Pike's ghost

António Pedro Marques · 30 Nov 2011, 17:21 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:21:11 +0000
Subject: (urth) Pike's ghost
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James Wynn wrote (30-11-2011 16:53):
>
>>
>>>>> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>>>>> What do you mean by "wrong" and "misled?" These seem to assume that
>>>>> there is a True Interpretation and all others are wrong, where I think
>>>>> that texts in general and Wolfe's texts in particular are polysemous
>>>>> and subject to a multitude of (apparently) contradictory
>>>>> interpretations, all based on the text.
>>>>
>>>> entonio at gmail.com wrote:
>>>> It doesn't. 'X is wrong' is not the same as 'All but Y are wrong'.
>>>
>>> Perhaps, but if your method of proof is to assert that there is an
>>> alternate interpretation, then you aren't proving anything except that
>>> there is an alternate interpretation.
>>
>> Ant?nio Marques wrote:
>> It can become entangled, no? When you point out actual problems with an
>> interpretation and *then* people ask you for an alternative,
>
> Unfortunately that is not the only way it happens. What very often happens
> is that someone suggests an explanation of an occurrence that is not
> explicitly declared or based on irony or allusion, and someone else will
> respond with:
>
>     "This explanation is a totally unsupported. The truth of this event is
>     clearly declared in text [James notes: although actually only implied]
>     by this flat half-blind reading of the story that I follow. Thus, I have
>     proved that my initial reading is correct and not in need of
>     enlightenment because I am eschewing any high literary understanding of
>     the events and other literary voodoo."
>
> This person is not refuting an explanation AND THEN going on to explain his
> alternate understanding. He refuting an explanation WITH his alternate
> understanding.

Even in your parody above, your person starts off with 'This explanation is 
a totally unsupported'. That's the refuting part, not the eventual Dumb 
Interpretation.

What I suggest is that next time you see someone declaring an interpretation 
as totally unsupported without an explanation, you call them on that. 
Arguing abstractions may be useful for making general cases - I did it above 
and you do it here -, but general cases only need making if they're not 
obvious. I presented the one above because it seemed to me it wasn't 
obvious. However, I have difficulty seeing how yours isn't - nobody has to 
be told what's wrong with a dismissal that doesn't present a reason (or 
whose reason wasn't general knowledge unadressed by the hypothesis).

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