GRGR (5) PK

[keith woodward]

Thracymachus Flaherty wrote:

>So he rejects ontology and allows for a plurality of ontologies. Can't be
>right?   Does the preface contain a quote on Aristotle, Plato, and Cognitive
>Science, or am confusing it with another McHale book or article I've read. I
>remember discussing it here after I read it?

Yeah, that doesn't look right to me either.  Who WROTE that?  What I think
I meant to say was that the postmodern novel leaves the notion of a
singular ontological truth (i.e., approach) behind, and presents instead
numerous simultaneous realities (present, for example, through Mexico's and
Pointsman's differing conceptions of the real (which is tied to being)).  I
don't know if we're in the same book, it's been a while and I presently at
work.  I suspect we are.

>Ontic, Epistemic, and Semantic. Being, Knowing and Meaning. The history of
>philosophy tells us that we are still moving through a semantic phase. In such
>moments the world is viewed as "text" to be read, interpreted, "played" with.
>The primacy of the text is now characteristic not only in Philosophy, but in
>literature and all other disciplines. This will pass. However, as we "play" in
>the semantic sandbox, at some point Ontic and or Epistemic will be
>challenged by
>the enthusiasm of agreed upon semantic views. The world is a text? Come
>now,  I
>ask you, is the world a text? Is the world an aggregate of texts?

Pynchon suggests at numerous points during GR that the world might be read
as a text (particularly once we enter the zone), for what it's worth.
Whether the WORLD world is a text?  Beats me, dude, I just work here.  But
I would suggest that it's not too far-fetched, it is composed of
signifiers, of a sort, to be read.  As you've read before, no doubt, there
is that approach by some (put on your hamlet hat):

"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought
through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and
seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust:
coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was
aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his
sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro
di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane,
adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a
door. Shut your eyes and see."

>Both Plato and Aristotle were pretty rough on Sophists. Sophists got a bad
>rap.
>They are very important to the history of philosophy. However, for a Sophist,
>how one views the world is how it is, a personal view. For Sophists, all
>things
>are in conflict. For a Sophist Principles are personal (freely willed). For
>Sophists reality is whatever is real to the Sophist. Now if the world is a
>text
>and all men are Sophists, Hmmmmm. Nope, to confusing for this simple
>gypsy-roofer.

The approach to the world qua text is very Sophistic, because it offers up
itself to be read and doesn't necessarily always provide a key for
interpretation.  It also seems to me that the act of writing the postmodern
text is a little Sophistic.  In GR, a number of approaches, ontologies,
etc. are presented and aren't moderated by a narrator that give final truth
value/preference to any of them (though, it seems to me, there are
certainly instances where it's not tough to intuit right from wrong here).

Keith W

(Hey, man, didn't mean to send that last response with nothing in it: itchy
trigger finger, sorry.)