___ Doyle ___
| The distinction I am making is the interactivity of a
| movie versus text.
 ___

Yes - but my point is that any interpretation of a text is a
kind of interrogation.  It is basically a dialog with the
text.  Thus reading is a very interactive project.  Put an
other way to make a reading is to engage in a kind of
abduction (if you're familiar with Peirce's term)  You make
a guess about what something means and then take that meaning
and compare it to the rest of the text.  The text then
critiques that proto-reading.  It is then either kept or
rejected and the process continues.  In this manner you
build up a meta-narrative about the text.

Obviously there are different levels of rigor in this.
However in the kind of criticism we are discussing, I think
we are viewing texts in a very interactive way.  So I agree
with your comments about film, but think that texts are
essentially the same.

As I said, both are two ways of "being-in-the-world."

 ___ Clark ___
| When we speak of *not* separating acting from idea, I'm
| not sure it implies that somehow films have a priority
| over text. (Because they "resemble" more closely the way
| in which we encounter these things as they are given to
| us in the world)
|
 ___ Doyle ___
| I note you use the word 'resemble' in a passive sense,
| whereas I  emphasize 'interactivity' to indicate media
| and action.
 ___

Only because of the way we tend to use the word resemble grammatically.

I could have done a Heidegger-like speak.  Acting in its actingness is both
an acting, an action, and an acted.  Further texts to be texts must act on
us.  They must transform us.  However texts to act must be given life by an
actor.  We give text the form to act.  We become part of the action of the
text s the text also acts through us.  However this view of text as actor in
which it both acts and is acted applies to actingness in general in its
roles as action and acting.  <grin>  (I can sense a slam by Jon coming)
<grin>

My point is that all these notions both give and are given.  They are a kind
of relating with the world.  That relating is inherently interactivity.

 ___ Doyle ___
| While the 'resemblance' between my vision of an apple
| and the apple are not the same, I am able to reach out
| and eat the apple.  I can interact with the apple.
| That apple is not wholly an apple once it is eaten.
 ___

Yes.  However that use of the apple is part of the apple's
being-in-the-world.  It is part of the horizon with which I encounter
apples.  I recognize that apples have as part of their mode of being the
ability to be eaten.  I can eat them.  The apple is in one sense still and
apple when eaten.  However it is also something else.  There are many modes
in which Being is given to me.  Things transform and are transformed as we
move through life.

 ___ Doyle ___
| Using your apple metaphor, I write down on paper 'there
| is an apple on the table'.  I hand that to a blind person.
| They can't see the text.  Nothing happens.  I say to the
| blind person aurally, 'there is an apple on the table'.
| They eat the apple.  You say there is no logical distinction
| between these two different ways of communicating?
 ___

Writing on paper for a blind person is no different than
speaking to a person who isn't in the room and can't hear
you.  Communication implies a kind of interaction.  All you've
done is provided a case where there was no interaction.

But by the same token I could bring up the character from
_Johnny Get Your Gun_.  He is nearly deaf, blind, mute, and
nearly paralyzed in a hospital room.  In what way can we
discuss interacting with him?  Surely we are limited.  But
I don't think we wish to suggest that implies something about
the ontology of communicating.

 ___ Doyle ___
| For me the Renaissance stage metaphor philosophically incurs
| an infinite regress.
 ___

Yes.  That was its strength.  You see that as a weakness.
However the "excess" I speak of which makes an apple and apple
and not the same as a representation of an apple is tied to
this "infinite regress."

 ___ Doyle ___
| Well you are arguing with Descartes not me when you perceive
| me with a Renaissance point of view.
 ___

Descartes is typically considered the break of the Renaissance
and the rise of modernism.  While he is reacting to trends in
the renaissance (his dualism arises out of Renaissance views
of mind) he is really taking a very different track.  Further
it is with that break that the "image" metaphor of the
Renaissance changes to a "text" metaphor.

I want to put them both on the same ground.

 ___ Doyle ___
| I think it contradictory above to say something is 'incorrect'
| when you are denying priorities elsewhere.   Conflicts with
| your point about priority.
 ___

I don't quite follow.  My point is that we have signs and to
prioritize any class of signs is misguided.  Saying that
specific sign classes shouldn't be given a priority is not
to discount truth.



-- Clark Goble --- [log in to unmask] -----------------------------