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Constructing a Replacement for the Soul - Bourbon
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
harvard university
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ART! AND SCIENCES
THESIS ACCEPTANCE CERTIFICATE
The undersigned, appointed by the
Division
Department English and American Literature and Language Committee
have examined a thesis cntided (,OA$frucfi'/t^
? f Sc/f--fU-fkefr^ . L--
_>Crf. Ac<_
presented by
(lr (1* Soj[ : ~f fu. Qr.
<1
candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and hereby certify that it is worthy of acceptance.
S i g n a t u r e <h r Typed name Johnso_
Signature
Typed name . . ? . . t. #ne. ly. . . Ca<fell
Signature . . . . Typed name
Daze
7- 17-96
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Constructing a Replacement for the Soul
The Grammars o f Self-Reflection and Temporality as the Limits o f Language in Finnegans Wake, Philosophical Investigations, and Cognitive Science
A thesis presented by
Brett Ryan Bourbon
to
The Department o f English and American Literature and Language
in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the degree of
Doctor o f Philosophy
in the subject of
English and American Literature and Language
Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts July, 1996
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
UMI Number: 9710397
Copyright 1996 by Bourbon, Brett Ryan
All rights reserved.
UMI Microform 9710397
Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI
300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
(C) 1996 BY BRETT RYAN BOURBON All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Abstract: Constructing a Replacement for the Soul: The Grammars of Self- Reflection and Temporality as the Limits of Language in Finnegans Wake, Philosophical Investigations, and Cognitive Science
In my dissertation I explore how literary art can function as a kind o f cognitive philosophy. I begin with the proposition that Artificial Intelligence programs, and the game worlds they spawn, attempt to articulate an aesthetic with ontological force, poems to blow our heads off. This possibility or promise frames my examination of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Wittgenstein'sPhilosophicalInvestigations, and my own description of a hypothetical machine I have designed that generates a fictional future within which it figures itself. I analyze Finnegans Wake as a philosophical text, and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations as describing an aesthetic. Both texts do not articulate a theory of meaning, but model meaning within what Wittgenstein called our "forms of life," our attunement within our language, culture, history, psychology, biology, and so on. How is it possible for human beings to inhabit this 'our' at all? How can I use an 'our' as mine? In writing towards and at the limits of language, I am trying to speak an 'our' as our species-being, and it this speaking enact the particularity of meaning instantiated through my particular involvement in language. Both Investigations and the Wake explore the limits o f what it means to be human by examining how linguistic meaning works throughtheinteractionsbetweensenseandnonsense. Ianalyzehowtheshiftingbetween language games, between sense and nonsense described and enacted within Finnegans WakeandPhilosophicalInvestigationsarticulatesamultivalenttemporalsense. I investigate the ways in which the limits between sense and nonsense construct a grammar of temporality that is simultaneously a literary aesthetic and a theory of mind. Time becomes a grammatical effect. The theoretical machine I have designed pressures the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
interpretative limit between the animate and the inanimate and between sense and nonsense toward the ontological limits described by causal languages. My dissertation is an attempt to describe the ways in which such grammars determine what counts as human.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abbreviations, i
Etymologies, ii
A Note on the Interpretation o f Finnegans Wake, iii
1. I.
INTRODUCTION: Constructing a Replacement for the Soul, 1
FRAGMENTS: FROM SOUL-MAKING TO PERSON-MAKING 2. From Soul-making to Person-making, 21
2. 1 Personalidentityandimpersonalsalvation, 29
2. 2 "timeliquescingintostate,pitilessagegrowsangelhood", 38
2. 3 Spiralingfrominterpretationtocause, 55
3. RomanticFragmentsandModernistMachines, 62 4. Keats' Version of Finnegans Wake, 103
5. The Distance between the Soul and the Mind, 113 6. TheWakeanGrammarof'Between', 167
H. THE SEMANTICS OF IDENTITY AND THINGS (Eliot's The Waste Land and Heidegger's 'Das Ding')
m .
7. Semantics of Identity and Mind, 213 8. (How) Can things mean? , 249
8. 1 Matter, 258
8. 2 What is a thing? : Functionalism, 269
8. 3 A Thing is a Temporal Condensate o f a Semantic Chain, 275
8. 4 The Ontological-Semantics of 'weilen', 280
8. 5 TeXevTTjteatevreXexeia(etverbumtemporalenomini), 296
8. 6 Animamundiseuorbis, 319
9. 'Weileri* in The WasteLand, 328 9. 1. Thunder-talk, 328
9. 2 On the road to objecthood, 348
9. 3 The visibility of the subjunctive, 383
THE SEXUAL ONTOLOGY OF THE PSYCHE
(Finnegans Wake)
10. The Sexual Ontology of the Psyche, 399
10. 1 Conversation with God and Self, 399
10. 2 "aprioric roots for aposteriorious tongues", 413
10. 3 "RenovetheBible":thelogicofcreationinGenesis, 424 10. 4 AnnaLiviaPlurabelle, 436
10. 5 Masculinetautology, 448
10. 6 Thelimitsofwhy, 453
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
IV. WITTGENSTEINIANTIME
(Philosophical Investigations)
11. The Ontology of Time, 460
11. 1Knowingtime, 465
11. 2 Inhabiting time, 477
12. The 'I* in the Nature ofPhilosophicalInvestigations, 493
13. GrammaticalTime, 532
13. 1 Physiognomyofasoul, 532
13. 2 Understanding, or not, how not to go on, 540
13. 3 The theology o f sentences, 556
V. MACHINE TIME: THE SCIENCE OF BUILDING A FUTURE
14. Machine Time, 571
14. 1. Constructing a Time Machine (the Self-Inductor) Limit between Cause and Grammar, 571
at the
14. 2 Time-machinelinguist, 577
14. 3 Generating the present from language, 580
14. 4 A wink in time means two, 588
14. 5 "Be! Verb umprincipiant through the trancitive spaces! ", 589
14. 6 The logic o f short-term prediction, 592
14. 7 The continuous future: hearing of and speaking in the new
worldorder, 594
14. 8 Another blueprint o f time, 596
14. 9 Mental imperialism: to make the world as mind, 596
14. 10 Time and the other, 597
14. 11 Looking for Mr. Goodmachine, 600
14. 12 Meta-temporal identities: the modeling o f others as syntax,
601
14. 13 Negative entropy, 605
14. 14 Re-building ourselves in the other, 606
14. 15 The pursuit o f death, 608
14. 16 Learning from the future, 609
14. 17 Inside a Chinese box, 610
14. 18 The I as the not-I: Using the future to build other machines,
611
15. EPILOGUE: But what have I denied the existence of? , 614 Bibliography, 616
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Abbreviations
All references to Finnegans Wake (abbreviated FW) in the following dissertation are identifiedparentheticallybypageandlinenumber. AllreferencestoPhilosophical Investigation (abbreviated PI) are identified parenthetically by section number or where appropriatebypagenumber. Otherworksfrequentlycitedareidentifiedparenthetically by the following abbreviations:
CPE BT
DD
NS
BB
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Co. , 1952.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (NY: Harper and Row, 1962); Sein und Zeit.
(Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993) Where relevant references are identified by the page number in the English translation, followed by the page number in the original German.
. "The Thing". In Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. NY: Harper, 1971; Vortrage undAufsatze.
Stuggart: Gunther Neske, 1954. 1will refer to the German throughout, and in specific cases will identify the German text as "Das Ding".
Vico, Giambattista. The New Science o f Giambattista Vico. Trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Rev. ed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984. References will be to paragraph number and not page number.
Wittgenstein,Ludwig. TheBlueandBrownBooks. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1952.
CV_________ _________________ . Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. Von Wright with Heikki Nyman. Trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
PG
TLP
_________________ . Philosophical Grammar. Ed. R. Rhees. Trans. Anthony Kenny. Berkeley: U o f California P, 1974.
_. "Philosophy" (Big Transcript) In Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951. Ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.
Oversize materials (e. g. , maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back ofthe book.
Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.
UMI
A Bell & Howell Information Company
300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
harvard university
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ART! AND SCIENCES
THESIS ACCEPTANCE CERTIFICATE
The undersigned, appointed by the
Division
Department English and American Literature and Language Committee
have examined a thesis cntided (,OA$frucfi'/t^
? f Sc/f--fU-fkefr^ . L--
_>Crf. Ac<_
presented by
(lr (1* Soj[ : ~f fu. Qr.
<1
candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and hereby certify that it is worthy of acceptance.
S i g n a t u r e <h r Typed name Johnso_
Signature
Typed name . . ? . . t. #ne. ly. . . Ca<fell
Signature . . . . Typed name
Daze
7- 17-96
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Constructing a Replacement for the Soul
The Grammars o f Self-Reflection and Temporality as the Limits o f Language in Finnegans Wake, Philosophical Investigations, and Cognitive Science
A thesis presented by
Brett Ryan Bourbon
to
The Department o f English and American Literature and Language
in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the degree of
Doctor o f Philosophy
in the subject of
English and American Literature and Language
Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts July, 1996
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
UMI Number: 9710397
Copyright 1996 by Bourbon, Brett Ryan
All rights reserved.
UMI Microform 9710397
Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI
300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
(C) 1996 BY BRETT RYAN BOURBON All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Abstract: Constructing a Replacement for the Soul: The Grammars of Self- Reflection and Temporality as the Limits of Language in Finnegans Wake, Philosophical Investigations, and Cognitive Science
In my dissertation I explore how literary art can function as a kind o f cognitive philosophy. I begin with the proposition that Artificial Intelligence programs, and the game worlds they spawn, attempt to articulate an aesthetic with ontological force, poems to blow our heads off. This possibility or promise frames my examination of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Wittgenstein'sPhilosophicalInvestigations, and my own description of a hypothetical machine I have designed that generates a fictional future within which it figures itself. I analyze Finnegans Wake as a philosophical text, and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations as describing an aesthetic. Both texts do not articulate a theory of meaning, but model meaning within what Wittgenstein called our "forms of life," our attunement within our language, culture, history, psychology, biology, and so on. How is it possible for human beings to inhabit this 'our' at all? How can I use an 'our' as mine? In writing towards and at the limits of language, I am trying to speak an 'our' as our species-being, and it this speaking enact the particularity of meaning instantiated through my particular involvement in language. Both Investigations and the Wake explore the limits o f what it means to be human by examining how linguistic meaning works throughtheinteractionsbetweensenseandnonsense. Ianalyzehowtheshiftingbetween language games, between sense and nonsense described and enacted within Finnegans WakeandPhilosophicalInvestigationsarticulatesamultivalenttemporalsense. I investigate the ways in which the limits between sense and nonsense construct a grammar of temporality that is simultaneously a literary aesthetic and a theory of mind. Time becomes a grammatical effect. The theoretical machine I have designed pressures the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
interpretative limit between the animate and the inanimate and between sense and nonsense toward the ontological limits described by causal languages. My dissertation is an attempt to describe the ways in which such grammars determine what counts as human.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abbreviations, i
Etymologies, ii
A Note on the Interpretation o f Finnegans Wake, iii
1. I.
INTRODUCTION: Constructing a Replacement for the Soul, 1
FRAGMENTS: FROM SOUL-MAKING TO PERSON-MAKING 2. From Soul-making to Person-making, 21
2. 1 Personalidentityandimpersonalsalvation, 29
2. 2 "timeliquescingintostate,pitilessagegrowsangelhood", 38
2. 3 Spiralingfrominterpretationtocause, 55
3. RomanticFragmentsandModernistMachines, 62 4. Keats' Version of Finnegans Wake, 103
5. The Distance between the Soul and the Mind, 113 6. TheWakeanGrammarof'Between', 167
H. THE SEMANTICS OF IDENTITY AND THINGS (Eliot's The Waste Land and Heidegger's 'Das Ding')
m .
7. Semantics of Identity and Mind, 213 8. (How) Can things mean? , 249
8. 1 Matter, 258
8. 2 What is a thing? : Functionalism, 269
8. 3 A Thing is a Temporal Condensate o f a Semantic Chain, 275
8. 4 The Ontological-Semantics of 'weilen', 280
8. 5 TeXevTTjteatevreXexeia(etverbumtemporalenomini), 296
8. 6 Animamundiseuorbis, 319
9. 'Weileri* in The WasteLand, 328 9. 1. Thunder-talk, 328
9. 2 On the road to objecthood, 348
9. 3 The visibility of the subjunctive, 383
THE SEXUAL ONTOLOGY OF THE PSYCHE
(Finnegans Wake)
10. The Sexual Ontology of the Psyche, 399
10. 1 Conversation with God and Self, 399
10. 2 "aprioric roots for aposteriorious tongues", 413
10. 3 "RenovetheBible":thelogicofcreationinGenesis, 424 10. 4 AnnaLiviaPlurabelle, 436
10. 5 Masculinetautology, 448
10. 6 Thelimitsofwhy, 453
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
IV. WITTGENSTEINIANTIME
(Philosophical Investigations)
11. The Ontology of Time, 460
11. 1Knowingtime, 465
11. 2 Inhabiting time, 477
12. The 'I* in the Nature ofPhilosophicalInvestigations, 493
13. GrammaticalTime, 532
13. 1 Physiognomyofasoul, 532
13. 2 Understanding, or not, how not to go on, 540
13. 3 The theology o f sentences, 556
V. MACHINE TIME: THE SCIENCE OF BUILDING A FUTURE
14. Machine Time, 571
14. 1. Constructing a Time Machine (the Self-Inductor) Limit between Cause and Grammar, 571
at the
14. 2 Time-machinelinguist, 577
14. 3 Generating the present from language, 580
14. 4 A wink in time means two, 588
14. 5 "Be! Verb umprincipiant through the trancitive spaces! ", 589
14. 6 The logic o f short-term prediction, 592
14. 7 The continuous future: hearing of and speaking in the new
worldorder, 594
14. 8 Another blueprint o f time, 596
14. 9 Mental imperialism: to make the world as mind, 596
14. 10 Time and the other, 597
14. 11 Looking for Mr. Goodmachine, 600
14. 12 Meta-temporal identities: the modeling o f others as syntax,
601
14. 13 Negative entropy, 605
14. 14 Re-building ourselves in the other, 606
14. 15 The pursuit o f death, 608
14. 16 Learning from the future, 609
14. 17 Inside a Chinese box, 610
14. 18 The I as the not-I: Using the future to build other machines,
611
15. EPILOGUE: But what have I denied the existence of? , 614 Bibliography, 616
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Abbreviations
All references to Finnegans Wake (abbreviated FW) in the following dissertation are identifiedparentheticallybypageandlinenumber. AllreferencestoPhilosophical Investigation (abbreviated PI) are identified parenthetically by section number or where appropriatebypagenumber. Otherworksfrequentlycitedareidentifiedparenthetically by the following abbreviations:
CPE BT
DD
NS
BB
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Co. , 1952.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (NY: Harper and Row, 1962); Sein und Zeit.
(Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993) Where relevant references are identified by the page number in the English translation, followed by the page number in the original German.
. "The Thing". In Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. NY: Harper, 1971; Vortrage undAufsatze.
Stuggart: Gunther Neske, 1954. 1will refer to the German throughout, and in specific cases will identify the German text as "Das Ding".
Vico, Giambattista. The New Science o f Giambattista Vico. Trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Rev. ed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984. References will be to paragraph number and not page number.
Wittgenstein,Ludwig. TheBlueandBrownBooks. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1952.
CV_________ _________________ . Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. Von Wright with Heikki Nyman. Trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
PG
TLP
_________________ . Philosophical Grammar. Ed. R. Rhees. Trans. Anthony Kenny. Berkeley: U o f California P, 1974.
_. "Philosophy" (Big Transcript) In Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951. Ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann. Indianapolis:
Hackett, Pub, 1993.
. TractatusLogico-Philosophicus. Trans. C. K.
This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type o f computer printer.
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely afreet reproduction.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.
Oversize materials (e. g. , maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back ofthe book.
Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.
UMI
A Bell & Howell Information Company
300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
harvard university
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ART! AND SCIENCES
THESIS ACCEPTANCE CERTIFICATE
The undersigned, appointed by the
Division
Department English and American Literature and Language Committee
have examined a thesis cntided (,OA$frucfi'/t^
? f Sc/f--fU-fkefr^ . L--
_>Crf. Ac<_
presented by
(lr (1* Soj[ : ~f fu. Qr.
<1
candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and hereby certify that it is worthy of acceptance.
S i g n a t u r e <h r Typed name Johnso_
Signature
Typed name . . ? . . t. #ne. ly. . . Ca<fell
Signature . . . . Typed name
Daze
7- 17-96
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Constructing a Replacement for the Soul
The Grammars o f Self-Reflection and Temporality as the Limits o f Language in Finnegans Wake, Philosophical Investigations, and Cognitive Science
A thesis presented by
Brett Ryan Bourbon
to
The Department o f English and American Literature and Language
in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the degree of
Doctor o f Philosophy
in the subject of
English and American Literature and Language
Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts July, 1996
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
UMI Number: 9710397
Copyright 1996 by Bourbon, Brett Ryan
All rights reserved.
UMI Microform 9710397
Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI
300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
(C) 1996 BY BRETT RYAN BOURBON All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Abstract: Constructing a Replacement for the Soul: The Grammars of Self- Reflection and Temporality as the Limits of Language in Finnegans Wake, Philosophical Investigations, and Cognitive Science
In my dissertation I explore how literary art can function as a kind o f cognitive philosophy. I begin with the proposition that Artificial Intelligence programs, and the game worlds they spawn, attempt to articulate an aesthetic with ontological force, poems to blow our heads off. This possibility or promise frames my examination of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Wittgenstein'sPhilosophicalInvestigations, and my own description of a hypothetical machine I have designed that generates a fictional future within which it figures itself. I analyze Finnegans Wake as a philosophical text, and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations as describing an aesthetic. Both texts do not articulate a theory of meaning, but model meaning within what Wittgenstein called our "forms of life," our attunement within our language, culture, history, psychology, biology, and so on. How is it possible for human beings to inhabit this 'our' at all? How can I use an 'our' as mine? In writing towards and at the limits of language, I am trying to speak an 'our' as our species-being, and it this speaking enact the particularity of meaning instantiated through my particular involvement in language. Both Investigations and the Wake explore the limits o f what it means to be human by examining how linguistic meaning works throughtheinteractionsbetweensenseandnonsense. Ianalyzehowtheshiftingbetween language games, between sense and nonsense described and enacted within Finnegans WakeandPhilosophicalInvestigationsarticulatesamultivalenttemporalsense. I investigate the ways in which the limits between sense and nonsense construct a grammar of temporality that is simultaneously a literary aesthetic and a theory of mind. Time becomes a grammatical effect. The theoretical machine I have designed pressures the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
interpretative limit between the animate and the inanimate and between sense and nonsense toward the ontological limits described by causal languages. My dissertation is an attempt to describe the ways in which such grammars determine what counts as human.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abbreviations, i
Etymologies, ii
A Note on the Interpretation o f Finnegans Wake, iii
1. I.
INTRODUCTION: Constructing a Replacement for the Soul, 1
FRAGMENTS: FROM SOUL-MAKING TO PERSON-MAKING 2. From Soul-making to Person-making, 21
2. 1 Personalidentityandimpersonalsalvation, 29
2. 2 "timeliquescingintostate,pitilessagegrowsangelhood", 38
2. 3 Spiralingfrominterpretationtocause, 55
3. RomanticFragmentsandModernistMachines, 62 4. Keats' Version of Finnegans Wake, 103
5. The Distance between the Soul and the Mind, 113 6. TheWakeanGrammarof'Between', 167
H. THE SEMANTICS OF IDENTITY AND THINGS (Eliot's The Waste Land and Heidegger's 'Das Ding')
m .
7. Semantics of Identity and Mind, 213 8. (How) Can things mean? , 249
8. 1 Matter, 258
8. 2 What is a thing? : Functionalism, 269
8. 3 A Thing is a Temporal Condensate o f a Semantic Chain, 275
8. 4 The Ontological-Semantics of 'weilen', 280
8. 5 TeXevTTjteatevreXexeia(etverbumtemporalenomini), 296
8. 6 Animamundiseuorbis, 319
9. 'Weileri* in The WasteLand, 328 9. 1. Thunder-talk, 328
9. 2 On the road to objecthood, 348
9. 3 The visibility of the subjunctive, 383
THE SEXUAL ONTOLOGY OF THE PSYCHE
(Finnegans Wake)
10. The Sexual Ontology of the Psyche, 399
10. 1 Conversation with God and Self, 399
10. 2 "aprioric roots for aposteriorious tongues", 413
10. 3 "RenovetheBible":thelogicofcreationinGenesis, 424 10. 4 AnnaLiviaPlurabelle, 436
10. 5 Masculinetautology, 448
10. 6 Thelimitsofwhy, 453
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
IV. WITTGENSTEINIANTIME
(Philosophical Investigations)
11. The Ontology of Time, 460
11. 1Knowingtime, 465
11. 2 Inhabiting time, 477
12. The 'I* in the Nature ofPhilosophicalInvestigations, 493
13. GrammaticalTime, 532
13. 1 Physiognomyofasoul, 532
13. 2 Understanding, or not, how not to go on, 540
13. 3 The theology o f sentences, 556
V. MACHINE TIME: THE SCIENCE OF BUILDING A FUTURE
14. Machine Time, 571
14. 1. Constructing a Time Machine (the Self-Inductor) Limit between Cause and Grammar, 571
at the
14. 2 Time-machinelinguist, 577
14. 3 Generating the present from language, 580
14. 4 A wink in time means two, 588
14. 5 "Be! Verb umprincipiant through the trancitive spaces! ", 589
14. 6 The logic o f short-term prediction, 592
14. 7 The continuous future: hearing of and speaking in the new
worldorder, 594
14. 8 Another blueprint o f time, 596
14. 9 Mental imperialism: to make the world as mind, 596
14. 10 Time and the other, 597
14. 11 Looking for Mr. Goodmachine, 600
14. 12 Meta-temporal identities: the modeling o f others as syntax,
601
14. 13 Negative entropy, 605
14. 14 Re-building ourselves in the other, 606
14. 15 The pursuit o f death, 608
14. 16 Learning from the future, 609
14. 17 Inside a Chinese box, 610
14. 18 The I as the not-I: Using the future to build other machines,
611
15. EPILOGUE: But what have I denied the existence of? , 614 Bibliography, 616
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Abbreviations
All references to Finnegans Wake (abbreviated FW) in the following dissertation are identifiedparentheticallybypageandlinenumber. AllreferencestoPhilosophical Investigation (abbreviated PI) are identified parenthetically by section number or where appropriatebypagenumber. Otherworksfrequentlycitedareidentifiedparenthetically by the following abbreviations:
CPE BT
DD
NS
BB
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Co. , 1952.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (NY: Harper and Row, 1962); Sein und Zeit.
(Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993) Where relevant references are identified by the page number in the English translation, followed by the page number in the original German.
. "The Thing". In Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. NY: Harper, 1971; Vortrage undAufsatze.
Stuggart: Gunther Neske, 1954. 1will refer to the German throughout, and in specific cases will identify the German text as "Das Ding".
Vico, Giambattista. The New Science o f Giambattista Vico. Trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Rev. ed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984. References will be to paragraph number and not page number.
Wittgenstein,Ludwig. TheBlueandBrownBooks. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1952.
CV_________ _________________ . Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. Von Wright with Heikki Nyman. Trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
PG
TLP
_________________ . Philosophical Grammar. Ed. R. Rhees. Trans. Anthony Kenny. Berkeley: U o f California P, 1974.
_. "Philosophy" (Big Transcript) In Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951. Ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann.
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harvard university
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ART! AND SCIENCES
THESIS ACCEPTANCE CERTIFICATE
The undersigned, appointed by the
Division
Department English and American Literature and Language Committee
have examined a thesis cntided (,OA$frucfi'/t^
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presented by
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candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and hereby certify that it is worthy of acceptance.
S i g n a t u r e <h r Typed name Johnso_
Signature
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Signature . . . . Typed name
Daze
7- 17-96
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Constructing a Replacement for the Soul
The Grammars o f Self-Reflection and Temporality as the Limits o f Language in Finnegans Wake, Philosophical Investigations, and Cognitive Science
A thesis presented by
Brett Ryan Bourbon
to
The Department o f English and American Literature and Language
in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the degree of
Doctor o f Philosophy
in the subject of
English and American Literature and Language
Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts July, 1996
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UMI Number: 9710397
Copyright 1996 by Bourbon, Brett Ryan
All rights reserved.
UMI Microform 9710397
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(C) 1996 BY BRETT RYAN BOURBON All rights reserved.
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Abstract: Constructing a Replacement for the Soul: The Grammars of Self- Reflection and Temporality as the Limits of Language in Finnegans Wake, Philosophical Investigations, and Cognitive Science
In my dissertation I explore how literary art can function as a kind o f cognitive philosophy. I begin with the proposition that Artificial Intelligence programs, and the game worlds they spawn, attempt to articulate an aesthetic with ontological force, poems to blow our heads off. This possibility or promise frames my examination of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Wittgenstein'sPhilosophicalInvestigations, and my own description of a hypothetical machine I have designed that generates a fictional future within which it figures itself. I analyze Finnegans Wake as a philosophical text, and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations as describing an aesthetic. Both texts do not articulate a theory of meaning, but model meaning within what Wittgenstein called our "forms of life," our attunement within our language, culture, history, psychology, biology, and so on. How is it possible for human beings to inhabit this 'our' at all? How can I use an 'our' as mine? In writing towards and at the limits of language, I am trying to speak an 'our' as our species-being, and it this speaking enact the particularity of meaning instantiated through my particular involvement in language. Both Investigations and the Wake explore the limits o f what it means to be human by examining how linguistic meaning works throughtheinteractionsbetweensenseandnonsense. Ianalyzehowtheshiftingbetween language games, between sense and nonsense described and enacted within Finnegans WakeandPhilosophicalInvestigationsarticulatesamultivalenttemporalsense. I investigate the ways in which the limits between sense and nonsense construct a grammar of temporality that is simultaneously a literary aesthetic and a theory of mind. Time becomes a grammatical effect. The theoretical machine I have designed pressures the
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interpretative limit between the animate and the inanimate and between sense and nonsense toward the ontological limits described by causal languages. My dissertation is an attempt to describe the ways in which such grammars determine what counts as human.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abbreviations, i
Etymologies, ii
A Note on the Interpretation o f Finnegans Wake, iii
1. I.
INTRODUCTION: Constructing a Replacement for the Soul, 1
FRAGMENTS: FROM SOUL-MAKING TO PERSON-MAKING 2. From Soul-making to Person-making, 21
2. 1 Personalidentityandimpersonalsalvation, 29
2. 2 "timeliquescingintostate,pitilessagegrowsangelhood", 38
2. 3 Spiralingfrominterpretationtocause, 55
3. RomanticFragmentsandModernistMachines, 62 4. Keats' Version of Finnegans Wake, 103
5. The Distance between the Soul and the Mind, 113 6. TheWakeanGrammarof'Between', 167
H. THE SEMANTICS OF IDENTITY AND THINGS (Eliot's The Waste Land and Heidegger's 'Das Ding')
m .
7. Semantics of Identity and Mind, 213 8. (How) Can things mean? , 249
8. 1 Matter, 258
8. 2 What is a thing? : Functionalism, 269
8. 3 A Thing is a Temporal Condensate o f a Semantic Chain, 275
8. 4 The Ontological-Semantics of 'weilen', 280
8. 5 TeXevTTjteatevreXexeia(etverbumtemporalenomini), 296
8. 6 Animamundiseuorbis, 319
9. 'Weileri* in The WasteLand, 328 9. 1. Thunder-talk, 328
9. 2 On the road to objecthood, 348
9. 3 The visibility of the subjunctive, 383
THE SEXUAL ONTOLOGY OF THE PSYCHE
(Finnegans Wake)
10. The Sexual Ontology of the Psyche, 399
10. 1 Conversation with God and Self, 399
10. 2 "aprioric roots for aposteriorious tongues", 413
10. 3 "RenovetheBible":thelogicofcreationinGenesis, 424 10. 4 AnnaLiviaPlurabelle, 436
10. 5 Masculinetautology, 448
10. 6 Thelimitsofwhy, 453
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IV. WITTGENSTEINIANTIME
(Philosophical Investigations)
11. The Ontology of Time, 460
11. 1Knowingtime, 465
11. 2 Inhabiting time, 477
12. The 'I* in the Nature ofPhilosophicalInvestigations, 493
13. GrammaticalTime, 532
13. 1 Physiognomyofasoul, 532
13. 2 Understanding, or not, how not to go on, 540
13. 3 The theology o f sentences, 556
V. MACHINE TIME: THE SCIENCE OF BUILDING A FUTURE
14. Machine Time, 571
14. 1. Constructing a Time Machine (the Self-Inductor) Limit between Cause and Grammar, 571
at the
14. 2 Time-machinelinguist, 577
14. 3 Generating the present from language, 580
14. 4 A wink in time means two, 588
14. 5 "Be! Verb umprincipiant through the trancitive spaces! ", 589
14. 6 The logic o f short-term prediction, 592
14. 7 The continuous future: hearing of and speaking in the new
worldorder, 594
14. 8 Another blueprint o f time, 596
14. 9 Mental imperialism: to make the world as mind, 596
14. 10 Time and the other, 597
14. 11 Looking for Mr. Goodmachine, 600
14. 12 Meta-temporal identities: the modeling o f others as syntax,
601
14. 13 Negative entropy, 605
14. 14 Re-building ourselves in the other, 606
14. 15 The pursuit o f death, 608
14. 16 Learning from the future, 609
14. 17 Inside a Chinese box, 610
14. 18 The I as the not-I: Using the future to build other machines,
611
15. EPILOGUE: But what have I denied the existence of? , 614 Bibliography, 616
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Abbreviations
All references to Finnegans Wake (abbreviated FW) in the following dissertation are identifiedparentheticallybypageandlinenumber. AllreferencestoPhilosophical Investigation (abbreviated PI) are identified parenthetically by section number or where appropriatebypagenumber. Otherworksfrequentlycitedareidentifiedparenthetically by the following abbreviations:
CPE BT
DD
NS
BB
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Co. , 1952.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (NY: Harper and Row, 1962); Sein und Zeit.
(Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993) Where relevant references are identified by the page number in the English translation, followed by the page number in the original German.
. "The Thing". In Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. NY: Harper, 1971; Vortrage undAufsatze.
Stuggart: Gunther Neske, 1954. 1will refer to the German throughout, and in specific cases will identify the German text as "Das Ding".
Vico, Giambattista. The New Science o f Giambattista Vico. Trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Rev. ed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984. References will be to paragraph number and not page number.
Wittgenstein,Ludwig. TheBlueandBrownBooks. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1952.
CV_________ _________________ . Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. Von Wright with Heikki Nyman. Trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
PG
TLP
_________________ . Philosophical Grammar. Ed. R. Rhees. Trans. Anthony Kenny. Berkeley: U o f California P, 1974.
_. "Philosophy" (Big Transcript) In Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951. Ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann. Indianapolis:
Hackett, Pub, 1993.
. TractatusLogico-Philosophicus. Trans. C. K.
