[lit-ideas] Is This A Dagger I See Before Me?

Apples in the Basket
 
McCreery "Everyday conversation: "The dog is eating the rug." "Make him  
stop."
Philosopher's conversation: "A knows that 'The dog is eating the rug'  only
if the dog is eating the rug." And so?"
 
-- And so far so good.
 
From you can make "the closest of friends" -- and no better way, trust me,  
than get that _via_ philosophy. (Only philosophers who have studied Aristotle's 
 "Ethica Nichomachea" understand _philosophically_ was Moore and Russell in 
this  passage below -- what 'the very closest of friends' *means*)
 
 
-- From 
 
Jonathan Miller has this exchange between London-born (Irish ancestry)  
philosopher G. E. Moore and Welsh (well, Monmoutshire-born) philosopher B. W. 
E,  
Lord Russell as they meet in Cambridge's Trinity:
 
CD Angel CD ZDM 0777 7 64771 21. 
 
“Portrait from Memory”
 
MILLER: 

“The British philosopher Bertrand Russell was reminiscing on television a  
great deal in those days”. 
 
Presenter: 
 
This is the BBC Third Programme. We have in the  studio Bertrand Russell, who 
talks to us in the series, 
 
        “Sense, Perception, &  Nonsense, Number Seven: 
 
            Is this  a dagger I see before me?”
 
Bertrand Russell. 
 
Bertrand Russell: 
 
"One of the advantages of living in Great Court, Trinity, I seem to recall, 
 
was the fact that one could pop across, at any time of the day or night, 
 
into trap of the then young G. E. Moore, into a logical falsehood, by 
 
means of a cunning semantic subterfuge. 
 
         I recall one occasion with  particular vividness. I had popped 
 
across and have knocked upon his door. 
 
         “Come in,” he said. 
 
I decided to wait a while, in order to test the validity of his  proposition. 
 
        “Come in,” he said once again. 
 
        “Very well,” I replied, “if that  is in fact truly what you wish.” 
 
       I opened the door accordingly, and  went it. And there was Moore, 
 
seated by the fire, with a basket upon his knees. “Moore,” I said, 
 
“Do you have any apples in that basket?”. 
 
          “No,” he replied,  and smiled seraphically, as was his wont. I 
 
decided to try a different logical tack. 
 
          “Moore,” I said, “do  you, then, have SOME apples in that basket?”
. 
 
          “No,” he replied,  leaving me in a logical cleft stick from which 
I had 
 
but one way out. 
 
           “Moore,” I  said, “do you, *then*, have APPLES in that basket?”. 
 
          “Yes,” he replied. 
 
And, from that day forth, we remained the very closest of  friends."



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