Californian houses can in fact metamorphose into flowers; by digesting themselves with fire to produce a large quantity of heat that can germinate flower-seeds within the house, which are then fertilized by the ash.

Doesn't awareness of forms of life also imply a transcendental vantage point? — frank

By forms of life he means our ways of life, what we say and do. An anthropologist might study the forms of life of a people, but here Cavell is pointing to our engagement in the world.

@Fooloso4
If we agree that mountains don't turn into flowers, this is agreement in forms of life.

Wouldn't being aware of that imply a transcendental vantage point?

Apparently anthropology is part of our form of life, So suggesting that forms of life are identified by anthropologists could only be a metaphor. I think that what Witt was trying to say can't be said outright. It could perhaps be hinted at in the way the Flatlander points to the signs that a three dimensional spoon is passing through the two dimensional world.

I write and mean something right now, right this moment. Except that now that I refer back to it , it has changed. No center. Yet there is a way of belonging to a thematic without there being a center . There is relative, differential belonging which is changing itself in an ongoing manner ,yet in ways that allows relative consistency. Thus we have at the same timer difference and continuity. And my claims to 'no center' are self-reflexive. They have built into them this consistent- changing rubric. So it is perfectly possible to articulate a notion of transformative that carries along with it relative stability and have this built right into our discourse about it. This is, after all, how meaning operates anyway. — Joshs

(Responding a bit late, so I'll understand if you've moved on from this.)

The beginning of you post reminds me a lot of Hegel's analysis of sense-certainty in Phenomenology of Spirit. I assume that's what you're drawing from. If so, I understand that section to be a sort of ur-contradiction which contains the rest of the book in embryo. There's what I mean, and then there's what I say. If I try to refer back to some singular this (what I meant), I only say "this" which is a universal.

I can't say what I mean [ ...] Absolute spirit. (Except Derrida would see an ever-widening spiral, rather than a self-completing circle?)

But what does the 'center' have to do with any of this?

Let's say that this analysis is about the center and do a quick deconstruction of Hegel.

The 'center' he was drawing on, in Sense-Certainty, is closely connected to the revelation in the Eluesinian mysteries (Hegel explicitly draws this connection.) Already this 'origin' is itself derived. Doubly derived in fact, because looking back over his ouevre, we can see, from his early essays on Christianity that his understanding of the dialectic probably derived in large part from his reading of the bible. The 'center' here is something like the holy of holies within the tabernacle, as a sort of semitic mystery cult.

Now we have a triple derivation, because the holy of holies was itself a late stage in the biblical dialectic. (Eden, the flood, the patriarchs, the exodus, the tabernacle.) Moreover, the tabernacle has to constantly be moved (taken apart, stored, set back up.) We know that the god who speaks from the holy of holies, is ever-changing, even fickle. Plus the presence of god himself is overwhelming, impossible even, and can only be broached through mediators. When god doespresent himself, he emphasizes the contingency of his desire, and how his mission is sustained through equally contingent covenants.

And we know, in addition, that this center was constantly violated (and so is violable) causing changes in the religious and social economy. And that the Israelites were aware of this (otherwise the entire genre of prophecy wouldn't make sense.)

At this point, it's hard to say what we really mean by 'center' here, except something that changes in an on-going manner, but with enough consistency to allow relative continuity. Ancient people seemed quite aware of the fragility and fickleness of a 'center'.

The expression of this more sophisticated theoretical idea of a center seems analogous to a person who didn't understand social cues, but slowly observed people interacting and put together a theory and then announced to a group his theory of human behavior - 'yes, we know' most of them over the age of 30 would say, 'We were waiting for you to get it. Only we're not sure you do, because you still think we don't.'

And so the question arises, who is really defending 'center' qua what derrida is saying a center has to be? Hegel isn't really. It seems like the person who needs this center is....Derrida, through the projected desires of others.

[and then, of course, you can deconstruct the need for him to need a center, and so it goes.]

The point is - the whole enterprise brings you right back to where you started. I think it's necessary for thought, but I think that's also just thought catching up to reality. And that's why, in the end, the same philosophical questions survive the deconstructive storm. Integrate the storm, but there's no point in bringing everything back to it.

I wrote a short article where I define center in Derridean (and Heideggerian) terms as the thinking of a structure, state, form, pattern as a simultaneous THIS rather than a temporally unfolding THESE.

Here's a snippet of it, explained in my own terms:

Writers endorsing a general account of meaning as non-recuperable or non-coincidental
from one instantiation to the next may nonetheless treat the heterogeneous contacts between
instants of experience as transformations of fleeting forms, states, logics, structures,
outlines, surfaces, presences, organizations, patterns, procedures, frames, standpoints.
When thought as pattern, the structural-transcendental moment of eventness upholds a
certain logic of internal relation; the elements of the configuration mutually signify each
other and the structure presents itself as a fleeting identity, a gathered field. The
particularity of eventness is not allowed to split the presumed (temporary) identity of the
internal configuration that defines the structure as structure. History would be the endless
reframing of a frame, the infinite shifting from paradigm to paradigm.

In their essence, Beings don’t HAVE structure or constitution. There is no such THING
as a form, a structure, a state. There is no trans-formation but rather a trans-differentiation,
(transformation without form, articulation as dislocation) What is being transcended is not
form but difference. Each of the elements in the array that define a structure are differences
.They do not belong to a structure . They are their own differentiation. There is no
gathering, cobbling , synthesis, relating together, only a repetition of differentiation such
that what would have been called a form or structure is a being the same differently from
one to the next. Not a simultaneity but a sequence. So one could not say that form of nature
is the way in which nature transitions through and places itself into the forms and states
that, from a schematic perspective, constitute the path of its movement, and nature turns
into natural things, and vice versa. Nature would not transition through forms and states,
Nature, as difference itself, transitions though differential transitions. Differences are not
forms. Forms are enclosures of elements organized according to a rule. Forms give
direction. Difference does not give direction, it only changes direction. What are
commonly called forms are a temporally unfolding system of differences with no
organizing rule, no temporary ‘it’. The transformation is from one differential to the next
before one ever gets to a form.

Schemes, conceptual, forms, intentions, willings have no actual status other than as empty
ontic abstractions invoked by individuals who nevertheless, in their actual use of these
terms, immediately and unknowingly transform the senses operating within (and defining)
such abstractions in subtle but global ways concealed by but overrunning what ontically
understood symbols, bits, assemblies, bodies, frames and other states are supposed to be.

The thinking of structure as a singularity implies a multiplicity of supposed ‘parts’ captured
in an instant of time. But the assumption that we think this parallel existence of differences
at the ‘same time’, as the ‘same space’, organized and centered as a ‘THIS’, must unravel
with the knowledge that each differential singular is born of and belongs irreducibly to,
even as it is a transformation of, an immediately prior element . Two different elements
cannot be presumed to exist at the same time because each single element is its own
time(the hinged time of the pairing of a passed event with the presencing of a new event) as
a change of place. Thus, whenever we think that we are theorizing two events at the same
time, we are unknowingly engaging in a process of temporal enchainment and spatial
recontextualization.
The assumption of a spatial frame depends on the ability to return to a previous element without the contaminating effect of time. How can we know that elements of meaning are of the same spatial frame unless each is assumed to refer back to the same ‘pre-existing’ structure?
The same goes for the fixing of a point of presence as a singular object. This pointing to,
and fixing of, an itself as itself is a thematic centering that brings with it all the metaphysical implications of the thinking of a structural center.

In the article I link to below I relate my argument to what Hedegger and Derrida say about structures.

https://www.academia.edu/38392519/Heidegger_and_Derrida_on_Structure_Form_and_State

a gathered field. — Joshs

I haven't read the whole essay through, though I will try to soon.

What I did really like was that phrase, 'a fleeting identity, a gathered field.'

I wasn't sure about forms and differentiation. I think if you can transport back in memory and remember childhood games- king of the hill, capture the flag etc - you can see how forms and transitions can occur very naturally, with people spontaneously understanding them. It's only later, when you try to fix things, that the confusion arises.

Ugh, away for a day and my thread is a Heidegger cesspool that only people who can speak the jargon can participate in. Yuck yuck yuck.

get out of town, i responded in non heidi terms, and so did a few others.

So it's that not our kind of houses do not turn into our kind of flowers because they have 'essential properties', but because what we call houses (the kinds of things we count as being houses) are not the kinds of things that turn into what we (happen to) call flowers (what we count as being flowers). So at stake here is a question of intelligibility, not properties and (substantial) essences. Or, if essences, then essences pertaining to what we count, call, or recognize as houses and flowers: a question of how we relate to the world around us, and not questions about the world 'in itself'. — StreetlightX

I'm uneasy about this because it would seem that it is our kind of houses and our kind of flowers which are always at stake.

It seems to me there is no situation in which we would not be talking about our kind of house or flower. In any case, we are referencing an object beyond its form(s) (the difference itself), no matter where it might be located. In this respect, there is no distinction between a real or fictional house of flower. Both are our kind of houses and flowers, they are just happening in different places/we are experiencing them in different places.

Faced with the object (difference itself), it's not just what we call an object which no longer matters, our very concepts of the object become disrupted because they are no longer constitutive of it. No object is so on account of its concept, not merely in what we name it. Only the object itself, difference itself, can be the presence of a thing. Form is as epiphenomenal as a name.

To be concerned with "kinds of things which do not turn into other kinds of things," even in the sense of intelligibility you are talking about, would still seem to be caught in questions of how we relate to there world. When we move to the world itself, I don't think it intelligible to speak about "kinds of things," even in a conceptual sense, as that is really our relation.

With difference itself, it would seem we could only ever speak of difference in relation to a distinction of kind. That's to say, we can take a difference itself and say that it might be any kind of thing.

The point is - the whole enterprise brings you right back to where you started. — csalisbury

It's not surprising that this process is circular, because "centre" is derived from circle. When you assume a centre you've already assumed equidistance from that point, and the circle is necessarily implied. There's no escape from the circle without denying the reality of the centre, which we do by emphasizing the fact that pi is irrational. If, after denying the reality of the circle we assume a spiral, we have to accept completely different principles, such as Fibonacci, and lack of centre.

Interesting argument. If you were to set up a critical divide among philosophers on this issue who would you put on each side? Streetlightx mentions Wittgenstein and Cavell in support of his position. Would you counter them with Deleuze?

I'm coming from a Deleuzian postion, but I don't think it's really a counter. The moves made by SX suggest to me he's been trying to talk about a certain kind of relation to us all along. I don't think they're after existence itself (difference itself), but a specific kind of relation formed by these differences.

SX is talking about the concepts we have beyond pure difference, certain conceptual relations of form and how they are defined. The point, I think, is these conceptual distinctions mean something. They aren't just an arbitrary whim of an interprating actor. Scepticism wins no battles here.

We can use pure difference to understand this consequence. Difference itself is the present of an object. If something is so, difference has defined it, amounts to the presence of a thing (and its absence; it will be unless another difference comes along).

At this point must bring formal relations back in. The object I'm considering may be pure difference and present only in difference itself, but that's not all it is.

These objects, these differences are actors and performers upon our plane of forms and phenomena. They aren't just differences, but differences which do something in relation to each other, in relation to us.

The screen I'm looking at, for example, is a pure difference. It's not existent by its form. At any moment it might disappear or even turn into a flower. I cannot use the forms I expect of it to judge whether it exists.

This, however, doesn't mean my screen is without form and its impacts upon me. My screen may possibly do anything, but that does not mean it does nothing. On the contrary, the difference of my screen does a lot of very specific things to me. It's my visual interface for communicating messages on this forum, for example. If it turns into a flower, it will do other very specific things to me.

In any case, the screen, the pure difference, the screen is acting upon me in certain ways. The difference (the existence of the screen) has consequences for my experience and my relations. The difference and its effects, are neither a whim of language (Derrida) nor ultimately mysterious and inaccessible (Heidegger).

In short, I agree with what SX is saying. I just think they've misdiagnosed the object of their critique. SX isn't attempting to talk about existence itself, to get beyond any talk of relations. They are trying to talk about the impacts of a difference itself (a thing that exists) upon the world of relations, the forms and relations a given difference performs in its presence.

The screen I'm looking at, for example, is a pure difference. It's not existent by its form. At any moment it might disappear or even turn into a flower. I cannot use the forms I expect of it to judge whether it exists. — TheWillowOfDarkness

There's such a thing as "inertia". Due to the brute fact of inertia, described by Newton's first law, your screen will not disappear at any moment, nor will it turn into a flower at any moment. Force, (cause), is required for this. In reality you can, and we do use the forms that we expect of a thing, to judge whether the thing exists or not. That's inductive reasoning. To deny that things will continue to be as they were, without a cause of change, is just to deny the law of inertia, but what's the point to that?

i believe what you're saying is that what SX refers to as a normative region would be the forms and relations a given difference performs in its presence.
I had earlier put forth the argument that Derrida and Heidegger would take issue with the distinction between the 'normative effects' of a difference and the difference itself as existence. Essentially they would argue that there is no such distinction to made. Not that there aren't nonoperative groupings, structurations, and modalities, but that there are not the effecgt of a difference, they are the temporal unflagging of multiple differences.

The difference and its effects, are neither a whim of language (Derrida) nor ultimately mysterious and inaccessible (Heidegger). — TheWillowOfDarkness

Not a whim of language for Derrida at all , but rather a function of intricately structured contextual differential relations, What Derrida does that Deleuze doesn't is that Derrida recognizes that even the moment of the gathered field that is the screen is not a single , centered THIS but a series of differential transformations. Deleuze begins with structures and forms in differential relation. Derrida beings with differences in differential relations. Deride gives us a more intricate and intimate view into the basis of meaning than Deleuze's more polarizing and semi-arbitrary starting point in differnce as temporary structure. Heidegger, far from seeing difference as mysterious and inaccessible, makes Derrida's approach possible by determining difference primordially in terms of temporality, a complexly structured unity.

Just going to try and respond to bits and pieces to catch up a little bit:

If so, then the phenomenal analysis of 'turning into' would reveal that while at one level the phrase breaks from the context of use, at a more general level it is taken into account in some way, either as nonsense or as an exception exposing the larger totality of relevance framing the discursive situation. As we enter into a particular context of communication and language, we bring to bear , we presuppose, not just what binds the previous phrases to each other normatively, but also what those phrases and the exception share in a more general sense. — Joshs

Don't you find this kind of approach just absolutely suffocating? I mean, Hegel gets alot of shit for being 'belly turned mind' (in Adorno's wonderful phrasing) in which the dialectic just gobbles up everything in its path, but this is in some respect even worse. Everything here is pre-digested and already accounted-for, everything has a place in an (oxymoronic, monstrous) economy of contingency, where every non-sense is already the other side of sense. Nothing escapes, and the engulfment into Theory is total and asphyxiating (the response to which is to self-flagellate by dwelling in paradox, writing 'under erasure', sous rature, and bringing to bear a whole Christian (?) theology of guilt and sin on philosophy, self-conscious to the point of immobility, like so many miserable Benedictine monks).

By contrast to this absolutisation of philosophy and its suffocation, a phrase like 'houses are turning into flowers' (or at least, situations analogous to it) ought to mark a point genuine - that is to say, creative - crisis, a point where sense needs to be reoriented by our grasping our way about, by our readjusting - however much we need to, and on whatever basis our lives are lived and contested - how we understand and relate to the world about us. There needs to be a way for change, transformation, novelty (and not just the forever oscillating pin-ball between differing and deferring) to occur in the order of things, the conceptual and lived matrix by which we relate to the world and ourselves. Breath.

And the only way to do this is to begin in the middle of things, to begin by ‘cognitively mapping’ (as Csal said) how things stand right now, in order to assess the possibilities of transformation, to measure the transcendental from within, rather than continually reaching the abstract, tired and useless shibboleth that everything is always-already other from the very beginning (which in any case is the reply of the reactionary: “everything is always-already other, what more could you possibly want?”). Philosophy needs to be innocent, aerial, unabashed - unlike anything the monastic stodginess of the Heideggarian legacy leaves us.

I would take this as a lesson in perception.

If houses are turning into flowers, then flowers are turning into houses.
Flowers, as one might guess, house many things from the abstract to the exact. Practically, they function as houses.

But when one thinks of one's house, there is a disparity between it and the ocean.
Though the ocean houses many things and functions as a house, its frame is different from the house of a human; likewise from the flower, which houses pollen.
By meaning, these are all houses - by frame, they are the ocean, a man's house and a flower.

Consider what I've said - by graphite and diamond. The difference is the structure; the frame, no?
And even though one may know that they are chemically the same, one can easily distinguish one from the other.

What transformations can't we think (which transformations really make us strain)? I think that that by definition is a more challenging question, but its exactly what thinking otherwise is all about. — csalisbury

Perhaps one response to this is to transform the question from 'what transformations can't we think?' to: 'what transformations can't we live?'. This, perhaps, is what gets to the heart of what Cavell takes from Wittgenstein: at the end of the day, of course we can say - and think - if we want, with all abandon, that houses can turn into flowers. We can think this. We do think this, insfoar as we do (a tautology). We say it: houses can turn into flowers. But can we 'live' this? To say this, and perhaps more importantly, sustain it's 'saying', is to have to transform how we relate to houses and flowers, insofar as we live those relations. This is why, I think, when Cavell asks the question, he immediately turns to questions not 'immediately' related to houses and flowers, but to questions about 'growing' and 'gardens' and 'seeds' and 'stones':

"What would "houses" or "flowers" mean in the language of such a world? What would be the difference between (what we call) stones and seeds? Where would we live in that world, and what would we grow in our gardens? And what would "grow" mean?"

I think the 'style' of questions here are significant, and they remind of Deleuze's dictum to not ask 'what is?', but "who?, how much?, how?, where?, when?": Cavell's questions are in this vein, it seems to me. Even when they ask 'what', they are not 'what is?' but 'what would we grow?' and 'what's the difference?', questions that bear on relations and their significance, on how we relate, how we live with our ways of speaking, and how ours ways of speaking (and thinking) and embedded in ours ways of living.

Another way to put this is that the question 'do houses turn into flowers?' cannot just be about houses and flowers: it's also a question about growing, about gardens, about stones and seeds, all of which it carries in tow like an umbra which is easily missed if one doesn't make sure to pay attention to it. So to bring this all back to transcendentality: would it answer your concern to say that the 'missing bridge' between 'deep transcendentally' and 'local transcendentality' is just us?

And this little piggy went 'we we we', all the way home.
(I think he lived in a shoe with an old woman...)

Experience will teach you what you may
And what you may not do
I'll teach you to forget the truths
You always knew.
See what might be,
See what might have been.
Though you yourself created me,
Your own mistake has set me free

I was your slave, now you are mine
I am Time, I am Time. — Robin Williamson

It's always all about identification. Philosophers identify with thought, and thought is the bottle from which no flying thought can escape, with or without a ladder. Thought circles or spirals (who cares?) around a centre that is not thought, though thought names it 'actual'. This infinite centre is the only place to live, because thought is always already dead.

Therefore, houses are infinite flowers, and I and my house are the central attraction for every honeybee.

Just thought I'd mention... carry on.

Edit:

Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts, he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in the mind. — J. Krishnamurti

But what kind of significance does saying 'it is false that houses turn into flowers' have? How, even in principle, does one go about rendering any sense of significance to this? Think again of the child who affirms the truth of this statement ("mumma! houses turn into flowers!): one's immediate (adult?) response is something like: 'this child doesn't know what truth is'; or, 'this child doesn't quite understand how houses, or flowers, or change works', or "how adorable". This child doesn't understand concepts and how they relate to other concepts - at least, not like we do. Her language is in error (according to our standards). That's the immediate adult response, not: 'No darling, houses do not turn into flowers' (at least, it's not the response parent who isn't tired and just wants to get through lunchtime with bub; or, the adult could say this, but she's being somewhat pedagogically irresponsible). — StreetlightX

distinctions with significance require asymmetry of response: if anything is possible, then anything follows, and one cannot say anything significant about anything at all.

Constraints need to be placed on our grammar such that one responds this way to a truth and this way to a falsehood: this asymmetry is the condition for language to function at all. But no such asymmetry exists in the case of 'it is false that houses turn into flowers'. — StreetlightX

Indeed, Cavell’s claim can be interpreted as an assertion of a fundamental asymmetry, grounding the condition for language to function at all. When Cavell writes that “I am asserting, rather, that we do not yet know what verification for or against it would be … both [the denial and assertion] rest on the same concept of what knowledge is, or must be … Both, in a word, use absolutely conclusive verification out of its ordinary context,” he means that he refutes all possible empirical processes of the verification of the given proposition “houses turn/do not turn into flowers.” Houses, flowers, the turn may have meaning from our ordinary context. Further, instead of real houses and flowers, we can consider our notions of these objects, but it is still possible to organize a process of verification. The utterance “houses turn into flowers” can have
different functions – it could be a proposition about real, imaginary, or symbolic objects. Or, it could be a grammatically correct/incorrect phrase - which is still an object for a kind of verification or an automatic rejection/acceptance within
the ordinary context. Another possibility is to assume that the utterance is merely a statement that just later can bear an assigned meaning and become a meaningful sentence or a true/false
proposition. Therefore, it has not yet confronted by a correlate or the absence of a correlate, as a proposition has (or has not) a referent. When the child says ("mumma! houses turn into flowers!), maybe she affirms the truth of this statement, but most likely she just exercises a fundamental ability of enouncing significant sentences; if it were just a random or mechanical combination of sounds, there would not be any significant adult response. A faculty to produce and differentiate significant and non-significant expressions can operate as “absolutely conclusive verification out of its ordinary context.”

And the only way to do this is to begin in the middle of things, to begin by ‘cognitively mapping’ (as Csal said) how things stand right now, in order to assess the possibilities of transformation, to measure the transcendental from within, — StreetlightX

Any point which you assume as the middle, or centre, will always end up having something further within, even if it's just a matter of "information" within that point. So the assumption of a middle point actually provides a false start. No starting point can be the middle because there is always something further inside, by the nature of infinity. The assumption of a middle is a lost cause. The seed, which forms the actual existence of "possibilities of transformation", itself must have an actual existence, and therefore a "within". This seed, as possibilities of transformation, has no centre or middle itself, and the information within cannot be described as having the spatial form which lends itself to the concept "middle". In other words, being within cannot be described as being in the middle.

the only way to do this is to begin in the middle of things — StreetlightX

Your argument starts with your conclusion, that Derrida and Heidegger don't begin in the middle of things. Well. I agree with half of that. They don't begin in the middle of things. They begin in the middle of something more mobile and intricate than things. If one doesn't see how it is possible to reduce 'things', in the guise of primordial form, structure, pattern, to a more primordial starting point, then what Derrida and Heidegger are doing will have to appear as though they are performing an "absolutisation of philosophy", an "engulfment into Theory", because they are not able to get right down into the middle of things.

It's nice to escape the highfalutin language of Heidegger-Derrida every once in awhile and remind ourselves of why this all matters. You and I want to be able to understand ourselves and each other most intimately.
Moving past Hegel via discourses that begin from the middle of things(Cavell, Deleuze, etc) takes us a good way in that direction. But what they don't do is provide us with the sort of exquisitely intricate creative potentiality of moment to moment felt meaning that H-D offer, a more intimate, intricate starting point for meaning than that of the in between of Deleuzian temporary structurations.
You and I know there are many readings of Heidegger-Derrida, and yours is a perfectly respectable one. What I am offering is a minority interpretation of them. Before you can reject it , you first have to understand it, and I readily admit that I may be unable to make this interpretation coherent enough for you to summarize it the way that I am more than confident I can summarize Deleuze or Cavell or Wittgenstein (approvingly, I might add, for I don't reject anything of what they argue , as far as they go. They just don't go far enough for me).

a point where sense needs to be reoriented by our grasping our way about, by our readjusting how we understand and relate to the world about us. There needs to be a way for change, transformation, novelty to occur in the order of things, the conceptual and lived matrix by which we relate to the world and ourselves. — StreetlightX

You and I have discussed before how Massumi and Protevi treat the relationship between affectivity and language. They come close, but are simply unable to fully integrate the two notions. The reason they fall short is that structure and transformation remain distinct moments for them . Just as for you, the way they articulate matters, 'there needs to be a way for change, transformation, novelty to occur in the order of things'. But is there a dynamic more intricate than the order of 'things' as starting point, such that change, transformation, novelty don't have be seen as a problem to be explained? Is it possible to think change, transformation and novelty not as possible outcomes but as the most primordial ground of experience?

But is there a dynamic more intricate than the order of 'things' as starting point, such that change, transformation, novelty don't have be seen as a problem to be explained? Is it possible to think change, transformation and novelty not as possible outcomes but as the most primordial ground of experience? — Joshs

Of course it's 'possible'; Derrida and co. have never left the plane of the 'possible' - that's the only thing they are acquainted with. The question is what analytic pay-off you get by doing it. And frankly I don't see much use in trying to 'think change' by swamping everything with it; when everything is 'change as primordial ground' or whathaveyou, what you lose is precisely the ability to think change. If you make it your point of departure, any attempt at distinction is lost in the white noise of 'change': Derridians or whatever see this as a feature; I think this is a monstrous bug.

This is why Derridian responses to the OP have only ever been totally irrelevant. The price you pay for seeing change everywhere is an inability to see change anywhere. It's self-imposed analytic impotence.

Perhaps one response to this is to transform the question from 'what transformations can't we think?' to: 'what transformations can't we live?'. This, perhaps, is what gets to the heart of what Cavell takes from Wittgenstein: at the end of the day, of course we can say - and think - if we want, with all abandon, that houses can turn into flowers. We can think this. We do think this, insfoar as we do (a tautology). We say it: houses can turn into flowers. But can we 'live' this? To say this, and perhaps more importantly, sustain it's 'saying', is to have to transform how we relate to houses and flowers, insofar as we live those relations. This is why, I think, when Cavell asks the question, he immediately turns to questions not 'immediately' related to houses and flowers, but to questions about 'growing' and 'gardens' and 'seeds' and 'stones':

"What would "houses" or "flowers" mean in the language of such a world? What would be the difference between (what we call) stones and seeds? Where would we live in that world, and what would we grow in our gardens? And what would "grow" mean?"

I think the 'style' of questions here are significant, and they remind of Deleuze's dictum to not ask 'what is?', but "who?, how much?, how?, where?, when?": Cavell's questions are in this vein, it seems to me. Even when they ask 'what', they are not 'what is?' but 'what would we grow?' and 'what's the difference?', questions that bear on relations and their significance, on how we relate, how we live with our ways of speaking, and how ours ways of speaking (and thinking) and embedded in ours ways of living.

Another way to put this is that the question 'do houses turn into flowers?' cannot just be about houses and flowers: it's also a question about growing, about gardens, about stones and seeds, all of which it carries in tow like an umbra which is easily missed if one doesn't make sure to pay attention to it. So to bring this all back to transcendentality: would it answer your concern to say that the 'missing bridge' between 'deep transcendentally' and 'local transcendentality' is just us? — StreetlightX

I like the transition to living versus thinking. On this, we're on the same page.

Still - I'm not going to let this go - we can live [the example] just as well as we think it. I mean, maybe not us, in our apartments. But whoever has the fancy house-flower thing. And we all recognize what that kind of access is - as people living the realm where that's possible, or aspiring to it, or shut off from it. Here, we're close to something sort of close to the world we live in, almost. The house-flower thing is a little awkward, class-architecturally speaking, but at least it gets closer to some sort of shared situation we care about.

I'm still not clear on whether Cavell is doing the cinnabar thing, or means, precisely, houses and flowers. It's confusing. Cavell can ask - 'what would we grow' but he either means this as a pure example (which is my impression) or: he does have some experience with gardens, as such people sometimes do, but in a way that has nothing to do with sustenance, or anything more life-impacting that any hobby, and so, again, the significance of the example is not really significant.

I mean, if it is about hobbies, no harm no foul. Plant peas away from beets, or however gardens work. But this seems to be some bigger point?


[frankly, I think Cavell, in these quotes, is saying nothing more profound then: there's a difference between statements pertaining to frames and statements pertaining to framed content. Which, true, but most people would agree, and, hey, get in here Derrideans. The equivocation between that and the cinnabar stuff is just muddying and I'm struggling to figure out what I would take away from Cavell that most of us wouldn't have already known going in.]

when everything is 'change as primordial ground' or whathaveyou, what you lose is precisely the ability to think change. If you make it your point of departure, any attempt at distinction is lost in the white noise of 'change': — StreetlightX

When Deleuze introduced to the world his 'philosophy of difference' which puts difference before identity, this exposed him to the same sorts of criticisms that you level against Derrida, as if there was nothing there but a white noise of relativism, chaos, indeterminacy. But of course, what Deleuze means by this move is in fact a complex dynamic in which imminence and transcendence operate. Leaving Derrida out of this for the moment, one can make the same defense for Heidegger's equiprimordial concepts of temporality, care, attunement, understanding and discourse. And what is the analytic payoff? Speaking personally, it allows me to move alongside others in their ways of being more insightfully and empathetically than I would be able to via a 'Deleuzian psychotherapeutics', which i find still too polarizing, arbitrary and violent.

But then I am becoming convinced that enactivist approaches such as those of Gallagher and Thompson also do a better job of this than Deleuxe, for similar reasons , but that's a subject for another thread.

Oh my God are you at all capable of arguing about ideas rather than names? Rid yourself of this continental disease, it's philosophically asphyxiating. I didn't even mention Deleuze in my response to you ffs. I mean who tf is talking about 'enactivist approaches' and empathy or whatever irrelavant shit you're talking about? This Derridian regurgitation is fucking insufferable, please fucking stop.

Deleuze doesn't put difference before identity (at least in the sense you seem to be using it here), he puts "prior" to form. For Delueze, the identity of a thing by this difference itself. The distinction between things, between you and me, between one rock and another, between one plastic spoon and another, is not found in any of those forms or linguistic which might present. Each has an identity on account of difference itself. No matter how similar or not in form, the logical distinction of a particular thing is given by this difference. Were there no difference, there would nothing with identity to possess a form.

In this respect, Deleuze is refuting these kind suggestions of relativism, chaos, indeterminacy. Unlike in Derrida's analysis, which puts us in a swirl of language, or Heidegger who puts us in the whims of Dasein, Deleuze is specifically pointing a thing and its identity are beyond us. They are true by difference itself, not by our particular interpretation or experience.

For all the chaos and indeterminacy of the world, Deleuze is pointing out difference/identity of things is never subject to change. All things are a difference itself, never subject to alteration, no matter how someone might complain we are now speaking different. (change, is of course, also around, but that's given in new differences, in repetitions).

In terms of this thread, Deleuze more or less agrees with SX's position. The major point of difference itself is to recognise distinctions between things aren't made by our interpretations or experience.

What texts of Deleuze are you basing this analysis on?

Difference and Repetition majorly.

Obviously, I'm putting into specific analytical terms with respect to the point of contention. I don't think, you'll find him saying things like "All things are a difference itself, never subject to alteration" because it's horribly misleading in any wider context (which he usually works in). Things are always changing, new differences coming into being, other ones passing out. The world is never still like moments of our logical analysis.

Joshs' approach is a strange inversion in this respect. They appear to be trying to do an analytical analysis of logical distinctions, of difference between things, yet they speak like they were just talking about what was here one moment and gone the next. I do wonder what the distinctions are meant to be if they are nothing more than our language or experience. Are we the distinctions being spoken about? Am I the keyboard I'm using write this message?

I'm pretty salty here because it is this kind of idea, supposing forms define the distinction between things, which Difference and Repetition is critiquing/rejecting/refuting.

This Derridean regurgitation is fucking insufferable, please fucking stop. — StreetlightX

What does Derridean regurgitation have to do with enaction? None of the enactivist writers I mentioned are even interested in Derrida. I know you have an interest in Deleuze(you referenced him earlier in this thread in response to another poster), which is why i mentioned him. I also mentioned him because I think he is among the most rigorous representatives of the kind of position you are supporting and which I am critiquing.

The level of discussion here concerning Deleuze vs Derrida-Heidegger is too abstract to make any headway in getting to the crux of the argument I am trying to make(for one thing, I'm worried it's going to give SX a stroke). Are you familiar with John Protevi's work or Brian Massumi's? Both of them have attempted to 'apply' a Deleuzian thinking to issues such as the relation between affectivity and linguistic conceptualization. Protevi has spent that past few decades trying to convince us that his reading of DG gives him a method of analyzing notorious affective-socio-political situations such as Columbine that can supplement enactivist accounts. Protevi's 'AFFECT, AGENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY:THE ACT OF KILLING IN THE AGE OF CYBORGS' is one example of this, as is Massumi's 'The Autonomy of Affect'.

If you are prepared to accept these writers' analyses on these themes as generally consistent with Deleuze, then I can proceed to compare and contrast them with the work in this area of Eugene Gendlin, who I consider to be an effective interpreter of Heidegger.

Doing this sort of comparison gets us into the trenches, where we need to be, in order to reveal what is at stake in how we understand the functioning of affectivity, as a source of creativity and otherness, in relation to conceptualization, language and perception. And , believe it or not, this will bring us back to the original theme of the OP.