After the Fall (was Re: religious crackpots in public life)

[kelley]

At 07:09 AM 7/10/00 +1000, you wrote:
>I'm sorry, Doug, but I just can't let assertions like this go unopposed.
>It's a quiet day, and I promise not to post for 24 hours, okay?
>
>Ken pronounces:
>
> >There is a qualitative
> >difference between original sin brought about by the fall as theologized in
> >christianity and the OBJECTIVE processes of human development and the
> >formative
> >processes of socialization and individuation.
>
>Yeah, but the difference is only in the status of the premises - one
>(munching on that apple) didn't happen, and one (humans spoke) did.  I
>reckon both parties do weird, or at least moot, things with the bricks they
>stack atop their foundations.
>
> >Self-consciousness cannot be achieved with the aquisition of language (or
> >some
> >such symbolic system that is achived through socialization). Despite our
> >pre-linguistic tendencies, which facilitate language acquisition, the brain
> >isn't hardwired for any *specific* language - otherwise we'd all be speaking
> >the same m(other) tongue. Language-use is, essentially, alienating from our
> >needful state of being (prior to language). This creates a rupture between
> >"being" and "speaking." This rupture can only be "fixed" at the expense of
> >subjectivity. In other words - subjectivity is a forced choice: you either
> >"be"
> >or you "speak." Hence, there is a gap. Language does not spring 
> naturally (so
> >to speak) - it appears only in a social community. Entrance into this
> >community
> >*creates* a kind of second nature in human beings. Exactly how does this
> >correspond to the fall? (where subjectivity is conceived of as full blown
> >and Ideal maturity - *Absolute* freedom of will outside of any and all
> >contingency and social context).
>
>I just don't think linguistic philosophy gets it!  We were using symbols
>long before we got to sentences, after all.  We've effectively always been
>a symbol-using species.  And *all* symbols were expressed, related and
>interpreted in a social context.  Always.  You keep insisting on some kind
>of state of nature that just ain't natural, Ken!  There ain't, and never
>was, a 'being' outside symbolic/social interaction (ie history).  It ain't
>even possible, fershriekingoutloud!  Whatever is noumenal in and about us
>(to use the Kantian framework you're employing), is, and always has been,
>mediated by the phenomenal.
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.

i agree with you rob.  but, i've come to understand ken as really worrying 
about "da Law".  language is just a stupid way to explain it.  anyone who 
has raised a kid can't imagine that the kid exists outside 
symbols/language.  coming to have lanuage for a child, as it was for 
humans, is a *process* and not an event that occurs in a snap.

bleh

kelley