The First Time Out of Five, Part Two

Some possible answers to this occurred to him. One was simply, "Yes." Or, more broadly, "Yes, I hear you." After all, the only actual question he had been asked was whether he had heard the insinuating statement about the handwriting. He had heard it, so strictly a "yes" was a full and fair answer.

But "yes" alone could be interpreted as meaning "yes, I wrote that." Even "yes, I hear you" without more could be interpreted as something like, "yes, I wrote it and I'm glad you appear to have enjoyed the wit of it." That would never do.

He also thought quite briefly of a response that would be suitable for a math class. He could go to the blackboard, grab a piece of chalk, and draw two circles, labeling them A and B. They would NOT intersect. He could then explain to her and to the whole class that set A consisted of everything he had ever done or contributed to in any way whatsoever, and set B consisted of all letter to any teacher with any reference to a bomb in them.

He would then write the symbolism for the intersection of A and B being the null set. But no ... too complicated and confrontational.

So he said this: "Yes, ma'am I heard you. The letter has nothing to do with me; I had nothing to do with it."

She seemed instantly deflated by this, asking only, "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She had to go on to actually teaching the class material for the day and leaving him be. Whether she continued her Nancy Drew like efforts in some other context, what person or group of persons were actually responsible for that letter ... he would never know of that.

But he would know from that point on that he HAD said the right thing, so it was possible for him to say the right thing in critical moments.

Not very many though. That was just the first out of five.

Comments

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog