display all the ideas for this combination of texts
20 ideas
| 21894 | Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks in all language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks behind all language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21886 | Meanings depend on differences and contrasts [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Meaning depends on 'differences' (contrasts). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21930 | For Aristotle all proper nouns must have a single sense, which is the purpose of language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: A noun [for Aristotle] is proper when it has but a single sense. Better, it is only in this case that it is properly a noun. Univocity is the essence, or better, the telos of language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] His target seem to be Aristotelian definition, and also formal logic, which usually needs unambiguous meanings. {I'm puzzled that he thinks 'telos' is simply better than 'essence', since it is quite different]. |
| 21884 | Capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21935 | The sign is only conceivable as a movement between elusive presences [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The sign is conceivable only on the basis of the presence that it defers, and moving toward the deferred presence that it aims to reappropriate. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: [Glendinning gives no source for this] I take the fundamental idea to be that meanings are dynamic, when they are traditionally understood as static (and specifiable in dictionaries). |
| 21933 | Writing functions even if the sender or the receiver are absent [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: Writing can and must be able to do without the presence of the sender. ...Also writing can and must he able to do without the presence of the receiver. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: In simple terms, one of them could die during the transmission. This is the grounds for the assertion of the primacy of writing. It opposes orthodox views which define language in terms of sender and receiver. |
| 21654 | The "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning says every expression in a language has a referent [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The picture of language often called the "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning says every expression in natural languages refers; they simply differ in what they refer to. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems obvious that at least there are syncategorematic terms like 'not' and 'or' and 'maybe' that are internal to language. I'm inclining to the opposite view of Paul Pietroski. Hofweber says if all words are names, they can't add up to truth. |
| 21641 | Inferential role semantics is an alternative to semantics that connects to the world [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: An inferential role semantics is generally seen as a large-scale alternative to a semantics based on reference and other language-world relations. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 03.4.5) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the other obvious language-world relation is truth. Being a robust realist, I take it I have to be strongly committed to semantics which connects to the world - or do I? Reality is robust, but our talk about it is evasive? |
| 21931 | 'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The intention to oppose polysemia with dissemination does not aim to affirm that everything we say is ambiguous, but that polysemia is irreducible in the sense that each and every 'meaning' is itself subject to more than one understanding. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: The key point, I think, is that ambiguity and polysemia are not failures of language (which is the way most logicians see it), but part of the essential and irreducible nature of language. Nietzsche started this line of thought. |
| 21885 | Words exist in 'spacing', so meanings are never synchronic except in writing [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Words only exist is 'spacings' (of time and space), so there are no synchronic meanings (except perhaps in writing). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21638 | Syntactic form concerns the focus of the sentence, as well as the truth-conditions [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Syntactic form is not only related to the truth conditions of a sentence; it is also related to what focus an utterance of a sentence will have. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber has commendably studied some linguistics. The idea of mental and linguistic 'focus' increasingly strikes me as of importance in many areas of philosophy. E.g. in the scope of ethics, on whom should you focus? |
| 21658 | Properties can be expressed in a language despite the absence of a single word for them [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Simply because there is no single word in a certain language for a certain property doesn't mean that it isn't expressible in that language. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 09.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Good. For example a shade of blue for which there is no label might be 'the next darkest discriminable shade of blue adjacent to the one we are looking at'. And then the one after that... But 'tastes better than Diet Pepsi' in ancient Greek? |
| 21659 | 'Being taller than this' is a predicate which can express many different properties [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: It is said that not every property can be expressed because there are more properties than there are predicates. ...But the same predicate can be used to express many different properties: 'being taller than this' depends on what 'this' refers to. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: A good example, but being a comparative and relying on a demonstrative indexical makes it a favourable example. 'Being made of iron' doesn't have much scope for expressing many properties. |
| 21655 | Compositonality is a way to build up the truth-conditions of a sentence [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Compositional semantics assigns semantic values to various expressions in order to generate the truth conditions of the sentences in which they can occur correctly, ...thus leading to the truth-conditions of the sentence. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.3) | |
| A reaction: I favour both the compositional and the truth-conditional accounts of semantics, but I am not sure how to fit the pragmatic and contextual ingredient into that picture. You can't leave out psychology. |
| 21656 | Proposition have no content, because they are content [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: If there propositions then they do not have content, because they are content. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: This sounds right. A rather obvious regress threatens if you say otherwise. |
| 21635 | Without propositions there can be no beliefs or desires [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: If there are no propositions, then there are no contents, and thus there are no beliefs and desires. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 01.4.3) | |
| A reaction: A simple but powerful point. Those who claim that there are only sentences (and no propositions) can hardly claim that you must formulate a sentence every time you have a specific belief or desire. |
| 21662 | Do there exist thoughts which we are incapable of thinking? [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Might there be some thought token that has a different content than any such token we can in principle have? | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 10.3.3) | |
| A reaction: For me the idea that a thought might exist which can never be thought is an absurdity, but people who believe in the external existence of parts of reality called 'propositions' seem committed to it. A baffling view. |
| 7357 | People who control others with fluent language often end up being hated [Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: Of what use is eloquence? He who engages in fluency of words to control men often finds himself hated by them. | |
| From: Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE], V.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't recall Socrates making this very good point to any of the sophists (such as Gorgias). The idea that if you battle or connive your way to dominance over others then you are successful is false. Life is a much longer game than that. |
| 21645 | 'Semantic type coercion' is selecting the reading of a word to make the best sense [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: 'Semantic type coercion' is where an expression of variable type is forced to take a particular type on a particular occasion so that the sentence as a whole in which it occurse is semantically interpretable. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 05.4.4) | |
| A reaction: He compares 'and' in 'John sang and Mary danced' with 'John and Mary danced together', where 'and' can vary in type, and we adopt the reading that makes sense. Hofweber says we do this with number language. He favours 'cognitive need'. |
| 21639 | 'Background deletion' is appropriately omitting background from an answer [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: 'Background deletion' is the pheomenon that what isn't focused in an answer, what is the background, can be left out of the answer, with the resulting sub-sentential answer nonetheless being appropriate. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.6.2) | |
| A reaction: [I'm struck by the verbosity of this sentence, from an over-long book] It is not unreasonable to think that each conversational exchange has an implicit and agreed domain of quantification. Well, 'focus', then. |