Opposition to Derrida does not imply conservatism

[jolly]

Though admittedly a po-mo naif,  I will admit that some of Derrida's concerns seem to be not far from more tangible semantic and analytical issues.   It is more a question of degrees; in some contexts of the "language game" (I think Wittgenstein is a better guide to these issues than Derrida and po-mo) meanings and referents and denotation may be very difficult to specify or agree upon ; there may be some element of "intersubjectivity" between meanings and of course across languages( I always thought there were good grounds for believing in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) .  In other contexts (say programming or logic) the parameters are much more defined: as Witt. said in the PI, .�the signpost is in order�if under normal circumstances it fulfills its purpose.�    
 
No one except maybe hard-core Kantians or theologians or platonists  would hold that objective meanings and truths exist in some transcendent realm for all words, concepts, and sciences; however, Deridda seems to remove all constraints, whether within language  or in denying the causal relation of language to non-language.   For any real knowledge, say in biology, it seems that one must hold that language can objectively correspond to and represent a non-linguistic external nature, and that those linguistic concepts which refer to the external nature can be known and agreed upon by those in the biology game: the Krebs Cycle has a very specific meaning which those with fluency in that discourse know well .  
 
Postivists of course desired to reduce problems with reference and meaning by introducing quantifiers and a symbolic notation into language--perhaps even everyday language: Quine was more than willing to grant that proper names and nouns be replaced with bound variables, which reduces most of the problems with "sense" and description, etc. that philosophy of language people spend years arguing about. Such a reduction of language to constants and variables would not bode well for the belle-lettrist biz of course. 
 
 

		
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