Frances to Cheerskep and others... Good reply. More later as time permits. Will try next message to define and compare signs with literature. The issue of them both being narrow and broad is a thorny one for me to address. Further, as you mentioned even if they are well defined and compared then so what and who cares, which must also be tackled. For now perhaps some members might explain whether "literature" to experts in the field is only or mainly art, or if it is also held to be other than art, as noted in my last post.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 12:06 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Rand Chapter 4: Basic principles of Literature France -- I very much respect your earnest and benevolent industry on our forum, but I fear the words in the disquisition below veil such murky notions behind them as to make a useful exchange impossible. For example, many times, and extending back for years, you've been asked to articulate the clearest notion of "sign" that you can manage, and you have often promised to do that, but you have never done it. As I read your last two postings, on "literature", I considered again how much readers would need you to summon up concrete examples in your postings -- not just to enhance the clarity of your ideas for the reader but for yourself. However, again, I've importuned you for years to detail how your insights apply to specific examples -- and I've never succeeded in persuading you to do it. A final thought. As I read other listers' postings, even those I don't agree with, it very seldom occurs to me to ask: Suppose one were to accept what this says -- what difference would it make? But that query arises repeatedly as I I read your ruminations. And the reason is, I think, because so much of "pragmatic realism" you elaborate reduces in the end solely to a fiat about what category-label to apply to a particular something. You write: "for the sign to have any value and worth and power as literary literature, it need only be referred and defined linguistically, but not structured logically." For openrs, my guess is it will startle you to hear that you have not made it clear if your position is that a novel or play or poem is itself "a sign". Then I can't help asking "Why?" and "What do you have in mind with the phrase, "defining a novel linguistically"? And "What difference would such a definition make -- and how -- to the "value, worth" of a novel, and, especially, to the "power". Show me how Pragmatism could increase the impact on me of THE GREAT GATSBY or "The Soul Selects Its own Society", or HAMLET. Alas, from our long history together I know that isn't going to happen. *** Frances to Chris and Cheerskep and William... Allow me to move in to the debate from my lurking position in the wings. My knowledge of "literature" in the traditional sense has always been hazy, and Rand has not clarified it adequately for me. If her position as reported here is understood correctly by me, she holds that the major literary form of artistic literature is deemed the novel or book or tome, which is a fictional tale or lore or story; in which the important attributes of such a literary work are deemed its theme and plot and sort and style. This deeming has confused me, because it is not consistent with what is known by me from pragmatism. In its semiotics and linguistics, the sign of even literary art may bear a referred object and content, and then may yield a defined subject and meaning. In its methodics and logics, the sign can further endure a structured style and topic and theme and truth and so on. The point here is that for the sign to have any value and worth and power as literary literature, it need only be referred and defined linguistically, but not structured logically. The issue of whether signs and as stories "have" a meaning carried in their form is of course in dispute mainly by realists and antirealists. The pragmatist and realist stand on this issue is that meaning is supported best by an "objective relative" stance, rather than by a "subjective relative" stance, so that the meaning of a sign is not merely a mental product of the notional or nominal mind alone. In other words, the sign objectively bears information in the form of objects, and also potentially yields contents and subjects and meanings, all in a relative situation with the signer. The signer after all is brought into a relation with the object or content and subject and meaning of the sign, and not with their own inner sense of it, because it is the sign and its stuff that is sensed, and not the sense of it that is sensed. The logic of relations or relativity is adequate realist proof of this stance. This is to say that the thought or idea meant of the sign is in the sign, and not only in the mind. The mind may be in thought and with an idea and meaning, but the thought and its idea and meaning is not in the mind, but is in the sign as say the literary writing.
