Moore. Arguing With Derrida

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SESSION TWO

Jonathan Dancy (chair): In this session we are going to have apaper by Adrian Moore of St. Hughs College, Oxford. AdrianMoore has written extensively on the topics of infinity and theineffable. In his most recent book Points of View, he has exploredthe possibility of whether we can form absolute representations:representations of the world which are not simply representationsfrom our point of view. Today he has very kindly agreed to offeran appreciation, perhaps from his point of view, of certain argu-ments in the work of Derrida. Fittingly, his paper is called Argu-ing with Derrida.

ARGUING WITH DERRIDA

A.W. Moore

1.

My brief today is to give my reaction to some selected argumentsfrom the work of Derrida. I shall try to follow this brief by relat-ing two of Derridas best known texts, Diffrance and Signa-ture, Event, Context,1 to some of my own interests and concerns.But first, I want to say a few words about the particular profile that

I bring to this task.

2.

It is no secret that there are philosophers who deride the work ofDerrida. There are those indeed who think that it is pernicious. Iunequivocally distance myself from either category. However,although I greatly admire Derridas work, I can claim no specialexpertise in it. The reaction to his work that I shall offer today,

though it is not the reaction of an antagonist, isthe reaction of anoutsider.

1 Both in Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Brighton: HarvesterPress, 1982).

Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 MainStreet, Malden, MA 02148, USA.Ratio (new series) XIII 4 December 2000 00340006


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Very well then; a reaction from where outside?Roughly speaking, the style of philosophy of which I take

myself to be an exponent has as its principal aim clarity of under-standing and as its principal methodological tool the analysis ofconcepts.2 In an earlier version of this essay I unashamedlyreferred to this as analytic philosophy.3 But Simon Glendinningconvinced me that this was unhelpful. For one thing, I was need-lessly taking a stance in the controversy about how that labelshould be applied. But more importantly, given the connotationsthat the label has (and in particular, given the clumsy distinctionthat is often drawn between analytic philosophy and continen-tal philosophy), I was implying that what followed was going tobe part of some interchange between two philosophical fronts,perhaps even that it was going to contribute to hostilities betweenthese two fronts which is not at all what I intend. Still, it wouldbe useful to have a label for what I am talking about. So I shallappropriate the phrase conceptual philosophy for this purpose,in the hope that, given this disclaimer, it will not carry the sameunwelcome implications.

Now it is natural to characterize this style of philosophy thestyle of philosophy that I am calling conceptual philosophy bycontrasting it with science. In particular, it is natural to dissociateit from the pursuit of knowledge or truth that scientists typicallyarrogate to themselves. Thus exponents of conceptual philosophymight say that it is not their business to discover and state truthsabout the world; rather, they aim to get into sharp focus variousconcepts, in particular concepts that bemuse us in certain distinc-tive ways, which are themselves used in discovering and stating

truths about the world. If, in the course of doing this sort of philos-ophy, one makes any claims about reality, then it will be by way ofdemonstrating how these concepts work. The claims one makeswill as likely as not be platitudes or items of common empiricalknowledge. They will have no special significance of their own.4

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Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

2 By the analysis of concepts I mean something very diverse. It encompasses on the onehand the use of formal techniques to demonstrate ways in which concepts come together,and on the other hand the creative use of the imagination to demonstrate ways in whichthey come apart.

3

Cf. the characterizations of analytic philosophy offered in Michael Dummett, Originsof Analytical Philosophy(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) and P.M.S. Hacker,Wittgensteins Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996),in each casepassim.

4 Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F.McGuiness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), 4.1114.116; Ludwig Wittgenstein,


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While I applaud the spirit of this way of characterizing concep-tual philosophy, I query the letter of it. There are certainly impor-

tant distinctions between the practice of conceptual philosophyand the practice of science. But I do not think it is helpful toexpress these in terms of the pursuit of knowledge. There aremany ways of knowing things. Having a clear grasp of conceptsseems to me to be one of them. Someone who has a clear graspof a given family of concepts knows how to handle them; knowswhat it is for them to apply; knows his or her way around a partic-ular part of conceptual space. So I do not think that conceptualphilosophy should be dissociated from the pursuit of knowledge.It is a different question whether it should be dissociated from thepursuit of truth. Not all knowledge consists in the possession oftruth. This is an exceedingly important point to which I shallreturn. But even if having a clear grasp of concepts is a case inpoint (that is, even if having a clear grasp of concepts is a case ofknowing something without thereby being in possession of anytruth), the primary way of achieving and displaying such a graspwill still be through the affirmation of truths. Conceptual philos-ophy may not involve the pursuit of truth in the way in whichscience does; but there is an important sense, it seems to me, inwhich conceptual philosophy has a commitment to the truth. Aconceptual philosopher is as beholden to eschew that which iseither false or nonsensical as a scientist is.5

3.

What I have said so far has involved all sorts of presuppositions

that are open to challenge. But I shall not attempt to defend it. Ihave said it just to indicate where I am coming from.

ARGUING WITH DERRIDA 357


Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974),122133; Michael Dummett, Can Analytical Philosophy be Systematic, and Ought it toBe?, reprinted in his Truth and Other Enigmas(London: Duckworth, 1978), pp. 438 ff.; andP.M.S. Hacker, op. cit., pp.110ff. But note: this further illustrates why I do well to eschewthe label analytic philosophy here. There are plenty of philosophers who standardlycount as analytic philosophers and who champion precisely the opposite view (the viewthat philosophy is continuous with science). The best known of these is Quine: see e.g.W.V. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, reprinted in his From a Logical Point of View:

Logico-Philosophical Essays(New York: Harper & Row, 1961).5 There is also alevel, it seems to me, at which a conceptual philosopher is as beholden

to eschew that which is either false or nonsensical as an artist is. However, I would be waryof saying that this distinguishes conceptual philosophy from any other kind of philosophy.The comparison with science, on the other hand being concerned with conceptualphilosophys primary or most suitable mode of expression does.


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There is, however, one dialectically significant question in thisarea that I do wish to broach, namely whether there are any

grounds for the suspicion that conceptual philosophy (as I havejust characterized it) fails even in its own terms. If so, thenconceptual philosophers will obviously need some way of allayingthis suspicion. But that is not my principal reason for wanting tobroach the question, at least not in this context. Rather I thinkthat broaching the question will direct us to some importantpoints of contact between conceptual philosophy and the work ofDerrida.

Why, then, might one think that conceptual philosophy failseven in its own terms? One of the most important reasons isencapsulated in a question which anyone who has studied therecent history of philosophy will know has much exercised thosewho think of themselves as analytic philosophers, namely:

Is the concept of a horse a concept?

Presented just like that, the question looks both absurd and triv-ial, a burlesque of a question. So let me begin by saying somethingabout what the question means and why it arises.

It is Freges question.6 Frege is often said to be the father ofanalytic philosophy. Whatever the merits of that epithet, he iscertainly of colossal importance to what I am calling conceptualphilosophy. This is in part because of how many of its techniquesof analysis he devised, in the course of developing his celebratedsemantic theory. Now there are two linguistic categories that arecrucial to this theory: that of a name; and that of a declarativesentence. By a name Frege means any singular noun-phrase that

can be used to refer to a particular object, where the term objectis understood in the broadest way possible. Examples of namesare Paris, this animal, the cube root of 8 and procrastina-tion. By a declarative sentence Frege means a sentence that canbe used to say something true or false. Examples of declarativesentences are Paris is a bigger city than Oxford and This animalis a horse. Frege asks us to consider what results when a name isremoved from a declarative sentence. For example, when Parisis removed from Paris is a bigger city than Oxford, we get . . .

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6 Gottlob Frege, On Concept and Object, trans. P.T. Geach, in Translations From thePhilosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, eds P.T. Geach and Max Black (Oxford: Basil Black-well, 1952). See also Michael Dummett,Frege: Philosophy of Language(London: Duckworth,1980), pp. 211ff.


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is a bigger city than Oxford; and when this animal is removedfrom This animal is a horse, we get . . . is a horse. He calls what

results a predicate, and he calls what a predicate can be used torefer to a concept. This suggests that . . . is a bigger city thanOxford can be used to refer to the concept of a city that is biggerthan Oxford, and . . . is a horse can be used to refer to theconcept of a horse. But there is a problem here. What kind ofthing is a concept? It had better be something of a fundamentallydifferent kind from an object, Frege insists. Otherwise declarativesentences would in effect just be lists, like Paris, New York. Thiswould mean that they could not be used to say anything true orfalse. However, if the term object really is understood in thebroadest way possible, then it is hard to see how we can resist theconclusion that concepts, so far from being fundamentally differ-ent in kind from objects, are themselves objects. The phrase theconcept of a horse, for instance, has all the hallmarks of a name.Frege concedes this. He admits that the concept of a horse is anobject. But he continues to insist that concepts and objects areheterogeneous. Hence his question: Is the concept of a horse aconcept? The only way he can see of escaping his predicament isby denying that it is.

This tangle seems to represent something of a crisis forconceptual philosophy. The attempt to devise techniques thatwill help us to come to a clearer understanding of how we thinkabout the world seems only to generate new confusion. Notonly that. It seems to embroil us in an issue that is scarcelyworthy of philosophical attention. How can conceptual philos-ophy have any pretensions to be taken seriously if it leads to

preoccupation with such an inconsequential self-inflictedminutia of semantics?The second of these charges I think can be firmly resisted.

Freges question is not the quibble it appears. It relates to funda-mental philosophical issues about the unity of thought and theunity of reality. There are direct connections between his ques-tion and Kants transcendental project (to take one notable exam-ple).7 Moreover, within a generation of Freges raising andaddressing his question, Wittgenstein in turn related it, in a quite



7 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London:Macmillan, 1933), A95130 and, differently in the second edition, B129169: see e.g. A129in the former and B14142 in the latter. Cf. also Plato, Sophist, 261c6262e2; and Plutarch,Platonic Questions, X, 1011c.


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extraordinary way, to what he called the problem of life and itsmeaning.8

There is a lot more to be said about this of course. But I shallnot say any more about it now. Of much more concern than thecharge of triviality is the first charge, the charge that Freges ques-tion indicates new confusion that conceptual philosophy gener-ates. For all Freges heroics, denying that the concept of a horseis a concept, he seems to have been driven by his own semantictheory to couch it in a way in which it ought not to be couched.Frege realized this, and was famously prompted to write:

By a kind of necessity of language, my expressions, taken liter-ally, sometimes miss my thought; I mention an object, whenwhat I intend is a concept. I fully realize that in such cases I wasrelying upon a reader who would be ready to meet me half-way who does not begrudge a pinch of salt.9

Likewise Wittgenstein, having urged that there are things that inprinciple cannot be said, was forced to recognize his own work asan ill-begotten attempt to say some of these things, and was just asfamously prompted to write:

Anyone who understands me eventually recognizes [my propo-sitions] as nonsensical, when he has used them as steps toclimb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away theladder after he has climbed up it.) . . . What we cannot speakabout we must pass over in silence.10

If it is the fate of conceptual philosophers, when trying to cometo a clearer understanding of how our thoughts relate to the

world and when trying to express the insights that they therebyachieve, to do so in ways that either have entirely the wrong senseor have no sense at all, and if conceptual philosophers are, as Iput it earlier, beholden to eschew that which is either false ornonsensical, then we do, after all, seem forced to conclude thatconceptual philosophy fails even in its own terms.

4.

In fact, we seem forced to recognize a more general failure here,

360 A. W. MOORE


8 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.124.1213, 5.5515.641, and6.47.

9 Op. cit., p. 54.10 Op. cit., 6.547. See also 4.1212 and 6.522.


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the failure of conceptual philosophy to come to terms with theineffable. For it looks as if we can, in the light of what has just

been said, mount the following broad case against conceptualphilosophy.

Wittgenstein was right: some things cannot be put into words.Moreover, some things that cannot be put into words are of theutmost philosophical importance. By treating affirmation of thetruth as its sole primary mode of philosophical expression,conceptual philosophy prevents itself from reckoning with thesethings, so that there is a real question about its very claim to thetitle of philosophy. As for Freges question, that merely demon-strates how, in spite and because of its own methodology, concep-tual philosophy is sucked into contact with the ineffable. WhenFrege himself, somewhat desperately, denies that the concept of ahorse is a concept, or when Wittgenstein produces what he laterin the same book denounces as nonsense about logical form,11

what each is doing, in effect, is unsuccessfully trying to talk aboutthat ineffable unity of language, of reality, and of language withreality which makes it possible to talk about anything at all. Andthe fact that each escapes the charge of revealing how trivial theconcerns of conceptual philosophy are serves only to accentuatethe force of the other charge: that they both reveal how inade-quate the resources of conceptual philosophy are to cope withwhat is philosophically important.

5.

It is here at last that I think we can see points of contact with the

work of Derrida. This case against conceptual philosophy hascertain clear echoes in Derridas remarkable essay Diffrance.12

Among the countless things that are going on in this essay, one,clearly, is that Derrida is directing our attention to, and attempt-ing to come to terms with, something that is in some importantsense ineffable. What this sense is is a delicate question. Wecannot say that the ineffable here is what resists expression byany linguistic means. If we do, we fall foul of what Derridaachieves in the very writing of his essay. (This is a point to which



11 Ibid., 4.12ff.12 For an approach to Derrida very close to that which I am about to take, tracing out

similar connections, see Graham Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1995), Part 4, esp. Chs. 12 and 14.


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I shall return.) But we can say that it is what resists expression byany customarylinguistic means; and, more particularly and more

pertinently, we can say that it is what resists expression by meansof the affirmation of truths.

What Derrida is drawing attention to, then, is something thatcan never be the subject of any truth. It is that which in somequasi-Kantian way makes possible and precedes the affirmation ofany truth. There are clear links here with what each of Frege andWittgenstein is doing. The way Derrida himself puts it is asfollows. Having devised the neologism diffrance (with an a), hewrites, Diffranceis where the is is crossed out what makespossible the presentation of the being-present.13 It is itself neverpresent. This is not because it has some kind of super-being, inthe way in which God might have, which means that it transcendsall the finite categories in terms of which it could be madepresent, still less because it is straightforwardly absent. It exceedsthe order of truth at a certain precise point, Derrida writes, butwithout dissimulating itself as something, as a mysterious being,in the occult of a nonknowledge or in a hole with indeterminateborders (for example, in a topology of castration).14Diffranceisnot. It is never present; it can never be presented. Yet somehow,as rigorously as possible we must permit to appear/disappear thetrace of what exceeds the truth of Being. The trace (of that)which can never be presented, the trace which itself can never bepresented . . . 15 It is to this end indeed that he coins the worddiffrance, whose inaudible difference from diffrence (with ane) holds it in graphic suspense between the concepts of differ-ing and deferring, between the appearance and the disappear-

ance of this non-presentable trace. But diffrance must not beunderstood as a name of something. Here again is Derrida:

Diffrancehas no name in our language. But we already knowthat if it is unnameable, it is not provisionally so, not becauseour language has not yet found or received this name, orbecause we would have to seek it in another language, outsidethe finite system of our own. It is rather because there is nonamefor it at all, . . . not even [the name] of diffrance, whichis not a name . . . 16

362 A. W. MOORE


13 Derrida 1982, p. 6.14 Ibid.15 Ibid., p. 23.16 Ibid., p. 26, emphasis in original.


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Earlier in the essay he writes, Diffrance. . . is neither a word nora concept.17 Likewise Bennington, in his well known commen-

tary, writes: This word or concept can be neither a word nor aconcept, naming the condition of possibility . . . of allwords andconcepts . . . 18 The concept of diffrance is not a concept then.Who can fail to hear the echo of Frege?

Of course, we must beware of making glib associations. It wouldbe absurd to suggest that the very same idea has surfaced in bothDerrida and Frege. But it would be just as absurd to deny thatthere is a common family of concerns. The interesting question,for our purposes, is whether there is a common predicament. IfFreges truck with the concept of a horse signals the failure ofconceptual philosophy, does Derridas truck with the concept ofdiffrancesignal the failure of his style of philosophy? Anyone whois hostile to Derridas style of philosophy will be tempted to offerit the back-handed compliment of replying, No. Derridas style ofphilosophy is not beholden to the truth. It can tolerate falsehoodand nonsense. But perhaps this back-handed compliment can beturned into a genuine compliment: Derridas style of philosophy(unlike conceptual philosophy) does not labour under arestricted conception of what linguistic resources are available toit; in particular, it does not treat affirmation of the truth as its soleprimary mode of philosophical expression.

6.

At this point I can turn to the second of the essays by Derrida thatI want to discuss, Signature, Event, Context. In this essay Derridahelps us to a lively appreciation of the variety of linguistic games

that can be played. Not that conceptual philosophers will be obliv-ious to this variety. Insofar as Wittgenstein is one of their princi-pal mentors, how can they be?19 Indeed one of Derridas mainconcerns in this essay is to discuss certain ideas of the philosopherAustin, who certainly counts as a conceptual philosopher, andwho is particularly known for his work on the different ways inwhich words can be used.20 Derridas complaint is that Austins



17 Ibid., p. 7.18 Geoffrey Bennington, Derridabase, in Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida,

Jacques Derrida(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 734, emphasis inoriginal.

19 This question alludes primarily to Wittgensteins later work: see e.g. PhilosophicalInvestigations, 234. But see also Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.002.

20 See esp. J.L. Austin, How to do Things With Words, eds J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbis(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).


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conception of language games is over-sanitized and thus undulyrestrictive. He (Austin) writes as if we can cleanly separate the

contexts in which it is possible to play any given language gamefrom those in which it is not. In any other than the rightcontexts there can at most be, on Austins view, secondary or para-sitic uses of the vocabulary associated with the game. Thissuggests, by extension and analogy, that we can cleanly separatethe contexts in which it is possible to use any given word with its(standard) meaning from those in which it is not. Derrida, bycontrast, urges a much more fluid understanding of the relation-ship between how words are used and how they mean what theydo. For a word to have a meaning, it must be capable of beingused in anycontext in a way that depends on, and at the sametime extends, that meaning. Its meaning is its infinite potentialfor iterability in new contexts, to new effects, for new purposes, inplaying new games. It would be an abrogation of a words mean-ing to try to circumscribe in advance the contexts that could orcould not tolerate its application, the contributions that it couldor could not make to the playing of different language games. Wemight try to rule out a words use in certain linguisticcontexts, asbeing in violation of its meaning. For instance, we might dismissa certain combination of words as gibberish. But even in doingthis, we would be belying our purpose. For precisely in saying thatthe combination of words was gibberish, we would be using theword in the supposedly forbidden context. True, we would bequoting it. But it would be begging the question against Derridato insist that our use of the word did not therefore count; that itwas somehow secondary. As Derrida himself puts it,

every sign . . . can be cited, put between quotation marks;thereby it can break with every given context, and engenderinfinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. . . This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability ofthe mark is not an accident or an anomaly, but is that(normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longereven have a so-called normal functioning.21

There are indefinitely many ways in which words can be used,

then, apart from in the communication of presences22

or in theaffirmation of truths. There are even undemanding criteria for

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21 Signature, Event, Context, pp. 3201, emphasis in original. Cf. p. 325.22 This phrase occurs in ibid., p. 316.


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what makes sense whereby some uses of words countbothas fail-ing to make sense andas being utterly straightforward examples

of how the words can be put to successful use in accord with theirmeanings. Think, for instance, of an ungrammatical string ofwords such as hungrily eat bread cheese, whose use, in a poemmaybe, might because of what the words mean conjure up allsorts of images and have all sorts of associations and connotationsand thereby convey all sorts of ideas.23 Indeed anycriteria for whatmakes sense will allow for this (that is, for the possibility of uses ofwords that fail to make sense even though they are in straightfor-ward accord with the words meanings), provided only that thecriteria are not so undemanding that each use of a word thatworks its meaning to some effect automatically counts as makingsense. Nor must we equate the nonsensical with the non-serious.There is a perfectly respectable view of mathematics, for instance,according to which mathematics consists in the manipulation ofnonsensical symbols: what gives the manipulation its point is itsapplication to other uses of words, notably in science, that are notnonsensical. Derrida mentions this view in his essay, in connec-tion with Husserl.24 It is also, interestingly, the view that Wittgen-stein endorses in his Tractatus, the very work in which heacknowledges what he himself has written as nonsense.25

Why then should there not be certain playful uses of language,perhaps involving language games in what might antecedentlyhave been thought of as unsuitable contexts, perhaps involvingneologisms, perhaps involving contradictions, perhaps involvingnonsense, whose effect, given the meanings of the words in play,is, if only as a matter of brute psychological fact, that those who

encounter these uses, or some of those who encounter these uses,have insights that are, in some perfectly orthodox sense, ineffa-ble? And why should philosophy not include such uses? Cannotmuch of Derridas essay Diffrance be viewed in this way? Or ofWittgensteins Tractatus? the difference perhaps being that thenonsense in the Tractatus masquerades as sense, thereby givingWittgensteins work a disingenuousness that Derridas essay, withits overt playfulness, lacks. If so, then we are again brought to seethe failure, or at least the limitations, of conceptual philosophy.

Because of its commitment to a certain paradigm of language use,



23 Cf. ibid., p. 319.24 Ibid., p. 319.25 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.26.211.


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namely that in which truths are affirmed, it cuts itself off from thevery uses of language that are appropriate to so much that is of

philosophical importance. (Who knows but that Frege wouldhave done better if he had written the concept horse undererasure?)26

7.

But despite the power of this onslaught, I am convinced thatconceptual philosophy can withstand it. I agree that some thingsare ineffable. I agree that philosophy, and in particular concep-

tual philosophy, has to reckon with these things. And I agree thatcertain playful uses of language, most notably those involving thecreative use of what is strictly nonsense, can be used to commu-nicate some of these things (in a sense that is quite compatiblewith their ineffability). These are all claims that I have been atpains to defend elsewhere.27 But I also still want to insist thatconceptual philosophy must in some sense eschew these playfuluses of language; and that its own primary mode of expression isthe affirmation of truths. The question is how to resolve the

apparent tension between these beliefs. In attempting to answerthis question, and thereby to defend conceptual philosophy, Ihope not only to maintain the dialogue with Derrida but also tosuggest ways in which his style of philosophy and conceptualphilosophy the style of philosophy that I try to practise myself can be of mutual benefit.

8.

The first task confronting any conceptual philosopher trying tocome to terms with the ineffable is to show how it is possible toaffirm truths about the ineffable without belying its very ineffa-bility. For example, consider my claim, earlier, that what Derridais drawing attention to is something that can never be the subjectof any truth. Whatever else it was, that claim cannot have been atruth. Otherwise what Derrida is drawing attention to wouldhave been the subject of at least one truth, namely that one.

Whenever we try to discuss the ineffable, there is a constant threatof self-stultification.

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26 See e.g. the translators preface to Of Grammatology, pp. xiiixx.27 A.W. Moore, Points of View(Oxford: Oxford University Press), esp. Chs. 79. Much of

what follows in this essay is a summary of the argument of these three chapters.


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A second task for any conceptual philosopher who accepts thatsome things are ineffable is to say what the term things ranges

over in this claim. If it ranges too widely, the claim is utterly triv-ial: you cannot put a chair into words for example. On the otherhand, the most obvious way of restricting its range, namely bysaying that it ranges over truths, renders the claim incoherent:ineffable truth is a contradiction in terms. (Or so I wouldargue.)

The only decent way that I can see of discharging either task isto say that the term things ranges over objects of knowledge.The claim that some things are ineffable is to be understood asthe claim that some states of knowledge cannot be put into words,or more strictly, that some states of knowledge do not have anycontent (and therefore do not share any content with any truth).The knowledge in question is not knowledge that anything is thecase. It is knowledge how to do certain things.28 Indeed a centralinstance, it seems to me, is knowledge of the very kind thatconceptual philosophy pursues: knowledge how to handleconcepts. (This is why I think that there is a sense in whichconceptual philosophy pursues knowledge but does not pursuetruth.) The threat of self-stultification is annulled because there isnothing self-stultifying about discussing somebodys ineffableknowledge how to do something. We can even put into wordswhat is involved in the persons having the knowledge. What wecannot put into words is what the person knows.

Moreover, on this construal, there is no mystery in the idea ofsomebodys communicating something ineffable. All that isrequired for this to happen is that the person exploits language

plays with language in such a way that other people come toshare some of his or her ineffable knowledge. And if this doeshappen, or even if it could happen, then there is a way for us toreckon with the ineffable knowledge in question withoutsurren-dering any commitment to the truth. For we can describe theprocesses whereby this playful use of language, which we are atperfect liberty to talk about, can issue in this knowledge, which weare also at liberty to talk about, without at any point doinganything other than affirming truths.



28 Or at least, it may be that, and very often is that. This qualification is needed to squarewith the answer that I gave to Thomas Baldwin during the question-and-answer session atthe conference. See the transcript below.


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9.

But wait! This defence of conceptual philosophy dependscrucially on a distinction: the distinction between talking aboutplayful uses of language and actually indulging in them; betweenadverting to abnormal ways of using words and using those samewords in abnormal ways. Yet is this not just the kind of distinc-tion that Derrida calls into question in Signature, Event,Context?

There is a more general distinction at stake here, a distinctionthat many conceptual philosophers would regard as a basic analytic

tool. This is the distinction between using a word and mention-ing it: the use/mention distinction.29 A fairly orthodox way ofcharacterizing this distinction would be as follows. Using a wordinvolves putting it to service in a way that exploits whatever mean-ing it has, in order to draw attention to some aspect of reality.Mentioning a word involves putting it to service in a way that waiveswhatever meaning it has, in order to draw attention to the worditself. Among the various means of mentioning a word, thecommonest, at least in writing, is to put the word between quota-

tion marks. (An analogue sometimes encountered in speech is todance ones fingers while saying the word.) Thus, by way of illus-tration, whereas cats have four legs, cats note the singular verbcoming up has four letters. A word that is mentioned need notitself have any sense. Thus we can say, truly, that splonk has sixletters. Indeed we can say, truly, that splonk is a piece of nonsense.(Mentioning nonsense does not entail talking nonsense.)

It is clear how this distinction, if it were viable, could sustainany pretensions we might have to discuss certain word gameswhile remaining faithful to the methodological principles ofconceptual philosophy, and in particular while maintaining a suit-able distance from playing such games ourselves: we could do thisprecisely by mentioning the words in play. But it is clear also thatthere is much in this characterization of the distinction thatwould be an anathema to Derrida. He once said, I try to placemyself at a certain point at which . . . the thing signified is nolonger easily separable from the signifier.30 And in Signature,

368 A. W. MOORE


29 This is one of the distinctions that J.R. Searle, in his commentary on Signature,Event, Context Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida, in Glyph1 (1977) famously accuses Derrida of failing to heed: see p. 203.

30 See David Wood and Robert Bernasconi (eds.), Derrida and Diffrance(Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 88.


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Event, Context, as we have seen, he resists the idea that putting aword between quotation marks is fundamentally different from,

or even secondary to, doing what an advocate of theuse/mention distinction would count as using the word.31 OnceDerridas strictures have been duly taken into account, thedefence of conceptual philosophy mounted above looks distinctlyuneasy.

10.

I am in fact with Derrida in recoiling from much in this charac-terization of the use/mention distinction. It (that is to say, thecharacterization) does not yield the clean grammatical distinc-tion between two ways of implementing words, each with its ownclear imprint, which I take the use/mention distinction to be.However and this is a point on which I think Derrida wouldagree32 it does not follow that there is no such a distinction.There is. Indeed it is a distinction with extremely importanttheoretical work to do. One of the greatest intellectual achieve-ments of the twentieth century, namely Gdels proof that arith-metic cannot be consistently and completely axiomatized, wouldnot have been possible without due appreciation of it.33 My



31 In Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 97ff., he alludes, very amusingly, tothe obsession that some philosophers have with the use/mention distinction, and hegently mocks their convoluted efforts to keep it clearly in focus. He writes, This is theproblem of Fido-Fido . . . the question of knowing whether I am calling my dog or if Iam mentioning the name of which he is the bearer, if I am utilizing or if I am naming his

name. He goes on, I adore these theorizations, often Oxonian moreover, their extraor-dinary and necessary subtlety as much as their imperturbable ingenuity . . . (p. 98). Hecites an example of the tortured prose that philosophers produce when trying to respectthe distinction (p. 99). And, as any student of analytic philosophy knows, there are count-less other examples that he could have cited. See e.g. W.V. Quine, Mathematical Logic(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947), 46, and George Boolos, QuotationalAmbiguity, in Paolo Leonardi and Marco Santambrogio (eds), On Quine: New Essays(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

32 See e.g. his reply to the piece by Searle cited in note 29 above Limited Inc a b c . . . ,trans. S. Weber and reprinted in his Limited Inc, ed. G. Graff (Evanston: Northwestern Univer-sity Press, 1988) where on p. 81 he writes, I agree that [the confusion of use andmention] might very well be [a radical evil].

33 Kurt Gdel, On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica andRelated Systems I, trans. Jean van Heijenoort, in Jean van Heijenoort (ed.), From Frege toGdel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 18791931 (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1967), e.g. p. 601. See also W.V. Quine, Gdels Theorem, in his Quiddities: AnIntermittently Philosophical Dictionary (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), p. 84. Actually, Ithink we can add that one of the great achievements, in turn, of conceptual philosophy,


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opposition is not to the distinction then. It is specifically to thischaracterization of it.

There is not scope for me to say in detail how I think the distinc-tion shouldbe characterized. But I do insist that it is a grammaticaldistinction. Thus although it is true that mentioning a wordinvolves employing it in such a way as to refer to some aspect of thisvery employment, the notion of reference here is a formal seman-tic notion tied to grammar. This is reflected in the fact that there isa range of conventional devices for mentioning a word. (Puttingthe word between quotation marks is indeed one of these.)

Of the various problems with the characterization above, I wantto fasten on three. First, whether one is mentioning a word is nota question of what one is drawing attention to. What one is draw-ing attention to, on any given occasion by means of any givenword, is a messy, complex, indeterminate matter that depends inall sorts of ways on the particular circumstances. It certainly doesnot just depend on the grammar of what one has said. Nor can weformulate general criteria for it which (as in the characterizationabove) concern the meanings of words in abstraction from theiriteration in new contexts. This is precisely one of the lessons ofSignature, Event, Context.

The second problem is related to this. Whereas the distinctionbetween using a word and mentioning it is a distinction of kind,the two definientia in the characterization above exploiting awords meaning in order to draw attention to some aspect of real-ity, and waiving its meaning in order to draw attention to the worditself merge imperceptibly into each other and generate adistinction of degree. Suppose, for instance, that I assert the

following:Albert, who remembers virtually nothing of the physics he onceknew, does remember that electrons have negative charge.

Which of these two things have I just done with the word nega-tive? Or suppose I say:

In a certain sense of love, it is impossible to love more thanone other person.

Which of these two things have I just done with the word love

370 A. W. MOORE


or perhaps of analytic philosophy, is to have made due appreciation of the distinctionpossible. Even the most rigorous writings in mathematics often flout it. See W.V. Quine,Use Versus Mention, in ibid., p. 232.


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in its first occurrence? in its second?34 It is worth recalling in thisconnection Barthes observation that all texts are quotations

without quotation marks,35 or the related claim that Putnammakes:

Using any wordinvolves one in a history, a tradition of obser-vation, generalization, practice and theory. It also involvesone in the activity of interpretingthat tradition, and of adaptingit to new contexts, extending and criticizing it.36

The third of the problems on which I wish to fasten is contextual.Even if the characterization above had been correct, it would nothave helped with my defence of conceptual philosophy. If mention-ing words really did involve putting them to service in a way thatwaived whatever meaning they had, so as to draw attention to thewords themselves, then a good translation of a text in which certainwords were mentioned would, all else being equal, leave thosewords intact. Yet clearly, if I describe, in English, the relationshipbetween some given state of ineffable knowledge and some givenplayful use of language, then any examples of that use of languagethat I give will themselves be in English; and any translation of whatI say into French will involve their French equivalents. This meansthat, on the characterization above, I shall not have mentioned thewords in play. But mentioning the words in play was precisely whatwas supposed to enable me to describe that use of language whilekeeping a suitable distance from it.

So how does my defence of conceptual philosophy stand now?

11.

Well, ironically, I think it is bolstered. Whether one has said some-thing that is a candidate for being true whether one has to that



34 For an expansion of these ideas see A.W. Moore, How Significant is theUse/Mention Distinction?, in Analysis46 (1986). (But note that I do not take the sameforthright attitude in that article to how the distinction should be construed. Rather Iconcede that there are alternative ways of construing it, and, in particular, that it can beconstrued as a distinction of degree. This is not the volte-facethat it appears to be. It is justthat I have elected, in the current essay, not to construe the distinction in one of theseother ways. I could just as well have done so. But if I had, then even though much of what

I have said above and much of what I shall say below would have had to be reformulated,the substance would not have been affected.)

35 Roland Barthes, From Work to Text, in J.V. Harari (ed.), Textual Strategies: Perspec-tives in Post-Structural Criticism(Oxford: Methuen, 1980), p. 77.

36 Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1981), p. 203, emphasis in original.


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extent conformed to the methodological paradigm of conceptualphilosophy is itself largely a matter of grammar.37 Mentioning

words, and in that quasi-technical sense talking about them, doesenable us to engage with playful uses of language from a suitabledistance. But precisely because it does not determine what we aredrawing attention to, nor, more generally, what effect we areachieving, it also leaves us free, with due skill and artistry, toaccomplish much of what can be accomplished by the very uses oflanguage with which we are dealing, and in particular to reckonwith certain philosophically important ineffable insights. Thusone thing we can do is to specify a particular ineffable insight bymentioning the nonsense that one would come out with, or thenonsense that it would in some sense be appropriate to comeout with, if one attempted, unsuccessfully of course, to put theinsight into words. Devising such nonsense will itself involve theskill and artistry to which I have just alluded. It will involve juxta-posing words in such a way that, when their meanings are playedoff against one another, and against the context, this excites theinsight in question. Moreover, if we did do something like this,there would be nothing fundamentally out of the ordinary aboutwhat we were doing. Anyuse of language involves somesuch skilland artistry. Putting words to service is always an imaginative exer-cise in which the infinite possibilities of the words meanings areplayed off against one another and against the context, in orderto secure some effect. Or perhaps perhaps we should exceptcertain atypical uses of words from this claim, for example sayingCheese when having ones photograph taken or writing onesname in order to test a new ballpoint (though it is unclear that

Derridawould want to except these). But at any rate, talking aboutword games in such a way as to exploit whatever would beachieved in actually indulging in those games should not beexcepted. Conceptual philosophers can, I think, have their cakeand eat it.

The upshot of my discussion, therefore, is that there is scopefor a curious and unexpected convergence of Derridas style ofphilosophy with what I have been calling conceptual philosophy.What I hope to have done in this essay is to give some indication

of how it is possible, first, to appropriate resources highlighted inSignature, Event, Context, in order, second, to reckon with inef-

372 A. W. MOORE


37 But not exclusively. For an excellent discussion see Crispin Wright, Truth and Objec-tivity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).


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fable insights afforded by Diffrance, while managing at thesame time, third, to conform to methodological paradigms of

conceptual philosophy. In various senses of the phrase, then and here I echo Benningtons excellent paper38 this has been anattempt to argue with Derrida.39

St Hughs CollegeOxford OX2 [email protected]



38 Geoffrey Bennington, For the Sake of Argument (Up to a Point), above.39 I am extremely grateful to Susan Durber and especially Simon Glendinning for their

help in the writing of this essay.

Documents

Moore. Arguing With Derrida