John Page

Deeply thoughtful, Phaedrus. Isn't there a mechanism at play here that somewhat complicates the picture.

1. Our belief systems do change over time.
2. The belief systems are modified by experiences which include those of an intellectual nature such as reading (and indeed writing).
3. As the author writes, what he is writing changes him/her as it provokes thought and contemplation, for example of the dilemmas the characters are in and how those dilemmas can deeply affect and change you to the core.
4. As the reader reads, they can be persuaded (consciously or unconsciously) by that experience that they will not, say, repeat the mistakes of the author's characters.

For example, through moral relativism one can start to analyze one's belief system and "get outside it". Do you agree that it is such a realization that facilitates deconstruction in the first place?

Cheers, John

Hugo Holbling

To be fair to jp, it should be noted that he didn't post that remark - i did, quoting Olsen's work on Stanley Fish.

Hugo Holbling

Since i don't have the book with me right now, i think i'll watch you two for a little while. :notworthy

Hmm... an interesting choice of word.

I guess self-mockery appeals to me too, hence my refusal to take myself seriously here. As for irony, i'm sure there are other tools around, but a healthy dollop can't hurt.

Quiet desperation, maybe?

I recall Mencken having something to say about this, along the lines of "if you're fool enough to throw your ideas around then you can expect others to be fool enough to take them every which way but how you meant them". Sage advice indeed.

Luiseach

lol Not fair!


Well, it's the best way to be...healthy, I think!

lol...I like that. I think one of the quieter American presidents said something similar. Woodrow Wilson? (I'm not sure if it was him)...anyway, when asked why he didn't say much, he replied 'Silence is often misinterpreted, but never misquoted'....

Silence doesn't make for a good convo, though!

Amos

I love it! Very beautiful and well put. I would leave Jung out of it because I do not know him well enough to use him. The waters are always the unconscious (my womanity) and the earth is always the conscious mind (my humanity). The BVM is represents our womanity and that is why she always appears as a local girl but in the image of mortal perfection (sometimes she has battle scars or torn clothes because she must drag the lesser serpent out of the Tree of Knowledge and into the Tree of Life) .

The text was certainly romanticized and this is normal. It is proper and good and is just the right thing to do because our Stephan hero is writing the story of his life wherein he found his destiny almost despite himself. Almost despite himself here means that, although Stephen was a man of intergrity, he was not always a 'nice' person by any standard. The point made here is that his integrity (his womanity or anima)becomes the driving force in his life to create the conflict in his mind out of which this new Joyce was to be born (the cross of eternal salvation is for sinners only). His integrity came from his deeply engrained religion that was reinforced by the persistence and prayers of his mother against which his father and friends influenced Joyce to become the 'upright bamboo stilt hero' (sinner or humanity) he pretended to be.

It's been fifteen years since I read this novel but I actually liked the first pages where his absolute carefree childhood was emphasized. Before this I had read Araby and knew that this tranquil period was the beginning of his rising action that would lead to, and end in, the crisis moment of his life.

The girl in midstream was the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) who always 'appears' as a local girl but in the perfection of mortal beauty (mirror, mirror on the wall). Yes, she was the anima against which he exhuasted his animas and while at rest near the tranquility of the celestial sea she appeared to him with his animas trampled underfoot (his animas was his serpentine nature that was fashioned as a sign upon the flesh by the seaweed). In case you are not familiar with our statue known as "Mary of Grace," it is the one where Mary holds the serpent under her feet until Crucifixion at which time the serpent is raised on the other side of the anima (where reason is placed subservient to intuition). This triumphant pose of Mary is clearly depicted in Massacio's "The Crucifixion."

The first pages of Joyces Portrait resemble these lines from "A River Merchant's Wife."
1 While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
2 I played about the front gate, pulling flowers

Here we see harmony between the conscious and subconscious awareness (between anima and animas) and 'she' was playing near the conscious mind (frontal lobe) where she was pulling flowers (collecting data).

Yes, language is a closed system but the archetypes are not and I often try to bring in material from outside our closed system to make this known. To me it adds weight to my argument but some people think that it is confusing.

Accordingly, I can now state that the "River Merchant's Wife" was our Mary who wrote this poem while anticipating the return of the animas who had departed from her as if on bamboo stilts and is now about to come home to her on rubber crutches while dragging his feet under the oppression of human vanity. She, therefore, will meet him at the narrows of Cho-fu-sa and sup with him there as if for the first time (just like in Cana), and so begin the second go-around in life but now effectively with her in charge of his destiny (she's the queen of purgatory in James de Mille's "A Strange Manuscript").

Amos

Hello Hugo, I don't mind at all and will continue. Your comments are always welcome and I can usually give an answer. I can express myself well enough to make myself clear but the concept is not always easy to make clear and I hope that you will at least try to understand. I will never ask you to agree with me or to believe me at will and am I am just happy if you can follow me.

Amos

Reminds me of something like "words, words, the wole world is tormented by words but insofar as we are free from words do we really understand words."

I forgot who write this. Does anyone know?

phaedrus

Hugo

I'm afraid i don't follow you here, jp. How does your Kuhnian exposition discount what Olsen said? His comments and Kuhn's work don't seem mutually exclusive to me. Until you clear up my confusion, i'm left thinking you have, shall we say, an optimistic reading of intellectual history

Kuhnian exposition???? Nope...just my thoughts....which part of Don’t agree, granted most people in the world don’t like their views challenged, but making that a sweeping statement doesn’t make sense. An open-minded homo sapien, doesn’t do the above. An individual “interprets” evidence or information based on his/her current “web-of-beliefs” (rorty uses this as well). This web-of-belief is not an island but is connected to the individual webs-of-beliefs of other souls of the society. What this means is, all evidence which tends to challenge the current belief structure is viewed with obvious discomfort, but if this piece of “evidence” is deemed important by most of the individuals in the society, it alters the webs-of-beliefs of all individuals and also the “shared understanding” of the society. Given what we achieved (sic!) as a race through constant learning and re-learning, Olsen’s remarks seem to be out-of-touch with reality. this is confusing? All that rambling to be boiled down to a single line...belief systems are not static.

The latter; i thought this was kinda obvious...

We justify a belief, then, by turning to the structure of beliefs from which the belief derives its intelligibility and within which it is coherent, and we then seek to express that intelligibility and coherence rhetorically, establishing a case for the belief.


Umm if it is for "self", then what exactly is happening here....How can we justify a belief by turning to the belief system which we already like and subscribe? Doesnt this mean one will not accept any belief which is "alien" to the structure and doesnt make sense? And once we have justfied the belief, what is the need for establishing a case for the belief. has it not already happened?

Take a look at that Derrida passage; is that how you read it?

Doesnt matter since you say its for the internal audience. Anyhows i dont when we talk we are trying to "sell" always, we are also trying to "communicate" our thoughts/feelings and sharing as well in an attempt to learn

What rungs? Fish was arguing for a different model of the belief structure.

Apologies i misread.

Is that the basis of your complaint? Do you want any criticism to offer a replacement for the critiqued?

If one says the current system is wrong or not right, instead of just complaining or criticizing they need to offer an alternative right?

Resistance to Fish's claim, that a belief about belief doesn't have "general rather than merely local consequences".


I very much doubt that the irony of this particular aspect of his work has escaped Fish. Still, i'm struggling to see the parellel with Foucault - perhaps you can enlighten me?

Umm...maybe this will help Focu 'n' Fish

I think not, my friend. I've been over this in the relativism thread so i suggest you take a look there. I got jumped on then and i'm not about to call in the clowns again; if you want to discuss this, pick apart my comments in that thread and we'll start anew here. Okay?

Yup already enough diversion here. Which part of that thread is your argument in this regard? Saw the thread a while back...too much noise

Still selling Gadamer, eh? How about expanding on your comments, so as we can see what you're offering before we buy?

Not selling, just offering so that someone can nitpick on his approach which i havent been able too inspite of the habermas debate. And with regard to expanding on what i said...that madison article which i had talked about does the job pretty good

john page

As hugo pointed out that was olsen and i have offered my problems with olsen's position.

Hugo Holbling

Ah! Okay - what makes Olsen (and hence Fish) reject this, as it isn't obvious from the quotes i posted and from the work i've read? Of course, i haven't read everything by Fish... see later for a similar question.

For the believer, but not necessarily anyone else. I think that's what he's getting at regarding the use of rhetoric; i.e. how do you convince someone if they don't share your belief structure? This is a far more interesting question, i think, and one on which i'd like your opinion. I tried to discuss it here but had few takers.

To what end such communication?

I see, but disagree.

Hmm... maybe, but not yet. There are no references in that article, so i can't see where he's getting his ideas about the position Fish takes with regard to social structuralism. Like i said - above - i don't have all of his works so i'd need to know where to look for this (ostensibly damning) criticism.

That's a polite way of putting it... Back there i was trying (for the sake of argument) to defend relativism from the charge of being self-refuting; to help me out, i posted a few quotes from Habermas, Derrida, Rorty, et al, that i thought would help explain why Putnam's statement could be seen as a recognition of a limitation. You could look through for them but it's really a case of looking at a tough mountain when the weather's coming in and saying "can't get up there, fella". Anyways, the quotes were along the lines of this one, from the first page (i can't be bothered to look for others):

On that same first page, our mutual friend Kantian provided an argument which may be of interest to you.

Fair enough. So do you want me to try to critique him?

Hugo Holbling

As an aside, and for anyone still interested in the relationship between author and reader, here is the director Michael Haneke giving his opinion. The medium is different, but the message is still relevant, i think.