6.0710 Rs: Literacy; Memory; Legend; Writing (4/124)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 6 May 1993 18:41:06 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0710. Thursday, 6 May 1993.


(1) Date: Wed, 05 May 1993 17:23:21 (12 lines)
From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz)
Subject: Re: 6.0703 R: Literacy/Memory/Legend (1/116)

(2) Date: 6 May 93 08:16:59 EDT (51 lines)
From: "David A. Hoekema" <DHOEKEMA@legacy.Calvin.EDU>
Subject: Re: 6.0703 Rabkin on memory

(3) Date: Thu 6 May 93 11:18:03-PDT (36 lines)
From: Ken Laws <LAWS@ai.sri.com>
Subject: Re: 6.0703 R: Literacy/Memory/Legend (1/116)

(4) Date: 6 May 93 08:22:49 EDT (25 lines)
From: "David A. Hoekema" <DHOEKEMA@legacy.Calvin.EDU>
Subject: Plato on writing

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 05 May 1993 17:23:21
From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz)
Subject: Re: 6.0703 R: Literacy/Memory/Legend (1/116)

I too was puzzled by the assertion that we experience 10K deaths a year due
to the use of electricity. Perhaps Kulikowsky has confused the lightbulb
and the automobile? I remember that during my highschool years it was
widely asserted that we could save more US lives by giving up our cars than
by getting out of Vietnam, the point being, or so I assumed, that people got
disproportionately excited about war casualties. A prosaic death is more
tolerable?

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------65----
Date: 6 May 93 08:16:59 EDT
From: "David A. Hoekema" <DHOEKEMA@legacy.Calvin.EDU>
Subject: Re: 6.0703 Rabkin on memory

Rabkin's musings on language and memory are provocative and helpful, and
bring to mind the adage (Mark Twain?): "It's not what he doesn't know that
worries me, it's what he knows that ain't so." I recall a fascinating story
in _The Princeton Alumni Weekly_ on the 20th anniversary of JFK's
assassination that involved soliciting people's most vivid memories of that
unforgettable event. Some of the most vivid memories turned out to be
demonstrably false, e.g., "I will never forget the sound of Walter
Cronkite's voice breaking into the program," or "I was sitting right there,
on the third step of the side entrance to my dorm," when in fact Cronkite
was on vacation that week, and the side entrance was added in 1968. (These
examples are reconstructed from memory and hence not to be trusted.)

In reply to Rabkin's resolve to take no pictures in Florence:
The decision whether to photograph has a different force if one is, or at
one time has been, a serious photographer with pretensions to the mantle of
art. Yet even if photography serves not so much to remind as to distill
otherwise concealed elements (in the rare instances where it succeeds),
there are moments when getting the camera out seems an affront to the
intensity of the image before one. Among those that come to mind are not
just situations involving other persons, whose privacy or dignity might be
invaded, but also moments of surpassing natural beauty. A certain rainbow
over Jackson Hole is affixed permanently to my memory, as is my sense that
to take out my camera would have been irreverent. But then again, there is
a quality of light in some Japanese gardens that I am sure I would not
remember without my photographs to "remind" me. I am sure the same
phenomena can be traced with regard to writing and foregoing writing.

The distinction between fiction, argument, and exposition captures concisely
some of the force of J. L. Austin's and John Searle's theory of speech acts.
But, like all helpful simplifications, it leaves much out and forces
inappropriate choices. Many novels are essentially argumentative; fiction
can serve as exposition; exposition often functions implicitly as argument;
and so on. Worse, poetry seems to have no obvious place.

At last week's 250th anniversary celebration of the American Philosophical
Society Emily Townsend Vermeule delivered a virtuosic lecture on "Jefferson
and Homer" in which she observed, _inter alia_, that the very character of
the Homeric poems is shaped by their formulation in a culture that lacked
writing but treasured oral poetry. The resort to writing, she implied,
made it impossible for the process to continue as it had. Contrast this
with the very different objection registered in the _Phaedrus_.



|| David Hoekema, Academic Dean, Calvin College (Grand Rapids MI 49546) ||
|| tel. 616 957-6442 || fax 616 957-8551 || <dhoekema@calvin.edu> ||

(3) --------------------------------------------------------------47----
Date: Thu 6 May 93 11:18:03-PDT
From: Ken Laws <LAWS@ai.sri.com>
Subject: Re: 6.0703 R: Literacy/Memory/Legend (1/116)


I just read Eric Rabkin's interesting essay. I agree about
not carrying a camera, although my reasoning is that it makes
one a spectator in one's own life. (I'm also a hypocrit, as
I do tend to take the camera. I love the technology.)

Sherlock Holmes was said to have memorized everything that might
relate to crime in London, and to have consciously ignored every
other fact. Too many scientists, myself included, approach
their fields by _collecting_ every relevant fact. Unfortunately,
too much is known for this to work. The collecting takes over
as there is no time for comprehension. (Jack Kessler's quotation
from Umbert Eco applies: there is little that one can do with
a bibliography of 10,000 titles except to hoard it or discard it.)

Suppose that one viewed himself (or herself) as the subject of
an autobiography, and remembered only those things that influenced
his life in important ways. This would be a meaningful thread,
capable of structuring life so that only a reasonable number of
facts must be retained and integrated. Each person might construct
an interesting tale of his life, to be told around a campfire
or on long winter's eves in front of the fireplace. The best
elements of these stories would merge into tribal or village
histories.

Unfortunately, writing and printing have permitted us to
save too much. No synthesis is possible unless we focus and
discard. We have lost our life stories, with our sense of
who we are replaced only by vain pride in what we own.

-- Ken Laws
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(4) --------------------------------------------------------------39----
Date: 6 May 93 08:22:49 EDT
From: "David A. Hoekema" <DHOEKEMA@legacy.Calvin.EDU>
Subject: Plato on writing

An afterword to the discussion of writing in the _Phaedrus_: to my
recollection no one has yet cited the important discussion of writing in
Plato's _Seventh Letter_ (historically much disputed but now, I think,
usually regarded as genuine). There (S. 341-344) Plato derides those who
write about philosophy, denies (1) that he has written down the "true
doctrine" that he has come to understand, and concludes (344c) that "when
anyone sees anywhere the written work of anyone, whether that of a lawgiver
in his laws or whatever it may be in some other form, the subject treated
cannot have been his most serious concern." His own teachings, he says, can
only be conveyed (341d) to "some few who are capable of discovering the
truth for themselves with a little guidance."

There has been a good deal of comment about this (don't ask me for
references, I'm not up to date in the area!) and about the irony not only of
Plato denying that writing can convey philosophical truth but also of making
this argument itself in writing. As Plato would not have said, go figure.


|| David Hoekema, Academic Dean, Calvin College (Grand Rapids MI 49546) ||
|| tel. 616 957-6442 || fax 616 957-8551 || <dhoekema@calvin.edu> ||