Re: Public Funding vs Free Inquiry

Mike Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Tue, 19 May 1998 16:08:23 -0800


Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> At 09:31 AM 5/19/98 -0700, Mark Crosby <crosby_m@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> >Still, it's possibly an Objectivist red herring to
> >characterize this as "hostility to truth", to suggest
> >that hermeneutics implies that a text really has
> >*infinite* meanings, or to equate all
> >post-structuralist thinking with the antics of some
> >jeering court jesters. It's just the public-goods
> >market in evolution.
>
> I used to think hermeneutics implied that every interpretation is a mis-
> interpretation -- or, at least, that all interpretations are equal. On this
> stance, someone who believed, to use a classic example, Belgium
> invaded Germany in World War One is just as right as someone who
> believed the opposite as well as someone who believed there was
> no war or that Belgium and Germany were both nonbelligerents.
>
> However, regardless of what I think, the Objectivist movement has
> penetrated and been penetrated by hermeneutics.

THis is rather odd. Though I imagine that you mean that as two
ideological adversaries, they have engaged in internal sabotage and
raconteurism of their adversaries organizations, that is to be expected.
That is not hard to do, I've done the same with state Democratic Party
meetings, SDS meetings, etc. It can be very informative and fun...
>
> Personally, I don't believe _all_ poststructuralist, postmodernists and
> hermeneutics is bunk, though like all movements, the members of
> these probably do too far and lack perspective. It's like the New
> Critics who saw irony in everything or Freudians who see sex all
> over the place. I'm sure there's a good deal to be learned from all
> of them.
> You can learn as much from someone by studying their lies as much as
when they tell the truth. For example, there is a whole branch of the
NSA which studies nothing but disinformation. By studying what a
government is saying that is truthful and what is lies, you can discern
much about what they wish to hide, deny, or otherwise obfuscate