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A Flaw in Derrida's Linguistic Skepticism
The Transcendental Signified et al

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A Flaw in Derrida's Linguistic Skepticism
Apathy Kills
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Posted 06/17/09 - 10:46 PM:
Subject: A Flaw in Derrida's Linguistic Skepticism
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#1
The focus of my preceding claims will be on Derrida's more well-known essay Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourses of the Human Sciences. Here's a link for those analytics out there that want to try a bit of that continental "forbidden fruit" wink. (I'm focusing only on the first 2-3 pages of Derrida's essay)

I will, first, briefly make known what I agree and disagree with Derrida and then I will make the case for my views. While doing so, I will attempt to briefly summarize Derrida's position in the essay.

1) Derrida's Historical Analysis (i.e. his talk of the "rupture"), although a bit poetical, is a decent interpretation of the history of structuralized thought and is not under my crosshairs.

2) Derrida's analysis and evaluation of what he calls the "Transcendental, or central, Signified" is what I am calling into question and rebuking. Derrida's rejection of the potential existence of a suitable transcendental signified opens up the avenue for Linguistic skepticism - that is, skepticism regarding linguistic meaning and significance within structured thought.

First, let me try to explain Derrida's historical analysis elaborated in the beginning of his essay.

Derrida sets up his linguistic skepticism by elaborating on an event or "rupture" which he says "occurred in the history of the concept of structure." This rupture is a culmination of a realization when surveying the whole history of structuralized thought. The concept of structure itself, the "structurality of structure", Derrida believes, is ingrained in the roots of our language and this can be witnessed in patterns. Structures are exhibited by a center and the center itself is a particular linguistic sign which distributes significance and meaning to all other signs in the structure. Derrida calls the concept of this sign - the transcendental or centered signified. Now, to understand this term we have to rewind to an earlier linguistic thinker named Saussure who first used the terms "signified" and "signifier". The term "signified" is only one part of what forms the linguistic sign. A sign, according to Saussure, is composed of two parts, signified and signifier. The signified denotes the concept or mental entity of the sign, while the signifier is what Saussure calls it's "sound-image." The transcendental signified (or TS), in this case, denotes the concept of the sign which is to form the centering of the structure.

To further explain Derrida's historical analysis,... we are able to notice the presence of the TS by observing the historical spectrum. What we see when we observe the "structurality of structure" is "a series of substitutions of center for center." Over time, the TS changes names and, consequently, has different meanings over time. Here are some concocted examples of my own to illustrate -- For Plato, his TS were the Forms but in the middle ages, God became the TS - for without God nothing could be, nor could have been. In the beginning of 20th century philosophy, Frege turned the TS to "Truth" referring to timelessly true thoughts which must exist in his infamous "third realm."

Now, I'm going to precede on to Derrida's rejection of the TS and his argument for the use of destructive discourses, which is effectively a very sophisticated form of linguistic skepticism (i.e. deconstructionism).

These substitutions throughout the history of metaphysics particularly, for Derrida, serve as evidence that possibly these patterns, which, as the result of our deeply-rooted concept of structure, are not only just repetitions based on our desire for a center, but also reflections of an inherent flaw in the concept of structure itself. In other words, the TS is man-made and, by this nature, undergoes substitutions and permutations. The climax of this rupture for Derrida is the realization that there is no center - the TS and the concept of centered structure altogether must be abandoned. "...the center had no natural locus, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play."

Once Derrida has done this, invalidate the need or believability in a TS and structured thought, then this opens up what he calls the "free play" of all signs - everything becomes pure discourse.

MY ARGUMENT

I find Derrida's historical analysis of the TS to be intriguing and albeit poetical, but there is nothing that I find objectionable. However, I have problems with Derrida's overall conclusions concerning the TS. He dismisses the possibility of establishing a TS, one that could be acceptable but presently unknown. It is a hasty inductive generalization to infer that the insufficiency of one or more previously established TS(s) makes the whole entire structuring of the TS insufficient. I fail to see why one should completely abandon the kind of thinking which leads to this justification of structures.

In a way, Derrida falls into the same kind of error as the global skeptic would in evaluating the problem of induction. The global skeptic would generally evaluate the problem of induction as a problem that illustrates an irresolvable flaw in the process of induction, which influences the grounding of all inductive statements, and therefore it taints all knowledge and must be disregarded. As Hume said, though, "...our certainty [concerning causality] proceeded neither from intuition nor demonstration, but from another source". The problem of induction does not invalidate any or all inductive usage; rather it presents doubt about our ability to find the source of induction and to justify it adequately. Derrida encounters the same type of problem, falls into the same faulty reasoning, with his evaluation of the TS. He misconstrues the historical analysis and, rather than realizing that it shows a lack of justification for the acceptance of the stability of signs, concludes that the TS is an inadequate concept. It is not an inadequate concept, only an unjustified one. The Humean, or mitigated skeptic, in this instance, is merely admitting to the possibility of discovering the TS. Derrida's linguistic skepticism is flawed in this vein.

I find that maintaining a mitigated skepticism in the topic of linguistic meaning and signification is more successful than Derrida's. Although Derrida does offer some crucial insights about some of the problems concerning language meaning within a structural system, there is no clear and persuasive indication that we ought to abandon the endeavor. We can be moderate skeptics about language meaning, while also remaining steadfast in the pursuit - so as to avoid the "interplay of signification ad infinitum". In the end, if we are to truly strive through these problems, doubt is needed to get us there but it cannot take us to the end.


"Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire..."
Nietzsche
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Posted 06/18/09 - 07:01 AM:
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First off, I want to say that this is one of the few times that I've seen an intelligent critique of Derrida from a non-"Continental" perspective. The usual reaction is a kind of righteous indignation to slogans like "il n'y a pas de hors-texte", a refusal to actually read his works, and blanket attacks on "deconstruction in general" that blame it for everything that's wrong with the world today. Your reading is much more respectful and thoughtful, and its refreshing to see that.


However, I don't agree with it. Derrida's rejection of a transcendental signified is not an inductive argument. . Derrida describes two different interpretations, both present in Lévi-Strauss, of the cticism of totalisation: 1) "totalisation can be judged to be impossible in the classic style: you therefore recall the emprical effort of a finite subject or discourse panting in vain after an infinite wealth it will never be able to master" (throughout the following, my translations; L'écriture et la différence p. 423). In this style of critique, we renounce totalisation because we realize after many attempts that it's all in vain, that we poor mortals can't achieve it because of the shortness of our lives, the weakness of our intelligence, etc. A longer-lived, smarter being could do it, but we can't because of our limitations. This is, I think, more or less the way you've presented Derrida; but he describes another style of critique as well: 2)


ED 423 wrote:
If totalisation therefore no longer has any sense, it's not because the infinity of a field can't be covered by a finite examination or discourse, but because the nature of the field--that is, language, a finite language--excludes totalisation: this field is, in effect, the field of a game, that is, of infinite substitutions in the enclosure [clôture] of a finite set. This field only permits these infinite substitutions because it is finite, that is, because rather than being an inexhaustible field, as in the classic hypothesis, rather than being too large, it lacks something: a centre that stops and founds the game of substitutions.


The impossibility for a linguist to record every utterance of a language before making any claims about its structure (ED 422, citing Lévi-Strauss's Le Cru et le Cuit) isn't due to the vast number of signs that we unfortunately can't examine one at a time because of our empirical limitations; it's due to the finite number of signs not being being tied to a transcendental signified, that is, (at least some) signs always signify other signs. There's always more signifying than there is to be signified (ED 423-4). In Lévi-Strauss, the recognition of the "supplementary character of the signifier" (ED 425) is the "sad, negative, nostalgic, guilty, Rousseau-ist face of the thought of the game" (ED 427); Lévi-Strauss understands the infinite substitutions, but wishes there could be a full presence, an "archaic and natural innocence" (ED 427). But this infinite substitution can also be affirmed, as in Nietzsche, as


ED 427 wrote:
the joyous affirmation of the game of a world of signs without fault, without truth, without origin, offered to an active interpretation [..] This affirmation therefore determines the non-centre otherwise than as a loss of the centre. And it plays without security. For there is a safe game: the one that limits itself to the substitution of pieces that are given and existent, present. In the absolute Chance, the affirmation also gives itself up to genetic indetermination [the indetermination of genesis, not DNA--makerowner], to the seminal adventure of the trace.


This second interpretation "is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms the game and tries to pass beyond man and humanism; the name of man being the name of that being which, throughout the history of metaphysics or of onto-theology [...] has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of the game." (ED 427).


Derrida doesn't choose the latter over the former (though it's easy to tell where his sympathies lie). Instead, "we must try first to think the common ground, and the differing/deferring [différance] of this irreductible difference" (ED 428). We can't take sides between these two non-totalisations until we understand how they differ.


So the point of the article is not to argue that there's no such thing as meaning or even that we should be skeptical about meaning, it's to contrast two attitudes we can take towards meaning in an age where totalisation is no longer viable. (Hegelianism is dead.) Derrida isn't telling us not to believe in the transcendental signified, he takes that for granted; he's trying to discuss (and to get us to discuss) how to live without it.


For philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if he carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a gentleman and a person of honour ought to know.
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Posted 06/18/09 - 07:24 AM:
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Quote: ''Derrida isn't telling us not to believe in the transcendental signified, he takes that for granted; he's trying to discuss (and to get us to discuss) how to live without it''.
I agree.
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Posted 06/18/09 - 09:54 AM:
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makerowner wrote:
So the point of the article is not to argue that there's no such thing as meaning or even that we should be skeptical about meaning, it's to contrast two attitudes we can take towards meaning in an age where totalisation is no longer viable.


Still, though, like you said - it is easy to see where Derrida's sympathies reside.

I was anticipating someone bringing up the fact that Derrida does not explicitly argue against believing in TS, but as you have already indicated - one can make a reasonable interpretation of him thinking such. Your quotation of his summary of the two "interpretations of interpretation" is representative of that.

Derrida's rejection of a transcendental signified is not an inductive argument.

I don't think I quite said he's making an inductive argument, I more said he made an inductive error. Namely, my argument accuses Derrida of committing a fallacy of composition - inferring from the insufficiency of one or more TS that there the whole concept of structuring signs in that way is insufficient.

I don't have any issues with Derrida's deconstructionism or his use of the destructive discourses of Heideggar, Nietzsche, and Freud to fortify his position. I think all that's intriguing. But, I just find that his attempt to abandon the TS in the first half a dozen paragraphs in his essay has that minor logical flaw. So, in many ways he is discussing what it would be like to live without it (i.e. the TS) but I think that what he said in the beginning of his essay makes me suspect that he has underlying intentions.

"Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire..."
Nietzsche
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Posted 06/19/09 - 06:16 PM:
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Apathy Kills wrote:




I don't think I quite said he's making an inductive argument, I more said he made an inductive error. Namely, my argument accuses Derrida of committing a fallacy of composition - inferring from the insufficiency of one or more TS that there the whole concept of structuring signs in that way is insufficient.







I don't have any issues with Derrida's deconstructionism or his use of the destructive discourses of Heideggar, Nietzsche, and Freud to fortify his position. I think all that's intriguing. But, I just find that his attempt to abandon the TS in the first half a dozen paragraphs in his essay has that minor logical flaw. So, in many ways he is discussing what it would be like to live without it (i.e. the TS) but I think that what he said in the beginning of his essay makes me suspect that he has underlying intentions.


 


You make it sound nefarious or hidden in some way; if you look at other works of his, "La différance" being the prime example, he comes out clearly in favour of the Nietzschean affirmation of the "game". But I think you're missing the point to some extent. He's not trying to "fortify a position" or infer that the concept of a transcendental signified is insufficient: that's already been said in various ways by Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Levinas and others. What makes Derrida different from the rest is his realization that there can be no "final critique" that would finally free us from metaphysics; instead, all we can do is use these critiques "economically" and "strategically" against metaphysics and each other to make the structure "tremble". The point of Derrida's work is not to finally revalue all values or prove that being is not a being, it's to try to understand how we can live in an age where all of these fractures are starting to appear in the structure of metaphysics. We can either look back nostalgically on an age before everything fell apart (an age which of course never really was), as Lévi-Strauss did, according to Derrida; or we can say yes to the game, and find joy in it.


For philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if he carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a gentleman and a person of honour ought to know.
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Posted 06/19/09 - 10:27 PM:
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But I think you're missing the point to some extent. He's not trying to "fortify a position" or infer that the concept of a transcendental signified is insufficient: that's already been said in various ways by Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Levinas and others.


Yeah, I have to say that you're most likely right about that. But allow me to further explain my reasoning for thinking Derrida could be saying that - because the whole foundation of my argument rested on the assumption that Derrida, if but implicitly, argues for the abandonment of the process which establishes a TS. First, in Derrida's essay up to the point where he introduces the destructive discourses of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Freud, he delivers scathing criticisms of the "structurality of structure" or the concept of centered structure. For instance, in the third paragraph, he describes how the "classical thought concerning structure"..."closes off the freeplay it opens up and makes possible." Essentially, he -through commentary- critiques the concept of centered structure by deducing a damning contradiction from it. "The center is not the center." Overall, the paragraphs leading up to his talk of the destructive discourses is nothing short of illustrating the absence of a coherent/unflawed/stable TS. How could this not be an attempt at building strength for his later position? The option for discovering a possible TS that could adequately limit the freeplay of a structure is not on the table for Derrida. The available options we have, as a consequence of these criticisms of centered structure, according to Derrida, is 1) immanent signified instead of transcendental or 2) the freeplay of all signifiers (which is what Derrida favors).

At least, this is how it all struck me when I read it.

"Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire..."
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Posted 06/21/09 - 09:58 AM:
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Derrida wrote:
Trans-philosophical concepts would be transformed into philosophical naivetes. One could give many examples to demonstrate this risk: the concepts of sign, history, truth, and so forth.
What I want to emphasize is simply that the passage beyond philosophy does not consist in turning the page of philosophy ( which usually comes down to philosophizing badly ), but in continuing to read philosophers in a c e r t a i n way.
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Posted 06/21/09 - 11:19 AM:
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Apathy Kills wrote:
Yeah, I have to say that you're most likely right about that. But allow me to further explain my reasoning for thinking Derrida could be saying that - because the whole foundation of my argument rested on the assumption that Derrida, if but implicitly, argues for the abandonment of the process which establishes a TS. First, in Derrida's essay up to the point where he introduces the destructive discourses of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Freud, he delivers scathing criticisms of the "structurality of structure" or the concept of centered structure. For instance, in the third paragraph, he describes how the "classical thought concerning structure"..."closes off the freeplay it opens up and makes possible." Essentially, he -through commentary- critiques the concept of centered structure by deducing a damning contradiction from it. "The center is not the center." Overall, the paragraphs leading up to his talk of the destructive discourses is nothing short of illustrating the absence of a coherent/unflawed/stable TS. How could this not be an attempt at building strength for his later position? The option for discovering a possible TS that could adequately limit the freeplay of a structure is not on the table for Derrida. The available options we have, as a consequence of these criticisms of centered structure, according to Derrida, is 1) immanent signified instead of transcendental or 2) the freeplay of all signifiers (which is what Derrida favors).



At least, this is how it all struck me when I read it.


There are two misunderstandings here. 1) The point of the commentary leading up to "The centre is not the centre" is not a reductio ad absurdum, ie. deriving a contradiction from the premises to prove that at least one of them is false. He explains on page 410: "The concept of a centred structure--although it represents coherence itself, the condition of the episteme as philosophy or as science--is contradictorily coherent." It's not that the contradiction shows it to be false, it's simply that the concept is unstable, that philosophies based on this centred structure tend to fall apart; see De la grammatologie for an example of how this happens in Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and Rousseau.


This is another example of what I was saying in the last post. Derrida is not trying to propose philosophical theses (philosophèmes) and provide evidence for them using other people's texts (Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud, etc.). What he does is take other people's texts and find the points of tension (which sometimes, but not always, means contradictions) in them. The "centred structure" is a point of tension in the history of metaphysics (=philosophy=the West, for Derrida) taken as a giant text. As Derrida explains in the same paragraph as above, these points of tension indicate a desire and a fear (for certainty and of the game, respectively). A "deconstruction" of a text isn't a criticism of it or a claim to prove that it's false (what could it possibly mean to accuse Hegel of falsity?), it's a continuation of Nietzsche's "dramatic" method of asking what kind of will is speaking in philosophical texts.


2) The second misunderstanding is about the term 'transcendental signified'. Note that it's not a transcendent signified, to which we could oppose an 'immanent' one (though I'm not sure what that would mean). The sense of 'transcendental' here is based on Kant's: "I apply the term transcendental to all knowledge which is not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of these objects" (from Introduction, section V of the CPR). The transcendental signified is just the centre of the centred structure, a signified that could not be substituted for, and whose absolute certainty would provide a foundation for all the rest. An example is the "affections of the soul" that for Aristotle are indicated by our words. (Today we would say 'mental states'.) The two basic forms of transcendental signified are the archè (origin) and telos (goal): moments of full presence and absolute certainty from which we've fallen away by an unfortunate accident (Rousseau) and that we will one day reach again (Hegel), the middle period of absence in which we live being justified by the past or future presence.


For philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if he carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a gentleman and a person of honour ought to know.
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Posted 06/21/09 - 11:49 AM:
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Makerowner wrote: ''A "deconstruction" of a text isn't a criticism of it or a claim to prove that it's false (what could it possibly mean to accuse Hegel of falsity?), it's a continuation of Nietzsche's "dramatic" method of asking what kind of will is speaking in philosophical texts.''
This is the best explanation of ''deconstruction'', that I ever read.
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Posted 06/22/09 - 09:34 AM:
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...And, as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire. The concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a freeplay based on a fundamental ground, a freeplay which is constituted upon a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude, which is itself beyond the reach of the freeplay.
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