FALLACIES, INTENTIONAL OR OTHERWISE
I don't actually believe in God, or gods, or Goddess, or the God-womyn, or Bob, whatever. I think the capacity of the human species to fool itself is without limit, and people can believe the unlikeliest stuff with the tiniest provocation. This includes me! There's nothing self-honoring in this; I went around the first twenty-five years of my life with the back of my head unzipped. I would believe just about anything, and I know I still have that capacity. I know what you're saying..."If you have the back of your head unzipped, then God can get in, my child." True. But so can the wind, and bugs. Icky. That was the problem with the Heaven's Gate people. Too many bugs in their heads. And I think that "nothing is true and everything is permitted" sounds cool, but if you take it to its logical extreme it's bloody dangerous for you and for those around you.
I am a skeptic. That doesn't mean I say there is no God, only that I don't believe in one. I can't prove there isn't one, of course. You can't prove a negative.
"I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." This is something we hear a lot. Not a unique point of view at all, in this day and age. Try googling "spiritual not religious" and see how much stuff comes up. I liked one Christian who said, "Well, I'm religious and spiritual. So there."
I do believe in something I think of as the human family, which is a bit foolish as nobody else seems to really believe in it, or wars and stuff wouldn't happen, and I've never exactly codified that belief, and I can't even claim to have tried to really live by it. But just having something like a community, a group of people who get along with each other, and produce children, and look out for them, and look out for other people's children if it seems necessary, because you wouldn't want someone turning a blind eye if your child was standing over an open manhole, means that "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" need severe modification. They give one just a bit too much leeway for the comfort of others, and if you're going to live around others, you do need to consider their comfort. Otherwise they're liable to say "Him bad man! Make crops wilt!" and pour orange juice in your bed while you're asleep.
Digression here. I have this occasional argument with my friend Marcus and his friend John about this thing called the intentional fallacy, which you won't have heard of -- lucky you -- unless you've made some study of philosophy or literary theory. The basic idea is that when one is discussing, critiquing, judging a work of literature, the author's intentions are irrelevant. The author's opinion is irrelevant, and need not be consulted. In fact, if you go with people like Foucault and Derrida, the author has actually ceased to exist. (Hang on a minute, there.)
Marcus is an atheist and a skeptic, like myself, and John is a Christian. They don't use exactly the same arguments, but Marcus's I have a hard time disagreeing with because they do make sense to me -- a painting is just pigment on canvas, a novel is just black marks on white paper, the work of art is an object occupying space and since we seldom have any real notion of how it got to be there, we can enjoy/interpret it in whatever way appeals to us, and draw from it whatever we draw from it, and who cares what the artist intended? What do we know about him? what does he know about us? "Who says we have to read it a certain way?" Marcus asks. "The God of Stories?" Snicker snicker. I agree with each individual point both make, and disagree very strongly with what the argument adds up to.
I'm a writer myself, if a slow, dogged, uncommunicative one, and I suppose my problem with the intentional fallacy is just an egotistical one: it's basically telling me that I, the author, don't matter, and my informed, reasoned response to that is "Write something better yourself then, you academical goofball." Childishly enough. But a writer cannot proceed -- or at least, I can't -- on the assumption that his intentions don't matter and his opinions are worthless. That attitude may be a lot of help to a reader. It's no help at all to a writer.
But then, I sometimes have other problems with the arguments, though intellectually I find them sound. One thing is that when I write something, and then look it over, and think about where all the stuff in it comes from -- and I have pretty good connectivity, in my brain, if that's the right word -- I can say "That was a direct rip-off from so-and-so, and this was influenced by that guy over there, and this is from the architecture of a school I attended when I was 18," and so on and so forth. But now and then things turn up in my own texts and I have no clue where they came from. Sometimes -- even more disconcertingly -- I'm sure I know where something came from, and I go back and check on it just because it's niggling at me, and it turns out to have maybe some points in common, but it's different, very different, from what I thought. Can you explain this? I sure as hell can't. Possibly the God of Stories is cutting capers.
A more reasonable explanation, of course, is that I'm drawing on something I know but have forgotten, or that my brain has been changing the thing unconsciously while I was thinking of something else -- in other words, that it's my own brain doing this. But since I understand very little about how my brain works, and since it seems nobody understands anything about how brains work generally that doesn't get torn down by some other savant within thirty years or so, it strikes me that "The God of Stories" is as good an explanation, for me at least, as "It's a brain thing, man." Even though I know that the God of Stories is an absurdity. (Gowan feels a giant finger tapping on his shoulder and hears a deep gravelly voice: "An absurdity, am I? Punk?...")
I can't say anything to Marcus or John that helps my position, it seems. In fact, all I can say does it positive harm. "Well, if you don't KNOW where the things in YOUR OWN STORIES come from, why should we listen to your EXPLANATIONS of said stories? What are we PAYING you for if you don't KNOW?" To which my answer is: you aren't paying me, you bastards.
Although I don't go for mysticism or spirituality on a personal level, I did when I was younger. I remember how to feel, intuit, in those terms, if not how to think (I was never much of a thinker, mystical, rational, or otherwise), and since what I like to write is primarily fantastical in nature, it's useful for me to be able to feel, intuit, that way.
All that's lovely. But my main reason for being against the intentional fallacy is that it's telling me that I, the author, have a tiny, tiny member. I resent this.
Now, let's all read a story:
Africa
ETHIOPIAN GIRL REPORTEDLY GUARDED BY LIONS
Authorities: Cats chased off men trying to force her to marry
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:25 p.m. ET June 21, 2005
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.
The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa.
She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.
"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Wondimu said.
"If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage," he said.
'Some kind of miracle'
Tilahun Kassa, a local government official who corroborated Wondimu's version of the events, said one of the men had wanted to marry the girl against her wishes.
"Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people," Wondimu said.
Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said the girl may have survived because she was crying from the trauma of her attack.
"A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they didn't eat her," Williams said.
Ethiopia's lions, famous for their large black manes, are the country's national symbol and adorn statues and the local currency. Despite a recent crackdown, hunters kill the animals for their skins, which can fetch $1,000. Williams estimates that only 1,000 Ethiopian lions remain in the wild.
The girl, the youngest of four siblings, was "shocked and terrified" after her abduction and had to be treated for the cuts from her beatings, Wondimu said.
He said police had caught four of the abductors and three were still at large.
Kidnapping young girls has long been part of the marriage custom in Ethiopia. The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where most of the country's 71 million people live.
(c) 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
***
Now, a number of things automatically occur to me upon having read something like that. The first is, "Miracle, my bum." Then comes "This is most likely a hoax." Another is, "So, all those other girls who have been abducted and raped and no lions came to save them, what about them? God, or Goddess, was on a coffee-break? Or SHe just didn't give a Philadelphia?" These are automatic thoughts, upon having read it. But first, I read the story with absorption. I was a true believer, while I was reading the story. I loved the story, I loved the girl, I loved the lions. I felt tenderness and fascination for all of them. It seemed as if there was a momentary break in the grey horror of existence, and a light shone through.
And suddenly, the author's intentions become very important. I ran into this story on the internet, an object in cyberspace. How did it come to be there? Did this really happen, in Ethiopia, more or less as written? Was a true event exaggerated or distorted somehow? Or was it made up from the whole cloth by somebody, either for some reason of his own, or for sheer mischief?
I think many skeptics carry believers around inside them, and vice versa. I think the skeptic and the believer need each other. Can't prove it, of course. Can't prove much.
I am a skeptic. That doesn't mean I say there is no God, only that I don't believe in one. I can't prove there isn't one, of course. You can't prove a negative.
"I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." This is something we hear a lot. Not a unique point of view at all, in this day and age. Try googling "spiritual not religious" and see how much stuff comes up. I liked one Christian who said, "Well, I'm religious and spiritual. So there."
I do believe in something I think of as the human family, which is a bit foolish as nobody else seems to really believe in it, or wars and stuff wouldn't happen, and I've never exactly codified that belief, and I can't even claim to have tried to really live by it. But just having something like a community, a group of people who get along with each other, and produce children, and look out for them, and look out for other people's children if it seems necessary, because you wouldn't want someone turning a blind eye if your child was standing over an open manhole, means that "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" need severe modification. They give one just a bit too much leeway for the comfort of others, and if you're going to live around others, you do need to consider their comfort. Otherwise they're liable to say "Him bad man! Make crops wilt!" and pour orange juice in your bed while you're asleep.
Digression here. I have this occasional argument with my friend Marcus and his friend John about this thing called the intentional fallacy, which you won't have heard of -- lucky you -- unless you've made some study of philosophy or literary theory. The basic idea is that when one is discussing, critiquing, judging a work of literature, the author's intentions are irrelevant. The author's opinion is irrelevant, and need not be consulted. In fact, if you go with people like Foucault and Derrida, the author has actually ceased to exist. (Hang on a minute, there.)
Marcus is an atheist and a skeptic, like myself, and John is a Christian. They don't use exactly the same arguments, but Marcus's I have a hard time disagreeing with because they do make sense to me -- a painting is just pigment on canvas, a novel is just black marks on white paper, the work of art is an object occupying space and since we seldom have any real notion of how it got to be there, we can enjoy/interpret it in whatever way appeals to us, and draw from it whatever we draw from it, and who cares what the artist intended? What do we know about him? what does he know about us? "Who says we have to read it a certain way?" Marcus asks. "The God of Stories?" Snicker snicker. I agree with each individual point both make, and disagree very strongly with what the argument adds up to.
I'm a writer myself, if a slow, dogged, uncommunicative one, and I suppose my problem with the intentional fallacy is just an egotistical one: it's basically telling me that I, the author, don't matter, and my informed, reasoned response to that is "Write something better yourself then, you academical goofball." Childishly enough. But a writer cannot proceed -- or at least, I can't -- on the assumption that his intentions don't matter and his opinions are worthless. That attitude may be a lot of help to a reader. It's no help at all to a writer.
But then, I sometimes have other problems with the arguments, though intellectually I find them sound. One thing is that when I write something, and then look it over, and think about where all the stuff in it comes from -- and I have pretty good connectivity, in my brain, if that's the right word -- I can say "That was a direct rip-off from so-and-so, and this was influenced by that guy over there, and this is from the architecture of a school I attended when I was 18," and so on and so forth. But now and then things turn up in my own texts and I have no clue where they came from. Sometimes -- even more disconcertingly -- I'm sure I know where something came from, and I go back and check on it just because it's niggling at me, and it turns out to have maybe some points in common, but it's different, very different, from what I thought. Can you explain this? I sure as hell can't. Possibly the God of Stories is cutting capers.
A more reasonable explanation, of course, is that I'm drawing on something I know but have forgotten, or that my brain has been changing the thing unconsciously while I was thinking of something else -- in other words, that it's my own brain doing this. But since I understand very little about how my brain works, and since it seems nobody understands anything about how brains work generally that doesn't get torn down by some other savant within thirty years or so, it strikes me that "The God of Stories" is as good an explanation, for me at least, as "It's a brain thing, man." Even though I know that the God of Stories is an absurdity. (Gowan feels a giant finger tapping on his shoulder and hears a deep gravelly voice: "An absurdity, am I? Punk?...")
I can't say anything to Marcus or John that helps my position, it seems. In fact, all I can say does it positive harm. "Well, if you don't KNOW where the things in YOUR OWN STORIES come from, why should we listen to your EXPLANATIONS of said stories? What are we PAYING you for if you don't KNOW?" To which my answer is: you aren't paying me, you bastards.
Although I don't go for mysticism or spirituality on a personal level, I did when I was younger. I remember how to feel, intuit, in those terms, if not how to think (I was never much of a thinker, mystical, rational, or otherwise), and since what I like to write is primarily fantastical in nature, it's useful for me to be able to feel, intuit, that way.
All that's lovely. But my main reason for being against the intentional fallacy is that it's telling me that I, the author, have a tiny, tiny member. I resent this.
Now, let's all read a story:
Africa
ETHIOPIAN GIRL REPORTEDLY GUARDED BY LIONS
Authorities: Cats chased off men trying to force her to marry
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:25 p.m. ET June 21, 2005
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.
The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa.
She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.
"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Wondimu said.
"If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage," he said.
'Some kind of miracle'
Tilahun Kassa, a local government official who corroborated Wondimu's version of the events, said one of the men had wanted to marry the girl against her wishes.
"Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people," Wondimu said.
Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said the girl may have survived because she was crying from the trauma of her attack.
"A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they didn't eat her," Williams said.
Ethiopia's lions, famous for their large black manes, are the country's national symbol and adorn statues and the local currency. Despite a recent crackdown, hunters kill the animals for their skins, which can fetch $1,000. Williams estimates that only 1,000 Ethiopian lions remain in the wild.
The girl, the youngest of four siblings, was "shocked and terrified" after her abduction and had to be treated for the cuts from her beatings, Wondimu said.
He said police had caught four of the abductors and three were still at large.
Kidnapping young girls has long been part of the marriage custom in Ethiopia. The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where most of the country's 71 million people live.
(c) 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
***
Now, a number of things automatically occur to me upon having read something like that. The first is, "Miracle, my bum." Then comes "This is most likely a hoax." Another is, "So, all those other girls who have been abducted and raped and no lions came to save them, what about them? God, or Goddess, was on a coffee-break? Or SHe just didn't give a Philadelphia?" These are automatic thoughts, upon having read it. But first, I read the story with absorption. I was a true believer, while I was reading the story. I loved the story, I loved the girl, I loved the lions. I felt tenderness and fascination for all of them. It seemed as if there was a momentary break in the grey horror of existence, and a light shone through.
And suddenly, the author's intentions become very important. I ran into this story on the internet, an object in cyberspace. How did it come to be there? Did this really happen, in Ethiopia, more or less as written? Was a true event exaggerated or distorted somehow? Or was it made up from the whole cloth by somebody, either for some reason of his own, or for sheer mischief?
I think many skeptics carry believers around inside them, and vice versa. I think the skeptic and the believer need each other. Can't prove it, of course. Can't prove much.
posted by Gowan Campbell | 1:13 PM
|
0 comments
