January 21 2006
RESPONDENT: It tells me a lot about Actualism that you cannot tolerate or put aside what you label as deficient thinking in another and still keep a dialogue going.
RICHARD: How on earth can I keep a dialogue going when the very evidence offered in response to requests for same is dismissed out of hand as being an expounding of theory?
RESPONDENT: You could realise that I deal with facts and believe them to exist as well … with the usual proviso that contradictions render previously accepted facts into falsehood.
RICHARD: Why would I keep a dialogue going when the very evidence offered in response to requests for same is treated as being (a) evidence believed to exist … and (b) potentially false evidence?
[Snipped]
RESPONDENT: Could you be so kind as to point out where I have ‘dismissed out of hand’?
RICHARD: Look, by your own reckoning as soon as you open your mouth and say, for instance, that ‘the bus is bearing down on you’ you are unavoidably expounding theory – it may be a bus; it may be bearing down; it may be you the theoretical bus is theoretically bearing down upon – and, as a description cannot capture all the details of a situation, it is necessarily a distillation of experience … it is a theory which could be modified or disproved by further experience or a change in perspective (‘the bus’ is untrue at 10,000x magnification/ ‘the bus’ is untrue in a dark room) and the only way you can insist that it is a bus is to control the way you look at it.
Perhaps a fanciful conversation will throw some light:
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘I say, old chap, the bus is bearing down on you.
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘There you go again … expounding theory.
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘It’s a good theory, though.
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘By Jove, I do believe you might be right … and it may well be so good it approaches the status of fact.
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘It could be so close to the status of fact we might as well colloquially call it fact.
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘Only with the usual proviso, though, that a contrary observation may change that fact into falsehood at any time.
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘Of course, that goes without saying, else you make a mockery of my position and turn it into a parody.
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘I might just get out of the way of the jolly old thing, then.
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘Just a moment … it could be explained by other theories too, you know.
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘True enough. Or even by a change in perspective.
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘What do you mean by ‘change in perspective’?
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘What colour is a carrot in the ground?
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘Oh, that one … I see you’ve boned up on relativism!
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘Yes, all knowledge is relative; not absolute’. [end example].
An alternative ending might look something like this:
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘What do you mean by ‘change in perspective’?
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘I re-invented myself.
• [Person ‘A’]: ‘Oh, that one … I see you’ve boned up on subjectivism!.
• [Person ‘B’]: ‘Yes, all knowledge is merely subjective and relative; there is no objective truth’. [end example].
Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 107
