Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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 al...

The old man thought, looking back on his life, that there had only been five moments when he had managed to say just the right thing, just the thing that needed to be said just when it was, in a cogent and concise way. Only five. What was of course far more common were memories of the many times when he had said the wrong thing and lived to regret it. Or when he had said the sort-of right thing, but in an unnecessarily verbose or ambiguous way. Or when he hadn't really said anything: when he had stammered or sat or stood in silence until the moment passed. But there were at least those five times. That was something. The first of them came when he was in a geometry class in high school. Way back in a decade well into the previous century, even well into the previous millennium. His teacher had something she wanted to say to everyone [or maybe not, but everyone should be there as a witness to it] that had nothing to do with conveying the genius of the Pythagorean theorem....