The nail in the coffin of my brief career as a linguist was probably a seminar I took that winter about the philosophy of language. The aim of this seminar was to formulate a theory that would explain to a Martian "what it is that we know when we know a language." I could not imagine a more objectless, melancholy project. The solution turned out to consist of a series of propositions having the form "'Snow is white' is true if snow is white." The professor, a gaunt logician with a wild mane of red hair, wrote this sentence on the board during nearly every class, and we would discuss why it wasn't trivial. Outside the window, snow piled deeper and deeper.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Up from theory ...
... Confessions of an Accidental Literary Scholar. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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Paraphrasing a famous fellow spouting during an infamous moment, perhaps it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you run into other problems. Some cultures (especially including Inuit, I am told) have a number of words for "snow," and--of course--it would be nearly impossible for anyone to agree upon the exact representation of the word "white."
Actually, what it all boils down to is this: this is another example of certain academics justifying their existence by concocting esoteric ways of thinking about thing (while these same academics have no way of actually contributing to the advancement of society). The absurdity of it all extends to the fact that academia fosters this kind of navel gazing.