RE: virus: Re: virus-digest V2 #306

Robin Faichney (r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk)
Wed, 19 Nov 1997 20:26:48 -0000

> From: David McFadzean[SMTP:david@lucifer.com]
>
> At 06:44 AM 11/19/97 +0100, Reed Konsler wrote:
>
> >This is simply an attempt to give a word to a principle that I think
> many
> >people implictly evoke when they speak of truth that is not defined
> by
> >human desires and morals (goods) or systems of knowledge (logics).
>
> This sounds like the kind of truth that can only be conveyed
> indirectly
> through fiction. A friend (who may or may not be eavesdropping now)
> once
> told me that he thought that the greatest truths could not be
> expressed
> at all.
>
Some friends and I were discussing this just
last night, as it happens. (Of course, it's
relatively easy to discuss the fact that some
things can't be discussed!)

I'm convinced this is precisely the reason
that philosophers, art theorists and the like
are so often accused of beating around
the bush, not coming out with what they
really mean, and so forth. It's just that
what they're *really* getting at can't be
expressed directly. The talk last night
was about subtle mental phenomena, like
what happens when the "internal,
seemingly interminable monologue" finally
stops. We just don't have words for such
stuff, so have to resort to metaphor,
analogy and so on. And the closer you
get to the reality, with your metaphors, the
fewer words they usually contain. Eg,
another way of expressing that
phenomenon just mentioned is "the sound
of one hand clapping".

Robin