Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  All these 'school shooting' stories are starting to look the same. Except perhaps for this one. Because with this one we get a controversy over the use of the word "bro." There was an active shooter in the halls of Oxford High. One particular classroom followed the protocol they had learned on 'shooter drills.' They sheltered in place -- locking the door, taping the windows. So far as I can tell, there was no teacher in the room at the time. One of the students seems to have been 'in charge.' Then came a knock on the door. The voice that presumably belonged to the knocker said that he was from the sheriff's office and "it's safe to come out."   In-charge guy, "We're not willing to take that risk right now." Voice from outside, "Come to the door and look at my badge, bro."  I'm impressed that the students in that class had the operational common sense to understand that sheriff's deputies don't cal...

Recently in my twitter feed I encountered a use without explanation of the initials NLP (of course tweets don't allow for much by way of explanation). I wasn't familiar with them, so I did some googling, and was left unsure whether the tweeter had meant "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" or "Natural Language Processing." Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP1) is a fringe-science therapy in the manner of EST or even Scientology, using language that suggests a Chomskian foundation, though the impressive language is just for show. Natural Language Processing (NLP2) on the other hand, is a field of computer engineering that seeks to give computers the ability to understand and speak English, French, Mandarin, etc. ... and ideally to pass the Turing test. The phrase behind NLP2 seems straightforward and commonsensical, although it refers to a demanding and technical body of scientific work. The phrase behind NLP1, on the other hand, seems like it must refer to s...

The motion picture academy is givingout its big awards this weekend, but I've been thinking recently about the sappy old movie, Bells of St. Mary's. Bing Crosby, as Father O'Malley, is in charge of a parochial school. One of the students, Patsy, is failing (a course taught by Sister Mary Benedict, played by Ingrid Bergman, who here is simply the sexiest nun in Hollywood nun-portrayal history). O'Malley helps Patsy out, even ghost writing an essay Patsy has to submit, because Bergman's sticking to her high standards. The essay is supposed to be about "my favorite sense," and the Sister expects some students to write about why they love various sights, others about why they love various sounds, smells, etc. But under O'Malley's tutelage, Patsy comes to understand that the idea of "common sense" is our faculty of combining the reports of all those special senses into one rounded perception of the world about us. Its a very good ex...