I don't know. I realize that suicide is very serious. But I'd say that it helps to have ways of thinking about serious problems.

I mean, what's the way of thinking about suicide now? Isn't it actually pretty complex? And it's mostly placed within a medical context, too -- thereby depriving the victim of much say in the cure. That isn't to say that it shouldn't be done, but I wouldn't exclude it from the realm of philosophy either tout court.

Perhaps he does. But, even so, it's worth noting that he's speaking about Kierkegaard from the perspective of the absurd man. They are legitimate to themselves, but -- according to Camus -- they negate the absurd, which the premise of the essay (Can we, and if so how, do we live with an absurd world?)

Mystical thought has familiarized us with such devices. They
are just as legitimate as any attitude of mind. But for the moment I
am acting as if I took a certain problem seriously. Without judging
beforehand the general value of this attitude or its educative power,
I mean simply to consider whether it answers the conditions I set
myself, whether it is worthy of the conflict that concerns me

...

What is perceptible in Leo Chestov will be perhaps even more
so in Kierkegaard. To be sure, it is hard to outline clear
propositions in so elusive a writer. But, despite apparently opposed
writings, beyond the pseudonyms, the tricks, and the smiles, can be
felt throughout that work, as it were, the presentiment (at the same
time as the apprehension) of a truth which eventually bursts forth
in the last works: Kierkegaard likewise takes the leap. His
childhood having been so frightened by Christianity, he ultimately
returns to its harshest aspect. For him, too, antinomy and paradox
become criteria of the religious. Thus, the very thing that led to
despair of the meaning and depth of this life now gives it its truth
and its clarity

...

It is not for me to wonder to what stirring preaching this
attitude is linked. I merely have to wonder if the spectacle of the
absurd and its own character justifies it

Also, while Camus is certainly a rationalist, I don't find any good reason to attribute scientism to his philosophy. One can conclude that the world is absurd without attributing metaphysical status to scientific propositions, and Camus doesn't rely upon science to sketch absurdity in the beginning or to define it directly thereafter.

What makes you say otherwise?

I'm mostly just focusing in on the text, in this case, rather than cultural affect of Camus' writing.

I sometimes wonder about the particular lives he uses to elucidate the absurd man. My take on it was that he's using extreme cases which are counter to the general attitudes of moral living in order to demonstrate that the absurd man, while it is a kind of ethic, is not the sort of ethic which many are concerned with. He does, though I grant that it's curious that all of his examples are rather romantic, say:

Do I need to develop the idea that an example is not necessarily an example to be followed (even less so, if possible, in the absurd world) and that these illustrations are not therefore models?...A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard

So, just at his word, at least, he's speaking against the notion that one must follow the examples he uses. In addition, he states explicitly that complacency is exactly what the absurd man does not allow -- this is his criticism, in a way, of both suicide and existentialism. They are ways of escape from the absurd, ways towards complacency with the absurd world -- whether that be through the church, the knife, or plunging into the irrational.

This looks to me like you haven't read the essay, or at least missed the part near the beginning where he makes a distinction between people who kill themselves due to distress, and suicide as the result of a process of thought.

Furthermore, he's arguing against suicide -- arguing that it is possible to find joy even in a world without meaning. So it wouldn't matter that "he's not really going to kill himself!" -- he's arguing the extreme circumstance that it is not logical to do so.

Remember, he broadly falls into the existentialist camp (though he tried to renounce this label). — schopenhauer1

While I agree that he falls broadly into the existentialist camp, it's also fair to say he's writing in response or as critical of existential philosophies (as he defines the term, of course). So it's also fair to say he is not an existentialist. On one hand you have the broad historical category where we group some authors together because they have similar themes or moods, but on the other you have a crisper definition offered by Camus which he is critical of.

Still pondering the rest, but on your closing -- I agree that there is a cyclical process. But I don't think the solution is to restart the cycle as much as it is to disrupt the cycle -- the discovery of differance, in this case through the sign and through Husserl's phenomenology, is that concept which is meant to stop the cycle from repeating itself.

It could be, sure. But that's why I'm saying that it's just the introduction to the essay. He even remarks that times may change and that his essay may not be relevant in other times, but that it seems relevant in his time. It's not so much an essay about "This must be the first question in philosophy", as it is an essay about confronting a world seemingly without meaning, as well as wondering if, logically speaking, that would indicate that death is preferable to continuing to live.

Why?

I mean, it's just an introduction to the essay. If you disagree then maybe you can still find insight in the essay, or perhaps you could just put it down and read something else. If you agree, then you'll read it.

It seems to me that one would just support this as the one truly philosophical problem by saying: "If you answer in the affirmative, then all the other problems of philosophy are never addressed, and in the negative, then you may take up the other problems knowing that life is worth living"

I will say -- at parts of the text I feel like, even just to understand the argument, I just need to be more familiar with Husserl than I am. I did my best with my passing familiarity, which includes selections from the Logical Investigations but not Time Conscsiousness, but there was a lot of presumed understanding in the arguments -- which seems to almost always be the case anytime I read Derrida. (For Of Grammatology I had to stop and read Saussure, for instance)

So, to the end now -- as always, guess work is involved, and this is provisional. I think I get the gist, though the reasoning of the paragraph on page 87, where you were referring @Metaphysics Undercover I'm still smudgy on.



Starting where I just left off:
"How does difference give itself to be thought?" What does all this mean?


Husserl, according to the previous, makes Derrida believe that he never believed in the achievement of an absolute knowledge as presence nearby to itself -- but Derrida also states that even though this is the case, that even though sense and the sign are not anchored by wanting to say-the-truth, the metaphysics of presence weaves its way through Husserl's project and tries to make the sign, difference, derived from presence.

The indefiniteness of differance appears only by way of the positive infinity previously discussed, the telos of language. And, likewise, the Ideal as infinite differance is only produced in relationship to death (generally speaking) -- where said Ideal is the infinite differance of presence, in the case of my-death.

Comparing the ideality of the positive infinite to the relation between my-death and the Ideal (as infinite differance) makes this realtion between my-death and the Ideal finite, an empirical matter. So once infinite differance appears, it is finite, rather than infinite. Differance is the finitude of life as the essential relation to itself as to its death. "The infinite differance is finite" -- a contradiction, of course, but a contradiction meant to elucidate differance as play between oppositional concepts -- finite:infinite, absence:presence, negation:affirmation.

If differance appears between, outside, or points to a place that is not dominated by these oppositions, by the metaphysics of presence, then the metaphysics of presence is the end of history. Or, perhaps a better way of saying it, it is a closed history whereupon we master it as we master an object. And, furthermore, even "history" has this quality of mastering, of knowledge as a relation to an object, and is the production of the being in presence.

And full presence is meant to go to infinity to where we have absolute presence to itself -- where we achieve absolute knowledge. But this is only possible in an ideal sense. Hence the oppositional categories which "passes over" ((to use a Heideggerian phrase)) differance and the play between. Metaphysics is wanting-to-hear-itself speak (autoaffection). And this voice, being without differance, is both alive and dead.

2nd paragraph, page 88: Seems to me to be speculating on what this outside of a closure would mean, and acknowledges that if we were to encounter such a question it would sound unheard-of, that it would not be either knowledge or not-knowledge, and that it would seem as if we were wanting to say nothing. I believe the reference to "old signs" is the sort of phenomenological etymology that Heidegger practices, but clearly Derrida believes something more must be done in order to escape this closure. It seems to me that this paragraph acknowledges that we must use signs such as "knowledge", "objectivity", "affirmation:negation", "absence:presence", "finite:infinite" because these oppositions structure our very way of thinking. But there is some hope that through differance we can "break free" of these hierarchies.

Since this is the case we don't know when using these old signs if they are used in the metaphysics of presence or in some novel way. We do not know if the classical distinctions which we have inherited are actually true, or if they are a way of suppressing the truth (since they are so totalizing of our way of thinking, but differance shows us that this totalization, to be cryptic about it, is not total).

The concluding paragraphs seem to be wrapping up these conclusions through metaphore, and noting that, yes, we must speak, yes, we are engaging philosophy in the same manner as it has always been engaged, through the opposition of these concepts -- but what Derrida is after is outside of the concepts of intuition and presentation, outside of sense and non-sense. In fact, given what was just said, it would sound like non-sense.

And though Husserl is the foil through which we are able to see this, he, like others in the philosophical tradition, makes a choice and secures the thing itself -- when the thing itself is infinitely deffered and in each deferal there is a difference from it, something which defines it. Therefore, "the look" (present-at-hand) cannot "remain" (itself a sign steeped in the metaphysic of presence).

Taking me to the top of 87, and adding some of my own connections along the way that I'm making --

It seems to me that the argument here is to focus in the living-present as the founding concept of phenomenology as metaphysics, because this is the common matrix of all the concepts which have, thus far, been put to the test.

And this concept of the living-present is deferred to infinity, in the sense that Kant states we are approximating the truth -- and that this concept lives on a play between, at least in this demonstration (and I presume elsewhere) ideality and non-ideality -- between objectivity and subjectivity, between Bedeutung and wanting-to-say.

This is important because "In its ideal value, the whole system of the 'essential distinctions' is therefore a purely teleological structure" -- hence, metaphysical. It is teleological in that our goal, our objective is the ideal, and an ideal that is never realized at that.

Which, so it seems to me, is elucidating the concept of erasure. We have the moment prior, where the meaning is objective and divorced from the truth, and the moment after, where language -- though it be divorced from truth -- is always reaching for truth, and is thereby still following a notion of the sign determined as sensical only by the form "S is P" -- so the original insight of language, the sign, having meaning regardless of who is speaking, is erased by this infinite deferal, and the phenomenology of the sign shows in what way differance is the origin of this presence (that we choose to focus on presence).

"Why does Husserl refuse to draw these conclusions from the same premises? The motive for full 'presence', the intuitionist imperative and the project of knowledge continue to govern -- at a distance, let us say -- the whole of the description"

This is argued on the basis that language's telos is the truth, and the truth of its comparison to an object. "If the 'possibilty' or the 'truth' happens to be lacking, the intention of the statement is obviously achieved only 'symbolically'"

"Authentic meaning is the wanting to say-the-truth."

That is, in Husserl, while "the circle is square" has a kind of sense, it is not the kind of sense which is good or authentic. Authentic sense, normalcy, is relagated to knowledge. And not just any knowledge, but the sort of knowledge which can be understood with the form "S is P" -- as opposed to signs like "green is or" or "abracadabra".

"the efficacy and the form of signs that do not obey these rules, that is, that promise no knowledge, can be determined as non-sense only if we have already...defined sense in general on the basis of truth as objectivity"

Why? Because if Husserl meant signification by sense, then poetry would be nonsensical. Husserl wouldn't deny signifcation, but would deny them sense, i.e. they do not want to say-the-truth, when truth is understood as truth as objectivity.

(That takes me to the asteriks on p. 85)

Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event. — csalisbury

A slight quibble in the scenario. You start with the person knowing he will be tortured, but then ask why it makes sense for them when they haven't been tortured yet, aren't being tortured now.

But if the person knows it to be true, then it will happen. The person will feel undesired pain, and knows that they will feel undesired pain.

Though maybe this isn't that important, actually -- what else is fear other than a product of desire, after all? One would only need to believe they will feel undesired pain tomorrow and the fear would seep in.

I think I would say that it makes sense because the person believes that an (intensely) undesired event will take place tomorrow. Perhaps they believe that torture will result in losses in other ways, too, like a lack of being able to walk. But let's take it a step further then -- the scenario is in some future society where people who are inclined towards sadistic torture are tortured, and then the conscious memory is wiped. Maybe the state has been convinced that this is how to combat sadism, by implanting visceral non-conscious impressions into the brain the sadist begins to feel empathy without realizing it (so the theory goes).

It would make sense, even in that scenario, to fear the pain. And I think that it makes sense because of the desires a person has.

Without the desire -- say the same future society, in developing the above experiment, decided to re-arrange the mind so that the desire for comfort was simply not able to be felt -- then there would not be fear.

Why do you say 'not any longer'? What has changed? — Wayfarer

I say "no longer" because it's institutionalized now. While there are those who disagree with an interp, and it's understood that the question of interpretation is not settled (and sometimes posited that it could not be settled), it's not offensive in the sense that it was before. I mean, as I noted, that's what I was taught. So it's not exactly a scientific controversy when it's textbook (even if it is acknowledged that the question is not settled)

I can think of two reasons why that might be the case.

One, scientific thought changes not just with experiments, but with the deaths of those who postulate scientific truths. Many a scientist has gone to their grave against the consensus when their "opponents" won the general agreement of scientists. So the proponents of CI, MWI, Bohm, etc. are dead, and therefore the arguments aren't carried with the same sort of conviction. And, in the meantime, none of them really won out. CI has enjoyed the most renown probably because it was first, more than anything.

Two, the cultural milieu of this particular scientific thread has changed. QM was developed on the continent, where philosophy enjoyed a higher degree of respect within academic institutions. A lot of the questions that drove QM were part of a philosophical concern (not strictly, but partially). They were interested in the nature of reality and the nature of, well, nature. But Americans aren't as patient with these sorts of questions. They tend to enjoy the results of technological progress more than questions about what a scientific theory might mean about the nature of the world. Where these were a part of the scientific tradition, the victors of the two world wars fractured that tradition and had it reborn elsewhere, with different cultural values and educational goals.

Finally made the time to watch the video. Also, this floated by me today and it briefly goes over anger in relation to a particular zen buddhist: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/01/only-dont-know-seung-sahn-anger/

I'm posting it as food for thought, as I just read it.

But I think - am I deceiving myself? - that it is possible to form an attachment to one's daughter, not just to an image of oneself being attached. — unenlightened

I don't think this is a deception. And after watching the video I think that we're actually talking about two different concepts with the same word (or two different experiences, perhaps).

Attachment here I would term "relationship" or "connection". I don't think it's a deception to say that we can form connections with others without being attached to an image.

There is a fairly respectable thread in psychology going back to Bowlby that holds attachment to be a crucial feature of the development of the child. Now such an attachment will be asymmetric; dependence on the child's part, and dependability on the parent's. Here is Gabor Mate talking about it, (and mentioning Buddhism). It takes a while to get to attachment.

Because the image of a loving father must have a real source, surely?

Yeah, I wouldn't want to deny that. Sorry for the delay. I just wanted to make time to listen to the talk before responding.


This is a bit off the cuff -- but perhaps the difference between these two kinds of attachment can be understood in terms of craving(or desire, though that could be too general too), and need. In the former I become angry, anxious, or fearful because I crave this or that but don't have, might not have it, or don't feel safe without it (respectively). In the latter we need attachment to others, and children need attachment to adults, to give us a sense of belonging and to give us a safe place to be vulnerable and develop (respectively).

79-83 makes a nice thought-bridge.


So the example of statements about perceptions, it seems to me, is meant to draw out how a statement means something even when it doesn't have an intuition which can, in principle, give the statement an object. Bedeutung without intuition -- "I see a person standing before me", "I have a perception of a person standing before me" are about how we see things, and so naturally can't be given over to the person I'm talking to -- yet we understand their meaning. This leads directly into the conversation "I" through the question, "In what way is writing...implied in the very movement of signification in general, in particular, in speech that is called 'live' ".

Husserl will make a special place for the use of the word "I". They are indicative when spoken to others, as is all communication. But "in solitary discourse, the Bedeutung of the 'I' is realized essentially in the immediate representation of our own personality..."

That is, the root of these expressions is the 'zero-point of the subjective origin, the "I," the "here," the "now" "

Derrida goes on to point out that "I" functions like any other word, in that it has a meaning regardless of who speaks it and that meaning is understood. That is we do not need to have a representation of our own personality -- "I" is repeatable, the Bedeutung (being ideal) remains the same, and it will keep its sense "even if my empirical presence is erased or is modified radically...even in soliatary discourse" the possible absence of the object is what gives "I" sense. "I am" is discourse only under the condition that, as with all expressions, that it is intelligible in the abscence of the object. "Therefore in this case, in the absence of myself"

Which is to say, the death of the speaker is a possibility of the statement having sense -- which seems to be how Derrida answers the original question. This is the manner in which writing is implied, even in speech -- even in 'the solitary life of the soul'.

"One has no need of knowing who is speaking in order to understand it ((me: that is the "I am")) or even to utter it. Once more, the border appears hardly certain between solitary discourse and communication, between the reality and the representation of the discourse"

I think Derrida just continues to elaborate this point up to the bottom of the first paragraph on 83, taking note that the distinction between "sense" and "object" reinforces the point that the meaning of the statement "I am" (and, likewise for other statements using this indexical) have no need of an object in order to mean, and must actually be able to mean without an object (and hence are forms of writing).

I tend to think the implications for causality are the most "offensive" aspects of CI -- well, at least they *were*; not any longer. It was that not just the complexity of a system giving rise to uncertainty, but even the most simple system, down at the smallest, is not deterministic, ala CI, but stochastic, which ran against a number of assumptions of physicists at the time.

So that's another way of saying the same, but I was trying to generalize to allow not just what's on the table, but even new ways of interpreting the postulates. It's good to be aware of that history, but no need to pin oneself down either. I'm not really overly committed to CI, it's just what I'm most familiar with, and makes sense of the postulates.


I could see your point on what motivated Everett, though.

The problem is more of a question -- while we can predict various phenomena using QM, what do the postulates and predictions of QM indicate about the nature of nature/reality?

Initially the equations developed in QM didn't predict anything as much as they resolved certain paradoxes. The structure of the atom was the question.

But the solution presented seemed to contradict a number of beliefs that one would draw from classical physics and thermodynamics. And, furthermore, seemed to border on the incoherent -- and certainly contradicted leading theories of the atom at the time.

I don't. Mostly because I don't see what it adds to Copenhagen interpretation, and Copenhagen interpretation is what we focused on several years back in the class where we learned about such things.

But I've been out of the loop on that for a long time, too.

Alrighty, I have today off and I'm making a second go at chapter 7. I think I'll go piecemeal as I switch between pages and tasks (laundry, phone calls, etc. )

The opening is a little confusing in an almost analogous way to the opening of Chapter 6. He introduces a concept at the end of Chapter 6 -- the originative supplement -- and briefly elucidates said concept in relation to Husserl at the opening, then switches topics to a closer reading of Husserl's distinction between intention and intuition, while questioning not the distinction itself, but rather that Husserl goes too far in the direction of intuition when the original argument should keep the meaning separate from intuition even if there is a "fulfilling object" within intuition.

That takes me up to just before the example of statements about perception to another person on the top of page 79.

Just restricting myself to the characterization of leftism, then: Even metaphorically -- this is what I mean by I think our experiences are just different. I can say I have seen what you describe. I can say I've participated in it, and will probably do so again.

But, in my experience, there's more than that, too.

Let's take capitalism. Do communists dream big dreams? Yes. Why not, after all? But do they recognize them as dreams? Well, depends on the communist. And, after all, an American communist is of course trained to live within a capitalist society, they just believe that communism -- whatever that happens to be -- is better than capitalism.

But how could that be unless they had some notion of how it functions and why? And wouldn't a self-critical communist also come to realize, at some point, they are very much part and parcel to the system of capitalism and they don't know how to survive in a communist system?

On that latter point, especially -- I mean, in my experience, leftists are poignantly aware of that fact.

Hence why I agree with Mike -- he's bringing his analysis of society back to the level of survival, which is in fact the sorts of things you would have to think about in any society. It doesn't have to be hunting, as you note, but just know-how to live in that society. And sometimes the better choice in the moment is to have "more lawyers" and fewer "revolutionaries", just to keep with the communist drift. (that wouldn't mean they are political revolutionaries if they are lawyers -- but they may still harbor communist sentiments, at least).


But, I'm willing to say that these are merely what I've seen, and isn't necessarily representative of the left. But I see leftists in not just idealist terms, but much more pragmatic and earthly terms too, just going off of what I have experienced.

I suppose on the points he makes I'd just say that my experience is different with the left. I'd say that Killer Mike is partially correct about leftists, depending on the leftist group. It's important to not get lost in rhetorical dreams in turning political beliefs into action. And there are people who won't necessarily draw out the conclusions of the words they are saying.

Of course you've said that your beliefs about the left are confirmed by experience too, and I'm more than willing to concede that experience is far from all encompassing or representative.

But when he listed those skills -- I was like, well, yes! (and it's actually very very hard to organize politically along those skills)


However, I tend to think of race, and the politics of race, as a different issue from left/right too. Leftists care about race, for sure, but I'd say it's a bit odd to frame the issues of race as strictly leftist issues. There's the dialogue of race within leftist circles, there's a dialogue of race within other circles, and there's a dialogue on race within different racial groups and within their own racial groups. The biggest lack of dialogue on race, by my lights, is actually between groups.

There are both liberal and conservative political proposals and beliefs about race, and at the end of the day black people organize regardless of party or political ideology in order to obtain power and pursue self-interest. I don't mean that in a negative way -- I tend to think that this is what politics not only is about but should be about (not always, but tend to). This is only to say that the politics of race, as I view them, are not strictly leftist, though race is certainly a part of leftist concerns in general (however that happens to manifest in a particular setting or group).

A brief note to the conversation on race:

There's a difference between ethnicity and race. An ethnicity can contain multiple races. And a race can contain multiple ethnicities.

For the former: Hispanic is an ethnicity. It includes people who are brown, black, mestizo.

For the latter: White is a race. It includes people of Jewish, Scottish, and Scandinavian ethnicities.


Ethnicities have to do with culture, heritage, country, origins. Race is a mark which designates certain character traits which then assign you a relative position within a social group.

Obviously both of these definitions aren't accepted by everyone, and I wouldn't even say they are the best on offer. But there's certainly a difference between the two.

I'd be fine with that at this point. I just finished 7 the first time last night.

On Chapter 6:

Stuff started clicking for me once I just decided to ignore the beginning of the chapter. I don't know what the lead-in about silence is supposed to be on about. It almost reads like it comes from another essay -- which, as I recall (though I don't remember where I read this) isn't too far from what Derrida does in these books published this year. After all it would only make sense, being a philosopher of writing, to question the dimensions of the book with a supplement.

But yeah, the stuff about the voice and it leading to auto-affection and securing the seat of ideal meaning and expression -- that all seemed to flow naturally from the last chapter. I just wanted to note that the beginning kept me stumped for awhile. I still don't know what it's about, except by way of some vague metaphorical connections (such as with the notion of hiatus, and the analogy with the trace).

On to chapter 7 then.

Heh. I don't know if I have a question yet, but the difference between, or lack thereof, metaphysics and epistemology is a concern I'm usually pretty sensitive to in reading philosophy -- just because it seems to happen often enough they co-define one another, not just among philosophers but even in common thinking (though the terms aren't the same or technical).

The only question I would have is that if I am correct in stating that there's a risk of bleed-through, then I'd be interested to see if there is a manner of differentiating the epistemology from metaphysics given said definition of metaphysics. (or if, in fact, this is not a concern worth having given said definition) -- I haven't read the book, but it's the question that your opening sparked.

I wasn't sure where you were going with it until you used the definition to mark a distinction between metaphysics and ontology. Then its value clicked for me. A question pops into my head though -- it seems that by saying 'selection' that you're also saying that metaphysics is a sort of procedure, but then it would seem to -- and perhaps this is unavoidable with any definition -- bleed into epistemology, no?

Heh. Honestly this last chapter was hard for me. But I'm still down for pushing on.

More often than not I don't absorb everything on a first reading and things start to click later, or on a 2nd reading after letting it sit for awhile.

I wonder if we are saying the same thing or not. — unenlightened

My guess is that we aren't, just to judge from similar conversations. :D I tend to think that we run parallel in some ways but there's a divergence somewhere in our thinking about emotion -- which, as you noted before to Mongrel, may just be a matter of what we feel we need to focus on for our own better living. (I certainly am not proposing a scientific theory here -- though something more universal than unique to myself, I'd guess)

I suppose compassion comes from empathy, whereas attachment comes from self image. So are you saying that my compassion for my daughter's suffering is necessary, but the extra 'weight' of pain that comes from my attachment is unnecessary and self inflicted? I'm not terribly happy with that analysis.

I wouldn't say necessary -- since compassion isn't necessary -- but that you can also cause unnecessary pain to yourself depending on your relationship to said suffering, or that you can relate to the suffering of others in such a way that you are not responding compassionately, but from a role or identity you hold dear (I really think that compassion runs contrary to identity, though I could be wrong on that). So, for instance, I think of myself as a loving father, and a loving father expresses outrage in these situations, so I then express outrage in such-and-such a manner to satisfy my self-image of a loving father vs. approaching the suffering of your daughter with an ear towards their suffering.

Also, I think I would flip your causal chain there in saying that empathy comes from compassion. Compassion is a state of mind in and through which which empathy (to feel as others feel) can grow.

Though "pain" here, I believe -- and generally I think this about pain -- is a bit of a weasel word. It seems comprehensive, but on the whole I tend to think that it's just a collection of similar experiences. Loss and anger feel different from one another, but are easily classified as "pain", just to elucidate where I'm going with that.


I think I'd disagree with @Wosret's characterization of "attachment is good, and pain is necessary" Attachment causes suffering, and I hazard it's unnecessary suffering. I can agree up to a point, if I understand at least. There's a sense in which emotions just are. You just feel what you feel, and there's no amount of storytelling to yourself which can change that. You can't really run from them or hide them or change them. But you can habituate your behaviors -- including mental behaviors -- so that you are happy more often than not. Pain doesn't go away magically, but the pain you cause yourself does.

Some pains only go away with death. So in some cases I would agree that pain is necessary. But I wouldn't say that this pain is the result of attachment, but is just a fact of life. (In which case -- why try altering it in the first place if it is necessary?)
Some pain isn't necessary. It's learned.

Heh. Rambly on my part. I'm trying to bite off too much.

Perhaps a more concise and better expressed version is: the question you ask inherits a lot of answers which I think, insofar that we are interested in knowledge and ideas, should be questioned. We've already accepted, by answering the question, what counts as innate, what an idea is, what experience is, and knowledge too when it's at least within the confines of reasonble inquiry to have beliefs on these topics which differ before we even come to the debate on whether or not there are innate ideas or a priori knowledge.

I was wondering when this would become an explicit question. It has been given answers in various comments that I have avoided responding to, and has hovered in the background of the discussion of the toddler video. One might look at infants or animals, one might look to evolutionary psychology. But I don't want to answer, because I don't want to start from there, I want to start from here.

So my only answer is that the primary feeling is the feeling I have before I make a judgement or have a feeling about my feeling. It may well be that such feelings do not even have a name of their own, because they are so universally masked. Or maybe it is some list - fear, disgust, curiosity, affection, or whatever. I don't want to preempt what anyone might uncover, or force feelings into categories. — unenlightened

Cool.

Can I say that to be attached is to be vulnerable to hurt? This immediately prompts one to see the benefit of detachment. But to me, detachment is a curse, it is a state of unreality in which my relationship to the world is denied. There is no feeling more destructive of the person and the other than indifference. — unenlightened

Well, I will say that I came to this terminology from Buddhists. Not that I am a Buddhist, but when hearing them speak it just made a lot of sense. This is important because the state of detachment isn't one of indifference, but rather a state of compassion. So detachment isn't to turn oneself into an emotional rock, but rather to calm the mind into a state of loving-kindness, as the terminology has it.

Of course there is an objective in such a phrasing -- it's not what I would consider something purely scientific, per se. But then, I don't mind that. I'm not sure if such a thing is possible anyways.

But, to directly answer your question -- I think you could say that, but that's not exactly what I mean. Attachment causes pain, but as I see it it is unnecessary pain. The sort of pain that you cause to yourself.

But then not all anger is like that, either. So perhaps there's more to it than that. Perhaps we could just say "being vulnerable" is something different from this way of talking.

I wouldn't say I believe in innate ideas. Not that the thought hasn't tempted me, but more like it strikes me -- when I try to believe in such things -- as a befuddled belief. I can't readily identify what would count as innate and what wouldn't. What would the difference between innateness and, say, simply a strongly held belief be? At least for the purposes of identifying what beliefs you hold to be one or the other?

But, likewise, I don't believe that all ideas arise from experience. Once we accept something like experience it seems clear to me that ideas permeate said experience -- experiences change with a change of thought, our perceptions are guided by what we usually classify as mental phenomena, and we organize said perceptions into and with ideas.

And then with respect to knowledge: granting the above it would suggest that there is such a thing as a priori knowledge insofar that knowledge and ideas overlap -- just using the bare-bones notion of a priori to mean "without experience". But here the same question rises: which ideas would count as knowledge, and which of the ideas which we count as innate would also count as knowledge?

The best guess I can give is knowledge not based upon what is sensible. But again this seems to take for granted so much to me. Why, for instance, do we consider mathematical statements non-sensible? Mostly because we are taught there are 5 senses, and we likewise then develop a notion of interiority and exteriority to classify these things. But there's not a justification for such a division, it's just the way we talk. There's something to be said for saying I have a sense of my own body, a sense of my mental state -- so why not also have a sense for what is mathematical? Not necessarily a separate sense where we just posit a sense for anything, but it doesn't seem implausible to me to reclassify our internal lives, our mental lives, as sensible. I don't know what use such a classification would have, and clearly it would be confusing to presume such a classification in conversation, but insofar that we are asking after the nature of ideas and knowledge then it seems worthwhile to question these sorts of presuppositions.

So I'm a bit late on re-reading 5, but I began to see your objection much better @The Great Whatever -- and I think I saw the response, too on the Husserl quote which spans page 55 through 56:

If we now relate the term perception with the differences in the way of being given which temporal objects have, the opposite of perception is then primary memory and primary anticipation (retention and protention) which here comes on the scene, so that perception and non-perception pass continuously into one another

So even granting that retention and protention are perceptive, it will still put a strike against the "solitary life of the soul" because there is non-perception passed continuously into this "blink of an eye".

At least, this reading brought that particular passage out for me. I'm saying something similar to what I said before (and I should note again that I'm not evaluating whether Derrida's claim is true or not, just trying to suss out how the argument works) -- but with a textual reference to back up what I was saying. I'm not sure if that actually persuades you or not. I would like to hear what you think.



Also, the last paragraph -- it was really confusing but I think I'm seeing what he's getting at with it. He's not just asserting the trace, which is what I kind of had as a take-away when I first read it, but claiming that the ideality which Husserl claims -- the Bedeutung of any signifier -- is fully granted, but possible only by repetition. That reptition is, in some sense, Bedeutung, or takes the place of Bedeutung once we see that the eternal now has differance inscribed into it through indication.


Yeah, this next chapter is a doozy. I have some notional ideas, but I'll wait to see what @Metaphysician Undercover says.

I guess I would ask -- what is a pragmatics vs. a supposed idealism?

It seems to me that such views are just principled in another way -- not that they sacrifice principles, but that they have different ones. Or, at the very least, as you have defined the terms no one would call themselves idealists including people who call themselves anarchists.

I'm not so sure jealousy is simpler. One could say that jealousy is the motivator of competition, and competition is the motivator of excellence. It seems to be concerned again with self image, and may or may not involve a component of anger. But whether it is felt to be good or bad, that feeling comes after the jealousy itself, and does not affect the complexity of the source of the feeling. — unenlightened

We can stay focused on anger then.

I want to hold clear the distinction between the feeling - anger, and the action - harming. So, although it is not always used quite this way, I define anger as the feeling that motivates harm. Now one can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, but breaking eggs isn't normally the motive. So to endorse harm is not necessarily to endorse anger. I support taxing the rich, not to damage them, but to help the poor. I can imagine not hating Hitler, but loving Jews enough to assassinate him. — unenlightened

My focusing on goodness and badness is that it seemed to me that anger is (generally) bad, in your characterization of anger. That's what gives me hesitancy.

But actually rereading your post -- anger is a secondary emotion to primary pain, either empathetic or egoistic.

What, then, are the primary emotions?



Also, I gather we're thinking about anger in a different way. I don't think of anger as egoistic. I agree with your approach that it is a result of an internal configuration, but I'm less prone to think of anger as attached to identity. I'm more prone, in general now and not just with anger, to think in terms of attachment. And this may just be a way of restating what you're getting at, but it's the verbal pattern I'm accustomed to.

I become (and, in some sense, am) attached to the world in various ways. This "I" is not an identity, but is that which identifies with an identity -- one might say becomes attached to an identity. But it is this attachment which usually results in anxiety and anger. Possibilities take on a kind of reality (may stop what I have become attached to), hence resulting in anxiety, or reality interferes with this attachment, hence causing anger.

But were I not attached in the first place -- or were I to detach ahead of time -- anxiety and anger would go away. (at least when it comes to things I have no control over, which will inevitably come and go, causing excitement and disappointment)

Which isn't to say one should always detach. While I do think anger is a nullity on compassion, I'm less certain about saying compassion is something we should always have.

I'm concerned to emphasise that whether anger is proper or improper, good or bad, harmful or not, is a feeling one has about one's anger (or about another's). The phrase 'consuming anger' is interesting; when one is consumed by anger, it has taken over, to the extent that in the moment, there is no judgement - no feeling about anger - one is anger itself, completely. To get carried away is to be for a moment undivided, single minded, and this is a wonderful state of no (internal) conflict. Afterwards, one may judge one's condition to have been proper or improper in the usual divided and conflicted way. This is part of the attraction of anger, that it liberates one from conflict. — unenlightened

Well, I think what I was getting at is a little different from what you're stating here. All consuming anger, as I meant to refer at least, is not something which is momentary or which you can't have divided internal conflicts about. It is all consuming precisely in the way that even if you have divided feelings you continue to feel the anger. It is an anger in the long-term, and is all consuming in that it centers your awareness of the world. Akin to hatred, but different too -- because it is easy to hate, but it is hard to hold anger. It is the sort of anger one desires revenge out of, because of the harm you are causing yourself.

Some more guess work.

My thoughts on that are that is that it's justified only insofar that we "open up" the sign. I get the distinct sense that Derrida is not trying to disprove Husserl, as much as inhabit his thoughts out of a kind of respect. Otherwise, wouldn't he just make a straightforward argument? Derrida seems more than capable on that point.

Though, since it's being mentioned, it could just be sympathies playing in Derrida's favor in my part. I don't mind the conclusion -- I tend to fall on the non-Cartesian side of things in my thinking.

But if the latter Husserl trips across indication in the now, by way of the interplay between the present and the absent found in what is all equally now (which is probably the closest to a succinct first reading I can muster at this point. I plan I re-reading the chapter on Thursday to see if I can suss anything else out of it), then the deconstruction is only against metaphysics -- the expression/indication distinction -- and not against phenomenology and Husserl. This "opens" the sign in the sense that the sign is not a modification of presence, but rather allows the "solitary life of the soul" to operate.

Which would mean that it has a kind of existence (existance?) -- it is the concept of the origin, and the sort of ideal meaning, and the notions of language, rather than all the conclusions of Husserl that are threatened.

Though, if that be the case, it is also hard to reconcile statements that Derrida makes like "the project is threatened" -- I suppose it depends on what the project was. If it was to secure a kind of point-like individual separate from the world then that would be the case -- the Cartesian core of a self as a metaphysical entity. But the Cartesian project wasn't predicated on those sorts of conclusions, and I don't know if I'd say anything I've read of Husserl's is actually threatened by this attempt to "drain the presence" out of the text. (of course, I am only passingly familiar with Husserl too -- what say you @The Great Whatever?)

Also, it'd be cool to read Time-Consciousness lectures directly after this. But in some sense, at least at this stage of reading, I'm not quite as invested in that project because it would be the more critical project of evaluating Derrida's claims. At this point I'd settle for a fair reading of what V&P is trying to get at more than anything -- not necessarily whether or not it is correct in its assertions. (as is my usual approach to reading phil)

Now, given all this, where are the teeth left in the criticism? Suppose that we can, as Husserl insists, perceive the past, and so Derrida's insistence that perception is strictly the form of the present (segun Husserl) is wrong in the strong sense he has maintained it so far. Suppose further, as he also insists, that non-perception lies at the end of protention and retention as a continuum. Given this picture, what is the appeal of placing Husserl within a 'metaphysics of presence?' — The Great Whatever

Isn't this actually all granted? It seems to me that these things aren't an issue on their face, but only when you consider the development of the expression/indication distinction -- and not just that distinction, but rather, the argument that goes into separating expression off from indication. What this picture paints is something very much other than the solitary life of the soul which gives us pure expression. Derrida has no problem with that unto itself -- actually, it seems, given what he states about the mixture of presence and absence, he rather favors the view -- but rather that this description of time consciousness does not square away with the now, as described to support the notion of pure expressivity, which is how the sign became subordinate to presence (hence the metaphysics of presence).

EDIT: At least, that's the gist I'm getting from reading -- the goal isn't so much a criticism for participating in the same metaphysical tradition in the sense that he ought not to do it, but rather, that in one case the sign is relegated to a modification of presence -- an eternal "now" outside of, or prior to, the sign, where the sign is produced as a series of exits -- but in the other case this "now" is disrupted in the sense defended in the LI as the basis for expression. Therefore, the enthymeme seems to be, Husserl should accept the subordination of expression to indication -- that Time Consciousness, as described by Husserl, actually takes advantage of this interplay between two positions without owning up to the more prominent role which the sign actually plays. The two sides structure one another, but the truth is somewhere in-between the two extremes that are seemingly contradictory.

I think the focus is more on Husserl's take on language than it is a critique in the sense of Husserl being in error, since that would open the door to the wider picture of language which Derrida wishes to advance.

If anyone participating think that's an entirely off reading please do say so.

I think it's often unexamined -- which is to say I share your uncertainty on what's being said in each case.

I think, since you mentioned philosophy of mind, this is especially the case in philosophy of mind. The mind and the world sort of define one another, it often seems. Not always. Sometimes these are rendered explicitly -- such as in Descartes. But in other renditions it's a sort of taking for granted -- why, after all, are emotions generally situated within the mind? Or perceptions? Why not the world? Or vice-versa?

That isn't to say that these are wrong categorizations, but the underlying reasons why I think are where we might be able to say our notion of "world" becomes examined.

Listened to this album for the first time today. I listened to it 4 more times.

Cool thread, un.

Just some initial thoughts here:

Anger, I think, is not the easier case. Jealousy, as a source of evil at least, would make more sense to me to focus on because I find it hard to think of a case where the motivation of jealousy is a good thing, even when the effects are good (say, donating to a charity out of jealousy because of a vain desire to appear better than someone else) ((although, then again, perhaps we don't need to mention the effects at all here -- because the conversation is already primarily focused on motivation, rather than the effects of our actions, as a locus of evil... or at least wrongdoing, if evil seems too strong a word)). But anger has so many layers to it that I find it hard to make sense of it in such declarative terms. Anger is a proper response in some cases, and in some ways, and not so in other cases or other ways. It's the way anger is expressed, I'd wager, that makes it bad or good. (indeed, I would hazard to say that unexpressed anger is itself not a good thing, though it makes sense to wait for the right context in which to express it)

For instance, I think there is a kind of anger that is harmful to the angry person. It doesn't matter if the anger is acted on or not, but it is a kind of consuming anger which causes harm to the person who is angry -- and if it is acted upon, harm to what that person directs their anger against.

But then there is justified anger. I agree with you in that it's not the state of the world which causes this anger, but I'm not sure I could say that it is a response to emotional pain. Couldn't anger just be emotional pain, for instance? Say I am attached to some thing in the world and I lose it -- loss and anger accompany this attachment. That is emotional pain.


Though (and this might be tangential -- depending on how much you were wanting to focus on the relationship between good motivation and good actions) I might be a bit at odds with the initial thoughts on goodness and badness, too, since harm to another is not something I would say is wrong, tout court. That isn't to say I endorse revenge -- revenge, I would agree, is a poor motivation. But I'm not so certain that harm is morally forbidden. Or, at least, that it both is and isn't -- there's a sense in which I would say harming another is always a shame, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done, in such and such a circumstance. (as in, a better world is one without harm to others, but in this world, harm in this case was the better option)