stop making sense

Today I thought about numbers. I do not know much about them. They have never be very kind to me. But they are very mysterious. I thought about the number '4', and what it means to call something '4'. I also thought about how the concept of number could be conceived in poststructural terms. Some of my general musings were: how is number determined? How is it allegedly and possibly beyond determination (viz. the determination of discourse)? How could '4' already be other to itself, self-divided, not '4', structurally, etc., and how (if this could be demonstrated) has this instability been dealt with historically?

When we generally think of a number, say, '4', we think of a uniform measure of determination--a specific quantity, discernible by virtue of its pattern or sameness. This must be repeatable, since it is repetition which provides the basis for its identity. '4', whatever else it may be, is a system of arrangements, the sum of which is contained and containable within the blanket concept named '4'. But '4' is actually nothing concrete, and nothing tangible. (In reading this, it was precisely this italicized sentence that my brother pronounced his severe disagreement with its contents.) In a certain way, I argue, '4' has never been demonstrated, except by analogy. There are infinite ways to show '4': '4' is 1+1+2, or 2x2, or -8/-2, and so on and so forth. But where and what exactly is '4' itself in all of these arrangements? In other words, where could '4' be shown to exist, or where does it exist, without the imposition, the imprint, of something posing as '4' (1+3, for instance), which stands in for '4', which constitutes '4' and assumes its name? The answer is, of course, nowhere.

Some conclusions. This is how I can presumably say that '4' is already other to itself. With all of the nonsense and ambiguity implied: '4' is never '4'. Just as Freud demonstrated that we are all strangers to ourselves and to our consciousness, by virtue of the radical otherness otherwise known as the unconscious, here too we see numbers working in the same way, as having a similar unconscious, that both eludes our clear understanding of the concept, since it endlessly complicates it, and perverts its contents to us. '4' is never '4': '4' is always a metaphor for an abstract idea, an ideal, say, of order, or correspondence. Because, again: you can't show me '4' without showing me something else: and so it appears that not only is '4' an abstract label, but indistinguishable from something else, something not '4'.

But always '4', always '4'. At the same time, of course, one naturally thinks (but why is this particular thought natural, as oppose to the other) : that in all cases one has done nothing but show '4', each and every time! '4' has consistently appeared everywhere, with pure and proper consistency, the consistency and analyticity of science. Of course, of course.

So '4' is always '4' and apparently never '4'. You might agree with me on this, or you might not. I won't mind. But here. It shows itself precisely in the Marxian observation of the economy of exchange. Here's how exchange works: something is exchanged for something else. Meat for money. But they are converted or exchanged through an abstract (let's not forget) system of equivalence. Meat and money are taken as the same, when they are, in fact, not. Or, rather: exchange politics declares meat and money the same, while meat and money are not the same. Are they the same? Exchange performs magic and miracle: it establishes paradox proper. So too with '4'. '4' and '3+1' are not the same: and yet they are, of course, always. They are depicted as equivalent. The hundred dollar question, of course, is whether this sameness or equivalence is outside of human determination, or whether it is instead an effect of discourse. My question, the same one, to the prodigious reader would be (and which no doubt sounds ridiculous and absurd, but I desire to question precisely these things): aside from everything you have ever learned about numbers, and looking simply at what I write, and the concepts as they are given, in what way is 3+1 the same as '4'? At what point does 3+1 become '4'?

The experience with number for Kant and the empiricists was as follows: the question or problem was always a coin toss between number as synthetic (Kant) and number as analytic (Ayer and co.). In other words, is there something mysterious, something more added to 3+1 to make it '4', or is '4' simply imbedded in 3+1. Today we are no doubt accustomed to thinking the latter. In fact we don't even think it. We don't need to. Set theory and analytic philosophy are prefaced on derivation and 'truth' preservation. Any idiot knows 3+1 is 4. It has to be. But what if we said that the solution to the synthetic/analytic problem consisted in precisely its non-solution? Or: what if we said that Kant and others were mistaken to focus on such as a 'problem' or an antinomy altogether?

I want to go on with this, and I feel I have much more to say, but alas, I've written myself tired. To be continued?