"Oddly, when deconstructionists required appendectomies or bypass surgery or even a root-canal job, they never deconstructed medical or dental "truth," but went along with whatever their board-certified, profit-oriented surgeons proclaimed was the last word."

Can't remember where I read this, but someone was on an airline flight sitting next to a hippie who kept talking about how we needed to get rid of bourgeois values, western forms of logical thinking, follow our bliss, etc etc. The non-hippie guy said:

"You know, you're on the right flight...this is a really cool airline. I was talking to the pilot in the bar before we left, and he said they smoke weed all the time and when they have a hot flight attendant on board, sometimes they do her right there in the cockpit."

Very nervous hippie for the remainder of the flight.

I love this!

As near as I can tell, the truth is that there are more stupid people than there are those who have common sense, and the stupid people right now are winning. This needs to change.

Curiously, I never heard the animal rights whackos say anything about the animals that benefitted from medical procedures and medicines being tested on animals.

I also remember seeing a bottle of shampoo for dogs that proudly announced on its label that it was "not tested on animals". If I'm gonna shampoo the dog, I damn sure want one that was tested on animals!

I notice hippie was flying on an airplane, designed by engineers who believed in absolute truths. So was he merely hypocritical, or stupid enough to believe the nonsense he was spouting?

Nah, MarkD... engineers believe in FACT, philosophers believe in truth. I would think this was true of most of the professions, incl. docs and Dentists. If you have a cavity, that is Fact, and you fix it that way...

Best line for this?
Indiana Jones: Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.

The deconstructionist is the lazy thinker.

Rather than take the hard road and try to construct something...they take the easy road and pretend that nothing built has value.

Arguing that words and their meanings are arbitrary is ludicrous. Not because it is not true, but because it is so patently obvious that there is absolutely nothing gained by saying it.

There have likely been millions of languages over the course of human history, which use different words, inflections, sounds, and grammatical structure. All of them served their purpose.

But that a word can exist in multiple languages and still have the same meaning serves no purpose but to make the weak mind feel good about itself for noticing the obvious.

It is only the first stage of logic. The second step is to recognize that, though language is virtually arbitrary (the word for "doctor" could have just as easily turned out to be "shit" if history had gone differently) that does not mean that there are no meanings at all. Words, whatever form they take, are facts of expression to ensure that two engineers can express the same intent, equations, and plans.

Admitting however, that meanings are important, would destroy the deconstructionist "thinker", which is one reason why you are so likely to hear such a moron talk with hostility about "logocentric" thinking. Logic is anathema to the illogical, they despise reason because it exposes such laziness of thought, and reveal how obviously shallow their thinking really is.

How shallow and ludicrous is it?

I'd never heard of deconstructionists before as a child, but I came up with and dismissed much of their arguments independently around the age of 11 or 12. It occurred to me at some point, and then I picked it apart as a meaningless and lazy philosophy about 20 minutes after the fact.

Just a pack of lazy self important elitists trying to get paid for the least amount of work for the greatest amount of regard. For people hostile to language, they certainly talk a great deal.

I found this excerpt of Derrida's work at (surprise!) Marxists.org
--- www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/derrida.htm

== ==
The science of linguistics determines language — its field of objectivity — in the last instance and in the irreducible simplicity of its essence, as the unity of the phonè, the glossa, and the logos. This determination is by rights anterior to all the eventual differentiations that could arise within the systems of terminology of the different schools (language/speech [langue/parole]; code/message; scheme/usage; linguistic/logic; phonology/phonematics/phonetics/glossematics). And even if one wished to keep sonority on the side of the sensible and contingent signifier which would be strictly speaking impossible, since formal identities isolated within a sensible mass are already idealities that are not purely sensible), it would have to be admitted that the immediate and privileged unity which founds significance and the acts of language is the articulated unity of sound and sense within the phonic. With regard to this unity, writing would always be derivative, accidental, particular, exterior, doubling the signifier: phonetic. “Sign of a sign,” said Aristotle, Rousseau, and Hegel.
== ==

I'm good at understanding things. The above is gibberish to me. I suppose it impresses people who don't think that they are supposed to understand the writings of a great man. So, the more complicated and abstract something is, the more they are willing to respect it.

The opposite is true. Great thinkers communicate clearly. They don't hide their thought or lack of thought behind pretense and complexity.

Could it be ideopathic, high-functioning Wernicke’s aphasia? (smile)
--- www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/aphasia.html
== ==
People with Wernicke’s aphasia may speak in long sentences that have no meaning, add unnecessary words, and even create made-up words. For example, someone with Wernicke’s aphasia may say, “You know that smoodle pinkered and that I want to get him round and take care of him like you want before.” As a result, it is often difficult to follow what the person is trying to say.
== ==

"The science of linguistics determines language "

"I'm good at understanding things. The above is gibberish to me.

That's bcause it is false. Linguistics describes language, it does not determine it. When it comes to language, Derrida is a laymen, and makes layman's mistakes. He is probably thinking of all those half-witted, error-filled grammars inflicted on him as a schoolboy as the study of language, that insisted he speak and write a certain way that was as likely as not unlike any form of his own language that he had ever encountered, and probably based on no observed features of the language.

That is prescriptivism, and it is not scientific. It is not based on empirical fact. And linguists sneer at it and use it as an insult on each other.

"since formal identities isolated within a sensible mass are already idealities that are not purely sensible),"

This is Platonic bullshit. It specifically states that words and grammatical forms have some meaning other than the language-speaking community confers on them by actual use. It is anti-empirical babbling.

@Amy -- let me guess... your next book will be "I See Stupid People" -- too bad there is already a book with that title: http://snurl.com/2622gm [Amazon.com]

This is how a deconstructionist thinks:

If you can't dazzle them with brillance, baffle them with bullshit.

@Amy -- let me guess... your next book will be "I See Stupid People" -- too bad there is already a book with that title: http://snurl.com/2622gm [Amazon.com]

For anyone who's wondering, the little attempt at snark above is due to the fact that I told the guy that you don't get to use my comments section to post free advertising. That's stealing.

The classy thing to do, if the person just wasn't being mindful that they were being presumptuous, would be to apologize, not attempt to snark back.

I do accept advertising -- but those who are ethical e-mail me, ask if I'd be interested in hosting their ad on my site, and then make me an offer.

It's guys like this that make me feel even more grateful for the man I have. Gregg loves a bargain, but he's not one to try to scam something for nothing. Advice for people who are looking: Keep looking until you feel you've found somebody you can count on to always do the right thing, the kind thing, the classy thing. It took me eight years of mostly being alone, but I see a bunch of reasons every day that tell me that every minute of waiting was worth it.

"That is prescriptivism, and it is not scientific. It is not based on empirical fact. And linguists sneer at it and use it as an insult on each other."

That's because deconstructionism, as Jim and others have pointed out, is intellectual laziness. If there are no truths and no facts, then all of life reduces to a power struggle -- the physical laws of the universe are determined by whomever is in charge at the moment. (Which in turn leads to a whole lot of wishful thinking, but that's beside the point.) In the deconstructionist's world, everything is prescriptive.

Of course, the deconstructionists also claim that they are intellectually and morally superior to all outside of their clan. Which is a statement of fact. So even within their own inconsistent system, they're inconsistent when it benefits them to be so. You know what that is? Narcissism. And narcissism does not qualify as a philosophy.

"They began with a hyperdilation of a pronouncement of Neitzsche's"

Wolfe and his publishers don't know how to spell "Nietzsche"?

Silas, are you a native speaker of English? Are you referring to the added 's? I ask because that is in accord with standard grammar.

"If there are no truths and no facts, then all of life reduces to a power struggle -- the physical laws of the universe are determined by whomever is in charge at the moment."

CD, this reflects the literary background of Deconstructionism's major proponents. They come out of Literary Criticism, and basically they think that Lit Crit is the real arena of intellectual life. It is all concepts and impressions and displays of intricate language. I call them the Lit Crit Nitwits.

Camille Paglia defended them partially at the time, saying they were responding to the sclerosis of French high culture, which needed deconstructing. But so many of their deep insights are sophomoric and shallow. Buddhist thinkers in India got there firstest with the mostest, something like 1800 years ago. There is no truth but what the mind creates? That's the Cliff Notes version of Yogaacara, no, it's the scrawled class notes from your hungover roomate version of Yogaacara. Of course these deep, wonderful French thnkers would have known this if they had been even a little less parochial, but then that's most European's problem in life.

"But so many of their deep insights are sophomoric and shallow. "

Yeah, that was always the way it struck me too; it's the kind of stuff you come up with on a Friday night in your dorm room when you and your buddies are polishing off a case of PBR.

"I suggest that people who are against animal testing..."

I oppose animal testing. They get all nervous and give the wrong answers.

-----

But this is really less complicated than people make it out to be. You form beliefs even more simply than I have described it - and if you're typical, you've never thought about how that happens.