please help

I want to sleep. But no, because:

I can’t stop
The way I feel
Things you do
Don’t seem real
Tell you what I got in mind
’cause we’re runnin’ out of time
Won’t you ever set me free?

She drives me crazy
Like no one else
She drives me crazy
And I can’t help myself

I can’t get
Any rest
People say
I’m obsessed

She drives me crazy
Like no one else
She drives me crazy
And I can’t help myself

[to my thesis]

Mr. Smith

"...They were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many inferior chapters, till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of philosophy as the doctrine of bodies, of which so much can be known. The doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two distinct sciences. What are called Metaphysics or Pneumatics were set in opposition to Physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime, but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful science of the two. The proper subject of experiment and observation, a subject in which a careful attention is capable of making so many useful discoveries, was almost entirely neglected. The subject in which, after a few very simple and almost obvious truths, the most careful attention can discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequently produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatly cultivated.

When those two sciences had thus been set in opposition to one another, the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a third, to what was called Ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and attributes which were common to both the subjects of the other two sciences. But if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the Metaphysics or Pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this cobweb science of Ontology, which was likewise sometimes called Metaphysics."

[Ev is finishing a chapter and has no time for comment. Refrain from asking him how he came upon a passage of Adam Smith. There is a good reason, but he needs to get back to work. Love "ev".]

NIN does Derrida

I'm reading about Derrida and listening to NIN's "Hurt." It's been a while since I've listened to Trent. After five Zeppelin filled days I decided it was time for a change, and when I failed to find my Tool (apparently I erased the files accidentally), I went for NIN instead. Doesn't do much for making me happier but somewhere in the catharsis there is some joy.

The reason I'm writing is really just to tell you that Derrida and NIN, specifically "Structure, Sign, and Play" and "Hurt," go very well together. Before settling down to read Limited Inc., I decided to head over to Wikipedia to see what the over-obssessed wiki nerds had to say about a man who is regarded alternately as an intellectual luminary of the 20th century, or a great charlatan who managed to fool pompous comparative lit profs in universities across the US. (It's often said that Derrida never received widespread recognition within the French academy, which is partly true, but he did hold a teaching post at L'École Normal Supérieure, colloquially referred to as "Normale," which is the French equivalent of Harvard times ten.) Appropriately, the Wikipedia article has a big red flag at the top saying that the factual content of the article is disputed. Anyways, I was reading this quote from "Structure, Sign, and Play" when a particularly painful part of "Hurt" came up:

the entire history of the concept of structure, before the rupture of which we are speaking, must be thought of as a series of substitutions of centre for centre, as a linked chain of determinations of the centre. Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the centre receives different forms or names. The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. Its matrix [...] is the determination of Being as presence in all senses of this word. It could be shown that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the centre have always designated an invariable presence - eidos, archē, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) alētheia, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth." ("Structure, Sign and Play" in Writing and Difference, p. 353.)


The particular connection had something to do with Derrida's idea of shifting centres, which somehow described to me my particular experience of "Hurt" at that point. Anyways, back to my reading.

Love Ev

thoughts while rereading

Reading books is overrated. I don't exactly mean that, but I couldn't resist the ?????? bombast of that statement. Reading lots of books is overrated. I'm rereading parts of Swann's Way, the first book of In Search of Lost Time for at least the sixth or seventh time. It just gets better. Proust's introduction is sublime. Sometime ago I wrote something stupid about the sublime being a category academics use to escape their own self–edification, at which they horribly fail. If the adjective 'stupid' doesn't qualify as a negation for you, let me put it this way, "it is not the case that...." Wow, look what logic has done to me. I've begun think about how my natural language (English) sentences could be translated into formal logic. This is both good and bad. Probably good to learn how, I can always be intentionally ambiguous later.

Yahoo!

I am so smart, I am so smart, I am so smar! (Imagine Evan singing this to the tune of Ren and Stimpy's "Happy, Happy, Joy Joy.") I had an epiphanously ephiphanic moment this morning (I did have to consult the OED to sort those two out.) I have devised what I think is a new view of the relationship between metonymy and metaphor in Proust. I'm very excited. It is entirely possible that I'll discover someone else has already said the same thing, but so far I haven't, and I've read many of the proustian luminaries.

??????

Back to work.

Love Ev

And there was connectivity.

I have re–emerged from the cave. No, not Mr. Plato's, but my own, self–imposed, cell phone free cave. I've just ordered a Nokia 6102 from Amazon.com. As long as I can navigate the rebate process, I will actually net $75 from the transaction (ignoring the $500 I've just agreed to pay T-mobile over the next year). It's not a particularly swanky phone, but it's not a piece of shit either. Were cost no concern, I might have gotten either a Samsung t809 or a Motorola PEBL. But, as a poor college student, and further as someone who is somewhat uncomfortable with conspicuous consumption, I opted for the Nokia. While pondering the choice—I've been researching phones for about three weeks now—I've frequently asked myself which phone I would buy if money were of no personal concern. The PEBL is one cool little phone. Not as trendy as the RAZR, which, I must sheepishly admit, is a small part of why I like the PEBL more, but much cooler (even apart from that) as it is actually a very well–designed, feature rich, skookum little phone. On the one hand, were I a consumer of greater financial means, I would be inclined to support Motorola for their design achievement, and I might also be inclinde to reward myself for whatever successes I have had. And yet, that money might be put to better use. When talking of cell phones, such questions may almost seem a little excessive as the amount of money involved is so small (to me at least). So how about we change the situation. I have, for many years dreamed, on and off, of owning a BMW M5. It is a beautiful car, and yet sort of practical, by which I mean that it seats more than two people. But I've never been sure that I could actually buy such a car (regardless of my wealth). Why not choose a Honda Civic, or some other car that similarly teems with practicality. I think I might feel like a tool every time I got into my M5. And, if ever I didn't, I fear that I would have lost an important part of who I am. It's not that I have anything against capitalism; market based democracies are the best form of governance we humans have stumbled upon so far. It is instead a of question of my personal priorities, of how I want to allocate my resources, considering all the potential effects of my decisions.

It was recently suggested to me that I should write about something more personal here. I think my friend, call him almost–dad, has a point. When I began this thing, it included a significant amount of personal thoughts, experiences and musings. I don't think it's entirely lost my personal voice—I write about language, philosophy and politics in a way here that I would never dare in an academic paper—but I've stopped talking about my life. My thesis has something to do with this. I spend most of my time either working on my thesis, thinking about my thesis (those two are not always the same), or irresponsibly relating my thesis to things I never should. Case in point: I was recently having what could certainly be called a heart to heart (intentionally left vague, for this is the interweb), and somehow felt it appropriate to say something like the following: "It's not that I want to make this academic, but I can't help but think about Frankfurt's criticism of "postmodern" privileging of the personal over truth....." The specifics of his argument are not to point here, but what is goes as follows: Frankfurt suggests that it is rather absurd to think that we can say anything meaningful about our own experience—ie. be 'sincere'—if we believe it is impossible to recognize truth in the external (not of our mind) world. In his view, it is much easier to recognize truth and falsity in reality than it is to know oneself. From my recent experience, the man has a point. I need a map to Evan, even just to figure out what I want. (Though my reference to Frankfurt was perhaps germane to the discussion, I still felt a bit odd after it.) I often spend too much time being academic to pay attention to how I feel. This is partly intentional. There are things in my heart I'd rather not feel right now, but it's also a matter of being a senior at ??????. I also exagerate slightly. I have been meditating more recently. Even if I haven't used this to look into the "depths of my heart," (this is why I don't like metaphors sometimes, even in normal discourse, what/where is the "depths of my heart" Am I perhaps manufacturing an experience that I'm supposed to have, one that may not even serve me in any positive way?) I have used it to open my mind, keep myself present, and generally be cheerful about the world.

I got to go eat and get backt o work, but I hope all are well.

Love Ev

PS. Now that I've been listening to both Illmatic and Reasonable Doubt for a solid six months, I feel I can make up my mind: Nas knocked Jay out in the first round.

Metaphors in Philosophy

Until recently, I thought metaphors had little place in philosophy. It's not that I subscribe to a literalist view of metaphor, wherein a metaphor means nothing more than its semantic, propositional content, but that I think metaphors are not satisfyingly truth–verifiable (typically, they are not at all truth-verifiable). To be clear about what I'm talking about: take the phrase (this is an example from some academic's paper): "You are the cream in my coffee." By a literalist view, this sentence is nonsense. The indexical 'you' requires a human referent and humans are not "cream". Simple as that. Now for some more interesting examples, and the reason I'm writing. In a paper entitled "Sex, Breakfast, and Descriptus Interruptus," Kenneth Taylor argues for a crossover view of semantics and pragmatics in which semantic contents (what the words 'mean' irrespective of context) may sometimes be indeterminate without some amount of pragmatic interpretation. Specifically, he suggests that "context-independent ingredients of sentence meaning more or less tightly constrain the to–be–contextually determined values of either suppressed or explicit parameters.” (55) He calls this view 'parametric minimalism.' His point in arguing it is that, though there may be prepropositional pragmatic externalities (instances where semantic meaning must be determined by reference to context), the potential meanings of the utterance are constrained by semantic (ie. context independent) factors. This is important because otherwise we might be able to claim (as Récanati does) that all context is important and we might then be lost in a willy–nilly orgy of free association. Intuitively, I agree with Taylor. However, in order to give his argument a semblance of factual underpining, he suggests that sentences typically set "up a semantic scaffolding which constrains, without determining, [their] own contextual completion.” (53) Metaphor, in the form of 'semantic scaffolding,' is already creeping in, but so far, it's alright. I'm happy to take his 'scaffolding' to be an explanatory description and not an assertion of a determinate proposition. However, he soon goes on to construct some perhaps dodgy metaphors. These metaphors creep in as he tries to account for the semantic parameters that constrain utterance meaning (an utterance being an instance, within a specific context, of a particular sentence.) As he says, “sometimes the to-be-contextually determined parameter is explicitly expressed in the syntax." Examples are explicit indexicals, demonstratives and verb tenses. However, Taylor also claims that the parameters are sometimes suppressed. As he admits, saying where they are hidden is difficult, but, nonetheless, he goes on to give us two juicy metaphors to help locate them: "some unexpressed parameters hide in what we might call the subsyntactic basement [first metaphor] of suppressed verbal argument structure." As an example, Taylor says that the verb 'to rain' “has a lexically specified argument place which is θ–marked THEME and that this argument place take places as values.” (53) This is to say that “the subatomic structure [second metaphor] of the verb ‘to rain’ explicitly marks rainings as a kind of change that places undergo.” (53) Taylor says we have a ‘tacit recognition’ of this, and intuitively, I agree, but I don't really think there is any such 'sub-atomic structure'. I would instead advance the idea that our background knowledge of the verb 'to rain' constrains the "to-be-contextually determined" proposition to such a degree that it may seem that there exist context independent semantic parameters only because, with the verb 'to rain', the background knowledge is widely–shared and very well–established. Admittedly, this does not hold up so well to post-modern indeterminacy, but I'm happy to simply assert it as fact. (I mean, hey, Thomas Jefferson and the US Congress did just that sort of sleight of hand when they asserted the "self–evident" truth of the "unalienable Rights" of man. Similarly, the French National Assembly when they passed the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" in 1789.) Unfortunately, when I argue against Taylor in this way, I undermine such assertions. Clearly, I need to become a philosoper–king.

Back to Taylor: A week ago, I would have taken a much harsher view of Taylor's metaphors. I would have said that they assert no proposition (ie. they are not truth-verifiable), and that they obfuscate more than they explain. However, I am now much more sympathetic, and, I think, for good reason. Let us first remember that the philosophy of language is written in a meta–language (thank you Colin Cherry), and that the phenomena of our object language (in this case English) are apparent to us only to the extent that our meta-language contains identifying words. In other words, we can only talk about things for which we have words. As Cherry says, "metaphors arise because we continually need to stretch the range of words as we accumulate new concepts and abstract relationships." (Signs, Language, and Communication, 74) Thus they are often the first step in identifying and discussing a heretofore unrecognized phenomenon. Taylor's "subsyntactic basement" or "subatomic structure" (I prefer the former) may just be such a case. To his credit (unlike Récanati and his 'Availability Principle') Taylor is careful throughout to make clear that his ideas are merely hypothetical. So yeah, let us embrace the philosophical metaphor (sometimes, and with due reservations).

Semantics v. Pragmatics

makes a tasty breakfast. "Have you had breakfast?"

Grice & Taylor v. Récanati, with a little bit of Peirce on the side.

more late.

Ev

ps. And if your think meaning is context depedent, well you're right, but what exactly do you mean (non-naturally, of course) by 'meaning,' and in what way is it dependent on context (and what do you mean by 'context').