Comments on: But what did they really mean? http://www.raggedclown.com/2008/07/12/but-what-did-they-really-mean/ It's just a shadow you're seeing that he's chasing... Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:32:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Brian Marick http://www.raggedclown.com/2008/07/12/but-what-did-they-really-mean/comment-page-1/#comment-9167 Brian Marick Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:58:29 +0000 http://www.raggedclown.com/?p=737#comment-9167 My understanding of deconstruction, rather faded now, is that there's no claim that "words can mean anything". It's rather based on the linguistics of Saussere, who taught that words are defined by difference. That is, you learn what a "ghost" is by distinguishing it from a "shade", a "spirit", etc. Then you pop down a recursion rabbit hole, since the words used for the distinguishing are themselves learnt through differencing. But, in most all cases, you get convergence acceptably fast. I did notice, in my reading-social-science phase, that they tend to treat recursion and the idea of applying a function to functions (and thus, inevitably, to itself) in a rather more excited, even mystical, way than seemed justified to an old Lisp programmer. My understanding of deconstruction, rather faded now, is that there’s no claim that “words can mean anything”. It’s rather based on the linguistics of Saussere, who taught that words are defined by difference. That is, you learn what a “ghost” is by distinguishing it from a “shade”, a “spirit”, etc. Then you pop down a recursion rabbit hole, since the words used for the distinguishing are themselves learnt through differencing. But, in most all cases, you get convergence acceptably fast.

I did notice, in my reading-social-science phase, that they tend to treat recursion and the idea of applying a function to functions (and thus, inevitably, to itself) in a rather more excited, even mystical, way than seemed justified to an old Lisp programmer.

]]>