However, there is a second phase of removal described. This is the removal of the act of imagination from the thing which is imagined, in this case, the word. Following this there is a third phase suggested, and that is a removal of the contents of the act of imagination, the noema, from the act of imagination. Now it is implied, if not explicitly stated, that the contents of the act of imagination, the noema, is not actually the imagined words. If this is the case, then I believe that Husserl's claim that the imagined word is a form of pure expression, cannot be upheld. The act of imagination forms a mediation between the imagined word, and the content, or noema (this could be 'the concept') , and therefore I believe we have indication. In other words, the imagined words are not properly "the content" of the act of imagination, they are in some sense a manifestation, or indication of the actual content. — Metaphysician Undercover

This has to do with what I mentioned with regard to Husserl's many arcane distinctions about what is real and not real, and the distinction between noesis (act of consciousness) and noema (object of consciousness). I will try to talk more about this later when I have time, but for now I think I should say, that the noema need not point to, or motivate belief in, any really existent thing.

It's easier to see this if we use an example of something we take to be purely imaginary, like Husserl's own example of the centaurs. If we imagine a centaur, there is the act of imagination, and its object, its noema, which is the imaginary centaur. According to Husserl, there is still an object of imagination, even if there is no centaur (this is a holdover from Brentano, the 'inexisting intentional object'). Furthermore, we do not take there to be any centaur, nor do we feel that the imagination of a centaur motivates the existence of any centaur. The same is true for anything, including a word. The act of imagination itself suffices to see the expressive essence of the word – just as, I might add, we can see the essence of a centaur from imagining it, even though there are none, nor do we take there to be any!

So to be a little obtuse we can speak of 'the imaginary word' versus 'the imagined word.' The former exists qua intentional object, but the latter not only doesn't exist, we don't even take it to. It's not like because we talk to ourselves we suddenly think some real word somewhere has been actually uttered, and we're thinking about that. Likewise with centaurs, there is 'the imaginary centaur,' but there is no centaur, period, the centaur is the imagined object, but there are none, so the imagined object doesn't exist.

Importantly the notion of imagination that Husserl is appealing to is that of 'phantasy,' which is sort of like a plain old fantasy: it's not the kind of imagination where we e.g. imagine what someone else is doing right now, in hopes we are imagining correctly. Sometimes we say 'imagine' to mean something roughly like 'think,' but this is not what Husserl has in mind here.

The imagined centaur is composed of elements that do exist, and not of anything that doesn't, so what you say above seems somewhat superficial or at the very least, moot.

Thanks, that all makes sense. But the issue for me is that the act of imagination is a mediation between the imagined word "centaur", and the noema, the imagined centaur. Doesn't this imply that the meaning of the imagined word is not immediately present to the one who imagines it, there is no self-presence, and therefore there is indication. Is it not the case that "mediation" is what distinguishes indication from expression?

Communicative speech thus requires mediation through physical objects that indicate one another: we can see another’s feelings and emotions, but not purely intuitively or originarily by nature, we only originarily see the physical signs through which they’re conveyed. Although expression is therefore generally intended to be used in communication, communication itself paradoxically destroys expression in its most basic form. For that, we need a lack of indicative mediation, which means a lack of mediation through physical signs, which means a lack of mediation through other people: we essentially have to talk to ourselves. — The Great Whatever

So the question is, how is the psychical act of imaging the words, as a mediation, fundamentally different from the psychical act of hearing the words. as a mediation, such that one is indicative, and the other is not?

So the question is, how is the psychical act of imaging the words, as a mediation, fundamentally different from the psychical act of hearing the words. as a mediation, such that one is indicative, and the other is not? — Metaphysician Undercover

Derrida talks a little about this on pp. 37-38.

But why is Husserl not satisfied by the difference between the existing (perceived) word and the perception or the perceived being, the phenomenon of the word? It is because in the phenomenon of perception, a reference is located in phenomenality itself to the existence of the word. The sense "existence" belongs then to the phenomenon. This is no longer the case with imagination. In imagination, the existence of the word is not implied, not even by means of the intentional sense.

Perception differes from imagination as an intentional act in that the former takes its object to be existent, even just within the experience of perception itself. To perceive something existent is a redundancy (we can then have beliefs regarding the perception that neutralize this belief, when we choose not to 'trust our senses,' or simply bracket this belief, as we do in the epoché, but the sense of existence remains in the experience itself, even if at a higher level we choose not to make use of this in theorizing).

Hearing the words is a kind of perception, which implies the existence of the heard word (to hear something, there has to be a sound). Indication requires that something existent give us motivation to believe in the existence of something else. With imagination, then, we have no existent thing to serve as motivation, nor is there any other existent thing that we take to be motivated by the imagination. The imaginary centaur not only doesn't exist, but it points to nothing else existent and motivates no new belief about existent things on our part. This is unlike with hearing someone else communicate with speech, where we perceive an existent word and this indicates an existent psychological state of some kind.

The imaginary centaur not only doesn't exist, but it points to nothing else existent and motivates no new belief about existent things on our part. — The Great Whatever

This is equally true or untrue of an imaginary apple, landscape or motor bike.

Are you reading V&P? If you're looking for clarification to better understand the book, that's great, but, if not, it might be better to bring this up in another thread, just to keep the convo on point. Not trying to be rude, just the book itself is complicated enough.

Let's look at it this way then. Suppose I memorize "a centaur is a creature with the head, arms and torso of a man, and body and legs of a horse". Also, I write this on a piece of paper. How is the "existence" of those words on the piece of paper fundamentally different from the "existence" of those words in my memory, such that on the paper the words exist, but in my memory they are non-existent?

Incidentally, there is some mention by Derrida in this chapter, concerning the written word, which is quite unclear. We should bear in mind that in Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", in the so-called private language argument, the private language is characterized by a marking down. This 'taking note' is carried out such that the individual can note each time a certain sensation occurs.

I think it is important to respect a fundamental difference between written language and spoken language. I believe that there is such a fundamental difference, and that it is based in a difference of intention behind these two types of language. Spoken language is intended principally, as communication between individuals. Written language is intended principally, as a memory aid. I write things down so that I can refer to them and remember them at a later time. So with respect to "the solitary life of the soul", we should really pay special attention to the written word, rather than the spoken word.

Having said that, suppose I write something down, say my doctor's appointment, and later I take a look at this note to affirm, or refresh my memory. I infer that the physical existence of the note contaminates what could have been a pure expression, with some degree of indication. Now assume that I didn't write it down, and I remembered it correctly. How is the "self-presence" of the meaning of those words, (the date), any different between these two cases, such that the written word involves indication while the remembered word does not?. Here's a third possibility, suppose that I don't write down the date, and I remember it wrong. Now I have words in my mind, the date, and the meaning is self-present, this is the time of my appointment, but the meaning is wrong, false.

How is the "existence" of those words on the piece of paper fundamentally different from the "existence" of those words in my memory, such that on the paper the words exist, but in my memory they are non-existent? — Metaphysician Undercover

A couple things – first, memory and imagination are very different for Husserl. Husserl does think that memory is 'positional' just like perception is: it also presents the remembered thing as existent (in the past). My guess is that when we imagine a word to ourselves in silent speech, we are typically not remembering some past actual instance of that word spoken or inscribed. Though of course we can, in which case the actual past existence of that word may motivate any number of things, and so serve as an indicator.

Second, it looks like in the next chapter Derrida will ask this question and come to the conclusion that there really is no difference between phantasied and actually used language. It may be possible you are sympathetic to his argument, but I'm not sure because I don't understand the fourth chapter very well yet.

I think it is important to respect a fundamental difference between written language and spoken language. I believe that there is such a fundamental difference, and that it is based in a difference of intention behind these two types of language. Spoken language is intended principally, as communication between individuals. Written language is intended principally, as a memory aid. I write things down so that I can refer to them and remember them at a later time. So with respect to "the solitary life of the soul", we should really pay special attention to the written word, rather than the spoken word. — Metaphysician Undercover

Derrida will claim, AFAIK, that this is basically how western philosophy has always treated writing v. speech, although I don't know if he goes over it in this book. That is, speech is primary, used to express communicative intentions, and then writing comes along as a representation of speech. It seems like Husserl would be sympathetic to this, although perhaps writing itself isn't so important as the communicative immediacy, which is just typically higher in speech than writing (a recorded message on an answering machine, for example, while technically 'speech,' would seem less immediate than an instant message sent to an attentive audience, which is technically 'writing' – so what matters is not the sensory modality, but the use it's put to, and the degree to which it's 'symbolic,' 'recorded,' 'repeatable,' etc.). Husserl seems to want to get rid of any sort of use of actually existent symbols, to get rid of communication, though I'm not sure if writing used merely as a mnemonic aid would trouble him, since it would indicate the expression desired, but then the expression itself, once gotten ahold of, could be seen in its own right. Though maybe I am being flippant here. It looks like Derrida will ultimately argue that the 'repetition' of writing is in fact in no way secondary to the original 'production' of intended meaning, since the latter relies on the former in alway employing pre-understood symbols (that is the best I can make of it in this early stage).

There is a footnote on writing by Derrida on p. 23, at the beginning of chapter 2, though honestly I haven't quite figured out what's going on in it yet, and some of the vocabulary is opaque to me.

Yes, my point was just that this lack of motivation is easier to see with a centaur, since there is no temptation to think imagining a centaur motivates any existence. It holds equally true for the imagination of things, instances of which actually exist.

My guess is that when we imagine a word to ourselves in silent speech, we are typically not remembering some past actual instance of that word spoken or inscribed. Though of course we can, in which case the actual past existence of that word may motivate any number of things, and so serve as an indicator. — The Great Whatever

There is a passage concerning this on page 35, what makes a word recognizable as the same word, "...the sameness of the word is ideal." "It is the ideal possibility of repetition...". Further, he says that Husserl says, that what we are to receive as an indication must be perceived as an existent, but "the unity of a word owes nothing to its existence". By "unity", I assume he is referring to this sameness. That each occurrence is of "the same" word, creates a unity of those occurrences, or, it is "the same" word by virtue of this unity. Thus expression is a "pure unity". I assume that each occurrence of the word, in the imagination, is the same, as it has no physical properties to make a difference

That is, speech is primary, used to express communicative intentions, and then writing comes along as a representation of speech. — The Great Whatever

What I was saying is not that writing comes along as a representation of speech. I think writing and speech came about separately, in parallel, for different reasons. At first, there wo
that we would today classify as art, should really be classified more as written language, memory aids. Consider artificial landmarks, direction indicators and such things as memory aids. It was when these two forms of language, communicative, and memoric, merged, when it was learned that oral sounds could be remembered through representation with writing, that the evolution of language exploded. A symbol could represent an artificial sound, and this would enable the memory of that sound, and how to make that sound. The writing down of the symbol enables the memory, which ensures the unity, or sameness which is referred to above.

Well I think there's an ambiguity in the idea of 'motivating existence', and I'm not sure what you want it to mean; but in any case I won' t pursue it here. Maybe I'll start another thread.

There is a passage concerning this on page 35, what makes a word recognizable as the same word, "...the sameness of the word is ideal." "It is the ideal possibility of repetition...". Further, he says that Husserl says, that what we are to receive as an indication must be perceived as an existent, but "the unity of a word owes nothing to its existence". By "unity", I assume he is referring to this sameness. That each occurrence is of "the same" word, creates a unity of those occurrences, or, it is "the same" word by virtue of this unity. Thus expression is a "pure unity". I assume that each occurrence of the word, in the imagination, is the same, as it has no physical properties to make a difference — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, or the word has an essence as a sign: an essential sound-form, an essential syntactic role, and an essential semantic role. We can then put the latter to use in expressing what we mean, independent of the fact that any occurrence of the word exists. Like anything else, what makes it the 'same' word is that it fits beneath the essence of all the other instantiations. Derrida seems to object that a word's essential features and its features in actual use are one and the same.

What I was saying is not that writing comes along as a representation of speech. I think writing and speech came about separately, in parallel, for different reasons. At first, there wo that we would today classify as art, should really be classified more as written language, memory aids. Consider artificial landmarks, direction indicators and such things as memory aids. It was when these two forms of language, communicative, and memoric, merged, when it was learned that oral sounds could be remembered through representation with writing, that the evolution of language exploded. A symbol could represent an artificial sound, and this would enable the memory of that sound, and how to make that sound. The writing down of the symbol enables the memory, which ensures the unity, or sameness which is referred to above. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know how much this matters, but there's nothing essential about writing it seems to me that services memory more than sound: it just so happens that the materials we had lying around were better for inscribing visual marks than sound waves, which changed once phonograph cylinders were invented. It might have been otherwise. Also, sound forms were themselves used as mnemonic devices in epic poetry long before the stories were written down, and sometimes remembering a pattern in verse is even more effective than searching a text. In any case I do not think language as a mnemonic device is crucial for Husserl once we separate imagination from memory (also, I don't think Husserl would want to claim a word's unity comes along with writing – surely he wants to attribute the same unity to languages spoken in pre-literate societies, and words can have unity, as I said, via their phonological, semantic, etc. functions). It seems like it might become important for Derrida, who seems to be going in the direction of claiming that any use of a sign brings with it a 'memory' of a different sort, of its institutional uses and place in a symbolic system, which will be preserved equally in imagination and ordinary communicative use.

'Here again, this exteriority, or rather this extrinsic characteristic of indication, is inseparable, in its possibility, from the possibility of all the reductions to come, whether they are eidetic or transcendental.'

I'm still not sure what to make of this one. For one thing, the 'here again' seems to suggest that Derrida has made this point before, or given some justification for it; but I can't find anything to that effect. Grammatically, it's a little confusing what's being literally said here: is it that the reductions cannot be performed without making use of indication? Or is it that indication cannot happen without the reduction? Presumably the former is more in keeping with the tone of the text. But then I do not know why this is so.

Grammatically, I think he's saying something like: "that (approach/stance/method) which makes it possible to consider indication as extrinsic, is also what makes it possible to perform (or even conceive of) eidetic and transcendental reductions."

Perhaps what is at stake here is not the reduction itself, but any efficacy it has in reporting its results. I suspect for Derrida that these two things turn out to be inseparable – if we can't secure phenomenological results, then tho that extent there really is no reduction the way Husserl wants for there to be one. This in turn seems to be based on the following gambit: knowledge is not properly knowledge unless it can be recorded and communicated linguistically, and Husserl's notion that there is a pre-linguistic stratum of experience is a fantasy. Husserl would hold, I imagine, that it is possible to conduct eidetic analyses intuitively, without needing to record them linguistically, and the fact that we must resort to language to communicate them is a mere accident (one that could perhaps be bypassed if we were a certain sort of intuitive mind-reader?)

This seems right to me. (It could be fruitful to bring PI-era Wittgenstein in here, but I'm not well-versed enough to do so.) The broad strategy of chapter 3 is to characterize the 'soliloquy' section of the first Logical Investigation as a larval 'epoche,' where words are seen as irreal noemata (which double, without modifying, other noemata.) The idea appears to be that the discussion of 'the solitary life of the soul' is the place, in LI, where Husserl determines the essence of expression and thus offers especial insight into what he's about.

Derrida shuttles between Ideas and LI constantly throughout this chapter, which makes things difficult. Everything about the 'ex' in expression, the movement outward, comes from Ideas. It's the story of a 'meaning' produced by a noetic act and then carried delicately into the arms of a word, which will preserve it. Derrida, if I understand him, is taking this later understanding of expression and retrojecting it onto the first investigation, in order to sketch a movement in which meaning is produced, proceeds outward, and is instantly reabsorbed. The 'imagined' word expresses something we already understand (having produced it in a noetic act) and so immediately grasp.

I honestly don't understand the purpose of the 'soliloquy' chapter in LI. It doesn't seem to have, for Husserl, the import or ultimate significance Derrida ascribes to it. It feels less like a honing-in on the essence of expression and more like an aside on a unique case. But even taken on its own terms, I don't really understand what Husserl is saying. If we already understand immediately what we're saying to ourselves, what's going on with these interpolated (and yes, inherited) signs? Why are they there? Why is the immediacy of meaning taking a superfluous detour through a self-dissolving mediator?

There is something deeply unintelligible about the soliloquy section, at least to me - maybe that's Derrida's point. Expression without indication doesn't make sense at all (why would we reflect what we already have back to us through a contingent symbol?) Either you dispense with the external movement toward a sign (and so are left, I guess, with 'pression') or the translation of experience into words somehow, by that very movement, reshapes that experience and gives you something new. A closed circuit from meaning to expression to immediate comprehension is a bit like mailing yourself letters which explain why you sent them. (This goes beyond the texts but, in my experience, if you listen, really listen to your interior monologue, it's not a neutral expression of your thoughts, but a very subtle kind of theater where different voices with different 'tones' present those thoughts to you in a certain way, consoling or cajoling you. Honestly, try it out, take a close listen for a half hour.)

So, I think I disagree about the centrality of soliloquy to Husserl's thought generally. Husserl has a certain tenor to his work, and that tenor certainly includes a belief in an absolute withdrawal into the self and a sometimes shocking sense of solitude and metaphysical loneliness. It's part of his reduction to the sphere of ownness, his detour through solipsism in the Fifth Meditation, his obsession with Augustine and his comments about 'the inner man,' the belief in the transcendental ego constituting all cultural sedimentations, his adoption of the Leibnizian notion of the 'monad,' his accusation that other philosophers are 'afraid' to go down the hole into the origin of origins in the 'Ur-ich,' the primal solipsism, for fear they cannot make it back out, and so on. I do not think Derrida is being tone-deaf here, even if at this initial stage he takes himself to be psychoanalyzing something that Husserl has ;let slip' at the beginning of the Investigations.

It is important to remember that all transcendental thinkers flirt with solipsism, and I think this is not an accident: Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer are prime examples, and I think a certain solipsism can be read into, even follows from, Kant himself. Husserl clearly thinks at some level that we can communicate completely alone, and the notion that presence as Husserl conceives of it has not only to do with being in the present, but also alone, is on point.

I don't really understand what Husserl is saying. If we already understand immediately what we're saying to ourselves, what's going on with these interpolated (and yes, inherited) signs? Why are they there? Why is the immediacy of meaning taking a superfluous detour through a self-dissolving mediator? — csalisbury

Husserl does admit that the point of using language is to communicate: that we can talk to ourselves doesn't mean that it's often a useful exercise, except in his little faux-examples, where one addresses oneself as 'you.' It's still phenomenologically important, though, because we can extract the essence of, say, the semantics of a word, or the semantics of it relative to a certain intention.

Personally I think self-directed speech is important, and psychologists generally have been very interested in it, because we can indicate things to ourselves or communicate to ourselves. But I don't find Husserl's notion that there's a layer of sense and experience that has no need for indication at all implausible. In fact it seems to me the vast majority of my experience goes on like this without communicative comment. Crispin Sartwell has a great comment to this effect as well, that even trying to imagine what it would be like to have a running commentary on all your experience, or to think that all experience is linguistically mediated, is just totally absurd and impossible. Generally philosophers overrate language because they spend a lot of time talking and reading: I think Derrida is one of them (and he strikes me as someone who likes the sound of his own philosophical voice as well, and deeply fears, just as much as Husserl fears death, that someone will force him, or the tradition he's a part of, to shut up), but that doesn't necessarily make his criticisms of Husserl off point.

I don't know Husserl as well as you, but I do know him well enough to agree with your comments about his often solipsistic tenor. What I meant, though, was that I just don't see the centrality here, in the first logical investigation. It's passed over so quickly, soliloquy (all of the sections on indication are as long or longer!). It's only by reading certain sections of Ideas back into the investigation that Derrida can give the soliloquy section such weight. And maybe that's fine. I don't want to press the point too much, but just note that we've definitely moved from a close reading of the investigation to something entirely different.

I don't find Husserl's notion that there's a layer of sense and experience that has no need for indication at all implausible. In fact it seems to me the vast majority of my experience goes on like this without communicative comment. Crispin Sartwell has a great comment to this effect as well, that even trying to imagine what it would be like to have a running commentary on all your experience, or to think that all experience is linguistically mediated, is just totally absurd and impossible

Mmm, but I guess that would have nothing to do with expression, right? For these experiences, one could simply say 'it is what it is.' What would it mean to express these experiences to ourselves? Or to indicate them to ourselves? I think self-directed speech is important, as well, but it seems something very different then presenting a mediately immediate re-experience of what we're already experiencing.

It's still phenomenologically important, though, because we can extract the essence of, say, the semantics of a word, or the semantics of it relative to a certain intention.

Do this, though, as an experiment - imagine the word 'contemplation' and extract the semantic essence from it. And attend closely to how this plays out. It's really not clear what's going on, at least when I try to do it.

Do this, though, as an experiment - imagine the word 'contemplation' and extract the semantic essence from it. And attend closely to how this plays out. It's really not clear what's going on, at least when I try to do it. — csalisbury

Here are some things I can pull out rather quickly:

-Contemplation is an activity that something can partake in.

-Contemplation is not something an inanimate object can take part in. It requires animacy at the very least, and probably intelligence at least comparable to that of a human at least of a certain stage of cognitive development.

-Contemplation is deliberate, and cannot be done involuntarily or un/subconsciously.

-As opposed to thought generally, it is unhurried. In at least its most canonical forms, it is also penetrating, revealing all accessible aspects of something.

-Contemplation is telic: it aims at something contemplated, and seeks to discover something about it, and in particular something having to do with its structure that can't be gleaned from a superficial observation of it. The results of contemplation are intended to be consciously understood if successful.

How do I know all of these things?

That's perfect (let me build on what you've said about Derrida and language) How do you? Would most competent english speakers agree? Would this be possible without a deep immersion in the english language? What are you understanding in this solo imagining? Where does it come from? How do you think your understanding of this idea would be different if you hadn't immersed yourself in language?

when i do this same experiment, it's very strange. I have all sorts of attendant dreamlike images. I have the same sort of linguistic breakdowns too. But the word itself is like a weird center (a kind of 'fire pit') all these things congregate around. It seems like language is what creates these firepits that allow my thoughts to coalesce. But they also flow into pre-established channels. The word itself seems somehow outside myself, its in the shared space beyond my hut, so to speak.

Would this be possible without a deep immersion in the english language? — csalisbury

Obviously not, but we need to stay on guard against the fallacy that Kant warns against in the very first sentences of the CPR.

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. For how should our faculty of knowledge be awakened into action did not objects affecting our senses partly of themselves produce representations, partly arouse the activity of our understanding to compare these representations, and, by combining or separating them, work up the raw material of the sensible impressions into that knowledge of objects which is entitled experience? In the order of time, therefore, we have no knowledge antecedent to experience, and with experience all our knowledge begins.

But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions and of what our own faculty of knowledge (sensible impressions serving merely as the occasion) supplies from itself. If our faculty of knowledge makes any such addition, it may be that we are not in a position to distinguish it from the raw material, until with long practice of attention we have become skilled in separating it. This, then, is a question which at least calls for closer examination, and does not allow of any off-hand answer: -- whether there is any knowledge that is thus independent of experience and even of all impressions of the senses. Such knowledge is entitled a priori, and distinguished from the empirical, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience.

Certainly Husserl is aware that one has to be exposed to empirical light in order to see – but it would be a bad misreading of Husserl to suppose that this fact threatened the possibility of eidetic analyses of visual phenomena.

when i do this same experiment, it's very strange. I have all sorts of attendant dreamlike images. I have the same sort of linguistic breakdowns too. But the word itself is like a weird center (a kind of 'fire pit') all these things congregate around. It seems like language is what creates these firepits that allow my thoughts to coalesce. But they also flow into pre-established channels. The word itself seems somehow outside myself, its in the shared space beyond my hut, so to speak. — csalisbury

Have you ever made up a word before, with a gerrymandered meaning that would be difficult to get beyond the inner sphere of expression into communication? One reason I've always been skeptical of OLP-oriented criticisms of private meanings is that even as a child, before ever hearing any of these arguments, I had seemed to have done exactly what these philosophers were telling me I could not do, and I just assumed everyone else had, too. The word is no less potent for my private musings for the fact that I'd have a hard time explaining it. Some of them in fact ended up having real words that I understood immediately to be what I had been thinking of all along. "Virtue signaling" is one such case – I had always known on a very fundamental level what virtue signaling was, but had never thought to communicate the notion. I don't think I ever attached a phonological form to the notion, but I had a sort of 'private word' for it all along.

There is a footnote on writing by Derrida on p. 23, at the beginning of chapter 2, though honestly I haven't quite figured out what's going on in it yet, and some of the vocabulary is opaque to me. — The Great Whatever

I didn't think much of this footnote when I read it, but now that you highlighted it, here's a crack at it: I think that Derrida is alluding - he doesn't quite spell out an argument, and in fact he says quite explicitly that he won't 'stress the problem' - to the fact that if Husserl had considered 'non-phonetic' writing in a bit more depth, he might have saved himself alot of trouble (the kind of trouble Derrida will stir up in this essay). The distinction between phonetic and non-phonetic is the distinction between languages whose spelling will tell you how to pronounce the word (English, French, etc), and languages whose form will tell you nothing about it's pronunciation (Chinese). The character "ren" (人), for example, taken on it's own as a graphic inscription, will tell you nothing about how to pronounce it.

Intuitively, one can see, I think, how there is 'more indication' in phonetic languages than there is in non-phonetic languages: that is, there is more that is 'communicated' in phonetic language (the pronunciation), than in non-phonetic languages (where the pronunciation is not indicated). Hence non-phonetic languages tend to coincide more with a kind of 'sheer expression' than phonetic languages. Thus the line: "non-phonetic discourse would substitute for that which unites expressive discourse immediately to the meaning" - the 'mediation' of 'indication' plays a smaller part.

Of course to the extent that non-phonetic language is still language - that is, to the extent that it communicates at all - this would make it 'indicative' in Husserl's sense to begin with. What I think Derrida is trying to get at is that you can see a kind of scrambling or 'disorganization of essential distinctions' at work here, one that takes place within the grapheme itself, and not even yet at the level of communication/non-communication. Hence the employment of what should be a strange syntagm, given everything that's been discussed so far: "expressive discourse" (isn't the whole point that expression is precisely non-discursive?).

I'm not sure if this retroactive reconstruction of Derrida's would-be argument 'works', but I think that's the general thrust of it. In any case, it serves to flag the more sustained line of questioning that will make up the rest of the book. If I have time I'd like to deal with the big-ass footnote later on too.

Its perhaps worth noting that the above line of thought is something Derrida will pursue in his Of Grammatology, published in the same year as VP. Here's a snippet:

"What writing itself, in its nonphonetic moment, betrays, is life. It menaces at once the breath, the spirit, and history as the spirit's relation­ ship with itself. It is their end, their finitude, their paralysis. Cutting breath short, sterilizing or immobilizing spiritual creation in the repetition of the letter, in the commentary or the exegesis, confined in a narrow space, reserved for a minority, it is the principle of death and of difference in the becoming of being. It is to speech what China is to Europe"

Note that in this chapter of VP which we are discussing, Derrida already refers to indication as a 'relation to death', 'the process of death at work' (p. 34) and to 'visibility and spatiality' as 'the death of that self-presence' (p. 29). Note also that this reference to death is not (just) a grand rhetorical flourish, but a term motivated by Husserl's own phenomenological emphasis on 'Life' as with the 'Living Present'. Anyway, in Of Grammatology, Derrida also discusses Leibniz's remarks on how Chinese script would serve as a prototype to Leibniz's own imagined universal discourse:

"What Leibniz is eager to borrow from Chinese writing is its arbitrariness and therefore its independence with regard to history. This arbitrariness has an essential link with the non­ phonetic essence which Leibniz believes he can attribute to Chinese writing. The latter seems to have been "invented by a deaf man" ... Leibniz [promises] a script for which the Chinese would be only a blueprint [quoting Leibniz]:

'This sort of plan would at the same time yield a sort of universal script, which would have the advantages of the Chinese script, for each person would under­ stand it in his own language, but which would infinitely surpass the Chinese, in that it would be teachable in a few weeks, having characters perfectly linked according to the order and connection of things, whereas, since Chinese script has an infinite number of characters according to the variety of things, it takes the Chinese a lifetime to learn their script adequately' [end Leibniz quote]

[Derrida continues]: The concept of Chinese writing thus functioned as a sort of European hallucination. This implied nothing fortuitous: this functioning obeyed a rigorous necessity." Figured this is an interesting supplement (!) to the reading we're doing.

Thanks a lot for this. Yeah, I was barely on the cusp of understanding that Derrida was referring to logographic scripts, and not some alternate writing technique. Man, this exchange is wild. Derrida's conclusions about the significance of all this seem too excited, as are the cultural comparisons (which reek of a weird Orientalism). But man, given what he was responding to, I can barely blame him – that Leibniz quote is wild. It's so indicative of the time period, but also so astoundingly naive: this episode on 'when a genius says stupid things.'

I do not think this exchange has ultimate bearing on what Husserl is saying, interesting as it is. The fact that alphabetic scripts encode phonological information that logographic scripts don't seems not to detract from the points about communication and indication: perhaps Derrida's mind was more solidly on the subject because of his Saussurean influence, since for Saussure the signifier is a sound-image, but as far as Husserl is concerned, I don't see how it makes a difference even in writing, since the crux is on communication and not any particular sensory vehicle that accomplishes it, so logograms do not get us 'closer' to pure expressivity in that sense. Additionally, the privileging of the spoken word makes all of this moot, since of course it's not as if Chinese has any less of a phonology than European languages for not encoding it in a script (and any European ideas that it might are totally ridiculous). A pedantic clarification here: it is the script that matters, not the language, since of course Chinese can be very easily written in alphabetic script, and often is, and while the reverse is not really done as a matter of common practice, nothing precludes it in principle.

"expressive discourse" (isn't the whole point that expression is precisely non-discursive?). — StreetlightX

Rather, that it doesn't include discourse essentially, not that it excludes it essentially, since communication is both indicative/discursive and expressive simultaneously.

Rather, that it doesn't include discourse essentially, not that it excludes it essentially, since communication is both indicative/discursive and expressive simultaneously. — The Great Whatever

Ya, good point.

perhaps Derrida's mind was more solidly on the subject because of his Saussurean influence, since for Saussure the signifier is a sound-image, — The Great Whatever

I think this is right, which perhaps also explains in part the sudden appearance of Saussure at the end of the chapter (other than helping - to those familiar anyway - to clarify by similarity, the notion of imagination and the 'iireal'). The discussion in Of Grammatology re: Chinese script itself is largely carried out in a context of a critique of Saussure as well.

As far as Husserl is concerned, I don't see how it makes a difference even in writing, since the crux is on communication and not any particular sensory vehicle that accomplishes it, so logograms do not get us 'closer' to pure expressivity in that sense. — The Great Whatever

Yeah, I think this is the case too. If I have time, I'll try go back to OG to see how and where the point about non-phonetic scripts is explicitly made (again I think it's in conversation with Saussure), to see how Derrida gets to his 'excited' conclusion (the whole of OG is a rather 'excited' book as a whole, to be fair).

The distinction between phonetic and non-phonetic is the distinction between languages whose spelling will tell you how to pronounce the word (English, French, etc), and languages whose form will tell you nothing about it's pronunciation (Chinese). — StreetlightX

It may be worthwhile to consider here, the non-phonetic language of mathematics, and all of those mathematical symbols which are principally written but usually have a corresponding spoken word. To a limited extent, we can do mathematics in our heads, but to sit with a pencil and paper greatly facilitates this. And in extension, we now have calculators and computers which we can make to do our math for us. These mathematical expressions, when I sit with my pencil and paper, are generally very personal, and are not meant for communication at all.

The fact that alphabetic scripts encode phonological information that logographic scripts don't seems not to detract from the points about communication and indication: perhaps Derrida's mind was more solidly on the subject because of his Saussurean influence, since for Saussure the signifier is a sound-image, but as far as Husserl is concerned, I don't see how it makes a difference even in writing, since the crux is on communication and not any particular sensory vehicle that accomplishes it, so logograms do not get us 'closer' to pure expressivity in that sense. — The Great Whatever

I think that communication and indication might be correctly related, but it is the role of the physical existence of the sign, which I question. I think that pure expression, with no intent to communicate, utilizes the physical existence of the sign just as much as communication does. This is evident from the example of mathematics, above.

When I imagine words, or think in words, it is almost always with the goal of communication, I am thinking of what I will say to someone else, or what I will write here, for someone else to read. So as much as imagining words, and thinking with words, might appear to be pure expression, the motivation, or intent is still communication, hence it is not free from indication. So thinking in words cannot be pure expression, if expression is lost in communication, as thinking in words is already contaminated by this motivation. On the other hand, when I am thinking with numbers I am working out my own problems, and not thinking with the goal of communicating. When I use numbers, regardless of whether I give them physical existence on the paper or not, I do not have this motivation of communication, so this must be a more pure form of expression.

Note that in this chapter of VP which we are discussing, Derrida already refers to indication as a 'relation to death', 'the process of death at work' (p. 34) and to 'visibility and spatiality' as 'the death of that self-presence' (p. 29). Note also that this reference to death is not (just) a grand rhetorical flourish, but a term motivated by Husserl's own phenomenological emphasis on 'Life' as with the 'Living Present'. — StreetlightX

I can't quite figure out these references to death, maybe it will become more clear later in the book. The life of self-presence is exiled by the exitings of indication, and this is the process of death at work. And the one on p29 is even more intriguing.

It may be worthwhile to consider here, the non-phonetic language of mathematics, and all of those mathematical symbols which are principally written but usually have a corresponding spoken word. To a limited extent, we can do mathematics in our heads, but to sit with a pencil and paper greatly facilitates this. And in extension, we now have calculators and computers which we can make to do our math for us. These mathematical expressions, when I sit with my pencil and paper, are generally very personal, and are not meant for communication at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

Mathematics is an interesting case, and is in fact one of the sources of Derrida's reflections here. Apart from his uni dissertation on Husserl, his earliest published work was in fact an 'Introduction' to Husserl's 'The Origin of Geometry', where Derrida first began to think about the problems between expression and indicaiton, although not in those terms. The problem outlined there is basically this: to the degree that mathematical truths are meant to be "eternal", how does the necessity of the empirical transmission of those truths bear upon that supposed eternity of mathematical truth? You can see, in VP, where these reflections eventually led Derrida.

Thanks for the info. I find this a very interesting subject. as I have believed, for a long time, that there is a distinct difference between spoken and written language. That is how I approach Wittgenstein's private language. Spoken, I assume to be communicative, while written, I assume is essentially non-communicative. Written language I believe evolved from personal expressions which were not meant to be communicative, they're created to reflect meaning back on the one who created them. This may be found in the basis of art as well, it is fundamentally a non-communicative form of expression, produced for personal satisfaction.

Evidence of the difference between communicative and non-communicative language exists in the fact that in common communicative language, writing consists of a representation of the spoken words, yet the inverse is true of mathematics, the spoken word is a representation of the written symbol. So the spoken "seventy two" for example, is a representation of the written "72".

Derrida: Signs always point to other signs but have no meaning in themselves.. Everything is mere indication and not completed expression. Meaning cannot be bracketed as was the project of Husserl. It would be an error to jump to presence, the underlying experience of the signifier.. Essentially, the map is not the territory. Pace Wittgenstein: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Hey guys,

Sorry it's been a little tough keeping up the energy this week. I want to close out just by mentioning a couple things as promised about the series of distinctions Derrida mentions near the end of the chapter regarding Husserl and Saussure.

First, Husserl, or "what the fuck does 'non-reell' mean?"

Husserl was obsessed with the real versus the unreal, and with belief and the postponement of belief. The epoché, as a method of 'bracketing' the world and our natural attitudes toward it, was effectively a massive 'neutralization' of our ordinary credence in a sort of naïve metaphysical picture, which allows phenomenology to happen. As such, he drew many distinctions regarding reality and unreality, and belief thereof. Some clarification on what Derrida is on about with his two levels of unreality and so on may be helpful to some of the questions MU was posing earlier this week.

The first distinction that's important for Husserl here is the real versus the 'irreal,' a term Derrida also uses here. Reality in this first sense usually corresponds to the German Wirklichkeit or Realität, which means reality in a pretty unphilosophical sense: real stuff in the real world, things that have causal effects on one another, are concrete an manifest in space in time, and in short, partakers in efficient causation. Pretty much all of the talk Derrida goes into regarding ideality versus the empirical, mundane, accidental, etc. has to do with this distinction: so indication, for example, as something involving a really existent sign that motivates belief in something else that is really existent, owes its efficacy to its reality in this basic sense. On the other hand, we have things that are 'irreal,' that is, unworldly, ideal as opposed to empirical, not party to efficient causation, non-spacial, atemporal, and in short, Platonic. The bizarre neologism 'irreal' is meant to contrast with 'unreal;' these things are real, but have a different sort of reality from concrete stuff, in the way that the Platonic forms do. These would be things that we classically think of ideal, like mathematical objects, but also crucially for Husserl, things that are closer to what you might call Kantian forms of intuition, things that are a little bit more 'sensuous' despite having no existence, like the form of the color blue, for example.

Two important points for Husserl here: irreal things can still be perceived, in a quite literal sense: for Husserl, all cognition is ultimately due to perception, direct 'seeing' of something before the ego's gaze, whether ideal or concrete; and second, the real and irreal crucially depend on each other, in contrast to the more unidirectional instantiation-Form Platonic model. All irrealities are perceived via concrete existent things, and all concrete existent things are in turn only able to exist insofar as they fit the mold of abstract forms or essences. This is the basic phenomenological distinction between fact and eidos, and the basic phenomenological method for securing results, which secures perception of the eidos from some fact, is the aptly named eidetic reduction.

The second distinction is between things that are real as concrete or inherent pieces of consciousness versus things that are not constituted as part of consciousness, but outside of it. As Derrida mentions, things that are 'real' in this second sense include (1) hyle, (2) morphe, and (3) noesis. Hyle is sensory matter, the raw sensory 'stuff' out of which experiences are built, sort of like Humean impressions or the Kantian sensory manifold: hues, light, timbre, odor, and so on. Morphe is then shape or form, which imposes on the matter some shape, and allows the hyle to be seen as objects of one sort or another. For Husserl, there is no pure perception of hyle not molded to morphe, although the status of these two is left unclear ultimately. Finally, there is noesis, which is the act of consciousness itself, which 'animates' the hyle into its form: so noetic acts will include perceiving, wishing, wanting, believing, doubting, and so on.

Across the divide from noesis is the noema, which is the object of consciousness. It is important to remember that the nomeata need not exist in the ordinary sense of being 'real' as above. Thus, for example, we can imagine a centaur, and there is a noema there, qua imagined object: there is an 'imaginary centaur,' but no 'imagined centaur,' since of course there are no centaurs. Direction toward a nomea, therefore, does not require existence: Husserl distinguishes between the noema roughly as the 'sense' of the object, and the 'underlying X' which we take in ordinary realistic thinking to underly it, the existence of which the epoché brackets. Thus in doing phenomenology we see the nomea, the object-sense, which equates roughly to Brentano's 'intentionally in-existing object,' but we do this purely within experience, and do not take our experience to motivate a transcendent underlying X that the noema directs us to; instead we merely examine phenomenologically our positing such an X, i.e. in perception, even as we don't buy into this positing. A nomea is 'unreal' in this second sense, because unlike the hyle, morphe, and noesis, it is not an inherent or concrete part of consciousness: consciousness is directed at it, as something that is constituted outside of it (even though, in the usual phenomenological paradox Derrida mentioned last chapter, we examine this 'outside' from purely 'within' experience). It is this second sense of being 'unreal' that the unfortunate term non-reell is being used to describe (with the inherent parts of consciousness then being 'reell').

So in soliloquy, in speaking to ourselves, Husserl wants to maintain that we merely imagine the words, and that they are not real: so in what sense are they unreal? We have seen two ways in which this holds:

(1) The word itself is not real in the ordinary sense, and experience in no way claims that it is: it is only imaginary. Crucially, this is because imagination, unlike perception and memory, is what Husserl calls a 'non-positional' attitude: it does not motivate belief in or commitment to the existence of its object.

(2) As noema, the word is non-reell because it is not an inherent part of consciousness.

Finally, it bears mentioning that insofar as our goal is to express something by means of the word, we have a third kind of non-reality, or irreality:

(3) What is expressed is an ideal, as opposed to a concrete and actual, meaning. And so we see the word in its essence, not as a concrete thing being used to indicate concrete experiences or states of affairs to anyone.

I will try to say a little something about the comments on Saussure too, but I don't know how much would be helpful. In the meantime, let me know if anyone else wants to take up summarizing Chapter 4.