From: Scott Roberts (jse885@cox.net)
Date: Sat Jul 16 2005 - 15:14:23 BST
Arlo,
> Scott:
> While I for the most part agree with this, it overlooks something, namely
> how
there could be an analogy in the first place.
Arlo said:
This is an intriguing question. I'm not sure I have the ability to answer,
but
I'll respond best I can. Analogy, as we think of them, are complicated
intellectual explanatory devices for understanding. But these are built on
less
complicated analogues, on down until we (if possible) can imagine the "just
semiotic" emerging of humankind.
Scott:
This is, of course, my real question: I don't think it is possible to
imagine semiotic emergence.
Arlo continues:
Back to gestural motions and, mostly iconic or
indexical pattern recognitions (not sure if that is the right word). These
are
the initial analogues, or sign-productions, that allowed two humans to focus
shared attention on a given object. From these analogues, more complicated
analogies emerged (over time) as more complicated semiosis was made possible
(through sign relations). Just want to make sure we are on the same page
that
present day "analogies" didn't emerge from nothingness. They were built by
more
and more iconic and idexical to finally (say) pointing behavior to draw
shared
attention (this is Tomasello's argument).
Scott:
I trust you realize that your response here is culturally conditioned. I am
trying to question that conditioning. You are trying to solve the problem of
the emergence of language within the presupposition that the mental is to be
explained in terms of the non-mental, which is to say, within the
materialist viewpoint, slightly modified with Quality. But, of course, it is
the adoption of the materialist viewpoint that created the problem in the
first place.
Arlo said:
Analogy "emerged", then, from very basic, likely pragmatic, accidents of
humans
developing shared focus on a third object.
Scott:
And how do you explain the shared focus? Or non-shared focus, for that
matter? Language presupposes consciousness. How did consciousness emerge?
(Another problem created by a materialist viewpoint.)
Scott previously:
> Also, it is given, I believe, with the assumption that if all human beings
were to vanish, there would be something left, on which analogizing has been
a-building, but which is not itself analogy (though any attempt on our part
to
think about it would be analogizing). Shades of Kant, and a lingering
remnant
of S/O thinking.
Arlo said:
I disagree. Analogizing isn't based on "stuff" (materialism), its based on
response to a valuistic "force". Quality would remain, should all humans
disappear, but everything we "call reality" would disappear too. This
reminds
me of Pirsig's "law of gravity floating in space" discussion. The "law of
gravity" is an analogy used to describe valued experience. Before the
analogy,
there was only the value/Quality of the experience. We use "fish", to use a
material example, to describe a particular set of biological value patterns,
which would exist per se in the absense of humans, but "fish" would not.
Scott:
And how did the ability to respond emerge? How is any pattern observed? It
looks to me like you are using Quality to wave away all the hard problems. I
think Pirsig does the same, which is why I see the MOQ as materialism plus
DQ as a deus ex machina.
Scott previously:
> Both problems are overcome by treating analogy (or more generally,
> semiosis)
as all there is. God (analogically speaking), as well as humanity, creates
by
speaking analogically.
Arlo said:
I know some theorists such as Lacan propose this (semiosis is all there is),
I
don't know that Pirsig mandates going this far. Since I don't have any answe
at
all, I'll need to let this one sit.
Scott:
Pirsig never addresses these problems. Moreover, within the structure of the
MOQ I see no way to address them. All one can do is wave Quality at them.
That is why I find the MOQ to be inadequate.
> Scott previously:
> While it is true that societies battle and suppress freedom in the name of
religion, the theologians (religious intellectuals) have never forgotten
that
all their talk of God is analogical. Indeed, the notion that truth about
reality could be definitely established through logic and/or science is a
modernist notion.
Arlo said:
Its too bad, then, that the vast majority of "religious" people around the
world
aren't influenced by these theologians.
Scott:
The vast majority of people around the world are not intellectuals. What I
am trying to get across is that in this sort of thing, I agree with the MOQ,
that the struggle is between the intellectual and the social, not between
the religious and the secular. Too many secularists, though, consider all
religion as non-intellectual.
Arlo said:
I don't mean to sound cynical, but I
see a global return to literalness (a re-embracing of the literal "truth")
in
religions; from christianity to muslim. Baptists represent the most
expanding
religion in America (last time I checked). Their doctrine hardly has room
for
"All this is an analogy". And nor do the Muslim fundamentalists. (I'm
picking
on two major world religions, but I think these also represent the largest
growing religions, evidence that people are turning away an understanding of
religion as analogy, and towards one as "my religion as literal truth".
Scott:
What it looks like to me is more polarization, that in religion, like U.S.
politics, the middle ground is being drowned out. This is in part because
the fundamentalists have become more media savvy, but also because the
secularists treat the problem as all or nothing. For example, they frame the
fight over teaching evolution as one between neo-Darwinism vs. Genesis,
never mind that Intelligent Design, for example, is also a theory of
evolution.
Arlo said:
If you tell me there are theologicans actively working to counter this, I'll
believe you, but I have yet to experience it myself.
Scott:
One interesting development I've recently heard about, called Emergence, is
that of some Evangelical pastors embracing postmodernism (see, e.g.,
anewkindofchristian.com). A lot of theologians have been making postmodern
noises for some time, but these have been mostly academics from liberal
backgrounds, like Don Cupitt, so it will be interesting to see what happens.
- Scott
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