Natural language and Myth Cassirer, Logos and Mythos.
Cassirer's argument in his book the Myth of the State was that Fascist Propaganda, Fascist mythmaking, while it flagrantly contradicted empirical reality, it did provide a simple, direct answer to the anxieties of a secular present. Cassirer died in 1945. But what we're interested in his Cassirer's Logic of The Cultural Sciences. Aesthetic Phenomena. Gold rooms
"In The Logic of the Cultural Sciences (1942) Cassirer argues that objective and universal validity can be achieved not only in the sciences, but also in practical, cultural, moral, and aesthetic phenomena. Although inter-subjective objective validity in the natural sciences derives from universal laws of nature, Cassirer asserts that an analogous type of inter-subjective objective validity takes place in the cultural sciences"
Symbols are not reality, they represent reality. In our current condition as a species. Symbols on a slope in a random place are open to manipulation and "wrong footedness." This I think is why myth even if it is empircally flaccid, remains central to how we manage information. How we set the tone and at the moment in the West, where balance permits the paradox of liberal democracy the tone is not Good.
An eternal question : How do we look at Cassirer's Intersubjective Objective Validity in the social science today?
I think the "Random Place" what can be put in terms of "the universe does not offer answers" is directionless without the subjective. Science, the objective method for pursuing testable truths, takes a back seat to the lobbying of fossil fuel interests.
And yet the objective pursuit of knowledge takes on it's very own narrative, "what next" it asks "is the universe actually expanding?" and there it goes off into a new adventure. Is commerce, the business of making money an objective game or does it depend on a need that is subjecively interpretable, Money-safety-a full stomach-power-authority.....
Intersubjective Objective Validity does not tell us much more than Kant's moral imperativemnaged to tell us. It's an agreement between people who matter.
I find myself thinking that the Objective side of us people is a myth unto itself, it's a myth dominated by the subjective side of us people.
For example, as an interest to be courted and funded by society, pure science - the pure pursuit of knowledge unadulterated by the profit motive - produces new mind blowing understandings. There doesn't seem to be such a thing as pure society.
I'm old, Comrade and I'm not convinced private enterprise has even been the vehicle for expanding the scope of consciousness.
