From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 13:28:21 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 11:50 PM 8/31/02 -0700, Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> >> > from now on my statements
> >> > about the sun are to be *taken* as referring to that
> >> > ball of gas, and *not* any possibly weird thing going
> >> > on in people's brains.
>
> >> Obviously it's neither, except in shorthand.
>
> >Whot, yo mean, like, common spoken English? ;) What language did you
> >*think* he was using? ;)
>
> >For that matter, what language are YOU using? From whose frame of
> >reference is it supposed to be the case that you could "know" that the
> >Earth is spherical and "know" that the Earth is flat? The middle
> >ages? No... The modern era? No... So where then? Which culture is
> >it that licenses this sort of talk? Or are you just making it up as
> >you go along...? :)
>
> Oh my god, a terrible thing has happened, my Socratic irony detector just
> broke down. Evil smoke came out of it, and now it's just lying there on the
> bench smelling awful. I have o way to tell whether Dan is being cleverly
> amusing at my expense, or agreeing with me in an enactment of Corbinian *We
> Common Folks Know How It Is* realism. Waaaahhh.
LOL. :)
So, my point, in clearer language, is this: certain claims that
postmodernism likes to make aren't true within our culture, or any other
culture that ever existed.
Now, within the context of postmodernism, you have some freedom to create
your own radical interpretation/language/culture/whatever to consider
given problems. But at the end of the day, you have to consider its value
from within your own culture, and your own situation. More importantly,
you *can't* just use postmodernism to achieve the old objectivist goal of
jumping out out your skin, of perceiving all language models from a God's
eye view.
Yet that's exactly what your language attempts to do: it attempts to
discuss various cultures and languages (especially in the way they use
words like "know" and "true") impartially; even your own culture is
supposed to be treated impartially.
This is a mistake, I say. Once you're done examining what it would be
like to be that kind of postmodernist, you have to consider whether you
Can Get There From Here, whether it's true according to our own modern
cultural truth-evaluators, and whether *we* can accept it. I think you'll
find that the answer is no.
Even if you *could* change our culture to be more like the postmodernist
one, you'd find it fraught with the most painful contradictions (whereas
the contradictions inherent in *our* culture are comfortable and well
accepted: the-devil-you-know, the good old dog, the nostalgic landscape).
In particular, the trick claim you'll have to get us to swallow is this:
"all cultures are to be treated impartially, from the perspective of
this, our current culture, *which is better than all the rest, because it
can see all the others impartially*." It's a cultural chauvinism in favor
of rejecting all chauvinism.
Now, this isn't *deadly* to the frame of reference as such (lord knows
we've got plenty of contradictions of our own lurking in our cultural
mores), but I do argue that it'll represent an unclimable mountain for all
of us, even the bright ones who are or could be academics. Those of us
happily farming in the "ordinary realist" valley below will see little
benefit in packing up and migrating to your new plateau, especially
considering the difficult and possibly dangerous ascent of "impartial
chauvinism."
So, regardless of whether you're trying to change our culture or whether
you're showing that postmodernism is acceptable to our culture, you have
to speak to us on our own terms, in our own language. That especially
means that you're *not* licensed to say things like: "Had I lived a
thousand years ago, I would have `known' in exactly the same sense that
the Sun is a small bright flaming ball which orbits about our flat world."
You wouldn't have 'known' that ... at least, not in our modern sense,
which *is* different from the medieval sense.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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