(urth) Pike's ghost

[David Stockhoff]

On 11/28/2011 6:56 PM, António Marques wrote:
> James Wynn wrote:
>> On 11/28/2011 5:00 PM, António Marques wrote:
>>> - You (as many others) often like to assert "there's no reason to
>>> believe X" when in fact it's merely that "though the odds are for X,
>>> it may well be otherwise".
>>
>> Unfortunately, there are no odds-makers in literary criticism. Perhaps
>> you mean "though THERE ARE REASONS for X, it may well be otherwise".
>> Everybody thinks his theory is the most likely.
>
> This isn't about theories. This is about when something looks like a 
> duck and quacks like a duck. If you want it *not* to be a duck, you'll 
> have to say why you think it isn't a duck. It may perfectly well not 
> be a duck. However, if you don't even care to say why you want it not 
> to be a duck, please don't go around saying 'there's no reason to 
> believe it is a duck'. Because, if it looks like a duck and quacks 
> like a duck, the odds are it is a duck. Presuming it to be a duck is 
> agnostic. 'Agnostic' doesn't mean not taking a stance. It doesn't mean 
> bumping into furniture because that thing that looks like a piece of 
> furniture may or may not be a piece of furniture. Where is literary 
> criticism different? If we're told enlightenment came to Patera Silk 
> in the ball court, the odds are it was in the ball court. The odds are 
> not that it was in Maytera Mint's chambers. Nor are we to say that 
> there is no reason to think it was in the ball court.

This is a simple case, of course. Others are not so simple. I agree, for 
example, that if we read "X is a clone of Y" then we can have a working 
hypothesis that maybe Y robbed the bank, not X who has been falsely 
accused. We have to consider that cloning may be read as identity.

When we see signs that cloning might not produce identical twins---when 
characters have no trouble telling X and Y apart---we need to examine 
our assumptions. That's not the same as asserting that "there is no 
reason to believe" cloning = identity but I can see how they could be 
mistaken.
>
>>> - You (as probably others) seem to believe phenotypic plasticity can
>>> lead to clones being very different from their originals. That is just
>>> not the case in what regards higher animals, the more since the
>>> environments aren't radically different, and specifically it won't
>>> give you two persons with really different faces. Nor do I think that
>>> could have been GW's intention.
>>
>> If Silk is a clone of Typhon, we are probably supposed to believe Silk
>> looked a lot like Typhon when he was young. However, there it is nowhere
>> asserted that either head of Pas looks just like Typhon...unless someone
>> is going to argue that the original Echidna had snakes in her hair and
>> Cilinia had squid arms.
>
> Whether Pas looks like Typhon is a completely different question. Here 
> I was addressing the issue of phenotypes/genotypes.

Do you mean Pas's resemblance to Typhon is purely a matter of artistic, 
i.e., painterly, or for that matter political, license? If so, I agree, 
though the two questions are hardly unrelated.