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The threatening question

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Functioning

Disrupted -- which came first?

Here's the threatening question:

I've been talking about place grammars. Place grammars sound a lot like formal systems of rules guiding us. But what if there are no such things?

What if grammars and rules are not what we live by, but are only retrospective constructions? What if lived places don't have grammars, and only get grammars attributed to them after the fact?

So would claim, more or less, Bourdieu. In a way, Quine. Likely, Davidson. In his own way, Wittgenstein. With reservations, Derrida. Rorty. Heidegger. Deleuze. They don't agree on much but they could agree on this objection.

On my side. I can claim Hegel and Sellars and maybe Foucault, plus some anthropologists and sociologists, but they are being attacked by those heavy hitters on the other side.