Strange how different are thinkers on morality and literature from post-modern thinkers

Here'a real dialogue with a smart guy who holds to a post-modern life stance

He has earlier declared that all books and morals are subjective and relative.

In a long detailed response, I explain that on the contrary, the study of literature is to find out what the author intended in his work.
Myself, American literature and world literature teacher:

We teachers studied literary criticism for years including the various schools. Our goal is similar to the biological sciences—to find out what is real and accurate.

However in the humanities and social sciences, it's more difficult to get at the accurate meaning than in the hard sciences.

Even in the latter, consider that the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould came to very different conclusions than some other famous biologists based upon the evidence.
For instance, his conclusion based on the facts is that deep time in biology is based in Chance!

He stated that IF reality could come again, the human species probably wouldn't even show up. We humans are here by cosmic “luck.”

In contrast evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and neuroscientist Sam Harris hold that existence, particularly for all humans and our actions would be exactly the same because everything is determined.
Allegedly, according to Harris, even IF the cosmos came again, all of us humans would do exactly the same because we are “puppets” of the cosmos.

Though, as I already said, it is more difficult to find what is true in literature and criminal justice, etc., the reason to study these fields is to find out what is objectively meant.

Subjectivity is to be avoided.

Most people find there is an objective qualitative difference between Shakespeare's plays and popular literature and the media.

For example, some of Ernest Hemingway's short stories are amazingly powerful and complex, far better than most stories, TV shows, and movies. Hemingway scholars are agreed that he hated Christianity, that his famous short story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" is objectively brilliant and is a scathing attack against religion.

Post-Modernist:
Although I didn't agree with you on a fair number of things, I had held you in higher esteem than to think you would brazenly try to pass yourself off as knowledgeable about something which you can't fail to know that you know nothing about.
You didn't even want to educate yourself before responding, so you could have plausibly pretended to have known something about it. Instead, you insulted my intelligence by trying to pass off horseshit.

Daniel Wilcox
Hmm...3 universities, 5 school districts, post-graduate work, many years of teaching literature, attending post-grad conferences, etc. all taught us "horseshit."

I'll keep the horseshit;-)

Post-Modernist
Keep digging. My estimation of you just keeps going down. Either you have a problem with honesty, or senile dementia is setting it.

Either way, I'll avoid you in the future, as you're not worthy to debate.

Daniel Wilcox
Understanding the meanings of literature and basic reading comprehension tests don't register "like" or "dislike" but the ability to comprehend the texts.

Students study Shakespeare's plays because they are far better than studying inferior popular writing.

Finding what an author means when he writes is to discover the accurate view. Subjectivity needs to be avoided.

Post-Modernist
Just do me one favor, and answer the question...

Daniel Wilcox
I did answer your question and gave you two specific examples--the plays of Shakespeare and Hemingway's famous short story, "A Clean-Well-Lighted Place."

We teachers taught those for many years.

Please give me the name of a scholar who disagrees and I will read his point of view.

I also pointed out that reading comprehension tests aren't subjective.

We are seeking the accurate meanings.

Post-Modernist
The accurate meaning? According to who?
Are you trying to say that you think the point of literary criticism is to try to figure out what meaning the author was intending the reader to understand?<br>
Have I got that right? I want to give you more than ample rope with which to hang yourself.

Daniel Wilcox
In a short story, one has the author's conscious intent--the themes.

One also has the author's unconscious intent. One can see this very much in Hemingway's writing as I pointed out.

One can also check with the actual statements by the authors themselves of what they meant.

Then we need to remember the perspectives of us readers, our varying cultures versus the society and culture in which the story was created.

This is where most schools of literary interpretation come in.

Then there is also the factor, that sometimes a story (by conscious intent or not) is intentionally ambiguous. Or the story has, intriguingly, contradictory themes.

This is the basis for the outstanding work of Great Books Program which came out of the University of Chicago.

Like in any field whether philosophy or evolutionary biology or literature, there will often be disagreements about what the actual meaning is.

But, except for post-modernists, most scholars do think there is real meaning in the facts, essays, songs,and stories of humans.

Otherwise, why bother?!

Likes and dislikes don't need to be taught.

Remember my original example from the hard sciences--of how Gould's conclusions are very different from Harris and Coyne’s.

Yet all 3 do think that evolution has actual identifiable characteristics; they just haven't reached the point of figuring out which of them is correct, or if there are other possible explanations.


Ditto for literature, justice, and social sciences.
Subjectivity needs to be avoided.


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Reflection on Pessimistic book of Ecclesiastes, (so contrary to witnesses of early Quakers)

Ecclesiastes 1
New International Version

"Everything Is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

Other skeptical thinkers for 2,500 human years have claimed similar hopelessness.
OR
have suggested illusionary images of Death...

Such as that each of us billions of humans when we die are like
billions of waves that roll in on the Pacific Ocean tide...

BUT a series of waves of the tide of the ocean are TOTALY Non-sentient, NOT Aware,
Don't have deep life experiences and stories, Don't have a keen sense of MORAL REALISM, OUGHT, the IDEAL.

A wave or dead leaf are only physical objects.
Lifeless.

Billions of the waves and leaves can come and go--and except brief impersonal life in the case of a leaf, NOTHING LIVES NOW

ALL is LOST!!!!!!!

HOWEVER in the case of all humans
(and maybe a few other cases of higher animals?
ALL MEANINGFULLNESS
of humans is
LOST:-(

Our bodies mean zilch!

BUT to LOSE OUGHT, AWARENESS,
Our Stories and all that we have learned in 78+ years,
HOW Despairing, How Absurd.
......

So, that's why billions of humans, including Quakers hope for AFTER LIFE.

Otherwise, we as a species are in reality, a ZERO, Nilhism. :-((

All the facts of Life say, No existence after Our Brain ceases.

Just reflecting on all of this, seems so impossible to imagine or understand!
How can
Each of us PERSONS
be ONLY " mere breath, mere vapor" as the Teacher claims.

Most of my consciousness, every moment, thinks I won't become ZERO!

But I was with my dad when he died. A ccouple of hours later, the attendents came into our living room, rolled
his stark lifeless body onto a sheet, picked up the roll of bones and skin and hauled it out.

BUT Billions going back at least a million years experienced this same anguish, same absurd irrational
and No longer EXIST--),
were only transient vapor
like the Teacher of the Old Testamen/Jewwish Bible claimS.

My last gasp for MEANING and HOPE is that G_D--U.R. is far more AWARE
than any intelligent physical species in the vast Cosmos.
!
And that G_D
Is EVERLASTING INTELLIGENT PROCESS who will carry billions
of brief intelligent moral individual lives in its memory!

I know this is a 'hail, mary'-Hope (very unlikely based on all known science :-(


IF the TEACHER
is correct, then I agree with the philosopher Albert Camus that REALITY IS
ABSURD!!

IF Reality and Life came about by CHANCE or DETERMINISM

Camus stated that he Rebels against this Reality
and
EMBRACE OUGHT (that which is NOT subjective, NOT relative like most atheists and anti-human nihilists Claim.


In the HOPE of the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

seaquaker@gmail.com
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/
Writing Websites: http://psalmsyawpshowls.com
http://seaquaker.com

The Importance of Defining the Term "G-d" When Discussing Philosophy, Worldviews, and Lifestances

The famous philosopher Martin Heidegger seems to show insight for how atheists and theists ought to dialogue: "Who is God? That is perhaps beyond the possibilities of our asking. But what is God? That we should ask."

Too often atheists assume a particular image, usually an anthropomorphic one, as the given for the definition of the term, "God."

And, too often, theists assume (except for fundamentalists and creedalists) that everyone listening to them will not associate their use of the "God" word with mythological versions.

That's one reason I prefer Webster-Merriam Collegiate Dictionary's first definition of the word, God: "the supreme or ultimate reality:"

Then with that start, theists and atheists can more clearly articulate what they do and do not think is true about reality, whether atheism generic is more true, atheism-materialism, particular organized religion's various anthropomorphic versions of "God," various forms of deism, process thought of Whitehead, Asian philosophical views, etc.

Is "ultimate reality" Chance or Determinism or the Good or Intelligence or Impersonal Will or Illusion of Matter or Laws of Physics or Consciousness or Principle or Trinity or Multiple Realities or Infinite Mind or Emergent from Matter or Process or Mystery or Unknown, and so forth?

There is something to be said for Einstein's emphasis that the human species in trying to ferret out the truth about reality is like a small child in a vast almost infinite library who has just started to explore.



In the LIGHT,

Dan Wilcox

The ‘Darlossness’ of Dawkins, Harris, and Coyne

One Last Caustic, Satiric Negation of the False Worldviews of this Ending Year--

The ‘Darlossness’ of Dawkins, Harris, and Coyne


It-less blasts energy to matter
less ness

Cosmic lockstep determinism

Or the lucky infinite accident upon accident

To accident—what a fluke!

Every non-act of ours caught like a termite in amber

To be repeateddddd a trillion times

If Time

Runs again and again and again...zarathustraing



Perpetually motioning life from non-life then careening astronomically

Speaking,

Through geologic time


Rock-wearing ever so slower

Than the heart-rending billion cries.

In its juggernaut,

This holo(gram)caustic negation--

Without purpose, no meaning--

This Selfish gene

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreplicating

Through
billions of generations;

Yes,
Descent
to
the
Lower
Realms of the ‘outer limits’

Through modification.

Reality’s indifferent tyrant--

Natural selection 'chooses' with its

Unconscious, unSmitherly

Hand

Of pitiless indifference

The 1% of species to survive;

Waste muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Survival through sorrow

Not the Tree of Life--

But that random bush

of EXCESS.


Life is one eternal screammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Of total unreason

No One hears;

Huge mirages of hope delude

Brief “i”s

Harris claims to be illusions;

Breathe and think for naught


Worthless flesh for every temporal now;

But a few bones fossilize

While the cosmos verses and careens


continuing to blast out a c r o s s darkness

ever expanding,



Enlarging this petty matter which doesn’t matter

Until squished in the

Quantum’s flux--

Deeply
Vacuum
Cleaned.


Daniel Wilcox
First pub. in The Clockwise Cat


Lessen the darkness with more Light
in the New Year,

Daniel Wilcox