Which is why i think the people discussing physical reality both are and aren't missing the point. I think it does matter that the example has to force itself to work, it needs a lot of intepretive scaffolding. — csalisbury
Heideggerian destruction or Derridean deconstruction questioned the justification of the distinction, in the dialectically oppositional way it is presented by Cavell, in the first place — Joshs
So a few people now have mentioned 'physics' - as though 'physics' could tell us what we call houses and what we call flowers; but this of course is a silly idea, as though one could read our language 'off' the physical characteristics of the world. As though a kind of pre-established harmony existed between word and thing. How ironic that those who speak of physics are theologians in disguise. What is missed is language - human language, and what we do with it. — StreetlightX
And as I also mentioned to Banno, this kind of question finds its lineage in Hume on induction (maybe the sun won't rise tomorrow), and in Kant on knowledge more generally (the cinnabar that turns red and black and light by turns); More recently in Meillassoux on radical contingency (physical law might and can change at any point, for no reason whatsoever). — StreetlightX
There's nothing theological about saying that things in the world are made up of matter and that matter of one type can (or can't) turn into matter of another type. — Michael
One way to put all this is that language is normative: we call things what we do not because (or not only because) of their 'physical properties' but also because of what we imagine things 'should' be: a 'house' is roughly what we call something to be lived in; the kind of thing made out of weather-proof material; usually has a roof; has connotations of homeliness; may be small; may be big: these things are what a house is because 'we' put them into the concept of a house: it was (communally?) created, not discovered.
Or, to put it a bit roughly from the other side of things, there is nothing in 'nature' that just is a house. You can measure particle interactions till kingdom come, and none of them will tell you that 'this is the kind of thing you ought to call a house'. Or, at least, one must have an idea of what wants to call a house before deciding: this is the kind of thing of qualifies as a house (made of the right material, is spacious enough, etc). — StreetlightX
I agree with this, but I don't see how this precludes the conceptual possibility of houses turning into flowers. It's no different in kind to mercury turning into gold – it just differs in scale and complexity. — Michael
When the child says: "my house turned into a flower!" - we know she is not talking about our kind of houses — StreetlightX
you were gesturing toward the possibility of deconstructing the difference, so that there was no real difference in kind. — csalisbury
We couldn't deconstruct the opposition between center and margin if we didn't already understand the distinction. Maybe the distinction is grounded in this or that; still the difference is there, as a fact of distinction.. So deconstruct away, but you'll need to reconstruct in order to explain the fact of the distinction itself. — csalisbury
Houses can't turn into flowers because the laws of physics as we know them preclude this kind of transmutation. — Michael
Because we know that it's impossible for houses to turn into flowers. Whereas if she were to say that the tree in her garden became a shed we wouldn't question it because we know that carpenters are able to do this.
So I think it's entirely appropriate to say that houses can't turn into flowers because the laws of physics as we know them preclude this kind of transmutation. It really has nothing to do with language or our concepts at all. — Michael
Apparently my earlier criticism along these lines, criticism which is unsympathetic to the thoughts and feelings behind the creation of this discussion, was deemed to be worthy of deletion. — S
The laws of physics eh? The one pertaining to flowers? Or the one about houses? Remind me. — StreetlightX
Cool, so you've gone ahead and mapped the concept of flowers and houses to the physics, and then, on the basis of that, told me that concepts have nothing to do with it; but of course, you wouldn't even be able to furnish your barely-there explanation if you didn't already know what it is you're talking about. You can't even get the critique off the ground without implicitly invoking the concepts — StreetlightX
That our concept of houses is different to our concept of flowers doesn't mean that we can't talk about houses turning into flowers — Michael
I suspect this is at the heart of your boredom with Derrida. If you were pressed to perform a deconstructive reading of Cavell , there likely wouldn't be much of substance you would be able to offer, because your leanings are toward a constellation of thinkers outside the orbit of the Derrida and Heideger that I understand. The vital contribution I impute to Derrida and Heidegger has to do with revealing a profound intimacy in the moment to moment unfolding of temporaity that I see as being missed by Cavell, Wittgenstein and others. In my view, to understand being via this intimacy is to make this starting point vastly more interesting than to begin with normative structures and then celebrate their transformation. My writing and thinking was in this direction well before I ever read Derrida or Heidegger, so I can take or leave them. I find your contributions to be among the most thoughtful of the commenters on this site, and since there are few others here who are willing or able to engage at any level with Derrida , I occasionally see if I can draw you into incorporating him into discussion, even if just in the form of a critique.Is it presented in a dialectically oppositional way? — StreetlightX
In various writings Derrida deconstructs the notion of structure. He argues that structure
implies center, and at the center, transformation of elements is forbidden. But he says in
fact there is no center, just the desire for center. If there is no center, there is no such
singular thing as structure, only the decentering thinking of the structurality of structure.
“Henceforth, it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center
could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that
it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of
sign-substitutions came into play. This was the moment when language invaded the
universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a center or origin, everything
became discourse-provided we can agree on this word-that is to say, a system in which the
central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside
a system of differences. — Joshs
.in my experience epigones of Derrida (or Heidegger, really) end up having the same conversation almost every time. — fdrake
This is where my Derrida-Heidegger come in. rather than focusing on "articulating the suspension(bracketing) and its impacts on metaphysical reasoning", in my reading, they move within the very heart of context itself and notice an almost imperceptible mobility within what has been rendered as structure, presence, state, form, scheme, element, being, the 'is', as the most supposedly irreducible origin of epxeience. What's most remarkable about this 'split' within the 'I" moment to moment is not that it leads to opposition , incommensurability, negation, suspension. On the contrary, it lends to the ongoing temporization of experiencing, in and through all contexts, a radical consistency, integrity and intricacy that is missing from other approaches. Whether you buy this or not, the implication is that what happens BETWEEN supposed normative regime of understanding to another becomes utterly uninteresting, becasue it is now understood to be only an abstracted and derivative way of thinking the basis of transformation in meaning. The real action has not been made visible yet to those who begin from centered contexts and their transformation. — Joshs
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