Memorandum

this was such a snappy quote, i had to put it down somewhere i'd remember it.

"And who-so seith of trouthe I varie,
Bid him proven the contrarie."

(Chaucer, The House of Fame)

My belief is almost surely false

I'm perplexed. Arnold Zwicky at the Language Log just wrote,

Try this little experiment: ask a number of friends (linguists or not) how long they think the idiom the whole nine yards has been around; if they're over 30, ask them if they remember reading or hearing it when they were young. I myself believe that it was in common use when I was in high school and college (in the 50s and 60s).

My belief is almost surely false, since much tedious digging by lexicographic types has gotten attestation of the idiom back only to the early 70s. I still find this astonishing.

Zwicky acknowledges in two consecutive sentences (a) that he believes an expression was in common use in the 1950s, and (b) that this expression "almost surely" was not in common use in the 1950s. He has just asserted "I believe P; but P is almost surely false". This is a form of expression which philosophers (following Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore) claim you just can't say--utter nonsense--and I've always been inclined to agree with them. The canonical example is, "I believe it is raining; but it is not raining". (More precisely, you can't assert such a thing. You can say it in non-asserting contexts, like "Suppose I believe it is raining, but it is not raining.") And yet here is Arnold Zwicky asserting it loud and clear--and worse, I seem to understand what he is talking about. Maybe. I can't tell.

The problem, you see, is that normally when you assert something, you are putting the force of your beliefs behind it. If I tell you (sincerely and without qualification) that it is not raining, you have the right to conclude that I believe it is not raining. But if I also tell you that I believe that it is raining, then it would seem that I believe two contradictory statements.

It seems like Zwicky is describing believing as a purely perceptual experience, without any connection to what he takes to be true. He's treating "believe" like "seem to see": you can say "I seem to see that it is raining, but it is almost surely not raining", in which you are describing on the one hand a subjective experience you are having involving images of falling water, and on the other hand your beliefs about what is objectively the case about the weather. But "I believe it is raining" doesn't work the same way, because you can't drive a wedge between your beliefs about the world and, well, your beliefs about the world. You see the problem?

Maybe Zwicky is treating himself as two distinct people. We relativize other people's beliefs all the time: there's nothing weird if I say, "Arnold believes it is raining, but it is almost surely not raining." But to adopt that same detachment toward yourself...the mind boggles.

My other roommates are also cool

Eric: "She's sixty-five, so she really knows how to throw a party."

I can't think of any particular recent Sung-Woo utterances. But he does have a secret admirer, and that certainly counts for something in the keeping-me-entertained department.

Free advice to everybody: people are a lot more interesting than no people. Keep a few around, if you can.

Some good advice

"My advice to students is to be born in 1943, and get your Ph.D. by 1968," [Prof. John Perry] told his listeners. "Because everybody got nice offers in 1968, but by 1969 the bottom dropped out of the job market and it's been out ever since."

(Campus Reports, June 10, 1998)

On Me

i can't speak a word of the person i am.
you can ask, and i'll say what i see,
but the flittingest fact swoops to unspeak my sham.
all i know is what i want to be.

now, to be--that stuff's real, every wisdom will say,
and to want--merely myth, to be sure.
but reality fades (and may god haste the day);
still the myth (by and large) may endure.

I love my roommate

Chris: "Dude, I'm gonna marry you--not marry you like I'm gonna marry you--like--I'm gonna marrify you."

Why study philosophy?

I don't know if any of you care about this question, but hey, since when has this blog been about the questions you care about? That's what I thought. Thus, my apologia:

Claim: Our most tenacious dogmas are not those we assert, but those we assume. Lots of people are pretty quick to question assertions, and even check them from time to time. But rarely do we give a second (or first) look to the things the people around us (and by consequence, we ourselves) take for granted--for better or for disastrous. Philosophy (on one characterization) is the study of what everyone takes for granted.

Claim: The apparatus of philosophizing must be kept in good repair--knowing an assertion from an argument, or a premise from a conclusion. Everyone uses these tools, but they are easy to misuse (c.f. the opinions page of your favorite newspaper). The philosopher's job (on another characterization) is to clean, hone, apply and train others in the application of tools for being reasonable.

Claim: People (like me) ask--or are asked--or are plagued with--deep questions about knowledge, reality, God, themselves, and so forth. Ignored, these questions fester. Treated superficially, they cripple. Addressed frankly and diligently, they heal and strengthen.

Claim: Honest grappling with philosophical questions is essential training in humility. C.f. David Hume: "...the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy...."

Claim: To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if you do not have good philosophy, you will have bad philosophy; there is no such thing as no philosophy. Therefore, injunctions like St. Paul's, "See to it that no one captivate you with an empty, seductive philosophy according to human tradition" (Col. 2.8)--far from warning against studying philosophy--are (at least for some of us) a command to do so--and to do so well, and with much trembling.

Claim: I like philosophy. And I think I'm reasonably good at it. Ergo (and in light of the foregoing), why not give it a stab?