The Book of Mormon's Use of the Tower of Babel and the Adamic Language as the Power of God

[clarkgoble]

19 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I guess the real question is how he differs from the determinism in Saussure.

The main difference is in having a trichotomy rather than a two factor logic. Umberto Eco and Jacques Derrida wrote some interesting works contrasting them although that may be a bit much to point you towards. Basically for Saussure (at least in the received version although not apparently necessarily the individual himself) the signifier and signified are inseparable. They are inseparable. For Peirce the sign connects the object to the interpretant and the interpretant ends up being key. That first off opens up a lot more possibilities. Second Saussure's semiotics is static whereas Peirce's is a dynamic process of evolution.

More cynically Saussure's scheme is a bit more positivist in nature whereas Peirce's dynamic really is closer to a hermeneutic type vision albeit one not necessarily tied to human minds. For Saussure signs are primarily about what he calls parole or acts of referring. Peirce's semiotics is much broader and most importantly includes indices. Again that example of a weather vane is a clear way to see how they are doing different things.

This is why when people became frustrated with structuralism Peirce offered a way out. His notions of unlimited semiosis and evolution really became a huge part of post-structuralism and as well moving past more positivistic conceptions. A sign stands for an object but the way we interpret a sign is by generating yet an other sign. You end up with this notion of the open text. Semiosis continues and signs become more definite but there's not a completion so much a stability in a sign's meaning.

Edited March 28, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

6 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The main difference is in having a trichotomy rather than a two factor logic. Umberto Eco and Jacques Derrida wrote some interesting works contrasting them although that may be a bit much to point you towards. Basically for Saussure (at least in the received version although not apparently necessarily the individual himself) the signifier and signified are inseparable. They are inseparable. For Peirce the sign connects the object to the interpretant and the interpretant ends up being key. That first off opens up a lot more possibilities. Second Saussure's semiotics is static whereas Peirce's is a dynamic process of evolution.

More cynically Saussure's scheme is a bit more positivist in nature whereas Peirce's dynamic really is closer to a hermeneutic type vision albeit one not necessarily tied to human minds.

Yes I know the Derrida vs Saussure debate and Differance.  It's not "too much" for me

I seem to be having trouble with Peirce's idea of representation and correspondence, but I will work on it more.  It is probably strictly a terminology problem

But it would help to see how his views help Mormonism.  But I am sure we will get there eventually.

[clarkgoble]

1 minute ago, mfbukowski said:

Yes I know the Derrida vs Saussure debate and Differance.  It's not "too much" for me

I seem to be having trouble with Peirce's idea of representation and correspondence, but I will work on it more.  It is probably strictly a terminology problem

But it would help to see how his views help Mormonism.  But I am sure we will get there eventually.

As I said I don't think it's that relevant beyond what I said in those earlier comments on inquiry. (You might have missed it - you were replying quite quickly while I usually do about three or four edits to my posts before I'm done. So it may have been much shorter when you first read it)

The main part where Derrida uses Peirce is the first part of On Grammatology. He wrote that after going to Harvard and studying the Peirce documents that at that time weren't widely available. Most of his notion of deconstruction ends up coming out of Peirce IMO. Effectively he's moving from a static model to a dynamic model. Saussure is really a bit of a stand in for Husserl as well.

[mfbukowski]

On 3/27/2017 at 9:03 PM, clarkgoble said:

As I said I don't think it's that relevant beyond what I said in those earlier comments on inquiry. (You might have missed it - you were replying quite quickly while I usually do about three or four edits to my posts before I'm done. So it may have been much shorter when you first read it)

The main part where Derrida uses Peirce is the first part of On Grammatology. He wrote that after going to Harvard and studying the Peirce documents that at that time weren't widely available. Most of his notion of deconstruction ends up coming out of Peirce IMO. Effectively he's moving from a static model to a dynamic model. Saussure is really a bit of a stand in for Husserl as well.

Well it is clear that anything that smacks of positivism is going to be hostile to religious belief.  I am simply looking for alternative ways of justifying religious belief I am presently unaware of.   I have seen a lot of ways of doing it, but I am always looking.  For me that is the bottom line since in my life religious experience is a fact I cannot deny.

I also frequently edit my posts, like this one in fact.

Edited March 29, 2017 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Well it is clear that anything that smacks of positivism is going to be hostile to religious belief.  I am simply looking for alternative ways of justifying religious belief I am presently unaware of.   I have seen a lot of ways of doing it, but I am always looking.  For me that is the bottom line since in my life religious experience is a fact I cannot deny.

I also frequently edit my posts, like this one in fact.

While in practice that's true I'm not sure positivism is necessarily amicable to religion, I don't think there's an inherent problem with it. It all depends upon how one deals with private experiences. Some people have used positivist private language arguments against religion of course. But it seems to me that one has to distinguish between private classes of phenomena and thus private language from private experiences which are communicable. While evidence for a religious belief might not be demonstrable on demand and thus open to skepticism, typically the class of phenomena grounding the belief are unobjectionable. The main argument is whether the particular form those take ought be better explained by delusion but Joseph "seeing" God doesn't seem problematic for positivism in theory.

Anyway back to Peirce and epistemology I think his epistemology is quite fruitful. There are of course objections to it which is why Putnam for instance rejects Peirce's epistemology in preference to Dewey's warranted assertability. 

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

While in practice that's true I'm not sure positivism is necessarily amicable to religion, I don't think there's an inherent problem with it. It all depends upon how one deals with private experiences. Some people have used positivist private language arguments against religion of course. But it seems to me that one has to distinguish between private classes of phenomena and thus private language from private experiences which are communicable. While evidence for a religious belief might not be demonstrable on demand and thus open to skepticism, typically the class of phenomena grounding the belief are unobjectionable. The main argument is whether the particular form those take ought be better explained by delusion but Joseph "seeing" God doesn't seem problematic for positivism in theory.

Anyway back to Peirce and epistemology I think his epistemology is quite fruitful. There are of course objections to it which is why Putnam for instance rejects Peirce's epistemology in preference to Dewey's warranted assertability. 

Hey thanks for the article- I am reading it now

Hope you can download this one- it's easy to set up an account if you don't have one- but this is a fantastic article = maybe you even linked it to me, I recently found it, do not remember who sent it

https://www.academia.edu/9202891/Apophatic_Elements_in_Derridas_Deconstruction

I have to say this really nails my position exactly and I feel quite vindicated- did not realize that I would be so much in agreement with Derrida on this.

Like Rorty, he is an atheist who shows us excellent reasons why belief in God is justified as ineffable experience, both using the ultimate inability of language to capture "reality".

That puts them in the camp with James and Dewey and Wittgenstein and Dworkin and Nagel, Viattimo and so many others.   And that is not including the believers who are legion.

I am feeling very strong in my position on Mormonism right now!

 

[clarkgoble]

35 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Hey thanks for the article- I am reading it now

Hope you can download this one- it's easy to set up an account if you don't have one- but this is a fantastic article = maybe you even linked it to me, I recently found it, do not remember who sent it

https://www.academia.edu/9202891/Apophatic_Elements_in_Derridas_Deconstruction

I have to say this really nails my position exactly and I feel quite vindicated- did not realize that I would be so much in agreement with Derrida on this.

Like Rorty, he is an atheist who shows us excellent reasons why belief in God is justified as ineffable experience, both using the ultimate inability of language to capture "reality".

That puts them in the camp with James and Dewey and Wittgenstein and Dworkin and Nagel, Viattimo and so many others.   And that is not including the believers who are legion.

I am feeling very strong in my position on Mormonism right now!

Yes, that's a good paper I've read before. There was a fad in the late 90's in phenomenology called the theological turn in French phenomenology that made big use of this. It was largely due to certain Catholics injecting traditional theology as a way of making sense of certain things in phenomenology. There then was a debate between Derrida and Marion over this. (That paper you gave touched upon it) Derrida tended to emphasize there there was less in a phenomena or a gap. Marion emphasized the oversaturated phenomena. Effectively I don't think they were necessarily saying that much different but just emphasizing different aspects of the same thing - although there were a few important albeit subtle differences. Ditto between Derrida and Ricouer although their positions were even closer. Likewise between Derrida and Heidegger. Heidegger focused on how phenomena became joined together whereas Derrida was focused on how it became disjointed, flexible, and problematized.

Note that for Derrida the role analogous to negative theology results primarily due to the play of the sign. That is because what evidence we have at any point could be undermined, when we talk about any experience or especially phenomena like (to use Derrida's favorite example) Justice we have to distinguish between our understanding of Justice and what Justice might me. This is why Derrida's sometimes described as the atheist prophet of an ever announced messiah who never comes. All of this is really out of Peirce's notion of the sign that Derrida picked up at Harvard but using more theological language. 

What Derrida ends up doing is taking these big ideas like Justice and saying they are beyond deconstruction because they are essentially incomplete. He'll then contrast them with ideas that are essentially seen as present such as law. So the conflict between law and Justice in "Force of Law" is really this distinguishing between the final interpretant, dynamic interpretant, dynamic object, and immediate object in Peirce. Justice is what is to come whereas Law is what is here. So Law is always in a sense unjust. The reason apophatic logic is so useful to Derrida is because the classic and especially mystic language in the medieval era already deals with this sort of thing with respect to God. So when Anselm or Eckhart talk about ridding him of God in order to find God (or words to that effect) it's because they recognize the difference between how we use terms, especially moral terms, and how they apply to God. So our Justice and the ultimate Justice that is God's justice are distinguished.

Now one can dispute how much in practice this happens. While Derrida, especially in the 80's, goes off in this direction I think Peirce is a good check on it. Derrida himself actually admits to it as well. His deconstruction of Searle in Limited Inc has an afterword which is an interview with Derrida where he clarifies a lot of these things. He makes the point that of course we have truths now but there's still this phenomena at play. While I appreciated his style in my 20's I now have to admit I have a lot less patience for it. There's a reason for it of course. He's trying to make these points via an immanent critique rather than just explaining semiotics the way Peirce does. But the logic is the same.

Getting to experience what it means is that for any experience any description is incomplete. It's a matter of too much and too little. You add things that weren't in the experience and leave things out. However (and this is where Peirce comes in) you can continue to inquire and discover more about the phenomena. So an experience can continue to be unfolded, leading to new insights. The ineffable in any and all experiences is because we've not yet finished speaking about it. Nor can we finish speaking about it. There's that feature of unlimited semiosis in experience. 

So language can never capture experience fully which is not to say it isn't useful. We might start where what little we can say is vague - most of what we experienced we can't put into words. However with time we can fill that in.

An other interesting thing Derrida does relative to apophatic logic is adopt the idea of the aporia from Plato and Aristotle. Derrida does this weird thing using Gödel as an analogy. His theorem was basically an argument for mathematical platonism by showing that for any axiomatic system there were statements we'd consider true or false that couldn't be shown true or false by those axioms. Effectively this is the aporia of Plato's dialogs (especially the early ones). For Derrida what this means (by way of analogy) is that there's this unspeakable in any formal system (and here's he's considering philosophy as a formal system despite the problem of induction). So this unspeakable or apophatic element gets filled in by inquiry where what is marginal (or external to the text or system) gets included into the system.

Same basic idea.

All that said, I think a more useful way of speaking about the same thing is simply a logic of vagueness and a logic of continued inquiry that Peirce and Dewey give us. (James is a tad more problematic for a variety of reasons) A useful paper that gets at a few elements of this is Hildebrand's "Putnam, Pragmatism and Dewey" While he's more targeting Putnam than Rorty it gets at a lot of these issues of truth I think.

Edited March 30, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Yes, that's a good paper I've read before. There was a fad in the late 90's in phenomenology called the theological turn in French phenomenology that made big use of this. It was largely due to certain Catholics injecting traditional theology as a way of making sense of certain things in phenomenology. There then was a debate between Derrida and Marion over this. (That paper you gave touched upon it) Derrida tended to emphasize there there was less in a phenomena or a gap. Marion emphasized the oversaturated phenomena. Effectively I don't think they were necessarily saying that much different but just emphasizing different aspects of the same thing - although there were a few important albeit subtle differences. Ditto between Derrida and Ricouer although their positions were even closer. Likewise between Derrida and Heidegger. Heidegger focused on how phenomena became joined together whereas Derrida was focused on how it became disjointed, flexible, and problematized.

Note that for Derrida the role analogous to negative theology results primarily due to the play of the sign. That is because what evidence we have at any point could be undermined, when we talk about any experience or especially phenomena like (to use Derrida's favorite example) Justice we have to distinguish between our understanding of Justice and what Justice might me. This is why Derrida's sometimes described as the atheist prophet of an ever announced messiah who never comes. All of this is really out of Peirce's notion of the sign that Derrida picked up at Harvard but using more theological language. 

What Derrida ends up doing is taking these big ideas like Justice and saying they are beyond deconstruction because they are essentially incomplete. He'll then contrast them with ideas that are essentially seen as present such as law. So the conflict between law and Justice in "Force of Law" is really this distinguishing between the final interpretant, dynamic interpretant, dynamic object, and immediate object in Peirce. Justice is what is to come whereas Law is what is here. So Law is always in a sense unjust. The reason apophatic logic is so useful to Derrida is because the classic and especially mystic language in the medieval era already deals with this sort of thing with respect to God. So when Anselm or Eckhart talk about ridding him of God in order to find God (or words to that effect) it's because they recognize the difference between how we use terms, especially moral terms, and how they apply to God. So our Justice and the ultimate Justice that is God's justice are distinguished.

Now one can dispute how much in practice this happens. While Derrida, especially in the 80's, goes off in this direction I think Peirce is a good check on it. Derrida himself actually admits to it as well. His deconstruction of Searle in Limited Inc has an afterword which is an interview with Derrida where he clarifies a lot of these things. He makes the point that of course we have truths now but there's still this phenomena at play. While I appreciated his style in my 20's I now have to admit I have a lot less patience for it. There's a reason for it of course. He's trying to make these points via an immanent critique rather than just explaining semiotics the way Peirce does. But the logic is the same.

Getting to experience what it means is that for any experience any description is incomplete. It's a matter of too much and too little. You add things that weren't in the experience and leave things out. However (and this is where Peirce comes in) you can continue to inquire and discover more about the phenomena. So an experience can continue to be unfolded, leading to new insights. The ineffable in any and all experiences is because we've not yet finished speaking about it. Nor can we finish speaking about it. There's that feature of unlimited semiosis in experience. 

So language can never capture experience fully which is not to say it isn't useful. We might start where what little we can say is vague - most of what we experienced we can't put into words. However with time we can fill that in.

An other interesting thing Derrida does relative to apophatic logic is adopt the idea of the aporia from Plato and Aristotle. Derrida does this weird thing using Gödel as an analogy. His theorem was basically an argument for mathematical platonism by showing that for any axiomatic system there were statements we'd consider true or false that couldn't be shown true or false by those axioms. Effectively this is the aporia of Plato's dialogs (especially the early ones). For Derrida what this means (by way of analogy) is that there's this unspeakable in any formal system (and here's he's considering philosophy as a formal system despite the problem of induction). So this unspeakable or apophatic element gets filled in by inquiry where what is marginal (or external to the text or system) gets included into the system.

Same basic idea.

All that said, I think a more useful way of speaking about the same thing is simply a logic of vagueness and a logic of continued inquiry that Peirce and Dewey give us. (James is a tad more problematic for a variety of reasons) A useful paper that gets at a few elements of this is Hildebrand's "Putnam, Pragmatism and Dewey" While he's more targeting Putnam than Rorty it gets at a lot of these issues of truth I think.

Good points!  I really appreciate your comments!

This is why I like Rorty who says it all in these words

Quote

 

 " To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states.  To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences, there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.

     Truth cannot be out there- cannot exist independently of the human mind- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot."   Richard Rorty- Contingency Irony and Solidarity, P 5.

 

To me, those few lines summarize it all very simply.  Straightforward, five lines and pretty much done, incredibly terse and packed with implications.

What it lacks is what Rorty calls "ineffable" and that apophatic element.  Before I became LDS my prayer was mostly apophatic and to this day I have trouble praying in public, in words.  It seems fake to me to tell God what he already knows better than I do!  "Lord we are gathered here for pupose x..." as if he didn't know that.  It drives me nuts when someone says "The Lord knows your name!"  How the heck could he hear your silent prayers if he didn't know who you were?!   I have a heck of a time praying at the altar in the temple- that is the worst ever for me!

So that element has always been part of my life especially when I went through my Zen phase.  So I went from mystical Catholic to mystical Buddhist to non-mystical atheist to mystical Mormon.  Quite a journey!

But that is what I think Rorty lacks- the positivity of direct experience filling in what language cannot do.   He just does not get it.

I have pretty much memorized Dewey, chapter and verse.  I wish I knew the scriptures the way I know Dewey.  I am pretty familiar with Putnam, I am very familiar with Wittgenstein, James and much of analytical philosophy having been a UCLA guy and City University of NY.  At CUNY I took a couple of classes on Continental philosophy as a grad but it is now like a language I once knew and forgot - it comes back to me when I hear it but it has become foreign to me.

I went to parts of SMPT and it was all Heidegger and continental stuff which I found surprising so thanks for your help with this odd Continental stuff.

Nobody was speaking good old Amurican straightforward sentences!   Perhaps that was why Peirce I think was more influential over there than here- he has a Continental spirit I think.

 

[clarkgoble]

49 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Nobody was speaking good old Amurican straightforward sentences!   Perhaps that was why Peirce I think was more influential over there than here- he has a Continental spirit I think.

Sadly outside of Derrida and Umberto Eco in the Continental tradition and to a limited degree a few somewhat pragmatic German philosophers like Habermas he's not appreciated at all in the Continental tradition. (And many think Habermas gets Peirce wrong - although I don't know Habermas well enough to have an opinion) He gets more influence in American philosophy due first to Dewey (who adopts many of his views but oddly not his logic) and then recently with the renaissance in Peirce studies that Putnam helped contribute to. (He edited a few important writings of Peirce) Oddly he's very accepted in Scandinavian philosophy. I'm not sure why that is. Most of the attention on Peirce comes more from semiotics than philosophy. Of course it's understandable why he'd be popular there. And Eco is much more a semiotician than a philosopher.

I'm surprised you saw a lot of Heidegger at SMPT. I'm constantly surprised how little there is given the influence of several prominent Heideggarians. Of course I wasn't able to attend the latest one so maybe I missed the talks. 

There is a certain interpretation (more appropriation) of Heidegger along pragmatic lines following more the Herbert Dreyfus style of interpretation. I think that's a more minor tradition though. Mark Okrent is the chief person in that movement, if it even is influential enough to be called a movement. (I honestly don't know how influential it is) I believe he's written on Rorty a fair bit too. I have a few of his books and papers and agree with parts but think he gets some aspects of Heidegger wrong - at least to my understanding. But I'm far from an expert. I do think he gets right a constant problem with Heidegger that while he describes human experience well he doesn't do well with object to object relations outside of how they appear for humans.

Interestingly there is a conference this year on pragmatism and the analytic/continental split. I've no idea about much about it beyond it getting mentioned on a mailing list I'm on.

I should add relative to Rorty, the question of truth ends up being whether it has to be present now or not. That was what that paper I linked to was getting at. For the classic pragmatists truth was the fated end of inquiry. We might have statements now but what makes them true or false was that "in the long run of inquiry." Rorty and Putnam's big break from the pragmatists was wanting truth as something here and now. Either via a kind of relativism for Rorty or Putnam's twisting of Dewey's warranted assertability. Throw away that aspect of them and I have far fewer objections.

An other way to put it is that Peirce is a realist towards possibilities and thinks the nature of inquiry limits the possibilities of informed belief to truth given enough inquiry. While Putnam and Rorty have their points regarding finitude I don't think either really thinks through the logic of inquiry the way Dewey and Peirce did. (James on the other hand, while often adopting Peirce's view had a concern more in line with Rorty and Putnam I think)

Edited March 30, 2017 by clarkgoble