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2 / Communication before deconstruction Husserl’s impact Husserl’s vission of a First Philosophy has been prominent within the twentieth-century theoretical thinking. Phenomenological elements into the humanities and the social sciences. Phenomenologically Describe, the everyday life-world, insider’s point of inspired ideas and view, reduction, presence, transcendence, the subject, concepts life-world, temporality, transcendental consciousness, deconstruction. Communication studies Emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s? Influences from phenomenology are visible. Chapter outline 1. How this phenomenological consciousness makes possible the clear articulation of a subjectbased problematic. 2. How and why these theories necessarily fail to answer the question of mediation <-- idealist vision of the subject A NOTE ON THE PROBLEMATIC Althusser: the problematic Looking beneath theories to uncover their foundation. Performing a “symptomatic reading” the available theories --> reconstruct the system behind the words. Epistemological field Constitutes “a problematic”. Functions as the latent thought-structure enabling the production of theories. The prolematic gives order to the pretheoretical chaos and determines what counts as a legitimate scientific object. THE QUESTION THEN…: COMMUNICATION AND THE COMMUNICATIVE SUBJECT The central challenge How is individuality transcended? How is sharing meaning/understanding achieved? Concerns questioning what is usually taken for granted. Ricoeur: (…) Because [it]… appears as a way of transcending or overcoming the fundamental solitude of each human being.” (39). Central mystery Communication seems to be a necessary fact. Yet communication appears to be enigmatic, a person’s individuality as a difference that sets a person apart from all others. Can both be possible? The possibility of transcending individuality. Presuppes a conception of In short noncommunication. Overcoming the dilemma of subjectivity as essentially understanding the individual, the egocentric subject as solitary bot monadlike and coexisting. Modernized Inagurated by Husserl’s transcendental subject. This transcendentalism constitutes the background for thematizing the solitary subject of communication. Both existing with and necessarily distanced from other subject and the social world. COMMUNICATION AS MEDIATION: THE POSTAL PRINCIPLE The solitary subject The primitive of the problematic of communication. Because: 1. It is a necessary constituent of the problematic. 2. The nature of the solitary subject is determined before its participation in the problematic. Before the theory. Problem of mediation The challenge of communication translated into a challenge of privacy. The problem of communication rewritten as a problem of mediaton. How can solitary subjects share understandings. Closing the gap between the islandlike monads. Communication represents the embodiment of an interplay between self and other. From individual to The telos of communication as a dialectical becoming. commonality The I becomes a member of the We. Communication as The delivery of messages. The specific adressing transmission according to receiver. Communicatio as delivery. The postal principle - the more general principle governing the dialectic of mediation. The postal principle as the medium of communication rather than the reverse. The presupposed identity of both the addresser and the addressee, and the identity of the message. Why postal principle Unifies the concepts of communication, exchange, and mediation under one rule – its own rationality as universal mediation. This postal ideology explains why the concept of communication so easily translates into the concept of mediation. Really? Potential problems with It seems to me that Chang works with at least two Chang somewhat dubious premisses: that communication effortlessly translates into mediation; and that in creating and sending messages, receiving is already inscribed in the sending, that the addressee must be known prior to the sending. METAPHORS AT LARGE IN COMMUNICATION Metaphors to explain Metaphors easily step over their function and stand in communication place of the concept they are supposed to illustrate. A trespassing of the abstrac by the concrete, a reversal of the signifier and the signified. The danger of Raises questions regarding the validity of explanatory overreliance of metaphors discourses in which the usurpation takes place. Are communication theories nothing but postal constructs? Derrida on metaphors in The founding concepts of philosophy are metaphorical philosophy and philosophy is as such not rational altough appearing to be. A heliotropic system of metaphors. Philosophy is necessarily a culture-specific tropology. Has become powerlessto control the tropology that has empowered it. Towards “hermeneutics of Sceptisism toward the foundatio of communication suspicion” towards the theory inspired by Derrida’ scepticism. origin of communication Theories of communication, relying on metaphors, as not theory different from fictional artifacts? REREADING THE PROBLEMATIC OF COMMUNICATION Resisit parrotry when Staying within the problematic of communication, yet rereading remaining indifferent to its suggestions. How? How is the problematic of communication as an active structure of determination itself determined? How does the postal government of communication itself display the same kind of metaphorical displacement that is displayed in the postal construction of communication? Dialogical nature “I give myself verbal shape from another’s point of view” (56). Verbal (only?) communication requires a minimal level of reciprocity. Perspective taking. Parallels to G. H. Mead (and hence symbolic interactionism). Language/code Communication, communality, co-operation. Language makes this possible in the first place. More precisly the code. Establishes the possibility of commonality in a world of differences and the basis for co-ordination. Code/intersubjectivity The code is essentially intersubjective. Intersubjectivity as the key term in explaining how individuality is transcended. Codes translates what is subjective into something objective or accessible. Intersubjectivity thus the Answers the question of communication: how mediating term individuality is transcended. The conflict between the natural certainty (we communicate) and the reflective puzzle (solipsism). IGNOTUM PER IGNOTIUS; OR, THEORETICAL VENTRILOQUISM First: definition Explaining the unknown by means of the more unknown. The problematic of Fundamentally at triadic structure of subject, mediation, communication intersubjectivity. Chained together by the postal principle. The problem of the Generated from within the problematic in response to the concept of problematic’s initial move of postulating a solitary intersubjectivity subject. This way the concept and meaning of intersubjectivity blocks any further exploration of the relation between privacy and mediation without really explaining anything. “The logic of “deferral” Parallel to the concepts of “social role” and “interaction” (suspension) in sociology. Tautologically defined: one is defined or clarified in relation to the other. Radically compromises the explanatory utility of the concepts. The same can be said about the postal play taking place between mediation and intersubjectivity in communication theories. Trades away the 1. Intersubjectivity functions as a transcendental explanatory integrity signifier. It accounts for mediation but is itself unaccounted for. 2. As a signifier immune to reflexive critique, Tautologically understood intersubjectivity designates the problematic’s own blind spot. The theoretical challenge of solipsism is silenced. Communication and intersubjectivity can only be tautologically understood. The lack of a terminal referent whose meaning does not presuppose prior understanding of the terms within the problematic. 3 / The inaugural relation: toward an ontology of communication DeMan: no natural unrhetorical language Rhetorical turn Communication theories Reality constituted as such by linguistic signs according to their own reason. Establishes the world as present. Rhetoric as epistemic and ontological. Captives of their metaphors, their rhetoric. How then can theorizing about communication find a way out of the metaphorical mess and still respond to the initial existential eigma that brings that theorizing into being (the fact of communication taking place + solipsism). READING THE CIRCLE AND THE HERMENEUTIC RETURN Chang’s aim Conduct a Heideggerian critique of the “textual prehistory” of communication theories. An archeological reading of the movement between the two signifiers communication and intersubjectivity to uncover the staging of elements that supports the double play of the metaphorical couple of mediation and intersubjectivity. --> a nontranscendental regrounding of communication theories. YOU MUST TAKE FOR GRANTED THE TAKEN-FOR-GRANTED Husserl’s post-Cartesian Not a simple or innocent point of departure although self Husserl seems to believe so. Identity “actualizes itself as a grasping of itself by the unity that I am in myself” (Nancy in Chang: 74). “Cogito” presupposes a selfconstituted ego. The question of self“if the foundation of philosophy is to be found in the I foundation think, could the thinking of an I be a good judge of the validity of its own thinking?” (75). The problem of self-reflection because of the problem of infinite regress. Self-reflection Cannot provide anything beyond the empty truism that the reflecting self is capable of self-reflection. With a starting point in the self, reflection can never close the gap between that which reflects and that which is reflected upon. Husserl’s shift to A response to the problem of infinite regress. A need to transcendental install a “firstness of the ego” to halt the reduction. A phenomenology moment of aboslute knowledge above and beyond the sphere of infinite regress. The stopping point of the transcendental consciousness. Necessary to avoid scepticism and relativism. Difficulties with Husserl’s Especially concerning the question of intersubjectivity. transcendentalism The chasm between the self and other seems decisive and too wide to cross. There is no escape from solipsism (although reduction promises exactly that). Existential turn By Husskerl’s followers. Reverting to the mundane world of everyday life. Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Sartre. Looking at the surrounding worl: individuals act and react before they reflect. Intersubjectivitiy is declassified and becomes an intramundane problem. The everyday world is already a world with others. Already Changes its meaning from temporarily prior to logically following. Takes on additional meaning of “metaphysical priority.” States a relation between concepts. Intersubjectivity gets metaphysical priority over the subject. Hence, no problem of solipsism. GROUNDING THE LIFE-WORLD: SOCIAL ONTOLOGY The “alreadyness” of the The ego lives and interacts with others before it becomes life-world aware of its solitude (clearly there are parallels here to Lacan’s emancipating-from-mother theories?). The social nature of the world is a definitive fact. The world is intersubjective. Intersubjectivity precedes individuality. How is a common world How does it come about? The formation of the possible? intersubjective lifeworld. Cannot be answered at the level of descriptive phenomenology (descr. ph. the same as exist. ph.?) The metaphysical problem Pushes phenomenology into a social ontology. of fundamental-grounding An impossible project? <-- every attempt leads to a situation with three unacceptable alternatives. Trilemma: (1) infinite regress. (2) a logical circle: one is forced to resort to statements that have already shown themselves to be in need of grounding. (3) a stopping of the process at one point > arbitrary suspension. Intersubjective phenomenology faces this trilemma because it cannot eschew the question of how it is founded. Crucial task To identify at which moment cessation takes place and determine the implications for the conceptual system. Post-Husserlian The rejection of the transcendental pov.; and the phenomenologies opposition to the reduction ti the sphere of ownness. reactions Focus is rather on the everyday world. Radical redefinition of the phenomenological enterprise. --> Schutz and Luckmann The everyday life-world is man’s fundamental and paramount reality. That part of reality which we take for granted as common sense. - Entails as such an ontological commitment. Responds to the problem of fundamental-grounding. The everyday life Where social life begins and where intersubjective phenomenology marks its reflexive point of investigation. Taken for granted > the irreducibility of a naïve trust in reality. > the permanence of that faith: there is always some part of reality that is accepted as valid or unproblematic. The concept of the lifeIn the post-Husserlian phenomenology of world signals the moment intersubjectivity. Now the search for intersubjectivity of cessation can be laid to rest. Descriptive phenomenology reaches its borderline, social ontology takes over. Intersubjectivity From the transcendental subject to the taken-for-granted reanchored intersubjective life-world. The intersubjective life-world begins as a descriptive concept, but ends as an ontological postulate. Ontologizing the lifeThe only way to terminate the infinite regress of world searching for ground. But bypasses the question The strategy of ontologizing is a strategy of of the relation between the prioritization. subject and the world The transcendence of subjectivity remains a problem. What is still missing A fundamental ontology as a crtique of subjectivity. --> Heideggeria turn: give way to a fundamental ontology that responds to the hermeneutic complexity of existence. Juxtaposing being and communication. FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY: QUO VADIS Heidegger’s fundamental Launched against representational metaphysics ontology (epistemology is really metaphysical). The question of Being Diachronic thinking of the nature of Being. A return to metaphysics focusing on the sources of intelligibility implicit in our everyday existence. Rupture with Critical of Husserl’s prejudgement, depends on a Husserlianism postulated distinciton between subject and object; between consciousness and its object. A hermeneutic inquiry of Preliminary to a illuminating of Being as such. Dasein – being there Returning to where man already and always is: being-inthe-world. A world of cultural and historical meanings. Heidegger’s reading of Metaphysics becomes problematic again. The critique of Kant pure reason. Inherits from Descartes the idea that the basic condition of knowledge is the ego as “I think.” The ego exists as a permanent principle of thinking and cannot be a representation or a represented object. Functions as the fundamental ontological foundation of being. All things that are not the I, are something that But what is the difference stand as something else in relation to a subject. The between Kant and Being of all things are determined by their relation to the Husserl? subject. The search for Being Directed toward the subjective roots of the transcendental consciousness. The problem with Kant’s Fails to grasp the transcendental I as factical and an representionism essentially temporal existence. Fails to recognize that “I (am)” us always and already somewhere and at some point in time. Kant is trapped by the transcendental illusion. THE THERE OF BEING Kant’s transcendental critique of knowledge ”an inquiry into the ultimate conditions a priori in terms of which there is knowledge. This meant that it had to be an inquiry into thinking per se as productive of knowledge, into the structure of thinking, and thus into the ultimate unconditioned grounds and sources of knowledge.” (http://www.crvp.org/book/ISM/MASTER-4.htm) Heidegger critique of Kant Kant’s critical idealims subordinates object to subject leading to a high degree of ontological indeterminacy. Fundamental ontology Heidegger’s proposal. Traditional ontology does not problematize the nature of Being. This must be the starting point for ontology. ” Heidegger hopes to recover a more original sense of things by setting aside reality as seen from theorizing and focusing on the way things show up in the flux of every pre-reflective activities Heidegger begins by asking the question of traditional ontology, “What is the being of entities?” But Heidegger quickly asks “What is the meaning of being?” or else ontology will remain naïve and opaque A two-ponged task: fundamental ontology is a hermeneutic topology of Being Starts from a preontological understanding of Being Where to start The questioning Fundamental ontology Dasein Since what things are [their being] is accessible only if intelligible to us, “fundamental ontology” will clarify the meaning [that is, the conditions of intelligibility] of things in general” (Anil Mitra: Heidegger on Being) 1. The question of the topos of being: where is this internal possibility of understanding of Being to be found? 2. The question of interpreting that understanding once that topos is located. The meaning of Being available as an always already vague, avergae understanding of Being. Preunderstood as ”that which determines beings as being. From this the ontological clarification of Being must proceed. No guarantee that one is able to enter the hermeneutical circle of this preunderstaning of Being in a manner adequate to the task, The ontological must be sought in the ontic [refering to existing reality; concerned with the facts of entities], but how can the former be canvassed in adequate clarity on the basis of the latter? The question of Being is immediately reflexive. To the questioning of Being one has to add a questioning of the questioning and of the questioner. A topology of Being and a reflexive hermeneutic converge as one in fundamental ontology. ”this being, which we ourselves are and which has questioning as one of its possibilities of Being.” ” By using the expression Dasein, Heidegger called attention to the fact that a human being cannot be taken into account except as being an existent in the middle of a world amongst other things (Warnock 1970), that Dasein is ‘to be there’ and ‘there’ is the world. To be human is to be fixed, embedded and immersed in the physical, literal, tangible day to day world” (http://www.royby.com/philosophy/pages/dasein.html) Essentially reflexive being both the subject and object of reflection, ”Dasein constitutes an existential opening in the form of a temporal, historical and mortal organization where being first becomes apparent and approachable”. (98). Exposure as in making Of Dasein’s need of being and the hidden meaning of manifest or laying bare this needfulness. To expose metaphysics as representationism. Setting the limits of metaphysics. Starting point: no longer in the I’s a priori structures of objective knowledge but in our being’s involvement with things and with others. Being-in-the-world The originary basis of metaphysics. The mutation of From Husserl to Heidegger: has to do with the role of transcendentalism man: the condition of our knowledge is sought in our relation to the being of entities in their totality. BEING AS RELATIONAL TOTALITY Husserl’s eidetic-noetic Eidetic: precise, detailed, photographic memory phenomenology Noetic: referring to the mind or intellect, or to understanding gained through human rational processes. - Subject/ego understands world through a precise intellectual (transcendental) process? Dasein Critical extension of Husserl’s understanding of what constitutes phenomenological evidence. I.e. evidence of reality, of entities in the life-world? Husserl’s phenomenology Omits questioning the phenomena themselves. comes to short Overconfidence in transcendental optics: --> blurs the distinction between the given and its appearance. Hermeneutic shortcoming. Radicalizing the Cannot be understood solely as immanent/located inside conception of the subject. ”I can see a natural thing in its bodily transcendence presence only on the basis of this being-in-the-world” (Heidegger in Chang: 101). Dasein: the constitutive antecedence of the subject’s relfective possibilities. Dasein destroys the And destroys the dualist economy that priviliges te representational subject over the object. metaphysics Man and world: distinct yet essentially related. Must be considered to be mutually constitutive. Dasein as a way of being Whose essence is its relation with the world and its possibilities thereof. Let go of Husserl’s Dasein is always outside, alongside entities. Hence the constructionist theory of knower cannot be substantialized as the origin of the knowledge known. Antisubstantial, antidualist understanding of Dasein <-Openness/disclosure Phainomena as something that of themselves show themselves or appear. Appears as something meaningful (with a function?). Most entities simply occupy space and persist through time [but this seems to be related to physical entities alone – what about transcendental concepts?] Dasein however, stands ahead of itself, open to its own possibilities as transcendence [aka beyond the limits of experience?] Dasein has no essence As in fixed qualities. Dasein cannot be anything but its openness. Dasein is openness Being-in as in being-alongside: being open for. Situated disclosure Points to the mutual presence of Dasein and the world. The coming into presence of the average everyday world Significance-world as a structure of significance: specific situation, place in the world and its moment in history. Hermeneutic turn to The truth is as much a matter of producing as it is of phenomenology proving. TOWARDS AN ONTOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION