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All the ideas for 'Demonstratives', 'Fragments' and 'Implications'

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 6. Deconstruction
Deconstructing philosophy gives the history of concepts, and the repressions behind them [Derrida]
     Full Idea: To 'deconstruct' philosophy would be to think the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time determine what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid, making itself into history by this motivated repression.
     From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.5)
     A reaction: All of this type of philosophy is motivated by what I think of as (I'm afraid!) a rather adolescent belief that we are all being 'repressed', and that somehow, if we think hard enough, we can all become 'free', and then everything will be fine.
The movement of 'différance' is the root of all the oppositional concepts in our language [Derrida]
     Full Idea: The movement of 'différance', as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language, such as sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture etc.
     From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.7)
     A reaction: 'Différance' is a word coined by Derrida, and his most famous concept. At first glance, the concept of a thing which is the source of all differentiation sounds like a fiction.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 10. Two-Dimensional Semantics
Indexicals have a 'character' (the standing meaning), and a 'content' (truth-conditions for one context) [Kaplan, by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro]
     Full Idea: Kaplan distinguished two different semantic features of indexical expressions: a 'character' that captures the standing meaning of the expression, and a 'content' that consists of their truth-conditional contribution in particular contexts.
     From: report of David Kaplan (Demonstratives [1989]) by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro - Introduction to 'Two-Dimensional Semantics' 1
     A reaction: This seems so clearly right that there isn't much to dispute. You can't understand the word 'I' or 'now' if you don't understand both its general purpose, and what it is doing in a particular utterance. But will this generalise to other semantics?
'Content' gives the standard modal profile, and 'character' gives rules for a context [Kaplan, by Schroeter]
     Full Idea: Kaplan sees two aspects of meaning, the 'content', reflecting a thing's modal profile, which is modelled by standard possible worlds semantics, and 'character', giving rules for different contexts. Proper names have constant character; indexicals vary.
     From: report of David Kaplan (Demonstratives [1989]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 1.1.1
     A reaction: This gives rise to 2-D matrices for representing meaning, and the possible worlds are used twice, for evaluating meaning and then for evaluating context of use. I've always been struck by the two-dimensional semantics of passwords.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / d. Study of history
Dividing history books into separate chapters is disastrous [Weil]
     Full Idea: The division of history textbooks into chapters will cost us many disastrous mistakes.
     From: Simone Weil (Fragments [1936], p.131)
     A reaction: Nice observation. The point is that we fail to grasp what really happened if we draw sharp lines across history.