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Ratio (new series) XIII 4 December 2000 00340006
SESSION TWO
Jonathan Dancy (chair): In this session we are going to have a
paper by Adrian Moore of St. Hughs College, Oxford. Adrian
Moore has written extensively on the topics of infinity and the
ineffable. In his most recent book Points of View, he has explored
the possibility of whether we can form absolute representations:
representations of the world which are not simply representations
from our point of view. Today he has very kindly agreed to offer
an appreciation, perhaps from his point of view, of certain arguments in the work of Derrida. Fittingly, his paper is called Arguing with Derrida.
ARGUING WITH DERRIDA
A.W. Moore
1.
My brief today is to give my reaction to some selected arguments
from the work of Derrida. I shall try to follow this brief by relating two of Derridas best known texts, Diffrance and Signature, Event, Context,1 to some of my own interests and concerns.
But first, I want to say a few words about the particular profile that
I bring to this task.
2.
It is no secret that there are philosophers who deride the work of
Derrida. There are those indeed who think that it is pernicious. I
unequivocally distance myself from either category. However,
although I greatly admire Derridas work, I can claim no special
expertise in it. The reaction to his work that I shall offer today,
though it is not the reaction of an antagonist, is the reaction of an
outsider.
1
Both in Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Brighton: Harvester
Press, 1982).
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While I applaud the spirit of this way of characterizing conceptual philosophy, I query the letter of it. There are certainly important distinctions between the practice of conceptual philosophy
and the practice of science. But I do not think it is helpful to
express these in terms of the pursuit of knowledge. There are
many ways of knowing things. Having a clear grasp of concepts
seems to me to be one of them. Someone who has a clear grasp
of a given family of concepts knows how to handle them; knows
what it is for them to apply; knows his or her way around a particular part of conceptual space. So I do not think that conceptual
philosophy should be dissociated from the pursuit of knowledge.
It is a different question whether it should be dissociated from the
pursuit of truth. Not all knowledge consists in the possession of
truth. This is an exceedingly important point to which I shall
return. But even if having a clear grasp of concepts is a case in
point (that is, even if having a clear grasp of concepts is a case of
knowing something without thereby being in possession of any
truth), the primary way of achieving and displaying such a grasp
will still be through the affirmation of truths. Conceptual philosophy may not involve the pursuit of truth in the way in which
science does; but there is an important sense, it seems to me, in
which conceptual philosophy has a commitment to the truth. A
conceptual philosopher is as beholden to eschew that which is
either false or nonsensical as a scientist is.5
3.
What I have said so far has involved all sorts of presuppositions
that are open to challenge. But I shall not attempt to defend it. I
have said it just to indicate where I am coming from.
Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974),
122133; Michael Dummett, Can Analytical Philosophy be Systematic, and Ought it to
Be?, reprinted in his Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth, 1978), pp. 438 ff.; and
P.M.S. Hacker, op. cit., pp.110ff. But note: this further illustrates why I do well to eschew
the label analytic philosophy here. There are plenty of philosophers who standardly
count as analytic philosophers and who champion precisely the opposite view (the view
that philosophy is continuous with science). The best known of these is Quine: see e.g.
W.V. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, reprinted in his From a Logical Point of View:
Logico-Philosophical Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1961).
5
There is also a level, it seems to me, at which a conceptual philosopher is as beholden
to eschew that which is either false or nonsensical as an artist is. However, I would be wary
of saying that this distinguishes conceptual philosophy from any other kind of philosophy.
The comparison with science, on the other hand being concerned with conceptual
philosophys primary or most suitable mode of expression does.
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
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Derrida 1982, p. 6.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 23.
Ibid., p. 26, emphasis in original.
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365
what makes sense whereby some uses of words count both as failing to make sense and as being utterly straightforward examples
of how the words can be put to successful use in accord with their
meanings. Think, for instance, of an ungrammatical string of
words such as hungrily eat bread cheese, whose use, in a poem
maybe, might because of what the words mean conjure up all
sorts of images and have all sorts of associations and connotations
and thereby convey all sorts of ideas.23 Indeed any criteria for what
makes sense will allow for this (that is, for the possibility of uses of
words that fail to make sense even though they are in straightforward accord with the words meanings), provided only that the
criteria are not so undemanding that each use of a word that
works its meaning to some effect automatically counts as making
sense. Nor must we equate the nonsensical with the non-serious.
There is a perfectly respectable view of mathematics, for instance,
according to which mathematics consists in the manipulation of
nonsensical symbols: what gives the manipulation its point is its
application to other uses of words, notably in science, that are not
nonsensical. Derrida mentions this view in his essay, in connection with Husserl.24 It is also, interestingly, the view that Wittgenstein endorses in his Tractatus, the very work in which he
acknowledges what he himself has written as nonsense.25
Why then should there not be certain playful uses of language,
perhaps involving language games in what might antecedently
have been thought of as unsuitable contexts, perhaps involving
neologisms, perhaps involving contradictions, perhaps involving
nonsense, whose effect, given the meanings of the words in play,
is, if only as a matter of brute psychological fact, that those who
encounter these uses, or some of those who encounter these uses,
have insights that are, in some perfectly orthodox sense, ineffable? And why should philosophy not include such uses? Cannot
much of Derridas essay Diffrance be viewed in this way? Or of
Wittgensteins Tractatus? the difference perhaps being that the
nonsense in the Tractatus masquerades as sense, thereby giving
Wittgensteins work a disingenuousness that Derridas essay, with
its overt playfulness, lacks. If so, then we are again brought to see
the failure, or at least the limitations, of conceptual philosophy.
Because of its commitment to a certain paradigm of language use,
23
24
25
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namely that in which truths are affirmed, it cuts itself off from the
very uses of language that are appropriate to so much that is of
philosophical importance. (Who knows but that Frege would
have done better if he had written the concept horse under
erasure?)26
7.
But despite the power of this onslaught, I am convinced that
conceptual philosophy can withstand it. I agree that some things
are ineffable. I agree that philosophy, and in particular conceptual philosophy, has to reckon with these things. And I agree that
certain playful uses of language, most notably those involving the
creative use of what is strictly nonsense, can be used to communicate some of these things (in a sense that is quite compatible
with their ineffability). These are all claims that I have been at
pains to defend elsewhere.27 But I also still want to insist that
conceptual philosophy must in some sense eschew these playful
uses of language; and that its own primary mode of expression is
the affirmation of truths. The question is how to resolve the
apparent tension between these beliefs. In attempting to answer
this question, and thereby to defend conceptual philosophy, I
hope not only to maintain the dialogue with Derrida but also to
suggest ways in which his style of philosophy and conceptual
philosophy the style of philosophy that I try to practise myself
can be of mutual benefit.
8.
The first task confronting any conceptual philosopher trying to
come to terms with the ineffable is to show how it is possible to
affirm truths about the ineffable without belying its very ineffability. For example, consider my claim, earlier, that what Derrida
is drawing attention to is something that can never be the subject
of any truth. Whatever else it was, that claim cannot have been a
truth. Otherwise what Derrida is drawing attention to would
have been the subject of at least one truth, namely that one.
Whenever we try to discuss the ineffable, there is a constant threat
of self-stultification.
See e.g. the translators preface to Of Grammatology, pp. xiiixx.
A.W. Moore, Points of View (Oxford: Oxford University Press), esp. Chs. 79. Much of
what follows in this essay is a summary of the argument of these three chapters.
26
27
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28
Or at least, it may be that, and very often is that. This qualification is needed to square
with the answer that I gave to Thomas Baldwin during the question-and-answer session at
the conference. See the transcript below.
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9.
But wait! This defence of conceptual philosophy depends
crucially on a distinction: the distinction between talking about
playful uses of language and actually indulging in them; between
adverting to abnormal ways of using words and using those same
words in abnormal ways. Yet is this not just the kind of distinction that Derrida calls into question in Signature, Event,
Context?
There is a more general distinction at stake here, a distinction
that many conceptual philosophers would regard as a basic analytic
tool. This is the distinction between using a word and mentioning it: the use/mention distinction.29 A fairly orthodox way of
characterizing this distinction would be as follows. Using a word
involves putting it to service in a way that exploits whatever meaning it has, in order to draw attention to some aspect of reality.
Mentioning a word involves putting it to service in a way that waives
whatever meaning it has, in order to draw attention to the word
itself. Among the various means of mentioning a word, the
commonest, at least in writing, is to put the word between quotation marks. (An analogue sometimes encountered in speech is to
dance ones fingers while saying the word.) Thus, by way of illustration, whereas cats have four legs, cats note the singular verb
coming up has four letters. A word that is mentioned need not
itself have any sense. Thus we can say, truly, that splonk has six
letters. Indeed we can say, truly, that splonk is a piece of nonsense.
(Mentioning nonsense does not entail talking nonsense.)
It is clear how this distinction, if it were viable, could sustain
any pretensions we might have to discuss certain word games
while remaining faithful to the methodological principles of
conceptual philosophy, and in particular while maintaining a suitable distance from playing such games ourselves: we could do this
precisely by mentioning the words in play. But it is clear also that
there is much in this characterization of the distinction that
would be an anathema to Derrida. He once said, I try to place
myself at a certain point at which . . . the thing signified is no
longer easily separable from the signifier.30 And in Signature,
29
This is one of the distinctions that J.R. Searle, in his commentary on Signature,
Event, Context Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida, in Glyph 1 (1977)
famously accuses Derrida of failing to heed: see p. 203.
30
See David Wood and Robert Bernasconi (eds.), Derrida and Diffrance (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 88.
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Using any wordinvolves one in a history, a tradition of observation, generalization, practice and theory. It also involves
one in the activity of interpreting that tradition, and of adapting
it to new contexts, extending and criticizing it.36
The third of the problems on which I wish to fasten is contextual.
Even if the characterization above had been correct, it would not
have helped with my defence of conceptual philosophy. If mentioning words really did involve putting them to service in a way that
waived whatever meaning they had, so as to draw attention to the
words themselves, then a good translation of a text in which certain
words were mentioned would, all else being equal, leave those
words intact. Yet clearly, if I describe, in English, the relationship
between some given state of ineffable knowledge and some given
playful use of language, then any examples of that use of language
that I give will themselves be in English; and any translation of what
I say into French will involve their French equivalents. This means
that, on the characterization above, I shall not have mentioned the
words in play. But mentioning the words in play was precisely what
was supposed to enable me to describe that use of language while
keeping a suitable distance from it.
So how does my defence of conceptual philosophy stand now?
11.
Well, ironically, I think it is bolstered. Whether one has said something that is a candidate for being true whether one has to that
34
For an expansion of these ideas see A.W. Moore, How Significant is the
Use/Mention Distinction?, in Analysis 46 (1986). (But note that I do not take the same
forthright attitude in that article to how the distinction should be construed. Rather I
concede that there are alternative ways of construing it, and, in particular, that it can be
construed as a distinction of degree. This is not the volte-face that it appears to be. It is just
that I have elected, in the current essay, not to construe the distinction in one of these
other ways. I could just as well have done so. But if I had, then even though much of what
I have said above and much of what I shall say below would have had to be reformulated,
the substance would not have been affected.)
35
Roland Barthes, From Work to Text, in J.V. Harari (ed.), Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structural Criticism (Oxford: Methuen, 1980), p. 77.
36
Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), p. 203, emphasis in original.
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