[lit-ideas] Re: Meaning of "agree to disagree"
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 10:27:26 +0100 (BST)
________________________________
From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
>Surely, the thought experiment in which one reads some wonderful lyric
poetry and then learns it was written by Himmler, suggests that one
needn't have a different aesthetic response upon learning that. What
would it be based on? The poems haven't changed, even if one is revolted
by the very thought of Himmler.>
Though Himmler's anti-semitism was reportedly wishy-washy compared to Eliot's
and Pound's, we might conceive that unlike Eliot [with his 'squat Jew'] Himmler
did not let his anti-semitism obtrude on his poetry - which focused
romantically on blue-eyed boys, blonde Rhine-maidens, Alpine scenery and
lederhosen. Of course, all these things can now, thanks mostly to people like
Himmler, be regarded as intrinsically anti-semitic - but assuming they are not,
then we might imagine that in Himmler's oeuvre we don't face the problem of
having the sense or authorial tone change because we know the author hated Jews
[so the sense of 'squat Jew' is changed by this knowledge]. This problem goes
beyond poetry - imagine if it turned out James Joyce was a rabid Jew-hater :
then the treatment of Bloom might have to be re-read in the light of this
knowledge.
So there is an issue as to whether the poems have or haven't changed when we
have this added W3 knowledge as to the author, and indeed other kinds of W3
knowledge that are extrinsic to the poem on the page - issues that we might
clear up using the distinction between W3.1, W3.2 and W3.3 objects.
Unfortunately the answer is rather involved and so cannot be given in full
here. Suffice it to say that on one view two identical W3.1 objects must be
identical as W3.3 objects though they need not be identical as W3.2 objects. A
striking example is given by Bob Dylan in his Chronicles when he sits and
listens to Robert Johnson with van Ronk: given that that the "object" they are
listening to is the same in W3.1 terms, it is clear that both Dylan and the fat
old phony are hearing something very different - in W3.2 terms. And perhaps
very different even in W3.3 terms: for among the questions that arise are
whether these different W3.2 appreciations of the music mean that there may be
more than one W3.3 object that may be taken as reflected in a given W3.1
recording? And does this mean that identical W3.1 objects may not always be
identical as W3.3 objects?
Imagine someone fabricated, by a whatever means but never using the original
recordings, recordings that were identical in key W1 terms - in sound - to the
original recordings. Would these sound-alike W3.1 recordings therefore be
identical in W3.3 terms or in W3.2 terms? Or would we say that (somehow) the
fabricated Blonde On Blonde, though it physically sounds the same as the
original, is just not the same as we appreciate it [i.e. in W3.2 terms], nor is
it the same in W3.3 terms (because it was produced, say, by electronic trickery
that helped the creator mimic the original, or simply because it is a product
of mimicry)? Would a copy of a painting by an Old Master that was visually
indistinguishable from the original, be the same object in either W3.2 or W3.3
terms? Would it even be the same object in W3.1 terms - for we might argue that
while it is visually indistinguishable it is still physically distinguishable
because the physical World 1 process
by which it was created was different (in a previous post, it was asked
whether Michelangelo's David would be a different "object" had he not sculpted
it by hand but produced something to the same physical specifications using
programmed robots).
What we need here is a clearer understanding of what distinguishes (or makes
distinct) one W3.1, W3.2, and W3.3 object from another, and then a clearer
understanding of how these different kinds of object inter-relate - and this is
more involved than it might look.
That is perhaps why Popper largely side-steps all this guano in his published
work (while making remarks that leave an intriguing and incomplete trail).
Popper may have reckoned that the answers to these questions depend on taking a
stance on questions that go beyond those necessary for establishing the
viability of a W123 approach - and so should be left aside in work that was
concerned with establishing the viability of that approach. The questions
remain though.
Donal
London
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