John Page

She confuses the means of realizing language with language itself.

Cheers, John

Hugo Holbling

I think this is beyond my pay-band. The people to ask are Gurdur and ksagnostic; to that end, i suggest you go here.

Amos

Hi Louise, in case you missed it. Did you count to 5 here?

The five chapters of the novel "to live, to err, to fall, to triumph, and to re-create life out of life" are true reflections of Stephen's life (New York Penguin, p.172).

King's Indian

Hello to you, Amos. Pleased to m your a.
This was going to be a longer post, but the more of your time I take up, the less you have to write about Joyce (Very much enjoyed your post about "A Portrait...", and thought about replying with all the points I wanted you to elaborate on. However, I'm still finding my feet here, and don't want to make a habit of butting in. If you have said other things re: Joyce* (on Ulysses, perhaps?) I would appreciate it if you could direct me to them (by direct email, if you like).
So, quickly, then:
I am a firm believer of "speech as the 'writing of the soul.'
As am I, although we may have arrived by different routes.
we have to believe in a soul that is incarnate upon us from previous generations from where we "re-collect" our intuit knowledge that was placed there
Does this mean my innate faculty for building igloos is because I re-collect my Inuit knowledge? Yeah, I know. Sorry.
I'll leave Deconstruction to those who are familiar with it.
In that case, make yourself familiar with it. At least with the stuff Derrida writes: I make no big claims about some of the directions taken by other writers. Perhaps the easiest book of his to pick up is "Of Grammatology" (Johns Hopkins UP), but it really depends with what philosophical school you're comfortable with: Speech Act Theory and the Oxford School? Limited Inc. Freud/Lacan? The Post Card. Mauss? Given Time. He's quite wide-ranging, and because his is a strategy of reading one does pick up an awful lot, because he always supplies lots of quotations of the things under discussion. (A good introduction is "Derrida", by Christopher Norris, by the way.)
This includes the structure of language which is mathematical or it could not be an avenue for artistic expression(?).
Mmmm, not sure. I've just come back from the late closing of the Titian exhibish at the National, and, with this thought at the back of my mind, couldn't see where it applied to my experience.However, if you are interested in the question of beauty and maths: by coincidence, I have just finished reading "It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science". (Ed. Graham Farmelo.) I've no head for maths myself, but that doesn't signify in this case. Taking stuff from relativity, quantum field theory, information theory and so on, it's very much about beauty.
Still quite long in the end, eh?

*Halleluia!

Take care,

KI.

Amos

Thanks and make yourself at home. You are like a breath of fresh air here where nobody is special here except those who think they are.

Don't be sorry because they'll always be better at it then we will ever be. If this was not true why don't we all become masters, or artisans, and paint Mona Lisa's. The fact is, we're so 'flat' ourselves that we insist our world is 'round.'I did some of that about the Modernist writers and soon found that they were all alluding to themes and images but nobody was able to "take the bull by the horns," so to speak. To me they are opposite and the archetypal images are either there or they are not. That's a personal thing with me, perhaps, but that is just the way it is.

Thanks for the leads but I think I'll just leave it up to the experts here. I have an idea and an opinion but if I am not ready to defend it I best keep it to myself. I've read some very beautiful arguments about the mathematics of beauty but they are not 'my own' and therefore too complicated to make them my own.

Thanks again.

King's Indian

Hello again, John! Hope you're well.

Rather than muck about cutting and pasting the above, I'll respond to your points by number, although slightly out of order.
I've spent a pleasant lunch hour digesting what you've written, and I think I can clarify myself a bit.
1.
I'm with you there. When I was writing before, however, I think I had presuppose rather than include at the back of my mind. The point, in this case, being that while these foundations lead to linguistic behaviour (which I would distinguish from communication, as such), they need not be thought of as linguistic in themselves (bookshelves or google, I've not had much luck with a reference to back this up. But I will. I beg your patience in the meantime.
2.
Yes, the linguist intuits the structure of language, using phrase trees and whatnot. You're again correct in distinguishing it from foundations as well, I think. It's interesting to recall, however, that when Chomsky first set out his programme for language, he wasn't particularly bothered in the way the brain actually does it. His methodology concerned itself with deriving the set of well-formed utterances from the set of all possible utterances, with as little redundancy as possible. This emphasis has changed a bit, and the Minimalist Programme allows a bit of room to allow ways to integrate syntax with physical speech production and semantics (I think- I'm a bit of an autodidact, as you'll come to appreciate). This is moving away a bit from the Continental approach referred to in the heading so I'll stop here, but I do have some citations for this sort of stuff. (Ray Jackendorff springs to mind).
Leaping ahead to 4
When I have used "fundamental" in my two preceding posts, I had it in mind as an adjectival form of "foundation" (because of the shared etymology), and perhaps would have expressed myself more clearly if I had chosen "foundational" (although perhaps not, for reasons of taste). I am disagreeing with the position "language is reality" (or, in another formulation, "There is only language") even if only because I refuse to condescend to think about such silliness. If it's a "Deconstructionist" premise, then so much the worse for Deconstructionism. As far as one can discern, this all springs from the phrase "There is nothing outside the text". This is Gayatri Spivak's take on "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte", as found in her translation of "De la Grammatologie" (not her fault: a more prosaic rendering is, "There is no out-text", which is a bit leaden). The point here is that Derrida rather has the same thing in mind as your last sentence in 4 (although he doesn't actually say, "so no big deal"). Recall that the phrase crops up in Derrida's critique of Rousseau's "Confessions", where (to cut a long story) he is responding to the objection, "But is it legitimate to conflate Rousseau's writing with the actual facts in his life? (As Derrida has just done. The subject of masturbation crops up... but anyway, must press on) Shouldn't we separate the two things, real life and writing, rigorously? D responds: but in talking or writing about real life, we constitute it into a text anyway, and we've no choice about it. If we keep "real life" pure from writing, how can we even get near it meaningfully?

Phew! And 3?

Well, that was my favourite point, and it really got me thinking. As there are a few things I want to hear you elucidate, and as it is something to which you've given some thought, I will try and start a new thread in "Philosophy". Perhaps called " What is Reality, Papa?"

Hugo, Amos, Phaedrus et al, [Edited to add: Of course I should have mentioned Luiseach by name, as it was her post I muscled in on originally. Sorry, L.[/i]]

Sorry to have waffled on so much.

Take care,

KI.

John Page

Hi KI - Croydon, the gateway to Clapham? Must have been a ploughman's lunch then.

It is we who presuppose, not the foundations of language, hence the use of include. I don't hate the word "presuppose", but find difficulty with it - how can one suppose something before you've supposed it! (Perhaps you have to presuppose that you can - damn, regressing again!)
Assuming the brain is the implementor of language, this seems a somewhat foolish endeavor since the set of utterances is driven by brain capability. I do think his work is fascinating in mapping human language (as she is broken) characteristics, though, and think this is essential preparation for an investigation of how the brain actually processes it. Do Hungarian language enabled brains (8 cases) wire themselves differently than English language enable brains, for example.
Thanks, as a relativist, I am wary of such things - its turtles all the way down.
*Kicks text*. There are some things that words cannot describe, but I cannot describe them, except to say they are indescribably by me in words. The text is part of our lives, but does not come alive until interpreted by our minds. Sorry to pontificate - I toally agree with you.
Perhaps we could rename this "What is a parsnip, Papa?"

From the OED:
Now, I'm with contextual theories of language (including deconstruction) that show meaning can vary depending upon the circumstances in which a word is used. For example, I say "Look at that man's nose" and you say "Parsnip" you may be describing the form of the man's nose or you might have just seen your favorite winter vegetable in the market through which we are perambulating.

Through the mechanisms of intersubjectivity we are thus able to share the same "sense" of the word parsnip and, if ambiguous, seek clarification (also part of language). IMO, if we are communicating clearly about material reality, the other part of the binary is not a word but a real, dead, 'parsnip'?

Sorry this is hastily typed, hope it does not come off as condescending. Must go and make some tea - its cold sitting by my window with the snow outside.

Cheers, John

King's Indian

Hello again, John.

Apologies for over-editing the quotation (!), but I'll respond properly tomorrow.
I have now moved officially from "knackered" to "tired and shagged out after a long squawk".
I shall also continue honing my "Papa" thread to a scalpel-like gleam hem hem i dont think.
When did the OED get so obsessive about parsnips? I'm still coming to terms with Our Redeemer's vendetta against figs- no, don't tell me now;tomorrow...
The allusion to Dr. Johnson is double-hard, mate. (South Londonese for, "It rocks!")

Condescending? You? Leave it aht, son!

Ner-night.
KZZZzzzzz...

John Page

Magnifique - un double double entendre!

phaedrus

Could you elaborate as to how you inferred penny lee's confusion from the following?