Friday, January 17, 2014

Can texts be Unintelligible?

After discussing subject-predicate propositional logic, Hegel says the following:

This abnormal inhibition of thought is in large measure the source of complaints regarding the unintelligibility of philosophical writings from individuals who otherwise had the educational requirements for understanding them. Here we see the reason behind one particular complaint so often made against them: that so much has to be read over and over to be understood....(63)

At first, I took this as a joke about how people would react to the author's text, for the Phenomenology appears to be so unintelligible and one has to read it over and over to understand. But this got me thinking: Can texts be unintelligible? Given the centrality of the rational universe for Hegel, would the mere existence of an unintelligible text mean that our world is irrational?

Before I can explore further, it is necessary to clarify what I mean by text. For my purposes, text will refer to anything that can be perceived with the intention of finding meaning, whether it be a text message on a cellphone, a painting on a wall, or a song on the radio. There are four levels of a text that people can know. I want to argue that perhaps on some these levels it is possible for a text to be unintelligible.

To demonstrate what an intelligible text is like, I will use the song In the Hall of the Mountain King.


First level of this text is the sound vibrations in the air. Next is the immanent experience of the song. We can hear the notes. Third is we feel something because how those notes are put together. The song is in B minor, which often reflects more foreboding or sadder moods. The song also increases in pace after every repetition, increasing the song's expression of these feelings. The fourth level of the text is its meaning, which those moods produce. This meaning level is also the world inside of the text in which the action of the song is taking place. The song creates an atmosphere of being in the hall of the mountain king. If a text does not reach this fourth level, it fails to be intelligible.

To demonstrate an unintelligible text, I will use a Jackson Pollock painting.


The first two levels of this painting are completely intelligible. We understand that it is made of paint and canvass. We can see the colors. We, however, cannot know what to feel in response to it because it is constructed so chaotically. Unless we take into account what the author was trying to achieve with this painting, which is another angle of a text, our minds will try and probably fail to make meaning out of this text. In other words, it is a text specifically designed to have allow no imposition of meaning.

This leads me back to the question: If the world of the text can be irrational, does that mean there is irrationality in the world we live in?

The answer might come from how people tend to react to partially intelligible textual worlds. For instance, one could read a fiction in which details from one part of the story keep contradicting ones in other parts, causing the world inside the text to be impossible as a unified whole. In response to such a text, people often either admit that the world of the text is not one (multiverse response) or admit that the world of that text is unintelligible and, therefore, void. This is how comic book hero enthusiasts deal with contradictory canonical accounts of their superheroes.

Perhaps how we should respond to Jackson Pollock's painting the same way. We could either impose meaning on the painting in order to make it intelligible or we could deny that it even has a textual world altogether. 





1 comment:

  1. I find your thoughts on intelligibility rather intriguing so I'll bite. First, as one might expect from a philosophy student, I have some questions of my own. Is it a fair treatment of Hegel to assume that he would treat art and philosophy/science as both having the same kind of intelligibility or even truth conditions? I feel like your use of 'intelligibility' presupposes or is a concern for traditional/foundationalist view of truth, knowledge, and meaning. I think these views can come up with responses to your question by saying that texts are by definition intelligible and then offering an account of intelligibility, of which there is at least a good amount of discussion in the philosophy of science on what it means for a theory to be intelligible, but discussion in aesthetics may be more relevant if one can show that we should treat the two differently. That aside, I haven't seen reason to think that intelligibility is necessarily the same thing or even has similar conditions when dealing with art/fiction and with truth/fact seeking inquiry. So it seems to me like your concern may not actually be applicable to Hegel in the same way because of his holistic views and hermeneutic ideas.

    On another note, I agree with you that Pollock's painting could have multiple interpretations, but your conclusion that this makes a text unintelligible does not follow. Its entirely possible and reasonable for us to have multiple theories/accounts/interpretations of a story as long as they are all internally coherent (to some extent a la your superhero example). Just because they may conflict with each other doesn't decisively show that they are necessarily unintelligible. It appears that you think intelligibility must be entirely objective/universal but have not given reason for thinking so.

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