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1. Reality is cognitively intransparent: that is, all discourse about the world is mediated by our conceptual schemes, and there is no way to tell whether what we claim about the world directly “corresponds” with what is there, in the world independent of inquiry.
2. The structure of reality and the structure of human thought are inextricably symbiotized—there is no principled means by which to ascertain what it is that mind contributes to what we take to be the world’s structure, or what the “brute” world contributes to our sense of the world. [In fact, the “line” between the two, or the “percentages” supplied by cognition and “the world” may be radically different in different circumstances.]
3. Thinking has a history: that is, all the supposed fixities, invariances, necessities, universalities of thinking and the world—for instance, of logic, rationality, laws of nature, principles of judgment and conduct—are contingent artifacts of the historical existence of different human societies; there are, therefore, no necessities except in the sense of so appearing under the constraints of changeable history.
4. The structure of thinking is preformed and self-modifying: that is, whatever appears compelling or salient with regard to inquiry or reality is tacitly formed by antecedent enculturing processes that we cannot entirely fathom; though by participating in those same processes (as we must) we alter them, alter ourselves, and alter the conditions under which those who are yet to come will be encultured.
5. The phenomena and entities of human culture have no “natures,” they have, or are only histories: that is, persons and selves, artworks, artifacts, texts, actions, institutions, societies, words and sentences, and the like cannot be characterized as falling under “natural kinds” (as either having assignably fixed essences or behaving nomologically [lawlike] in ways that may be explained by reference merely to what could explain the behavior of physical things); they “have” only (predicatively), or “are” only (referentially), histories, narratized careers of a distinctive sort—ordered compatibly with the arrow of physical time but subject to forms of change peculiar to themselves. [These points are particularly apropos to artworks.]
We will see these points again in discussions to follow.