William: I do not wish to engage in "piling on", following Cheerskep's
comments. I DO join with him in feeling uncomfortable with what appear to be
hasty ad hominem arguments by any members on the list - not just you.
I would like it if you would consider my perception that you have felt
personally attacked or criticised at times, including by me. I have already
written about my own intentions. I have not perceived that ... others have
had an intention to attack you personally (while not denying your perception
of some comments). At the same time, your responses have sometimes been
directed toward the person of the poster (list member). You surely have the
intellect, experience and range of reading to enable you to participate
quite forcefully in this or other forums, philosophical or other. I, for
one, acknowledge that my reading in neuropsychology is much more shallow
than yours. I do understand that it's a disappointment that there seems to
be a dearth of members who can share in the perspective you've gained from
your reading in that area.
To conclude, with one more wish, I would ask if you would consider that most
of the comments/posts on the list are not directed at persons and that the
list probably will function better if we examine ideas and experience as
opposed to any member's naivete or nature as such.
Geoff C
From: William Conger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Envisioning by Cheerskep
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:41:21 -0700 (PDT)
Ok, I am chastised. But why are you the only one, besides a few Jesuit
teachers in high school, who says I don't have the intellect and temperment
for philosophic discussion? Gee, I was a member of Phi Sigma Tau, the
Natonal Honor Society in Philosophy in college. And those essays I've
published in peer-reviewed journals must have been incomprehensible, I
suppose. I'm astonished that you've kept a list of my remarks, none of
which was mean-spirited, and, in fairness, rather visual (a signal of good
writing). I wish you had kept the comments where I did fault your
syllogisms and also (to use a newly popular word) and questioned your
sources. By deeply insulting my intellect (unleavened by humor or wit) you
go to the default position of so many others who, mystified by art, assume
it springs from irrational, if not actually crazy, brains. In this you
imply your adherence the long abandoned Cartesian body-mind split. My own
philosophic reasoning has
been greatly influenced by new research in neurology and by widely
admired authors in art and aesthetics, both old and new. Although I've
mentioned many of those sources often, inviting others to correct my clumsy
interpretations, you have not engaged me through them, except to be
dismissive of me and them as well. Is that philosophic? Your own philosophy
is centered on linguistic issues -- as far as I can tell with my stunted
intellect -- and you have yet to discuss the "deep language structures"
that must underlie your thinking. They either contradict your notion
regarding the emptiness of words by implicating a "meaning" that glues
syntatical structures together or will reveal how minds construct meaning
independent of language.
At any rate my deep apologies to you and all listers for my irascibility
and love of sardonic wit.
WC
--- On Fri, 10/24/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Envisioning
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Friday, October 24, 2008, 9:17 PM
> William, for the last few weeks I've tried hard to avoid
> any ad hominem
> remarks, either in the form of denigrating anyone's
> faculties, or assuming and
> ascribing to them motives as though I am reading their mean
> minds. I did this
> in
> hopes of reducing those moves in others, particularly in
> you -- but I have to
> conclude you are irremediable.
>
> Months ago I asserted that I thought you have gifts
> I'll never approach in
> visual art but you don't have the intellect and
> temperament for philosophic
> discussion. I now discern that you repeatedly confirm me in
> that judgment.
>
> In your latest, you say:
>
> "people on this list don't want to be current with
> the scientific data and
> prefer their own old-fashioned errors. Read a book or
> two."
>
> "Cheerskep likes to discount my comments."
>
> "You fellows can claim to know what creativity
> is." (None of us has done
> that. We certainly have called work "creative",
> but by that we usually mean
> that
> someone is inventing unprecedented stuff -- it doesn't
> follow that we esteem
> it.)
>
> "Cheerskep says, again, my comments are
> "incomprehensible". For him, yes, I
> suoose that's the case."
>
> You don't have to suppose it; I said explicitly
> "to me". This is effectively
> identical to what you did earlier when I talked about
> 'ambiguous'. You said,
> as though educating me, the point is ambiguous to whom. You
> reprinted the
> entire posting -- except the paragraph in which I explain
> that we always have
> to
> ask "ambiguous to whom".
>
> "You can't begin with a recipe, as Cheerskep
> sought from his authors."
> Geoff has you right here. Read my passage again. I did
> nothing close to asking
> them for a recipe.
>
> "And that's the point, isn't it? You
> can't set out to do something that
> ends as creative, or as art."
>
> But that's exactly what many writers do. Read the
> entries in "Afterwords" by
> Ed Doctorow and Joan Didion. They had no idea what they
> would ultimately be
> "writing about" as they typed their first words.
> But they were determined to
> start. Doctorow ended up finding his way to one of the most
> memorable novels
> of
> that decade, "Ragtime".
>
> I'm aware that you wrote: "I don't think it is
> of any use at all to explain
> how one creates."
>
> My invitation to the writers in "Afterwords"
> said:
>
> "The book could be valuable in several different ways.
> For one thing, it
> seems an apt and allowable way to satisfy readers'
> appetites for details about
> the
> writers and the writing they admire. For another, its
> descriptions of how a
> writer has seen and solved technical problems could be
> helpful to students of
> the craft. For a third, it could be an aid to appreciating
> what a writer has
> done: It's the rare reader who has what the writer
> would feel to be a
> perfectly
> placed focus on a book, and this was the writer's
> chance to adjust the lens"
>
> A final virtue, said the letter, is that "the making
> of a novel can be a
> dramatic thing, a structured tale altogether worth
> preserving for itself.
> These
> seemed to be four of the reasons why the likes of Henry
> James's prefaces and
> the
> Paris Review interviews are such a delight to read."
>
> None of this ever pretends to tell writers "how to do
> it", but sometimes
> these stories, with their craft-tips, can tell them how to
