Text-Dependent Semantics for Pure Conversation

Carl H. Flygt

April 2005

I am concerned to identify the truth conditions of a speech situation I call pure conversation. Pure conversation is a spiritual exercise in which individuals work to remain meditatively self-conscious during a well-defined social interlude. This interlude is indexed to a long list of rules or expectations which are claimed to represent a priori the conditions on conversation itself. Within this context, individuals choose to assert themselves, because they see a value in doing so, in ways that conform to something spiritual and idealistic traditions call “Truth” or “The True.”

What are the conditions that determine The True? How can we decide as a procedural matter in real time and as an objective matter of fact, if and when Truth obtains? Can we say with authority when the Spirit of Truth has come, when He (It) has gone and what should be done next in either case?

Here is a proposal. Truth in pure conversation is reference to a text that everyone in the conversation has internalized and is using either from memory or through clairvoyant intuition. If an utterance is made or a proposition asserted that conforms to the text, the proposition or utterance is true, and the conversation as a whole is on the right track. If an utterance or proposition with no clear reference to the text is produced, the conversation is on the wrong track. Pure conversation, which is a condition both in and for Truth itself, is nothing more and nothing less than a rehearsal of this text and its logical entailments.

Now suppose someone makes an assertion, call it p, and suppose not everyone thinks p accurately represents what he (she) considers either to be in the text or to be implied by the text. Under these conditions, p cannot be True. Someone present has the wrong representation of p, and this circumstance is sufficient to keep the ideal of Truth out of reach, at least for the moment. If someone thinks there is something wrong with what was just asserted, or with the manner in which it was asserted, something actually is wrong with it. Truth is relative to what everyone in the conversation thinks it is.

On this picture then, Truth is something essentially alive and living in the inmost self-nature of the individual. Everyone has an identical claim on Truth because everyone has some internalization of the text. But equally, Truth is a social quantity. Truth is only Truth when everyone concerned accepts what was just represented as Truth to be Truth. This peculiar ontological status, stretched between an existential condition on the one hand, that it satisfy the individual’s deep inner intentionality, and a universal condition on the other, that it satisfy everyone’s self-conscious and social intentionality, everyone’s public representation of the text, is just the status that Truth enjoys.

The social picture that emerges under text-dependent semantics is basically musical. Under this semantics, the individual both wishes to be and is required to be a transparent medium. He (she) disinterestedly bears witness to contents that emerge both from within and from without, all the while keeping an active watch on the semantic form of each contribution to the conversational space. This form includes all of the rules and meta-rules of conversation in general, as well as the Truth condition of each propositional utterance, that is of the current representation of the transcendental Text that is trying to shine through indifferently in the consciousness of each conversationist. Under these conditions, one can be sure that real spiritual phenomena can be produced and studied objectively to the benefit of science and of society.

Accordingly, a few definitions:

A conversational rule, r, is a concept of conversation that everyone in the conversation sees reason to accept;

R is the set of all relevant conversational rules;

A conversational meta-rule, rM, is a concept of conversation that everyone in general sees reason to accept;

RM is the set of all meta-conversational rules;

A transcendental text, T, is a set of propositions that stands as a reference to a conversational utterance;

A conversational utterance, u, is True (its propositional content is True) if and only if everyone in the conversation (indexed to R and RM) thinks (accepts, acknowledges, sees reason to suppose) u is contained in the transcendental text, T.

Now, suppose someone in conversation utters,

    (1) Snow is black

and suppose nobody objects. Everyone is perfectly satisfied by the expression of (1). Under these conditions, we can only suppose that (1) is contained in or refers to the text, and that in some world constituted by the collective imagination, snow is really black. But look at what the conversationists have done! They have created a stable, consensual and purely transcendental reality among themselves. Under these conditions, the imagination has become a force of nature. And in a society in which the imagination is quite literally a natural phenomenon, nature herself will need to respond in kind.

A few words to motivate the argument as presented, and perhaps to justify the foregoing claims about natural law. There are a number of well-documented if poorly understood phenomena in today’s world that appear to be constituted entirely by the imagination. The paradigm example is Chinese medicine, and in particular the acupuncture meridians which purport to circulate vital energy or chi. No micro-anatomical basis for these acupuncture meridians and points is known, and it appears unlikely one will be discovered. These meridians have a transcendental basis. They are a function of a willed imagination which places them where it places them. But it would appear that the imagination is only able to place them in particular places.

I think a number of other such phenomena exist in the world, especially phenomena having to do with mysticism and religious experience, but actually extending to all institutional facts, such as money, government and social status in general. The kundalini power of Indian yoga is one such apparently brute reality. Another such reality, in all probability, is the revelation vouchsafed to the Catholic Church. There are in our world a finite number of such realities. Truth or The True by and large is relative to the text-dependent semantics employed in each of these systems. Now I think it would be a very fine thing if we could get all of these apparently separate Truths to speak the same language, to speak from the same text,  or at least to speak to one another in terms that could lead to a universal language, to a universal text and to a kind of universal music.

Benedict XVI is right. Relativism is the scourge of contemporary culture. Benedict’s problem of course is that what he believes to be true is simply incredible to most of the rest of us. Benedict’s people, moreover, have a long history of ignoring Truth developed in other quarters, and that further damages their credibility. To get past relativism, we are going to need to embrace it, because relativism is a true picture of the way things stand. What we need is an understanding of the laws of the imagination itself. This is why Kant’s program is so compelling. Kant thought there was a way to describe the categories of the imagination. If that is true, and if we can develop an objectively valid theory of conversation, then there is hope for metaphysical science. If it is not, and if we are not able to do so, self-interest, self-possession and metaphysical anxiety will continue as the rule of intellectual comportment.