All posts filed under: distinction

Language is not a Signal: Notes on Wilhelm von Humboldt

Monday, January 28, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
comment 1
concept / decision / dialogue / distinction / humboldt / language / metaphysics / order word / protoype / representation / segmentation / sign / Thought

Language is not a Signal: Notes on Wilhelm von Humboldt One of the earliest and most strident critiques of the signifier, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s philosophy of language refused the even-then-canonical concept of a “sign” by questioning the universal conceptual image of a language as representation. Beneath the semiotic aspect of language — the “common sense” idea of language as utterance, signalling, communicating, “saying” — Humboldt catches sight of a more profound function of language, where […]

Deconstructing Cybernetics

Saturday, January 19, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
comments 4
abstract machine / catastrophe / chaos / communication / conservatism / cybernetics / decentralization / derrida / distinction / exteriority / godel / humanity / machine / metaphysics / ontology / spencer-brown / spirit / writing

Notes on Derrida and Cybernetics Let us conjecture that the invention of the transistor — an auto-controllable circuit — indicates the attainment of a critical level of development in cybernetics, a “tipping point.” Then for writing the corresponding moment is the invention of the video camera, perhaps more precisely the photograph: now seeing is writing, literally marking. Visio-literature is the only kind that can ever exists for us today — even ancient literature is post-modern […]

Identity and Division

Sunday, August 26, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
comments 5
badiou / distinction / event / identity / void

Identity Project (Skull Lab), oil on old silkscreen frames (February / March 2006) What is the relation between experience and identity? Clearly, a purely logical account of identity cannot lay claim to our ‘experience’ of identity, only its most formal aspects. Even an ontological account of identity, identity as collection of experiences or even identity as a pure cognitive event, would again demonstrate only the tautological function of identity (for example, agent A is that […]