Let us talk about the elephant.
30 May 2011, 12:41 pm
Awesome, you need to spend more time in a parabolic community, or looking closely at actual language use and folkloric traditions.
To say that is not what the story is assumed to mean is at the level of the only one meaning to the scriptures bit. Proverbs, parables, metaphors are NOT simplex in reference any more than words. Just as the devil can quote scripture, a single trope can be used - and used in debate and in criminal cases - with diametrically opposite intent.
It is perfectly reasonable to recognize that the blind palpator is seriously limited in their initial attempts. He WILL think his mother a good cook. Very true.
It is perfecrly reasonable to recognize that the various palpators will diss one another for stupidity. We humans do that. I have seen it all my life in academia.
But there is nothing in the parable to say that each will not keep extending his reach. There is nothing to say they CANNOT - whatever the odds - collaborate and work toward synthesis..
30 May 2011, 1:29 pm
To say that is not what the story is assumed to mean is at the level of the only one meaning to the scriptures bit. Proverbs, parables, metaphors are NOT simplex in reference any more than words. Just as the devil can quote scripture, a single trope can be used - and used in debate and in criminal cases - with diametrically opposite intent.
It is perfectly reasonable to recognize that the blind palpator is seriously limited in their initial attempts. He WILL think his mother a good cook. Very true.
It is perfecrly reasonable to recognize that the various palpators will diss one another for stupidity. We humans do that. I have seen it all my life in academia.
But there is nothing in the parable to say that each will not keep extending his reach. There is nothing to say they CANNOT - whatever the odds - collaborate and work toward synthesis..
Since most religious movements, sooner or later, not only fragment, but do so with both violence and high negative emotions, it seems the blind are more motivate to disagreement than synthesis.
30 May 2011, 1:35 pm
To say that is not what the story is assumed to mean is at the level of the only one meaning to the scriptures bit. Proverbs, parables, metaphors are NOT simplex in reference any more than words. Just as the devil can quote scripture, a single trope can be used - and used in debate and in criminal cases - with diametrically opposite intent.
It is perfectly reasonable to recognize that the blind palpator is seriously limited in their initial attempts. He WILL think his mother a good cook. Very true.
It is perfecrly reasonable to recognize that the various palpators will diss one another for stupidity. We humans do that. I have seen it all my life in academia.
But there is nothing in the parable to say that each will not keep extending his reach. There is nothing to say they CANNOT - whatever the odds - collaborate and work toward synthesis..
Philologos, I know about folkloric traditions and I also know that their hermeneutics are crap. Reaching "beyond the text", while useful, cannot be said as simply following it. Our elaborations and fan fictions cannot be said to be a proper part of JK Rowling's Harry Potter, regardless of how well put together or reasonable they are. When we are dealing with simple invocation of tropes, we are playing them straight. If we are changing the game, then on some level, an awareness needs to be recognized of what we are doing. Otherwise we lose the ability to distinguish between the intended meaning, and the meanings we later derive.
In short, I reject your fan fiction as being the same as the story.
30 May 2011, 2:36 pm
Do not go lit crit on me. I am NOT talking Aarne-Thompson or folklore hermeneutics. I am talking about the use of parables, folktales, proverbs, quotes from the classics AND so forth as dialectic tools in live interaction. As much the stock in trade of the sophisticated conversationalist [no, I do not claim to be one, but I have known them] as case law for the attorney or a joke file for the entertainer or scripture citations for the Bapotist preacher.
Take a look at what Jesus was doing with them, though the record is streamlined. I make my point citing a proverb, remember the fox who lost his tail. You object that they found the woman in the field. I say yes, but the old wine is better. You can have an entire sophisticated legal or philosophical argument without ever citing a "fact". Everyone in the village KNOWS what the facts are, the question is how to deal with the situation.
I have an advantage having a mind that runs on analogies and having worked extensively with languages whose people operate the system. We in the electronic west are handicapped my a mischmasch civilization that is no longer a culture. But those of us for whom there is a BIT of literary tradition can at least see records of the phenomenon in operation.
Taking it down to words: where I am among the riper cheeses, and even the culturally deprived can see what gives: Remember a proverb is a long word and a folktale a very long word [word for now = unit with form and meaning capable of being uttered alone[:
Nor "cat" nor "table" nor "mother" has a unique meaning. The glossing in the dictionary, while not useless, is far from adequate. It cannot TELL us what the meaning of unique in the paragraph initial senence is, it can just try to give us a clue that will help us figure it. A given English word IN THE MOUTH AND USAGE OF A SINGL:E SPEAKER - making no reference to marital status - can AND WILL have dozens of significantly different sounds and dozens or importantly different meanings.
31 May 2011, 8:57 am
I take it as a prime that there IS a reality [this is an old problem in Linguistics and probably sits swept under the carpet in every science] to explore, that our task is to find as much as we can OF that reality.
Certain others in my field and, there is some evidence, in certain others, will maintain thsat what we find is [or is for practical purposes] reality and that Schrodinger's cat has no REAL status as live or dead until we find it.
Where do you stand on the cat? You tend to talk as if you are one who says the cat is neither alive nor dead OR both alive and dead, not one who says the cat is one or the other but ewe don't yet know. But I do not read you clearly enough to be sure.
OK. I accept there is such thing called reality independent of human understanding.
As for the cat, what the thought experiment shows is that common language like dead / alive is insufficient to describe the quantum world. I just accept that we are not evolved to 'understand' the quantum world intuitively and can only rely on formal mathematical language.
31 May 2011, 10:59 am
Okay. Then we are not that many miles apart. If we each of us can accept there is a humanity-independent reality, then at least we are touching the same elephant. Clearly your processing of the data differs from mine, and we are starting from very different sites on the elephant.
But it makes a difference.
Pardon an analogy which may seem outlandish.
Years ago, there was a book I found in a library. I wanted my own copy. I found an associate who came from the country where the book was published.
I showed him the book, and asked him: "What would be the best way to go about getting a copy of this book from your country?"
He took the book, looked it over, and said, "Yes, I would be willing to work omn this kind of research with you."
THERE is a case where we are working with TOTALLY different elephants, and no progress can be made.
I never did get that cleared up.
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