02.27.08

My first hesitation here is that it sounds like you are playing with the sign/word distinction. For me, a sign signifies because it is a symbol, and a sign is a symbol because it is representing something outside of itself. Wittgenstein here makes a distinction that I don't follow. He says in the Tractatus that a sign is the perceivable aspect of the symbol. So for him, both '&' and 'and' are signs of the logical symbol that is what is presented (not re-presented!) by not only the signs '&' and 'and' but also 'et', 'und', '+' 'conjunction', and so on. The thing for him is that no one can ever say what the symbol is, but everyone can know it from it showing itself through signs.

But I'm not sure that I buy this. (Assuming, of course, that I'm reading him right.) I would say that a sign represents, but that a word doesn't. For me, the difference hinges on the matter of interpretation; I don't think that a word stands in need of interpretation, but a sign does. To put it differently: A system of signs is contingent upon a pre-existing language; a language is not. (Bertrand Russell thought that there might be a hierarchy of languages, each one providing meaning for the one below it.) Folks like Sausseure and Frege thought that a word has meaning because it signifies either an idea in my head or an object in the world. So when I say "The cat is on the mat," my words have meaning because of their relationship with the world, i.e., that there is an object called "cat" and an object called "mat" and there is the relation of "being on top of." (For them, even a false sentence has its meaning based on its relationship (T or F) with the world.) But this picture of language, of course, is wrong.

Speaking of philosophical grammar: They even invented a logical notation to try and show this relationship. So the sentence "The cat is on the mat." becomes: (Ex)(Ey)(If [Cx & My] then [xRy]) (This is read as: "There exists such an x and such a y so that if x has the property of being a cat [C] and y has the property of being a mat [M], then x stands in the relation [R] of being on top of y." Much simpler, no?)

I bring this all up because when you say that "re-presentation is the attempt at communication", it sounds like what you're saying is that there is this living thing that is communication, and that all that we have are these dead signs that are flailing about trying to communicate something alive. Is it right to say that an analogy could be something like, "A word is to its meaning as a body is to its soul." ? [A means for conveyance. To "express" is to press the essence out of the body.] This was a major preoccupation of Wittgenstein's. Philosophical Investigations §454: "How does it come about that this arrow ====> points? Doesn't it seem to carry in it something besides itself? - "No, not the dead line on paper; only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that." - That is both true and false. The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it. This pointing is not a hocus-pocus which can be performed only by the soul."

I think it would be a mistake to say something like real communication is impossible. Because it's not; we successfully communicate all of the time. (Communicate: Latin communicatus, past participle of communicare to impart, participate, from communis common.)

In On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Nietzsche privileges metaphor in the formation of words and concepts in human language. There is a running theme through his writing and through the writing of a lot of post-Enlightenment German philosophers and philologists about the "value" of words, their "exchange value", how a coin is to a word as a piece of metal is to an idea, or how a coin is to a word as the value of a coin is to an idea (depending on who you ask.) To coin a term. Nietzsche thinks that language comes about through the forming of new metaphors, and as a metaphor becomes accepted by the speaking community and becomes introduced into the "market of ideas", so to speak, and it slowly loses its metaphorical quality as it is used or exchanged over and over and over again. (Or, more accurately, we forget that it was a metaphor in the first place, thus mistaking a falsehood for a truth.)

But this doesn't mean that a word loses some kind of inherit value as begins to get used by a community. Unless, of course, there is some kind of inherit value in novelty.

(Everything in quotes in this passage is a metaphor) Which is a big "part" of art, maybe? (And not merely visual art, but in the "way" that an object can be "viewed" as a "text".) That art is the process of creating new metaphors that allow us to "see" old concepts in a new "light". This is "sounding really broad" to me right now; and I am not sure if I am "connecting" with your original concern. My "thought bank" is running "empty" now.

One more thing: There is some kind of relationship between metaphors and mythologies. Wittgenstein was always saying that all Freud was doing was coming up with new similes to describe phenomena that lots of people had long since recognized. And Freud was aware of this, too. This next sentence is wrong, but I think there is something to it: To share an ideology with another person is to share a set of metaphors by which you describe the world.