Meta: Putnam Makes Me Think about Fandom

[alixtii]

I continue to find Hilary Putnam's Reason,Truth, and History to be very useful and thought-provoking for my thesis. Let me state for the record that while in general I agree with Putnam's objectives, finding a position within the gap between objectivism and extreme relativism, I'm not quite sure that how he gets there--his "internal realism"--works

Comments

[cathexys]

Well, since I'm likely one of the people you disagreed with last summer, I'll just turn around and disagree here. I'm as much for universal truths as the next desperately-holding-on-by-a-thread modernist. However, I believe there are differences between aesthetics and ethics. And to make an argument that is convincing in one (even though, clearly only to a degree because both your girlfriend and Rorty would probably have a lot to say about localized ethics!) does not necessarily translate to another

[alixtii]

Oh, I certainly don't disagree that there's a huge difference in the way in which ethics and aesthetics obligate us, and certainly aesthetic relativism is coherent in a way that moral relativism isn't. I'm agnostic as to aesthetic values, andI have no problem--intellectual or otherwise--with aesthetic relativism.

I agree with pretty much everything you say in regards the role of aesthetic thought in fandom, and I think conversations since last summer reveal that we're more or less on the same page re: the role of interpretative communities, for example.

The place where I disagree, though, is that I have a problem is when that thought--with which I more or less agree--becomes a tenet of faith which cannot be questioned, when those who try to make normative claims are met with ridicule and hostility.

because reading, *especially* fannish reading, is all about what ellen_fremedon has called the Id-Vortex, i.e., it only on one of its many level functions as artistic textInsofar as this is true, I think it is a good thing--which is a