Small point maybe, but what do you imagine to be the center of a system of differences without positive elements? I don't see a center for language itself, but only a central cluster perhaps in certain language games (such as in philosophy there are few master concepts entangled with all the others.) — igjugarjuk

Hmm. A system of differences without positive elements. The question is how that system comes into play in contextual word use. As a normative , grammatical or rule-forming criterion, is the relation between this system and actual word use referential( the rule is accessed and applied to the current situation) or does the system only actually exist as it is being redefined by the present context of word use? Witty thought of such systems in terms of family resemblance wherein the particular context establishes the rule, (from the particular to the general) , rather than the pre-existing structure determining the contextual sense of the world ( from general to particular)

I'll prove it to you: how can the post modernist condemn Nazism? Post modernism is morally relativist - so cannot condemn nazism on moral grounds. I can condemn Nazism - because I know it's factually baseless, and immoral. But post modernism is also epistemically relativist - so facts are no help to you either. On what basis can you condemn nazism? You cannot! — karl stone

Here’s a reply from one of the right’s favorite punching bags, Derrida, the poster child of postmodern ‘relativism’:

“Of course there is a "right track" [une 'bonne voie "] , a better way, and let i t b e said i n passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preciSion, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.

Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”

The norm is the majority; and in the vast majority of people, sex and gender are related. Studies put naturally occuring transgenderism at as little as 0.1% of the population. Yet for the sake of these vanishingly small, and mentally disordered few, political correctness would dismantle gender norms in society - with the risks and costs suffered almost exclusively by women. — karl stone

I wasn’t talking about transgender. I was taking about gay men and women. There are many of them. I’m sure you know some. Your whole life you probably assumed they learned this from watching television or something, but many of them were born this way , with what I call a pre-wired perceptual-affective style that composes an enormous constellation of perceptual, gestural and vocal features that could not possibly have been simply learned, and of which sexual preference composes only an insignificant element. You may disagree that there are biologically formed intermediate genders, but what if you are wrong? What effect do you think your incomprehension might have on those around you, some of whom you may know?

Psychological gender is strongly correlated to the biological reality of sex. — karl stone

No, it’s strongly correlated to biology. Whatever biology can do , it will do, meaning that biological mechanisms of inheritance are capable of creating , and so do create, intermediate versions of just about every organismic feature. It creates intermediate versions of psychological gender all the time, which is why there are biological males and females whose parents report them having exhibited strong opposite gender behavior from birth. Your whole life you probably assumed they learned this from watching television or something , but they were born this way , with what I call a pre-wired perceptual-affective style that composes an enormous constellation of perceptual, gestural and vocal features that could not possibly have been simply learned, and of which sexual preference composes only an insignificant element. You may disagree that there are biologically formed intermediate genders, but what if you are wrong? What effect do you think your incomprehension might have on those around you, some of whom you may know?

Since you know some math, perhaps you know of structuralism in the philosophy of math? I think that's adjacent to Derrida too. The meaning or content of '1' (for instance) is 'only' its place in a system. — igjugarjuk

Deleuze is useful here. There is a lot of Derrida in his position on mathematics. He argues that quantification is inherently qualitative. That is , every repetition of a numeric counting (a counting of degree) is simultaneously a qualitative change. Every difference in degree is a difference in kind.

“ “ A multiplicity has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions
that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows). … An assemblage is precisely this increase in the dimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections. There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root.

The number is no longer a universal concept measuring elements according to their emplacement in a given dimension, but has itself become a multiplicity that varies according to the dimensions considered (the primacy of the domain over a complex of numbers attached to that domain). We do not have units (unites) of measure, only multiplicities or varieties of measurement.”( A Thousand Plateaus)

Our minds are not hermetically sealed spirit chambers. They are continuous with our bodies and environments. Or that's an idea I read into Derrida. — igjugarjuk

That’s certainly quite compatible with embodied , enactive , embedded approaches in cognitive science. Gallagher’s primary corporeal intersubjectivity, which borrows from the phenomenological
work of Merleau-Ponty, is one example. The relation of embodied phenomenology to Derrida, however , is quite complex, and has to run through Heidegger’s and Derrida’s critiques of the subjectivist underpinnings of Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment model.

under the auspices of the idea gender is a mere social construct, and not a biological reality. — karl stone

. Even if the claim were that gender is a biological reality you would reject it. Why? Because, first of all, gender refers not to sexual identity as in what chromosomes and genitalia one was born with, but to psychological
gender, which determines patterns of behavior. Think about the difference in masculine vs feminine behavior in dogs and cats. This is psychological gender. Many in the lgbtq community argue that psychological gender is inborn , and can differ from one’s biological sex. This inborn gender-related brain wiring would explain extremely feminine acting males and extremely ‘butch’ females.

Here’s more on Rouse’s disagreement with Brandom, McDowell and Haugeland:

“Haugeland, McDowell, and Brandom have further developed the “manifest” conception of ourselves as agents who perceive, under­stand, and act within the world as responsive to conceptually articulated
norms. Their work thereby complicates as well as enriches the task of achieving a naturalistic fusion of the scientific and manifest images.
Each of them takes his account of conceptual capacities to block any stringent or (in McDowell’s 1994 phrase) “bald” naturalism. They en­dorse a minimalist naturalism, arguing that nothing in their views is inconsistent with what we learn from the natural sciences. Conceptual
normativity nevertheless remains autonomous in their view, without need or expectation of further scientific explication. This opposition to a more thoroughgoing philosophical naturalism presumes familiar conceptions of scientific understanding, however, and also does not consider some new theoretical and empirical resources for a scientific account of our conceptual capacities. The other two developments guid­ing this book suggest that these presumptions are misguided.”

“ In contrast to traditional efforts to establish the epistemic objectivity of articulated judgments, Davidson, Brandom, McDowell, Haugeland, and others rightly give priority to the objectivity of conceptual content and reasoning. They nevertheless mis­takenly attempt to understand conceptual objectivity as accountability to objects understood as external to discursive practice. A more expan­sive conception of discursive practice, as organismic interaction within our discursively articulated environment, shows how conceptual nor­mativity involves a temporally extended accountability to what is at issue and at stake in that ongoing interaction.”

Still, I don't think a tamer version of that claim is anything Saussure would object to. Synchronic study is an abstraction. We take language, living evolving thing, at an ideal moment. Every tiny piece of parole will theoretically reverberate through the structure, changing it. But is this more than a footnote? The magnitude of that reverberation matters. Is it news? — igjugarjuk

A tamer version of that claim which presupposes the dialectical transformation of centered structures(reverberation through a structure) is a form of structuralism.

What is problematic here is the justification of a center, an ‘all of these together’. Deleuze showed how one can conceptualization a system with no center , a rhizomatic assemblage of differential singularities whose sense changes from one singular element to the next.
The Saussurian model is widely seen these days in the form of a dynamical reciprocal causality within patterned
structures.

It wouldnt be a question of jettisoning distinctions , but of making any singularity equivocal and indeterminable(which is not the same thing as indefinable).
— Joshs

Maybe you can tame what you are getting at. — igjugarjuk

I should have said the issue for Derrida was the undecidability vs the indetermination of the poles of distinctions.

“I do not believe I have ever spoken of "indeterminacy," whether in regard to "meaning" or anything else. Undecidability is something else again. While referring to what I have said above and elsewhere, I want to recall that undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for example, of meaning, but also of acts). These possibilities are themselves highly determined in strictly defined situations (for example, discursive-syntactical or rhetorical-but also political, ethical, etc. ). They are pragmatically determined.The analyses that I have devoted to undecidability concern just these determinations and these definitions, not at all some vague "indeterminacy. " I say "undecidability" rather than "indeterminacy" because I am interested more in relations of force, in differences of force, in everything that allows, precisely, determinations in given situations to be stabilized through a decision of writing (in the broad sense I give to this word, which also includes political action and experience in general). There would be no indecision or double bind were it not between determined (semantic, ethical, political) poles, which are upon occasion terribly necessary and always irreplaceably Singular. Which is to say that from the point of view of semantics, but also of ethics and politics, "deconstruction" should never lead either to relativism or to any sort of indeterminism.(Limited, Inc, p.148)

Not familiar w/ Rouse, and couldn't find much info. Perhaps you could summarize/paraphrase a choice nugget? — igjugarjuk

Rouse takes up Sellars’ distinction between the manifest
image and the scientific image , and shows
them to be inextricably dependent on each other. I’m this effort , he has some problems
with the views of Brandom, Davidson and Sellars.

I don't know if the word is worth cleaning at this point. — igjugarjuk

Here’s a good argument in favor of making the distinction:

https://youtu.be/cU1LhcEh8Ms

How can we ever be sure that the decision we’re making isn’t biased? Biases are unconscious… — Skalidris

I am not an advocate of the cognitive bias framework. Each of us interpret the world via value schemes which differ from person to person. In order to manipulate, shape, influence another’s thinking it is necessary to connect with their interpretive framework, from their own perspective. So what is called ‘bias’ is actually the necessary sense-making framework we bring to bear on expereince. Eliminate this ‘bias’ and the world disappears. ‘Objective’ truth is just a certain kind of bias.

Skalidris

I find the whole idea of cognitive bias unconvincing — Jackson

I agree with you here.

Post-modernism is a corrosive substance; eating away at organic value systems and conceptual schemes at the foundations of Western civilisation - and replacing them with artifical concepts and values that have little normative credibility, and so require denial of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and social progress to maintain - and furthermore; implies social exclusion, disemployment, doxing, threat, violence against anyone who objects - for example, to their children being told in schools there are 99 genders, and when they consequently become dysphoric, being fed puberty blockers without parental consent. It's basically the philosophy of cultural vandalism, and it's only practiced in the West. — karl stone

First of all, contrary to Peterson and other conservatives, CRT, BLM and cancel culture in general is not a postmodern movement. It is a form of moralistic finger-pointing arising of of Marxism and related thought, which postmodern philosophers do not support.
Second, postmodern ideas don’t reject truth, they recognize that truth requires human beings to construct constructs , and those constructs are incomplete and can always be re-construed in better and more humane ways.

. Because language is a system of differences and a form without substance, it makes no sense to privilege the voice. — igjugarjuk

This would not be Derrida’s view. For him there is no form without substance. Form and content are equivocal in every meaning. Saussure’s system of language is a structuralism, because it is oriented around a systematic center. For Derrida the ‘system’ of language remakes itself one singular to the next, without reference to a pre-existing totality.

I hear you, but I don't think we think can or should just jettison that very distinctions that make such exciting claims possible in the first place.

Let's imagine a set of concepts such that, starting from any privileged subset, we can use that subset to rhetorically hobble all the rest.

Along these lines, see how your latest claim above depends on the concepts of singularity, polarity, and eventhood. Which, according to your own claim, must be metaphorical usages. As I grok the white mythology (and I expect you'll agree), it's no good to simply point out the metaphorical origin or residue of master concepts. The most obvious objection is that metaphor is itself a metaphor being applied metaphysically in such a context. This is a problem in general with centers of structures/systems, both inside and outside problematically. — igjugarjuk

It wouldnt be a question of jettisoning distinctions , but of making any singularity equivocal and indeterminable(which is not the same thing as indefinable). Singularity for Derrida , as the gramme, the mark, differance, is not a univocal concept, it is a bipolar hinge, a differentiation. an in-between. To be a singularity is to borrow from what it is not, and this is the essence of metaphor, or what Derrida calls the metaphoricity of metaphor.

Usage can change, become abstract or metaphorical. Meaning inhering in a system of differences seems especially important as this happens. What 'matter' is, it isn't mind. And maybe that's 'all' matter is. One bit of information, a system of two categories (imagine a device that returns one bit of information about its environment.) — igjugarjuk

I might add that usage doesn’t only become metaphorical. For Derrida there is no non-metaphorical usage. Also, one would not be able to separate ‘mind’ from ‘matter’ , form from content , the transcendental from the empirical, presence from absence except as poles of a singular event.

. I suspect that he obsessed over presence because he fucking wanted it and yet couldn't lie to himself about having it. — igjugarjuk

He does indeed place desire for pure presence at the heart of all desire. But pure presence for Derrida is death, so desire must always be thwarted or interrupted in order to continue to be.

↪Jackson Last I checked I was talking about what you said, not you. But perhaps as with Derrida, we can settle this the good old way: provide a quote which demonstrates Kant's commitment to skepticism. — Streetlight

Perhaps Jackson should have said that , despite the fact that Kant’s idealism was intended to avoid Humean skepticism , Kant’s split between our representations of the world and the thing in itself leads inevitably to its own form of skepticism. The veil that remains in place between subject and world is deconstructed by Derrida.

So you are not a skeptic, right?

My definition of skepticism: The knowledge we seek cannot be had. — Jackson

What is it we are seeking when we seek knowledge? A true correspondence between our maps and the actual territory? Or ways of seeing the world in more and more harmoniously ordered ways that we can anticipate more and more intimately? Popper advanced the former goal and. relived we could asymptotically approach absolute scientific truth. Others believe matching our representations to an independently existing world is not the goal of knowledge,but instead we ‘ produce’ worlds with knowledge, and we can progressively produce more and more intricately orderly worlds through repeated trial and error.
Does having knowledge mean having a truth that is forever unchanging? What if the knowledge we attain is an improvement over the knowledge we seek?

I don't think there's a correct reading of a text, there are just correct readings. There are erroneous readings of various degrees or kinds, and then there's some good readings -- some more creative than others, but mostly good and within bounds of the texts I read. — Moliere

Derrida would agree with you that there are better and worse readings of texts.

Which is the space and which is the object? Is there ever an object or just a field of differentials?

If Derrida's philosophy is to apply to all text, and everything is text, then it follows that the experienced world is not so easily separable from concept -- hence, not a skeptic in this sense. — Moliere

I certainly agree with that. I think of the modern Kantian and neo-Kantian forms of skepticism as arising from a presumed gap between our representations of the world and the world as it is in itself ( the veil of perception). As Zahavi puts it, phenomenology and deconstruction “dismiss the kind of skepticism that would argue that the way the world appears to us is compatible with the world really being completely different.”

It's the aspiration to be rational that drives the explication of rationality. A — igjugarjuk

What drives the aspirations to be rational? How and why do motivational-affective-valuative processes direct us toward rationality? Are you familiar with Brandon’s colleague at Pittsburgh, Joseph Rouse? He is attempting to ground meta-cognitive processes in biological niche construction.

Deleuze embraces Nietzsche’s anti-dialectical perspective against Hegel:

“Pluralism sometimes appears to be dialectical — but it is its most ferocious enemy, its only profound enemy. This is why we must take seriously the resolutely anti-dialectical character of Nietzsche's philosophy.

…the concept of the Overman is directed against the dialectical conception of man, and trans-valuation is directed against the dialectic of appropriation or the suppression of alienation. Anti-Hegelianism runs through Nietzsche's work as its cutting edge. We can already feel it in the theory of forces. In Nietzsche the essential relation of one force to another is never conceived of as a negative element in the essence. In its relation with the other the force which makes itself obeyed does not deny the other or that which it is not, it affirms its own difference and enjoys this difference.”

Are those guys outside the universe or do you have a point? — Clarky

I have a habit of posting before I have completed my edit.

Philosophers like Nietzsche , Foucault ,Heidegger , Derrida , Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty argue that the notion of the nothing as lack is the result of grounding difference and negation on identity and Sameness. They instead ground concepts like identity and sameness , which are the basis of the notion of the empirical object , in difference. Identity is an effect of difference. From this vantage , talking about the ‘nothing’ as a lack of identity is incoherent. — Joshs

that he prioritizes unity and identity
— Joshs

That would be Kant — Jackson

Doesn’t Hegel post a totalization of differences in Absolute Subjectivity?

So, I guess that means there can't be nothing inside the limits of our universe. What about outside? — Clarky

Philosophers like Nietzsche , Foucault ,Heidegger , Derrida , Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty argue that the notion of the nothing as lack is the result of grounding difference and negation on identity and Sameness. They instead ground concepts like identity and sameness , which are the basis of the notion of the empirical object , in difference. Identity is an effect of difference. From this vantage , talking about the ‘nothing’ as a lack of identity is incoherent.

I think of nothingness as negative space in a visual field. It is the space between things that helps define the objects. — Jackson

Like figure-ground? We could reverse these then, right? With a shift of perspective the negative space becomes the object and the object becomes negative space. Conclusion:no priority can be given to object over negation. This is the post-structuralist ( Nietzsche, Deleuze, Derrida , Heidegger) critique of Hegel, that he prioritizes unity and identity over the negative. The role of the negative and the nothing in Hegelian dialectic is subservient to the unity of the total structure; negation is overcome by synthesis. For these authors the nothing is fecund, affirmational, creative.

Is that an accurate account, to your knowledge? I like the sound of it well enough. — ZzzoneiroCosm

The only quibble I have is the claim that there is only one true reality. Kelly at times did seem to talk like a realist, but the important thing is that, unlike realist cognitive therapists like Aaron Beck or Albert Ellis ( rational emotive
therapy) , Kelly never determined the ‘correctness’ or rationality of a belief on the basis of correspondence with an objecivte outer world. My constructs are validated or invalidated on the basis of a world that appears
already pre-interpreted by me relative to my prior history (my personal construct system). So what is validating or invalidating from my perspective is not necessarily so for you. This is a departure from cognitive therapy.

I don't really compare science and philosophy in this way. Science sends folks to the moon and gives me omeprazole for my reflux. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I know it will sound weird if I say that philosophy ‘sent folks to the moon’ two centuries before NASA. But what I mean is that most of the important conceptual elements required for this technological achievement were in place with the breakthrough work of certain key philosophers.
Think about the most astonishing and monumental scientific achievements of all time(Newton, Einstein, Darwin) My claim is that the bulk of the conceptual substance of their contributions was already on the scene through the work of earlier philosophers. Most of us simply aren’t familiar enough with philosophy, or good enough at making the translation from philosophical to scientific language, to recognize this parallel.

↪Joshs I can't tell if that's a yes or a no. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I was still editing my comment.

All? Do you mean testability exists vis-a-vis the realist v. idealist showdown? — ZzzoneiroCosm

To test a perspective on the world is to use it as a tool for meaningfully organizing and anticipating events. We know that a construct is invalidated when it fails in this task and we find ourselves in a state of confusion. This is not something we can hide from ourselves or deny because sense making is an affective process. The signs of failure to anticipate are anxiety, anger, etc.
Validation doesn’t require the consensus of a community. This is an artifact of objectivist thinking.

I agree we should constantly strive for a new perspective. But when a vital healthiness of mind is achieved, to my view it's time to put philosophy to bed and rest on our laurels.

My continuing to search for new vistas put philosophy on the back burner in favor of psychology, especially the positive psychology of flourishing and Maslow's research on peak experiences. Unfathomed heights are there to discover and explore. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You should dump Maslow for his contemporary, George Kelly ( or at least Carl Rogers).
Kelly’s philosophy of constructive alternativism offers that there are infinite ways of construing the world , none of which is the final or correct way.

Philosophy in general deals in untestable theories so it's easy to get snared in one's personal fetishistic philosophical labyrinth and thereby to self-aggrandize boundlessly - there's no controlled experiment on the horizon to set one straight if one has committed an egregious error. — ZzzoneiroCosm

All philosophical accounts are testable and only persist becuase they continue to be validated. Your notion of testability comes from a narrowly conceived empiricist conception of evidence. It doesn’t take into account that what counts for the scientist as evidence is circular. That is, what appears within a scientific domain as an observable is recognized as such on the basis of the interpretive framework of that science. When a scientific paradigm changes, what counts as evidence changes with it. The value of scientific evidence and proof is to tighten up the structure of the theory under test. It doesn’t make the theory more ‘true’. On the contrary, it makes it easier to recognize when the theory is eventually overthrown.

One might want to argue through the method of empirical test , scientific theories are tighter, more rigorous, more precise in their predictions than any philosophical account, but I think the opposite is the case. A science is a conventionalized version of a philosophy.This means its mathematized terms are designed to be so general as to hide interpretive differences between participants. A philosophy is richer and thus more particular, which accounts for the disparity of interpretive modes of access to it.

We only need the new if we're clearing ancient clouds and have never seen the sky. We need the new to eliminate inherited errors of thought - confusions, covert and overt. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Consistent with your previous comment, we only know error(clouds) in hindsight, from the vantage of a new perspective. All current scientific and philosophical accounts will be show as erroneous from a future vantage. That means we should strive for a new perspective not just when a theory isnt working, but also when it is working, when it does t appear confused.

↪jgill Far too seriously. Certainty can be a crippling psychological illness.


Uncertainty too. Philosophy has its place but should keep to it: clearing away the clouds. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Clearing away clouds is only desirable to the extent that it opens up magnificent new vistas. Would you describe the job of the sciences as merely clearing away clouds? Is thar all that Newton, Einstein and Darwin did? Everything we pride our sciences for , and more, we can expect from our philosophies.

In general, they each describe an approach, a method, but they do not claim to have reached the bottom. There's a big difference between claiming to be pointing the way, and claiming to have reached the end of the voyage. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly. They create a specific ‘way’( a metaphysics), and assume future philosophy will follow this path and add more clarity and detail.
In other words, they claim to have reached the bottom (the way) as far as they can tell. Obviously if they were able to detect a more originary ground than the one they present in their writing they would talk about it. When a philosopher believes they have penetrated to the most fundamental level of things, this means that going any further in that direction would lead to the dead end of nihilism, meaningless relativism, an infinite regress, the elimination of the world, incoherence, or some such catastrophic consequence. These are the accusations they typically make against the philosophers who follow and critique them for not having reached the most fundamental level of metaphysical grounding, and who proceed to burrow deeper.
What you will instead find is that a philosopher will remind us they have only sketched out a beginning framework, which will need to be completed by future generations of thinkers. In other words, while they cannot conceive of a more originary ground that would stand up to scrutiny , they tend to be quite aware of the incompleteness of their framework,that they have only pointed the way, and this ‘way’ needs to be filled in with more detail.