Dear Norm,

Hmmmmmmm ... here, I'd say that the issue is not fiction. It is the 
variability of language.

The American comedian George Carlin used to get mileage out of 
routines in which he would ask us to reflect on what we'd be saying 
or meaning if our words were literal rather than expressive. That's 
the case with some of the ideas you've put forward as fiction.

To say that you are "on the PhD list" is a representative statement. 
I imagine that we could perform a comprehensive exegesis of careful 
linkages and cultural explanations to demonstrate the idea that this 
is a short-hand representation for reasonable concepts. These 
concepts would add up to a fair description of what you are actually 
doing when you say that you are "on the PhD list." This would be more 
or less actual, though, since no representation is ever complete or 
actual. The representation is not the thing it represents.

We don't expect things to be what they represent. We understand and 
interpret representation. Human beings are natural heremeneutes, 
interpreters. We use an informal system of hermeneutics and different 
forms of intuitive exegesis to understand what representations and 
expressions mean. When we step away from our own culture and time, we 
often employ formal hermeneutics, hermeneutical research and 
exegesis, to unpack and understand the meanings of texts. Classicists 
do this with The Iliad or the plays of Sophocles. Theologians do this 
with the Bible.

Much more is wrapped up in words that the literal meaning. In 
theology, for example, the classical tradition of exegetical 
hermeneutics examines four senses of meaning. The first sense 
involves the literal meanings of the text embedded in history and 
translated again into our own language. The second sense engages the 
interpretive meanings embedded in metaphor and allegory that extend 
and transpose history into a new key. The third sense examines the 
moral and ethical applications of the ideas and issues disclosed by 
the first two senses. Finally, there is a fourth sense in the forms 
of meaning that create and encompass a future in which meaning is 
consummated.

Unpacking a seemingly simple phrase such as "I'm on the PhD list" may 
involve all four senses for a full understanding. We understand all 
of this through shared experience, though our personal and cultural 
interpretations differ. It's this way with most things. I could give 
you examples from others field, but most of us could -- with enough 
care -- unpack the statement "I'm on the PhD list." Once unpacked, it 
is not fiction, but representation.

Such artifacts as engineering diagrams, automobile blueprints, or 
mathematical models are representations rather than fictions.

Your post embodies an epistemological inquiry on several levels. 
There are always several levels on which we might speak, write, and 
intend -- or hear, read, and understand these kinds of statements. 
While I think I understood the intention of your post, I would not 
apply the word "fictive" to the several forms of representation you 
describe.

Merriam-Webster's defines "fiction" as "1 a : something invented by 
the imagination or feigned; specifically : an invented story b : 
fictitious literature (as novels or short stories) c : a work of 
fiction; especially : NOVEL; 2 a : an assumption of a possibility as 
a fact irrespective of the question of its truth <a legal fiction> b 
: a useful illusion or pretense; 3 : the action of feigning or of 
creating with the imagination."

This is a descriptive dictionary, of course, so these definitions 
simply exemplify what most people mean by the word fiction in common 
usage. It seems to me you are extending the usage. What I'd say is 
that I would choose different words to sort out the different ways 
you use the term.

This requires more thought. Thank you for a good post.

Yours,

Ken




>Hi Ken & All
>
>I have enjoyed this thread and the idea of all writing as fiction 
>...  there is some work that addresses fictive languages, fictive 
>arguments and fictive interactions- (mainly theory from Spanish 
>speaking institutions I believe). According to this work much of our 
>language and culture is concerned with fictives while fictive 
>engagements are increasingly the most prominent aspects of social 
>life.
>
>The statements you can find me in the phonebook or I am on the Phd 
>List are a good examples- because I am not and can never be in these 
>places .... I am actually here on an office chair constructing a 
>language event on the list using an interface which encodes and 
>decodes my movements.
>
>We often use fictive conversations because they are most meaningful 
>- and can be described as one of the best ways to convey or reveal 
>the truth of an event. The fictive conversation between a lawyer and 
>witness is an excellent example ... we all know such a conversation 
>is fabricated for a judging audience ... but this is the universal 
>mode we rely on because it reveals truth ... yet like writing the 
>skill in fabricating these conversations plays a part in convincing 
>us while our social attunement skews our attention to aspects of 
>this fiction that defines the limits of our certainty - so events 
>are seen as more or less probable... however truth may be discerned 
>regardless of the actual or fictive nature of the experience.
>
>I often feel that the actuality of events has little relevance to 
>the ways most European understanding is presented given the habitual 
>mind - matter split ... theory seems to be a most useful fictive 
>device - so is the blueprint of my car.
>
>No writing is actual it is all fictive which it must be otherwise 
>writing the words "stubbed my toe" would hurt ... it is through this 
>fictive context that the truth of things often becomes very 
>apparent. The relation between fiction and fictive is crucial here 
>because books are actual things ... I know I was once hit with one 
>for being cheeky .... anthropology will tell us that all cultures 
>think-through things ... that is ... culture fabricates objects as 
>coactive devices; things that impel thinking modes for a group. Some 
>of these objects are actual but they are all fabricated and a few 
>regardless of their actuality or fiction are true to the cultural 
>mode that informs their making.
>
>Norm


-- 

Ken Friedman
Professor

Dean, Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia