This exchange below between Saul and Cheerskep reminds me of Derrida's term 'differance' He claims that any statement is incomplete and that nothing can be fully explicted. There is always a remainder, something left over, to be noticed by someone...ad infinitum.
i don't think I said that drawing is superior to language, or if I did, I erred. I do think drawing is a fundamental form of communication. It might be a product of language and not its antecedent. I don't know and I don't think anyone knows for sure. Did the early man grunt and point at the same time to tell his pal that the bison is just ahead? Was that pointing a mode of drawing? Was his grunting a performative act of 'drawing sound' or was it language and was language therefore born with 'drawing'. In the practical terms of our daily lives, I think that the drawn or performed images we make are likely conditioned by language. I think historical man is so deeply immersed in language that all of his concepts are shaped and limited by language. Whatever shape we make as a 'drawing' (again, I use the term in its broadest performative sense ) already has a name and many names. We 'draw' what we say; we say what we draw. This leads me to side with those who do not accept the ineffable in aesthetic experience. I think we are forced to explicate experience and what we say is merely tacit is that which cannot be firmly explicated but is 'explained away' or 'talked around' or said and re-said until every word known has been used and the matter is still incomplete. There is always something pertinent to be said, not enough, but no experience is truly 'speechless'. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, July 24, 2012 3:42:06 PM Subject: Re: is list dead? In a message dated 7/24/12 3:41:50 PM, [email protected] writes: > All answers are always already premised on a misunderstanding - > subsequently to be sure is to mistaken > My guess is there's no one on our list more convinced than I about the inherent "incompleteness" of language as a tool for "communication". William's remark about the superiority of hand-drawing to any verbal communication is very often true. But I also believe that language can often be what I've called "serviceable". (I have subsequently discovered that Quine used the term before I did. Being beaten to a good term can be an occasion for dismay, but not in this instance: I'm chuffed to know that Quine, a very smart though incomplete cookie, also saw utility in the term 'serviceable'.) The serviceability of language in getting across what we have in mind depends on our doing everything we can to describe our notions behind all our key terms. The quintessential "description" is often what's called "ostensive definition": We hold an apple up and say, "Apple!" Then we hold up an orange and say, "Orange!" Are there possibilities for mistakes even there? Yes. But chances are we will have enhanced the possibility that we will "communicate" -- i.e. stir a serviceably apt notion -- when we thereafter utter the word 'apple'.
