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Saussure held that definitions of concepts cannot exist independently from a linguistic system defined by difference, or, to put it differently, that a concept of something cannot exist without being named. Thus differences between meanings structure our perception; there is no real chair except insofar as we are manipulating symbolic systems. We w
... See morewikipedia.org • Linguistic Turn
There's a sense in which I disagree with the sense in which perception is characterized as manipulating symbolic systems. Because we’re perceptually constrained and share statistical relations among our sensory apparatus, we are all getting at something that can’t be seen as _purely_ symbolic.
It also strikes me that this kind of definition is coherent with an ecological view, wherein the chair is not a chair if it doesn't afford sitting (e.g., it is piled high with books).
A culture that believes its citizens are not reliably competent thinkers will treat those citizens differently to one that respects their reflective autonomy.
We Are More Rational Than Those Who Nudge Us – Steven Poole – Aeon
Biological evolution takes time, because it requires biological generations; the unit of reproduction is the mortal and replicating creature. Once the naked ape starts talking, however, “the unit of reproduction becomes”—in the words of anthropologist Gary Clevidence—“the mouth.” Information and complexity burgeon and replicate so fast that the pri
... See moreAnnie Dillard • For the Time Being
The oil painting was addressed to those who made money out of the market. Publicity is addressed to those who constitute the market, to the spectator-buyer who is also the consumer producer from whom profits are made twice over – as worker and then as buyer. The only places relatively free of publicity are the quarters of the very rich; their money
... See moreJohn Berger • Ways of Seeing
The bogus religiosity which now surrounds original works of art, and which is ultimately dependent upon their market value, has become the substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible. Its function is nostalgic. It is the final empty claim for the continuing values of an oligarchic, undemocratic culture. If the image is
... See moreJohn Berger • Ways of Seeing
To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power. A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words, is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychi
... See moreSusan Sontag • On Photography
There were two further points I felt I should have made in our earlier conversations, one of them being that doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief, and the other being that the Greek word sozo, which is usually translated "saved," can also mean healed, restored, that sort of thing. So the conventional translat
... See moreMarilynne Robinson • Gilead
To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.
To be naked is to be without disguise.
To be on displ
John Berger • Ways of Seeing
What feels like fun to me, but work to others? The mark of whether you are made for a task is not whether you love it but whether you can handle the pain of the task easier than most people. When are you enjoying yourself while other people are complaining? The work that hurts you less than it hurts others is the work you were made to do.