Three Major League Baseball umpires are sitting in a bar, having a drink. They start discussing their philosophies of umpiring. . .
Ancient-Medieval Umpire: "I call 'em as they are." (Realism)
Modern Umpire: "I call 'em as I see them." (Perspectivism)
Postmodern Umpire: "They ain't nothing 'til I call 'em." (Anti-realism)
Realism holds that there is a natural relationship between How Things Are and our ability to describe those things using language. (Aristotle/Aquinas)
Perspectivism holds that the relationship between How Things Are and our ability to use language to describe those things is primarily mental-ideational, that is, relative to the mind of the describer. (Kant)
Anti-realism holds that language only refers to itself, so any description we create is the reality we are describing. (Derrida)
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Nazis committed war crimes, but the Allies who bombed Dresden didn't. A fetus is not a child, except when the woman claims him as an heir to a millionaire. We are at war with Eeurasia; we've always been at war with Eastasia.
ReplyDeleteDerrida was right, but only in the tyrannical sense that the winner writes history.