[lit-ideas] philosophical dreams
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:23:54 +0900
Hilzoy, writing on www.washingtonmonthly.com:
> Brad DeLong had a strange
> dream<http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/01/new-deal-dreaming.html>
> :
>
> "I just dreamed that it was the 1930s and I was briefing the Cravsth
> lawyers for today's scotus oral argument in Schechter Poultry..."
>
> I sometimes have odd dreams related to my profession. There are the
> standard anxiety nightmares -- I have a recurring one in which I discover
> that I have been assigned to teach something I know nothing about, like
> Intermediate Korean. But sometimes they are odder, like Brad's. As
> background to the strangest one ever:
>
> One distinction*: analytic propositions are propositions in which you say
> nothing about the subject that isn't true by definition. Synthetic
> propositions, by contrast, tell you something new. Thus, "All bachelors are
> unmarried" is analytic -- if you know what a bachelor is, you know that it
> is true. But "All bachelors live in Manhattan", if true, would be synthetic:
> it adds some information not contained in the very idea of a bachelor.
> Another distinction: a priori propositions are propositions we can know to
> be true without using some experience to verify them (e.g., looking to see);
> a posteriori propositions can only be known via experience. (E.g., to know
> whether or not it's true that my shirt is blue, I need to look at it, ask
> someone else who has looked at it, etc. Thus, it's a posteriori.)
>
> It's fairly obvious that there are true synthetic a posteriori
> propositions: e.g., I own a blue shirt. (True, but not by definition;
> requires checking.) Likewise, there are true analytic a priori propositions:
> e.g., All squares have four sides. (True in virtue of the definition of
> 'square; thus, I do not have to go looking at all the squares to see that
> it's true, or worry that there might be one square out there that has only
> three sides. Black swans: not an issue here.) Kant asked: are there
> synthetic a priori propositions -- propositions that we can know to be true
> without checking them against experience, but which are not just true by
> definition? He said yes. But logical positivists said no: every true claim
> must be either true by definition, or one we need to check against
> experience. And they were rather vehement on the topic. When I had this
> dream, I was taking a course on logical positivism. So:
>
> I was standing in a hall full of people who were listening to a speaker
> inveighing against synthetic a priori propositions. The atmosphere owed a
> lot to speeches by Hitler on the Jews and Joseph McCarthy on Communists: the
> speaker was standing behind one of those old-style microphones, shouting: We
> must *root out* synthetic a priori propositions! We must *eliminate*them!
> The crowd was getting increasingly worked up. I was standing by the wall,
> watching, feeling deeply uneasy.
>
> Suddenly, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I was entirely
> featureless and flat and rectangular, sort of like a large stick of gray
> gum. And I realized: oh no, *I am a synthetic a priori proposition! In the
> middle of this crowd of people who want to eliminate me!* There was no way
> out of the hall that I could find, and in any case I didn't want to draw
> attention to myself, so I just huddled by the wall, terrified, hoping no one
> would notice that I was one of the very propositions they were so eager to
> eliminate. Eventually, I woke up in a cold sweat.
>
> Question: do you have odd dreams inspired by your professional lives? If
> so, what are they?
>
> *Footnote: Yes, Quine called this distinction into question, but that's not
> relevant to my dream.
>
Does anyone here have philosophical dreams?
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
Other related posts:
