Generic Considerations

Jason Ingram · 25 Apr 2003, 02:58 · from urth-v0304.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: Jason Ingram <j_ingram at mac.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Generic Considerations
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 19:58:25 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0304-3321 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0304/3321.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I don't recognize many of my opinions in the arguments against which=20
Blattid responds.  Perhaps that's because I was unclear and hasty in my=20
earlier posts.  Rather than exacerbating the risk of seriously=20
misunderstanding each other's positions, I'll try to present a general=20
response.

We're using ambiguous terms (reality, truth, fact) to distinguish other=20
ambiguous terms (fiction, ?,?).  I like ambiguity, and don't=20
particularly want to draw clear delineations between fact and reality. =20
Blattid's distinctions make sense--but there's also some slippage. =20
Delirium, for instance, is a fact that expresses truths but is also a=20
fiction that expresses falsehoods: delirious visions are subjectively=20
real, and are factual occurrences, but their contents are fictitious=20
and non-factual.

Empirical verifiability is nice, and can challenge common sense (e.g.=20
dropping an apple and a ball of iron to see which falls faster). =20
Fetishizing empirical verifiability is, to be simplistic, bad.  So far=20
I don't think Blattid would disagree.  Fact, truth, reality . . . ok;=20
whichever is fine with me.

I'm comfortable remaining silent about that which we cannot speak.

To extend the Wittgensteinian trope, Wolfe's characters present a=20
variety of language-games that challenge defenders of a continuum of=20
objectivity.  That is, the indeterminacy of the gaps in Latro's=20
narratives aspire to different ideal of objectivity (this terminology=20
is an arbitrary imposition) than the objectivity at issue with Horn or=20
the text of 5HC.  Objectivity could mean, to use what I interpret to be=20
Blattid's terminology, "truthfulness" for some, "factualness" for=20
others, and "realness" for a third group.  Each should aspire to attain=20
their ideals of objectivity, but each will be playing a different=20
language-game with different standards.

Three specific replies:

[Blattid]:
> Since all reporters are, willy-nilly, biassed, I prefer a reporter
> who is open about her bias.

yes, I agree, and I think this is perfectly consistent with my earlier=20
viewpoint.  Apologies if I was misleading in my exposition.

[Blattid]:
> Unless one were to create a language with an infinite vocabulary,
> it's not merely a straw-dog but a chimera. I have little truck with
> positivism, but that doesn't mean we need to throw objectivity out
> the window.

The problems with positivism are even more serious than that; see the=20
above on objectivity.

[Blattid]:
> I guess the question I want to ask of this view is, what was there
> before language existed to construct "reality" from?

Flippant answer: Severian

Serious answer: Silence

Academic answer: It's hard to talk about the non-discursive.  I think=20
there are problems with Kantian approaches to reality (there is a=20
really real real out there, but we can't know anything for certain=20
about it; we can only know about the conditions of possibility of=20
knowledge and sense-perception), but don't want to get into that=20
discussion.  It's not so much *language* as *subjects* that construct=20
realities.  This doesn't mean that anything and everything is up for=20
grabs; there are always constraints.  However, absent foundationalist=20
arguments, it's hard to specify what those constraints are.  Solution:=20
Experimentation to test limits?

Cordially,

Sepia

--=20

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net