Do 'logico-syntactic' rules govern intensional, or 'intra-linguistic', notions of meaning? It is certainly true that protocol bound discourse- e.g. that of the Law- have a specialist hermeneutic or rules of interpretation. The problem is that intentions matter. A Judge may set aside what is written in the light of the intention of the writer and arrive at what 'ought' to have been written. Here the 'buck stopping' mechanism is not bound by 'logico-syntactic' rules. Indeed, it appears, there is no actual notion of meaning associated with such rules. They are defeasible by common sense.
Indeed, it would be difficult to think of a field of discourse where common sense or expediency or some other consideration might not simply override the outcome dictated by the application of any rules whatsoever.
Analytical philosophy may sincerely believed that 'following rules' leads to having different 'notions'. This may capture an aspect of our life experience. We may say 'working as a cop, led to my thinking like a cop because I had internalized the rule book for cops'. But the reply might be 'you aren't a cop now. You are a Dad. Think like a Dad.' This has the effect- at least in the sort of Netflix series I binge watch- of one 'prescriptive' notion being completely replaced by another. We may say both are 'rules-based'. But what is the rule which dictates switching from one rule-set to another? One may invent a 'halachah vein morin kein' rule such that the action it prescribes is forbidden by the very knowledge of that prescription. Or one may simply say defeasibility is a feature of all protocol bound systems- at least the useful ones. Rules don't determine notions. They may encode an aspect of them or they may simply be shibboleths. Philosophy bites at the empty air when it tries to make a meal of something essentially insubstantial.
Moore takes a different view-
if there are certain theoretical purposes at hand for which further detail is required, either in connection with the word ‘round’ or in connection with the difference between nouns and adjectives, then we can go into just such further detail. Even in cases where the difference of logico-syntactic use is less marked, as it would be in the case of the word ‘being’, and where the tools for characterizing the difference are not ready to hand, as they might not be in the case of the word ‘being’, we can do what we did where the two uses of ‘round’ as a noun were concerned: produce a sentence involving the ambiguous word (‘I had a round yesterday’) together with a context within which the sentence can be meaningfully embedded under one interpretation but not under the other (‘... and I had it toasted’).
The difficulty here is that the context can be suitably changed. Furthermore, the possibility of an error by the speaker permits us to simply ignore what was said or the normal 'logico-syntactic' rules that would apply and simply put in what we think ought to have been said.
The problem, however, is that this would be a way of exposing the ambiguity only to those who were already disposed to see it.
But isn't that always true? Consider ambiguous images like the duck rabbit. It may be there are some people who can only see a duck while there are others who only see a rabbit. It so happens that I can only see the soigne 'wife' not the elderly 'mother-in-law' in the famous German postcard of the 1880. However, I have to accept that the thing is ambiguous because enough people find it so.
If there were genuine controversy about whether the word had more than one logicosyntactic use, as there is in the case of the word ‘being’, no such expedient would help to settle the matter.
But if no expedient whatsoever can settle any matter in your field, then maybe real the problem is that your discipline is shite.
The denier of logico-syntactic ambiguity could simply deny that embedding the given sentence in the given context resulted in any relevant meaninglessness—whilst also of course acknowledging the ever-present and uninteresting possibility noted in the previous paragraph, that the word in question be construed as occurring without any meaning whatsoever.
The big problem with philosophy is that one foregoes nothing, save perhaps a credential whose prestige has declined greatly, by refusing to play along with its stupidity.
The advocate of the non-univocity of being may now appear to be in trouble. I have been urging, on the one hand, that the relevant ambiguity in ‘being’ would have to be exposed as a logico-syntactic ambiguity while suggesting, on the other hand, that there would be no exposing it as such that did not essentially involve preaching to the converted. But actually the trouble is just as great for an advocate of the univocity of being. In so far as there is a kind of surd in what one of them wants to assert, there is a kind of surd in what the other wants to deny. This is why there is an issue, not merely concerning how the univocity of being can be established, but concerning how it can even be properly thought.
This is the crux of the matter. Philosophy may not be thought, properly so called. It may be a type of 'displacement activity'. Or it may be pedantry of an ignorant and self-regarding type.
What can an advocate of the univocity of being do, to impress his doctrine on himself as well as on others, beyond blankly proclaiming that ‘being’ has just one meaning?
He may live like a Stoic sage whose oikeiosis has embraced the Cosmos entire. Others may be drawn to him by the sublime harmony of his nature. In him, they may find the oikonomos mysterion- the steward of the mystery- who shows the hidden unity of all things.
Well, one option that he might take is to identify being as an entity in its own right and to insist that any talk of the ‘being’ of a thing is a reference to this entity.
Then, as in Aristotle's third man argument, there must be some other entity which this is itself a reference to.
But as we saw, this would not be enough. An Aristotelian would insist that any talk of the ‘healthiness’ of a thing is a reference to health, but would deny that ‘healthiness’ has just one logicosyntactic use. The advocate of the univocity of being would need to insist further that any talk of the ‘being’ of a thing is not just a reference to this entity, but a reference of one particular logico-syntactic kind to this entity. But now there would be another impasse of sorts. The Aristotelian would see the differences between the things to which the word ‘being’ can be truly applied as simply too great for that to be a viable option. The most effective way for the advocate of the univocity of being to evade this sort of Aristotelian response is by being pre-emptive. Given various things to which the word ‘being’ can be truly applied, and given the various differences between them, the advocate of the univocity of being can say that precisely one of the functions of the word is to signify these differences; that for these things to be is for them to differ in the ways they do; that difference is itself the fundamental character of being.
The problem here is that univocity of being may be an apophatic or ineffable doctrine- it may be something lived outside of language. Indeed, it may be wholly ontologically dysphoric- not at home in the world- and different for everybody without ceasing to be something they would affirm to be the same.
There is then no question of two things’ differing to such an extent that the word ‘being’ has no single logico-syntactic use in relation to both. The very semantics of the word forestalls this.—But wait! Is it not question-begging to appeal to ‘the’ semantics of the word when what is at issue is whether the word even has one logico-syntactic use?—That is not what is at issue. What is at issue is how we can properly think of the word as having one logico-syntactic use. And the suggestion is: by first thinking in terms of its semantics; by thinking of its semantics as itself already encompassing all diversity in things.
But if we think the semantics of a word 'encompasses all diversity in things', then a heavy price is paid in terms of semantics. You say 'dog' we hear 'God'.
The word ‘being’ is to be understood in such a way that, whenever there are things that differ from one another, even if they differ so much that there is no single logico-syntactic way of making reference to all of them, this word can be truly applied to them, in a single sense, and therefore with a single logico-syntactic use.
But we can understand any word in this way. Or we can just get down on all fours and bark like a dog.
One way to regard the shift from thinking of being as an entity in its own right to thinking of difference as the character of being is as follows: it is a shift, in the attempt to think of ‘being’ as having just one logico-syntactic use, from modelling the word on a noun to modelling it on a verb.
As a matter of fact, there is a theory in Hinduism that everything is a verb. Nothing is a noun. The problem was this looked like Buddhist kshanikavada. It was safer to say to go the other way and raise the Name of God above any activity of the Godhead.
So long as the word was modelled on a noun—so long as the word was conceived as standing in an invariant semantic relation to one particular entity—there was an issue about whether talk of the ‘being’ of things could do suitable justice to all the ways in which things differ from one another. For even if such talk could secure the univocity of being, how could it do so except at the price of introducing fresh concerns, if not the same old concerns, about the univocity of participation in being? And if it did introduce such concerns, how could the obvious regress be blocked, except by locating the really important univocity in precisely that differing of things from one another which was giving pause? But the regress never even starts, nor are there any such concerns, if the word ‘being’ is modelled on a verb and is conceived as expressing such differing in the first place.
Then differing endures- except it doesn't really. We are stuck talking nonsense while the world changes around us. True, for soteriology, there may be some benefit in saying- 'I have been a God, a fish, a tree, nothing, everything. I have been Time. I have been Space. I have even been myself. Then I touched myself inappropriately and got expelled from self-hood. Sad.'
As Ecclesiastes says, 'Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.' The ultimate wisdom of wisdom literature is that not in words is wisdom to be found. We don't know if being is univocal. We do know natural language isn't. At best there may be univalent foundations of a utile type in particular fields for protocol bound discourses. But we might regret agreeing to any such thing. Why be bound, by something which may become silly farther down the road? The actual Aummann agreement would be never to have binding Aumann agreement. Let Epistemic contracts remain incomplete or defeasible.
Philosophy may, as Collingwood said, be all we can do in the face of an open question. But some such philosophy can turn into Science as those questions are closed in a particular way- though no doubt they reappear with greater generality and thus in a more potentially rewarding form.
What happens when you confuse comparative statics with dynamics? You make your life easier, but there may be Hell to pay. Similarly, when you turn a noun into a verb you may make things easier for yourself for the moment. But you are on a primrose path to perdition.
Moore concludes-
Substance, the entity to which the noun ‘substance’ refers, is now thought of as turning, the activity to which the verb ‘turn’ refers, around the modes.
The problem here is that non-substance too may turn. How do we know that 'substance' doesn't refer to both itself and its opposite? Consider the word 'bossing'. The Boss may boss me around or she may actually be very tactful and encouraging and empathetic. Mum may boss me around- but Mums are lovely not bossy. Bossing is completely detached in its reference from actual Bosses.
Furthermore, to think of difference as the character of being is to allow for the affirmation of the affirmation of difference to which I referred in §I.
The same could be said of thinking of sameness as the character of being. One could affirm that the affirmation of difference is different from the sameness of being. But what would be the point?
What I have in mind is this. The affirmation of difference is what enables being, univocal being, to be seen in the differences between things.
Affirmations don't enable anything to be seen. Either you see the thing and affirm you saw it truthfully. Or you think you see the thing and affirm truthfully that you saw it- though on cross examination your claim fails. Or you simply lied.
Those who can see, see differences between things. What enables them to do so is not any affirmation but the fact that Evolution endowed them with eyes so as to enable to survive on an uncertain and unforgiving fitness landscape.
It is a making sense of difference, as the face of univocal being, where this is as much difference’s making sense as it is difference’s being made sense of.
My making sense of how a new gadget is supposed to work might facetiously be described as the gadget's making sense of how to turn me into its obedient slave. A humorist may present us with a cartoon world, where the cunning of things is revealed by the manner in which they manipulate us. Fashionable Jeremiah's may seize upon this caricature to drone on about how the things we own have made us slaves of 'Planetary Technology' or 'Neo-Liberalism' or whatever.
But if difference is the very character of being,
or sameness is the very character of difference
then it is itself what enables univocal being to be seen in the differences between things.
Or vice versa. One may say 'Maya'- Illusion- is endlessly variegated. Sat- Truth, Being, Reality- is one and undifferentiated. It is a pathless land. Equally one may say every interaction is unique and sui generis in a kshanikavada world founded on Emptiness. But Nirvana is Samsara. Seeing only difference abolishes the difference between the Liberated and the Conditioned.
It is its own affirmation. The making sense of difference is simply things’ differing. The affirmation of difference is the affirmation of the affirmation of difference. What we have been witnessing—at least, what we have been witnessing if Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche and Spinoza is correct—is the power of the Nietzschean verb over the Spinozist noun, or the power of Nietzschean differing over Spinozist substance. Spinozist substance is an entity that differs from other entities in various ways. Nietzschean differing is not an entity at all. It cannot be said to differ from other entities. It cannot be said to differ from anything in the way in which entities differ from one another. On the other hand, it can in a way be said to differ. For there is a sense in which, in the differing of entities from one another, differing itself is ever different. (If it were not, the differing of entities from one another would stand to it in something like the relation of instantiation to a universal, and it would count as an entity after all.) But how can it be said to differ if it cannot be said to differ from anything in the way in which entities differ from one another? One way is through a break with traditional grammar: it can be said to differ from itself.
Godel's proof of God relies on the axiom that the set of positive properties is an ultrafilter. However, as is well known, this causes problems of self-difference, i.e. something both being and not being itself, or else endangers 'accessibility' and entails 'modal collapse' (i.e. turns every true statement into a necessarily true statement as if this were the only possible world.) A computer detected the error in Godel's proof. This suggests that 'grammar' is not the problem. An error in reasoning is required in order to gain an armchair proof of something in language which may or may not be in the world.
And if differing is said to differ from itself,
or if sameness is said to be the same as itself
this gives further fillip to the idea that the manifestation of being through differing is itself a differing of sorts,
one which is identical to the sameness of becoming the same or being the same sort
a differing through which being is manifest;
or a sameness through which its manifestation has being
in other words, that the affirmation of difference is the affirmation of the affirmation of difference.
as well as the affirmation of the sameness of all affirmation
This is the line taken by Deleuze, in his exposition and defence of the univocity of being.
He also wrote nonsense about Capitalism and Schizophrenia. He may have been mad but his madness made his money. There is a Globalized market for shite. It may be small but some peeps need to shit higher than their arseholes to keep up a Credentialist Ponzi Scheme.
As I have tried to make clear, I have not myself been concerned to defend the doctrine, still less to defend any of the associated exegesis; I have been concerned with what it takes to think the doctrine.
Ignorance. That's what it takes. Just ignore what has been happening in STEM subjects and you too can think like shit.
A famous remark of Nietzsche’s is pertinent here: ‘To impose upon becoming the character of being—that is the supreme will to power,’
This could be said of the Shakta doctrine or the Third turning of the wheel of Sangha. Oddly Nietszche was taken up by Iqbal, not any Bengali. But then Iqbal was a Kaula by ancestry.
But I have had a more particular aim too: to connect what it takes to think the doctrine with issues that exercise analytic philosophers. Not that this kind of linkage is likely to win any converts. Just the opposite in fact. It is likely to crystallize alternative ways of thinking in the minds of analytic philosophers. Thus many analytic philosophers will recoil from unadorned talk of anything’s differing from itself by demanding some kind of relativization, such as that which allows for talk of Ellen’s differing from herself by being both a child and an adult: a child then and an adult now.
Godel showed that in a constructible universe with a global choice function you can have explicit free ultrafilters. However, without the axiom of choice, maybe there are no such beasties. My point is that 'relativization' may not be possible yet. This does not mean the Research Program is degenerate. The reverse is more likely because, so to speak, you are improving the grammar in a way that gives you cheap verification or error correction. That's a useful type of 'Logico-Syntactic' work. Pretending that Thought works the other way- i.e. first the metaphysics is supplied to us and then this enables us to see the Physics it refers to and then we beat people with a Logico- Syntactic stick till they see it to- may be useful for indoctrination or pedagogy. You 'de-familiarize' the student so they give up their 'common sense' cognitive biases and learn to describe things using protocol bound 'terms of art'. However, something similar happens when a Fagin catches hold of an Oliver Twist. He is taught to see not men and women, but 'marks' and 'narks'.
Others will recoil no less from relativized talk of something’s differing from itself and they will deny that there is strictly any identity between that girl and this woman. Again, many analytic philosophers will insist that the word ‘differing’, as it occurs in the sentence ‘Differing is not an entity,’ functions as a singular term, and—an entity being nothing but what is picked out by a singular term—that the sentence is self-stultifying.
The self-stultifying objection has been around for decades. It hasn't hindered scientists from empirical work which tries to link physical to mental events. It is likely that there is a mutual connection. Finding it might mean tremendous advances in human welfare.
They are then liable to conclude that, if differing is anything at all, then it is (perforce) an entity. Others will take a leaf out of each of Frege’s and the early Wittgenstein’s books: they will acknowledge the self-stultification in the sentence ‘Differing is not an entity’ and they will conclude that there is an insight here to which the sentence is gesturing but which cannot strictly be expressed. Those who take this last option will of course be manifesting an element of conciliation. How close they will be to a convergence of view with any champion of the univocity of being is going to depend in part on how comfortable any champion of the univocity of being is with this kind of appeal to the inexpressible: in some cases, I submit, very comfortable. But that is not the point. The point is not about convergence of view. It is not even about rapprochement. The point is about dialogue. Some analytic philosophers might eventually feel at home with these ways of thinking; some might even eventually be persuaded by Deleuze to subscribe to the univocity of being. But first they have to be able to listen to what he is saying.
Pay them enough and they will find they are able to listen to any old shite. The problem with Deleuze is that he failed to inspire any lunatics to run around killing people. Thus there is no Intelligence Agency funding for research into his shite. I recall reading a well written book by a US Army major who was posted with the Indian Army. He took the time to read up on 'post modernism' and has good summaries of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan etc. At the time, the ruling coalition in India appeared to be relying on 'intellectuals' who wrote that type of shite. Indeed, it seemed that in its quest for modernity, India would pre-emptively crack down on a 'Hindu terrorism' which did not exist. Then the truth was revealed. There was no fucking 'dialogue' in the Academy or outside it. Ideas don't matter at all. Getting tenure does. A shakeout in the Academy occasioned by a fiscal crunch put paid to talk of univocity. Univalent foundations are fine. You can get a big grant to do that- if you are real smart. Google will hire you for mega-bucks. Only very poor socioproctologists bother with pointing the finger at the assholes who keep foolish academic availability cascades trundling on.
By seeking a dialogue between Deleuze and analytical philosophy, two different claims are made
1) that the Anglos don't have a stick up their butt and that they actually enjoy reading imaginative books written long ago. This is not true. The French philosophers generally had some literary talent and eccentric enthusiasms for neglected writers. They weren't ashamed to publish purple passages. The Anglos ruthlessly suppressed any literary proclivity of their own which might make them less dull than dishwater.
2) that the Anglo's High School Math is as 'structuralist' as that of the elite French institutions. French Math really did have some special qualities. The pseudo-Math of the French savant can nevertheless be corrected quickly enough to get to the genuine open problem. In other words, France- because of its 'synoecist' elitism- i.e. the pretense that its savants are well rounded masters of those who know- genuinely had- perhaps still has- a univocal discourse in which a Jacques Monod ranked as high as a Sartre and a Grothendieck might appear not mad but divinely inspired.
The Anglo world chose narrow specialization with little communication between silos. They rejected 'yoga' as unification based on greater generality. This accords with our view of checks and balances as operating independently and according to their own logic. The Lawyer sees the world differently from the Accountant who is horrified by the ideas of the Marketing guy. Still having all these different professions represented on the Board means 'due diligence' is shown to have been done. Sadly, this does not mean China might not eat our lunch after pushing us down in the playground. I suppose this means that Adrian Moore's successor will be gassing on about the I Ching and univocity- till, by a slip of the tongue, he says something uncomplimentary about the Benevolent Chairman and gets the sack after the Chinese Consul complains.
No comments:
Post a Comment