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Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

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Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#31

Post by conatus »

derr342 wrote: post #23
quinndupont wrote: post #19

Just so everyone is clear here, while Derrida had an "uncertain" reception in some parts of the academy (those crusty old anglo-American philosophers), he was deeply influential, and by some peoples' accounts, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. So, dismissing him out of hand (especially rejections based on his ostensible obscurantism) is akin to saying that Donald Knuth is no good. If you g…

> So, dismissing him out of hand (especially rejections based on his ostensible obscurantism) is akin to saying that Donald Knuth is no good. This is an invalid analogy if I ever saw one. Let me try to make it more accurate. For Knuth to be like Derrida his magnum opus would have to have been generated by just typing cat /dev/random and later claiming that MIX was somewhat defined in there as well as programs written…

Hi. How much Derrida have you actually read?

Like sat down, with a pre-existing understanding of the fields he is interfacing with (particularly phenomenology and structuralism and semiotics a la Saussure) and then begin reading?

Most approaches to continental philosophy I read on these pages are like someone jumping into a halfway point of a complex essay on functional programming, quoting it and declaring it nonsense. To people outside particular discourses, things often seem like nonsense. Within them, with enough background, one can see that these things are meaningful, while one might, of course, disagree.

Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#32

Post by rspeer »

sighsigh wrote: post #27
mynameishere wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

infinitely recursive and self referent system of language No idea if this is actually what he said, but when I say the word "dog" while pointing at a dog, the recursion of language stops. It's amazing how so much philosophy is almost intentionally incorrect.

... until a later bystander asks you, "What is a dog?" and you now have to define it without the associated dog present. Or someone looks at another breed of dog and asks "What is that?" because he isn't aware of canine taxonomy and thinks only that original breed is a creature called "dog". Welcome to Derrida's version of the halting problem. These are actual problems of NLP today.

That's not what people do in natural language processing. Don't appropriate the terminology of other fields for your own purposes and claim you're doing that field.

Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#33

Post by MichaelGG »

lambdaphage wrote: post #18
MichaelGG wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not fair. Daniel Dennett and Thomas Metzinger have said interesting things.

Are you suggesting that Dennett is a continental philosopher?

Sorry I skipped over that critical modifier. I agree with the GP then.

Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#34

Post by sighsigh »

rspeer wrote: post #32
sighsigh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... until a later bystander asks you, "What is a dog?" and you now have to define it without the associated dog present. Or someone looks at another breed of dog and asks "What is that?" because he isn't aware of canine taxonomy and thinks only that original breed is a creature called "dog". Welcome to Derrida's version of the halting problem. These are actual problems of NLP today.

That's not what people do in natural language processing. Don't appropriate the terminology of other fields for your own purposes and claim you're doing that field.

That's not what is done in NLP because that cannot be done by NLP... for the reasons that Derrida pointed out decades ago.

Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#35

Post by rspeer »

sighsigh wrote: post #34
rspeer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what people do in natural language processing. Don't appropriate the terminology of other fields for your own purposes and claim you're doing that field.

That's not what is done in NLP because that cannot be done by NLP... for the reasons that Derrida pointed out decades ago.

Don't tell NLPists what not to do, thanks.

In NLP, people don't just throw up their hands and say "grounding is hard, it's so hard it's impossible, let's not do it". Grounding is sometimes hard, but it's often perfectly tractable for a given problem domain.

If we haven't solved strong AI yet, don't count that as a victory for your unrelated field.

Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#37

Post by wfn »

mbrock wrote: post #20

Since the onslaught of ignorant anti-continental quips has already begun, I'd like to suggest two texts by Richard Rorty—an American pragmatist with an extremely lucid writing style—that show how it is indeed possible to find Derrida interesting without being a charlatan or stupid: Here, a short review that gives a very brief introduction/defense (in a sort of backhanded way, though): http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n03/ric…

> And here, a full essay on Derrida titled "Philosophy as a Kind of Writing": http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosoph...

Thanks for this, I haven't read it before. For anyone curious, it is a very clear-headed and well-articulated take by an American philosopher (analytic and later (him becoming a prominent participant of) pragmatic (if you could call it that?) tradition) on Derrida's conception of philosophy / approach to truth (so to speak.) There's a very nice part about what he considers to be the constructive component in Derrida's system/view, and it is detailed and honest (in the sense of capturing many nuances), I think.

A very nice and easy-going read, would recommend to anyone interested.

Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#38

Post by hblanks »

What a pleasure this interview was to read. And plain spoken, too.

Many here have complained that Derrida is hard to read, or worse, simply makes no sense. You may take a side in this, if you like. But I would encourage you to read some short piece of his instead. In so doing, and as the interview itself remarks on reading, you may make your own interpretation.

@mbrock has listed several items. To these, I add what my instructor for composition at Deep Springs (himself a student of Derrida) assigned us, "Declarations of Independence." It is but a nine page talk on the US Declaration of Independence. But within it, many of Derrida's persistent concerns on language and action come to light.

You can find it online, starting at page 5 in this PDF: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cole0384/academics/files/Derrida.PDF

Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#39

Post by coldtea »

mbrock wrote: post #20

Since the onslaught of ignorant anti-continental quips has already begun, I'd like to suggest two texts by Richard Rorty—an American pragmatist with an extremely lucid writing style—that show how it is indeed possible to find Derrida interesting without being a charlatan or stupid: Here, a short review that gives a very brief introduction/defense (in a sort of backhanded way, though): http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n03/ric…

>how it is indeed possible to find Derrida interesting without being a charlatan or stupid

Charlatan or stupid? How provincial one must be to come to that conclusion.

As hackers (geeks etc) we are generally mostly accepting of an empiricist, show-me-the-numbers, kind of analysis (and analytical philosophy), but it's by far not the only one, or the most potent, when outside the realm of hard sciences. The anglosaxon positivist/reductionist philosophical school is not the only one out there, just as Hollywood and the emphasis on the "plot" is not the only movie tradition.

It's like someone working on imperative programming all your life, and asking "what's this BS Prolog thing, that's not real code" or "LISP is pretentious and doesn't have a proper syntax".

Re: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

#40

Post by coldtea »

derr342 wrote: post #23
quinndupont wrote: post #19

Just so everyone is clear here, while Derrida had an "uncertain" reception in some parts of the academy (those crusty old anglo-American philosophers), he was deeply influential, and by some peoples' accounts, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. So, dismissing him out of hand (especially rejections based on his ostensible obscurantism) is akin to saying that Donald Knuth is no good. If you g…

> So, dismissing him out of hand (especially rejections based on his ostensible obscurantism) is akin to saying that Donald Knuth is no good. This is an invalid analogy if I ever saw one. Let me try to make it more accurate. For Knuth to be like Derrida his magnum opus would have to have been generated by just typing cat /dev/random and later claiming that MIX was somewhat defined in there as well as programs written…

>For Knuth to be like Derrida his magnum opus would have to have been generated by just typing: cat /dev/random

You seem to have an uncanny knowledge of philosophy for a throwaway account.

Tell us more about anything that you don't understand (not that you've actually tried or even went anywhere near Derrida/Continental philosophy) is /dev/random...

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