance. It's almost too easy to mock such a desire, often in terms that rely on something sufficiently timeless for the critique to have purchase. It's hard to get exciting about 'knowledge' with a questionable shelf-life. As others have mentioned, Derrida is a quasi-Kantian philosopher who can't help chasing the timeless and the pure himself. I suspect that he obsessed over presence because he fucking wanted it and yet couldn't lie to himself about having it.

Surely we should have read some Derrida before pondering this — Moliere

This point really can't be emphasized enough. Along with "don't trust others, credentialed or not, to do your reading for you." I understand that an outsider might be deciding whether further investigation is warranted, since life and short and there are lots of books out there.

My pleasure, and thanks for the positive feedback. You make an excellent point about the two layers in Derrida's deconstructions. One has to try and keep the distinction clear. In the case of Saussure, it's as if Derrida is siding with Saussure's radical tendency against his obliviously still-phonocentric tendency. He uses a crowbar provided by Saussure in the first place to set his work ajar.

That depends on what "they" meant by "material". — 180 Proof

Indeed.

A man gets lost in the mountains and carves his name on some peak before he dies. A thousand years later his inscription is discovered for the first time. The world has a kind of memory it seems, some kind of 'wax' that holds a pattern in the absence of us and, presumably, all lifeforms. It doesn't matter so much to me whether the scientific image is equated with this metaphorical wax. I just think 'anti-materialists' have to explain the possibility of this lonely inscription.

What does it do then? — Olivier5

You've just got to see an example, if you really want to know. One my favorites is Derrida's reading of Saussure (in Of Grammatology). Saussure is himself quite a fascinating thinker, and, as I understand it, Derrida's version of the crucial concept of difference is an extension of Saussure's. And grasping Saussure tunes you into the structuralism that Derrida is building-on-and-attacking. Saussure is an easy read, while Derrida is not. Christopher Norris wrote two books that provide acceptable shortcuts (and it's nice to get a summarizing overview of such a prolific writer.) The second, Deconstruction : Theory and Practice, echoes my previous point.

If there is a single theme which draws together the otherwise disparate field of structuralist thought , it is the principle --first announced by Saussure-- that language is a differential network meaning. There is no self-evident or one-to-one link between 'signifier' and 'signified', the word as (spoken or written) vehicle and the concept it serves to evoke. Both are caught up in a play of distinctive features where differences in sound and sense are the only markers of meaning.
— Norris

This might be helpful as well.

Saussure states that "in language there are only differences without positive terms" (LT 88). Signifiers (sound images) and signifieds (concepts/meanings) are not fixed and universal and do not simply reflect or represent prior categories (the world/ideas/forms): language articulates or makes such categories and concepts possible. Because there is no necessary or inherent relation between words and objects, the relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (e.g., similar meanings correspond in practice rather than in some natural or essential way to different words across languages or across time as words change). Yet because the sign's structure is arbitrary, it is subject both to history and to a synchronic study of its relational function within a signifying system (la langue) that is not arbitrary but conventional and socially constructed. To explain a signifying action (individual utterance, speech act, parole) is therefore to relate it to the underlying system of norms (conventions/practices) that makes it possible: hence, a structural rather than a strictly causal explanation (synchronic rather than diachronic/historical).

Saussure offers an analogy between language and chess: "The respective value of the pieces depends on their position on the chessboard just as each linguistic term derives its value from its opposition to all the other terms. . . . Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others . . . .Signs function, then, not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position" (LT 82-86).
...
The supposed union of sound-image (signifier's abstract form) and its signified, however, may still suggest that signs mediate or represent a world of phenomena and ideas via a system of differences (language/discourse, though the production of meaning via such relational differences also suggests that language is prior to thought, and that we apprehend or determine reality via language). But if we think of the sign as the possibility of distinguishing signifier from signified, then the structure of the sign can be understood as an effect of difference or "différance" rather than as something stable and unified. "Language works--gains meaning . . . through opposition [and] identity is a function of difference" (Jane Tompkins 736). Linguistic values/meanings depend upon their relations to other terms within particular frameworks/contexts.

https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~sflores/saussure.html

A big theme/question here is how/whether language refers to the world. It's a tangent, but Brandom writes of a representer's/representing's responsibility to the represented. Referral involves a norm that governs claims and acting on such claims (still grokking this, but it feels like a lead.)

I would make the bold declaration that animals use logic, even if they don't understand they are using logic. — ssu

I think this makes sense, though folks can fuss over the ideal application of 'use.' Along these lines we can picture a distinctly human metacognition laid on top of an inherited and more common animal cognition.

In all my years as a mathematician, however, I must confess that I have never worked in applied mathematics. Like most in my profession, I explored an intriguing abstract concept. Still do. — jgill

I guess I was just emphasizing what Popper also emphasized. Theory creation ('projecting' a pattern on reality) can itself be 'irrational' or mysterious without science failing to be science. This is because the science consists in the way we treat such theories, independent of their source. Another common point is that theory guides observation in the first place (tells us what to look for, frames the situation.)

What drives the aspirations to be rational? How and why do motivational-affective-valuative processes direct us toward rationality? Are you familiar with Brandon’s colleague at Pittsburgh, Joseph Rouse? He is attempting to ground meta-cognitive processes in biological niche construction. — Joshs

Good questions. My knee-jerk answer would be to mumble 'evolution,' since I tend to see us as continuous with the other animals, despite the great leap (perhaps we killed off the missing links out of shame.) Not familiar w/ Rouse, and couldn't find much info. Perhaps you could summarize/paraphrase a choice nugget?

Just thought I'd add some passages from '76. I value him most so far for his critique of phonocentrism (he got me reading Saussure.) I take him to put into question the 'superstition' that what we mean is present for us in some simple and direct way, the superstition that we know what we are talking about (beyond the foggy practical know-how with words that cannot reasonably be denied.) But he doesn't hammer much on that nail, perhaps because he's not afraid to make grand claims himself, and feels a relative mastery of his meanings.


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If, for Aristotle, for example, "spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, and written words are the symbols of spoken words," it is because the voice, producer of the first symbols, has a relationship of essential and immediate proximity with the mind...

The feelings of the mind, expressing things naturally, constitute a sort of universal language which can then efface itself. It is the stage of transparence. ... In every case, the voice is closest to the signified, whether it is determined strictly as sense ( thought or lived ) or more loosely as thing. All signifiers, and first and foremost the written signifier, are derivative with regard to what would wed the voice indissolubly to the mind or to the thought of the signified sense, indeed to the thing itself ( whether it is done in the Aristotelian manner that we have just indicated or in the manner of medieval theology, determining the res as a thing created from its eidos, from its sense thought in the logos or in the infinite understanding of God) . The written signifier is always technical and representative. It has no constitutive meaning. This derivation is the very origin of the notion of the "signifier."...
...
But to these metaphysico-theological roots many other hidden sediments cling. The semiological or, more specifically, linguistic "science" cannot therefore hold on to the difference between signifier and signified-the very idea of the sign-without the difference between sensible and intelligible, certainly, but also not without retaining, more profoundly and more implicitly, and by the same token the reference to a signified able to "take place" in its intelligibility, before its "fall," before any expulsion into the exteriority of the sensible here below. As the face of pure intelligibility, it refers to an absolute logos to which it is immediately united. This absolute logos was an infinite creative subjectivity in medieval theology : the intelligible face of the sign remains turned toward the word and the face of God. Of course, it is not a question of "rejecting" these notions; they are necessary and, at least at present, nothing is conceivable for us without them. It is a question at first of demonstrating the systematic and historical solidarity of the concepts and gestures of thought that one often believes can be innocently separated. The sign and divinity have the same place and time of birth. The age of the sign is essentially theological. Perhaps it will never end. Its historical closure is, however, outlined. Since these concepts are indispensable for unsettling the heritage to which they belong, we should be even less prone to renounce them. Within the closure, by an oblique and always perilous movement, constantly risking falling back within what is being deconstructed, it is necessary to surround the critical concepts with a careful and thorough discourse-to mark the conditions, the medium, and the limits of their effectiveness and to designate rigorously their intimate relationship to the machine whose deconstruction they permit; and, in the same process, designate the crevice through which the yet unnameable glimmer beyond the closure can be glimpsed.
....
There has to be a transcendental signified for the difference between signifier and signified to be somewhere absolute and irreducible. It is not by chance that the thought of being, as the thought of this transcendental signified, is manifested above all in the voice: in a language of words [mots] . The voice is heard ( understood ) ­ that undoubtedly is what is called conscience-closest to the self as the absolute effacement of the signifier: pure auto-affection that necessarily has the form of time and which does not borrow from outside of itself, in the world or in "reality," any accessory signifier, any substance of expression foreign to its own spontaneity. It is the unique experience of the signified producing itself spontaneously, from within the self, and nevertheless, as signified concept, in the element of ideality or universality. The unworldly character of this substance of expression is constitutive of this ideality. This experience of the effacement of the signifier in the voice is not merely one illusion among many-since it is the condition of the very idea of truthbut I shall elsewhere show in what it does delude itself. This illusion is the history of truth and it cannot be dissipated so quickly. \Vithin the closure of this experience, the word [mot] is lived as the elementary and undecomposable unity of the signified and the voice, of the concept and a transparent substance of expression. This experience is considered in its greatest purity-and at the same time in the condition of its possibility as the experience of "being."

https://monoskop.org/images/8/8e/Derrida_Jacques_Of_Grammatology_1998.pdf

Derrida is poorly understood and therefore derided. — Tom Storm

Or, as he might say write, Derrided.

Another theme from Brandom, tho I'm more freewheeling than paraphrasing : We humans were rational before we were good at talking about that rationality. We inferred well enough before the principles of logic were codified. We sifted claims for reliability perhaps before anyone had a name for this activity. We took responsibility and enjoyed entitlements before we had the vocabulary to say so.

I imagine the slow swelling of a metacognitive vocabulary. The philosopher, among other things, makes the philosophical situation explicit. It's the aspiration to be rational that drives the explication of rationality. A relatively indeterminate goal can drive the further articulation of that same goal. Eventually a philosopher might make this making it explicit explicit.

This idea seems to many as a powerful argument in favor of idealism and against materialism. If the only thing we can be sure of is our own consciousness, would it not make sense to posit that all is nothing but a result of it ?

It seems to me that although this idea is indeed a powerful argument against materialism, the support it provides to idealism is far lesser than the blow it deals to materialism. The fact that the only thing we can be sure of is our own consciousness does not imply that all is based on consciousness.

Nor does it imply that there is no material world. Perhaps there is one, but we cannot ever give evidence that would prove its existence with no room for doubt. — Hello Human

You are riffing on some classics here. I mean that in a good way. I've put some time in on these questions, so I'll offer my limited current understanding/attitude.


If the only thing we can be sure of is our own consciousness,

Do we know this empirically or just...'grammatically' ? In other words, we tend use the word 'consciousness' in such a way that a gap between it and 'the world' is built in. Probably this is related to our social situation of making, trusting, and doubting claims. 'From my perspective' is a kind of modesty to mitigates responsibility. Claims about sensation or feelings are generally treated as incorrigible, though even here we might find exceptions. A doctor might doubt the back pains of someone seeking opiates.

Nor does it imply that there is no material world. Perhaps there is one, but we cannot ever give evidence that would prove its existence with no room for doubt.


I agree with you, but I think it's noteworthy that the use of 'we' already implies this point. If there's a 'we' around to discuss this issue with, the issue is already settled. One can argue about exactly what 'material' is supposed to refer to, but one is definitely already beyond the private mind here. (I guess one can have the fear that the others we reason with are hallucinations, but how does the concept of hallucination make sense if there's only one mind? And 'only one mind' doesn't make sense if that mind is understood as responsible for its judgments (as a rational mind.))

.

Nice post on Berkeley. I'm glad to hear he's more sensible than the cartoon version of him.

Hume’s denial that there is an inner perception of the self as the owner of experience is one that is echoed in Kant’s discussion in both the Transcendental Deduction and the Paralogisms, where he writes that there is no intuition of the self “through which it is given as object” — RussellA

The 'self' I'm talking about is the persona or reputation. A rough analog is your LinkedIn profile. The metaphysical subject, on the other hand, is a hot mess. I agree with Kant and Hume that no such subject is available (or not one worth bothering with.)

I like Brandom because to me he's just describing the philosophical situation itself ( the interpersonal structure of rationality. ) For instance, you mention Hume's denial. A 'scorekeeping' conception of rationality will emphasize how we'll contextualize this denial against Hume's other claims. Hume is like an actor on a stage among other actors. His speeches are unified as his speeches..and interpreted as such a unity. As are we. This social situation seems basic to rationality.

What is in the mind corresponds to what is in the brain. What is expressed in the mind must be in some way be expressed in the brain, in that the mind doesn't have a soul outside of time and space allowing it to act independently of the brain. The mind cannot change without a corresponding change in the brain. — RussellA

I think this is fairly reasonable but still a little problematic. As long as the mind is (understood as) a factory of stuff that will "forever remain private knowledge," it's hard to see how anything comprehensive can established about it. The lurking assumption is that there is just one 'forever private' experience of red (for instance.) But 'forever private experience' opens up an abyss of possibility. It's outside the space of reasons. At the minimum we need claims, entry into the symbolic realm, such as 'The square looks red to me.' (Or a recorded measurement of a change in heart-rate, etc.)

Representationalism is about correspondence between the language and the world. — RussellA

I'm on a Brandom kick, so I'll mention his take. Representings are responsible to the represented thing, which functions like a target. Gadamer may come into play here. A kind of unspecified completeness is imagined from the beginning.

As reason and judgement are attributes of the mind, they can only be the responsibility of the individual making that reasoning and judgement. — RussellA

From a certain perspective, reason and judgement and the mind are abstractions or fictions, just like the self, just like responsibility. It looks to me that we have an entire system here of inherited concepts, which only make sense together.

Imagine practical animals who start with a limited cognitive vocabulary, which they use relatively rationally to thrive together in their environment. Now imagine the slow development of a metacognitive vocabulary, with words like 'judgment' and 'epistemology' and 'responsibility. ' As I see it, one accomplishment of philosophy has been to make the sociality of reason explicit to itself.

Yes, I was joking. Mocking those who believe in unrestricted free speech. As if students having to call their teachers "sir" or MPs in the UK having to refer to their colleagues as "the Right Honourable" or people having to wait their turn to speak at a town hall is some tyrannical attack on human rights. — Michael

Basically I agree with you. But it seems this same argument cuts both ways. Assuming that gender expression is otherwise unconstrained, it seems that keeping pronouns tied to biology is just tradition, just words, etc. Being offended by having to use the 'wrong' pronoun seems adjacent to being offended by having the 'wrong' pronoun used. Some would like to give control over the pronoun to the referent, others to the user. In general, the referent is perceived, probably correctly, as more vulnerable, so that it's easy to forget the symmetry mentioned above (it's all just bitching about linguistic norms, which is seemingly only as important as we make it out to be.)

When I was a student I had to refer to my teachers as "sir" and "miss". We weren't allowed to call them by their first names. The school system sure is oppressive. — Michael

I think you are joking, but this is maybe a tricky issue. It's hard if not impossible to get by without linguistic norms (like those gendered terms of respect you mentioned). But it's also hard to make everyone happy. I think it'd be fair for a student to want to be called 'Mr' or 'Ms' in any context where they can't call me by my first name. But that might indicate a shift in the status of teachers.

I think that if my name is Michael but my professor insists on calling me Mary then the university has the right to discipline her and compel her to call me by my name. — Michael

As a teacher, this is my solution to all the pronoun angst. Just use proper names, especially those chosen by the students. No one is (yet) objecting to that, even if a Derridean jester reminds us that names are unripe toetags.

Epistemic responsibility & ethics of belief!

Our task has always been, is, always will be to make the true (verum/satyam) synonymous with the good (bonum/shivam) and the good synonymous with the beautiful (pulchrum/sundaram). Presently, it ain't so - the 3 transcendentalia seem to be quite independent of each other and hence dukkha (dissatisfaction).
3 hours ago — Agent Smith

Brandom likes to talk about taking true and making true, belief and action.

we might as well treat ourselves to some irrationality every now and then. — Agent Smith

Oh I think we do.

Yes. Free speech goes both ways. But one should never seek to censor her. — NOS4A2

I appreciate the consistency.

I would prefer to stick with the language the way it is. So men as addressed as a "he", women as "she". — M777

I think that's a common enough preference. But should that personal preference trump the professor's right to express their view of the world (which is perhaps that all humans are essentially female in some non-biological sense) ? Forcing others to conform to your pronoun preference (which you have not suggested, I should add) would seem to be hypocritical. It's not clear that tradition alone could give your traditional preference any more weight in such a situation, though one might argue that it's the innovator's burden to justify changes in linguistic norms.

As I see it, words primarily have their meanings as proprieties of use. Such meanings can and do change. We can decide as a group that 'male' and 'female' no longer refer to things like XY and XX, and of course many of us already have, so that dissenters are not welcome. It's not insane to suggest such a change, even if you can find some careless types on either side who really haven't sorted out the various issues here.

I think a person not minding kids being put on puberty blockers is already deep into the crazy narrative. — M777

I'm skeptical about such blockers myself, but that's beside the point.

For me, the rule of thumb would be "live as you like, but don't force it on others", such as if you want to wear a dress, that's up to you, but don't force others to pretend you are a woman, and, moreover, don't try grooming children into such nonsense. — M777

In general I sympathize with that principle. Let's test it. Imagine a progressive professor who starts referring to all of her students as 'she.' Would you have a right to complain?

Excellent opening post. I hope this will develop. I adored the video of capuchins. — unenlightened

Thanks! Me too. And you are helping.

Reminded me of Umberto Eco — unenlightened

I need to read some Eco.

Communicative social representation gives rise to the possibility of deliberate misrepresentation in order to manipulate, but that possibility cannot become the norm, because the presentational meaning would be lost. — unenlightened

Indeed. Dawkins might add that it's not a stable strategy.

“Nice guys finish last” is a common saying. But Dawkins thinks there’s also a sense in which nice guys finish first. He thinks about birds who are “grudgers” (those that pick parasites off other birds, but remember the ones that don’t return the favor and ignore them the next time around). That strategy actually beats out the “cheat” strategy (accepting help with parasites but not reciprocating). Dawkins thinks the “grudger” is the kind of “nice guy” who “finishes first.” This is the individual who engages in “reciprocal altruism.” Dawkins agrees with Robert Axelrod and Hamilton that many wild animals are “engaged in ceaseless games of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, played out in evolutionary time,” which explains why nice guys finish first.

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-selfish-gene/chapter-12-nice-guys-finish-first

Thus one can choose to deceive, but one cannot chose deception to be the norm, it has to be honesty. — unenlightened

Well put! Our great strength as a species seems to be language, which implicitly means our honesty (and, to be fair, our ability to deceive enemies of the tribe.)

Philosophy will (probably) go extinct from the world of formal education conducted in universities and colleges in the coming 50-100 years or so. — Agent Smith

We're not so evil that we don't still need excuses.

.

Why do you assume one's feelings should trump reality? And a person disagreeing to engage in a falsehood is automatically an asshole? — M777

I am somewhat sympathetic to your concerns. As I see it, influential people are successfully changing the meaning --the 'proper' use -- of some basic words. This annoys a certain type of personality that doesn't like the rules changed without their permission. Very quickly it became a career-ending 'sin' to stubbornly use an old word in the old way. Outsiders happily conforming to the new use are maybe too quick to misunderstand all resistance as some kind of sexual fear. A person can really not mind radical transformations in gender expression...or even puberty blockers...while nevertheless resenting a stifling of critical thought on this issue. I think it's because of polarization that there's little room for nuance. I consider it risky to make even this point. I don't want to be assimilated by either complacent side of the issue that thinks everything is stupidly simple.

Another theme provided by Brandom (attributed to Kant) is the primacy of the propositional. The semantic atom is the judgment. Why? Because this is the minimum one can be responsible for. I am not responsible for the concept 'red.' I am responsible for claiming that Janine's hair is red. Or that a wolf is threatening the sheep.

The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly fools villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his town's flock. When an actual wolf appears and the boy calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm, and the sheep are eaten by the wolf.

It's conceivable that other animals have simpler versions of 'scorekeeping.' I can imagine a particular chimp being treated as an exaggerator or an understater.