Q: Part III ended with me saying that the conversation seemed to be moving in the direction of Interpretation and you agreed. So could we start Part IV with a word on Interpretation?
A: Of course.
Q: Great. So my question is, What’s the relationship between Interpretation and Explanation?
A: You mean, what do they have in common?
Q: Well, yes. Can we start with that?
A: Sure. Interpretation has the same structure as Explanation.
Q: What's that mean exactly?
A: It means that. like Explanation, Interpretation is hiearchical, it’s historical, and it’s dependent on response transfer and semiotic transformation.
Q: Didn’t Peckham have, in his own words, a formulaic and abstract way of putting it?
A: Yes, he did.
Q: And what was that?
A: He said that Interpretation is a perceptual disengagement of an analogically determined recurrent semiotic pattern from an analogically determined series of semiotic matrices.
Q: Could you break that down for us?
A: Sure. You and I walk into a restaurant. The waiter comes up to us and asks us what we want. We both ask for a coffee. The waiter comes back with our coffees and we return to our talk.
The matrix for the waiter is Restaurant-Customer-Request. The basic pattern of behavior is the waiter’s response to the request.
The Matrix Controls The Pattern
Let’s assume in this case that the waiter has years of experience. The waiter has responded to customer requests successfully in the judgment of all involved, restaurant owner, customer and the waiter. But even if it’s the waiter’s first day on the job their behavior is not without context. In other words, all of us are familiar with the matrix of Restaurant-Customer-Request.
You could say in this case that the matrix of the waiter is their desire to keep their job and their pattern is the behavioral sequence involved in being a waiter, complying with a request.
The patterns of behavior of the new hire will be different than the more experienced waiter. But the matrix will be the same and both waiters will be using it to control their behavior.
But actually, we control our own behavior. The thing is, like any simple pattern of behavior, once we’ve done it a couple of times it becomes internalized, unconscious and automatic. This explains the value of cultural history and human behavior.
Q: In what way?
A: Because, if we’re born into a period of time, or history, or cultural history, there’s a tendency to think that this is how the world should be. That’s why other periods of history seem almost unreal to us. Just as other culture’s that exist at the same time that we do also feel so different from ours that they seem unreal. That’s why changes in history and contemporary culture clashes involve so much conflict, confusion and turmoil.
Q: Why?
A: Because the patterns of our behavior fit a particular matrix, any change to another matrix will involve problems and conflicts even if we go with the flow and move into the direction of the new matrix. There’s still going to be conflict and tension. Even if the new matrix is somewhat similar to the old (and obviously there’s always conflict within the same matrix). This is why Romanticism was the greatest cultural redirection in human history and why knowing about it is so important.
Q: Could you elaborate?
All of the periods of cultural history from ancient China, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Christian Europe, The Middle Ages, Secular Europe, The Renaissance, The Reformation, The Scientific Revolution, The Enlightenment, all of them, though new relative to each other when they appeared, were similar in terms of Explanation, or, explanatory behavior.
Q: How so?
A: They were all constitutive. They were all redemptive, or redemptionistic. They all claimed to be perfect and final and still do. So, for that reason, and for all of their differences, they can all be subsumed under the single matrix of Final Explanation, an explanation that claims to account for all data and because of this should be the explanation that controls all of our behavior.
Q: Haven’t you said that Romanticism controls your behavior?
A: Yes. But the big difference is that I made that determination. It doesn’t control my behavior. I control my behavior through my response to Romanticism as I currently understand it. That requires self-awareness, reflective thought, not automatic belief.
When we say something controls our behavior we can be either literal or figurative. I’m being figurative. It’s shorthand for saying that I am using my understanding of Romanticism as a guide, as a way to direct and control my behavior, so as to give my life purpose and meaning. and, above all, to give myself the sense of value and identity without which life is intolerable.
Q: The meaning of life is your response to it?
A: That’s right.
Q: Interesting. Though our Q & A started with, and of course is about Explanation and Power, it has moved effortlessly into the subject of Cultural History. Why do you think that is?
A: Because our behavior, verbal and nonverbal, happens in Time and Space. Time (History), Space (Culture).
Q: And all of that involves or requires Explanation, right?
A: Right. We can’t understand anything without Explanation. And now we’re back to the subject of Interpretation.
Q: Great! So why don’t we start Part V with a discussion of the different modes of Interpretation?
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