[MD] From each... to each

[Stephen Hannon]

[Arlo]
Experience does not tell you "wolves have sharp teeth". Experience tells you
"low quality situation". Language is a cultural attempt to codify this
experience into symbolic representations. We have words like "wolf", "sharp"
and "teeth" because these have cultural value for us.

Tell me, do you both feel man is a objective observer, simply observing reality
and describing it in a unbiased and unobstructed way? Your views on language
(or a term I prefer, linguaculture) seem to indicate this.

[Steve]
These words are valued by our culture because we value communicating
the ideas behind them to other people.  If we were all objective
observers, we wouldn't value language in the first place because we
wouldn't communicate ideas to each other.

Obviously, we can have biased and obstructed experiences.  Shouldn't
cultural bias be equated with the "mythos" as described in ZAMM? 
Isn't it this mythos that influences logos, or "how to value reality"?


On 5/7/06, Arlo J. Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
> [Arlo]
> Professional biologists exist because their work is valued by others.  Amature
> biologists exist because their work is valued by themselves.  (Dare I add that
> you also knew that?)
>
> [Arlo]
> No, if I "know it", "it" certainly isn't this. "Biologists" exist because we
> value Aristotelian classification. From the closing of Lila.
>
> "Then LaVerne asked John, "What kind of dog is that?"
>
> John thought about it and said, "That's a good dog."
>
> LaVerne looked curiously at him for a moment and then looked down at the road.
> Then the corners of her eyes crinkled and as they walked on Phaedrus noticed
> she was sort of smiling and chuckling to herself.
>
> Later, when John had left, she asked Dusenberry, "What did he mean when he said
> 'That's a good dog.' Was that just 'Indian talk'?"
>
> Dusenberry thought for a while and said he supposed it was. Phaedrus didn't have
> any answer either, but for some reason he had been as amused and puzzled as
> LaVerne was.
>
> A few months later she was killed in an airplane crash, and a few years after
> that Dusenberry was gone too and Phaedrus' own hospitalization and recovery had
> clouded over all memory of that time and he'd forgotten all about it, but now
> suddenly, out of nowhere, here it was again.
>
> For some time now he'd been thinking that if he were looking for proof that
> "substance" is a cultural heritage from Ancient Greece rather than an absolute
> reality, he should simply look at non-Greek­derived cultures. If the "reality"
> of substance was missing from those cultures that would prove he was right.
>
> Now the image of the raggedy Indian dog was back, and he realized what it meant.
>
> LaVerne had been asking the question within an Aristotelian framework. She
> wanted to know what genetic, substantive pigeonhole of canine classification
> this object walking before them could be placed in. But John Wooden Leg never
> understood the question. That's what made it so funny. He wasn't joking when he
> said, "That's a good dog." He probably thought she was worried the dog might
> bite her. The whole idea of a dog as a member of a hierarchical structure of
> intellectual categories known generically as "objects" was outside his
> traditional cultural viewpoint."
>
> Arlo
>
>
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