deadairspace My Superior Being - i am uploading a little trace of what could be labelled as information upon this world wide web logbook. Just letting anyone know, who doesn't already, that Radiohead has been recording new music. That they will be participating in some charity cd, War Child (?) whatever (yeh i'm a bit slack on that), and that this album will be made downloadable. Yeh yeh, all albums are downloadable - what is so special about this one. Well apparently this one is meant to (that is the people commercially/legally responsibly for it are allowing it to) be downloaded. So that will be exciting won't it?

The above link is apparently a world wide web logbook that is updated by the band members. Yes - you can read the electronic ramblings of Thom, Colin, Phil, Ed and Jonny. Why don't you just wet yourself now and save yourself the embarassment later. Ok. When something more interesting pops into my head (and i happen to be sitting near a writing device) you can be assured it will be posted here...at some point in time.  ¶ 11:53 am 0 Comments

  Dinosaurs Rule The Earth Ehem.

I have cleansed the space that i exist in. I must admit after so many years of piling on shit, it seems quite refreshing. I act, if i act, and act i had to. So now, although it pains at first to let go of people that one holds so close it is a relief. I had read somewhere that true empathy consists of allowing someone to walk into danger willingly, and letting them know that you can let them go. I think this sentiment examines the idea that to empathise you realise that you are dealing with another person and thus they have a life of their own to lead; not to be led. In saying that also, a friend does not have the responsibility to bear the brunt of another's problem. Friendship, or love, should never be detrimental.

So onward the runaway train continues and has found yet another station to take on new passengers at an ever increasing fare rate. Though the ride is getting better all the time. And the seats, how i could go on about the seats. If only Cityrail had the same interior decorator as i have. Ah bliss.

Can you believe that John Howard was awarded with the Woodrow Wilson award. Wow - this first un-american to be attributed with doing all he can for the American way of life. Does that not strike you as odd. As far as i remember Honest John was elected the Prime Minister of Australia, and by that title alone He, the man, and his ministers are supposed to, as stated in the job description, to be enacting policy in the best interest of Australia, and all Australians. Since when did that coincide so closely with the United States of America that it constituted the most prestigious US Republican award for US service? Am i the only one to see this irony? While i am babbling on about irony how about this. The Woodrow Wilson award, named after the founder, a Republican ex-President of the United States, sent the United States of America into the Second World War.

Now i may just be wrong here (god help us if i am), but i am under the belief that it is a general consensus among people, on an individual scale, that killing people is a pretty detrimental (bad) action. That is, most people do not want to kill anyone, and that most people don't want themselves to be killed or anyone they care about....perhaps even anyone they know. Yet, in the Great Western Democracies we, the people, seem to be voting in warmongerers. Seriously, is there something wrong with this picture. I feel as though i am typing out the most evident observation to date. And i seriously beleive that most people will read this and go, duh, we know all this.

Well then - the question i put forward is this: if we know all this, and acknowledge it to be true, why do these warmongerers continually re-elected as our representatives and leaders of our nations?

I am stumped. I point to election rigging. But i am a cynic, and surely that only happens in places like Zaire, South America, and the Middle East.  ¶ 4:52 pm 1 Comments

  Dazed And Confused Ok, ok, so i don't feel any internal pressure to blog - is that not a good thing? Anyway, for all my fans out there, blowing the breeze my way, keeping things cool and real, i will venture to type something today.

Today has been marked. This will serve to remember it. Today i was involved in a motor vehicle accident. Evidently i am still alive. I was not operating a motor vehicle, i was not a passenger. I was on a bicycle. A car pulled in front of me without leaving enough stopping distance, nor pulling into the parking zone. Some people believe that the cycle lane is merely an extension of the parking space. Others don't understand that even a cycle needs some distance to come to a complete stop. I feel aggravated that my cycle is trashed, and that i will probably have to pay for repairs or a new cycle. I refuse to operate a motor vehicle for the small distances i travel - it is completely unnecessary. I think it is ridiculous that numerous people use their motor vehicles to the extent that they do within cities, for what little convenience (then bitch about parking) - i wonder what they will do when the world. or commercial market, runs out of petroleum. Most of them will probably cycle. Hah.  ¶ 4:36 pm 1 Comments

  Phil2005: Derrida 1. always deconstructing other texts. => required readings

2. deconstruction of the Western Metaphysics of Presence
+ what it is
+ it's importance
+ impact

Metaphysics of Presence
=> the science of first principles of reality.
Suppose presence in Time and Space,
-> that meaning is fully contained/present to a term.
----- that is locatable.
----- challenged: meaning is not in the term nor in someone's mind BUT within the difference => that is not fully present.

Saussure perpetuates that the subject is fully present to itself - self dependant - transparent to oneself...
+> without need of anything else
+> thought = meaning
+> mean what you say - say what you mean

Deconstruction draws out conceptual opppositions
-> analyses what seems to be self-evident----
by this analysis deconstruction shows that these self-evident things are generated by difference. And of what consequences priviledging in language has in dialogue.

Neologism -> to describe oppositions in their similarities.

"Differance" is a neologism ---> arising from Derrida's argument with Saussure's idea of difference.
+> challenge between speech and writing.
-> the priviledging of speech over writing supports a theory of Metaphysics of Presence.

"DIFFERANCE"
how meaning is generated through differentiated relations.
-> spelling. Derrida priviledges writing - difference/differance - the two words cannot be distinguished when spoken (in french)

Derrida's likes of Saussure...
1. Signifier and signified are inseperable.
-> no concepts without signifiers
2. Meaning is produced through differential relations.

Derrida's dislikes of Saussure...
1. Talking about signifiers and signified seperately
-> gives impression there are concepts outside'
-> transcendental signifier - exists outside sign systems
* implies full presence of meaning

2. Priviledges sound over all other sign systems
-> speech -> natural link between thought - sound - meanining ----in support of self present subjectivity.
A) thought precedes language
B) undermines the arbituary nature of the signs
C) reduces sign systems to instrument that the speaker uses to communicate their inner thoughts (pg 14 of Saussure - PHIL reader)
D) completely leaves the world out of the picture (of the sign system) -> the signifier takes force from the world => the world has no impact and we cannot impact the world.

Derrida deconstructs the difference between speech and writing.

Differance; is the systematic play/spacing of differences.
-> via this process the terms themselves signifier.
[NOT a whole lot different from Saussure]

No term is fully present because it refers to what it is not.

Saussure:
Writing distorts/disguises meaning because subject is removed/hidden.
Speech is purer because subject is present -> closer to meaning (say what you mean...clarify)
Derrida"
'Out there' - speaker doesnt interpret...once in the space of dialogue not to be regained or reheard.
-> not fully present
* Ultimately a lack of control once spoken.

Saussure's linguistics Vs. Phenomenology (Heidegger) -> Meaning is everything * one cannot experience without meaning -> importance for existence.

Labels: philosophy

  ¶ 10:00 pm 0 Comments

  PHIL2005 wk4 Heidegger PHIL2005 wk4 Heidegger

Last Week summary…

1. Language is arbituary – meaning is social
2. meaning is produced through relations of difference.

To get there:
A ‘sign’ – word is made up of two pieces; the signifier and the signified.

+ there are no concepts prior to the formation of signs.
⇨ meaning is produced when signifiers are delimited -> thus attached to concepts.

2 differentials:
⇨ disassociative : parralegamatic
⇨ combination : sygolamatic



This week…Emile Benviniste

Structuralism:
Social analysis that changed the focus of study.
1. shift emphasis from individuals to unconscious (hidden) underlying structures that shape individual acts. => meaning is social and assimilated by individual
2. doesn’t treat terms or individual as independent entities – rather the basis of analysis is the relation between subjects. (terms, indivi texts.) => meanings are values – not facts
⇨ aims at discovery laws at how a system operates

meaning matters because it is value
⇒ it has currency => leads to Heidegger as meaning being essential to Being.

Epistemology:
No absolute truth | only generated values via society.
⇒ nor universal truth

Politics & Ethics:
Descriptors carry value as well as meaning.
⇨ social context : values derived from their relative position
⇨ has limiting factors: role as discerning self-value and value others place on you.

Language, even though it is free-forming, falls into dichotomies.
⇒ play of differences -> leads to conceptual opposites -> justice and descrimination occurs.

Limitations:
Does not provide account of the production of language.
⇒ we are outside/separate from world
⇒ and likewise langauge is separate -> assimilated langauge @ unconscious level.

Benveniste_ critiques difference between
1. value and signification
2. speech act and language

two levels of meaning
1. potential -> concept -> mind
2. actual -> speech

• enacting the differences in values and then in signification is not in two acts but happens simultaenously within the speech act.

Value & Signification: (confusion due to Sausiere’s interpretation)
⇒ Emile argues that ‘I’ am only a conscious subject through the act of speech.

No fixed to the term ‘I’ – it only signifies the speaker in the discourse of the time – ie. Not universal.

*Differential relation within the utterances itself.
Referant: “I’m tired” -> actual speaker.
Referee: the ‘I’ in the instance of discourse positions the speaker in language. -> the ‘I’ is constituted by language itself and the speaker him/herself/itself.

I/you = indicators +> they indicate position of spker in discourse. -> time andplace.

The sense of I and you are newly defined in each discourse. They are open to shift so that anyone can occupy the I and the you.
⇒ shifters => they do not have potentialities.

Only through language is subjectivity constituted.
⇒ sense of self (ego) is established by language
⇒ structure of language is such that it already implies a dialogue

in taking up ‘i’ it is instand and only temporal.
⇒ but by doing this you are being contrasted by other signifiers -> that link to past/present/future
…history of discourse.

Communication is a necessary option in taking up a subject
⇒ to be conscious
⇒ to understand yourself

subject: social because individual is not separate from society or social structures of meaning.
+> point taken up against social contract – that as soon as you speak you are part of society.

1. language and subject are interconnected - there is no meaning without language.
2. subject constant in language via relation difference (you) – suggests fundamental instability.

Labels: philosophy

  ¶ 1:00 pm 0 Comments

  PHIL2005 wk2 Heidegger Phil. Knowledge ad the knowledge that cmes from the humanities gices us inferior knowl. Because it lacks the objecivity of the sciences. ~

Hermeneutic ~> Heidegger as basis
• How we make sense of the world (interpretation)

Frankfurt

Deconstruction ~> Heidegger as basis

Language of phil since Plato has become rarified and fixed in a very singular way. Heidegger insists on changing the phil lang in order to transform the way in which we see the wprld.

Dasein – there-being
Epistemological approach extricates human subj from world. Heidegger believes this to be impossible – as we are embedded within the world. the being there.

Understanding itself is at the heart of all experience. That is dasein’s fundamental relation to experience is understanding. Interpretation therefore is not just bound up with phil – phil must be centrally bound to interpretation and understanding itself.

Dasein is being-in-the-world.

“understanding in the sense of one possible kind of organising among others (as distinguished for example from explaining) must like explaining be interpreted as an existential deriviative of that primary understading which is one of the primary constituents of the being of the there in general” 9 Being in Time 182)

interpretative character of human existence.

+> we are always transforming and reflecting upon our existence and the world.
⇒ we can respind to changes in the world.
⇒ the possiblities we have for ourselves are limited by the constituents of the world; they are not ascribed by ourselves.

Being-There As Understaning (83)
- truth described as discovery of some fact about the world – Heidegger calls this discoveredness.
Truth -> in what way does truth exist in a world of interpretation???

Antigone: an example in interpretation revealing more about the interpretor than the text.

- multiple interpretations of the world
- creating conflict internal/external
- force of prioritisation of Dasein with their relationship to other Dasein
⇒ influences our understnding of right and wrong

- weaving different hats / role playing
- TRADITION: gender role – religion (interpretation)
- State-of-mind
- Constant change due to people’s actions

Projection: understanding of what is significant.
Two aspects:
1. a context in which the meaning is possible
2. Dasein must itself be invested in those possibilities. Dasein must see those as possibilities for it.

“projecting has nothing to do with comporting onseself toward a plan that has been thought, and in accordance with which Dasein arranges its Being. Dasein has, as Dasein already projected itself; and as long as it is, it is projecting.” (Being in Time 185)

+> in projecting we are our possibilies.
+> meaningfulness is not something that we give to world or an object, rather the world (understood as the totality of possibilities that make up our inhabited environment) supplies the possibilities by which ay object can be meaningful.

Fore-having:
This is to grasp the whole in which any particular object can come to light. It is the totality of possibilities in which objects are.

Fore-sight:
The more defined domain in which we can determe the appropriate way to do something or to point something out.

Fore-conception:
The particular way we concieve something.

*Our understanding can only come about in a web of context, in which we have a fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception.
-> these things are running concurrently.

Labels: philosophy

  ¶ 1:03 pm 0 Comments