The most prominent objection against formal semantics is that it rests on
an uncritical reification of meaning. As long as a distinction between
making noise and making sense is upheld, however, some account of the gap
opened up by the deferement accomplished by signs has to be given.
A great variety of theories, reaching from cognitive science to
hermeneutics, is currently offered to deal with the division and fusion of
syntactic and semantic modes of analysis. From information-processing to
(post)metaphysical thinking, the characteristics of signs have received
wide attention. But there has also been a counter-current, which, starting
with Husserl's attempts to ground signification in some prominent features
of human consciousness, tries to set aside such an uncomfortable dualism.
Ordinary reconstructions of our intuitions about meaning seem to produce a
very peculiar relation, bridging two incommensurable realms. In
Wittgenstein's words: ,,Naming appears as a strange connection between a
word and an object.''
Whatever the results of an empirical investigation
into our cognitive capacities might be and however impressive a case could
be made for (or against) our civilization's tendency to reify meanings,
according to Wittgenstein such a strategy does not address itself to the
most elementary question that can be asked concerning a sign, namely why
it needs some explanation at all. Why should there be such a puzzling
dichotomy calling for mysterious integrative elements in the first place?
To quote him again: ,,,The sentence, a peculiar thing!': the sublimation of
the whole presentation resides in this. The tendency to assume a pure
intermediate being between the sentence-sign and the
facts.''
According to the picture of linguistic elements that depicts them as linked up to corresponding elements of the world by a special, epistemologically relevant relation, signs appear as extraordinary constituents of the universe. But once one starts to wonder about signifying entities, there will be constant puzzlement about the unity of the world and man's position within and/or outside the course it takes. This reconstruction of our use of language establishes a fundamental ontological priority of speakers, i.e., beings that are somehow able to create the world of which they are part. This is the predicament non-semantical theories of understanding try to escape from. Wittgenstein, for example, in his later work worries about the legitimacy of the initial astonishment and considers substantialized meanings as consequences of a misguided picture of language. There are no signs to start with, rather contexts of use that serve as complex, multilayered units of communication. Furthermore a basis of unquestioned agreement in behavior has to be assumed before bits of language relating to pieces of the world can even be considered.
Jaques Derrida, as I have indicated, arrives at similar conclusions
starting from a critique of Husserl's phenomenology. But his line of
argument is completely different. Realizing that the phenomenological
concept of a sign is firmly linked to traditional metaphysical
assumptions, he tries to find a way out of the dilemma of this
foundationalism. In Derrida's view signs cannot but disturb metaphysical
securities by their non-primordiality. His philosophical strategy of
thinking at the edge of metaphysics, consequently, unlike Wittgenstein's
anti-metaphysical thinking, demands a more complicated procedure. His
efforts divide into establishing a proto-primordial grounding of
signification and an overcoming of the established concept of a sign. The
claim is that ,,to restore the original and nonderivative character of
signs, in opposition to classical metaphysics, is, by an apparent paradox,
at the same time to eliminate a concept of signs whose whole history and
meaning belong to the adventure of the metaphysics of presence.''
(SP, 51)
Where does that leave us regarding the initial astonishment indicated by Wittgenstein? Derrida occupies a peculiar position between semantic dualism and its systematic opposite, the dissolution of ordinary signification within the context of the living presence of consciousness or actual use of language. He hints at an ultra-foundational attitude toward the sign, although he recognizes that we would lose our current concept of a sign if we were successful in establishing its proper nature. Something like a primordial différance is supposed to ground signs and cannot be understood in established semantical terms. As it unfolds it cancels the ,,metaphysics of the presence'' on which, according to Derrida, the common notion of signification rests. At this systematic juncture analytic philosophy and deconstruction obviously part company in their attempts to clarify the structure of semantics. So where does that leave my argument?
Schematically speaking, the preceding considerations have been drawn in two different directions. On the one hand there is the discovery of a constitutive dualism inherent in every attempt to conceptualize signification, on the other hand there is insistence on a fundamental simplicity of human communication. Very different schools, ranging from transcendental phenomenology to ordinary language analysis regard this unity as anterior to a subsequent split. In taking up the discussion at this point the next section will deal with a traditional concept that receives scant treatment in Derrida's critique of Husserlian self-givenness of consciousness, namely intentionality. This concept will eventually supply us with a pattern underlying the strangeness of the semantic relation and the intuitive ease of signifying behavior.