Deaf and Dumb?

[The Heretic]

In this post I will deconstruct the notorious scholar of Deaf studies, Jack Gannon, who blamed Aristotle for that moniker, "deaf and dumb." While reading his excerpt, I found his rhetoric to be over cooked.


Deaf and Dumb -- A relic from the medieval English era, this is the granddaddy of all negative labels pinned on deaf and hard of hearing people.

If Gannon did his homework, as in investigate the definition of the words in its historical context, rather than presume the current meaning has never changed, then he would not consider it a negative label, or at least intended to be more than merely descriptive. The word "dumb" in Old Engliish means "silent or unable to speak." That there are negative connotations is a recent phenomenon; the word "dumb" acquired the meaning of low intellect only after the infiltration of the german dumm, and the earliest english use of "dumb" in the "stupid" context is 1823.

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, pronounced us "deaf and dumb", because he felt that deaf people were incapable of being taught, of learning, and of reasoned thinking.

Unless Gannon meant to blame somebody named Aristotle who lived in the 19th century, this is simply false. It is also worth noting that Gannon fails to actually list the reference of that infamous moniker.

However, and despite Gannon's sloppy phrasing, Aristotle is correct, as long we grant that without language, one cannot think. Without words, there is no conceptualization. Without communication, there is no exchange of ideas. Without the ability to read or write, there is no learning of philosophy, mathematics, or poetry. To be able to reason is the summing up of visual perception into concepts, but that is not possible without language. In this sense, the intellect is quantifiable.

Aristotle's argument is subtle, and deserves a far more careful reading than Gannon's uncharitable and rather disingenuous version, which is little more than substance-free rhetoric.

To his way of thinking, if a person could not use his/her voice in the same way as hearing people, then there was no way that this person could develop cognitive abilities. (Source: Deaf Heritage, by Jack Gannon, 1980)

This, too, is false, for here is the actual quotation from "Sense and sensible," where aristotle employs a reasoned dialogue to conclude that the blind is more intelligent than the deaf.

Link

From the starting premise that hearing is crucial for the intellect, aristotle's conclusion is both valid and sound.

Conclusion: Aristotle was an early day scientist who reasoned from the available evidence of his senses. Nowadays, we know that the deaf are intelligent, contra aristotle, but that comes only after acquiring language, a language that did not require the ability of hearing or speech. Therefore, aristotle remained in the right.

Deaf can do, but not without tools!

 

[Jolie77]

To valdiate this - I'd have to add this part. It's the same thing as if it was "mute" which mean the same thing being "silent or can't speak".

Of course the time changes in each generation and so does the interpretation of the word itself changes too. It was viewed as "silent or can't speak" back then but now we take it to the negative level referring to "dumb" being as if we are clueless or not getting at the point.

Sure, the dictionary is our best friend or as we were told to. Gannon might have done his homework but that doesn't mean He was trying to put it to the negativity. He was simply putting out his POV.

 

[Endymion]

Aristotle made a seemingly sound point when he rationalized that entities without language cannot enjoy the merits of "higher" cognition. Linguistic determinism in its multiple flavors and semi-tidbits (Wittgenstein, Saphir-Whorf, Derrida, etc.) certainly addresses this.

However, empiricists and idealists reject the notion that knowledge and sense are preceded by language. How would you treat Aristotle's assertion when confronted by someone who is heir to the two above?

 

[The Heretic]

There is nothing outside of text....

Jolie 77, your post was obscure. I don't understand this phrase: putting it to the negativity, nor what you actually mean by a P.O.V. If you meant that Gannon had a valid POV, then I can say 2 plus 2 is 6, cuz it is my point of view. Otherwise, POV or not, Gannon was incorrect.

Endymion, since you didn't offer a counterargument, I will play along to your pedagogical game, and put forth the claim that knowledge is discursive all the way down!

Knowledge is inherently as well as inescapably discursive. This is contra the popular notion fostered by the ancient prejudice that some knowledge, or the most fundamental knowledge is intuitive.

The dichotomy of discursive and intuitive knowledge requires comparing and contrasting in order to flesh out the relevant merits of the subject. Intuitive thought is naked, unmediated apprehension, immediately given (to experience), whereas discursive thought is mediated and articulated instead within language. Intuition is non-inferential awareness of abstract or concrete truths.

It is the essentialists who ask the rather metaphysical question: what constitutes the nature of thought? If knowledge is composed of thought, then an inquiry of knowledge calls for the analysis of its composition. What is the essence, the very being of thought itself? The search for a ground, a fundamental criteria of thought requires a metaphysics resembling proto-Platonic idealism which supposes there are pure, uncorrupted ideal 'form' for every conception (the ability to form or understand mental concepts and abstractions), cogitation (thoughtful consideration), notion (belief or opinion, or mental image, representation, idea, conception), percept (object of perception, mental impression of something sensed, basic component in the formation of concepts), identity (quality or condition of being the same as something else), abstraction (abstract concept/idea/term), and representation (something that represents, an image or likeness of something).

According to several pre-Socratic Greeks, intuition meant the grasp of universal principles by the intellect. That is how they concluded the universe to be composed of a single, underlying, eternal substance: from water to apeiron to the One. In Plato’s case, the universe was
composed of two realities: essential and perceived reality. Essential reality was perfect in every sense, whereas perceived reality was a poor substandard replica, in which we experienced. Every thing had an essence, which was represented by the eternal Form, the true universal archetypes that resided in a separate realm, an absolute heaven called the Good. Those permanent objects of knowledge are directly apprehended by intuition, which for Plato was that fundamental capacity of human reason to grasp at the true nature of reality. In other words, the means of discovering the essence of a thing was through reason or rational means. Aristotle further elaborated on essentialism, arguing that everything had an essential nature within. A book has an ‘essence’ that makes it a book. Once this essential quality is removed, destroyed, or altered in any sense, the book is no longer a book but some other object.

According to the medieval theologians (Aquinas), it was by intuition one gained the primary units of knowledge and the fundamental principles, which are primitive elements that supply a foundation to all forms of knowledge, particularly the philosophical and scientific.... Catholic theologians affirm intuition to be superior to conceptual and rational analyses, while the latter are the normal function of day-to-day life, they are imperfect, supplying an inadequate account of reality.

This sort of philosophical methodology has guided intellectual reflection, contemplation for centuries:

• Abelard solved the problem of universals by intuiting a general concept that removed all the distinguishing features from the particular object.
• As for Anselm, with intellectual intuition he deduced the existence of God by reflecting upon the greatest possible being whose possession of every attribute that makes it great or good also includes existence.
• Spinoza claimed that intuition was the premier form of human knowledge, since it deduces the structure of reality from the very essence of God.
• Wissenschaftslehre (science of knowledge), according to Fichte, begins with the first manifestation of the Ego as the form of a primordial intuition, which by perception and recognition of itself,
  the primal intuition becomes an Ego.
• Henri Bergson’s pure intuition is a conscious form of instinct that functions as an unmediated experience of the external world or of the self.

On the other hand, 20th century intellectuals, specifically linguistic thinkers, posed the same question, but rather within the bounds of actual use: the function of concepts. The turn from essence or inner being to practical application occurred much earlier than supposed: this took place with the Copernican turn of Kant, from the passive mind model to an active one, that reality is no longer an object of experience but a factor of experience.

Kant charged the rationalists to be fundamentally mistaken by claiming that man had the mental faculty of rational or intellectual intuition. There cannot be any intellectual intuition at all in epistemology. Instead, Kant argued that the faculty of intuition is sensory, while reason was actually an organizing, synthesizing faculty. However, the empiricists were also fundamentally mistaken because sensory impressions are not themselves cognitive or representational (lacking relation to an object-in-itself). Empiricists also believed that non-conceptual, receptive cognition or immediate apprehension of simple ideas was possible, but Kant insisted that the a priori conditions of sensibility made possible all apprehension of any object. Given that Kant thought the sensory data does not constitute intuitive knowledge per se – due to the activity of the mind or the presuppositions the mind engrave experience and the understanding functions only with general concepts – then knowledge is necessarily discursive. Discursive knowledge for Kant was apperception of reality within conceptual terms.

The ontologizing of a rational procedure has been overcome by Wittgenstein and Heidegger... The proper procedures of rational thought are already built in the make up of the mind or constitutes its structure.... But this is a variation of the View from Nowhere, alias the Spectator viewer theory, relentlessly demolished by Rorty in his book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Medieval theologians and 17th century rationalists such as Descartes engaged in argument by intuition – they made the assumption that thought is essentially intuitive – whereas empiricists/pragmatists/transcendentalists were more likely to include history, the contingencies of events, in their consideration on the use of concepts.

The thesis of historicism vis a vis intuitive knowledge: since truth is relative to or contingent upon a given moment in history, and all discursive thought are historically situated, then no knowledge is grounded in intuition. No intuitive understanding precedes any discursive knowledge whatever. Any possible intuitive knowledge would be by definition untranslatable to discursive knowledge, for it would consist of transcendent objects, or what Kant already dismissed as antinomies of reason in his Kritik der reinen vernunft. Transcendent objects are beyond the capacities of observation or perception to analyze; therefore, they cannot be articulated at any coherent or consistent level.

Intellectual discourse in the 20th century introduced two types of criticisms that, by employing linguistic means, targeted foundationalistic programs - the formal structure of epistemology as first philosophy – especially those that had the earmarks of essentialism or any intuitive knowledge. One emerged from the Anglophone school of philosophy and the other resulted from the most radical
Heideggerian of them all.

In his much-lauded book Empiricism and the Philosophy of the Mind, Wilfred Sellars launched an offensive against naïve empiricism by criticizing the distinction between immediate knowledge of sense data and direct awareness of particulars, or how all knowledge claims of immediate awareness are actually linguistic, i.e. dependent on prior understanding. Sellars insisted that the idea of an immediate and non-conceptual awareness of facts was impossible. If non-conceptual knowledge is an ignis fatuus, then, any claim of intuitive knowledge ergo must be actually discursive.

Since intuitive knowledge is defined as something immediate, fully and transparently present to us, it is vulnerable to the charge of metaphysics of presence. Deconstruction advocates and other poststructuralists identify metaphysics of presence as the desire for the transcendental signified, which is a signified that transcends all signifiers, a meaning that goes beyond all signs. For Derrida, pure presence, often espoused by philosophers [direct observation, sensation, clear & distinct idea, essence], has never been achieved, nothing can be truly immediately present to us.

This is not to say that theorists of the discursive persuasion has won the day, but that the pendulum of intelligentsia has now swung the other way, and hopefully the motion will gain enough momentum to create a fissure that will lead to the snapping of the stick and the dialectical oscillation between contending concepts is brought to a closure....

 

[The Heretic]

The two cents of a fellow heretic

Folks, i sent my opening post to many people in my address book, and one replied in kind. After i told my friend that i posted my critique, s/he asked me to post his/her comments. Without further ado...

I agree with much of your criticism of Jack Gannon's unscholarly assessment of Aristotle. You should know, however, that I do sometimes wonder whether there was some paraellel to modern deaf communities with possibly small ones during Plato's era. Although there's no strong evidence for their existence, I'm toying with the idea that there some deaf people of Antiquity who shared a common sign language. This hypothesis was inspired by my reading of Jonathan Ree's book of a few years ago and the reports on the recent formation of modern Nicagaran sign language. The idea is that it only takes a few deaf people clumped together to develop a shared sign language that can grow in complexity over time with infusion of new generations of deaf people using it and evolving it. In Ree's book, I vaguely remember him mentioning a quote from Plato's work, where he remarked on "those deaf people who gesture" as their form of communication. I forgot the reference. You can do an index search in Ree's book to find it. But this quote gave me the impression that there might have been some circumstance during Plato's time that allowed for coalescence of deaf people to develop a form of shared system of gestures or sign language, although unproved. But what is more plausible to this notion of premodern deaf community using sign language despite them being unlearned, contra Aristotle, is another reference in Ree's book about a report of deaf servants employed in sultan's court of the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. A Western traveler reported seeing several deaf servants in sultan's court. It was claimed that sultan liked the idea of employing them because they won't be privy to state secrets being spoken in the court. And it was reported that these deaf servants gestured with efficiency and sophistication. Which is the clearest evidence I could find of the existence of a premodern sign language. Quotes from Plato and Aristotle about deaf people's form of communication during their times are not as clear to decipher whether or not a sophisticated form of sign language had in fact been developed among those deaf people they encountered. What I can dispute, however, is that Aristotle is wrong in his view that speech is the only faculty through which human beings could originate the development of their ability to reason, as the report of sultan's deaf servants being able to communicate efficiently seems to indicate. Jack Gannon's work is typical of poor scholarship that is characteristic of Gallaudet's deaf and hearing scholars making feeble attempts at speaking intelligibly in the areas of philosophy and theology.

Of course, if there was a group of deaf/hard of hearing people who lived to adulthood, and socialized long enough, some sort of sign-language would develop. There's no question that Chomsky's contributions to linguistics, based on "pre-built grammar" in the brain, would lead to such conclusions, but i replied in kind, saying that infant mortality, as well as infanticide, was absurdly high back then, during the height of hellenistic Greece. The average woman gave birth to 12 children, but only 4 lived to adulthood. that kinda eliminates the possibility of a deaf community.

Also, Aristotle's argument can be undermined with a critique of phonocentrism. However, this critique has dire consequences for ASL, for if aristotle's incorrect that speech is the true medium or language, then neither is ASL, for it lacks a corresponding writing. Q.E.D.

 

[Endymion]

The average woman gave birth to 12 children, but only 4 lived to adulthood. that kinda eliminates the possibility of a deaf community.

As someone who is half Spartan by heritage, I can assure you that an anti-disabled mentality clearly exists today. Not even fifty years ago did members of the Greek-American community suggest "throwing your deaf baby into the sea" to some people I know.

Also, Aristotle's argument can be undermined with a critique of phonocentrism. However, this critique has dire consequences for ASL, for if aristotle's incorrect that speech is the true medium or language, then neither is ASL, for it lacks a corresponding writing. Q.E.D.

This is what happens when philosophy gets as literal as math. "God is a third order differential equation that involves the cosecant of pi times x squared." :Owned: That is also why I adore philosophy.

Additionally, if phonocentrism is undermined through argument and speech is no longer the "true" medium, then one may interpret more than any one medium as valid. Other valid possibilities may also include a manual medium. In such an instance, ASL retains possibility for status as a language.

Phonocentrism is the prevalence of speech over writing, as I am well aware. In this instance, I lump manual communication in the same category as writing.



I acknowledge your response to my initial query and shall post sometime soon.

 

[Cousin Vinny]

First of all, Jack Gannon is not a philosopher, last time I checked. And his landmark book, 'Deaf Heritage' is not a book about Deaf philosophy or anything remotely close to it. Thanks to the discourse in this thread, it is readily apparent that Dr. Gannon may have been somewhat glib in attributing quotes to Aristotle, but this should not really detract from his work on Deaf Heritage.

Secondly, Aristotle's reasoning about speech and language would have held considerable sway over generations that follow in the future. Moreover, these suceeding generations would not be as sophisticated in deciphering the rationale behind his philosopizing (sp?) about intelligence. Rather, such thoughts would be distilled in simple concepts and watered down over time. By the time in early 1800's, when the first Deaf education movement started, lay people everywhere pretty much have consigned Deaf people as to be uneducable and unintelligent.

Heck, even I had difficulty in following the discourse on this thread and I usually don't have a problem grasping such material. The lay person will just rather opt for a Reader's Digest version in big print. Now magnify it by a thousand years worth of successive generations in trying to distill this information, and you get this widespread and misinformed preconceptions about a specific group or whatever.

I suspect, this is what Dr. Gannon wanted his point to be in his Deaf Heritage publication. While he may have not articulated it much better than what philosophers would like, I think he has pretty much nailed it. Now, I wish he or some other capable author would update it for the 2000's! (And yes, I do own a copy of Deaf Heritage.)

 

[AL-KHAWARIZMI]

Apologist in Training

First of all, Jack Gannon is not a philosopher, last time I checked.And his landmark book, 'Deaf Heritage' is not a book about Deaf philosophy or anything remotely close to it. Thanks to the discourse in this thread, it is readily apparent that Dr. Gannon may have been somewhat glib in attributing quotes to Aristotle, but this should not really detract from his work on Deaf Heritage.

First, A paper which intentionally presented itself in error, a glib is inexcusable, casts doubt on the validity of other works in which it claims credit for. Dr. Gannon has been erroneously irresponsible in the sense that he allows this misinterpretation to continue, that its actually a disgrace and an embarrassment to his profession. He quotes one of the most famous philosopher of all time in a manner demeaning to those who study philosophy and history.

Secondly, A scholar work is expected, not "supposed", to be dissected heavily and deeply by ones peers. Unfortunately Dr. Gannon's so-called "landmark" work has not met that criteria expected of a scholarly work therefore the 'Deaf Heritage' should be placed in the category reserved for paper-weights and 99 cent bins at your nearby garage sale. To allow a work escape unscathed from the critique of others is a form of apologist that has no place in our educational society.

Third, I am not a scholar by any means, but I exercise enough common sense to actually check ones work without swallowing it without any doubt like someone on this thread seemed all to happy to do. Anybody with an iota of intellect would've caught Dr. Gannon's mistakes right off the bat, such as using the improper century to superimpose a belief upon someone who was born roughly 22 centuries plus before. One does not need to be trained in linguisticism, philosophy, nor history to make a verifiable and credible claim against Dr. Gannon's work, only an inquiring mind would suffice.

In certain communities, there is a tendency not to "air ones laundry" and this post by Eyeth chimes perfectly with this idea that one should never criticize ones own "ethnocentric-based' group, or at least the refusal to legitimately critique the work presented as a scholarly work, it's an apologist at the best bundled with lack of critical reasoning and self-assessment.

Secondly, Aristotle's reasoning about speech and language would have held considerable sway over generations that follow in the future.

Incorrect. You're still laboring under the assumption that the word "dumb" is derogatory, whereas The Heretic has already proven WITHOUT ANY DOUBT, that it did not have that connotation whatsoever. Feel free to check out Aristotle's original writing for yourself.

Moreover, these suceeding (SP) generations would not be as sophisticated in deciphering the rationale behind his philosopizing (SP) about intelligence.

You really don't hold up the human race to a high standard, now do you? Pity.

I disagree with you, for every single work of Philosophy has been an constant struggle to destroy the preceding one. Aristotle has been replaced by giants in the Philosophy field many times over. Our sophistication, and understanding, when it comes to philosophy has increased a thousand fold in the last thousand years. Aristotle's work is what any credible scholar/philosopher/historians would consider as basic teething work, kindergarten math, and learning the alphabets type of schism before moving onto the next stage of reason.

Rather, such thoughts would be distilled in simple concepts and watered down over time. By the time in early 1800's, when the first Deaf education movement started, lay people everywhere pretty much have consigned Deaf people as to be uneducable (SP) and unintelligent.

Incorrect. Aristotle's work has not distilled a whit in the last thousand years under the sheer power that every single work that he's credited for has been written down. Words do not automatically become distilled over time. Lazy reasoning and lazy scholars (such as Dr. Gannon) allow sloppy work to passed off as a fact which unfortunately gets passed off to others as a certifiable evidence.

As for the "lay" people, please cite evidence that they have "cosigned Deaf people as to be uneducable (SP) and unintelligent". Just saying so does not make it so.

Advice to keep in mind, in a scholarly based world, a misinterpretation of a misinterpretation does not excuse the final interpretation.

Heck, even I had difficulty in following the discourse on this thread and I usually don't have a problem grasping such material. The lay person will just rather opt for a Reader's Digest version in big print. Now magnify it by a thousand years worth of successive generations in trying to distill this information, and you get this widespread and misinformed preconceptions about a specific group or whatever.

Again, you're allowing your sloppy thinking take precedent of what's presented. You're stating: "Oh I don't understand it so therefore its crap, and we need folks to interpret it for us". That road that leads to anarchy.

Why are you so willing to let others actually take responsible for your own thinking and deductive reasoning capabilities?

I suspect, this is what Dr. Gannon wanted his point to be in his Deaf Heritage publication. While he may have not articulated it much better than what philosophers would like, I think he has pretty much nailed it. Now, I wish he or some other capable author would update it for the 2000's! (And yes, I do own a copy of Deaf Heritage.)

You suspect? How would you know? Do you have some magical inside track inside Dr. Gannon's mind? I do not go by suspicions. I only go by what he wrote, and what he wrote simply summed up his intellectual prowess.

He's a lightweight, my dear Eyeth, a lightweight.

Praise Umanità!

~Al- Khawarizmi
__________________

 

[Cousin Vinny]

He quotes one of the most famous philosopher of all time in a manner demeaning to those who study philosophy and history.

Hoookay... And what should Jack Gannon do? Or NAD, for that matter, as they're the publisher? Issue a retraction? Revise that chapter? Disclaim the book as 'damaged goods' due to this erroneous part which only occupied a few pages out of a 450+ page book?

I do agree that either Jack or the NAD commision someone to actually do a 2nd revision and straighten out all inconsistencies such as this one, though. I'm willing to bet that with a renewed 2nd effort under a more discerning eye, the Deaf Heritage book will even be much more better.

Secondly, A scholar work is expected, not "supposed", to be dissected heavily and deeply by ones peers. Unfortunately Dr. Gannon's so-called "landmark" work has not met that criteria expected of a scholarly work therefore the 'Deaf Heritage' should be placed in the category reserved for paper-weights and 99 cent bins at your nearby garage sale. To allow a work escape unscathed from the critique of others is a form of apologist that has no place in our educational society.

Ummm, this was published by the NAD. It was not a scholarly endeavor. But, I'll agree with you that over time, this book has taken on scholarly 'sheen' and has managed to acquire some sort of credibility on par with scholarly work that has actually undergone the crucible of criticism undertaken by academic peers.

Third, I am not a scholar by any means, but I exercise enough common sense to actually check ones work without swallowing it without any doubt like someone on this thread seemed all to happy to do.

I get pleased very easily. There was a donut shop in Riverside I liked to frequent and one time, the Health Board actually inspected the place and gave it a 'C' rating instead of the usual 'A' rating. I noticed the new signage and said to myself, 'I'll just go ahead and have a donut anyway! How much worse could they go?!?'

In certain communities, there is a tendency not to "air ones laundry" and this post by Eyeth chimes perfectly with this idea that one should never criticize ones own "ethnocentric-based' group, or at least the refusal to legitimately critique the work presented as a scholarly work, it's an apologist at the best bundled with lack of critical reasoning and self-assessment.

I hate to burst your excellent reasoning on this subject, but Jack is post-lingually Deaf. He was a perfectly normal child until 8 years old. While I do not know him personally and only have met him a few times, he does seem to be culturally Deaf. But he is not in the same mold as I am, a pre-lingually Deaf Joe.

Secondly, I'm not a scholar and I strongly feel that any criticism, whether warranted or not, should be directed by appropriate people (PhD's in History, etc.) in appropriate academic circles, specifically, Gallaudet. I just want to enjoy the book and I leave all of that criticial reasoning stuff to the pros. Life's too short to go between the lines in reading scholarly works, I guess.

Our sophistication, and understanding, when it comes to philosophy has increased a thousand fold in the last thousand years. Aristotle's work is what any credible scholar/philosopher/historians would consider as basic teething work, kindergarten math, and learning the alphabets type of schism before moving onto the next stage of reason.

That explanation sounds good to me as any. However, this is still a largely academic discourse that has taken place by philosophers and authors heavily invested in philosophy. However, the rest of the human race has merrily gone onto many endeavors in many areas. They are unlikely to be well versed in every nuances and conjectures as posited by philosophers. I'm a good example, knowing very little (Ok, I read En Sprach Zarathustra) and I know I'm not alone.

At any rate, I appreciate your reply and I know it was a harsh one, indeed. Thankfully, I have a thick skin and I'll continue to use my Deaf Heritage book as it was originally intended for; in reading about Deaf History and learning more about Deaf personalities the book profiles. And if there is a 2nd edition with substantial revisions, updated information, enhanced historicial accuracy, more rare photos, etc., that would be very cool!

 

[The Heretic]

ASL deconstructed!

Additionally, if phonocentrism is undermined through argument and speech is no longer the "true" medium, then one may interpret more than any one medium as valid. Other valid possibilities may also include a manual medium. In such an instance, ASL retains possibility for status as a language.

Actually, the argument does not lead to a pluralist buffet where anyone can choose their medium. Phonocentrism is merely the prejudice that has existed for the past 3000 years in western philosophy (plato, Aristotle, rousseau, hegel, husserl, etc) where speech was established the primary medium of truth and logic and reason. “the voice is the privileged medium of meaning” where the voice is the center, while the written word is secondary, derivative, for it merely represents speech, and is a poor substitute a limp-wristed extension. But don't be misguied by the word "speech," because there's something else more fundamental than that, and it is called the metaphysics of presence.

Phonocentrism rests on the assumption of the metaphysics of presence, which is something that guarantees meaning (the original moment, the transcendental signified, first principles, the divine word).

If i am signing to you now, it seems as if my conversation with you is a present, direct expression of my thoughts, my emotions, or my soul. My signing is how i present my thoughts and feelings to you. when i sign with you i seem to articulate my true self. my words come directly from myself. they seem like a perfect one-to-one fit for my thoughts, feelings, intuitions, just like any other transcendental signifieds. The binary opposite of presence is absence, which writing has been condemned to, not 'other mediums of communication.' Writing is less immediate than signing, much more mechanical. if i send you an email, and i'm not there when you get it and read it, i might harbor misgivings that you might misunderstand it, misread me, and misinterpret something. But i am always present to you if i am signing to you, and my presence helps you to understand me. so i would probably write to you if only i were no present. therefore, most philosophers think writing is irrevocably haunted by absence. We yearn for presence, and this yearning carries the prejudice of speech or signs, and favors one over writing.

Phonocentrism is the prevalence of speech over writing, as I am well aware. In this instance, I lump manual communication in the same category as writing.

That would take a lot of linguistic gymnastics to do so.

You would have to explain how sign language is similar to writing, while i just outlined how it was practically identical to speech, if you replace the physical organ of ear with the eye and the speech with the signs, ASL is no different than any other spoken language, for it is already contaminated by the metaphysics of presence that makes it a target for deconstruction.

Just like speech, a sign carries full presence, and the metaphysical concepts of being, in time and in space, demand presence. Writing, on the other hand, depends on absence for its characteristics opposes presence, and metaphysical thought must eject it or subordinate it or marginalize it.

In an ASL conversation, the signer and the listener must be present in 2 ways: present to the sign in a spatial sense and present at the particular moment in time in which the signs are made. Therefore, the signer's thoughts are as close as possible to their signs. the thoughts are present to the signs. so sign language offers a direct access to consciousness. the sign (as voice) can seem to be consciousness itself.

I have written a couple of lengthy threads on Derrida, and if you are interested, and you have the time, please feel free to peruse them to your heart's content.

Special theory of writing as language
General theory of writing

 

[Endymion]

First, A paper which intentionally presented itself in error, a glib is inexcusable, casts doubt on the validity of other works in which it claims credit for. Dr. Gannon has been erroneously irresponsible in the sense that he allows this misinterpretation to continue, that its actually a disgrace and an embarrassment to his profession. He quotes one of the most famous philosopher of all time in a manner demeaning to those who study philosophy and history.

While your post had points I liked, I must agree with Eyeth on this one. We are making mountains out of molehills when we say that Gannon's entire work should be tossed out because he has a flaw in his reasoning for one part. I once read an academic who criticized the Old French classic, La Chanson de Roland for the following lines:

Save Saragossa in its high mountain place;
Marsilion holds it, the king who hates God’s name,
Mahound he serves, and to Apollyon prays:
He’ll not escape the ruin that awaits. (6-9)

In the Christian versus pagan theme, the anonymous creator establishes Marsilion as pagan. The academic I read advised tossing out Roland because a true pagan of Marsilion's leadership would not root for both Apollyon and Mahound. The whole argument was ludicrous and clearly a consequence of the publish-or-perish mentality that pervades the ivory towers of academia. Roland is a classic about Roland and how he was betrayed at the Battle of Roncevaux, not about the classification and nomenclature of pagans.

Similarly, when we attack Gannon's flaws in philosophy, we ignore his expertise in the actual subject of history. That is like throwing Nancy Kerrigan out of olympic contention because she tied her skates with a double knot instead of a single knot.

Without doubt Gannon blundered at least more than once or even several times in his book. So do many academics today. I know of a botanist at Cornell who, about ten years ago, published a paper on the survivability of certain plant cells under certain conditions. His experiment was flawed by a silly miscalculation. Last I heard, he continued to publish papers on botany and enjoyed high prestige. A flaw does not an academic career nor an academic book demolish. Gannon is a member of the genus Homo after all.

I may have made a non sequitur by comparing Roland with Gannon. I expect, however, the gist to be quite clear and still applicable.

At a certain level I do definitely agree with you. When the criticism is magnified to junking an entire work for nintey-nine cents at a garage sale for a mistake, however, I'm not all that enthusiastic.

Third, I am not a scholar by any means, but I exercise enough common sense to actually check ones work without swallowing it without any doubt like someone on this thread seemed all to happy to do. Anybody with an iota of intellect would've caught Dr. Gannon's mistakes right off the bat, such as using the improper century to superimpose a belief upon someone who was born roughly 22 centuries plus before. One does not need to be trained in linguisticism, philosophy, nor history to make a verifiable and credible claim against Dr. Gannon's work, only an inquiring mind would suffice.

There exists a substantial segment within the greater deaf community that opposes many of the values that Gannon endorses. It concerns me somewhat that these people are not as recognizable as Gannon.

Incorrect. Aristotle's work has not distilled a whit in the last thousand years under the sheer power that every single work that he's credited for has been written down. Words do not automatically become distilled over time. Lazy reasoning and lazy scholars (such as Dr. Gannon) allow sloppy work to passed off as a fact which unfortunately gets passed off to others as a certifiable evidence.

I am with you on this one.

The argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy can be quite subtle, even to the person who makes it. That is why far more than the random historian has an affinity for the occasional blunder. I think often of Frederick Jackson Turner and how Patricia Nelson Limerick eventually took him on with the sharp blade of academic dissension.

 

[Tousi]

No offense but I feel sorry for some of you who have to go through this whole process before arriving at the conclusion that you need to urinate! Ohhh, the thought of planning anything more complicated must be such utter and abject terror for you.

Relax, just a lil levity, guys!

 

[Cousin Vinny]

After participating in this thread and wading through intellectual discourse better left to PhD's, I feel like Ted Ferguson, the Bud Light Daredevil.

Quick, get me a Bud Light, stat! Ahhh, whew! I'm recovering, I'll be allright!

 

[The Heretic]

what gives?

What is with all these content-free and substanceless remarks from the peanut gallery?

I thought this was the ON-TOPIC forum, so, for everyone concerned, kindly refrain from irrelevant asides. If you must, there's always private messages.

 

[Endymion]

Actually, the argument does not lead to a pluralist buffet where anyone can choose their medium. Phonocentrism is merely the prejudice that has existed for the past 3000 years in western philosophy (plato, Aristotle, rousseau, hegel, husserl, etc) where speech was established the primary medium of truth and logic and reason. “the voice is the privileged medium of meaning” where the voice is the center, while the written word is secondary, derivative, for it merely represents speech, and is a poor substitute a limp-wristed extension. But don't be misguied by the word "speech," because there's something else more fundamental than that, and it is called the metaphysics of presence.

Phonocentrism rests on the assumption of the metaphysics of presence, which is something that guarantees meaning (the original moment, the transcendental signified, first principles, the divine word).

If i am signing to you now, it seems as if my conversation with you is a present, direct expression of my thoughts, my emotions, or my soul. My signing is how i present my thoughts and feelings to you. when i sign with you i seem to articulate my true self. my words come directly from myself. they seem like a perfect one-to-one fit for my thoughts, feelings, intuitions, just like any other transcendental signifieds. The binary opposite of presence is absence, which writing has been condemned to, not 'other mediums of communication.' Writing is less immediate than signing, much more mechanical. if i send you an email, and i'm not there when you get it and read it, i might harbor misgivings that you might misunderstand it, misread me, and misinterpret something. But i am always present to you if i am signing to you, and my presence helps you to understand me. so i would probably write to you if only i were no present. therefore, most philosophers think writing is irrevocably haunted by absence. We yearn for presence, and this yearning carries the prejudice of speech or signs, and favors one over writing.

That makes much sense to me and I do not disagree with its relevance to our phonocentrism discussion, but I question the choice of a binary. Since my formal education is not in Philosophy (perhaps one day . . . ), I'm not sure what else has been said on the subject. I can see, however, that in establishing an absence/presence dichotomy, we make ourselves susceptible to certain cognitive biases. Certainly there are properties that define presence, such as "connection to the soul", and these properties can be evaluated not only among each other, but in varying intensities.

When we think of something as either present or not, we must classify all relevant material into the binary. I prefer to think of it not as a binary and not as a gradient, but as a multidimensional gradient. A chromatic tesseract comes to mind. Is this a valid treatment of absence and presence?

Which brings me back to the metaphysics of presence. Are there "methods of communication" that have more presence than "speech" ... ? Do increasing levels of interpersonal intimacy between two individuals, and thereby increasing understanding of intent and communciation patterns, correlate with an increase in presence?

That would take a lot of linguistic gymnastics to do so.

Somebody call Dominique Moceanu. Knock her on the head with the Oxford English Dictionary.

You would have to explain how sign language is similar to writing, while i just outlined how it was practically identical to speech, if you replace the physical organ of ear with the eye and the speech with the signs, ASL is no different than any other spoken language, for it is already contaminated by the metaphysics of presence that makes it a target for deconstruction.

Unfortunately, the cognitive patterns for hearing and seeing are different. I remember a paper by Connie Mayer and Gordon Wells in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education that cited research demonstrating that deaf children who process English visually have more difficulty acquiring grammar, but end up being superb spellers. The inverse holds true for hearing people who acquire English by the auditory organ.

The pathways through the brain for information from the ear and the eye are different. The topic of cortical modularity alone should raise our eyebrows when communication processed by visual and auditory means is considered relatively similar. Even our emotional response to a message differs by the mechanism it is received and decoded.

Though a tad bit of a false analogy, one classic political strategy uses a certain prevalence vision takes over speech. A community politician who has a reputation for being anti-pets can merely print a picture of him with a dog, and no matter how well word gets around, people usually opt for the visual over the heard message. From this we learn that memory mechanisms, cognitive biases and a great many other fundamentals of cognitive processing differ.

Just like speech, a sign carries full presence, and the metaphysical concepts of being, in time and in space, demand presence. Writing, on the other hand, depends on absence for its characteristics opposes presence, and metaphysical thought must eject it or subordinate it or marginalize it.

What if the sign has been rehearsed and then videotaped?

I have written a couple of lengthy threads on Derrida, and if you are interested, and you have the time, please feel free to peruse them to your heart's content.

Special theory of writing as language
General theory of writing

Merci. I shall check them out. This subject piques my interest.

 

[loml]

What is with all these content-free and substanceless remarks from the peanut gallery?

I thought this was the ON-TOPIC forum, so, for everyone concerned, kindly refrain from irrelevant asides. If you must, there's always private messages.

At the risk of further roasting of the peanuts.........we were on topic.

 

[The Heretic]

binary opposites are fundamental but not necessary!

I can see, however, that in establishing an absence/presence dichotomy, we make ourselves susceptible to certain cognitive biases. Certainly there are properties that define presence, such as "connection to the soul", and these properties can be evaluated not only among each other, but in varying intensities.

This is where philosophy strives for the more fundamental, the more basic, and where most people settle for quasi-synthetic new age-y goo. You can't have "varying intensities" without dichotomies.

When we think of something as either present or not, we must classify all relevant material into the binary. I prefer to think of it not as a binary and not as a gradient, but as a multidimensional gradient. A chromatic tesseract comes to mind. Is this a valid treatment of absence and presence?

I'm not sure what you mean here. With "chromatic tesseract," I presume you mean a colorful 4-d cube. Yet, a tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube. The human race isn't that sophisticated, not even mathematicians are capable of thinking four-dimensionally.

Binary opposites are fundamental to western thought, if not all human thought. to name a few, you have high/low, true/false, right/left, west/east, male/female, mind/body, inside/outside, positive/negative, etc. This dichotomous thought is governed by the either/or, and establishes a conceptual hierarchy that classifies and organize the objects, events and relations of the world. Binary opposites make decision-making possible and govern thought in everyday life (philosophy, theory, sciences). But derrida focuses on the undecidables that disrupt this ancient logic where indeterminate ideas such as zombies.

Which brings me back to the metaphysics of presence. Are there "methods of communication" that have more presence than "speech" ... ? Do increasing levels of interpersonal intimacy between two individuals, and thereby increasing understanding of intent and communciation patterns, correlate with an increase in presence?

I very much doubt it, for history claims that speech is the originary medium of truth. After all, the most overrated and yet the most powerful words in the language of intimacy is "i love you" and spoken in a certain way, it actually puts an exclamatory mark on feelings and actions.

Unfortunately, the cognitive patterns for hearing and seeing are different. I remember a paper by Connie Mayer and Gordon Wells in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education that cited research demonstrating that deaf children who process English visually have more difficulty acquiring grammar, but end up being superb spellers. The inverse holds true for hearing people who acquire English by the auditory organ.

Agreed on the processing of sound and sight, but i disagree on the deaf being superb spellers - even though i can spell relatively better than most hearing people, the deaf i know in life are, on a whole, the worst spellers of the lot. Ergo, i find that paper highly dubious.

The pathways through the brain for information from the ear and the eye are different. The topic of cortical modularity alone should raise our eyebrows when communication processed by visual and auditory means is considered relatively similar. Even our emotional response to a message differs by the mechanism it is received and decoded.

Cognitive science is still a nascent field, and new studies are being developed all the time, so i would be wary of taking anything conclusive.

What if the sign has been rehearsed and then videotaped?

The same thing if speech has been practiced and then recorded on tape. It still isn't writing.

Merci. I shall check them out. This subject piques my interest.

 

[Marijane Wright]

Deaf And Dumb

Not All Deaf And Mute Peole Are Not Dumb!!!

And I get very tired of hearing Deaf, Mute, Dumb in the same sentence!!!

 

[Deaf Images]

Aristotle deserves kick in butt...

I could jump in time machine and go back to 355 B.C. and kick his butt for mislabeling Deaf people. That is only a thought! =^)


on other hand, Deaf Heritage is off a bit cuz someone from East Coast told me that there was Deaf program before Clerc came to America. It was existed in 1814 somewhere in New England. I plan to VP him and get more details.

That was another ball game before Alice Cogswell. It was a group of Deaf that had some education training. Care to open can of worms???

Do not lay the fat on Jack Gannon! He did his best and to err is humane, to forgive is divine.

We learn more by sharing and improve by understanding.

It takes a Deaf village to make a deaf person successful!

 

[Fo'Shizzle]

Not All Deaf And Mute Peole Are Not Dumb!!!

And I get very tired of hearing Deaf, Mute, Dumb in the same sentence!!!

I agree with you!