Doxa

Oh, btw, did you notice that the aforementioned "conflict", between "maths and biology" - between the empirical and the rational - traced by Malabou in her Kant book - is also presented succinctly in the Alexander vs. the Mystic 'koan' on our other thread?

I feel lazy. I wonder if you can give me the "for dummies" version, e.g.

"What I mean by the primacy of symbols is [the world is made of words, and by changing the words we change the world], and my main reasons for believing this is so are 1), 2), and 3)"

I want to know what you think, in the simplest terms. about the primacy of symbols, with no digressions or quotations. Bonus points if you can do this without rhetorical questions, ellipses and winking smileys.

My hypothesis is that you won't be able to do this, because it will end up sounding vacuous, or silly, or both.

Easy....

The world is made up of cups and tables and trees and relationships, &etc- but wait, please note! - all these things are not objects, as (it appears that) you so lazily assume, but categories of objects.

What the objects really are in themselves, as Kant, Heidegger, et al assert, 'is withdrawn from us', & we only know them as appearances, relationally, i.e. correlationally - 'in terms of the way we think about them.'

Derrida's riveting image for Kant's insight was 'vomit' - i.e. the insides outside - so like, Kantian 'vomit' all over everything ...

Where does the symbolic being primary enter into this?