Jacques Derrida

But what I'm reacting to is the idea - I'm not sure if this is Alex's or not - that taking one position excludes being able to acknowlege or comprehend the other, knocks the other out of the conversation, with the other only capable of being reintroduced by some difficult theory-based method.

so alicia keys being a commodity doesn't change her qua her but changes her qua how she's viewed which in a way is her too.

No, it does change her. It just doesn't necessarily make her into something she is not.

so sometimes to come to terms with things, i think we do strip away the parts that don't fit with the "theory" of the thing that we're developing, and when we put them back in it changes the "theory" but if we never took them out then we'd have nothing at all.

concretely, say, i used to despise frats in college and then i just watched Old School and it made me feel good about some aspects of what it said frats are about, or could be. now my appreciation of those things is stronger because i had developed other understandings of the world with which to contextualize Old School. but, i suspect, if i hadn't despised frats in college i might never have developed those other understandings.

genovese's books, especially his essays and introductions, are marvelous in laying out this process w/r/t historiography of the slave south.

this is the same as saying that one can be "interestingly wrong" (which i call things all the time) or that someone can make a mistake and be all the better for it (sometimes).

I have a feeling that this is a crucial paragraph. But I have to go to bed now, and I don't yet understand it. I think Kuhn would argue that in paradigm shifts, what's preserved is irrelevant to the shift.

by definition of marx ppl. who sell their labor are alienated from the product of their labor because they cannot lay claim to it, since the labor time itself was sold. so ppl. are alienated from the products of their labor because they are alienated from their own labor-time. (i.e. "sorry honey i can't talk i'm on the clock" -- my time is not my own anymore)

you can't be "alienated" in general, only from something in particular!

also change "something it is not" into "something it was not before" and then there's no problem. i suspect this is totally acceptable given the weirdness of language and translation.

also there's no such thing as a tension between exchange value and use value or any other two qualities of a thing, unless you're speaking metonymically. there can be a tension between tendencies within a thing related to different qualities and how they relate to the rest of the world -- i.e. i can eat this apple or i can sell it for 30 cents. if i sell it, then i am hungry but i can buy a pear and eat that. so the exchange value of the apple becomes the use value of the pear, and in a broad network of exchange then the use value of the pear has some effect on the exchange value of the apple, not to mention its own exchange value. but then as the exchange network transforms and as many pears can be produced as ppl. want then the exchange value of the pear has increasingly *less* to do with its use value and more to do with the labor-time vested in its production. so the argument is that the relationship disappears not because of either quality themselves, but because they come under the sway of different tendencies as the general economic network of exchange transforms.

which has much less to do with philosophy, and more with economics although i could argue that the way these things were arrived at by marx was thru asking hegelian questions (in part).

hey my theory was a theory of knowledge!! a tiny weeny little little concept of a planet can easily be destroyed when the string changes fingers!!

i think it's pretty much built into hegel's idea of antitheticals that it's a mental machinery to produce better theories, and NOT an accurate portrait of how the world stands (or even how certain words work)

I did not understand this post (what in the hell is a "theory of knowledge," and how is this different some plain old theory?), but it seemed to be saying that the destroy-yet-preserves thing ("sublation"/"aufhebung") wasn't meant to apply to actual events in the world. So we wouldn't apply it to Einstein-Newton. This confused me, since in some emails a couple years earlier Mark had used it to analyze tax strikes and gas boycotts.

In any event, soulmate of the ILX fadeout is the ILX vague-out, and I am simply too ignorant of Marx, Hegel, Einstein, and Newton to be specific enough to be intelligible in discussing them. But I still read you as saying that people who sell their labor are alienated (from the products of their labor, and from their labor itself) by definition. So I am alienated from my James Chance review (and its writing style, and the persona that I adopt in it, etc.) no matter what. So to call it "alienated" is not a judgment I or anyone makes, but simply ratifies a pre-ordained fact.

Can Newtonian dynamics really be derived from relativistic dynamics? What would such a derivation look like? Imagine a set of statements, E₁, E₂... E_n, which together embody the laws of relativity theory. These statements contain variables and parameters representing spatial position, time, rest mass, etc. From them, together with the apparatus of logic and mathematics, is deducible a whole set of further statements including some that can be checked by observation. To prove the adequacy of Newtonian dynamics as a special case, we must add to the E_i's additional statements, like (v/c)² << 1, restricting the range of the parameters and variables. This enlarged set of statements is then manipulated to yield a new set, N₁, N₂... N_m, which is identical in form with Newton's laws of motions, the law of gravity, and so on. Apparently Newtonian dynamics has been derived from Einsteinian, subject to a few limiting conditions.

Yet the derivation is spurious, at least to this point. Though the N_i's are a special case of the laws of relativistic mechanics, they are not Newton's Laws. Or at least they are not unless those laws are reinterpreted in a way that would have been impossible until after Einstein's work. The variables and parameters that in the Einsteinian E_i's represented spatial position, time, mass, etc., still occur in the N_i's; and they there still represent Einsteinian space, time, and mass. But the physical referents of these Einsteinian concepts are by no means identical with those of the Newtonian concepts that bear the same name. (Newtonian mass is conserved; Einsteinian is convertible with energy. Only at low relative velocities may the two be measured in the same way, and even then they must not be conceived to be the same.) Unless we change the definitions of the variables in the N_i's, the statements we have derived are not Newtonian. If we do change them, we cannot properly be said to have derived Newton's laws, at least not in any sense of "derive" now generally recognized. Our argument has, of course, explained why Newton's Laws ever seemed to work. In doing so it has justified, say, an automobile driver in acting as though he lived in a Newtonian universe. An argument of the same type is used to justify teaching earth-centered astronomy to surveyors. But the argument has still not done what it purported to do. It has not, that is, shown Newton's Laws to be a limiting case of Einstein's. For in the passage to the limit it is not only the forms of the laws that have changed. Simultaneously we have had to alter the fundamental structural elements of which the universe to which they apply is composed.

Translation: The brake-lever is no longer a brake-lever, since it now belongs to a different mechanism. And if some parts of the new mechanism still seem to come to a stop, this isn't due to what we formerly thought of as braking action.

You can always point to something remaining the same, but for the "preserves" in "destroys yet preserves" to be anything but trivial, it's got to mean more than "well, some things stayed intact." The meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs didn't destroy all the atoms that constituted the dinosaurs, but nonetheless you can't say it preserved the dinosaurs. Some ideas die: Aristotelian motion, celestial wanderers, and so forth. That other things (arithmetic, lights in the sky) survive the destruction isn't necessarily relevant.

When is a genealogy complete? The answer depends on our purposes in undertaking the genealogy. If, say, we want to know how we got from classical physics to quantum physics, we have to go back to the late 19th century. If we merely want to understand quantum physics, we can ignore most that came before 1928. (For relativity, we'd go back further. And no, I don't know what I'm talking about here, but it's the principle, not the dates or the physics, that concerns me.)

he is also pointing out at times that there is an underlying assumption that something is 1 or 0, and that sometimes there are other possible states messing up those nice simple values and undermining the foundations of a system of thought - his undecideables are surely often doing this, aren't they?

I don't know how good this is as a description of what Derrida's doing, but I'll go with it at first.

"Underlying" implies that (1) the assumption is beneath the surface, hence not stated, but (2) nonetheless so deeply pervasive that it informs and supports pretty much all of the relevant behavior.

"There are other possible states messing up those nice simple values." I think that "other possible states" means "possible states other than 1 or 0." E.g., 0.614 might also be a possibility. Or 7.5. Or three 1's and five 0's sitting in a tree k*i*s*s*i*n*g. The problem I have with this assertion is that if the other states are merely possible, but not in effect, then they're not messing anything up or undermining any foundations - but, on the other hand, if the other states are in effect, then we have no right to call "something is 1 or 0" an underlying assumption, since it obviously doesn't inform or support all the behavior in question. Even if we announce in capital letters "SOMETHING IS EITHER 1 OR 0," if our behavior doesn't support this contention, then it's not an underlying assumption of ours.

And furthermore, I would challenge your contention that "there is an underlying assumption that something is 1 or 0." For one thing, very few word pairs actually function as either/or terms. Some that obviously don't are house-home, up-down, loud-soft, hot-cold, good-bad, stable-unstable... and then some that also don't, though sometimes people expect them or want them to, are adult-child, masculine-feminine, essence-accident, absolute-relative... For another, even 1's and 0's don't necessarily have an either/or effect, as you will recall from watching black-and-white TV. So the mere fact that someone is using "binaries" tells you nothing about their assumptions, much less whether the assumptions are "underlying."

I'll say as a hypothesis that people rarely or ever assume 1's and 0's as an underlying assumption, even if lots of people will say an either/or thing and let it hang in their minds for 20 seconds and not take into account all the rest of their actual non-either/or behavior. And these aren't the people who would grip a Derrida's imagination, anyway, at least as evidenced from the little I've read of him. He's interested in Plato and Husserl and those fellows: people who don't start with underlying either/or assumptions, but who rather, to the extent that they engage in either/or thinking, consciously and deliberately work at trying to create and maintain dichotomies (appearance-reality, necessary-contingent) against the dichotomies' tendency to break down, and who make demands on such words as "reality" and "necessary" that we simply don't in everyday life.

the people who would grip a Derrida's imagination

Well maybe I should make that a question. Who/what grips Derrida's imagination? What relevance do critiques of Plato and Husserl have to the understanding of non-Platos and non-Husserls?

But what I'm reacting to is the idea - I'm not sure if this is Alex's or not - that taking one position excludes being able to acknowlege or comprehend the other, knocks the other out of the conversation, with the other only capable of being reintroduced by some difficult theory-based method. -Frank

The problem is that the term appears to become transparent, i.e., the assumption arises that everyone who uses the term will agree on its reference. In some cases, it may just be that the term is underspecified for some users; in other cases, there may be disagreement. I don't think I completely accept the idea that language is a part of the world in the same way that what is not language is part of the world. The possibility of taking different perspectives on an entity or event introduces the potential for conflict.

When I said maybe Derrida is interested in how language does not work, I meant maybe he is interested in how it does not function. I don't know if that makes it any clearer, but 'work' seems to have become bleached of meaning. I was trying to call attention to the fact that language often appears transparent -- the idea that words can stand for what they designate -- when, in fact, it isn't.

My understanding of Wittgenstein is that he's saying that since the negotiation of meaning takes place using language, any clarification of meaning is a clarification of the language, not of the world. But this seems to me like he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. It doesn't seem to jibe with his idea that language is part of the stream of life. Maybe I have Wittgenstein's writings from different periods confused.

There is a paper written by Berlin and Kay on universals in the evolution of color terminology which presents data suggesting that color terms are introduced into languages in a fixed order so, for example, no language will have terms that contrast blue and green before it has terms that contrast black and white (or dark and light). The order roughly corresponds to contrasts made by the visual processing system of primates. Of course, other contrasts can be expressed, just not using basic color terms. (Think J Crew catalogue.)

Because the languages that we know probably have all the basic color terms discussed, the effect that language has upon our construction of the world may be clearer using terms for fruits and vegetables. This is all speculation of course because I don't know when the terms and their referents were introduced into the languages. Even though 'pineapple' is derived from 'apple,' I don't think of pineapples and apples as similar. Similarly, I expect that the French don't think of apples and potatoes as similar. On the other hand, my hunch is that because I learned 'green onion' after I learned 'onion,' I think of green onions as similar to onions. In other words, my hypothesis is that if a complex term for a fruit or vegetable is learned at the same time the basic terms in it are learned, then the complex term will appear transparent; otherwise, the language will force an analogy between the fruit or vegetable referred to by the complex term and the referents of the basic terms it contains. (I think this is something N1tsuh said he likes about reading works in translation.)

There's something Wittgenstein wrote about using (I think) some sort of net to detect variation in a pattern. I think he says something like if the net is fine enough, it can detect every bit of variation. Does anyone know what I am talking about, and if so, could you please refer me to the passage? I can't find it anymore.

"reading this book made me feel good/sad/annoyed/horny/_____"
"no, you only THINK it made you feel good/sad/annoyed/horny/_____"

(i actually had this thought while reading a not-very-smart review of a book which apparently argues that the effects of RSI are "only" psychosomatic, ie caused by stress or anxiety or overwork rather than actual physical misuse of yr limbs)

(ie it seemed to be arguing from a medical position whereby stress or anxiety or overwork, because not physico-chemical in nature, can only cause "unreal" symptoms, which management are therefore in no way responsible for)

Text because in the context Derrida makes that argument he is chiefly concerned with the privileging of 'voice' in certain philosophical contexts. Obviously the privilege of voice is not a constant through the tradition -- e.g. compare with the 'world as book' in medieval thought. This should point out to us that the term 'text' has only a provisional and strategic relevance. If anything, because Derrida's work intends to tell us that there are NO 'magic words', it is an attempt to displace the privilege attached to any such term (cf. 'God'; 'History'; 'Being'). But as Derrida is not simply concerned to say 'there is no truth' or 'truth is lack of truth' (c.f. Lacan, with whom there is a hidden argument taking place well before the publication of _The Post Card_) but instead to think the economy which regulates the substitution of terms in that position (i.e. we can't get out of having an onto-theological guarantee, a magic word, that easily) he knows that 'text' risks becoming such a word, and indeed, for the space of that sentence / article / period in his thought it does. But deconstruction is the repeated taking up of the same / similar problems in different contexts, so must move on. The substitution of 'text' for 'differance', 'restance', 'pharmakon', 'supplement' in the sequence of Derrida's writing should be seen as the attempt to deflect the privilege which might attach to one term.

This paragraph is at odds with itself:

(1) There are no magic words.
(2) There shouldn't be magic words.
(3) We can't get out of having a magic word so easily. "Text" risks becoming such a word.

Maybe you mean "pseudo-magic words." But if they're pseudo, are they a problem? ("There are no guns or bullets." "But there are toy guns." "We must get rid of them, so that they don't shoot anybody.")

But deconstruction is the repeated taking up of the same / similar problems in different contexts, so must move on.

What problems? Why shouldn't privilege attach to a term? (Not a rhetorical question.)

A Derridaen magic word ("différance," "restance," "pharmakon," "supplement," "text") seems to be the dumb twin of what I call a "stupor word," which is a Superword's stupid cousin. A Superword is a word such as "punk rock" that you progressively redefine so as to make it unattainable, so that e.g. no music is quite good enough to be punk rock; when something gets called "punk," the word scampers off so as to escape embodiment. And a lot of interesting music is left in its wake. This is not a problem.

(Superword in action: Hardcore punks aren't real punks since they aren't attacking their primary audience, James Chance isn't a real punk because his attacks on the audience have nothing to do with the audience, people who call themselves real punks aren't real punks since they're identifying themselves with a tradition rather than upending one, people who call themselves "real punks because we're upending punk" aren't real punks since they refuse to acknowledge their complicity in and dependence on the tradition they're claiming to overthrow...)

Stupor words are Superwords that have lost their adventure but trudge on, long after the thrill of wizardry has gone. Plato made his Super(magic)words ("being," "presence," "speech," "reality") hard to embody, since he tried to propel them out of the activities (mere "appearances") that were their home - as if they were Ben Tre, and he needed to destroy them in order to save them. More than two millennia later, John Dewey asked Plato why'd you do it?, and (no response coming) decided, "Plato did it because he was scared." Scared of what? "Uncertainty. The perils of daily, practical existence." As if that's an explanation. (Maybe it is. But if Plato was so scared of uncertainty, why did he try to put "certainty" out of reach?)

Sure, if you give "voice" or "signified" (etc.) really far out definitions, they will be unattainable, always contaminated by "text," and nothing'll be outside the "text." (And the requirement that they be "outside the text" [whatever that means] is not one that most people actually subscribe to or even think about one way or the other.) "Voice" is the stupor word, and "text" is the dumb twin that occupies the terrain that "voice" abandoned. But, not having read "There is nothing outside the text" in context, I'm puzzled as to why Derrida would say it. If anything, far from demystifying "voice" - if that's what Derrida is opposing "text" to - it exalts the word further, sends "voice" to the realm of the pure and the chaste, makes it untouchable. (And Alex does the exact same thing with "natural" in his passage about apples.)

But deconstruction is the repeated taking up of the same / similar problems in different contexts, so must move on.

Which can justify deconstruction's being a one-trick pony - except I challenge the idea that the "repeated taking up of same / similar problems" is necessary, given that the only contexts where such "problems" occur are theology, philosophy, and theory, all of which are quite avoidable. "Voice," "presence," "meaning," et al. are perfectly good words elsewhere, don't become stupor words, aren't eligible for deconstruction. (E.g., "His voice seemed absent from his text." "Well, that's what happens when he writes for Rolling Stone. His words either freeze into stiffness or take on these horrible kind of gonzo antifreeze mannerisms that ultimately seem just as stiff, like they're frozen into some hideous simulacrum of 'liveliness.' However, in other contexts, such as Radio On, his voice flowers." Emphasis added, so you won't claim that I'm claiming that "voice" is context free.)

Two questions here: (1) Does Derrida have any application outside of philosophy? (Possible answers might be: "yes, when he's not doing deconstruction," "yes, when we employ his edification strategies, but for purposes other than deconstruction.") (2) Why does philosophy continue onward, since its current "problems" seem fundamentally irrelevant? (Answer [from the paperback psych shelf] might be: "to feel like you're dealing with your problems when you're not actually doing so.")

Third question: Why is Frank bothering with all this? (Possible answers: "to bring you back to the [mundane] level where you'll try to figure out what's actually troubling you" and "to teach people how to sustain a conversation with me, so I won't be so lonely.")

"Undecidables are threatening. They poison the comforting sense that we inhabit a world governed by decidable categories." That's why I thought he was suggesting that the binaries don't always work. I think he very much likes these undecidables, and I do too.

Why? Because you like to threaten people? Or do you yourself feel threatened by decidable categories? This just seems like posturing.

(Not that I'm unsympathetic towards the posture.)

Surely, it would depend on the situation, whether either a decision or the failure to decide was threatening.

What are you really afraid of?

Derrida as a formalist turn, a making strange, looking awry (well, that's Lacan rilly), insistence that an explanation/justification of a worldview is *not* an endorsement but a critical beginning of a dismantling?

I am drunk.

Easy. Most people don't do philosophy. Of course, this depends on what we mean by "philosophy." But my question is really anthropological/sociological: Why do Martin and Mark and Alex and Sterling do philosophy? What are they trying to achieve? What do they think they're taking care of? "They can't escape it" is no answer.

No. I doubt that Wittgenstein ever said anything like it. Certainly not in his later philosophy, which is what I've read and what I've been quoting and which is the stuff that's supposed to have parallels to Derrida. Show me the passage. In particular, show me where he says that meaning and language are not part of the world. You'd have to have him arguing that social activities aren't part of the world, which he'd never argue.

An example of "clarification" might be showing us how the builder and his assistant conduct their business, e.g. that "Block!" has to do with building walls rather than playing football.

I can imagine someone saying, "This is how atmospheres function" - though the word "function" seems odd - and a second person saying, "No, atmospheres don't function like this, they function like that." But I can't imagine someone saying, "Atmospheres malfunction," unless he believes that God created atmospheres for a purpose but didn't do a very good job of it, hence atmospheres don't work as He'd intended.

Someone can create an analogy, and someone else can say, "Your analogy doesn't work," i.e., it doesn't make the comparison you want, doesn't do what you want it to. Someone can even create a language (say, a computer language) for a specific purpose, which the language can fail to meet. But you can't talk of language itself malfunctioning, or if you do, I don't understand you until you elaborate.

"I can't use language to get people to agree with me." Is that the purpose of language, to force agreement?

"I can't use language to get people to understand me." Is that the purpose of language, to get people to understand me? (This might be how people get the idea of language malfunctioning. But I blame the people, not "language.")

Someone can use language to feel he's engaging with me when in fact he's quite successfully evading my ideas and by doing so is having a richer and fuller life than he would otherwise. Or so an observer who's antagonistic to my ideas might decide. And from his viewpoint, language here is functioning quite well, as it allows for successful evasion, and one that's quite stress-free for the evader, as he's not even aware of having to take evasive action. The observer envies him! But evasion is just one of the functions of language, just one among many uses to which we put words.

(i) This is what machine A, machine B, and machine C do, and from this we can think of other machines that are or might work similarly to A, B, and C, bearing in mind that there are machines that we don't know of, and - of course - machines that haven't been invented yet, whose similarities to A, B, and C may be fewer.

(ii) "This is what all machines do, and any possible machine, or else it's not a machine."

Number ii seems odd, doesn't it? This rope and pulley doesn't work like an internal combustion engine, therefore it must be broken.

It would be possible to reduce the question of whether Faith Hill is country or not to a disagreement about language, but that would be to trivialize the main difficulty, i.e., when each substantive term in the definition of 'country' should be used and the relation of each such term to some subset of terms in the language, depending on how meticulous you wanted to be about it (the degrees of separation). Ditto for terms assigned to Faith Hill. Perhaps you (who am I addressing?) are only interested in whether or not this is possible and don't even care about what people have in their heads when they use the words.

I asked my sister to get me The Politics of Friendship for Christmas, and she did! This is the first book by Derrida that I will ever (try to) read. (Perhaps this is not surprising after all the nonsense I've posted on this thread. But I (think I) learned to ask questions like 'who am I addressing?' from skimming the first essay.)

translate object of desire to "objective knowing" and you get a derridaish answer to why philosophy? a reflexive "inescapable" process whose purpose is in consistantly reframing ontological questions and discovering them? better yet, a toolkit of models for how this might be done?

which is to say that i find myself mired in philosophy to the extent that every time i try to explain/understand something the questions of how i approach it need to be resolved anew?

What I'm trying to do, among other things, is to bring us to specifics, so that the questions stop being "Does language malfunction?" and "Is communication short of perfect?" They are bad questions not just because they're stupefyingly vague, but because they require us to assume that language has a single purpose and that communication has a single purpose. (Do machines malfunction? Sure. But no one expects there to be a model that explains how all machines should function or a single model to explain the malfunction of any and all machines. And if someone says "No machine functions perfectly," that person has simply cut himself adrift from idiomatic English. If someone says "No door handle functions perfectly," he doesn't know what he's saying.)

(Well, you had to be there.)

As clarification has been added to the language, so have the possibilities for humor. For instance, one day assistant B was merely observing, while another assistant, C, who was very stupid, actually did the work. The wall under construction only needed one more stone, a block, as any intelligent workman would have been able to see. The builder called out "Block!" but C didn't hear him well, thought it might have been "Pillar!" and went over and tapped the pillar. Builder A and his usual assistant B found this hilariously stupid, that C could possibly think that the builder would have wanted a pillar. So now when A and B are working together A will sometimes, as a joke, call out "Pillar!" when he obviously needs some other stone. Or A will call "Block!" and B will tap a pillar. (The invention of irony.)

Now, on a later day, when things are back to normal and there is no shortage of squat pillars or of any type of building stone, an observer might conclude that the situation is 1's and 0's (either/or) in relation to pillars: Either the builder calls out "Pillar!" and the assistant brings him a pillar, or the builder calls out something else and the assistant brings something other than a pillar. But the observer's conclusion is wrong, obviously, since as we've seen "Pillar!" can sometimes bring forth two blocks. The observer could further decide that binary assumptions are built into the language, but he would be just as wrong, for the same reason.

"But couldn't we say that originally an unstated binary assumption was built into the language, but that this assumption was overthrown on the day the workmen used blocks as pillars?" The fact that the workmen did start using blocks as pillars would argue against this. An assumption isn't "built into" a language if the people using the language can act contrary to the assumption. "But can't we say that the assumption was built into the language, but on the day the workmen used blocks as pillars, they changed the language so that it would no longer contain the assumption?" Yes, we could say this, but to what purpose (unless our goal is to make our concepts of "built into a language" and "change in a language" so weak as to be useless)? Whether we (stupidly) decide that the assumption was there but overthrown, or that it never was there in the first place, nothing in the original situation prevented the novelty of using blocks as pillars. "Built into" becomes a worthless concept when divorced from the idea of prevention. (And how can we ever decide if the assumption was there or not, and why would we want to? I could one day hit someone over the head with a chair. Perhaps I knew I could do this all along, having seen it done in movies. Or perhaps I had no idea until the day I clonked the guy. But my having given the matter no thought can't mean that I'd previously assumed I couldn't use chairs to clonk people.)

"He hadn't realized until that moment that he could use blocks as pillars!" But this doesn't mean he'd been prevented from realizing such a thing, or hadn't had the capacity. And anyway, for all we know, the idea had been percolating subconsciously. ("He hadn't realized until that moment how much he loved her.")

And the same is true of the stones: They wouldn't be building stones without the activity of building.

By "relation to the world," many theorists seem to think they mean the relation between an utterance ("Slab!") and an object (a type of building stone). Well, that relation would be that when the builder calls out "Slab!" the assistant brings a stone of a particular shape, or at least should bring a stone of a particular shape. (And note the practical and humorous modifications above, so that the command doesn't always bring forth the same type of stone, and sometimes brings forth laughter instead.)

Of course, someone could always refuse to participate in building activities, though his tribe or group might force him to participate anyway, or at least try to force him. But for the tribe or group as a whole, I would say that once they decide buildings are necessary, the choice isn't really between the activity and its abandonment, but rather between the activity and its modification, or between the activity and some other way of building (e.g., different power relationships or other types of buildings, say of mud rather than stone).

It could be turned into a name, perhaps. For example, slabs are kept in one warehouse, blocks in another, and so forth, and when the builder and the assistant are walking by one such warehouse, and the assistant says "slab," the builder might understand from the circumstances that the stones in that warehouse are slabs rather than blocks, etc. (A type of stone being abstracted from the command "Slab!")

But the sound "slab" may develop other uses too: A workman is holding a puppy, and another says "Slab!" though there is no building stone or building activity in sight. So the first workman understands that the second workman wants him to bring over the puppy. (The act of bringing being abstracted from the command "Slab!")

Or the two workmen are inside eating lunch, and one of the workmen says "Slab!" and the other understands from this that the first thinks they should go out and resume building. (So a part of the operation is being used to signify the whole: But note, this usage of "Slab!" doesn't name the overall operation but rather requests or commands that the operation resume. That is, the distinction being drawn isn't between building as opposed to, say, swimming or bicycling or even eating, but building as opposed to taking a break from building.)

And once again we've achieved vacuity, as the point I've just made has no practical consequences. No one uses names outside of activities. The only reason to make the point is to counteract a philosopher who claims it's the object - the slab - that gives the word meaning. No [I reply], only in the activity do the words and stones have meaning. (And my message for Alex is that our "insight" - that only in an activity do the words and stones have meaning - tells us nothing about whether we should revise an activity or leave it as is; nor does the insight provide us with a method or basis for making such revisions or understanding them. How could it?)

But when he did, he whacked her on the head with a chair.

Who says?

Who would argue with that? Why bother even to say it?

"Slab!" may not always communicate as intended, but sometimes it does, and so what either way? Why would we discuss such a topic? (Not a rhetorical question. Nonetheless, I wouldn't expect such a discussion to be anything but dysfunctional.)

"Do people get sick?"

Yes, everyone does at some point.

"Do buildings collapse?"

Yes, some do. But I wouldn't worry about it if your city has good building codes.

"Does he brush his teeth?"

No. He's only brushed them twice in the last month.

"Does he kill people?"

Yes, he's killed two in the last year.

"Do machines malfunction?"

I don't understand what's being asked. I'm sorry.

the subquestion implied by "language does not always communicate what is intended to be communicated" is "why would anyone think otherwise?"

but i think, tho can't at the moment demonstrate "people OF NECESSITY think otherwise" just as knowing that "there is no object of desire" doesn't quench the desire, then knowing "language does not always communicate what is intended to be communicated" doesn't prevent people from acting as though it did. again, this is very Lacanian and I think I should start a Lacan thread as I get more into him. also, this is the "a letter always reaches its destination" story which was lacan's classic disagreement with derrida.

we might go on to examine the way in which the disjoint between what is intended, what is percieved, and what is expressed and how its perception is based on a self-reflexive desire to see what is "really" intended (we could argue that the girl who takes a guy playing it cool as a guy expressing love doesn't just read "love" but "playing it cool to avoid expressing love") is a more accurate way to approach
communication than others.

Anyway how does "But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion,
question, and command?--- There are countless kinds: countless
different kinds of use of what we call "symbols", "words",
"sentences". And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given
once for all; but new types of language, new language-
games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become
obsolete and get forgotten. (We can get a rough picture of this
from the changes in mathematics.) " match up with yr opposition to "But can't we say that the assumption was built into the language, but on the day the workmen used blocks as pillars, they
changed the language so that it would no longer contain the assumption?"

I mean wouldn't Wittgenstein say that when the activity changed, the way of living changed, the language-game changed, the "language" changed?

if we, as wittgenstein does, assert that to describe a language is to describe a way of living, then couldn't we argue that all things that aren't thought of that could be aren't thought of because of the way of living? wouldn't that be almost tautological? hence, saying that "all things that aren't thought of aren't thought of because they aren't built into the language" is equally tautological?

then, your opposition to this in fact is a *seperation* of language from activity, of exactly the sort wittgenstein opposed? an argument that language is a "reflection" of activity.

A builder says "slab!" and he is brought a pillar. he assumes the workman has the two reversed. the builder says "pillar!" and he is brought a slab. his assumption is confirmed.

the next day the workman responds to the commands in the opposite way. his "language" is to just bring something whenever asked for anything. his way of living is that he won't get to enjoy the building anyway.

two ways of living, two languages, one activity. is it appropriate to say that the language is not the way of living after all, but simply the lived activity?

i'm happy if i take all the tricks in a game of hearts, you if you lose them because you think its hearts and i think its spades. we don't speak of the game as we play, and we are both happy when we "win". i am happy because i think you are sad, and v.v. activity occurs, "language" (the game of cards) occurs, communication occurs (letters reach destinations, cards are exchanged). but is that "a way of living"?

Wittgenstein is supposed to have asked "Could one play chess without the queen?" (This never never appeared in his writing, however.)

"He's changed" can mean anything from "his mood is a little different" to "he suffers from multiple personality disorder." What you're going to call "change" depends on the context and the conversation, and your particular purposes at the time. And so it is with language "change." Sorry if this is a boring response, but there's nothing general to be said about whether languages change, beyond the fact that it's sometimes useful to say that they do, and other times irrelevant to say so.

You're missing the thrust of my objection, which is to the idea that something is "built into" a language that prevents people from creating or imagining alternatives. Whether we decide that the change is in the language or it creates a new language is irrelevant to my point, though I'd think the changes would have to be big and many before we say the language is a new one.

Middle English and Modern English are different languages (I would say), but if we ask "What day did the changeover occur?" we're being ridiculous.

I want to clarify why it has to be a meaningful difference: When I lift up my phone receiver, I either get a continuous dial tone or a stutter tone. The stutter tone means that I've got a message in my Voicemail. If instead, the stutter tone occurred at random, unrelated to whether I had a message, then the difference wouldn't be meaningful, even though it was a difference.

Back in Why Music Sucks #7, Mykel Board pointed out that some people when speaking English say "spot" with a puff of air after the t, like the t in "tuff," other people barely pronounce the t at all, practically ending on the o, and yet others pronounce the t without a puff of air, so it's almost a d, but the meaning of "spot" doesn't change thereby. In Hindi, however, meaning differs depending on whether or not there's a puff of air. (Of course, for English speakers the puff may be meaningful in a different way, as it may indicate something about the speaker's class or region of origin.)

But our having to add the second "meaningful" to our sentence only shows how empty the basic idea is, despite its being right.

"He says he brushes his teeth."
"No, that's wrong. We're lucky if he brushes once a week."

The word "Yes" not only confirms some information ("He's a killer"), it registers a value judgment (killing one person is sufficient to make you a killer). But not only might different people make different judgments here, the same person might make a different judgment in a different situation, e.g., of a soldier in frequent combat: "They say he's a heck of a killer." "Naw. I doubt that he's killed more than two people in the entire operation."

"Yes" is usually a statement of affirmation or approbation, though it can also mean "What do you want?" (you answer the doorbell, you see a stranger, you say, "Yes?") or "You've gotten my attention" ("Frank." "Yes?" "Are you ready for supper?") or "Continue, I'm still paying attention" (though "Uh-huh" is the usual form here) or "It's been accomplished" (basketball announcer Marv Albert: "He drives right, he shoots... Yes!")

Now, speaking generally of "Yes" in its noun form "assent," I can say "Assent is discourse-dependent" and "Assent is contextual," except that if I did so, everyone would look at me like I was an idiot for stating the obvious. How can you have assent without a conversation? What would someone be assenting to if there were no conversation? -Of course, there can be tacit assent (which is harder to prove in court, and is useful for passive-aggressives), but nonetheless there must be some arrangement that one is assenting to. The statement "Assent is a discursive property" isn't even a platitude or a truism, it's so unnecessary. It's moronic, despite being correct. All it means is that you affirm or disaffirm, approve or disapprove, and confirm or disconfirm within particular contexts and discourses.

"There is no objective assent." What could such a sentence mean?

I'm leading up to this: In most instances the words "true" and "false" run very close to "yes" and "no" in their usage. ("They say he's a killer." "That's true. Six years ago he shot his neighbor." "He claims to brush his teeth." "That's not true. We're lucky if he brushes more than once a fortnight.") And like assent, truth is discourse-dependent and context-dependent - and again, this means no more than that you judge things to be true and false within contexts and conversations. And this is an insight that ought to have no interesting consequences, since it offers no guidance as to whether you should judge something true in a particular situation, nor does it guide you in how you judge discourses relative to each other.

However, despite this insight's apparent superfluity, it causes contention. Say it, and you can be seen as standing for instability, or for freedom (depending on what buttons it presses in the listener). Deny it, and you're standing for firmness, or rigidity. To my mind, this contentiousness is filibuster, but my saying so doesn't end my interest in the matter, since filibusters don't occur at random, without cause. And different people will participate in the filibuster for different reasons (everything from identity politics to compulsive self-justification), so there's no single answer to "What are they evading via the filibuster?"