[MD] Replacing SOM

[Krimel]

[dmb]
The use of quotes is disturbing and all texts are meaningless!? 

[Krimel}
Texts are codes. Meaning is the synthesis of the rational and irrational
that emerges from engagement with text. I wrote a really long post about
this just a bit ago.

[dmb]
There is an important distinction between empirical evidence and textual
evidence - but both of them form the basis of their respective domains. 

[Krimel]
Evidence is always empirical. Any text is a perceptual event.

[dmb]
Imagine a scientific paper listing rows and rows of empirical data in
support of its thesis or claim. Now imagine a critic denigrating that paper
as "datafest", one that's equivalent to "cutting up empirical data to
compose a ransom note". "All empirical data is meaningless", says this
critic. What you're saying textual evidence (quotes), Krimel, is equally
absurd. I mean, what you're saying is  downright wacko fringe stuff even to
a pretentious sophomore. 

[Krimel]
Data or facts or quotations do not contain meaning. Meaning must be derived
from them. There are no meaningful facts or meaningful texts. Meaning must
be embodied.

[dmb]
In the Humanities - language arts, history, philosophy, and the like - the
text is all you get. That's all there is. 

[Krimel]
Of course codes are all we ever get but each individual must derive meaning
from them.

[dmb]
The researcher is looking for evidence, 

[Krimel]
The researcher engages in the synthesis meaning.

[dmb]
This is a simple matter of respecting the nature of the object of inquiry.
The methods of investigation have to be appropriate to the subject matter. 

[Krimel]
Objects of inquiry do not have 'natures' to be respected or discovered. They
have meanings to be unconcealed and invented.

[dmb]
No, all you can do is use the text as evidence and that is only evidence for
the meaning of the MOQ. 

[Krimel]
You could use a text to express the meaning you have synthesized from it.
But on its own, laid out like a pile of dog turds on the carpet, texts mean
only whatever the reader expands them into. There is no reason to think any
two readers will produce the same expansion. The role of the academic is to
guide the reader into an enriched expansion of a text.

[dmb]
If you're an English professor and you want to make a case about the meaning
of Hamlet, quotes from that play are absolutely the best evidence you can
have.

[Krimel]
In the effort to exchange meaning one seeks to provide a path indication to
lead the reader along the path the writer has followed; to help the reader
expand, with a minimum of losiness, what the writer has compressed.

[dmb]
Quotes from Pirsig's books are not only the gold standard of textual
evidence, they're also specific features of the subject matter. They little
pieces of the thing we're supposedly here to discuss. A philosopher who is
disturbed by quotes from philosophers is like an empirical scientist who is
disturbed by empirical data; in both cases he's very, very confused about
what he's doing. 

[Krimel]
I am not especially disturb by the use of quotes as signs and indications to
support or discredit a particular expansion. I am disturb by the implication
of your writing that a particular quote will expand unassisted into the
particular meaning you have made of it. Or your insistence that Pirsig has
compressed precisely what you have expanded. You clearly read a different
Pirsig than I do and frankly I am sick of the Pirsig you read. Every nasty
thing I ever said about Pirsig has been directed at the Pirsig you see or
the Pirsig Platt saw. Those Pirsig's are narrow minded buffoons, careless
scholars, absolutely sure of their own self-righteousness, totally full of
shit and as such impelled to pile it on the carpet and invite others to step
in it.

Fuck 'em.