From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 18:38:38 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
> It used to be supposed that the world is just out there, on the other
> side of a clear sensory window pane. Now we're sure that the experienced
> world is itself a construct, a somewhat unstable patchwork of mental
> models driven partly by what's outside, partly by genetically ordained
> internal grammars, partly by the local cultural templates we imbibe from
> childhood on (including the language we use to categorize and
> communicate our grasp of the world). It's naive to suppose that culture
> and language capture "just how things are", and hence to fear and hate
> anyone whose inner maps conflict with our own, but still it takes quite
> an effort to see that our worlds are built-up in accord with these
> internal maps or theories. Education helps; it's easier to reach such
> counter-intuitive insights with the aid of difficult books, and dialogue
> with other people who've been down the same path.
FWIW, I actually take issue with postmodernists who talk like this. I
believe the best way of saying this is to point out that our claims
(including claims about the world) are true because we built the language
that way; thus we got to make up when to call a sentence "true" or "false"
around the same time we made up sentences.
[This isn't to say that we could do so however we liked. Indeed, the key
insight is that we're stuck doing it THIS way, for better or worse.]
We build the words, we build the language, and we build what it is for
words in language to be "true." We only built the "world" if you think
that the "world" is just "whatever it is that makes our sentences true."
This is a clever definition, but not one anybody outside of their study
actually uses.
The "world-shaper" mental image is an intriguing and fruitful one, but its
implausibility is inherent; it leaves tarnish on postmodernism when it's
claiming [with an apparently straight face] that it has figured out the
"truth" that the real world is a mental construct. It's as if to say
"There is no messiah! Well, alright, I AM THE MESSIAH."
Worse, it makes postmodernism seem more like mysticism than like a
structural framework. I don't want somebody to have to accept the claim
that "the world is a mental construct" mysticism in order to accept
postmodernism. That's not what it's about.
For example, in ordinary language, when I say "the real world" I talk
"about" something "non-mental." Maybe we'll all change our minds about
what we mean by those terms, but I rather doubt I'll do so in my
practical day-to-day conversations, in the course of doing scientific
work, or when discussing an interesting dream I had last night.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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