Andrea,
Your kind words sugar the fact that I have apparently not successfully
communicated to you the major point at issue.
ANDREA:
> I am pretty satisfied with your answer and think we have clarified most of
> what needed to be. Unfortunately, I still have the feeling you neglected my
> question as to how does "continuous" apply to "reality", as in "continuous
> reality vs discrete language". It seems you just said that it not metaphorical
> because it is apriori, or did I miss something? How come that apriori-ness
> excludes metaphorical use? I lost you on this one. A brief reply will be ok.
ELEPHANT:
A prioriness excludes something being a metaphor because a metaphor is a
description in terms of something else, while aprioriness is irreducibility.
If something is prior to all the "something else" in question it cannot be
described in terms of "something else".
Metaphor occurs when we see one thing, and then afterwards (a posteriori, if
you like) see another and use the image of the first in our minds to
understand the second. Hence metaphorical use of words is always a
posteriori, after the encountering of discrete objects, and since the
existence of disrete objects depends on our imposition of the discrete onto
the continuous, "discrete" cannot be metaphorical.
This is my main point - the one I'm making such a hash of communicating.
Get back to me if it still eludes you, and I'll check to see if that's
because I'm only pretending to understand this. I don't think so.
ANDREA:
> Minor: just to correct some assumptions you seemed to be making about my
> points:
>
>> [snip] I really don't think the faults you find in Poetry (imprecision etc)
>> are
>> exclusive to Poetry or absent in all Prose. Nor do I think that such faults
>> are
>> *necessary* fetures of poetry. [snip] Do poets only 'suggest' and never
>> 'say'?
>> No, of course not. [snip] And do philosophers only say things and never
>> suggest
>> them? Of course not Andrea (I think you are forgetting your Wittgenstein)...
>
> Am not forgetting Witt. My position (that I did not completely develop in my
> post) is in fact that *both* poets and philosophers are not precise. And I
> never said it was a "fault", nor do I believe it.
ELEPHANT:
I know that full well - but *I* think it is a fault, in so far as clarity is
concerned. And in analysis clarity is really the whole struggle. The
difference between poetry and philosophy.
> ANDREA HAD WRITTEN:
>> my point was and still is: The domain of language (taken literally) is
>> discrete. The domain of language taken metaphorically is "somehow" continuous
>> because you have your intuition work, and as we know, you have the (pre-,
>> non-linguistic) intuition of continuous reality (this should be developed
>> further).
>
> ELEPHANT WROTE:
> OK. But what advance is made by electing to call intuition "the domain of
> language"? I would have thought that one of the points of the word
> "intuition" was to exclude developed linguistic representations. I mean, that
> would be a "thought", not an "intuition".
>
ANDREA:
> I never said the domain of language is intuition, never at all. I said: the
> domain of language (taken literally) is discrete. We have intuition that is
> something which seems to be less discrete than language (I mentioned that this
> needed more development, it still does). And that we bridge the gap by using
> language in improper (not literal) ways. What you call "creative" use of
> language seems to me something that is opposed to "literal" use.
ELEPHANT:
Yes. And that's why literal truths are only those truths about the forms,
and their corrolaries.
I'm sorry about my reading you as saying that the domain of language is
intuition. It occured as part of an effort to make sense of your idea that
the domain of language is somehow continuous. This is something which, now
you remove my paraphrase, I cannot understand at all. "Domain": place where
someone or something is in power - area of operations. Language is not in
power over the continuous, nor is it's area of operations the continuous,
since nothing of the continuous is changed or moved around by language.
That being so I have failed to understand your "somehow" in "somehow
continuous".
A second attempt. Perhaps you simply mean that language is somthing that
comes about because of intuitions of Dynamic Quality. That's true. But it
doesn't (not even "somehow") make DQ language's *domain*.
Perhaps we are simply disagreeing about words. This does come down to
taste, to finding some uses of words high quality and others pointless, but
then...
"Expertness of taste is at once the result and the reward of constant
exercise of thinking. Instead of there being no disputting about tastes,
they are the one thing worth disputting about, if by 'dispute' is signified
discussion involving reflective enquiry."- John Dewey, The construction of
the Good
ANDREA:
> And I lost
> you again on your argument that words mean whatever you want them to mean - is
> that Humpty Dumpty?
ELEPHANT:
I think it is. Humpty-Dumptiness I take to be the point of the "one hand
clapping" koan. Even physics undergoes this, since there is nothing in
*experience* strictly speaking which corresponds to the discrete entities
described in physics. Those entities are what physicists agree to call them
- there is nothing else. There is Dynamic Quality - but that is not a
thing.
ANDREA:
> I also note (for his sake) that you mistakenly attributed some of my last
> paragraphs to Marco.
ELEPHANT:
I am really *very* sorry, both to you and to Marco. I do occasionally read
and write unsleeping in the dead of night - and this is the upshot. I am
sorry. I should probably try to post less.
In a few weeks I'll be unsubscribing for a while to get on top of some
reading. You may have to remind me of that intention though - as email
discussions can be addictive, and I'll naturally be wanting everyone to
agree with me in full on every tiny point before I leave.
Is that blackmail?
All good wishes,
Elephant
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