facts? interpretations?

[jbor]

    Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,-- Tops and Hoops, 
    forever a-spin....
                                        (_M&D_ 349)

----------
>From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
>

> That language is "not instinctive" is far from universally accepted
> as accurate; to the contrary, we seem to be hard-wired for language
> and culture,

Yes, this is the unstated alternative viewpoint in Bauerlein's article, that
language is instinctive, somehow miraculously-bestowed on humans at birth.
But if you compare an actual instinct, like suckling or breathing, which any
mammalian newborn is able to do immediately, to the way that language &
communication skills develop receptively and then actively through manifold
stages, and only after a long period of immersion in an environment which is
already language-specific, then it's pretty obvious that they are
qualitatively different phenomena. Who was it that was able to teach that
chimp to communicate using English language?

I'm not sure how "culture" might be instinctive: this proposition seems to
ignore the fact that human society is and always has been a culturally and
linguistically-diverse place.

> which appear to possess an evolutionary history that
> preceeds our own,

Are you saying that human language(s) and culture(s) preceded human
history???!

> which arise naturally among humans (and other
> animals) and conditioned by our physical make-up-- quite a bit of
> exciting work is underway exploring those areas; an interesting
> starting point is Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its
> Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, plus
> tons of research that's beginning to uncover the physical components
> of emotions and thought.

Nature vs nurture: there's nothing new in the debate. I agree that there
must be physiological aspects to thinking and emotion: the way that some
foods and chemicals are able to produce mind-altering states certainly
supports this thesis. But the fact that different human cultures (and
individuals) value different "emotions" and "thoughts", or prioritise them
differently, or even seem to "think" and "feel" differently, seems to me
self-evident. Pynchon:

   "My god," Saul flung up an arm. "Dehumanized? How much more human can I
 get? I worry, Meatball, I do. There are Europeans wandering around North
 Africa with their tongues torn out of their heads because their tongues
 have spoken the wrong words. Only the Europeans thought they were the right
 words."
   "Language barrier", Meatball suggested.
   Saul jumped down off the stove. "That", he said, angry, "is a good
 candidate for sick joke of the year. No, ace, it is *not* a barrier. If it
 is anything it is a kind of leakage. Tell a girl: 'I love you'. No trouble
 with two-thirds of that, it's a closed circuit. Just you and she. But that
 nasty four-letter word in the middle, *that's* the one you have to look out
 for. Ambiguity. Redundance. Irrelevance, even. Leakage. All this is noise.
 Noise screws up your signal, makes for disorganization in the circuit."
                                                        ('Entropy' 1960)

> Where does Pynchon come down on this question?  Hard to say, but
> given his devastating critique of the systems approach, and of
> religious dogma, it's difficult to imagine him applauding a system of
> thought as limited and dogmatic as social constructionism

Just chanting over and over again that a widely-held proposition is "limited
and dogmatic" doesn't actually make it so. But Pynchon certainly addresses
the alternative viewpoint in elaborate detail. Throughout _GR_ he satirises
the inter-relationship of "shit, money and the Word", Puritan "vanity"
(267.23), and that "Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the
visible" (188.14):

    It touches Slothrop's own Puritan hopes for the Word, the Word made
    printer's ink, dwelling along with antibodies and and iron-bound breath
    in a good man's blood ... (571.33)

> -- the
> world exceeds its grasp quite easily, it founders on self-cancelling
> contradiction ("no facts only interpretation" erases anything like
> certainty for the claim of fundamental truth that its defenders make
> for social constructionism), it fails to capture anything like the
> complex richness of life and thought.

There's no need to treat Nietzsche's maxim that "there are no facts, only
interpretations" as a "fundamental truth", particularly as some people, such
as Bauerlein, appear to interpret things differently. (This, to my mind, is
part of the *proof* of the proposition .... ) But if it helps at all then
think of it as a scientific hypothesis, just like the observation that the
planets orbit the sun. As with the latter, many scientists nowadays happen
to agree, to a point where it has become accepted without question in their
discourse. Just as academics in this field aren't obliged to demonstrate the
proof of planetary solar orbit every time they write a paper (however much
the atavists at the Flat Earth Society might protest), neither do linguists
or anthropologists need to demonstrate the proof that language, and thus
knowledge, are social constructs. Surely the onus is on naysayers such as
Bauerlein & co to provide substantive corroboration of an or the alternative
viewpoint/s, not just fire off broadsides against straw men?

best