[ChrisW]

Oh good, Robt. I didn’t mean to be humorless, just wanted to be sure I hadn’t offended. Of course, to those uninterested in such issues, all intellectual debate, or all debate about difficult and abstract issues (including physics and astronomy) can look like hairsplitting. On the other hand, the narcissism of small differences is certainly a real hazard in intellectual debate. One may fall into drawing a distinction without a difference.
While I’m confident that the distinctions I’m drawing are important within the debate over structuralism, I do worry that perhaps I’m the only one who would be interested in pursuing that discussion. Well, the good thing about discussion boards is that the audience is self-selecting – I just hope I won’t chase people away permanently who might be interested in other issues I also would like to discuss. With that said, I’m going to forge ahead on structuralism when I get the chance.

[ChrisW]

I said above that that I had a problem with structuralism's attempt to make sense of meaning purely in terms of words' relations to each other, leaving out words' relations to the world.
epigone responded that it was common sense to think that names are arbitrary – that calling something a chair doesn't tell us anything about chairs. (Putting it the other way around, there’s nothing about that combination of phonemes or letters that is any more suited to chairs than to skunk cabbages, and nothing about ‘chair’ that makes it capture reality better than ‘Stuhl’.)
This response puzzled me – I couldn’t see the connection between what I had said and epigone's reply.
Looking at epigone's reply to Paul Lake on the Enchanted Loom thread, I think maybe I've got it:

“Structuralism is a theory of how communication is effectuated through a system of recognized differences. The differences are arbitrary and have no connection to their referents, but communication is possible based on the differences within the system. Derrida broke with the structuralists by stressing the “play” in the relationship between the binary opposites and, more politically, by contending that binary oppositions are always hierarchical in nature.” [My emphasis]

The emphasized passage seems to have two readings. I think that, at least pre-reflectively, we assume that the world is the way it is apart from how we talk about it: though the particular sounds we use to mark distinctions are indeed arbitrary, the distinctions themselves are not. Whatever distinctions we may draw in language, there really is a distinction out there in the world between mountains and molehills or between mammals and fish. The job of arbitrary signs is to mark real, non-arbitrary distinctions between things -- things whose nature is the way it is whatever language we may speak (or whether there are any language users at all). In Plato’s metaphor, language or concepts “should cut reality at the joints.” This view is sometimes called "essentialism" and sometimes "realism".

(1) On one reading of the bolded remark, it seems to deny these real distinctions out in the world. It seems to say that conceptual differences themselves are arbitrary: before language makes its arbitrary distinctions, reality has no “joints”. The linguistic system, in marking distinctions, does not refer outward to real distinctions in the world (this is what I called ‘world-independence’ and ‘non-referentiality’). Rather our arbitrary marking of differences in some way creates the distinctions the language is supposed to respect. The way language as a whole carves reality (partly) creates the "joints" which an individual utterance or text must carve at. On this reading, structuralism is a form of transcendental idealism.

(2) On another reading, the bolded remark simply says, uncontroversially, that the difference in sounds tells us nothing about the distinction being drawn. For example, the fact that ‘bank’ closely resembles ‘bunk’ doesn’t give us reason to think that banks will resemble bunks.

It strikes me that epigone’s response to me makes sense if one assumes either that she confuses these two senses of the bolded remark, or if one assumes that she has an argument that shows, quite surprisingly, that the one follows from the other. I find some support for this reading in the paragraph immediately preceding the one I quoted from the Loom thread:

“I take Derrida to mean (and I take this to be a fundamental principle of deconstruction) that our world must be conceived of as a text and that we must be cognizant of the fact that our giving names to things (through a system of recognized distinctions – binary oppositions) inevitably shapes that world or, what for Derrida is the same thing, our understanding of that world. The point is not that texts exist and things do not. Rather, the point is that things cannot be divorced from the way we speak and think of them. [My emphasis again]

And in fact, I can see a reason why a structuralist would be tempted to slide from (2) to (1), if we remember Saussure's point about phonemes. Is there a difference between /a/ when a woman says it and when a man says it? There certainly is a difference in sound, but the phonemes are the same. If I pronounce a ‘t’ in on my teeth or just behind my teeth, is there a difference in phoneme? Whether there is a difference between the phonemes depends entirely on whether the language itself contrasts these sounds (or "marks the difference").
If one generalizes the above point about phonemes to ALL distinctions – between mammals and fish as well as /l/ and /r/, then the language as a whole makes the difference between mammals and fish in the continuum of experience simply by marking that distinction and not another.
But what is plausible with regard to the sounds we ourselves make in language is extremely implausible when we face a real distinction out in the world. From a commonsense or scientific point of view, the claim that we make the world by conceiving it smacks of magical thought.
Sure, our own linguistic behavior is influenced by the distinctions we draw between different phonemes. But how do we infer from this fact that the distinctions we draw somehow influence the world beyond us?
The analogy with phonemes certainly won't be enough to persuade a realist to abandon his view.



[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited April 02, 2004).]

[ChrisW]

Sorry for that long post. Hope I haven't permanently killed the discussion.
What about returning to Barthes' second "slogan":
"The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture."

Yes authors are all part of an inherited tradition and could hardly write what they write without it. The crazy quilt picture might not be a bad one for what third rate writers (unconsciously)do.
But for original thinkers, isn't Newton's image a better one? "I could only see so far because I stood on the shoulders of giants." (Yes, I know that the book _On the Shoulders of Giants_ shows that this was not one of Newton's original statements.)
If the structuralist account of signs forces us to treat Shakespeare, Plato and Darwin as merely stitching cliches together, like Danielle Steele, isn't this a reason to reject structuralism?

Or what about this question:
At the beginning, I mentioned as one of my commonsense assumptions, that there were non-manipulative (autonomy-preserving) means of persuading people.
If there are, then recognizing manipulation should be an important part of the work of literary criticism. (And we do in fact criticize movies and poems as "manipulative".)
Yet postmodernists seem to believe that all discourse is ideological.
Reason seemed to promise us a way out of being manipulated, but reason turns out to be just another ideology (logocentrism).
There is no liberation -- only irony and the embracing of contradiction.
Is there really no way to distinguish between manipulative and non-manipulative persuasion? Is it morally responsible for us to give up the hope of finding one?



[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited April 04, 2004).]

[Robt_Ward]

I would venture to opine that in any practical sense "manipulation" and "persuasion" are synonyms, and that "persuasion" is simply a more polite way of manipulating. In a very real sense, all proactive communication is "manipulation"; that is to say, by the very act of communication I am expressing that I see such-and-so and wish that you see it as well.

"Please pass the salt, dear!" is overt manipulation. "Is there a salt cellar at the end of the table down there?" is covert manipulation. In each case, the "desired" result is to get salt on the food.

In the fundamental sense, absent the need to say "I want..." there is no need for speech.

(robt)

[ChrisW]

That's a good place to start Robt.
Speech, like all other action is motivated by desire.
Generally, I wouldn't speak to you unless I wanted to persuade you to do something or think something -- or at least consider something. (We speak to ourselves in order to give vent to feelings or to clarify our ideas, and I might speak to you for similar reasons without caring much whether you are listening, but that's certainly not the standard case.

But we generally recognize two sorts of "persuasion":

1. I persuade the store keeper to give me a carton of milk by giving him something he values more: $2.
or
I persuade my father to give me money for college by persuading him that this will best serve my long term interest (which he already cares about because he loves me). I take the money and use it for college.

2. I persuade the store keeper to give me the milk by persuading him (knowing all the time that I won't do it) that I will bring him the money tomorrow.
or
I persuade my father to give me money for college all the while intending to use the money for drugs.
or
I persuade others of my political view by stating true (but irrelevant) statistics, knowing that my hearers will misinterpret the statistics as supporting my view.

If you are the persuadee, you don't mind being persuaded in the first way, but you do object to being persuaded in the second way (as soon as you realize it). This is an intuitive or commonsense distinction that we might want to mark, however far we understand what's behind the distinction -- we might use "manipulation" to mark the latter form of persuasion. For the former, we might use the word "justification." But if you prefer to use 'manipulation' synonymously with 'persuasion', then we can find other words to mark the distinction.
A plausible view of the difference is that the latter form of persuasion gets you to produce an outcome purely for my reasons (because I don't give you a real reason, only an apparent one), while the former gets you to produce the outcome I desire for your own reasons. The former treats you as a tool; the latter respects you as a rational agent.

Whatever the explanation is, if we assume that all persuasion is really more or less like the cases in (2) we end up with a rather horrible view of human relations -- and of politics.
Legitimate government is a kind that can justify itself to the people governed -- tyranny may persuade the people to follow it on the basis of falsehoods (e.g., divine right of kings), but it cannot justify itself to its citizens. If we give up on separating the two kinds of persuasion, don't we give up on the distinction between tyranny and legitimate government?

[Robt_Ward]

A more valid distinction, in my mind, is between "overt" and "covert" manipulation/persuasion. Certainly, the dichotomy you are identifying is real, but the distinction you are making is, from a logical perspective, paralyzingly hair-splitting.

You're proposing (a Good Idea) that we distinguish, essentially, between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" manipulation. But of ocurse, this raises the issue of "who decides?" and has very little utile value from a logical perspective. Manipulation is manipulation, logically you can't argue that one form is "superior" to the other. It's about like arguing that whites are "better" than blacks...

So down here at the deconstrucionist level we're currently exploring, you've drawn a meaningless distinction.

You're either comfortable judging acts by their results (conditional approach) and so you are in the "end justifies the means" camp, or you judge an act without relation to its (potential or actual) consequences (moral absolutism).

As an immediately relevant or recognizable comparison, some spherian's feel that "established members" should be allowed more slack within the framework of the posting rules (I've posted an average of 100 crits a month since I joined, I should be able topost more than 4 poems a month); others feel that the precise, same rules should be applied to all, and that no 'spherian, regardless of his identity, should be cut any slack at all.

Anyone standing on the outside would say, rewrite the rules to specifically define levels of properly reward the community's most valued members.

Running out of steam, I'm tired... I know there's a point int here someplace. later, dude...

(robt)

[ChrisW]

I'm puzzled by the charge of hair-splitting:
I'd have thought a distinction between deceptive and non-deceptive persuasion was part of common sense. And if we can go beyond common sense to specify more exactly what the difference is, then I'd think that a very useful project.

As for who decides -- the deceiver is in a position to know whether he is being deceptive or not. If the person to be deceived understood how the deceiver intended to persuade him, he would not be persuaded, and the deceiver knows this. The deceiver also knows that he doesn't himself want to be persuaded in this fashion.

But just at the level of making the distinction between deceptive or manipulative vs. rational persuasion, I do not mean to be discussing the issue of the morality of deception. Maybe there's never anything morally wrong with deceiving others -- but the distinction between the two kinds of persuasion remains. (For this reason, I'd avoid labeling them "legitimate" and "illegitimate.") For my purposes it's enough to think about the kind of persuasion you don't mind being persuaded by and the kind that you try to guard against.



[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited April 06, 2004).]

[Robt_Ward]

Chris,

It wasn't a "charge"; more a statement that, from my perspective, the distinction itself is paralyzing.

Remember, I said in the last post that what you are saying is a Good Thing; of COURSE we need to make those distinctions, in life. My point was more abstract; So down here at the deconstrucionist level we're currently exploring, you've drawn a meaningless distinction.

I'm just feeling my way through these ideas; please don't think for a single instant that ANYTHING I say in this sort of a thread was meant to be taken as belittling, a put-down, derisory, whatever.

But I can't get away from the concept that, at an elemental level, the essence of language is manipulation, and down at that level there's no such thing as "good" or "bad". The uses to which we put our manipulative abilities, of course, are a whole other story.

Makes me think of the dude that was sitting at a bar in St. Louis, nursing a bourbon-and-branch, when an extremely attractive, apparently unaccompanied, woman sat down two stools south of him. After watching her toss back 3 scotches in quick succesion, our guy decided to take a shot at it...

He slid down beside her, looked her straight in the eye, and said: "If I give you a million dollars, will you sleep with me tonight?"

She looked him up and down, nodded in decision, and said "Sure!"

He said, "Great!", pulled out his wallet, removed a 50-dollar bill, passed it to her, and said "Let's go out in the alley for a quick blow job!"

She looked at him in stunned amazement, and said "What kind of a woman do you think I AM, anyway?" (She was pissed, dontcha know?)

His reply? "Honey, we've already established that; we're just haggling over price now..."

If you catch my drift?

(robt)

[ChrisW]

Sorry Robt -- I used the word "charge" without heat to mean "objection" -- it's one of several habits of speech that (Anglo-American) philosophers employ to make the comparison of theories seem more dramatic. I didn't even consider that I might sound insulted or anything. Feel free to ignore it if I sound like that again.

I've always liked that joke (the version I heard was with Churchill and a woman next to him at a dinner party).

I'd have said the essence of language was communication. Sometimes I may only want you to know how I feel -- and by telling you I've achieved my end already. There's no persuasion involved (and certainly no manipulation). Sometimes I signal my intentions, not so as to persuade, but simply so that you and I can coordinate our plans -- turning on my turn signal to indicate I'm turning left or telling you that I've already vacuumed so you don't waste the effort. Can these really be called "persuasion" -- let alone "manipulation"?

Just in order to draw the distinction, we don't need to talk about morality or "good" and 'bad', but rather a distinction between two kinds of persuasive strategy:
Open persuasion
The strategy can be fully understood by the hearer, without undercutting its persuasive force.
Deception
The strategy of persuasion cannot be fully understood by the hearer without undercutting its persuasive force.

Even someone who doesn't believe in morality or good and bad could make this distinction -- in fact he'd need to. When he's deceiving, he won't want to let his strategy out of the bag "and here's the place where I will get you to slide illicitly from one meaning of the word to a quite different meaning..."

But perhaps you are doubting the possibility of open persuasion (as I defined it). In other words, persuasion necessarily involves fallacies or distortions of the facts?

[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited April 06, 2004).]

[Robt_Ward]

No, I'm speaking in the abstract:

Given: that the essential core of language is "manipulation" in the pure sense of the word; to have an effect is to manipulate...

it follows: that no meaningful theoretical distinction can be made, at the ur-level, between various degrees of manipulation...

because: any such distinction relies upon mutually agreed-upon frames of reference, and in order even to define those I must "speak with" (i.e. manipulate) you.

Something like that.

In the real world, we can, and must, make these distinctions. But deconstructionist theory is NOT the real world...

(robt)