🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9889@duke.cs.duke.edu>, mps@duke (Michael P. Smith) writes:
>I know that I am sitting here, by this computer, wearing shorts,
>holding this book in my hands, and so on.  I know that FOL is complete
>and compact, and higher-order logics are not.  I know that whales are
>mammals, that Great Britain has a monarch but France does not, that,
>ounce-for-ounce, ice cream has more calories that carrots, that I
>might be wrong about any of these things.  But I don't think I am,
>else I wouldn't say that I know them.

    I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because
    of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.  I know I am
    seated, my hands on my knees, because of the pressure against
    my rump, against the soles of my feet, against the palms of
    my hands, against my knees.  Against my palms the pressure is
    of my knees, but what is it that presses against my rump, a-
    gainst the soles of my feet?  I don't know.  My spine is not
    supported.  I mention these details to make sure I am not ly-
    ing on my back, my legs raised and bent, my eyes closed. [...]
    Ah yes, I am truly bathed in tears.  They gather in my beard
    and from there, when it can hold no more--no, no beard, no
    hair either, it is a great smooth ball I carry on my should-
    ers, featureless, but for the eyes, of which only the sockets
    remain.  And were it not for the distant testimony of my palms,
    my soles, which I have not yet been able to quash, I would
    gladly give myself the shape, if not the consistency, of an
    egg, with two holes no matter where to prevent it from burst-
    ing, for the consistency is more like that of mucilage. [...]
				--Samuel Beckett _The Unnameable_

I'd like to throw in, as I'm wont to do, one major plug for the works
of Samuel Beckett.  His novels can be very difficult reading, but they
are profound, sardonic, blackly humorous, and--the reason that I am
posting this here--touch to the core of many philosophical problems.
His works are open to multitudes of interpretations as few others have
ever been.

For example, critics sometimes like to read _Watt_ as if it is about a
world where logical positivism is *really* true.  There is no crueler
way to harpoon a theory than that.  One sometimes feel that Beckett is
writing those very silences that Wittgenstein ordered us to engage in
at the end of _Tractatus_.  I personally believe that Watt's analysis
of the "dog feeding" problem he runs into in the novel is a required
tour de force for anyone interested in appreciating how--or even that
or whether--science works.

(Curiously enough, "Wattgenstein" is one of the few interpretations--
perhaps the only one--that Beckett has ever expressly commented on.
He denied it.)

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
I should mention .... that I say aporia without knowing what it means.