Arguing With Geeks 11

Import Artifice — Even allowing for a reader of complete objectivity, the interpreting of a text may result in factual errors when it comes to discerning purpose and content. Authorial intent cannot be established with certainty and completeness, never mind the unconscious purpose traceable in the subtle indicators of subtext. The very content of a text may be open to multiple interpretations on account of ambiguity, shifts of significance over time, or simple miscomprehension, on a literal level never mind on the figurative. In so far as these judgements of content and purpose are dependent on judgements of import however, a subjectivity is introduced that can generate errors of a specific type, where the reader introduces an entirely spurious significance that is the product of an unreasonable response — an Import Artifice. “Unreasonable” is, of course informally defined and therefore arguable: as with the Argument by Insignification, conventionality may offer a standard of approximate objectivity by which significance can be deemed idiolectic and idiosyncratic, an eccentric invention, or validated as a more perceptive reading; ISMs will often lead to Import Artifices, but the subcultural semantic associations which lead to them may also legitimise significances within one community that another would consider spurious; accusations of Import Artifices should therefore be interrogated for evidence of a Subtextual Sensitivity Differential.