One whiny thought; one important (On Interpretation).
1. I hate the strict restrictions on freedom (of travel, specifically) on people simply because of where they were born. I wish the world's immigration systems were more human -- effective, but still understanding. Unfortunately, they're not, and I can see very little that I personally could do about it, so I must unwillingly acquiesce to the state of things.
2. Experience of the world is fundamentally first-person. Reading, analysing, interpreting art, literature, and philosophy must also be done from a first-person perspective: you can only see in a piece of art, or understand in some kind of theory, that which you can understand; beyond that, there is nothing to be seen or found. Your understanding can be expanded, but there is only ever so much as your understanding, and your understanding is perfect as regards you. The world that you experience is the true world that exists; the art that you interpret is the true art's meaning.
Some might ask by way of response: "Would you say, then, that a man being tortured beyond the realm of your own personal experience doesn't truly exist? And so would you also say that you interpreting a message that is completely contradictory to the author's intent is that art's true meaning?"
To both these questions, I would say yes. The tortured man does not exist, insofar as if you never experience or learn of him, you never know of him, and he doesn't affect your life. Tortured men will only exist if you care to make tortured men part of your worldly experience, and that is the truth.
What of art? So the reader's interpretation trumps the author's intent? True also. You can only understand (and therefore interpret) something insofar as your personal experiences. And given that your personal experiences constitute the truth of your world, your interpretations of theories, texts, and arts -- your interpretations that align with your experience of life are right and true, if that is the honest way you perceive the art, text, or theory.
What does this mean for esteemed critics or scholars? While their interpretation may incorporate more understanding, because they have exposed themselves to more opinions, their interpretations are no more right or true than the 14 year old's who reads and interprets the same text in his own way. The important thing to remember here is that what you experience, what you perceive, is right and true, and from that everything else follows. Understanding this will make you happier by doing away with insecurities, and will also help to understand other people, by realising their experience forms their first-person view of the world, and regardless of how contradictory it is to your own (which is right and true), theirs too is right and true insofar as it must be, because that is how they interpret the world, and an interpretation cannot be wrong because that is just how you see it (passive), not how you do it (active). While this certainly sounds relativist, it is important to note that while both your interpretations are indeed right and true, one interpretation may yield better results, for example: a racist's view of the world stifles culture and overall happiness. Their view, whatever it may be, is right and true, because that is how they have interpreted their worldly experiences, but it might not necessarily be the best, and so may be worth altering by exposing them to other views.
A typical smart-aleck's response might be: "Well then, suppose somebody's interpretation is that your view that each interpretation is right and true is wrong and false, does that mean yours is wrong, owing to theirs being right? But then isn't this a paradox? Your theory seems incoherent."
To this the response is: The rightness of one interpretation never affects the rightness of another, regardless of the content. So two interpretations might contradict each other in every manner, but what makes them right isn't their relation to each other. What makes them right is how each of them were formed from each party's personal experience of the world. So in one case we have a man deeply indoctrinated into a ritualistic cult wherein every Sunday they must sacrifice any barnyard animal to ward off their grief, and in another we have a secular woman who has grown up believing in the rules of science and analytic philosophy. If the man routinely sacrifices a barnyard animal to ward off the grief and he feels as though his grief is being warded off, then his interpretation of the world is right and true, regardless of the secular lady's insistence that it is only a placebo effect. Her interpretation of his actions, incidentally, are also right and true, insofar as all her experience has shown her that that is the right way to understand the situation. She has no other way to understand it; she is boxed into her secular belief, just as the indoctrinated man is boxed into his. Should, some day, the man sacrifice a barnyard animal and find that his grief persists, and then begin to doubt his beliefs, and also conclude that they are false, his new belief would also be right and true insofar as it follows logically from his personal experiences of the world. Likewise, if for some reason the secular lady began the practise of slaughtering barnyard animals to ward off her grief and found that her grief did go away and she joined the cult, her new belief would also be right and true, insofar as they logically followed from her personal experiences.
So yes, if somebody's interpretation was that this explanation that I am outlining here is wrong, then they would be right, if it honestly followed from their experiences of the world. It would be wrong to them -- truly and rightly wrong -- but it would not affect the truth of this explanation.
"So which would be right: your theory or their interpretation?"
Both, so long as they both comply to each of our personal interpretations of the world.
"Isn't that a bit wishy-washy?"
No, it's an accurate description of truth and interpretation; this can be falsified if you deny that our perception of the world is first-person, but without lying to yourself, I cannot see how that is possible.
"But what if my interpretation is exactly that: our perception of the world isn't first-person?"
I never denied this, but to be sure: your incessant questioning shows that there are fundamental truths, and the fundamental truth is that "each person experiences the world through a first-person perspective". The theory that follows is that because experiencing the world happens to you, whatever you experience is true and right. For example, tasting a fizzy drink and disliking it happens to you, when being honest to yourself, you don't choose to dislike it, you just do: it is right and true that you dislike it. You can acquire a taste for it, perhaps, by continually exposing your tongue to the taste and changing your perception of it by degrees, but this is all in accordance with your first-person, true-and-real experience of the drink. And this applies to all. Any theory, any art, any text -- any interpretation of those things is built upon your natural, first-person response to them, which is affected by your experience (just as when you acquired a taste for the fizzy drink, your experience changed your natural, first-person response to it). And each and every experience is true insofar as you are experiencing it, and that is how you feel.
If you can deny that each person individually experiences things, then the theory that follows also collapses. But I cannot see how you can, and so it is a fundamental truth. A claim so antagonistic to reason and instinct would have to be shown clearly until one understands and feels the truth of it; but until then, it cannot be accepted, and the fundamental truth stands (and, by consequence, so does the theory that follows).
2. Experience of the world is fundamentally first-person. Reading, analysing, interpreting art, literature, and philosophy must also be done from a first-person perspective: you can only see in a piece of art, or understand in some kind of theory, that which you can understand; beyond that, there is nothing to be seen or found. Your understanding can be expanded, but there is only ever so much as your understanding, and your understanding is perfect as regards you. The world that you experience is the true world that exists; the art that you interpret is the true art's meaning.
Some might ask by way of response: "Would you say, then, that a man being tortured beyond the realm of your own personal experience doesn't truly exist? And so would you also say that you interpreting a message that is completely contradictory to the author's intent is that art's true meaning?"
To both these questions, I would say yes. The tortured man does not exist, insofar as if you never experience or learn of him, you never know of him, and he doesn't affect your life. Tortured men will only exist if you care to make tortured men part of your worldly experience, and that is the truth.
What of art? So the reader's interpretation trumps the author's intent? True also. You can only understand (and therefore interpret) something insofar as your personal experiences. And given that your personal experiences constitute the truth of your world, your interpretations of theories, texts, and arts -- your interpretations that align with your experience of life are right and true, if that is the honest way you perceive the art, text, or theory.
What does this mean for esteemed critics or scholars? While their interpretation may incorporate more understanding, because they have exposed themselves to more opinions, their interpretations are no more right or true than the 14 year old's who reads and interprets the same text in his own way. The important thing to remember here is that what you experience, what you perceive, is right and true, and from that everything else follows. Understanding this will make you happier by doing away with insecurities, and will also help to understand other people, by realising their experience forms their first-person view of the world, and regardless of how contradictory it is to your own (which is right and true), theirs too is right and true insofar as it must be, because that is how they interpret the world, and an interpretation cannot be wrong because that is just how you see it (passive), not how you do it (active). While this certainly sounds relativist, it is important to note that while both your interpretations are indeed right and true, one interpretation may yield better results, for example: a racist's view of the world stifles culture and overall happiness. Their view, whatever it may be, is right and true, because that is how they have interpreted their worldly experiences, but it might not necessarily be the best, and so may be worth altering by exposing them to other views.
A typical smart-aleck's response might be: "Well then, suppose somebody's interpretation is that your view that each interpretation is right and true is wrong and false, does that mean yours is wrong, owing to theirs being right? But then isn't this a paradox? Your theory seems incoherent."
To this the response is: The rightness of one interpretation never affects the rightness of another, regardless of the content. So two interpretations might contradict each other in every manner, but what makes them right isn't their relation to each other. What makes them right is how each of them were formed from each party's personal experience of the world. So in one case we have a man deeply indoctrinated into a ritualistic cult wherein every Sunday they must sacrifice any barnyard animal to ward off their grief, and in another we have a secular woman who has grown up believing in the rules of science and analytic philosophy. If the man routinely sacrifices a barnyard animal to ward off the grief and he feels as though his grief is being warded off, then his interpretation of the world is right and true, regardless of the secular lady's insistence that it is only a placebo effect. Her interpretation of his actions, incidentally, are also right and true, insofar as all her experience has shown her that that is the right way to understand the situation. She has no other way to understand it; she is boxed into her secular belief, just as the indoctrinated man is boxed into his. Should, some day, the man sacrifice a barnyard animal and find that his grief persists, and then begin to doubt his beliefs, and also conclude that they are false, his new belief would also be right and true insofar as it follows logically from his personal experiences of the world. Likewise, if for some reason the secular lady began the practise of slaughtering barnyard animals to ward off her grief and found that her grief did go away and she joined the cult, her new belief would also be right and true, insofar as they logically followed from her personal experiences.
So yes, if somebody's interpretation was that this explanation that I am outlining here is wrong, then they would be right, if it honestly followed from their experiences of the world. It would be wrong to them -- truly and rightly wrong -- but it would not affect the truth of this explanation.
"So which would be right: your theory or their interpretation?"
Both, so long as they both comply to each of our personal interpretations of the world.
"Isn't that a bit wishy-washy?"
No, it's an accurate description of truth and interpretation; this can be falsified if you deny that our perception of the world is first-person, but without lying to yourself, I cannot see how that is possible.
"But what if my interpretation is exactly that: our perception of the world isn't first-person?"
I never denied this, but to be sure: your incessant questioning shows that there are fundamental truths, and the fundamental truth is that "each person experiences the world through a first-person perspective". The theory that follows is that because experiencing the world happens to you, whatever you experience is true and right. For example, tasting a fizzy drink and disliking it happens to you, when being honest to yourself, you don't choose to dislike it, you just do: it is right and true that you dislike it. You can acquire a taste for it, perhaps, by continually exposing your tongue to the taste and changing your perception of it by degrees, but this is all in accordance with your first-person, true-and-real experience of the drink. And this applies to all. Any theory, any art, any text -- any interpretation of those things is built upon your natural, first-person response to them, which is affected by your experience (just as when you acquired a taste for the fizzy drink, your experience changed your natural, first-person response to it). And each and every experience is true insofar as you are experiencing it, and that is how you feel.
If you can deny that each person individually experiences things, then the theory that follows also collapses. But I cannot see how you can, and so it is a fundamental truth. A claim so antagonistic to reason and instinct would have to be shown clearly until one understands and feels the truth of it; but until then, it cannot be accepted, and the fundamental truth stands (and, by consequence, so does the theory that follows).
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