Thoughts After Theory

Last Thursday night Dr. Dunning brought forth the rather ironic difficulty of theorizing about methods of theorizing. William James' typology of religious experience provoked the topic, leaving us questioning the legitimacy of typologizing itself. The catch word here is obviously 'legitimacy.' What can we possibly mean by it other than: to what degree does this method provide us with the means for knowing truth? Does typology provide us with truth? But even still, Dr. Dunning's question was more hermeneutical, i.e. how can we know that the interpretation of the presented data (that we typologize in order to find truth) is the right interpretation?

The trouble, he was pained to express, is that we cannot look at data qua data where it is not already interpreted. In phenomenological terms, objects (mental or not) are presented to us, and such as they are, they are already interpreted. Such is the problem of the hermeneutic circle: the transcendental subject 'perceiving' the immanent object (to use Husserl's terminology), and thereafter, the inability to 'step outside' to objectively view the immanent object without interpreting the interpretation. All immanent objects are necessarily and already interpreted, including the one perceived while stepping outside. To try to view the method of typologizing from the outside is really just another way of saying theorizing about theorizing where the neither theorizing possesses and objective point of view. Hence the circle.

To proceed down irony road, Dr. Dunning went on to produce a typology of modes for how people tend to interpret the data. There are, on his model, paradoxical thinkers and clear thinkers (and some others which i don't discuss here). Both James and I easily fit into the paradoxical category. Add nearly every poet since the beginning of time, a few of my favorites like Chesterton, Lewis, Tolkien, the majority of religious people, and a slew of Continental philosophers, and you'll have a picture of the paradoxical type. Life as it appears to us is a symphony of suggestions. The platitudes of 'clear' thinkers have little effect on us because we constantly feel that propositions set forth by the clear type are, well, either of little pragmatic consequence or boring.

I say this not to discount the clear thinkers. In the first place they are the last people on earth you want to make your enemy. They tend to be argumentative and, God help them, unconsciously sentimental. In the second place i have been too close to too many of them not to find it a credible modus operadni. They are unhesitatingly obsessed with the truth. Unfortunately, however, they also tend to think that their mode of obsession the only kind. Their criteria, of course, is that the truth, whatever it is, be clearly understood. Those who do not express or discover truth this way are not interested in it in the right kind of way. Many of them probably go so far as to say that if you do not express or discover truth this way, you do not express or discover it.

Thus you will find our analytic philosophers squabbling over the minutia of some minutia. It is a tactful and impressive exercise, really. Only someone with a certain temperament and mental constitution can do it. But it is tragically naive of those of them who think that they possess the modus operandi par excellence. I ask, "par excellence in virtue of what"? How can someone say their mode of interpreting the data is the better mode without invoking an objective principle--out of thin air-- for which mode is best ? Brake it down in layman's terms and you have, "i see the world this way and so should you."

I am beginning to think modes of interpretation have their corresponding psychological temperaments. It is very William James of me, i must confess, and i haven't yet worked out the details. The fear of consigning oneself to a false conclusion determines the insistence of our analytic types toward a modus operandi which fosters clarity. Given the true premises, we attain, however in-often, a certain answer. On the other hand hope as a temperamental disposition fits closer with the paradoxical type: truth, however incomplete or stretched, is attained en route, almost accidentally one might say. Additionally, it is almost always evolving. Of course, like every typology, there is not a one to one correspondence, not to mention it is an oversimplification. Any given human psyche is a bit more complex than that.

But what i like best about both approaches is their humility. Our clear types are O.K. with saying "i am only right about a very few number of things." Our paradoxical types are O.K. with saying "i am wrong about a great number of things."