I'm aware of Popper, but I can't say that I give much credence to his work. I could probably write a book on my problems of his theory of falsifiability, not to mention his political philosophy, which I not only find naïve but extremely undesirable in goal and outcome.

Saying that Popper is "right" (if such a thing exist) because he inspired Nobel Prize winners is like saying that Augustine of Hippo is right because he inspired many priests and popes, which is a particularly apt comparison given the Popperian treatment of science as the One True Faith. The fact that people who have been given medals, or who may be respected by their peers like or dislike him isn't an argument for or against him, appeals to authority and popularity are fallacious. However, if you'd like to go down that road, Popper is not very popular in even the most painfully analytical of philosophy faculties, let alone outside of the English speaking world, that doesn't mean anything, but you seem to equate popularity with correctness, so there's that.

I have limited exposure to Feyerabend, but it strikes me that he never understood the scientific method, or at least his radical relativism prevented him from doing so.

For someone with limited exposure, you sure seem confident making broad statements. However, that fits, as crusaders "against relativism" and "for objectivity" seem to make a habit of passing off opinions as fact and pretending that constructs are just natural occurrences instead of constructs.




Anyway, I didn't ask about Popper. I'm not interested in his work, nor did I ask for your opinion of Feyerabend, "radical relativism" nor did I request evangelism to the One True Faith of science. I asked for recommendations of books similar to Against Method, and thinkers similar to Feyerabend, if you'd like to say anything other than that I think you should make your own thread.

I'm not trying to limit the applicability of what I was saying to just what we call art. So what then?Communication? Language?

I'd say that near-everything is subjective, certainly including language. Think of a word, any word, it's a collection of sounds that we use symbolic to refer to something in some way. The letters h o r s e aren't inherently representative of what Linnaeus called Equus ferrus caballus, we ascribe that meaning to those letters and sounds on a completely subjective basis.

To oversimplify, art is the artist communicating something. She's trying to tell me something whether or not she can articulate it. You and I can disagree on exactly what she is trying to say, but if we cannot at least get somewhere in the same ballpark, then language has failed as a medium of communication. That could be the artist's fault, yours, mine, or the language's.

@T Clark

Sure, we're all trying to say something, but it doesn't matter what the author is trying to say, what matters is what you or I or anyone else perceive him to have said. If someone comes up to you and punches you while intending to show you how much he respects you — it doesn't matter that he intended to show respect, it matters what you interpreted his gesture to mean. If you interpret the punch in the face as a gesture of hatred for you, when he intended to show you how much he respected you, would you say that you "misinterpreted" his gesture on the basis of his intentions, or would you hold that your interpretation was valid for you based not on what he intended to say — which is irrelevant — but what he said?

Obviously, you and I disagree on this. On the other hand, I have no problem with the idea that different people get different things out of a specific piece of art than other people.

Why only art? Isn't it sort of arbitrary to "this is subjective, but not this"?

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This is sort of a non-response, but I came to my conclusion on the basis of your seeming lack of understanding of simple things like Barthes' Death of the Author.

@T Clark


Those are the things that are important to you, and that's fine. That's not the issue, the issue is why is the interpretation of the author more authoritative than my interpretation, or anyone else's? If the intent of the author is right to you, then that is right for you, but why should it be considered authoritative for anyone else?


There is a difference between "the way that I've interpreted this text is such that the intent of the author is important to me, and right for me" and "this is what the author meant to say, so if you interpret it differently then you're wrong." I don't think that there is a wrong or a right in this context, every interpretation is equally right for the person making that interpretation and everyone who agrees with him, and equally wrong for everyone who doesn't, just like food can be equally and simultaneously delicious and disgusting, depending on whose tasting it — if I cook you dinner and say that it tastes Italian, and you take a bite and say that it tastes Chinese, are you wrong because I cooked it and my interpretation of how it tastes is authoritative, or are we both equally right and wrong, it tastes Italian to me and Chinese to you, I'm right for me and you're right for you.



I'm getting the sense, from your comments, that you're not very familiar with what I'm talking about, and that you've never studied philosophy or literary theory at a high level at a university or on your own time. I say that because your reasoning is very much of the fallacious "folksy appeals to common sense" type, as if you've no versing in any sort of higher material. If that's so, there's nothing wrong with that, but the discussion will not be fruitful because I'm necessarily going to be talking past you.

@TheMadFool

Your proposition that "we are evil" seems to rest on the idea that the aforementioned rules are some sort of definitive example of good, and that violating those rules, means violating goodness, and being evil.


I see no indication that that there is such thing as definitive, objective or real good, or evil, nothing is good or evil, right or wrong, just we there is no such thing as objectively fragrant or pungent smells, or definitively delicious and disgusting food. It's a matter of taste, essentially, nothing is good or evil in the same way water is H2O, what is good is whatever you or I feel is good, and what is evil is whatever you or I feel is evil, and if you think something that I think is good is evil or vice versa, we're both right for us and wrong for one another.


Even if there was some sort of objective good and evil, what makes you so sure that what constitutes "real good" aligns perfectly with the values of the contemporary post-Christian West? Isn't that bit convenient? Don't you think it a bit presumptuous to say that your culture's constructs of good and evil are not just what's right for your culturally, but universally right? What makes your cultural standards of good and evil more true than the idea of good and evil in Pashtun culture, or that of 17th century France, or pre-Christian Rus, or Aztec?

@T Clark

Your point seems to rest on the idea that the intention of the author is the authoritative meaning, and to that I ask — why? Why is what Lao Tzu intended to say any more correct than what I perceive it to say? It seems incredibly arbitrary to say that the author's feelings about the work are the only correct feelings to have about the work?


Too much authority is given to authors, there is this idea that they own the words and truly know what they mean, but that isn't true. They don't own the words, theirs just happens to be the hand that puts the words to paper. What they think the words mean, means no more than what you or I or anyone else think that they do.

@Mitchell

Well, the way that you worded it, made it seem like a statement about Nietzsche the man. However, even though Nietzsche the man was anti-religious and an atheist, that doesn't preclude a reading of Nietzschean philosophy that isn't incompatible with a belief in God or Gods. His intent was to speak against religion, but I've always interpreted his work as more anti-Christian than anti-religion, that's not wrong or right, it's just what it says to me.


I don't think that there as such a thing as a misinterpretation of a philosophy, a work of literature, a song, a painting etc. For there to be misinterpretations, interpretations that are wrong, there has to be an authoritatively correct interpretation, and usually that is considered synonymous with the interpretation that the author has of his work. This is wrong, it arbitrarily makes the author's feelings about a work the "right" feelings to have, when his feelings are no more right or wrong than anyone else reading the text. It's fallacious to ascribe an objective meaning to works of this nature anyway, but it's even more fallacious to say that not only is there an objective meaning, it's whatever the author says it is.


On Heidegger, it doesn't whether he was or wasn't a National Socialist, it doesn't matter if he ate live children for breakfast. What matters is the work, which should be viewed in isolation from him and everything that he did or was. The work is a separate entity that is only connected to him on the basis that the words were put on the page by a pen in his hand. Everything about him, from who and what he was, to what he intended to say, is in my view wholly irrelevant to the words on the page, which say whatever you or I or anyone else perceive and interpret them to be saying.


We shouldn't be slaves to the meanings ascribed to things by others, we should decide and create our own meanings for things, based on what we feel and perceive.

@Mitchell

That's not an interpretation of his work, that's a statement about the man himself. It seems to me that you're having difficulty separating a person them-self, from a person's work — frankly, that's baffling to me, you refer to yourself as a "retired" philosophy professor in your bio but you seem unfamiliar with some very basic concepts. Curious.

I'm not talking about the man, I'm separating the man from the work when talking about the work. For instance, I've heard people say things like "this is what Nietzsche really meant when he said that 'God is Dead'" and what I'm saying is that it doesn't really matter what he intended to say, what he meant when he wrote 'God is Dead,' what matters is how you and I interpret 'God is Dead.' The meaning that he derived from those words is just that, the meaning that he derived, it is not the authoritative meaning, or of any more value than the meaning derived by others.

@Mitchell


I don't think that it's a matter of the author being mistaken or not, the meaning that he derives from a text is certainly right for him, and the meaning that I derive from a text is certainly right for me. My problem is considering his interpretation, the meaning that he derives from the text, as the authoritatively correct interpretation, as the "real" meaning, to the the exclusion of all other intepretations and meanings derived.

You seem to be putting this in binary terms, someone is authoritatively right and someone is authoritatively wrong. Whereas I'm saying that nobody is authoritatively right or wrong, his interpretation might be right to and for him, but that doesn't mean that my interpretation, or your interpretation is not just as right to and for me.