Language Compre...

The most prominent opposition with which Derrida's earlier work is concerned is that between speech and writing. According to Derrida, thinkers as different as Plato, Rousseau, Saussure, and Levi-Strauss, have all denigrated the written word and valorised speech, by contrast, as some type of pure conduit of meaning. Their argument is that while spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, written words are the symbols of that already existing symbol. As representations of speech, they are doubly derivative and doubly far from a unity with one's own thought. Without going into detail regarding the ways in which these thinkers have set about justifying this type of hierarchical opposition, it is important to remember that the first strategy of deconstruction is to reverse existing oppositions. In Of Grammatology (perhaps his most famous work), Derrida hence attempts to illustrate that the structure of writing and grammatology are more important and even 'older' than the supposedly pure structure of presence-to-self that is characterised as typical of speech.

For example, in an entire chapter of his Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure tries to restrict the science of linguistics to the phonetic and audible word only. In the course of his inquiry, Saussure goes as far as to argue that "language and writing are two distinct systems of signs: the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first". Language, Saussure insists, has an oral tradition that is independent of writing, and it is this independence that makes a pure science of speech possible. Derrida vehemently disagrees with this hierarchy and instead argues that all that can be claimed of writing - e.g. that it is derivative and merely refers to other signs - is equally true of speech. But as well as criticising such a position for certain unjustifiable presuppositions, including the idea that we are self identical with ourselves in 'hearing' ourselves think, Derrida also makes explicit the manner in which such a hierarchy is rendered untenable from within Saussure's own text.

Most famously, Saussure is the proponent of the thesis that is commonly referred to as "the arbitrariness of the sign", and this asserts, to simplify matters considerably, that the signifier bears no necessary relationship to that which is signified. Saussure derives numerous consequences from this position, but as Derrida points out, this notion of arbitrariness and of "unmotivated institutions" of signs, would seem to deny the possibility of any natural attachment. After all, if the sign is arbitrary and eschews any foundational reference to reality, it would seem that a certain type of sign (i.e. the spoken) could not be more natural than another (i.e. the written). However, it is precisely this idea of a natural attachment that Saussure relies upon to argue for our "natural bond" with sound, and his suggestion that sounds are more intimately related to our thoughts than the written word hence runs counter to his fundamental principle regarding the arbitrariness of the sign.

Sometimes one's evidence for a proposition is sharp. For example, you've tossed a biased coin thousands of times. 83% of the tosses landed heads, and no pattern has appeared even though you've done a battery of statistical tests. Then it is clear that your confidence that the next toss will land heads should be very close to 83%. Sometimes one's evidence for a proposition is sparse but with a clear upshot. For example: You have very little evidence as to whether the number of humans born in 1984 was even. But it is clear that you should be very near to 50% confident in this claim. But sometimes one's evidence for a proposition is sparse and unspecific. For example: A stranger approaches you on the street and starts pulling out objects from a bag. The first three objects he pulls out are a regular-sized tube of toothpaste, a live jellyfish, and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste. To what degree should you believe that the next object he pulls out will be another tube of toothpaste? The answer is not clear. The contents of the bag are clearly bizarre. You have no theory of "what insane people on the street are likely to carry in their bags," nor have you encountered any particularly relevant statistics about this. The situation doesn't have any obvious symmetry, so principles of indifference seem to be of no help. Should your probability be 54%? 91%? 18%?

It is very natural in such cases to say: You shouldn't have any very precise degree of confidence in the claim that the next object will be toothpaste. It is very natural to say: Your degree of belief should be indeterminate or vague or interval-valued. On this way of thinking, an appropriate response to this evidence would be a degree of confidence represented not by a single number, but rather by a range of numbers. The idea is that your probability that the next object is toothpaste should not equal 54%, 91%, 18%, or any other particular number. Instead it should span an interval of values, such as 10%, 80%.The toothpaste-in-the-bag example is artificial, but many realistic examples have been proposed. What is your confidence that "there will be a nuclear attack on an American city this century"? What is your state of opinion concerning "the price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence, or the obsolescence of a new invention, or the position of private wealth owners in the social system in 40 years"?

It is tempting to agree with J. M. Keynes that "About these matters there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever" and to think that the problem isn't just that our computers aren't fast enough. The idea is not that some computational or representational limitation prevents you from having a definite probability. Give an agent access to exactly your evidence relevant to the toothpaste claim, or, say, the claim that there is a God. Give her all the computers, representational tools, brain upgrades, etc. that you like. Still it seems as though the agent would go wrong to have any very precise degree of belief in the relevant claim. According to Scott Sturgeon: When evidence is essentially sharp, it warrants a sharp or exact attitude; when evidence is essentially fuzzy-as it is most of the time-it warrants at best a fuzzy attitude.

Sometimes one's evidence for a proposition is sharp. For example, you've tossed a biased coin thousands of times. 83% of the tosses landed heads, and no pattern has appeared even though you've done a battery of statistical tests. Then it is clear that your confidence that the next toss will land heads should be very close to 83%. Sometimes one's evidence for a proposition is sparse but with a clear upshot. For example: You have very little evidence as to whether the number of humans born in 1984 was even. But it is clear that you should be very near to 50% confident in this claim. But sometimes one's evidence for a proposition is sparse and unspecific. For example: A stranger approaches you on the street and starts pulling out objects from a bag. The first three objects he pulls out are a regular-sized tube of toothpaste, a live jellyfish, and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste. To what degree should you believe that the next object he pulls out will be another tube of toothpaste? The answer is not clear. The contents of the bag are clearly bizarre. You have no theory of "what insane people on the street are likely to carry in their bags," nor have you encountered any particularly relevant statistics about this. The situation doesn't have any obvious symmetry, so principles of indifference seem to be of no help. Should your probability be 54%? 91%? 18%?

It is very natural in such cases to say: You shouldn't have any very precise degree of confidence in the claim that the next object will be toothpaste. It is very natural to say: Your degree of belief should be indeterminate or vague or interval-valued. On this way of thinking, an appropriate response to this evidence would be a degree of confidence represented not by a single number, but rather by a range of numbers. The idea is that your probability that the next object is toothpaste should not equal 54%, 91%, 18%, or any other particular number. Instead it should span an interval of values, such as 10%, 80%.The toothpaste-in-the-bag example is artificial, but many realistic examples have been proposed. What is your confidence that "there will be a nuclear attack on an American city this century"? What is your state of opinion concerning "the price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence, or the obsolescence of a new invention, or the position of private wealth owners in the social system in 40 years"?

It is tempting to agree with J. M. Keynes that "About these matters there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever" and to think that the problem isn't just that our computers aren't fast enough. The idea is not that some computational or representational limitation prevents you from having a definite probability. Give an agent access to exactly your evidence relevant to the toothpaste claim, or, say, the claim that there is a God. Give her all the computers, representational tools, brain upgrades, etc. that you like. Still it seems as though the agent would go wrong to have any very precise degree of belief in the relevant claim. According to Scott Sturgeon: When evidence is essentially sharp, it warrants a sharp or exact attitude; when evidence is essentially fuzzy-as it is most of the time-it warrants at best a fuzzy attitude.

The most prominent opposition with which Derrida's earlier work is concerned is that between speech and writing. According to Derrida, thinkers as different as Plato, Rousseau, Saussure, and Levi-Strauss, have all denigrated the written word and valorised speech, by contrast, as some type of pure conduit of meaning. Their argument is that while spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, written words are the symbols of that already existing symbol. As representations of speech, they are doubly derivative and doubly far from a unity with one's own thought. Without going into detail regarding the ways in which these thinkers have set about justifying this type of hierarchical opposition, it is important to remember that the first strategy of deconstruction is to reverse existing oppositions. In Of Grammatology (perhaps his most famous work), Derrida hence attempts to illustrate that the structure of writing and grammatology are more important and even 'older' than the supposedly pure structure of presence-to-self that is characterised as typical of speech.

For example, in an entire chapter of his Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure tries to restrict the science of linguistics to the phonetic and audible word only. In the course of his inquiry, Saussure goes as far as to argue that "language and writing are two distinct systems of signs: the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first". Language, Saussure insists, has an oral tradition that is independent of writing, and it is this independence that makes a pure science of speech possible. Derrida vehemently disagrees with this hierarchy and instead argues that all that can be claimed of writing - e.g. that it is derivative and merely refers to other signs - is equally true of speech. But as well as criticising such a position for certain unjustifiable presuppositions, including the idea that we are self identical with ourselves in 'hearing' ourselves think, Derrida also makes explicit the manner in which such a hierarchy is rendered untenable from within Saussure's own text.

Most famously, Saussure is the proponent of the thesis that is commonly referred to as "the arbitrariness of the sign", and this asserts, to simplify matters considerably, that the signifier bears no necessary relationship to that which is signified. Saussure derives numerous consequences from this position, but as Derrida points out, this notion of arbitrariness and of "unmotivated institutions" of signs, would seem to deny the possibility of any natural attachment. After all, if the sign is arbitrary and eschews any foundational reference to reality, it would seem that a certain type of sign (i.e. the spoken) could not be more natural than another (i.e. the written). However, it is precisely this idea of a natural attachment that Saussure relies upon to argue for our "natural bond" with sound, and his suggestion that sounds are more intimately related to our thoughts than the written word hence runs counter to his fundamental principle regarding the arbitrariness of the sign.