I'm sure you are right when you say I'm taking "literalism" differently to you. You are talking about a whole position/movement/approach to texts, which I don't really know. But I am going to pursue my line anyway.
You say that:
"The key to literalism is not how specific texts are interpreted. That can vary from exegete to exegete and denomination to denomination. The keys are an assumption of isomorphism and a hostility toward higher criticism. Consider the hostility which many Christian fundamentalists exhbiit toward the social sciences."
I do not doubt you when you describe literalists' hostility toward higher criticism and social science, and their disinclination to look at the historical context of the texts they are interpreting, and that they feel "obliged to take many things as explicit prose."
What I do doubt is that there is for Literalists an assumption of isomorphism between words and reality. (Do any of them actually say this, 'We base our interpretive practice on an isomorphism between words and reality'?) At least, I think the savvy literalist would deny any such commitment, and I don't at present see that it could be made to stick. Perhaps though it can still be 'the key' to Literalism. You have read way more of this than me, and perhaps a careful adducing of evidence would and should convince me that in fact Literalists are assuming this. This could be what motivates their interpretive practice and so is the key to it, or some such. But were I convinced of that I would still suspect that they DON'T HAVE TO, in that that they could carry on their interpretive practice much as before without the assumption of isomorphism.
Put another way: On the one hand we have a set of interpretive practices - ignoring context etc - and on the other hand we have a doctrine or two about human language. I think the two can be separated, and in that sense the interpretive practices do not assume the doctrines.
(One reason I think this is that, as I conveyed in my last post, reading explicit prose as explicit prose is an everyday thing, and does not - or so I claim - assume isomorphism. A savvy Literalist should say. 'You read some things literally. We read this text literally (where it is not stylistically figurative). In so doing we assume no more than you do when you read things literally. If that is the isomorphism between words and reality then so be it.")
So, am I right, without the assumption of isomorphism could Literalist's carry on their interpretive practices much as before?
If I am right does that contradict your view that isomorphism is the key to literalism?
Lastly, you ask: "Yes, but what does it mean that something is literally true?" Leave aside "literally true", I think we all know what true means. We all have the concept of truth. We all use it when we think and use language. Maybe few or none of us understand it, but we all know it. Here I follow the analytical tradition in philosophy (Frege, Wittgenstein, maybe Austin) and take truth as a basic concept by which we understand thought and meaning. It is hard to say anything informative about truth, hard to understand, not because we don't really have a viable concept here, but because it is already presupposed by anything we might say. We might, for instance, say that "Words have to be understood in their historical context", and if we think that then we think it is true that words need to be understood in their historical context.
Regards
William
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