pynchon agnostic? II

[thomas kyhn rovsing hjoernet]

On 05/03/03 22:39, "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:

> on 5/3/03 7:20 AM, thomas kyhn rovsing hjoernet at tkrh at worldonline.dk
> wrote:
> 
>> How would you distinguish and define 'cantaloupe,'
>> 'rockmelon,' and 'god,' if not by means of language?
> 
> Interactively. One you eat. Even worms know that.

Worms know about god? And think of melons as 'melons'?

>> I do not claim that
>> there is no difference, that all is the same.
> 
> I'm glad to hear you admit it finally. That was all my point was.

'Admit'? 'Finally'? I never claimed there wasn't any difference. I have
nothing to admit. Sorry.

>> What I'm saying is that
>> differentiation depends on categories that do not exist prior to language.
> 
> And I'm disagreeing with you. What I'm saying is that a cantaloupe/rockmelon
> (same thing, different word) and "God" are different, and are in different
> categories, prior to, and regardless of, language.

No. I see no reason to think that categories should exist before language.
(Unless, of course, there really is some platonic world of ideas.) Neither
do I know of any reason to assume that god 'exists' before language.

> In many, if not most,
> instances, language assists in differentiating between different phenomena,
> events, experiences etc., and different types of phenomenon, event,
> experience etc.
> 
>   "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." (Saul in Pynchon's 'Entropy', 1960)
> 
> The "I" and the "you" aren't a problem here, and are differentiated prior to
> language.

'I' and 'you' are positions made available by language.


Thomas