HALF-TRUTHS AND CONUNDRUMS PT. 1

So if philosophical epistemology is concerned with the nature of absolute truth-- even if it might be, as in William James, to disprove its existence-- then mythico-literary epistemology is concerned only with "half-truths," with exposing its audience to pure possibilities.-- AND THE HALF-TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE.

Given this statement of the nature of "truth" in myth and literature, I want to bring it into line with my newly formed dichotomy between "problems" and "conundrums" as delineated in this recent essay. 

Though I didn't make any comment on the four potentialities in the first HALF-TRUTH essay, the subject did come up in the second essay. 

As I reconsidered this in greater depth, I feel it necessary to explain that though the kinetic and the dramatic potentialities certainly do draw upon "patterns" derived from sense experience, those two potentialities don't make substantial use of what I've called "epistemological patterns." I suppose I might term the first type of patterns "existential," since these two potentialities are more concerned with translating existence as the fictional characters *seem* to experience it. The other two potentialities, however, are rooted in a fictional form of epistemology, because the forms they deal with depend on abstract constructions. 

My more recent formulation was an attempt to identify the types of propositions involved with each potentiality, after making the determination that the "existential" types of propositions were short-range in nature and followed the paradigm of the idea of the "problem that can solved" (even if said solution is a negative one, as one often sees in horror stories), while the "epistemological" types were long-range and followed the paradigm of the "conundrum that may not be entirely soluble." From this line of thought I formulated this schema:

KINETIC PROBLEM-- how a protagonist solves a short-range problem with the use of kinetic applications, usually in the forms of "sex and violence." Aligned with Jung's "sensation function."

DRAMATIC PROBLEMS-- how a protagonist solves a short-range problem with the use of dramatic interactions with other characters. Aligned with Jung's "feeling function."

DIDACTIC CONUNDRUM-- how a protagonist reacts to a long-range conundrum through didactic assessments. Aligned  with Jung's "thinking function."

MYTHOPOEIC CONUNDRUM-- how a protagonist reacts to a long-range conundrum through symbolic embodiments. Aligned with Jung's "intuition function."

On a side note, in keeping with my observations in KNOWING THE IDEA FROM THE CONCEPT, from now on I'll attempt to term all "symbolic embodiments" as either "ideas" or "idea-tropes," while "didactic assessments" will be termed either "concepts" or 'concept-tropes."

Now, as I've conceived the relationship of problems and conundrums, they exist to complement one another. A reader doesn't necessarily find both a problem and a conundrum in every narrative, but the potential is always there, in keeping with Northrop Frye's observations about the distinction between narrative and significant values  (a set of paired terms that I used for some time before gravitating to others.) But since I stated at the outset that the purpose of mythico-literary epistemology was to create "half-truths," the following question arises, at least for me: "What is the half of the narrative that is MORE true than the other?"

And my answer is, inevitably, "the conundrum, not the problem." The PROBLEM is rooted in the existential nature of entities who never truly existed, even when an author has scrupulously sought to base a given fictional entity on a real person, as William Styron did in his CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER. The CONUNDRUM, because it is based in an epistemological idea or concept, has a degree of truth-value, even if the idea or concept is itself untenable as a source of philosophical epistemology. (One earlier example of such an untenable concept was that of Freudian psychology.) Again, the main purpose of narrative epistemology is to "expose... audiences to pure possibilities," which in turn can be aligned with Cassirer's notion of "a free selection of causes."

ADDENDUM: The above terms "ideas" and "concepts" have been replaced by the more arcane "correlations" and "cogitations."