Rupert and I are going to clash a bit on the issues because he seems to be tied to the notion that language/thought implications can be separated from words. I think words are always empty and have no inherent meaning but only become signs when we use them and then only in a broad context do they urge me to create some meanings. It doesn't matter if the word string is "isolated" or not because we will always flood it with associations that may or may not include its lexical dictionary "meaning". I can't avoid this and thus I can't avoid the implications that come to mind when I see supposedly disconnected words on a page. In Boris' case I was inventing implications that he seemed to reveal his point of view, his meaning, and I tried to show that those implications did not support that in a logical syllogistic fashion. Yes, I could have and probably did to some degree err in creating implications of Boris's words. But there's no escape from that creative communication either. We all create the meanings on both sides of the text, written or read. I suppose you are right in asking for sympathetic reading if I can use sympathetic as a synonym for creative. I should be willing to be creative in constructing my meaning of Boris' words. But what about logic? if we translate Boris' statements into symbolic logic form we find that contradictions abound.
wcl ----- Original Message ---- From: Rupert Dasilva <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, October 10, 2010 1:52:49 PM Subject: Re: "If it had been the purpose of human activity to bring the [arts? ] to the edge of ruin, no more efficient mechanism could have been in vented than the market economy." > I challenge you to provide the reasoning that supports your comments. > Not just the reasoning that supports your comments, but also the assumptions that give meaning to your comments, for William is right to say that without this background, they amount to very little. And I for one would actually be interested in your developed account of why the free market can be (in some qualified sense no doubt, and in virtue of some idea of the necessity of competition for progress) defended from the accusation made against it? William, it might be true to say that 'upon the simplest analysis your blunt and judgmental summations unravel as nothing but disconnected strings of words', although I personally doubt it. The very fact that your 'simplest analysis' of Boris's comment allowed you to move from it to a (supposedly connected) critique of his 'tangle of implications' shows that you yourself cannot have thought as much, implications being the kind of thing that are not normally present in disconnected strings of words. And we can all see the (albeit as presented, simplistic) aim of Boris's comment - given a sympathetic reading of it. Given the natural limitations of email based dialogue when it comes to critical discussion of any kind, perhaps we can help it along a bit, by not immediately stating problems with the 'simplest analysis' we can think of. As we should all be capable of a more 'sympathetic' analysis, that might draw out what is right, or could be right, about a view, this seems a more constructive methodology. Having said that, the onus must surely be on the original writer to give as much help as possible towards a sympathetic analysis by everyone else, and so what say you Boris? R
