Sunday, January 13, 2008

What We Know on the One Hand: Putting IT in Play on the Other.

Represent



this is not a pipe

Dear Colleagues,

This rumination is inspired by Dean Kahl
(sometimes known in Morse as El Supremo)
after an “argument” this past Friday at breakfast
over whether it’s possible to talk evolutionism,
creationism, and intelligent design out of 3 sides
of the mouth at the same time (so to speak) with
out without scaring the children, insulting the
the science people, offending the humanists.

It would have to be set up.
Framed. Plenty of Primordial Talk going on
talking about how we’re going to talk about it
BEFORE we actually talk about it would have
to be talked about, know what I’m saying?

Couldn’t just jump into it—with all our tacit
assumptions, pre-conceived & determined
notions operating as usual: subsidiary habit-
tattoos of mind kicking in spontaneously,
intuitively: whoa-nelly visceral distant early
warning systems blocking any possibility of
fooling around with noetic sacred cows,
are you kidding me?.

Have to disconnect & suspend disciplinary
homeland security systems so as to entertain
aliens for a bit—just to see what there is to see.
Something like that. Any one can improve
my terms, I'm xenophobic and powerless to
prevent it. .

Ways of Talking about ways of talking

Juxtapositions

What follows is what Freeze-Dried Dialectic
Somewhat Looks Like When You’re Looking
as
opposed to practicing: sort of like playing
unilateral ping pong, not pretty or gainly)

(AND always a terrible reduction: rip-off of the WHOLE,
really—mis-representation of course & not with standing
its necessary & insufficient violence: always generates
collateral damage, damnit. This must be factored in.)

Unless you utter by the tongues words easy to
understand, how shall it be known what is
spoken? For you shall speak into the air.
(St. Paul)

“Wind!” is what Vickie would call it.
“That’s so much wind, Sam.”

[And there are those who can break wind backward
so artificially that you would think they sung.
St. Augustine
“on the possibility that God
might have made man have the obedience
of his lower parts.”

This is not a pipe dream

Theory of Logical Types &
Hierarchies of Logical Typing

Language is inadequate, Sam. It’s all relative,
all related; how come you keep chopping stuff up,
breaking things down, cutting & stretching to fit
your biased beliefs & bedrock values; you reduce,
over-generalize, over-state, contra-dictate and con-
fuse the issue. Can’t we hold class outside
today for crying out loud.

Immediate Gratification
not to be collapsed,
conflated or
confused
with
immediate gratification.

A class-of-students is not a member of the
class-of-students that its determination indicates,
nor is a category what it categorizes and no
NAME is what it names & stands-for: no re-
presentation is the deal it re-presents; ceci
n’est pas une pipe
and a map is not the
territory nor is its legend the map & no one
goes into Shoney’s and eats the menu—no
matter how shiny.

Though: in manners of speaking, I do this all
the time: eat menus, confuse map & territory,
conflate class & classified, member and party,
parts and wholes—out of convenience & con-
vention, tradition & discipline, necessity &
ignorance, unaware of these seemingly picky
picky academic distinctions & their significance
because for most all my practical get-R-done
purposes, they don’t make no never minding.

They may even confound my clarities my luxuries
et verisimilitudes. I find it possible to be In Error
& Ignore-ance, attention deficient and still
sustain my efficiently self-validating confirming
biases & belief systems, prejudices & convictions:
put in a thumb, pull out a plum. Consistently.

Intelligent Design
Creation
Evolution

This triad-as-a-whole indicates A Way of talking
about our Ways of Talking as well as (might could
also be) a way of talking about ways people FEEL
about Ways of Talking— how-it-is some feel these
are not just Ways of Talking, damnit and some Ways
of Talking are better ways of talking than other ways
of talking—in fact: some ways of talking are BEST-
&-Only Ways of Talking given contexts and circum-
stances, and then for some there is THE Way of
Talking (meta-hodus) about Ways of Talking about
ways of talking that must not be collapsed, conflated,
and confused with them other sub-divisional ways of
talking without generating more ignorance and more
pain.

It’s a liberal art & dialectical challenge to disconnect,
separate, and sustain distinctions between trying to
describe our Ways of Talking on the one hand AND
the ways we FEEL about the Ways of Talking we are
trying to describe.

The 2 (describe & assess) resist divorce.
It hurts.

Intelligent Design
Creation
Evolution

3 incommensurate ways of talking.

the name “Muhammad”
a teddy bear
an elementary classroom
in the Sudan

Another 3 incommensurables

Any one who would put disparate ways of thinking
and talking in the same room (so to speak) unknowingly
without differentiating their incommensurate functions &
disparate character is going to FEEL the pain of mistake
& error, damnit which is also the same pain generated
by invention & creation: our margins for error & rooms
for play: agony & agon depending on how we frame IT,
need we argue?

Of course. We must. Or what’s a college for?
For we know that the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together….


How we talk, so to speak, our manners of speaking:
subject-object token content matter of dialectic.

What we talk about? Well, what about it?
Content is galore.

xxxooo, Sam

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