ELEPHANT TO JON LYNCH:
"Self enclosed"? That is precisely why I think structuralists are wrong.
I just can't make any sense of the idea that language is "self - enclosed".
What would be the point of language it it were?
What I have been saying is something quite different. When I say that the
world of particulars is constructed in language I am not saying that
language is "self - enclosed", and this is plain on several counts. (1) I
don't think language is a particular (it encloses particulars, not itself).
(2) I think that the primary purpose of languge is not to refer but to
describe, and on my picture language *is* open to what it must describe, ie
dynamic quality (this is another difference with the structuralists). (3)
(a corrollary of (2)) Since reference is a secondary function (reference is
in virtue of decription not the other way around) - it follows that to argue
that because the *referents* of a languge are created by that language the
languge must be "self-enclosed" is to have the wrong idea about what
language is for. (4) There *are* realities of the world which I say that
languge has not and cannot have created, ie the Forms. Language must be
open to these or it is not a language - since the very possibilty of
sameness and difference depends on awareness of the forms, and language is
about expressing sameness and difference.
In short: 'closed system'? Like hell.
There is a basic grain of truth hidden in structuralism as you report it,
but it just so happens to be radically unoriginal, and not a basis for the
edifice they construct around it either. It is the Heraclitean point that
you can't have "cold" without "hot". This is true. And?
JON LYNCH:
> I'm sure you could hold some sort of view like this without being a Platonist
> as such (unless you have a very, very broad definition of Platonism).
> Structuralists, eg., following Saussure have traditonally that language is a
> self-enclosed system without positive terms. Ie. each individual term within
> the system is negatively derived from its difference to all the other terms.
> Since the "meaning" of any term derives from the meaning of every term, and is
> thus not referential in the traditional sense, a structuralist could argue
> that language - or the structure of differentiation that permits language -
> precedes the world of particular objects.
ELEPHANT:
So he could - but if in the process he moves from the true obeservation that
"hot" depends upon "cold" to the fatuous, unconnected, and absurd conclusion
that therefore the "meaning" of "every" term depends on the "meaning" of
"every" other term, then his argument, and any conclusion that goes along
with it, isn't cheap at the price.
Meaning has something to do with description, and some descriptions are
better than others - this is what the structuralist is forgetting in his
closed system. It is *not* the case that because *reference* is internal to
language therefore *meaning* is too. These are different things entirely.
"Hot", for me, doesn't simply *mean* "the opposite of cold" - how could it -
how could that be a meaning? It could define "cold" well enoung for a
computer alright - but that's just the point: we aren't computers: we
experience stuff, and it's the experience that the languge is there to try
and help us navigate. How does "cold is the opposite of hot" help me
navigate the world? What might help is if I know that stoves are hot, and
have the experience that hot things can hurt, can be really low quality.
Language is a system alright - but, as a system, a tool, it is only useful
when it is open to and engaged with the world. This is not a world of ready
formed particulars, right enough - but it is a world where you can get the
seat of your pants singed.
JON LYNCH:
> Or you could be a Derridean post-structuralist. Not only is language
> self-enclosed and allows through its internal structure the modelling of a
> world of particular objects, but now the particular objects themselves are "
> always already" part of the language. Now everything is difference, and you
> are right to have nothing positive to say about what it is of language that
> pre-exists particular objects, because there is nothing positive to say about
> difference. It differs from itself and has no content. It eludes and makes
> possible by its non-presence the formative question "What is ....?" Dynamic
> Quality = the endless play of difference. Read 'Of Grammatology.' Or, my
> personal advice, don't bother. Just be a Platonist- it's easier.
ELEPHANT:
You speak from your experience. Personally speaking I find being a
Platonist is damm hard - and requires alot of hard thinking in the teeth of
a general conviction (based on widely divergent premises) that Plato *must*
be mistaken. It is hard to think clearly and divorce yourself from the
common opinion, as all the worthwhile things are.
I lost you somewhere along the line when you said that "everything is
difference". I would agree that there is something fundamental about
sameness and difference - more fundamental even than the forms.. perhaps you
should read The Sophist. But I can't see how you can think that everything
is constructed from sameness and difference - everything depends on them,
right enough, but that is not the same as being constructed out of them. I
depend on the internal combustion engine. But I am not a car, or even a
motorbike. And anyway, in this case "they" are not beings, but simply the
clear sightedness of our own miraculous intelligence, that without which no
conversation or enquiry can proceed, neither analysis of the forms nor
synthesis of the particular.
Structuralism. Yuk.
BTW - I recommend Iris Murdoch on Derrida - look it up in Metaphysics as a
Guide to morals.
Elephant
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