A big part of the point of NPOV is that if you don't agree with
postmodernists like Lyotard (quoted below), you can write carefully and
clearly, striving for neutrality as best you can manage, and be
satisfied that the result is useful.
And if you are in agreement with Lyotard, and regard the pursuit of
knowledge as a language game, you can still play. "If there are no
rules, there is no game"... and the game we are playing is NPOV.
Carl Beckhorn wrote:
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 07:47:58PM -0400,
WJhonson(a)aol.com wrote:
Essentially the same logic applies to your above
statement.
"Neutral point-of-view" is not a point-of-view, it is the absence of any
point-of-view.
I don't think there is much support in contempory critical theory for
the idea that a writer can write without presenting a point of view, or
that a reader can read without a point of view. Trying to pretend that
we have no point of view will only make us blind to our own viewpoint.
- Carl
--
It is useful to make the following three observations about language
games. The first is that their rules do not carry within themselves
their own legitimation, but are the object of a contract, explicit or
not, between players (which is not to say that the players invent the
rules). The second is that if there are no rules, there is no game,
that even an infinitesimal modification of one rule alters the nature
of the game, that a “move” or utterance that does not satisfy the
rules does not belong to the game they define. The third remark is
suggested by what has just been said: every utterance should be thought
of as a “move” in a game.
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition
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