The Quest for an Afterlife

[Era Might]

Checking out Quine now at the library, caught this nugget in an entry on "Communication" in his "Philosophical Dictionary":

 

Quote

We discourse blithely to patiently receptive ears and pick up only on occassional inconclusive indication, if any, that we have communicated our idea (excuse the expression) or perhaps engendered some unintended one. No news is good news. We read the listener's mind by what Neil Wilson called the principle of charity. We get an exaggerated idea of how well we have been understood, simply for want of checkpoints to the contrary.

The miracle of communication, in its outer reaches, is a little like the miracle of transubstantiation: what transubstantiation?

It's interesting to read John 6 with this in mind, and what it meant for Christ to "communicate" with people. He was just as interested in blinding people and preventing them seeing or hearing, as he was in giving them sight and sound. The reference to Transubstantiation is interesting, even today, in that Catholics and Protestants read the same Gospels and believe completely different things. They may even eat the same kind of host, and yet for one it is Divine, and other it is symbolic. I believe Muslims also view the Koran the way Christians view Jesus, rather than how Christians view the Bible...the Koran is Divine for them, yet in a conversation between a Muslim and a Christian (e.g., the Florida pastor who wanted to burn the Koran), the "communication" is nonexistent because both see the same book yet see something different.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Era Might