ideas stand on their own
quasimodal said, "Sheesh.. mea culp-ability. I thought the original post was Carolyn's. Now that puts a different spin on things."
quasim - I must beg to disagree.
Ideas stand independently of their authors. Whether great art causes suffering for instance, or who asks if it does, couldn't really change the answers and impact of the question.
Perhaps each of us brings wholly different metaphysical frameworks and assumptions to the question whether in asking or answering. But the question, once put to paper, and absent of reams of scholarship, floats free. An idea encounters each of us naked and begs fostering as an orphan.
quasim - I must beg to disagree.
Ideas stand independently of their authors. Whether great art causes suffering for instance, or who asks if it does, couldn't really change the answers and impact of the question.
Perhaps each of us brings wholly different metaphysical frameworks and assumptions to the question whether in asking or answering. But the question, once put to paper, and absent of reams of scholarship, floats free. An idea encounters each of us naked and begs fostering as an orphan.
5 Comments on "ideas stand on their own":
Well, no argument. Emphasis, however: ideas come in clusters - even absent "reams of scholarship". And (the significance of any one) idea is interpreted by virtue of entailment relations to other ideas.
Often, context (i.e., who we're talking with, what we seek to accomplish and just what seems to work best) is prior to choice of logic..... no?
My interpretation of (what I took to be) your thesis was: Great Suffering Art! Fight against suffering art - resist bleakness!
Whereas, my interpretation of (what turned out to be) Rohancat's thesis is (tentatively): Great Suffering Art! Art testifies there's no fighting suffering (i.e., Buddhism is correct).
quasim replied, "Often, context ... is prior to choice of logic..."
Well, of course! And yet, in many if not most cases, we will not have working knowledge of the context. I'd call having this a special case.
Why assume that something is a special case ever?
Why not instead, always foster the naked newborn? Let's treat every idea with honour and respect due to it, independently of it's ancestry. Yes?
Or do you wish rather to remain an idea bigot?
Me - an idea "bigot"? Are you suggesting I'm dogmatic? Dun'no if you are. Just for the record - I'm ain't no idea bigot.
Hell, I starts out friendly-like with every kind o' idea under the sun, moon 'n stars. I collects 'em all. Don't matter shape, colour, size or how ugly. I bring 'em all to m'house. M'house so full'a ideas it da size a' village (that's the house of understanding - the mind... ideas don't actually take up space).
I ain't no idea favoritist. I treats 'em all fair-like. Every night, I takes new ones down basement and lock 'em up. Every mornin', I goes down and cleans the mess. Any idea still breathin' stays my place free. For good. Or bad. 'Till death do us part.
I ain't no dogmatist. I ain't no idea favoritist. I don't slip no shiv to one'a them before lockin' 'em down. It's fair fightin. It's conceptual selection. Survivors be fit, fit, fit. Fit for anythin'.
Now, this notion that having working knowledge of context is a "special case". Dun'no 'bout that, Carolyn. Sure, ideas stand or fall on their own... either they're understood or they're not - and if not, they're not even there, I suppose. And dedicating one's life to an idea's not unheard of.
Still - what about communication? Conversation? Deduction? Derivation? Theories?
Understanding how ideas relate - or fail to relate - to each other is no special case. Not in any coherent sense of 'special case' I can conceive.
I mainly weighed in on this with a post that I just added. For the comment here just let me add that ideas don't stand independently, any more than their authors do. I don't want to get all anti-Platonic here, but human creations are tied to the their creators. Ideas on their own are like the Great Oz without the man behind the curtain.
Suffering doesn't create art, artists do.
I don't wan'na get all Platonic any more than you wan'na get all anti-Platonic, John. But that "ideas don't stand independently, any more than their authors do... human creations are tied to the their creators..." doesn't ring entirely true to me.
Where does the power of an idea to shape the world originate? How do we go beyond the information available (in any description of the world as it is)?
Seems to me in some ways ideas shape the understanding of all that appreciate them - regardless of other circumstance. If so, aren't ideas independent of us - and even, in a sense, of the world?
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