L04-421-15-10-12-15• Today: reading, intensively.• On the course website: Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas (1872).

• The core problem: if you start from things you presume you know, how can you evaluate it?• If you cannot start from the language, or you are uncertain how, what grounds your

understanding?• Causes for concern, and for some alarm:• The assumption that you already know what you know. Where did it come from? Did you invent

the language you speak? Without consensus of some kind, is it possible to understand what anyone else says?

• The conditions of consensus, and getting to the ground.• Three HUGE problems:1. ‘Self’ ‘Selfhood’NarcissismSolipsismthe trivialization of the person.2. Opinions and Rights. If we have consensus on either, it is historical. It is not grounded in any

absolute freedom.‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion’ Yup. But only because there is no way to prevent any

person from forming one. Does that entail that just because an opinion is yours that it is therefore valid?

3. Agreement, assent. Do you ‘like’ what you are reading? (what grounds that?) Do you agree with what the author says? (how would you know if you cannot read it accurately?) If you don’t understand it, what are you agreeing (or disagreeing) with?

Deferring Music again

The prior problem is RELATION. If you are listening to music, what are you hearing?

The lyrics?The melody?The beat?Where is your attention focussed? (your glands?

Your emotions (what are ‘emotions’?)? A state of agreement? Is that a mood? a purpose? A nameless spirit in the sound?

Confusions about ‘Imagination’

Mediation / topic comment grammar

(History) (Community)

TOPIC COMMENT

(Selecting)

(Identifying) (Structuring)

P {[Perception] ) ( Cognition]} {[Syntax] ) ( [Situation]} S

(Predicating)

(Correlating)

1

2

3

Whole diagram: Searle ; numbered elements: C. S. Peirce: on a new list

Some examples

• I have started Spring and All, for real. It is very confusing and I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t dislike it, though. At points I feel like Williams is saying things in a confusing way just to be pretentious, when he could be much simpler and to his point. I have to keep reading to see if any plotline at all emerges but I have the feelings it’s not going to. I don’t feel like reading it now and need to move more into my apartment. Hopefully Spring and All will be more realistic when I have more time.

• I really want to start The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which sounds really interesting and is in prose, which is my preferred style.

Some examples• More on Spring and All. Williams keeps making it seem like man

and the world are two separate beings.• I finished Spring and All. That was an extremely tough read, not

going to lie. I feel like I have a general jist of what Williams is trying to say and what his themes and such were. I definitely did not expect to reread sections or pages, or even chapters at some points, so this 93 page book of poetry and also just plain old thought, turned into a much longer read than I imagined it would be when I picked up the book. I definitely think that his view of the world and humans as two separate forces makes a lot of sense, although I’m not totally sure if I agree with it because I had always thought that because humans are on the earth and impact it in such a large way, that it is one interwinding being that thrives or dies off of what the other gives it.

Some examples• I read roughly the first 10 pages of Spring and All. I noticed that the

chapters are not in chronological order. I might try, after reading it the first time, to go back and read it in chronological order based on chapter to see if I get a different read from it. I doubt it will make much more sense. Although from what I gather it seems to note the futility of human existence, while simultaneously highlighting some of the beauties with in it. I could be wrong though. This will be much easier on the weekend when I’m not quite so tired. . . .

• I’m sure there’s a balance or optimum length that would be ideal. At the very least I should have asked a minimum length you would have liked. I thought about it at the time, but rationalized that the idea of the assignment being freeform made asking such a question redundant. Still, I worry about quality. (Note 10/2/15: That last line sounds arrogant to me now that I look at it again. Writing like this every day is certainly beneficial for a level of self-reflection,)