Pike's ghost

António Pedro Marques · 29 Nov 2011, 17:33 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:33:29 +0000
Subject: (urth) Pike's ghost
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James Wynn wrote (29-11-2011 17:09):
>
>>>> Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>>>> Why do you believe enlightenment came to Patera Silk in the ball court?
>>>
>>> Because the text says so.
>>
>> If the text says so and everyone can go look and everyone is supposed to
>> have read it once, isn't it a bit tiresome to have to repeat at each turn
>> what the text says?
>
> You know, ironically, I thought I answered that question in the text that
> followed. But I'll approach it in more detail.
> Answer: Because this is literature, and words can have more than one
> meaning. And because events carefully described can have different
> significance based on interpretation (thus we have Detective novels). And
> because, that's the field when you are discussing Wolfe.
> But (here's the beauty) you are /not/ required to engage anyone for whom you
> believe conversation is pointless. Embrace your freedom. But if you engage,
> it is always pointless if you approach it with the presumption that it is
> someone else's job to prove you wrong.

So you admit that when you ask where others get their assumptions from, it's 
a rhetoric/flippant question?

>> If everything everyone does has unspeakable motivations,
>> why point out that this or that action have unspeakable motivations?
>
> That's like saying that because we are all sinners, discussion of good
> behavior is pointless. It's like saying that anyone who condemns behavior is
> "self-righteous", anyone who earns a decent salary is "greedy".

Indeed, that's exactly where your procedure takes us: 'anyone who takes a 
part of a literary work a priori at face value is "theorising"'.

>>>>> They argue from authority based
>>>>> on what they consider is "most likely true" or "the consensus". This
>>>>> liberates them from having to explain WHY what they believe is "most
>>>>> likely
>>>>> true". They have generously yielded to THEMSELVES the default position.
>>>>>
>>>>> [...]What I'm
>>>>> really annoyed by is /smugness/. It makes me want to take the opposite
>>>>> position just to see how it plays out. I think the smug aren't really
>>>>> thinking because they have afforded themselves the right not to.
>>>>
>>>> And what in your view constitutes smugness?
>>>
>>> I think I just described it.
>>
>> If so, one could argue that smugness is in the eye of the beholder.
>
> Of course you can argue that. Most of us hail from free countries.
> But being smug doesn't require that you are wrong. It only means that you
> are not applying to your own theories the rigor to which you are with great
> adamance disputing others. It is a hypocrisy in which the hypocrite has
> satisfied himself that his hypocrisy is "authentic". It's like a tyrant who
> believes everything he does is just because God put him there. The "smug"
> has constructed a palace of mirrors that all show /only/ himself and always
> in the perfect light.

Whereas others are convinced that their opinions are wrong, correct?

Or - how do you say it? - 'if it's not my theory, they're not applying to it 
the rigor which they are with great adamance disputing me'.

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