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Articles

The World Well-Found

Some say the world is an illusion. Postmodernists claim it is a culturally-constructed ‘interpretation’. In a groundbreaking rebuttal of these sceptics, Susan Feldman argues that the world is just too irritating not to be real.

The ‘real’ world, and our post-modern (modern) unwillingness/inability to detach the ironic, distancing, idealist scare-quotes from ‘real’: is it lost to us? Can it be found again, without a commitment to foundationalism, inference to the best explanation or transcendental argumentation?

Here’s one new attempt: the argument from irritation.¹

Why would the world-cum-construct of consciousness or imposed interpretation be so annoying? I don’t just mean the big things that bug us either: war, pollution, disease, injustice, stupidity. I mean the petty minute by minute stuff that drives us batty.

Take noises. Why construct a world with extraneous irritating noises? Why does the fly drone, the mosquito buzz, the radio emit static, the dog grunt? If the world is a construct of consciousness or an interpretation imposed by culture, why at this level of annoying detail? If the constructed world needs flies (for the construct of the ecosystem, or whatever) why do they have to buzz? Female mosquitoes don’t, and they perform their (irritating) ecosystem role quite nicely.

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