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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Re: Literary Theory as Humor: Alan Sokal's Hoax debunked
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Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 15:12:39 GMT
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Sad.  Sad.

Look, this huffing and puffing is little more than that.  It's a
non-debate.  We know the world through human perception, we understand
it in more detail through human language.  We cannot separate a piece
of language into the linguistic part and the worldly part, the
subjective and the objective; it just can't be done.  We still, of
course, very much want to say that there IS a worldly part, because our
beliefs change.  We don't think that the earth was flat when (and
because) people thought the earth was flat.  At the same time we have
no reason to imagine our own beliefs about the earth will not be later
rejected.  So, of course, we imagine the globe would go right on
existing if all humans vanished (though nobody would think of it as a
globe), just as people might have imagined that the flat earth would go
right on existing if the plague wiped out humanity.  In that sense
there is a world which our beliefs do not shape.  If you can produce an
example of a book or an article in a respectable journal that disputes
this, I will be shocked, and will join in your laughter.  But that
there is a world we can get at without human tools and know we've
gotten final answers about: you'll have to prove that - it strikes me
as bunk.

Now is there a disagreement, and if so what is it and which side am I
on?

DS


"It is interesting to note that the death penalty for individuals is
less controversial than the mere suggestion that a few corporations may
have forfeited their right to exist.  How many people does a company
have to harm before we question if it ought to exist?" Paul Hawken
