>As a starting axiom I would say, "Things which are intellectually
>meaningless can nevertheless have value." -- Robert Pirsig
Words in a Italian are meaningless to me but they do have value for Marco.
>Words can be phoney as well as real. --John Beasley
What do you mean phoney? I would say meaningful and meaningless.
When I first read a poem I read it as if they are meaningless--a feable
attempt to make my own language sound as musical as when I hear Marco's. But
I don't read it as phoney...not sure how to do read any word as phoney.
>Words and ideas are not totally fluid, and not totally whatever we
>choose them to mean (the postmodern mistake). --John Beasley
Actually there is an abitrary aspect of words. Is there any reason why the
sounds /c/ /u/ /p/ refer the meaning of cup?
When a kid is learning a new word he does not arbitrarily map "cup" to any
object. Quine posed the problem that when a kid hears a rabbit called
something he has to INFER whether the name refers to the color of the rabbit,
the hopping motion, it's tail, the carrot the rabbit is eating etc.
A kid doesn't "choose" what a word means he refers to the speaker's intention.
I really don't see how this is concluded as a postmodern mistake.
The meaning of the word is not abitratry but the word itself has an abitrary
aspect---again "words in a foreign language"
So actually what i learned form postmodernism still holds up --there is a
subjective and objective aspect to words.
---------
JOHN:
I said "While the
quality that I experience is uniquely mine, the developmental path is not
unique, but can be shared with others, and the surprise at the end is that
the "uniquely mine" is a fantasy, too."
What I meant is that a mystic would say that the word 'mine' points to a
fantasy of a self that is me. The me that experiences quality is not
essentially real. It is a fantasy, a construction of the mind, driven by
fear to label and judge and thus to seek to control the world. But the
mystic says that when I get down to what can actually be experienced, the
world and I are 'not two', and so to discriminate between 'mine' and 'yours'
and the world is just an error.
ERIN: I see how the separateness may be an error but still not clear how this
shows uniqueness is an error
JB: So I must admit this is talking of something that seems right, but I
really
don't know it, or perhaps, I am in the process of regaining a deeper way of
knowing that will one day convince me that this is so, even if I cannot use
words to convince someone of it who does not have experience similar to
mine. Very messy. Fortunately, it does not make any great difference to what
I had to say about postmodernism, I think, though I could be wrong there
too.
ERIN: I think it is relevant. Back to the original statement in question
"While the
quality that I experience is uniquely mine, the developmental path is not
unique, but can be shared with others, and the surprise at the end is that
the "uniquely mine" is a fantasy, too."
Let's say there was an infinite string of "uniqueness" and I was experiencing
a small part of it. The surprise at the end is that my uniqueness is not
separate from the rest not that it is not unique.
For me postmodernism has said this:
"While the
quality that I experience is uniquely mine, the developmental path is not
unique, but can be shared with others,"
The postmodern mistake that I don't quite see yet is about this
"and the surprise at the end is that
the "uniquely mine" is a fantasy, too."
Your conclusion sounds like we are all just replicants and this may be valid
but it also may be a "nonpostmdodern mistake".
The only thing left to do is live in uncertainty (another thing I learned from
my postmodernist teacher which I haven't heard a sufficient critique against
yet)
How does the end of bladerunner go again...
can "replicants" dream of unicorns? (something like that)
Erin
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