Quick note, longer reply to come: yes, that distinguished literature is in
fact what I mean to reject. My original post did not omit a negative. On
the other hand, my "really there" has more phenomenology than ontology
about it -- the world is sufficiently complex to support multivalent and
even mutually incompatible renderings into human experience and language.
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen
jamzen@world.std.com
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: : : : : : : Ideas are cheap; : : \ : : : :
: : : : : Good ideas don't cost any more than lousy ones. : : : : :
: : : It's distinguishing them that's expensive. : : :
On 15 May 1995 WYNN@AppleLink.Apple.COM wrote:
> Replying to LO1203 --
>
> Jim,
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --As I see it, most of the distinctions one finds in academic-fancy writing
> styles (including philosophy) are probably really there.--
>
> There is a large and distinguished literature in phenomenology and social
> science based in the premise that there are no distinctions that are
> "really there". They are ALL constructed and exist by agreement. Stuff may
> be there but distinctions of it are not. Oliver Sachs,the neurologist had
> a (one of several) very nice article in the New Yorker about people blind
> from birth getting operations for sight. Most of them could not cope with
> the dizzying array of chaotic images for which they lacked visual
> distinctions. They did not even have the perception of perspective. It
> would seem that too is learned. Some went back to being "blind"; they were
> comfortable processing information sequentially in the mode of
> distinctions they had practiced all their lives.
>
> FYI.
>
> Eleanor Wynn
> Transparent Practices, Inc.
> Portland OR
> wynn@applelink.apple.com
> -----
> Host's Note: Re-reading Jim's sentence, I'm wondering if he accidently
> omitted a "not".
> -----