/lit/ - Literature

oh hi kierkeegard sup?

stop shitposting

>music
>pure

please go.

>>3228674
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWNaR-rxAic

Please reconsider.

>>3228654

If I wanted to be a cunt, I could say vocal music is basically grunting with tone.

But I'm not a cunt. Maybe.

Music is based on math.

Only pure language is math.

Just go

But maths is just counting.

>>3228698
>Music is based on math.

urine idiot.

just go
>>>/scimu/

>>3228708
http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/overtone.html

Western music is based on the overtone series which was defined by finding the mathematical relationships between intervals found in nature and rounding them to make more mathematical sense, which is more pleasing to the ear.

>>3228724
how intriguing; has nothing to do with math at the fundamental level though

try again

>>3228724
>western art is based on the visible light spectrum which was
just shut up /sci/

>tfw your conversations with others are brief, and only about the immediate circumstances, because you know words will trivializes your thoughts.
>tfw others will misinterpret you.
>tfw your thought will never be shared the same way with another person only using words.
>tfw you have no personality.

>>3228736

Everything is math at the most fundamental level jackass

words are bullshit, we should all just hug it out until we feel it

>>3228750

that's like a blind man saying everything is black. you'll see what you see.

>>3228750
math is a human invention created to describe the fundamental level

jackass

>>3228750
Everything can be talked about in a mathematical way, I'd say. It doesn't mean we get better conclusions out of this perspective though. Just saying.

>>3228755
Fair enough

>>3228750
facepalm3000.jpeg

explain Beethoven's 5th Symphony in strict, mathematical terms to us

>>3228790
I'll save you some time: he can't

>>3228654

How is reality a language?

>>3228805

>>3228805

A language is a system of communication.

Reality is the communication between the senses and the physical world.

>>3228805
Because all you are is language. Your consciousness is just language, your entire identify and sense of self is your language.

>>3228836

That response just makes me think you can't explain yourself.

>>3228837

You are talking about perception, not reality.

>>3228790
dumbass.png

Take music theory before you try to argue musical compositions. You wouldn't think of arguing string theory if you had no grasp on physics would you? The same way you wouldn't ask Brian Greene to explain the main theory of the Elegant Universe in a single post on 4chan. You can facepalm all you want but you know nothing about the academic study of music so it'd be a waste of time

>>3229038

You would be a lot more convincing if you actually responded with an argument and not just an insult.

I'm not the guy you were referring to and don't know who is right, before you respond with colonfury.

i'm neither.
funny world, huh?

>>3229038
there are no words.

can someone, please, get up with his 4th grade reasoning?

just when i thought there was a hope for STEM babies...

>>3229033

perception is reality

>>3229045

p funny sometimes i guess

>>3229154 (cont)
What I'm trying to say is that if you take music down to the most basic level (Western music in this case because that's what I know, although other countries developed scales in similar ways) everything is described in intervals, which were originally [and continue to be] described mathematically according to the patterns in the frequencies they're composed from.

So that's a really roughshod answer on why music is math, but it's endlessly complicated. If you take a college theory course you usually only spend a week or two on it because general knowledge of the mathematics is all you need to understand why some intervals work the way they do, from there on you only need to pay attention to the intervals and their rules.

>>3229043

The problem is that describing an entire song is a colossal project. For something that's performed by a full symphony even a measure is a problem.

You know when you spin one of those flexible tubes with a hole at the end and it makes a sound? And then when you spin it faster it makes a higher pitch? It's the same pattern you find when wind blows through tree leaves. This describes the intervals (measured in wave frequency) that are found in nature and naturally pleasing to the ear. Because some of the jumps are erratic the pattern was smoothed out, lower some frequencies and raising others to make mathematical sense. This is how the basic 8-note scale (which is the standard in Western music) was derived. If you even just took the melodic line from the first full measure of the Beethoven symphony the notes run according to very specific and strict rules in which certain notes, being closer in wave frequency, naturally lead into each other. On top of that you layer the harmonic lines which have to make intervalic sense on their own in addition to the intervals between harmonic lines and melodic lines, etc, etc. Describing an entire song would take at least a days worth of work and would be horrible to try to read and/or understand.

>>3229158

Although was already mentioned that this reasoning is similar to describing art by the wave frequencies of the light that composes it. I'm just saying for the sake of argument that music isn't pure, it's based on something more fundamental

So what's more pure? Math or reality?

Wouldn't you need one to have the other?

>>3229205
reality is just one instance of math

>>3229205

Math is the purest description of our shared perception of reality.

>>3229158
i think there was something that showed the mathematical frequencies were slightly off from what we perceive as intervals

>>3229217

I mentioned that. The 'pure' intervals were altered in order to make more mathematical sense

>>3228678

b-but those lyrics don't make sense

also this is a shitpost thread

>>3229076

>>3229307

that's nice. at least something good came of this thread.

>>3229311

>>3228654

reality is not a language because it does not compromise concepts with semantic relations, everything is immediate

idiot

>>3230390

We have no way of knowing the nature of reality without those relations.

>>3229372
>>3229307
More like this, but less gay. Thanks anon!

Why don't you have a nerdy and weird mathemusician waifu?

>mfw I cannot into maths

>>3229154
>>3229158
the retard is strong in this one; but keep on trying, you're doing very well at making me chuckle.

I like the idea of defining language as something that is self-enclosed so it cannot actually transmit anything. Totally not an autismal idea.

best thread on /lit/

>>3228724
>more mathematical sense, which is more pleasing to the ear

Except that's fucking wrong, you retard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_interval

>>3228895
Go to bed, Lacan.

>>3229158
>described mathematically

The Map is Not The Territory.

This thread is wonderful in that it contains in relatively few posts fundamental misconceptions about the basics of our existence in very different fields.

the fact tht music is based upon structure does not mean it's fucking math.

you can reduce every observable thing to binary. is there a point in approaching everything strictly from the point of math? no.

>>3230421
Women are weird looking.

You know how the Higgs boson and Higgs field show how mass is acquired? You can think of your "pure language" of math as a Boson and the context of both world and perception as the Higgs field. Something is gained in one's transmission through/by the other.

Language is not about discovering origins, or about reducing it to something "pure." That's a stance young poets and academics outside of the languages take. Roughly speaking, language's value is in the mass it acquires through use, misuse, abuse, and the ad-hoc creation of new games. Why? Because the ever-increasing mass of language is the result of it moving through and taking with it many different contexts--including consciousness.

When it is said that language is a social institution, it is to also say that social institutions are language. Both form and inform one another--like a parallax. If I tell you that, "this man is a criminal because he has committed a crime," even in presenting a circular argument I have both called upon and automatically legitimated (through self-reference) the institution of law/order/power and of personhood--a being/agent/social-entity/subject-to--and I have done so within a particular context signing toward a great many things. This is a significant series of forces at play, if you think about it.

Or don't.

Language is the first and last access point of thought/being--logos is thought's telos. The philosopher, like the psychologist, must first consider the language of what is being said before logical or empirical analysis can take place; the mathmatician, like the musician, first undergoes a process of translation--from one language to another, before analysis can take place. Any knowledge gained requires communication to others in order to survive, and therefore language is both first into one's being and last out of it. There's a lot of mass gained in this movement through being.

>>3230543
yes, the male body is far more aesthetic and visually pleasing

no homo, of course

>>3230543

men are weird looking

>>3230546
That's definitely homo.

>>3230520
Please stay up, Deleuze/Hakim Bey.

>>3230545
con't.

The mass that is gained is worthy of study because it contains within it an amalgam of traces--all of which constitute, in parts brought to a whole, the study of all other subjects.

Because reality is experienced and construed subjectively but shared and existed within objectively, language forms the bridge between those two worlds most directly. (That all other subjects and expressions take place through languages should demonstrate its centrality in human experience without further example.)

"If you wish to study the world in a specific capacity, you may do so by studying it in specific; if you wish to study the world in any capacity, you are free to do so through language."

In closing, part of reality dies with the subject; the part that goes on is the part communicated by nature and by other humans. Language, therefore is the only reality external to us that is exchangable and therefore the only reality that does not die with us that we yet have access to. In short, the only useful reality is language.

>>3230559
>>3230545
This could have been tightened up and cleaner, but it's early in the morning and I feel like a boson.

I would have liked to do better justice to a synthesis of Wittgenstein, Saussure, Foucault, Marcuse, Gadamer, Shelley, and Pierce.

>>3230552

Actually, I'm referring to Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski and potentially a little bit to Cloudkicker... but I am thrilled and delighted that you associate this with Deleuze, does he mention it? Because that is the most useful thing I got out of this whole Rhizome / Tree business and his Chomsky bashing. I liked that, because it resonates with my hatred of structuralism in cognitive science, linguistics and 'philosophy'.

>>3230568
>>synthesis of Wittgenstein, Saussure, Foucault, Marcuse, Gadamer, Shelley, and Pierce

Oh, so that's what you were trying to do? I don't like it.

>>many different contexts--including consciousness

Consciousness is the only context for language.

>>Both form and inform one another--like a parallax

That is not 'like' a parallax, that is almost exactly unlike a parallax.

>>The mass that is gained is worthy of study because it contains within it an amalgam of traces--all of which constitute, in parts brought to a whole, the study of all other subjects.

I just chose this passage because it seems to me to be symptomatic of your text. The problem is that it entails nothing. It sounds 'depthy', but it is utterly inconsequential.

>>reality is experienced and construed subjectively but shared and existed within objectively

Oh, now your really want to have your cake and eat it, and also not have it and not eat it, all four at the same time, don't you?

>>In short, the only useful reality is language.

confirmed virgin?

>>3230610

8/10 post i laughed

>>3230602
Wow. I haven't read Korzybski and Cloudkicker has me stumped.

Check this out, from A Thousand Plateaus, in a discussion of linguistics and the failure of certain linguists:

"The rhizome is altogether different, a map is not a tracing. [...] Does not a map contain phenomena of redundancy that are already like tracings of their own? [...] It is a question of method: the tracing should always be put back on the map. This operation and the previous one are not symmetrical. For it is inaccurate to say that a tracing reproduces the map. It is instead like a photograph or X ray that begins by selecting or isolating[...], the tracing has already translated the map into an image[but structural linguists, like psychoanalists are idiots] and so the map is reterritorialized while the territory is deterrorialized."

>>3230621

Cloudkicker is an instrumental metal artist with an album called The Map Is Not The Territory. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure what a 'tracing' is, though.

>>3230610
Ha ha! Let's play.
>I don't like it.
Excellent.

>Consciousness is the only context for language
Anthropocentric much? Taken at its best it's an intentionalist-only perspective. I'm sure I'm misinterpreting you, though, as the subjects of symbolism and interpretation would be speaking against "consciousness only" arguments and those "tree falls in the woods" follow ups.

>That is not 'like' a parallax, that is almost exactly unlike a parallax.
I should have referenced it, but I was referring to the parallax effect, or the phenomena whereby two agents act upon one another (often by means of perception), changing the other while being changed themselves. Like a mirror-cum-observer-effect, but more symbiotic, Elaine Scarry treats the concept really well if you're interested.

>utterly inconsequential
Why so grumpy? Or is that just cynicism? Something worse?--bitterness?! Or did you think I was referring to Levinas' "trace" and you aren't a fan. Or maybe you mistook this instance of the "trace" for Deleuze, which would be a mistake given the context.

>Oh, now your really want to have your cake and eat it, and also not have it and not eat it, all four at the same time, don't you?
Don't mistake what sounds nice for what can't be true. Sophistry is a different thing than you suspect it is; rhetoric serves more than just misdirection.

>confirmed virgin?
Nein.

>>3230645
Grab Anti-Oedipus to start, assuming you're familiar with Freud, Lacan, and the practice of psychotherapy. It's Deleuze's easiest in.

If psychoanalysis isn't something you know somewhat well you might be good to simply start with A Thousand Plateaus. The book is meant to be read rather willy-nilly. You'll pick up his terms slowly, through their continual use, rather than understand them from a more traditional vantage.

A tracing, here, is a few things: the obvious "I've traced this picture, mom," tracing; the tracing of contour lines on a map; the trace, or remnant, of something that was but is no longer; the Lacanian trace. In all cases, given the larger section from which I chunked out liberally, each definition fits. Which is why Deleuze is so lovely to read. I only quoted that, though, to show you how similar it was to Cloudkicker's expression, "The Map is not the Territory." I wouldn't be suprised if it was borrowed. Metal heads love Deleuze and Bey.

Thanks for Korzybski. I'm looking into him as we speak.

>>3228654
Only some math, becasue a lot of math (such as anything dealing with infinity) is bullshit

>>3230647
LitCrit bullshit leaves a bad taste in my mind.

>>3230679
What is litcrit?

>>3230684
Penis.

>>3230657
>I wouldn't be suprised if it was borrowed. Metal heads love Deleuze and Bey.

Well, it became something of a bon mot following Korzybski, so I'm not so sure he got it from Deleuze.

Something tells me you are going to like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i3HyRtdu1o0

Also, I have read some Deleuze, I like him best when he is most Nietzschean, I really cannot tolerate Lacan... generally I have a pained relationship to French 'post-structuralism' (inb4 X is not a post-structuralist), so much of it is purely mythological.

>>3230684
It's when people in English departments talk about things they know nothing about, like psycho-analysis, philosophy, cognitive science, marxism, or whatever else they can get their grubby little minds on. That said, I am one of these people.

>>3228654
I've never understood the valuation of "purity".

Anyone who's slept with a virgin knows the sex is arid; why do so many people expect virgin lands to be lush? Even if you were right it'd be all the more reason to focus on what those languages have become.

Unless, OP, you are stating that you were more interesting, skilled, fertile, and worthy of praise and attention where you were a baby than you are today, you filthy poster you.

<s> Fixing thread </s>

>>3230692
>>3230688
>>3230679

It's mostly shitty English majors who end up throwing that cliche around, from what I've seen. Self-loathing, in jest or not, is a terrible thing.

>>3230692, in specific:
Your list of subjects "English departments" know nothing about is rather brilliant, though: I've an MA in English and am entering into a PhD program for psychiatry (specializing in neurology as it pertains to the concept of "meaning") come September. While I'm pleased to say I've been camped out in literary criticism for about as long as I've had pubic hair, I still don't believe for a moment that I (or my litcrit colleagues in the English department, like my collegues in psychiatry, psychology, or philosophy) (i) know anything or (ii) have pretenses to my unknowing. It's because of (i) and (ii) that I strive to keep learning.

A lot of people do, however, like to pretend they know what "literary criticism" is, what the subject of "English" both is and is limited to, and what complete strangers know and have pretenses to knowing. The unfortunate side to their perspective is that it keeps them from learning and keeps them from testing their knowledge.

>>3230689
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i3HyRtdu1o0
My god... I cannot contain my joy. Thanks for this.

And, oi, I didn't mean to imply Korz borrowed from Deleuze, unless one of them broke the space-time barrier and gave physics a reach around. I do think you're right.

I too have a very hard time tolerating Lacan. I really do see him as a magpie philosopher, pecking at shiny things to put them in his nest as he, by his rules, sees fit. His treatment of structural is SUCH a good example: he took the formulation for the signified as it corresponds to the signifier and, because he wanted to, flipped it, asserted that it was true, asserted that the Austrian structuralists believed it, and then built an entire pillar of his thought out of this disregard for centuries of work on the part of linguists. Deleuze and Guattari take Lacan to school in Anti-Oedipus for this exact thing, even though they disagree with those structuralists.

I, however, appreciate French post-structualism, at least more than deconstruction. Maybe you need some more Barthes in your life? Late Foucault?

>>3230767
>Maybe you need some more Barthes in your life? Late Foucault?

I hate Barthes and late Foucault, but Barthes more. Let me re-post what I said about Barthes somewhen else:

I cannot into Barthes. I have this borderline-autistic thing (some call it 'standards') where whenever I read something by a 'thinker' that is obviously pants-on-head retarded, I discard them entirely (unless I have good reason to believe that there is some kind of fundamental rupture in their thought, in which case I consider what takes place on the other half of the rift).

In the case of Barthes, what did it for me was the fact that he uses a roughly Saussurean conception of language, which he explicitly specifies as entailing that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary, and goes on to claim that photographic images, when they are used to transport meaning, function as such a language. THAT IS FUCKING RETARDED BECAUSE: the relationship between that part of a photograph which depicts amongst other things a car (the 'signifier' as Barthes would claim) and the meaning of 'car' that it is supposed to evoke in the reader (the signified) is EXACTLY COMPLETELY UNLIKE ARBITRARY, in that the ENTIRETY - in shape, form and substance - of the signifier is determined by the ACTUAL signified - its shape, form and substance (granted: 'in the last instance', the 'earlier' instances being the technical circumstances of photography, but still).

When I read something like this, I figure: 'This person clearly does not think about the stuff he writes hard enough. Either he is dumb, or just a lazy thinker, but either way I shouldn't take this asshole seriously'.

>>3228703
>>3228703
>>3228703
>>3228703
>>3228703
>>3228703
>>3228703
>>3228703

>>3230776
On the one hand, the deconstructionists are taking up an important and, at the time, ignored school of thought: antiquated cynicism. Unlike modern cynicism, the original school was highly creative, playful, and productive in returning "decadent" philosophies back into applicable practices.

Unlike Lacan, Barthes wasn't treating, I don't know, sick patients or trauma victims, or working within a field that does. But that's only one way to view Barthe's assholery.

Let me see if I understand you correctly. By Barthes' use of "arbitrary" are you keeping in mind that he means "chosen or assigned without access to origin or original reason for assignment/without rigidly constructed connection" or are you thinking that he means to say the connection is "lolz, totes random"?

Keeping in mind that his goal in that work was to, if I remember this correctly at all, tear down some of the certainty of the logical positivists and the structural linguists, he (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) attacked their method: of systematically arranging the elements of language, meaning, expression, reference, and selfhood in rigidly and 'reason'ably established connections--between signified and signifiers tied together in an almost destined or "transcendental" purpose. In looking at "self-reference," in a semi-parodical manner, he attempts to undermine the simplicity with which structuralism (at the time) was treating the interior-meaning to exterior-expression dynamic since self-reference confused the straight-line of s-S.

>>3230812

Saussure himself came to make a similar criticism when he proposed that signifiers formed a cyclical system of their own--without anything "real" or "signified" needing to step in, making linguistics and psychology the REAL frontiers of study. Derrida's whole poststructural "there is nothing outside the text" was actually just him repeating structuralism's claim.


Anyway. I may be wholly wrong here, having misunderstood you or everything. Where am I off?

>>3230812

Saussure himself came to make a similar criticism of prior Structuralist methods when he proposed that signifiers formed a cyclical system of their own--without anything "real" or "signified" needing to step in, making linguistics and psychology the REAL frontiers of study. Language, Saussure would much later express, as Barthes expresses, references itself without regard for what something may etymologically boil down to. Derrida's whole poststructural "there is nothing outside the text" that became a rallying cry (or was that, "the center is no longer the center?"...) was actually just him repeating Saussure's attack on structuralism.


Anyway. I may be wholly wrong here, having misunderstood you or everything. Where am I off?

>>3230812

I am not sure what text you are talking about, what I read wasn't tongue-in-cheek, let my cite some more of myself to clarify:

"I am generally critical of Saussurean semiotics. I am merely pointing out that in the chapter 'myth today', Barthes describes photography as parallel to and functioning in the same way as language, through signification in which the relationship between signified and signifier is based on arbitrary convention. Even if one generally accepts Saussurean semiotics, this is wrong."

And before you say "Photography, film, other visual media, carry meaning in the Saussurean sense, more in fact than just that!" like some other anon, here is my response:

"No feature of the word 'car' causes it to stand for the concept 'car'. The association of the two in the sign is 'arbitrary'. The word 'tree' could stand for the concept 'car' equally well, apart from the fact that it does not.

However, a picture of a car stands for the concept 'car' because it is a picture of a car. It is entirely impossible that photography would function through a language in which the picture of a tree could stand for the concept of a car just as well as the picture of a car. "

>>3230825
>Where am I off?

I am medium convinced of the degree to which this 'strong textualist' version of the sign, that is the complete neglect of the signified, is already present in Saussure. You could be right, though, certainly people tend to portray Saussure in that way nowadays, but I suspect it might be a projection based on their perspective (presumably steeped in Derridean assumptions). After all, I seem to recall that Saussure thinks signifieds are concepts that actually exist in the brain, which seems more or less incompatible with Derrida's account of things.

That said, the idea that one can look only at the structure of differential relationships is retarded insofar as this structure is the result of the function of language, a function for which meaning is fundamental. This meaning however is not only the differential value of a sign (which I will refer to as vertical). By denying the importance of the relationship between signifier and signified (horizontal), Derrida is creating a travesty of an account of language. The only 'deferral' that takes place in actual language is diagonal, not vertical.

>>3230830
Ah, okay.

The text in reference is Mythologies, which has, ontop of what I was going on and on and on about above, a particularly political leaning.

Social mobility is wanted by the poor and detested by the rich. Mobility, flexibility--freedom: these are things wanted by the underclass and supressed by the overclass. That's at least what Barthes's subtext is stating.

Rather appropriately for what has already been mentioned in this thread, he's reflecting on the relationship between language and social institutions (like class). Associating the rigidity of linguistic structuralism (like the colonial audacity of cultural structuralism at the time) with the rigidity of aristocracy/bourgeois values, he's trying to express a relationship:

That those in power want to feel that power is "natural" and "right" and "proper" and "in order with nature" -- or, in other words, that "a car is a car" -- when, really, nature, class, right and order are all constructs. Or, a "car could be a tree."

A "car" is not a "tree" though. And this, perhaps, is your point? Barthes is, perhaps, trying to say that "a car is a car because the powers that be have said it to be so, and so it rigidly remains that way, but there is no NATURAL reason that a car can't mean 'tree'."

>>3230853
This has become surprisingly relevant:

If there are white horses, one cannot say that there are no horses. If one cannot say that there are no horses, doesn't that mean that there are horses? For there to be white horses is for there to be horses. How could it be that the white ones are not horses?
Advocate: If one wants a horse, that extends to a yellow or black horse. But if one wants a white horse, that does not extend to a yellow or black horse. Suppose that a white horse were a horse. Then what one wants [in the two cases] would be the same. If what one wants were the same, then a white [horse] would not differ from a horse. If what one wants does not differ, then how is it that a yellow or black horse is sometimes acceptable and sometimes unacceptable? It is clear that acceptable and unacceptable are mutually contrary. Hence, yellow and black horses are the same [in that, if there are yellow or black horses], one can respond that there are horses, but one cannot respond that there are white horses. Thus, it is evident that a white horse is not a horse.

>>3230843

Insofar as I may say, I think you're right about Saussure. The signified is swept under the rug, or, rather, into the brain. Thus his cockcrow for semiotics. It's Derrida that I believe agrees with Saussure: that the signified is in the mind.

What was your take on Derrida's construction of this?

And... I want to hear more about the deferral as diagonal. Fascinating idea.

(Though I loved Derrida in undergrad, read everything by him, about 3/4 of the way through his body of work I started seeing so much inconsistancy, so much judeo-christian faith, so much of the very stuff he was tearing down in others, that I just got sick of him. I stopped taking anything he said seriously. I know this, too, is an immature perspective of him... but I still feel burned by the guy.)

>>3230904
"Il n'y a pas de hors-texte": while Derrida, quite literally means, there is nothing outside of the text, the text in question is CONtext. A play, but a useful one, he asserts that there is no getting outside of epistemology, the "system," that there is no reality accessible that exists outside of language.

Saussure is saying a similar if not identical thing here: the signified-signifier system is a closed system, ultimately, and one that does not rely on the external world. Speech is sufficient. Psycholinguistics, more specifically semiotics, is sufficient. In positing this, it follows that there is nothing linguistic outside of this system, outside of the setting for the speech-act--outside of the context for language, which, of course, is the mind.

Derrida and Saussure are not monadists, solipsists, or strange existential nihilists, especially since they recognize the validity and existence of things outside of the self; they recogize the external world as pre-linguistic. For Derrida, this prelinguistic state of affairs is "the trace/mark," and for Saussure it is the referent or the object signed.

>>3230853

I am completely stumped by how your post has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about... I'm sure you mean well, though. I was talking about Barthes' analysis of myth as a second-order semiological system, which has as its signifiers entire signs from a regular semiological system, which he calls the language object. Now this language object can be language, but also photography. Barthes states that the language object is a semiological system which works according to the Saussurean conception, including the arbitrary relationship of signified and signifier, which for photography is demonstrably retarded.

>>3230861

10/10

>>3230904
>I want to hear more about the deferral as diagonal.

My favorite Derrida goof is the dictionary example: The claim that meaning is always deferred and never simply present is supposedly demonstrated by referring to a dictionary. You don't know the meaning of one word, you look it up but instead of meaning you get more words! How kafkaesque! (monsieur)

But really, that's a crock of shit. The implication is that you could then look up each word in the original explanation and continue to do this to the explanations for each word used in this first explanation, and so on. What results is a circulation inside a closed system, very much like what Derrida describes as différance. But is this how a dictionary works? Fuck no.

A dictionary works, we know that. They sell well, they are very useful. Why are they useful? Because typically upon looking up an explanation for a word, we understand it because we know what the words in the explanation mean. What is the 'meristem'? I don't know, but if I look it up there will be words in the explanation like 'plant'. Is the meaning of 'plant' defined exclusively by it's opposition to other words? No. It's made up mostly of my past experience with plants, and also a little bit of differential relationships to other words. However, this differential relationship only makes sense because of the extra-linguistic meaning that words refer to, tap into, evoke, or otherwise access.

>>3231109
Yes, concepts are interrelated in a differential manner, you know that yellow is not red, not blue, and so on. But that alone is not sufficient. If each sign got its meaning from the differential relationship to the other signs, none of them would mean anything. The only place where meaning could actually take place would be in these differential relationships. However, not only is this incompatible with Saussure (and there is really no way to explain why the differential relations are the way the are, and not some completely different way, if we do not refer to an outside. Why are we able to talk about the world in such a successful manner as to coordinate our living, hunting, fucking? Because that is what we developed language skills for, language is a tool that works on our behaviour in the world in a cooperative way, ignoring that is retarded), but the idea of a relational meaning in which the individual elements actually do not possess meaning themselves points us to the solution for this mess: Connectionism (the alternative to symbol processing in cognitive science).

>>3231087
>including the arbitrary relationship of signified and signifier, which for photography is demonstrably retarded.

I'm quite sure we're talking about the same thing, albeit from different angles...

I don't believe the photography element of which he speaks to be any more or less silly than his take on language. Consider it in less linguistic terms.

I say something, and it DENOTES something specific. That's its content. That same thing said may have a different tone, mood, a different form. That's it's CONNOTATION. Content, form, denotation, connotation: all of these are parts of what we ofter refer to as a "poetic" or "style".

I photograph something, and it DENOTES something specific: objects in an arranged scene. That's its content. That same photograph may, in its total arrangement, a different tone, mood, a different form. That's like that photograph's CONNOTATION. Content, form, denotation, connotation: all of these are parts of what we call "composition".

The parts of a poetic like the parts of a composition create a media's language, a series of tools used to convey. Photography, like language, abides by arbitrarily (but still chosen and agreed upon!) rules in order to translate meaning. That's where the political agenda, and his reason for extrapolating on two seemingly different but uncannily alike things, language and photography, comes in and reveals itself as his thesis.

I don't see why language works for you but photography doesn't? Even physiologically, you just substitute the mechanisms of speech for vision to end up with a similar neurological account to Saussures'...

>>3231109
You're relying on the basis of "we use it, so it works," which doesn't really hold water.

Difference helps us, but is hardly philosophically sound or complete. Derrida's project, one of them, is to destabilize the belief that we are close to some grand solution--a unified theory of everything (language.)

>this thread

>>3231124

pic related is a car. Is it a car because of arbitrary convention? Fucking no. It's a picture of a car, because it's a picture of a car. How are you not getting this?

>>3231140
>You're relying on the basis of "we use it, so it works," which doesn't really hold water.

No I'm not. I am merely pointing out that in addition to other reason why Derrida is wrong, he is also wrong because his claims entail that language cannot possibly work the way it does actually work.

Math, like language, uses a system of arbitrary symbols to denote concepts. How is it pure again?

>>3228750
Nope.
Reducing all sciences either to physics or mathematics was a failed project. Nobody except internet aspies and omgilovescience nerds holds that position.

Complex systems and systems theory kind of fucked explanatory reductionism in this ass.

Maybe try reading something other than webcomics sometime?

http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=reductionism

>>3231160
"It is a car [...] It's a picture of a car, because it's a picture of a car."

Because that's insanely circular, aside from kind of not what Barthes is saying... but the circularity of the last pic = pic is the point, demonstrating that the selection is arbitrary since circular logic can't apply! Gods didn't float down and say, "THIS IS A PICTURE OF A CAR! CALL IT SUCH!"

Car = car, picture of car = picture of car, car in picture = car in picture... the problem Barthes, Derrida, and, apparently, myself are trying to get across is that the abitrary-ness of the system is in the NAMING and the VALUATION of the terms in play.

They don't mean anything in and of themselves. "C" and "A" and "R" in French means something completely different. We didn't call it a "CAR" because the sound it makes is "CAARRRRRRRRRR" or that it looks like a "C" and an "A" and an "R". The choices were as random, arbitrary, and incestuous as dictionary definitions pointing toward one another.

Keep in mind, mate, you're not just looking at words but the metaphysics they imply. Ask yourself: "What is a car?" Look it up. Ask yourself what one thing on that page is. REALLY IS. A dictionary will not get down to the metaphysical core of a things thingness.

BUT we often, in logic, philosophy, psychology, and linguistics, treat language as though it will. That's Derrida's point. Barthes' master point is that we use this broken system to keep the underclass down.

>>3231199

The relationship between the word car and the idea of a car is arbitrary, conventional. That is symbolization, denoting a concept by a signifier that has no inherent relationship to its signified.

A photograph of a car is not an instance of symbolization. It is a reproduction of sensory data of a car, without any instance of encoding according to a conventional system of signs in between. If you see a car, you recognize the car through your visual faculties, without recourse to a linguistic representation. If you see a picture of a car, the process is the same, because of the isomorphism between the visual data provided by an actual car and the visual data provided by the picture of a car.

The worst part is I'm not even sure whether you are a troll or just a hardcore victim of what the humanities have become...

>>3231199
still looks like a car to me.

>>3231213
>still looks like a car to me.

YES, THAT IS MY POINT.

>>3231199
>Keep in mind, mate, you're not just looking at words but the metaphysics they imply

Not only am I not 'just looking at words', but I am in fact not looking at words at all, I'm looking at a computer screen on which I see a picture, in which I see a car.

>>3230830
>>3231160

To resolve this inconsistency in Barthes it is necessary to consult Pierce's typology of signs:

the photograph is an iconic sign. It is like a word because they are both signs; however words are absolutely arbitrarily symbolic; iconic signs share at least some of the characteristics of the referent or signified. Yet the remainder left over of the photograph of a car's difference from a car (you cannot drive it, smell its exhaust, etc.) belies its existence as a sign, and at least somewhat partially arbitrary. This is why photographs don't always perfectly capture what our eyes see, which is also not what a dog's eyes see, for example.

>>3231211
Insult all you wish, but you're the one flattening the terrain of symbolism in an attempt to say that a "picture of a car" is "a car."

Because I don't see you trying to hop into that picture I can assume you, on some level, understand that is not a car but the image of a car, perhaps even a representation of a car on the medium of (well, since this is a screen) light (or stroboluminesence). A picture, an image, a representation, perhaps--could it be?!--a symbol of a car.

The picture taken with the intention to portray something, convey meaning through content and form (otherwise composition), which transforms an object into a signified and the picture--a representation, or symbol of a car--a signifier.

>>3231252
>(you cannot drive it, smell its exhaust, etc.)

While I appreciate your post, I would want to point out that these aspects are not really a coherent guarantee of signification. If I see a real car that is very far away, I cannot hear it, smell its exhaust, or drive it. It could be standing somewhere far away and I wouldn't even be sure if it is a real car or a picture of a car. This shows how unimportant the arbitrary part of the picture is (I'm not entirely sure I agree that a picture is arbitrary at all).

>>3231280
If you've ever met a photographer, or considered photography as an art, rather than the staunch strangely reductionist view that "it is just captured moment of world," you'll understand that photography is:
i) intentional
ii) perspective based
iii) meaningful, based on composition and context
iv) conveying meaning through techniques that manipulate the symbolic presence of elements in the photograph.

>>3231271
>The picture taken with the intention to portray something, convey meaning through content and form (otherwise composition), which transforms an object into a signified and the picture--a representation, or symbol of a car--a signifier.

Even if you insist on calling them signifier and signified, surely you are not trying to argue that the fact that a picture of a red car also will depict the car as red is a matter of arbitrary convention? Because that is the only thing that I criticised FROM THE VERY BEGINNING ON.

>>3231287
I'm actually aruging that you don't understand what "arbitrary" means in this context.

Can I hand you... a dictionary?

>>3231280


Cameras usually have operators, don't they? Although there are rules and customs of composition, and natural laws regarding the capture of light, can the arbitrary ever be systematically excluded from the transformation of the car into an image? How?

>>3231287

What governs the decision to capture the car as an image that is red rather than in the greyscale spectrum?

>>3231292
Yes, but that is not the issue at stake here. Barthes in his use of photography as a language object analyzes a picture of a black soldier saluting a french flag. For him, it does not matter whether you have a picture of a black soldier, or a linguistic representation of a black soldier. Thus, any 'artistic expression' that you are insisting on is not actually what I am questioning, I am talking about our ability to recognize a car on the picture of a car. Yes, a photograph of a car can symbolize strength, speed or whatever-the-fuck, but it does not symbolize a car, it depicts a car.

>>3231287
In the end, though, it is not a red car but a picture. It may not even be right to describe the picture as "red" because presumably, while the subject is the car, there is some background of some kind.

>>3231306
>>3231313

Composition and colour are not the issues at stake here. The question is not why a photograph is taken in a specific way, but why are we able to recognize a picture of a car as a car? Is this because something on the picture functions as a conventional sign for car in the same way as the word 'car'? Or do we recognize a car on a picture of a car through the same visual pattern recognition that we use to recognize an actual car, that is without any symbolization?

>>3231315
Alright, last attempt to get us back in sync. I liked where it was going back when this was creative and not so finicky....

Saussure expresses that signifiers (sounds) and signifieds (concepts) are connected together by the process of signification. Barthes states that this process does not necessarily end at this point, as a sign can take part in a new level of signification where it becomes the signifier to a new signified at another level. For example, at the most basic level of signification which Barthes refers to as denotation, a photograph may suggest the sign "car". The sign "car" can in turn become a signifier for a further signified. For example one type of car can conjure up the sign "Jaguar XJS", another the sign "BMW". To Barthes, this second level of meaning at the level of denotation is "mythical". He argues that we tend to see such associations as natural and given (XJS = "luxury", BMW = "sport") when in fact they are arbitrary constructions.

"Arbitrary" here means chosen, not essential. Let's say I was in a car accident in a BMW. A picture of a BMW, any BMW, could represent that "sign" of BMW--the mythic thing--and so I associate it, not with sport car, but disaster. These third-order signings, these myths, like that of BMW = Disaster are arbitrary, as in not universal.

This "signing" at the level above sound and concept (above Saussy) we may call an encoding. This encoding we may take as an experience that is Absolutely truthful, essential, Truth. Of course, there is nothing essential, absolutely truthful about this third-order sign. That's all Barthes is saying here.

>>3231350
I didn't want to have the last word, I just wanted to clear things up.