© Roger M Tagg 2012
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
I've been reading a number of books which emphasize the role of 'narrative' in any philosophical view of knowledge, history, self-consciousness, culture in general and even science. In plain words, 'the story' is all that matters - any relationships to what actually happened - or is happening - is of lesser concern. Such a view is sometimes ascribed to journalists and politicians. But in the books I've been reading, it seems to be associated with some form of 'post-modernism', a school of philosophy popular particularly in Europe from around the 1970s. I find myself irked by some of these ideas, basically because they don't seem useful or 'pragmatic' philosophies to adopt in our lives.
One link to post-modernism arises because it reminds me of Derrida's famous quote " Il n'y a pas de hors-texte" - meaning something like "nothing exists other than what we can express in some text". Before we jump to conclusions though, Derrida didn't equate 'text' with language. He said: "I prefer to speak of 'mark' rather than of language. In the first place the mark is not anthropological; it is pre-linguistic; it is the possibility of language, and it is every where there is a relation to another thing or relation to an other. For such relations, the mark has no need of language".
Some academics that take the 'everything is narrative' line do not seem to follow Derrida - they equate narrative with what one might speak in 'ordinary' language. This view of narrative means 'telling a story', by speaking, writing or 'thinking by oneself in words'. It's a model - or view - of the world as 'conversations'. Such an approach emphasizes the role of literature, and also possibly of rhetoric.
While the conversational model above is how most of us are first brought up, it isn't the only model. And if it's all we ever adopt, we are likely to flounder around in today's social and technical culture. 'Going back to nature' doesn't seem to be a serious option.
Some examples of other means of narrative are listed below.
I think Derrida (if alive today) would include all these in his 'texte' or 'marks'. Maybe we should be talking about 'sign systems'.
Of course it must be admitted that there is sometimes a possible 'interpretation' of these other sign systems into conversational language, although such translation may not be easy, reliable, useful or efficient. It would not make much sense to translate Einstein's theories of relativity into a conversational-style narrative, or to 'speak' the whole of a map.
To me, Derrida's statement "every where there is a relation to another thing or relation to an other" sounds very much like what my Frolio is all about!
One extreme position, which seems to originate from Donald P Spence, is that there is such a thing as 'narrative truth'. This seems to be a quality that depends more on the consistency and usefulness of a version of events, rather than to any correspondence with how things might be observed by anyone else, or with documented evidence, or with evaluation by disinterested parties. If the narrator is a psychiatric patient, and a particular story enables him/her to get through a crisis and return to normal life, then such a story may indeed be valuable pragmatically, but to call it truth is, I believe, a very confusing re-definition of the concept of truth as people in general understand it. By contrast, James Hillman called it 'Healing Fiction'.
My feeling is, that if you take this idea much outside psychiatry, it leads to a risk of misuse, bullshit and agenda-driven 'hijacking' of discourse in general.
Some would say that myths and religious dogma play a role similar to that played by 'narrative truth'. They can give people, who might otherwise be very confused or anxious about life, some degree of 'certainty' and 'assurance'. However it's clear that there is a multitude of different narratives - as offered by all the different religions and sects. In my view, it is one of the greatest shames of Western and Middle Eastern civilizations that people have been persecuted - and even killed - for not 'going along with' the stories that some ruling class decided are 'truth' in the 'narrative truth' sense.
Extreme supporters of the 'it's all narrative' line take the philosophical view that nothing exists 'before' a story is told about it (or, presumably, an action is observed and we find words to describe it). In other words, the only things that exist are those we can tell someone about (that someone might be ourselves). However one 'narrative' supporter, AP Kerby, in his 1991 book "The Narrative of Self", allowed the existence of something he called 'pre-narrative' - a potential story not yet formed into something tellable. There are also the 'phenomenologists' (e.g. Husserl, Merleau-Ponty), who recognize pre-reflective 'perception', and point out that our thoughts are always 'about' something ('intentionality').
Clearly, if there is nothing 'before' the story, then thinking about 'truth' as a measure of correspondence - between a) the story and b) some 'objective reality' - isn't possible. But, like Dr Johnson kicking a stone in refutation of Berkeley's 'it's all in the mind' theory, most of us don't find a totally 'correspondence-free' notion of truth useful or workable in everyday life. It makes more sense to go along with the 'assumption' that what we observe or perceive really is there - although in some cases (e.g. mirages in the desert) it might be best to check with someone else, or with some source of information from the 'corpus' of human knowledge. And as many narrative-oriented academics point out, the narrative about anything can change over time; it's not only a matter of what happened, but how we look at it now. They also point out that narrative is not a one-sided affair; to make any meaning out of a narrative it requires brain effort on the part of the recipient as well as the narrator.
It seems to me that each of us needs to carry in our mind some model of 'normality' against which our brain processes can register that a significant event or change has occurred. This registering might happen through either our 'fast' (instinctive) thinking (Kahneman's System 1) or our slow (reflective) thinking (System 2). I would suggest that some models of normality are better - in the sense of being more pragmatically relevant - than others, although this evaluation of 'better' may depend on the era and society in which we live. For instance, regarding an international conflict as a disagreement between two sets of gods, as in Homer, would seem unwise in the West in the 21st century.
To build up a good model of 'normality', people in most civilizations rely on a consensus - of how things are and how they work - in what we call the real world. In Western civilization these days, logical, mathematical and scientific models form a framework for describing many things. I see these models as just particular examples of a consensus. For example we may agree that 2 + 2 = 4, we can subscribe to basic rules of logic like "if p => q and q=> r, then p => r". We can come to understand the laws of motion as described by Newton.
Of course consensus has some limitations. Firstly it's provisional - it may turn out to be wrong, or it may be superseded by a better theory or model. An example is that Einstein's theories of Relativity superseded Newton, but we don't tend to use Einstein's model in most situations because it's too complex . A model may also go 'out of fashion' and even return to popularity, like Continental Drift. Secondly, a consensus is often piecemeal - people in one group think one model is 'fact', but there may well be one or more other groups that believe some other model is 'fact'. Even religious groups that agree that "the end of the world is nigh" usually disagree about the precise date - and the 'running sheet' for that scenario. In politics we always have opposing consensuses; there are some who agree, and some who disagree - with certain basic 'laws' of economics, history and society.
Maybe all we can say is, if what has been narrated goes against a consensus that is widely accepted by open-minded people who don't have an agenda , then at least we ought to be concerned whether or not the story is true, and perhaps look for more evidence, both for and against.. The above category (of open-minded people) certainly won't include any politicians; it may exclude a lot of scientists as well, since many these days have to worry about keeping their job and getting money to continue their research.
One alternative criterion for truth might be 'consistency'. With Spence's 'narrative truth', self-consistency would be enough. However common sense suggests that this is not enough to use for life in general. After all, the narrative of the Nazi party may well have been self-consistent.
Another view of consistency is that a narrative should tally with 'the evidence'. The problem often is, though, that good enough evidence may be hard, time-consuming and expensive to find - if it can be found at all. We may be forced into a similar negative stance as we were with consensus, like Karl Popper's view that we can only say for sure what isn't true because it is contradicted by the evidence. However we might ask "Is this story resistant to any counter-evidence that someone might be able to throw at it?"
Since we don't know all the possible counter-evidence that might come along, we might approach the issue via the concept of 'probability'. Probability is certainly an abstract concept invented by man, and may be biased by one particular consensual world view rather than another. But it has some uses. We can, if we don't have enough evidence, try and decide which version of the truth is 'more likely'. However 'subjective probability', as evidenced from many experiments about what risks or gambles people will accept, seems to differ significantly from 'statistical probability' (as evidenced by records of the outcomes of similar happenings in the past) - see Kahneman and Tversky.
I have one other possible source for a criterion, which I call the 'team game' model of life. We can take the view that we are in a sports team, or in the cast of theatrical play, opera or ballet. There are 'rules of the game' - but not ones that we are 'given' externally, but ones that we learn as we go along. Each one of us can assume we are an individual, as the other players look to us to play our part, just as we look to them. We can also see ourselves in a mirror. We also all have the option of recording what we experience - we can keep a diary, or take lots of photos (especially if we have mobile phones with camera apps). There may also be a scorer (as in cricket), or someone video-recording the action. We can regard truth as what tallies with both our accounts and other people's, and also any recordings. Of course this does mean that the truth of many narratives is left as 'not determinable' - so we may be forced back into using probability for these cases.
The 'as if' philosophy was proposed by Hans Vaihinger. It means that it is useful in life to proceed 'as if' certain things are true. It does seem clear that if we doubt everything, or regard all truth as relative, we will blunder around aimlessly.
So maybe what is 'true' or 'real' is just a pragmatic convention, although one that takes account of both consensus and probability. A sensible line would then be not to quibble (about whether there is or isn't any objective reality) in most cases, unless it seems there is significant 'interpretation' taking place in the narrative, or a narrator is using rhetorical tactics like "the fact is", or "you can't argue with facts".
However, Vaihinger also said "An idea whose theoretical untruth or incorrectness, and therewith its falsity, is admitted is not for that reason practically valueless and useless; for such an idea, in spite of its theoretical nullity, may have great practical importance." Maybe this means we can always learn something from it.
Maybe the question to ask is not "Is it true?" but "Is it in accordance with a concept of 'Good' that is shared by many humans of different backgrounds?" (See my essays on Stories and Religion). In the case of a model (as I contend 'narrative', like science, is), we should ask "Is it a useful model for judgment, or for deciding what to do in the future?".
Index to more of these diatribes
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 21st June 2012
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .