The alien hypothesis?

[Paul Mackin]

On Oct 19, 2005, at 5:10 AM, Otto wrote:

> This reminds me of Jonathan Culler's "On Deconstruction. Theory and  
> Criticism after Structuralism" (Cornell Univ., Ithaca, New York,  
> 1982). Maybe you should check the second chapter "Deconstruction"  
> for Nietzsche's reversal of cause and effect where it is shown how  
> the cause is imagined after the effect has been suffered. Got it  
> only in German.
>
> Otto

I don't have a copy of the Culler book but here from the New York  
Review is John Searle's reaction to Niezsche's  cause/effect reversal  
as Culler presents it.

Although NYReview published a long rebuttal of Searle's review (also  
an equally long counter-rebuttal) I  don't think any  challange was  
made to Searle on the  Neizsche matter.

Since the review contains relevant direct quotes from Culler, it  
should serve present purposes.

Anyway, here's  what Searle wrote:

2.

Deconstruction, as Culler describes it, may not sound very promising,  
but the test of a method of textual analysis lies in its results, so  
let us now turn to some of the examples where Culler and Derrida show  
us how deconstruction is supposed to work. Culler's paradigm example,  
the one he presents to show how the various characterizations and  
operations of deconstruction "might converge in practice" (p. 86), is  
what he describes as Nietzsche's deconstruction of causality.

     Suppose one feels a pain. This causes one to look for a cause  
and spying, perhaps, a pin, one posits a link and reverses the  
perceptual or phenomenal order, pain…pin, to produce a causal  
sequence, pin…pain. "The fragment of the outside world of which we  
become conscious comes after the effect that has been produced on us  
and is projected a posteriori as its 'cause"' [p. 86].

So far this does not sound very deconstructive of anything. Culler  
thinks otherwise, and to get an idea of the deconstructionist style  
of argument it is worth quoting his commentary at some length:

     Let us be as explicit as possible about what this simple example  
implies…. The experience of pain, it is claimed, causes us to  
discover the pin [his italics] and thus causes the production of a  
cause [my italics]. To deconstruct causality one must operate with  
the notion of cause and apply it to causation itself [p. 87].

Thus one is "asserting the indispensability of causation while  
denying it any rigorous justification" (p. 88). Furthermore,

     the deconstruction reverses the hierarchical opposition of the  
causal scheme. The distinction between cause and effect makes the  
cause an origin, logically and temporally prior. The effect is  
derived, secondary, dependent upon the cause. Without exploring the  
reasons for or the implications of this hierarchization, let us note  
that, working within the opposition, the deconstruction upsets the  
hierarchy by producing an exchange of properties. If the effect is  
what causes the cause to become a cause, then the effect, not the  
cause, should be treated as the origin. By showing that the argument  
which elevates cause can be used to favor effect, one uncovers and  
undoes the rhetorical operation responsible for the hierarchization  
and one produces a significant displacement [p. 88; my italics].

I believe that far from demonstrating the power of deconstruction,  
Culler's discussion of this example is a tissue of confusions. Here  
are several of the most glaring mistakes.

1. There is nothing whatever in the example to support the view that  
the effect "causes the production of a cause" or that the effect  
"causes the cause to become a cause." The experience of pain causes  
us to look for its cause and thus indirectly causes the discovery of  
the cause. The idea that it produces the cause is exactly counter to  
what the example actually shows.

2. The word "origin" is being used in two quite distinct senses. If  
"origin" means causal origin then the pin is the causal origin of the  
pain. If "origin" means epistemic origin, how we go about finding  
out, then the experience of pain is the origin of our discovery of  
its cause. But it is a simple confusion to conclude from this that  
there is some unitary sense of "origin" in which "the effect and not  
the cause should be treated as the origin."

3. There isn't any logical hierarchy between cause and effect in the  
first place since the two are correlative terms: one is defined in  
terms of the other. The OED, for example, defines "cause" as "that  
which produces an effect" and it defines "effect" as "something  
caused or produced."

4. Contrary to what Culler claims, nothing in the example shows that  
causation lacks any "rigorous justification," or that any  
"significant displacement" has come about. Our common sense  
prejudices about causation deserve careful scrutiny and criticism,  
but nothing in Culler's discussion forces any change in our most  
naive views about causation.

>
> John Doe wrote:
>
>
>> LOL! "semantic constructs" my ass...
>> matter of fact,next time a person falls on his ass, tell him,  
>> "hey! dude; you just suffered from the effects of a semantic
>> construct!" Talk about sucking up to dogma; the people who wrote  
>> all those texts - oh pardon me, I should say 'generated' those  
>> texts, since we all know the individual "I" is an illusion;  
>> another "sematic construct"
>>
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