the language-learning case is interesting. People use 'samples' all the time without trying to communicate what the sample itself is trying to communicate - yet they're still communicating. It's also interesting in that its a border case in linguistic competence. The sentence is there because we're assumed not to be fully competent

Please wait for chapter three! A lot of this stuff gets taken into account there, or at least, is made alot more explicit. May not solve anything, but will provide grist for the mill.

thats two weeks from now! What if i fall into a well before then?

I will post a very moving thread.

❤️

I don't think it matters – you can accompany it with a phonological component to pronounce the words with differing stresses, etc. Still it's not meant to be used to communicate, and still there is a layer of meaning that we can discern merely in virtue of our semantic competence.

As for whether there is any expression going on in these cases, it seems there must be if our concern is 'logicity;' we can understand, for example, that certain arguments are intuitively valid even if not used communicatively (in fact, logic itself would be impossible if we could not do this, and so extract truth preservation in virtue of form).

True. But if you and I did happen to disagree about what it means, there's no way to resolve the conflict (assuming we have equal linguistic competence). So giving up a real speaker means that though we may be able to discern a meaning, there's no such thing as the meaning.

1) The linguistic sign indicates the mental state of the speaker. — The Great Whatever

This would not be too accurate, because rather than the mental state of the speaker, the sign indicates what the speaker wants, or more precisely, what the speaker wants you to think. The more precise qualification has to be kept in mind to account for the fact that it is possible to deceive.

Surely I know what the sign means in virtue of my linguistic competence, and not in virtue of my ability to mind-read; and furthermore the word would mean the same thing, in the sense we're interested in (logicity), regardless of who said them, excluding first-person indexicals and so on. — The Great Whatever

We can only say that you know what the sign means if you interpret the sign in the way that the person who put it there wants you to. Your linguistic competence may or may not enable you to do this, depending on your capacity in relation to the norms employed by the sign producer. Therefore "linguistic competence" does not suffice to give you "the meaning of the sign". It only possibly gives you that meaning. Linguistic competence gives you the capacity to produce an interpretation of "what the sign says". But "what the sign says", in actuality, is that a very particular mental process, is desired from you, one which you may or may not produce. If you produce the appropriate mental process, you have "correctly" interpreted the sign.

I think the big question is what is indicated in communicative speech (according to Husserl/Derrida). Is it the speaker's inner experience, the meaning of the sentence, or are they one in the same? To say that a speaker's 'inner experience' is always indicated in communicative speech is not necessarily to say that that 'inner experience' is what his sentence means. (cf the tripartite distinction referenced in §6, quoted above)

Reading through this some more, and looking ahead to section 3, I think that I have been going about expression in slightly the wrong way, and 'semantic content' might be a misleading way of putting it, because it conjures up the way modern linguists think about meaning. It seems to me that what Husserl means by expression (and the way I just used the word there <- is an instance of this use) is the sense in which we say 'but that is not what I meant,' when someone misinterprets us (and note here, far more is required than semantic competence to figure out what someone 'means'). It appears not to be the abstract semantic value of a bit of language at all, but something imbued with the desire to make public something gleaned from a private intentional act. This becomes clearer later in the text.

It may be that for Husserl, as for many philosophers of language prior to the mid 20th century, this notion of meaning to say something is one and the same as the meaning of the piece of language simpliciter. But I'm not so sure about that either: Husserl also was on his way to formulating, along with Frege, an abstract combinatorial semantics based only on interpretaiton of abstract syntactic categories. In any case, what Husserl is concerned with here, and Derrida's target, is meaning in this sense, 'intention,' and yet at the same time not the sort of intention that can be conveyed without language. It's a very specific sort of thing, that combines the Gricean notion of 'meaning-NN' but in such a way that it applies only to linguistic signs.

It therefore might well be that Husserl would simply deny that the signpost or the program mean anything at all in this sense, that not all productions of language are sufficient to be expressive, since after all in this sense a signpost indeed doesn't mean anything (but of course in a wider sense it does). There still remains the question to what extent Derrida's criticism relies on this weirdly parochial view of language.

in this sense a signpost indeed doesn't mean anything — The Great Whatever

This thread had me thinking about the ancient art of reading goat entrails. If the entrails have the appearance of a monster called Humbaba, it means something bad. I could see it as silly superstition, but I think that entrails actually could mean something bad. It could work the same way I-Ching, horoscopes, tea-leaves, cards, palms, etc. work: I think when people attend to those indications, what they're really listening to is their own intuitions. The reader hears his own voice coming through the entrails and so his own fears or joyful expectations are there. His own mind is trying to talk to him.

Yeah, I think you're right and that's why Derrida renders bedeutung as 'vouloir-dire.'

Yeah, I think you're right and that's why Derrida renders bedeutung as 'vouloir-dire.' — csalisbury

It is a bit unfortunate, though, that 'vouloir dire' is also commonly used, just as the English 'meaning' is used, to refer to the conventional linguistic/semantic meaning of a sign and not merely to refer to the communicative intention of whoever uses this sign, on a particular occasion, in speech or thought/soliloquy.

Yeah, this confused me too. I don't speak French, but there is a cognate in Spanish, querer decir, which also means 'mean,' but you commonly use it to ask what a word or piece of language in the abstract means, like ¿qué quiere decir 'caballo?' – 'what does 'caballo' mean?'

The translation is confusing because 'want' in these cases don't actually have to tie to volition, which is the parallel Derrida draws later.

Yeah, this confused me too. I don't speak French, but there is a cognate in Spanish, querer decir, which also means 'mean,' but you commonly use it to ask what a word or piece of language in the abstract means, like ¿qué quiere decir 'caballo?' – 'what does 'caballo' mean?' — The Great Whatever

Yes. When inquiring about the usual meaning of a word or phrase we can sometimes ask "Qu'est-ce que ça signifie?" but it is much more usual to ask "Qu'est-ce que ça veux dire?" This last question would be the standard translation of "What does it mean?"

But then, we can also ask "Qu'est-ce qu'elle veut dire (par là)?" meaning exactly the same as "What does she mean (by that)?" in cases where the communicative intention appears to go beyond, or be more precise than, the mere semantic/conventional meaning.

A couple things.

First, I found the place where Derrida implies the twofold reason for thinking language is indicative when used communicatively. It's on p. 19.

Since contamination is always produced in real colloquy (at once because in real colloquy expression indicates a content that is forever hidden from intuition, namely, the lived-experience of the other, and because the ideal content of the Bedeutung and the spiritual side of the expression are united in real colloquy with the sensible side)...

I have a copy of the Investigations now, and am looking to see what Husserl says about this second point.

Second, here is an interesting passage that my summary didn't address, on p. 18, insertions mine.

...we would be tempted to say that this hiatus [between fact and essence], which defines the very space of phenomenology, does not preexist the question of language, and it is not inserted into phenomenology as within one domain or as one problem among others. It is opened up, on the contrary, only in and by the possibility of language.

I hadn't realized on my previous read that this claim was so strong – Derrida seems to claim that the fact/eidos distinction is one that can't exist without language, and that indication and expression more or less stand for either side of the divide. There's no justification for this statement here, and having read forward I have not found any yet, but this sort of move seems to be indicative of what Derrida will be doing throughout the whole text.

Again, this points to the question of why 'needed for language' means 'needed for everything.' It also seems to me, at least at this stage, not to get the distinction right: there can also be an essential component of indication, and a fact of a particular expressive intention. Derrida makes this distinction a lot, and I can't find out where it's justified. He seems just to assume that if indication is (or needs to be) present at all, then the phenomenological method of the reductions just can't go through, because reductions 'bracket' the empirical, but this as I said in the previous thread seems to be a misunderstanding.

Let me know if anyone else wants to do the summary of Chapter 2. If not, I can do it.

I'll take a stab at it

Theme song for team Husserl.

I lose my shape, I tumble
And I drift across the sea
I lose my thoughts, I watch them
In graceful movements flow

I catch the raging darkness
And transform it into light
I try to catch a second
But it slips out of my hand

When I reach the
Glorious
My silence within
Enormous
A journey begins

All the words fall so silent
No need to react
I'll remain in my silence within

Illuminated highways, only used for thoughts
They're winding through the mountain still covered with snow
When touching time they ignore it, it stands still
The only thing that matters is the silent inner will

Increasing the innermost recesses
Of the heart and of the soul
The utmost of the inner
Revelations is the call

Inside the echoes of the laughter
Underneath a waterfall
Beyond the growing trees of knowledge
In a forest still unknown

Untie
Unfold the silence with
Unveil
We caught the silence within
We sold
We caught (we caught) (we caught)

I watch the sounds, they're fading
Into a silhouette
Of all the silent courts I've reached
But lost along my way

I touch vibrating timbres
Inside my silent voice
Out of an ocean of my thoughts
I catch a single drop

When I reach the
Glorious
My silence within
Melodious
My journey begins

All the notes fall so silent
No need to react
I'll remain in my silence within
I'll remain in my silence within

That's real cute!

(This summary is pretty rough and leaves a few things out, but just to at least get things started:)

Chapter 2 continues the close reading of Husserl’s first logical investigation. It covers sections 2-4 of the investigation, those sections in which Husserl concentrates on indication.

Before attending directly to the text, Derrida considers why indication is given such short shrift (having less than one third as many sections devoted to it as expression.) He surmises, as he will surmise often, that Husserl views indication as a phenomenon of secondary importance, as something extrinsic to expression. If indication is introduced first, it’s only to hastily, preemptively quarantine it, so that we can go on to explore expression unimpeded.

Derrida then turns to Husserl’s text.

First Husserl introduces another distinction, this time within indication. There is natural indication and there is artificial indication. Natural indication is something like: “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Here, indicators are intrinsically linked to what they indicate. Artificial indications, on the other hand, rely on convention, as in the case of branding.

Both natural and artificial indication, though, share something essential. In both cases something we currently know (that which functions as an indicator) motivates our conviction in (or presumption of) something we don’t yet know (that which is indicated.)

Derrida quotes Husserl’s definition in full & I think it’s worth requoting here:

“In these cases we discover as a common characteristic the following situation: certain objects or states of affairs whatsoever whose subsistence of what someone has actual knowledge indicate to him the subsistence of certain other objects or states of affairs, in the sense that his conviction in the being of the one is experienced as motivating (though as a non-evident motivation) a conviction or a presumption in the being of the others. “

Unfortunately this definition casts a bit too wide of a net. While it does cover indication in the sense we’ve been discussing (Anweis) it would also include deductive, apodictic demonstrations or proofs (Hisweis.) These latter have for their content universal, necessarily valid truths. Instead of something merely ‘indicating’ something else, with 'Hinweis, it logically/mathematically entails it. For instance, if we know, of a square, that its sides are four feet long, we are, as with indication, ‘motivated’ to pass from this knowledge to the knowledge that the square has an area of 16 square feet. Yet the square’s area is, in a sense, already implicit in the length of its sides.

The difference is that, while 'hinweis' is apodictic, 'anweis' is always a matter of empirical probability. The existence of A strongly, perhaps even overwhelmingly, suggests the existence of B, yet this can never be more than an empirical near-certainty.

Yet even within Hinweis, Husserl draws a distinction between the factual experiential ‘acts’ of deducing one thing from another and the ideal/objective relations which are the contents of those deductions This, to Derrida, suggests an indicative component even within the heart of (factual) demonstration (of objective truths.)

Derrida seizes upon this distinction as on opportunity to change gear, shifting from commentary on the text to its implications for the phenomenological project in general. Derrida sees in this distinction yet another instance of a move Husserl will constantly repeat. In order to secure the integrity of one thing, something else is relegated as being essentially exterior to it. All of phenomenology, he claims, boils down to making distinctions between the essential and the inessential. But the ability to make these kinds of distinctions is, itself, a function of language.

But, says Derrida, Husserl clearly would not himself characterize phenomenology in this way. After all, Husserl holds that there is a pre-linguistic stratum of sense.

ha, this'd be team Derrida (the end of it anyway)

I think I have a better sense now of why Derrida thinks indication's entanglement with expression could be a problem for Husserl. The project of Logical Investigations is very explicitly to provide a non-psychological base for logic. Yet the origin of indication, for Husserl, lies in the association of ideas (as the footnote on page 25 tells us.) If we view association as a process where contingent, empirical events lead to the conjunction, in our minds, of two separate ideas, then indication is thoroughly psychological.

Derrida (in the footnote on page 25, my bolding): "Here, what is excluded from pure expressivity is indication and thereby association in the sense of empirical psychology. We must bracket empirical psychical lived-experiences in order to recognize the ideality of the Bedeutung that orders expression. The distinction between indication and expression appears therefore first of all in the necessarily and provisionally 'objectivist' phase of phenomenology, when one has to neutralize empirical subjectivity. Does it keep its value when the transcendental thematic will found the analysis and when we return to constituting subjectivity?"

The idea seems to be that, at this stage of Husserl's thought, while he was still reacting against the psychologists (& I haven't read enough of the Logical Investigations to appraise this reading, though, based on what little I've read, it makes sense) Husserl still sees us as discovering ideal logical truths/relations/orders, rather than transcendentally constituting them. Thus, at this stage the processes whereby we discover these truths must be something entirely separate from the truths themselves (otherwise the psychologists are right.) In other words expression must be absolutely separable in principle from indication, otherwise expression (and so the order of ideal logical/mathematical truths) falls right back into the maw of psychologism.

Thanks for the summary, it's very helpful.

I don't know about anyone else, but I found this chapter a little bewildering, and am not sure even now I understand it. The last paragraph, in particular, is very difficult to parse. In particular, Derrida's insistence that what was outside essential demonstration was therefore 'outside of truth' was a little bizarre. This is characteristic of my frustration so far with this text – Husserl never disavows empirical truth.

It also seems to me that Husserl's definition of indication is not actually as broad as Derrida makes it out to be (causing him to drill down to 'indication proper,' which excludes demonstration), because Husserl clarifies in his definition that he is speaking of non-evident motivation, which has a precise technical meaning that excludes demonstration, which requires evident motivation in the sense of having adequate evidence for its claims. But this is less important.

Yet the origin of indication, for Husserl, lies in the association of ideas (as the footnote on page 25 tells us — csalisbury

True. Though late in his career, Husserl also begins to speak of a pure phenomenological notion of association that does not have to do with empirical psychology (even pure psychology). Again, I do not really understand how this works: it's one of the mysterious sections in the Cartesian Meditations (and may appear elsewhere).

Husserl still sees us as discovering ideal logical truths/relations/orders, rather than transcendentally constituting them. Thus, at this stage the processes whereby we discover these truths must be something entirely separate from the truths themselves (otherwise the psychologists are right.) In other words expression must be absolutely separable in principle from indication, otherwise expression (and so the order of ideal logical/mathematical truths) falls right back into the maw of psychologism. — csalisbury

I am having a hard time with this because the fact that the psychological acts whereby these truths are discovered require indication does nothing, at least in principle, to show that logic itself must be psychologistic. All it shows is that the human practice by which these non-psychological laws are discovered is amenable to psychology, which I take it no one denies. The point is just that regardless of how we discover the logical truths or draw logical implications, these implications in themselves have adequate evidence, and the psychological means by which they're reached is irrelevant. We would not, for example, mention necessarily any such method of discovery in a logic textbook at all.

Derrida also talks about how the reductions factor into this, and Husserl had not come up with the notion of reduction in the Investigations yet. So if Derrida means to criticize Husserl, and not just 1901-Husserl (which is the only way the text holds together), this sort of subjectivity versus objectivity thing, and discovering versus constituting ideal truths, should fall through, since as Derrida admits, Husserl's method of viewing ideal objectivities in terms of experiential constitution effectively transcends the subjectivist-objectivist divide (phenomenology is if you like no more than an assimilation of the science of experience to logic rather than to physics).

So when Derrida says this:

Husserl's whole enterprise–and well beyond the Logical Investigations–will be threatened if the Verflechtung attaching indication onto expression is absolutely irreducible and in principle inextricable, if indication were not added onto expression as a more or less tenacious bond, but inhabited the essential intimacy of the movement of expression.

Okay, but why? Seriously, why? There is no attempt to explain this, and it is so important! None of this matters unless we understand why he feels confident in asserting this!

In other words expression must be absolutely separable in principle from indication, otherwise expression (and so the order of ideal logical/mathematical truths) falls right back into the maw of psychologism. — csalisbury

Surely Husserl wants a complete separation between expression and indication, but not just to keep expression away from psychologism, more importantly I believe, this separation is what supports the notion of "natural indication". Without the separation, it will become impossible to maintain this principle, that there could be indication which is not expression. .

It also seems to me that Husserl's definition of indication is not actually as broad as Derrida makes it out to be (causing him to drill down to 'indication proper,' which excludes demonstration), because Husserl clarifies in his definition that he is speaking of non-evident motivation, which has a precise technical meaning that excludes demonstration, which requires evident motivation in the sense of having adequate evidence for its claims. But this is less important.

I agree with this (that bit in the relevant section of LI about applying a formula because its sanctified by authority, or out of habit versus understanding why the formula works)& I think it couldbe important. On one reading, Derrida's more or less saying the same thing as Husserl, just a little sloppily. On another, he's (intentionally or unintentionally) blurring some lines in a way that'll be useful for later claims. I haven't read past the first half of chapter 3, so I'm really not sure.

I'm inclined to agree with the rest of what you've said, as well, but I also want to get a better grip on expression (and try to finish volume 1 of LI) to help get all the pieces sorted out in my mind

I don't get the sense that the independence of natural indication, in particular, is a big priority for Husserl. He seems far more interested in expression.

Husserl does recognize the ability of indication to be independent of expression, but my sense is the thinks this is already intuitively obvious from everyday examples. Neither Husserl nor Derrida seem to expend effort defending this claim.

Though hey, there's a possible reversal of Derrida, if you were up for it. The more I think about it the less obvious it seems. Both admit already that indication requires the animation of 'lived experiences' – who's to say this doesn't require that the person who sees the indicator as an indicator must not 'mean' something in the expressive sense in order for it to work...?

I'm really looking forward to the time-consciousness section. Probably one of the most interesting philosophical issues period. Time-consciousness is mind-blowing, even 'sensuously' and pre-philosophically, and Husserl's writings evidence a genuine recognition of this.

In the meantime I still don't want to pass over this section with burning questions remaining that the text itself can't be squeezed for. To that end I think I want to compile a list of 'problem sentences' alongside questions about them. Anyone who has ideas or is similarly frustrated by these sentences, comments would be appreciated.