You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her drink
I have a new favourite philosophy segment. It's by W.V.O. Quine and, though not ostensibly, it's covertly a brilliant little demolition of Meinongian objects:
Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes, but this is not the worst of it. Wyman's slum of possibles is a breeding ground for disorderly elements. Take, for instance, the possible fat man in that doorway; and, again, the possible bald man in that doorway. Are they the same possible man, or are they two possible men? How do we decide? How many possible men are there in that doorway? Are there more possible fat ones than thin ones? How many of them are alike? Or would their being alike make them one? Are no two possible things alike? Is this the same as saying it is impossible for two things to be alike? Or, finally, is the concept of identity simply inapplicable to unactualised possibles? But what sense can be found in talking of entities which cannot meaningfully be said to be identical with themselves and distinct from one another?
(W.V.O Quine. "On What There Is")
Actually, because I'm in the mood, have some more favourites:
The best reason for asserting so bluntly that there are no such rights is indeed of precisely the same type as the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no witches and the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no unicorns: every attempt to give good reasons for believing that there are such rights has failed. The eighteenth-century philosophical defenders of natural rights sometimes suggest that the assertions which state that men possess them are self-evident truths; but we know that there are no self-evident truths. Twentieth-century moral philosophers have sometimes appealed to their and our intuitions; but one of the things that we ought to have learned from the history of moral philosophy is that the introduction of the word 'intuition' by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. In the United Nations declaration on human rights of 1949 what has since become the normal UN practice of not giving good reasons for any assertions whatsoever is followed with great rigour. And the latest defender of such rights, Ronal Dworkin, conceded that the existence of such rights cannot be demonstrated, but remarks on this point simply that it does not follow from the fact that a statement cannot be demonstrated that it is not true. Which is true, but could equally be used to defend claims about unicorns and witches.
(Alistair MacIntyre. After Virtue. Third Edition London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 2007. pp. 69-70)
Jumping sideways:
What demanding respect for people as Blacks or as gays requires is that there be some scripts that go with being an African-American or having same-sex desires. There will be proper ways of being black and gay: there will be expectations to be met; demands will be made. It is at this point that someone who takes autonomy seriously will want to ask whether we have not replaced one kind of tyranny with another. If I had to choose between Uncle Tom and Black Power, I would, of course, choose the latter. But I would like not to have to choose. I would like other options. The politics of recognition requires that one’s skin color, one’s sexual body, should be politically acknowledged in ways that make it hard for those who want to treat their skin and their sexual body as personal dimensions of the self. And "personal" doesn’t mean "secret" but "not too tightly scripted," "not too con- strained by the demands and expectations of others."
(K. Anthony Appiah. "Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections." Tanner Lectures On Human Values, 1996. p. 129)
Enough of this name-dropping. A bit about me recently now follows. Tune out at your discretion. Life is, in general, just drifting along. It is, however, drifting with a rather pleasant lassitude. I've now been in a relationship for, something like 8 months now. It's a bit out of character, I'll admit. But he makes me packed lunches, and plans weekends in hotels, and is in general, amazing. It's bizarre for each of us. I haven't really seen anyone else or done anything else in the past 8 months though. Not his fault. More just med taking me from university, and chewing up time. I haven't really put a lot of effort into med this year. But med people are so stupid sometimes. I mean, seriously. Last week there was someone complaining that the Gen Med term requires 3 case reports. I mean, OMG, that's like...12-20 pages of text over 8 weeks OMG. Seriously people, you're not writing an essay on Rawls. Man up. Still, Gen Med has been good. One of my consultants on weekend rounds gave us lectures on Popper, and Wittgenstein, and actually used the phrase "of course, Wittgenstein was an inveterate homosexual." I love him forever and he is awesome. Gen Med and Psych, the only two good terms this year. Well, Geriatrics was OK, but not very interesting.
No, actually, you've just caught up on the past few months of my life. That's it. Well, I guess I could write a brief review of all the new small bars in Perth, but I think I would rather just go to them with company. Who would be up for an afternoon trip to Ezra Pound or Andaluz? (Those two are the best, the rest are a bit rubbish. Well, I can see Helvetica being OK-ish on a summer afternoon, but it's nothing that special)
Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes, but this is not the worst of it. Wyman's slum of possibles is a breeding ground for disorderly elements. Take, for instance, the possible fat man in that doorway; and, again, the possible bald man in that doorway. Are they the same possible man, or are they two possible men? How do we decide? How many possible men are there in that doorway? Are there more possible fat ones than thin ones? How many of them are alike? Or would their being alike make them one? Are no two possible things alike? Is this the same as saying it is impossible for two things to be alike? Or, finally, is the concept of identity simply inapplicable to unactualised possibles? But what sense can be found in talking of entities which cannot meaningfully be said to be identical with themselves and distinct from one another?
(W.V.O Quine. "On What There Is")
Actually, because I'm in the mood, have some more favourites:
The best reason for asserting so bluntly that there are no such rights is indeed of precisely the same type as the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no witches and the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no unicorns: every attempt to give good reasons for believing that there are such rights has failed. The eighteenth-century philosophical defenders of natural rights sometimes suggest that the assertions which state that men possess them are self-evident truths; but we know that there are no self-evident truths. Twentieth-century moral philosophers have sometimes appealed to their and our intuitions; but one of the things that we ought to have learned from the history of moral philosophy is that the introduction of the word 'intuition' by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. In the United Nations declaration on human rights of 1949 what has since become the normal UN practice of not giving good reasons for any assertions whatsoever is followed with great rigour. And the latest defender of such rights, Ronal Dworkin, conceded that the existence of such rights cannot be demonstrated, but remarks on this point simply that it does not follow from the fact that a statement cannot be demonstrated that it is not true. Which is true, but could equally be used to defend claims about unicorns and witches.
(Alistair MacIntyre. After Virtue. Third Edition London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 2007. pp. 69-70)
Jumping sideways:
What demanding respect for people as Blacks or as gays requires is that there be some scripts that go with being an African-American or having same-sex desires. There will be proper ways of being black and gay: there will be expectations to be met; demands will be made. It is at this point that someone who takes autonomy seriously will want to ask whether we have not replaced one kind of tyranny with another. If I had to choose between Uncle Tom and Black Power, I would, of course, choose the latter. But I would like not to have to choose. I would like other options. The politics of recognition requires that one’s skin color, one’s sexual body, should be politically acknowledged in ways that make it hard for those who want to treat their skin and their sexual body as personal dimensions of the self. And "personal" doesn’t mean "secret" but "not too tightly scripted," "not too con- strained by the demands and expectations of others."
(K. Anthony Appiah. "Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections." Tanner Lectures On Human Values, 1996. p. 129)
Enough of this name-dropping. A bit about me recently now follows. Tune out at your discretion. Life is, in general, just drifting along. It is, however, drifting with a rather pleasant lassitude. I've now been in a relationship for, something like 8 months now. It's a bit out of character, I'll admit. But he makes me packed lunches, and plans weekends in hotels, and is in general, amazing. It's bizarre for each of us. I haven't really seen anyone else or done anything else in the past 8 months though. Not his fault. More just med taking me from university, and chewing up time. I haven't really put a lot of effort into med this year. But med people are so stupid sometimes. I mean, seriously. Last week there was someone complaining that the Gen Med term requires 3 case reports. I mean, OMG, that's like...12-20 pages of text over 8 weeks OMG. Seriously people, you're not writing an essay on Rawls. Man up. Still, Gen Med has been good. One of my consultants on weekend rounds gave us lectures on Popper, and Wittgenstein, and actually used the phrase "of course, Wittgenstein was an inveterate homosexual." I love him forever and he is awesome. Gen Med and Psych, the only two good terms this year. Well, Geriatrics was OK, but not very interesting.
No, actually, you've just caught up on the past few months of my life. That's it. Well, I guess I could write a brief review of all the new small bars in Perth, but I think I would rather just go to them with company. Who would be up for an afternoon trip to Ezra Pound or Andaluz? (Those two are the best, the rest are a bit rubbish. Well, I can see Helvetica being OK-ish on a summer afternoon, but it's nothing that special)