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I think it's significant that the distinction Philosophy 101 professors always tell students to make between what they "think" and what they "feel" doesn't come naturally.... and never does. The experience of thinking, particularly of trying to figure out what the source of a feeling of discomfort it, is difficult to detach from feeling. It starts there. And I suspect there are associated feelings for various stages of thinking, in which there's probably a lot of interpersonal variation. (What else is certainty but a feeling? Kripke too confuses a feeling of confidence in knowing how to go on with grasping a rule.) *** Linearity:Holism::mono-tasking:multitask Linearity is more enjoyable ("flow"), more 'sequential' in modes-of-learning speak, but also is elusive for me. I like the kind of thinking that just happens, like a change of aspect. But it's frustrating because there is no method for making it happen. It's a passive action both in having no recipe and in feeling passive. (There are 'basic actions' which have no recipe but do not feel passive--e.g. raising an arm). [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<end [...] note.>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] I think it's significant that the distinction Philosophy 101 professors always tell students to make between what they "think" and what they "feel" doesn't come naturally.... and never does. The experience of thinking, particularly of trying to figure out what the source of a feeling of discomfort it, is difficult to detach from feeling. It starts there. And I suspect there are associated feelings for various stages of thinking, in which there's probably a lot of interpersonal variation. (What else is certainty but a feeling? Kripke too confuses a feeling of confidence in knowing how to go on with grasping a rule.) *** Linearity:Holism::mono-tasking:multitasking. Linearity is more enjoyable ("flow"), more 'sequential' in modes-of-learning speak, but also is elusive for me. I like the kind of thinking that just happens, like a change of aspect. But it's frustrating because there is no method for making it happen. It's a passive action both in having no recipe and in <i>feeling</i> passive. (There are 'basic actions' which have no recipe but do not feel passive--e.g. raising an arm). <End Mental Note.> |
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From The Eye: "The situation was becoming a curious one. I could already count three versions of Smurov, while the original remained unknown. This occurs in scientific classification. Long ago, Linnaeus described a common species of butterfly, adding the laconic note 'in pratis Westmanniae.' Time passes, and in the laudable pursuit of accuracy, new investigators name the various southern and Alpine races of this common species, so that soon there is not a spot left in Europe where one finds the nominal race and not a local subspecies. Where is the type, the model, the original? Then, at last, a grave entemologist discusses in a detailed paper the whole complex of named races and accepts as the representative of the typical one the almost 200-year-old, faded Scandinavian specimen collected by Linneaus; and this identification sets everything right" (53-4). "What difference did it make to me whether she were stupid or intelligent, or what her childhood had been like, or what books she red, or what she thought about the universe? I really knew nothing about her, blinded as I was by that burning loveliness which replaces everything else and justifies everything, and which, unlike a human soul (often accessible and possessible), can in no way be appropriated, just as one cannot include among one's belongings the colors of ragged sunset clouds above black houses, or a flower's smell that one inhales endlessly, with tense nostrils, to the point of intoxication, but cannot draw completely out of the corolla . . . . What I needed from Vanya I could never have taken for my perpetual use and possession anyway, as one cannot possess the tint of the cloud or the scent of the flower" (70-1). One direction in which these quotes point in common with Sebastian Knight is that objectivity doesn't matter in certain realms--especially those of personal identity and perceptual/emotional experiences. The objective identity of the person one loves isn't required for the love to be real. A man who may or may not be a ghost is tracking down others' impressions of someone--who unsurprisingly turns out in the end to be himself. He proclaims that he is nothing but an eye. I'm not sure I can make much of the being-an-eye theme (which immediately makes me picture Emerson's 'transparent eyeball'); that the role he takes is passive does not seem necessary for the other things to be true. Perhaps it is significant, though, in relation to the idea that sensory qualities cannot be taken out of experience and into the objective realm. They can only be seen with eyes, etc. What is especially congenial to me, though, is the 'family resemblance' theory of personal identity (like that of the 'many-sided flower' in The Waves. The idea seems to be that the 'true self,' much like essences in a Wittgensteinian theory of meaning, is completely illusory; there is only a set of different instances. And of course I do like the idea that one can be happy without something 'objective' (read: solid, socially recognized) which is the cause of one's happiness. (And if he's right about the ineffability of things like happiness, it shouldn't matter anyway.) I think I turned to Sebastian Knight when I did because it offered hope--that I could manage to arrive at something real and redeeming entirely through my mind. 'Entirely' is not quite true, though--at least, not for me. But there are certain transformations of the spirit that can take place. This falls clearly into the category 'novels about the slipperiness of one's experience of oneself' (mostly from the early 20th century)--those in which characters feel invisible and go on to somehow affirm their reality as sippery observers. This was a revelation to me in high school; less profound to me now. I suspect there's something in Sass's Madness and Modernism about the simultaneous appearances of the ideas that with respect to the self, meaning, and things perceieved, there are only instances, a series of versions, perspectives, uses, with no center. |
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"it" being why Heidegger sounds like that. His dissertation was on Scotus. Duns Scotus: "Furthermore, what is a necessary condition for a cause's causing cannot be had from the caused. For in that case the cause, insofar as it is sufficient for the causing, would be caused by the caused. And so the cause would be the cause of itself and to that extent could give to its cause the causing of the caused itself" (par. 96. Ordinatio, II, d3, part 1, q4).
"The human being is rather 'thrown' by Being itself into the truth of Being, so that ek-sisting in this fashion he might guard the truth of Being, in order that beings might appear in the light of Being as the beings they are" ("Letter on Humanism").
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The phenomenology of philosophy, contined. When I am actually thinking about something I am wrapped up in it. I can't think about anything else, and it doesn't fit well into time-slots. Any project takes me over completely. The focus is the same kind of focus I have when the subject of thought is of a more personal nature. It's the same kind of focus I have when I am actually in a crisis. The way I read when I am actually 'on' is like a raider: out-of-order, pinpointing the thing that I need to know. I feel like I ought to 'really' read things, slowly, outlining and making notes. But I've discovered that that sort of reading is only useful afterwards if it is also somewhat raider-like. Thinking about the problems of philosophy also requires that one see the world (and oneself, perhaps especially oneself) as flexible in a way we do not usually take it to be. When I first studied philosophy what impressed me most was the way every philosopher offered a different way of seeing the very structure of the world. (My imagination is better at this sort of possibility than those that involve fictional persons.) This is easier when one has no sense of 'normal'; as a teenager the world really was full of gaps to be filled. They have filled themselves in somewhat, and I do have a hard time 'abstracting' in certain circumstances (e.g. in class; this has always been true: even in high school my constant awareness of my physical person and environment got in the way; this is also why I don't work well in public, usually). But my constantly dwelling in naturally altered states ensures that normal is never fully achieved. |
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I consistenly react negatively to an artificial sweetener. But it's not aspartame; it's acesufame potassium (or the combination of aspartame & acesulfame potassium). Unintended experiment: I have some Diet Dr. Pepper & some Diet Cherry Coke. I noticed that after I drank the Coke, every time, my forehead went numb & tingly, and my ears went stuffy. This isn't an unknown set of sensations, but the causation seems fairly direct. If I drank the Dr. Pepper, even if I drank two of them, it didn't happen. As it happens, the Pepper is sweetened with aspartame, the Coke with a combination of aspartame & acesulfame K. The Internet says the potassium sweetener can cause allergic reactions in people allergic to sulfites--which might explain why I get exactly the same sensations after I've been drinking red wine. Also, it's amusing that I can take Accutane for 5 months with none of the fabled horrible side effects, and am brought down by soda. In the meantime.... anyone want my Diet Cherry Coke? (I know you don't. None of you live in Bloomington. And I've just written a post accusing it of bad things. But it's the only way I could think of to end this post.) |
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Discussion on rule-following & phil. of action, referencing the papers I was referencing then; it finally became clear to me why my approach was so odd. I was, of course, employed in addressing a different problem. The normal analogy to make between the two areas is that both are concerned with normativity-grounding: e.g. in what do our rules for action/right action/meaning have their basis? Is there something in which my following the rule consists? And thus we get the same regress argument against mental entities(interpretations, judgments, etc.) in which being guided consists in both. This is all well and good, but I don't really care about normativity. That is, I don't feel worried about its..solidity. And I'm vaguely disturbed by the thought of looking for that in which right action consists. I do, however, love a good regress. And a good regress can have a number of contributing factors, and I think there are more here than the desire for something that "meaning plus by 'plus'" consists in. At the time, I was struck by the moment of understanding a rule ("in a flash") and knowing how to go on. This, it seemed, was remarkably like what happens when we learn how to do some physical action, and literally know how to go on. What does that consist in? Phenomenologically, it seems to consist of very little--we can articulate. In fact there is a conspicuous absense of things we can about what happens when we understand some idea or how to do something. Both approaches ask for a kind of grounding, but the grounding I am interested in is not as obviously justificatory. Its only clear purpose is to make clear what happens at these moments, and why it is the way it is. Its purpose is only the elucidation of phenomenology, and of the way that phenomenology correctly relates to our capacities for language and reasoning. And the 'blindness' at the root of knowing what to do or how to go on may be a by-product of the regress argument-favorable approach: asking for something in the mind that will explain something about our experience. If what we find is an ordinary-language mental entity it won't be a completely convincing explanation, since it will be too close to what needs explaining. If what we find is completely external, it won't seem apt as an explanation of experience. ******* This generality about regress arguments was discussed at the time. Further confirmation: Yes, I have absolutely come to the right place. But Yes, I am still comepletely crazy. |
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A few years ago I was very excited by the possibility that ordinary language philosophy need not be negative in tone and behaviorist in content. The reason--to the extent I can reconstruct it--was the insight I assume I got from McDowell that the things referred to in various neighborhoods of 'ordinary language' should be thought of as having the ontological status they have in ordinary language. This is what I have taken to be meant by "Wittgensteinian realism," although 'realism' might be too much of a leap for a provision that we accord something whatever status it seems to have. On reflection, this seems too superficial to count as a theory of anything. But at the time I though it would make ordinary language philosophy accurate. It is simply a call to pay more attention to what we're actually saying; not to de-throne all of our mental terms (as a more Rylean version of Wittgenstein would have it). This may seem anathema to the other major current in the PI, which warns that language is misleading us. Simultaneously, he is asking us to pay attention to the way we ordinarily talk, and not to be mislead by similarities between different turns of phrase. The idea, I assume, is that paying attention to how we actually talk will show us that the different turns of phrase should not be lumped together. There are different 'times' for each, different circumstances, feelings, etc. We easily lose track of what we mean by generalizations about abstractions seems to be the take-home message of the PI. And I agree; details are necessary. But the details needn't all be behavioral. It is hard to disconnect anything from behavior, in a living human being; behavioral connections to anything are inevitable. The Rylean urge to deny the existence of philosophers' mental entities is understandable, because in a philosophical context "beliefs" and "desires" and "representations" often seem mysterious--precisely because they're taken out of normal situations. It's hard to recognize anything familiar in them. But the same urge applied to ordinary mental entities is out of line, for there are inevitable behavioral connections to the ways we talk about such things. And there are dispositions, which cover all the cases in which the subject actually doesn't manifest any behavior corresponding to the state. For any distinction, however fine, between mental states, there could be dispositions to do or say something under certain circumstances that go along with that distinction. Often ordinary language philosophy is taken as a claim about what grounds the meanings of words. The Augustinian picture of language-learning (ostensive definition of nouns) isn't right because it requires us to have concepts prior to words, to be able to ask "What is that called?" (which of course we do after we've learned a language, but not initially). Individuation doesn't happen prior to the learning of language. Ideological Wittgensteinians take this to apply to adults too; we cannot ask what something is without first knowing what it is. (Meno, I love you and your paradox.) So no individuation of an entitiy we haven't learned originally, as it were, counts. But it seems clear that this is not the way things work. We can ask, what is that? And be answered, or find answers ourselves. These answers have to have some connection to the words we know the meanings for now; otherwise they would be jibberish. But one tie is all that is needed. It may be nonsensical to call into question all of one's beliefs at the same time, but less than all could be made sense of. The constraint on meaning that we get from our original learning of language is that what we say and understand must have its roots there; it is not that we cannot go beyond it while still making sense.
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So this is where we answer questions as if we were important people being interviewed; or students of the month. (The reward for being student of the month at my elementary school was that you got to post your answers to questions like "What's your favorite TV show?" on a wall at school.) (Logical conclusion: what will motivate people now?) There are awkward situations on the internet that could never exist elsewhere. People about whom you occasionally wonder, "what if X, Y, and Z were all in a room together again," where that scenario will never, thankfully, occur, can be found commenting on mutual 'friend's' posts--leaving weird evidence for everyone of this seeminly significant non-encounter. Also there are the Friends With Whom One Has Parted Ways--the actual friends, I mean, with whom obviously some kind of uncomfortable gap needs to be crossed, which, it seems, does not get crossed. (I have tried in some cases, with, literally, no results.) It's kind of like inviting someone to a party who comes but never speaks to you. Is it worth it? I suppose. Maybe. I don't know. |
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At a certain point, in high school, I realized I was a person. In a deeper sense than being someone responsible for algebra and French and my weirdness. It was when someone confided in me, someone who seemed capable of making sense as a person in a way that my peers, ever enigmatic, did not. And at that moment I felt like something vast and important had been bestowed upon me. I could be of use to people. It was like being entrusted with the care of something. But this feeling was hard to hold on to. Even in the context of the relationships in which it occurred, it didn't seem to mean anything; someone's confidence did not mean they were my friend. In the presence of more interesting company I became invisible, the importance melted away, the moment of meaning was meaningless in the context of normal life. Yet I never lost my belief that becoming open to another person is the best thing one can do--aesthetically, emotionally, and because that was what was strikingly missing from every interaction I had after a certain point. Superficiality makes things go smoothly; professionalism and prudishness require it in most spheres. The act of talking about anything remotely personally weighty with someone is disparaged as "dumping" and "emotional vampirism." We glide around invisibly. (Andre: "We don't see the world; we don't see ourselves; we don't see how our actions affect other people" - My Dinner With Andre, near the end.) This invisibility is comforting in a way, because it lets us avoid having to deal with our troubles when we're out in the world, lets us avoid the anxiety of revealing them to soneone else; but--fan though I am of avoidance--this is not ultimately what anyone needs. I know I'm supposed at this point in my life and career to be jumping on the bandwagon, but I cannot. Not that I know where that leaves me. I expect that for these things to be otherwise every institution in society would have to change, I have no idea in what direction. This was no small part of my decision to go to a college of 400 people--but people became numb to each other there, too, and it too initially felt quite impersonal. It is possible that a reverent attitude towards people is just hard to come by. I accept invisibility in certain groups because it seems like it couldn't be otherwise; and because I would prefer not to be abused. And when someone seems particularly reverent of others I find myself wondering whether there's an ulterior commitment. (This is important: if someone's kindness has its source in a religion they might not be as open as they seem, and might have strange moral judgments.) Of course, distance is necessary, civilizing, and in many aspects of life empowering. Dreams come from stepping back and re-imagining the self. But I haven't stopped feeling like I need a new kind of religion; a kind that isn't institutionalized or institutionalizable--and what I mean by this is a method, a trick, a means of holding on to that feeling of blessedness (or Eliot's "refining fire"): in Andre's words, "a new language, a new way of speaking between people that's a new kind of poetry; the poetry of the dancing bee that tells us where the honey is." |
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Re: "The Self-Thinking Thought" ....So Anselm's proof is not merely meant to show that God exists, but that there is within you an infinitely generous impulse. That impulse, that state of mind, is being-with-God. And that is something one can discover through one's friends. In that case it's more of an explanation than a proof, of the sort of thing that 'knowing that God exists' means. And the logic of the proof (that the greatest thing of all must exist; otherwise it would not be great) doesn't seem relevant to showing anyone the way to recognizing an infinitely generous impulse. But, though a long-time hater of Anselm's proof, I'll recognize the accessibility, as a state of mind, of the latter. |
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I've noticed that the kinds of writing I am most at home reading are those that others are most likely to say they don't understand: e.g. Cavell, Emerson, the later Wittgenstein, some poetry (though I don't read much poetry anymore; too moving). Students, professors, and everyone else frowns at these texts, and I don't know why. I have been assuming that this differences reflects a failure on my part to require a high level of precision in order to understand something. There is at least an emotional difference in that my reaction to these things is not "that's confusing!" but "wow! I now need to read this two more times and try to map out what's going on." According to the Berlin dichotomy, wherein "the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing" I suspect these guys are hedgehogs (if there is one big thing in the later Wittgenstein, the one big thing is that there are instead many little things). Read this way, the distinction really marks level of abstraction. There is also an element of foxiness in each, though, since the writing of each is colorful, and draws from many sources. But they are not "foxy" in the way that Shakespeare or Montaigne are (neither of which I particularly like, in case what I like happens to be a good guide to the real features of these things). The precisifying tools of contemporary philosophy are a way of attempting to concretize the relationships between abstract ideas. It is still faster to move outside of them, if you can. They may also function as evidence, and for some as aids to understanding. (I often find they stand in the way of understanding; though they may be of help in communicating my thoughts to others. I simply can't hold many stages of a proof in my mind, as I can a monologue or a day.) I never, of course, try to write like Cavell or Emerson; I'm not even sure I could if I tried. But I always feel found-out whenever someone else says "X is so hard to understand!" and I say, "Really? That's what I love!" And I wonder if it's a real failing of mine that's being exposed, and if it's related to the difficulty I have finding people with whom I can think in an intuitive (natural) way, and if, failing or not, I will ever find a way of compensating for it. |
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In my very odd senior essay were the two things I've been interested in all along (and in the earlier ones too, but it comes out well here): intelligibility and action. The question was, how is it possible to create something new? On one side the question, as I saw it, was a pragmatic one--literally, 'how am I to go about doing this?' But the created thing, whatever it is, needs to be in some relation to all the things that existed before; and yet be new. So the other side of the question is, what is it about the world or our minds that makes this possible, and how does it work? Parallel the Meno Paradox: how can we seek what we don't already know? Parellel Kant's question: how are synthetic a priori judgmentts (which add to what we already know about the concepts involved, but do so through reasoning) possible? I love reducing the history of philosophy to a single kind of question over and over again. The Meno Paradox also admits of a pragmatic reading. It's my interest in the pragmatic sides of these questions in conjunction with the semantic or metaphysical sides that leads me afoul of the traditional foci in philosophy. I don't know whether the two are necessarily linked; but my interest in the pragmatic question probably comes from the sense that, if we're going to look for data a good place to look might be the mind of the person creating or learning something new. Partly this is my inclination because it's what I'm best at; describing my experience in excruciating detail may be my best skill. For the pragmatic side of the question, a first-personal answer is demanded. Whether the first-personal answer has any deep connection to the non-pragmatic side of the question is what I need to figure out. i.e. Are first-personal answers in any way demanded by the non-pragmatic sides of the questions for the reasons of, say, the concepts involved? |
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(Inspired by the NYT magazine article, obviously.) I've been thinking lately about how, if Buddhism works, it requires you to walk a very fine line between letting an emotion run away with you and putting it out of sight. Practitioners insist, anyway, that it is not just escapism; but for myself, I don't know what "sitting with" can mean in this circumstance other than "detaching from," or "floating above." Detaching from thinga and floating above them are important; but I would never call them anyone's ideal state. They're like fevers that immobilize you until you're healthy again. Important in emergencies, as long as there's some determination that will take over and drag you along, some transcendental ego that's all-muscle. It feels almost comforting to be able to rely on it. That said, when I am in this state, I spend most of my time thinking about how to be myself again. I imagine and reimagine, write and rewrite every feeling, go through my old journals, set myself projects having to do with them, wander around in my endless memory. I've wondered whether that re-imagining itself does any work; whether it might not be a kind of illusion, since there can be no set facts about myself when I'm in that state. I could wander around forever in there, like the stereotypical character stuck in a world of illusion, who, however much she explores it, will not find the missing sense of "reality." I've susepected that what is required to spring out of it is something of another kind entirely. (And having done it many times, I still can't say how it happens. Not unlike the beginnings of actions generally.) But I wouldn't recommend becoming aloof from oneself as a primary way of life; it's negation, to use a Sartre word, and as such is a little dangerous. The ability to ignore suffering in oneself is at once beneficial and disturbing: the same ability applied to, or by, others could be disatrous. |
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Blame has for a long time seemed useleess and archaic to me. Saying "look what you did!" does not necessarily help to remedy the situation; it may even make things worse, through making the responsible party resent the excessive blaming; and it may make her inclined to see her responsibility for the bad situation seem inevitable and unchangeable--that there is nothing she can do to make things better at present or to escape from being shamed in the future. Blame reinforces responsibility. That is, ir reinforces the sense that some occurrence was done or controlled by a certain person. Because of this it can help one to become aware of the things that one does, so that one can be more careful in the future. Thus far, it's alright. But reinforcing an agent's connection to her action can have two different effects: it can lead her to think, this is what I've done, because I'm the kind of person who does these things, and there's no escape from that or to think, this is what I've done, and I can use the control that I now see that I had over this action to make things better now and do better things in the future. Blaming a bad action on someone's character seems particularly useless, as it will only lead them down the first path. Changing one's character (whatever that is) seems much harder than changing one's future actions. Yet, some say (Hume) that the criterion of responsibility is whether an action proceeded from an enduring character trait in the agent. And something in that criterion is right: namely, that it seems natural to excuse someone experiencing temporary insanity of some kind, or someone coerced, from at least some of the responsbility for what they do in that state. How to reconcile the intuition that blame often leads down a pernicious and useless path for the responsbile party, and the intution that people are responsible only when their actions stem from enduring character traits? 1. One could say that blame is not necessarily part of responsbility; it's something we do in reaction to an agent's having been responsible for something. 2. Perhaps we need a criterion other than stemming from an enduring character trait; one that does not tempt the agent to think he cannot avoid doing such things in the future. 3. An action's stemming from an enduring character trait does not necessarily mean that the agent will be unable to escape such actions in the future. (...But it is my complaint that this criterion brings us too close to condemning a person, and not an action.) |
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 (Switzerland, 1996.)
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The abstract of a paper by Roy Sorenson, in which he argues that selection for empathy (the method average people prefer for understanding each other) will produce more like-minded people, "which partly solves the problem of other minds." I don't know where to begin. "Stepping into the other guy's shoes works best when you resemble him. After all, the procedure is to use yourself as a model: in goes hypothetical beliefs and desires, out comes hypothetical actions and revised beliefs and desires. If you are structurally analogous to the empathee, then accurate inputs generate accurate outputs-just as with any other simulation. The greater the degree of isomorphism, the more dependable and precise the results. This sensitivity to degrees of resemblance suggests that the method of empathy works best for average people. The advantage of being a small but representative sample of the population will create a bootstrap effect. For as average people prosper, there will be more average descendants and so the degree of resemblance in subsequent generations will snowball. Each increment in like-mindedness further enhances the reliability and validity of mental simulation. With each circuit along the spiral, there is tighter and tighter bunching and hence further empowerment of empathy. The method is self-strengthening and eventually molds a population of hyper-similar individuals--which partly solves the problem of other minds" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LVIII, 1, March 1998). |
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The first time I talk about something I've read with another person, my own idea of it starts to look like a cubist painting: disjointed, with its various parts in odd proportions with respect to one another, the eye drawn in many directions at once, maybe particularly drawn to a point inessentially related to the missing order. |
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Between my undergraduate education and the experience undergraduates here in philosophy courses have.... This is more to the point, and more intellectually rigorous (in terms of the material presented); there is more 'analysis' in what the students hear, since they're hearing it from professional analysts. But there's a kind of reverence that isn't. I miss the sense that each book could be expected to have something to say to my soul, and that I needed to be able to hear it when it did. Being trusted to figure something out on your own confers a sense of honor and responsibility. I like feeling like there is a way of thinking that I need to find, and that finding it will require all my faculties--empathetic, intellectual, aesthetic--to be open, and which itself might involve all of them. |
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The feeling of dry, clean, room-temperature feet on upholstery (sheets in a bed, or a sofa after bathing after swimming). |
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(As if that needed proof.) Evidently most people's blood pressure rises in the morning. Mine dips dramatically around 6:30. Time slows, I start to feel heavy, and if I don't sleep during those hours--no matter how much sleep I've just had--I'll be dizzy for the rest of the morning. (It's tempting, if I've slept from late afternoon to around midnight, to just keep going through this 6 am period and make use of the time. But it's a very bad idea. Exercising at that time doesn't help, either.) If I get up at a 'normal' hour after sleeping I'll often feel a bit sick for awhile. On the bright side, I'm not going to have a stroke anytime soon. Denmark has a special high school for owls. Perhaps I should move to Denmark. |
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the philosophical skeptic asks. Now, with the miracle of digital cameras, you can:
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2 Cases
I assume it's supposed to be abominable because she shouldn't know that Min is on a cruise if she has no good reason to trust George's word. (But, all the same, Min is on a cruise--for which reason we might want to say that Jenn knows this. She has true belief, albeit unjustified.) The abominality must be a formal-epistemological abominality, and not an ordinary one. (B) An even less abominable example.
Now B3 is abominably expressed, but it's not incomprehensible. Turning it around, so that the 1st scenario comes first makes it better. It doesn't strike me as embedding any deep philosophical puzzle. But then, I find possible worlds remarkably uninteresting. (It's been awhile since I've failed to find something puzzling. So I felt like recording the fact.)
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 That's right, the powerbook is shorter. I wondered why the ibook's clothes wouldn't fit it.
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(Something for which there ought to be a name.) |
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Fall 1999, probably "There is a deep mystery in the thoughts and associations that make up what we call a 'world.' I'm not sure whether I want to crack this mystery or present it to people more clearly as mysterious."
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Makes the self smaller, more concentrated, in one mundane way since it can no longer expand to encompass one's house-as-an-extension-of-oneself. This makes it easier to get things done: it's harder to mobilize a scattered entity. ("Herding cats.") Pieces of oneself are everywhere, wherever one's stuff is. (My favorite Dennett-isms: "if you make yourself very, very small you can externalize virtually everything," and its opposite.) |
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Laptops have lately gone widescreen. In spite of the trend, I bought a second 12.1 x 10 apple; it's just small enough to fit in tight places, and almost square. But rectangles, according to the ancient geometers, are better than squares. And a 13.3 x 9 rectangle is closer to the golden ratio than a 12.1 x 10 rectangle. (If I were a real Johnnie, at this point I would do the math.) So perhaps my inclinations are untutored, and the designers have caught on to the true nature of Beauty. |
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