AND THE HALF-TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE PT. 2

Whereas empirical thinking is essentially directed toward establishing an unequivocal relation between specific "causes" and specific effects, mythical thinking, even where it raises the question of origins as such, has a free selection of causes at its disposal... Cassirer, MYTHICAL THINKING, p. 46.

In Part 1, I wrote:

...the term "patterns" aligns better with the process by which all forms of concrescence-- whether belonging to the mythopoeic potentiality or one of the other three-- in that I at least can picture how various motifs coalesce to reinforce one another and thus become a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

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. Once more with feeling:

The DIDACTIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of abstract ideas.

The MYTHOPOEIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of symbols.

Ernst Cassirer's passage above is one of many I've cited to clarify how modern "empirical thinking" (or "theoretical thinking" in other passages) develop out of mythical thinking. Both "symbols" and "ideas" are abstract constructions, but symbols offer the artist "a free selection of causes"-- which I have aligned with my concept of "affective freedom"-- while ideas depend more upon establishing a chain of cause and effect, which I have aligned with "cognitive restraint." But both abstract constructions depend upon the use of fictive epistemology.

Now, to repeat my conclusion from Part 1, all epistemology in fiction can only lead the reader to the experience of "half-truths," whereas epistemology in philosophy can lead the reader to the perception of "truth," at least for that particular reader.

In CONVERGING ON CONCRESCENCE PT. 2,  I discussed some of the interpenetrations of the mythopoeic and the didactic potentiality. My example of a work dominated by the mythopoeic potentiality was Gardner Fox's Hawkman origin, but even while establishing that primacy, I also mentioned that the author had utilized "metaphysical tropes that were discursively organized by their pagan proponents." In contrast, the various CEREBUS excerpts I analyzed were all dominated by the didactic potentiality, but I asserted that author Dave Sim was at his best when he created an "expressive underthought to complement the rhetorical overthought."

Nevertheless, even though Fox is of the "affective freedom" party and Sim of the "cognitive restraint" persuasion, both authors construct their narratives around principles of an abstract nature, and so are both purveyors of sacred half-truths.