Ferdinand de Saussure and Structuralism (Makers of the Modern World)

[@joffrethegiant]

What a fantastic series. Loved this video. If it's not too much of a departure, I would love to hear one on Paulo Freire and critical pedagogy.

[@games4web]

Can not stop enjoying this wonderful series!

[@Lobopandilla]

Going to watch this video and I get an ad from The Thomistic Institute. LOL.

[@digitaurus]

Many thanks. At 38:00 you suggest that Saussure's key point is that signifiers are arbitrary. It isn't - this idea was a commonplace, we could have "splifft" for "dog" and nothing would change. Saussure's point is that signs are arbitrary, in other words that both signifiers and signifieds are arbitrary. Saussure means a very specific thing by 'arbitrary' - essentially, open to being defined in any way. This is much more interesting because it makes language ungrounded; the meaning of words is defined purely by their linguistic relationship to other words (which words go together, which words share similar patterns of surrounding words etc). Although this all seems a bit "so what", it's worth mentioning that there is a particular resonance today as GPT-4, ChatGPT's language model, and others of that ilk (Gemini etc) are all examples of ungrounded, structuralist language systems. They are, in fundamental form, working instantiations of Saussure's idea.

[@torbjorntoll1481]

Thank you! This video connects a number of current thoughts with previous philosophical development.

[@Andrew-wo8ry]

Thank you for introducing us to thinkers/philosophers we may have never heard of but have had large impacts on the world.

[@lauraburton627]

It would be helpful to have a comparison of ontology epistemology and concepts of the self.

[@carlosbolton6499]

I appreciate your pedagogical approach. It helps to break concepts down into manageable parts. Also, I appreciate your cross references to other philosophers. It keeps the conversation diachronic.

[@way2girly]

Thanks for making it easy to understand. Great video!

[@KayleySexton]

Could you speak on Aldus Huxley?

[@Slatkinee]

Hasn't Nietzsche or other people already said that signifiers were relative because there are different languages?

[@TravisD.Barrett]

7:26 "The video on Kant will set some Kant-ext here"

[@bbharat307]

Pastor is there any lutheran commentary on the bible available.Heard a lot of television preachings and whenever i read the bible only they come to my mind.Say like rapture which is not congruent to lutheran beliefs or say baptism with fire which is not a good thing but some denominations believe it otherwise. Book of concord is great but is there any lutheran view available for bible verses or passages.Thank you

[@Mygoalwogel]

Jspublishing has a good one. It's about 20 US bucks per volume.

[@bbharat307]

@@Mygoalwogel thank you very much

[@Mygoalwogel]

@@bbharat307 Wish I could point you to something free of charge. Lutheran stuff is expensive. I believe this is one real flaw in our practice.

[@gavinthompson1133]

Is there some overlap here with speech/act theory?

[@DrJordanBCooper]

Yes. Absolutely

[@zgobermn6895]

Great exposition.

[@PresbyterianPaladin]

I see that you're presenting at ETS, sadly I'll be at work during the allotted time you'll be speaking, but hopefully we can meet in person later in the day. :)

[@Mr.MattSim]

I've been flirting with Lutheranism for 10+ years (from 30 years as Baptist). Last week I met with a Lutheran pastor to discuss the possibility of switching teams, LOL. The thing that seems to be "pushing me past the goalpost", is a growing conviction of the "reality of ritual" as a direct result of my study of semiotics. Specifically, Peircean semiotics (which is the counterpoint to the inadequacies of Saussurean Semiology), especially as expanded by John Deely. anyway... "hashtag: philosophy matters", lol

[@DrJordanBCooper]

Oh very interesting. I haven't done reading on him. Perhaps a future topic to explore.

[@Mr.MattSim]

​ @Dr. Jordan B Cooper Indeed!, I recommend "Semiotic Animal" (Deely, 2010) as a terse, but by no means basic, overview. Deely's focus is less on unpacking the particulars of Peircean semiotic and more so its heritage, relevance, impact, and validity. Some key take-aways, IMHO: 1. The commonly known "Postmodernism" is better named "Hypermodernism" (insofar as it is the extreme edge of strict, absolute nominalism) 2. A case is made for a better application of the term Post-modernism as the lineage of thought revived by Peircean semiotics. (seems futile to me, but sound points are made) 3. Saussure's theory is diadic, and could therefore never touch reality, only an endless arbitrary chaining of symbols. 4. The unfortunate detour introduced by Descartes and nominalism. 5. Humans are precisely and essentially "Semiotic. Animals." 6. The nature of sign as a real triadic relation ( *_esse ad_* ) 7. The reality of relations, as intersubjective and/or suprasubjective, allow us access to - and the ability to distinguish between - "things and objects" (or, so to speak: stuff vs signs). 8. some other ideas about "semio-ethics" that i think are safely ignored, lol. Sorry Deely.

[@augustinian2018]

@@Mr.MattSim If you haven’t come across it already, you might be interested in Nicholas Wolterstorff’s work in philosophy of liturgy as it relates to aesthetics and speech act theory.

[@truthisbeautiful7492]

Don't baptists have rituals too?

[@elel2608]

15:00

[@JoeSmith-xf8uo]

out of curiosity: can structuralism be used to support religion ?

[@DrJordanBCooper]

Aspects of it? Absolutely. Certainly not in the direction it takes under Roland Barthes and the Post-Structutalists.

[@catfinity8799]

I've realized that Structuralism is probably the reason why we have dynamic equivalent translations like the NIV and NLT today. With the classical understanding that each individual word corresponds to a real idea, a translator would look at a Greek word and try to find an English word which corresponds to the same idea. This is the methodology of the KJV and NASB. In Structuralism, however, words in a language have a purely relational meaning, and don't themselves correspond to objective ideas. You have to look at the meaning in its totality. So to the Structuralist, the formal transposition from Greek words to equivalent English words is the completely wrong way to go about translation. The translator would, instead, have to figure out the totality of the meaning of a portion of the Greek text, and then construct an English sentence or paragraph which has the same total meaning. This is exactly what most translations do today, such as the NIV, NRSV, and NLT.

[@czarquetzal8344]

Yeah, both the diachronic and the synchronic aspects of the words being translated should be studied.

[@EcclesiastesLiker-py5ts]

Interesting.

[@luistoomuch]

Never apologize for the weeds. We’re here for it!

[@godotkrull579]

not every society is based on communication--- most are simply based and raw phyical power rape rage will, oppression and repression... societies tend to create private-languages, which are VERY distinct from the language that occurs in their flock... they tend to actually decline by loosing their capability to distinguish their own signs from the ones that matter on the streets - the winds, tastes and whispers of revolution...

[@fidelitacadayona1551]

I want to be a student of yours Dr. Cooper

[@anyanyanyanyanyany3551]

Who doesn't want to? Dr. Cooper explains things that even laypeople could understand.

[@GoodOldDaysAreOver]

❤

[@crafterman2345]

39:11 Jordan Cooper out of context

[@robbiespence6504]

12:00 what is a woman?

[@davemorgan6013]

The neocolonialist mindset is still alive and well among Europe's "elites," which is why the EU continuously tries to impose its will on developing countries.

[@saimbhat6243]

This lecture wasn't that good. You jumped the basics during transition from hegel to linguistic turn. You missed the chance to explain the history and context of linguistic turn. Not a properly designed lecture. And it was dishonest of you to not continue with the example, "My meeting you is not same as my meating you." and "I am going to meat my wife for lunch"???? Seriously ? LOL jk