Re: text and links some might like to see

Jim said:
<< Oh, I'm not trying to say philosophy and science are completely
disconnected, but that science as a discipline tends to have narrow
philosophical preferences. >>

Does philosophy as a discipline tend to have narrow scientific preferences?

As it seems to me, Kant's view (at least as I understand it) is pretty
dead-on. Science can deal only and exclusively with appearances, but in the
world of appearances, science is king. Beyond that, a scientist can say
nothing as a scientist (science goes no further), but his commitment to
science doesn't hinder him, either. He need only don the hat of a
metaphysician, which science does not forbid.

And:
<< By "materialism" I mean that the sciences tend to look for physical
causes for physical effects, and by "empiricism" I meant that they tend to
value observation as the source of data. >>

Even allowing those applications of the words (which, I believe, are not the
usual ones), all this means is that metaphysical questions cannot be
answered on scientific (in the modern sense of science as natural
philosophy) grounds. Of course this is true. Likewise, you can't write a
symphony using only philosophy, but the philosopher's commitments do not
prevent him from playing the piano (or from writing a symphony, or from
critiquing one).

You're under no compulsion to agree with me, but I do believe that there is
a valid distinction between true things and false things, and that both
science and philosophy find true things (or continually improve their
approximations of them, at least). Since it is necessary from these
postulates that there can be no mutually exclusive truths, I must believe
that science and philosophy are mutually compatible, and in fact quite
complementary. They simply pertain to different (but usually similar)
things.

Regarding Hegel, I really don't want to get into another side-conversation
on him. Avoiding that, I'll just say that a great many philosophers have
made similar claims, especially a few hundred years ago with the beginning
of the modern era. Of course they tend not to follow the same
traditionally-conceived scientific method (involving experimentation and
falsification) because they cannot, because their subject matter does not
allow it. But they have consistently used the same essential standards of
true of false, used the same or infinitely similar logic, and have generally
followed the same lines of thought and reason, applied to different objects.

And:
<< Oh, no, I'd disagree here. Science requires a stable vocabulary for it
to do its job. Some of the humanities thrive on instability here. Some. >>

I don't follow this. Since we've both been using the example of
gravitation, I'll continue: science says that the force of gravity (or
heaviness, you can test this on your own weight with sensitive scales)
varies as the inverse square of distance. Right now your heaviness is in a
ratio with one divided by your distance from the center of the earth squared
(that is, the square of your distance from the center of the earth as the
bottom of a fraction, with one at the top). If you get farther from the
center of the earth, you will get lighter maintaining that same ratio. So
long as we're talking about pure mathematical concepts and their application
to consistent physical appearances, I don't think this depends on a
consistent vocabulary.

Perhaps there's a better example. Newton proves in the span of a few pages
that given certain conditions (which might or might not ever occur in
reality, but given those conditions), orbiting planets will in equal times
describe equal areas around their center of force. This is to say that if
you draw a line from the earth to the sun, and you keep that line connecting
them while the earth orbits the sun (no matter how circular or elliptical
the orbit is), the line will carve out a figure (a section of the orbit) in
the next month that has an equal area to the figure it carves out in any
other month.

Now, what's amazing about this is that Newton PROVES it with mathematical
certainty. Kepler already knew it -- it's one of Kepler's laws, in fact.
But he just looked over huge piles of data searching for patterns and after
a long time found that this seemed always to be so. If a new planet were
discovered, he'd have to go through the same data-collecting and examining
procedure to see if it were true for it too. But poor old Kepler gets left
in the dust by Newton, who demonstrates the mathematical necessity of the
equal areas in equal times law following from a few givens about the body
tending toward a center of force. If a new planet is discovered orbiting
the sun, you don't need to collect any more data to know that it follows the
same law than you need to collect merely to determine that is in fact
orbiting the sun. Any new planet orbiting the sun, any new moon or
communications satellite orbitting the earth, any moon or man-made probe
orbitting jupiter, will necessarily follow this law. In Kant's terms,
Newton takes something that Kepler learned empirically and turns it into a
priori synthetic knowledge. It's as sure as anything.

Now, you might say that this depends on a stable vocabulary of math, but I'm
not sure that it does (or I'm not sure that the assertion would mean
anything). Going much further with this side-issue might require another
conversation on the philosophy of math, which I really can't get into now
and I doubt you want to get into it with me anyway (and if you don't have
much experience with math, it would be utterly fruitless until we went
through some basic math together, some geometrical propositions and other
things, so that you can get a firmer idea of mathematical certainty).

To deny the necessary truth of such propositions, it seems to me, is akin to
saying that the whole is not greater than the part, or that two things that
equal the same thing do not necessarily equal each other. If you want to be
difficult you might make the assertion, but if you're human you are
absolutely incapable of believing it. These things do not depend on
experience or measurement or even language -- though a consistent set of
symbols that can manipulated allows the relationships to be more efficiently
explored. Indeed, all you need to allow is a CONCEPT (it need not even
exist outside of your mind) of equal, a concept of not equal, a concept of
one, a concept of not one. This is a part of the baggage we have -- there's
good evidence that dogs have it. It is certainly made easier by language,
but its truth is not contingent upon language.

And then:
<< What you seem to be doing in these sentences is working toward a theory
of reading that grounds textual meaning in specific historical
circumstances. C.S. Lewis, for example, said Tolkein couldn't have possibly
been referring to nuclear weapons in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (some
have argued that the "one ring" was a symbol for nukes) because they didn't
exist when Tolkein was writing the trilogy. >>

I think that's just about correct, so long as I clean up any messiness in
what is meant by "meaning" and "historical circumstances." I might say, for
instance, that explicit application of nuclear weapons to Tolkien's one ring
is invalid since they didn't exist at the time of writing, but that,
nevertheless, the one ring is a great, even an unparalleled, power, which by
its nature corrupts its wielder. This is applicable to nuclear weapons
(among other things), though the ring itself should not be taken as
"meaning" nuclear weapons.

Incidentally, Tolkien wrote of hating allegory ever since he was
sophisticated enough to know of its existence. He INSISTED that his writing
was never to be taken as allegorical, though it is APPLICABLE. There's all
the difference in the world, he suggested, between allegory and
applicability, and I would suggest a modification for this discussion: a
distinction between applicability and meaning -- for something in a text
might be applicable to something without, in a strict sense, "meaning" that.
This, of course, requires more fleshing-out of "meaning," which I won't do
just now.

Then:
<< This is a good example of excluding readings based upon historical
context via, in this case, appeal to authorial intent.
I would also like to say when I first got introduced to hermeneutics as a
discipline, I was taught that authorial intent was the ground of textual
meaning, and that to get to it, you need to study the author's life, the
author's text (in its original language), and the author's culture and
history. This isn't an unreasonable methodology.
What I discovered was that I didn't really need reference to the author at
all to do this kind of criticism -- beyond setting the work in a specific
time and place, identifying a specific audience. Once I've done that, the
method works on its own. I found that appeals to authorial intent was just
a misdirected way of grounding literary texts in specific social and
cultural histories. >>

I think that's about right. But why is authorial intent a "misdirected" way
of grounding literary texts in social and cultural histories? Why not take
the author as source and governor of the text, and the specific social and
cultural history as the means to get to him (or, if impossible to get to
him, exactly, as a means to get a closer approximation to him)?

Then:
<< There's the personal element as well -- what the text meant to the
"author" personally -- but it's quite often the case we have no way of
getting any closer to the author than his/her historical circumstances.
What do we know of Shakespeare personally, for example, that would tell us
how to read MacBeth or Richard II? >>

We know that Shakespeare was an especially bright fellow from the relevant
historical circumstances who thought up the words we read. We probably
cannot get any closer to him than that. If, after acknowledging these
things, the reading is the same whether we think in terms of authorial
intent or not, and if thinking in terms of authorial intent still
acknowledges the final uncertainty, what is, in this context, the disavowal
of authorial intent except the assigning of a dirty word?

And:
<< Furthermore, why is textual meaning limited to these narrow historical
circumstances? Most people who've seen or read Shakespeare's plays have
nothing but the vaguest notions about his culture and history -- even if
they've taken college courses in Shakespeare. Does that mean they don't
"get it?" Or, more precisely, are they "not getting it at all" if they
"don't get it the way Shakespeare and his first audiences got it?" (which
probably wasn't quite homogeneous either). >>

I would expect that there are many levels of "meaning" with different
degrees of subtlety, and that anyone with good English will get a good chunk
of them quite like Shakespeare did. I'm sure the plot of Hamlet, for
instance, is not different for you and Shakespeare. As we consider meanings
of increasing subtlety, it gets dicier and there's probably no guarantee.
Why I think textual meaning should be limited to the circumstances of the
author, though, I hope to explore a bit later.

Finally, a suggestion:
<< A "text" is:
a space created between an author and a reader in which "meaning" in some
sense resides.
The shape of the space and its content are dependent upon both author and
reader -- they stand at opposite poles, like poles of a magnet or like
separate gravitational fields -- and distort the space by their interactions
with it.
This doesn't mean the space doesn't have boundaries. It does. It can't mean
just anything. But that it means slightly different things depending upon
whose at each end.
What we usually mean by "valid readings" are the shapes of this space as
created by our most intelligent, perceptive readers[. . . .] >>

I think that this is pretty good, actually. But it seems to me that "valid
readings" should be limited in a few more ways, and that, too, I hope to get
to in that later post of mine.

-robbie
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Received on Sun Mar 9 04:30:05 2003