Deus ex machina

In Response to Krystal (4/4/2012)

Krystal brings up the always-good subject of interpretations. More specifically, she questions the idea that certain interpretations are “better” than others. In Krystal’s words, as “long as there is nothing in an interpretation that is blatantly at odds with the text then it should be considered a valid interpretation at the very least”. I would agree that all interpretations of this sort should be considered “valid”, but, in my view, these “valid” interpretations could then be ranked in order of the “best” interpretations. How would they be ranked? I suppose they would by determining the amount of questions that each interpretation is able to answer.

Novel Contributions? /In Response to Avery

In Avery’s recent post, the primary topic is literature’s ability to contribute to other forms of human understanding. I find this topic to be particularly important because, in recent class discussions, we have continued to address this contentious issue. Many believe that literature can only support ideas that have come up previously in scientific disciplines. Even further, some theorists maintain that, although literature may be able to first discover a certain idea, since it would have been discovered anyways by science, literatures discovery is surpassed by science.

What I find interesting about this view is the fact that I previously identified with it. Before are class discussion I thought is was veracious to claim that any idea that literature could possibly discover already existed in the great world; therefore, literature was not able to bring new ideas to light, but only support previously existing ideas. Now looking at it, it seems trivial to state that any idea discovered in literature previously existed in the so-called “great world”. Of course it did; but, this does not discount the fact that literature can discover these issues antecedently to scientific disciplines. Accepted prima facie, it seems certainly possible that literature has discovered certain ideas prior to science. I truly doubt that science is first with every discovery if it constantly discover new insights and fixes old ones.

Q: What role does marshalling evidence play in the process of “learning through” in literature?

“knowledge of the kind associated with ‘living through’ is not amenable to evidential support” (343)

The process of “learning through” seems to be integral to the cognitive value of literature. This seems to be the essential aspect involved in the meaning we derive from works of literature. Accordingly, I did not immediately understand what Lamarque and Olsen meant when they implied that marshalling evidence was required for knowledge to be obtained, but the process of “learning through” did not involve marshalling evidence.

It seems that when we “learn through” a piece of literature, we are using our own experiences as the marshalling evidence. We ultimately decide to accept a conclusion implied in a piece of literature based of our comparison of this fictitious series of events to our own experiences. Consequently, I am not entirely sure as to why Lamarque and Olsen insist that knowledge associated with “living through” is not open to evidential support. I would simply respond by stating that we use our own experiences as evidential support.