Rejections to Previous Positions

I begin by rejecting several positions proposed by others. Now, before actually proceeding, a methodological remark.

When a theoretical position is dismissed by a historical fact, it is not the theory itself that is dismissed, but the applicability of the theory. Here by applicability it is meant not that the applicability is theoretically not present, but only that the absence of application vis-a-vis to factual, brute-fact reality. There are several disadvantage in dismissing according to the applicability of a theory, rather than by exposing the internal inconsistency and properly theoretic defects of a theory. To name a few. First, facts are subject to, and in fact generated by, interpretations, which rely on another layer of theory. It can be argued that what counts as a coherent theory is by itself subject to theoretical considerations, so rejecting a theory by means of exposing theoretic defects is no better than according to its applicability, but, first, at least the former doesn't need to deal with those theories that needs to explicate the most difficult relationships between the factual and the theoretically possible, and second, the former is stable under revisions of historical facts, which unavoidably happen. Second, dismissing by the applicability of a theory doesn't expose the reason why the rejected theory doesn't work. It might be objected that there's no reason only brute facts, but first, for the sake of understanding we may still want to inquire, since there is no clear proof that a reason doesn't exist, and if it doesn't exist we may still want to know why it doesn't exist, and second, or further, the inquiry into the reason why a theory doesn't work may bring insight into what kind of theory may work. Judging from these two points, it may be appropriate to call this sort of critique external.

Now, most theories of myths are dismissed by external critique, but they are hardly dismissed by means of exposing the internal inconsistency in their theoretical contents, which we may call internal critique. Moreover, sometimes ideological and/or moral considerations are taken as proper reasons to dismiss a theory, which is neither internal nor external and doesn't count as a genuine critique but a sham, false one. Here I shall venture to reject various theories of mythology solely with internal critique, that is, in terms of their properly theoretical content, based on the internal inconsistency, incoherence, epistemological errors of those theories.

Rejecting Naturalism#

It is often argued that mythology is nothing but science turned into poetry. The reason why the presentation is thus chosen being that the poverty of language forced the natural philosophers to express abstract, logical concepts in terms of persons, through the relations between persons, and through human actions such as reproduction. This is often termed as naturalism regarding mythology.
There are deep epistemological problems underlying the position. Before venturing note that the problem is not with conceptualization, but with language expression.

First, how is it possible to decouple conceptualization from means of expression? This may be evaded by arguing that means of conceptualization is prior to expression since otherwise novelty in conceptualization seems impossible. But it may also be the other way around, since people learn new concepts by being given new expressions. Nevertheless, although this is a genuine problem, it doesn't really serve as an argument against naturalism. But we note that this problem of conceptual novelty is a crucial one for our theory of mythology.

Second, a general one. How are the abstract and the concrete distinguished? A red object is more concrete than redness in terms of particularity and in terms of language, but in terms of empirical content, vis-a-vis perception, redness seems to be prior to the red object. Natural philosophy that stems from empirical observation pertains first to sense perception ,then to language abstraction, hence in order that what is observed should be expressed in abstract language that is absent in the languages of the ancients, so that the position is to be defendible, then it seems that only an instance of Platonism/idealism should be adopted.

If epistemologically the position is an instance of Platonism or idealism, according to which a narrative/a category is transcendental or a priori, then it is hard to explain why in languages abstract conceptions and categories - which here is assumed to be distinguished from the anthropological ones - emerged posterior to anthropological terms, and in particular, posterior to anthropological terms that for the present age seem anthropological.

Still further, it can be argued that what is concrete and what is abstract, the determining factor of the distinction between the concrete and the abstract, depends on an account of ontology of the ancients. Then this account either needs to be given as a fact, or be subsumed under a general theory of meta-ontology that explicates how a certain ontology is generated in a certain situation. In either case, the problems still is that what the ancients count as the ontological real couldn't be in conflict with their language and their categories, since natural philosophy is based upon an ontology, not the other way around.

There's still one way that naturalism may make sense: it is the reversal of allegory. What the moderns count as empirical for the ancients might have been the mythological, and vice versa. Hence epistemologically the mythological is prior to the empirical for the ancients. The moderns use the empirical to talk about higher reality, and similarly, the ancients might have used the mythological, which for them are the empirical, to talk about a higher reality that corresponds to the empirical of the moderns.

This is deeper, and is quite insightful. But this is only superficially naturalistic, after all, the mythological is here primordial, unexplained, and the empirical (for the moderns) serves as a way to interpret the mythologies. Not only the ancient natural philosophers may regard mythologies as such, those who adopt this theory is also interpreting mythologies in the same vein in order that they make sense, only with an added layer of projection. Petitio principii, as we don't want to interpret mythologies, but understand their nature. The problem is exactly why metaphorical language is unavoidable. As a matter of fact the language of the moderns are filled with anthropological metaphors, the nature of the so-called "empirical" is as vague as the nature of mythology.

Again, a remark. The problem of allegory has already been mentioned, now an preliminary elaboration: how is allegory formed? What does it mean that an allegory expresses the inexpressible? - by means of synthesizing, or by means of genuine novelty-creation? How does an allegory incite in those who are exposed to it new concepts or categories of understanding etc.?

Finally, another vein of naturalistic explanation. Mythologies are natural philosophies, and the expressions are also correctly used, it is only that the expressions are misunderstood, so they become mythologies. This seemingly plausible theory doesn't explain what's mythology at all: it's not even an explanation, since, even if the theory is factually, historically correct, it tells nothing about mythologies proper: the misunderstood and thus constructed natural philosophies and the associated narratives are mythologies - why and how do these misunderstanding arise?