[lit-ideas] Re: A thought for the coming year
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2013 14:24:35 -0800
*Walter wrote*
Well, when I asked RP to articulate for us his conception of a thought, I
was
not thinking he would simply compile a number of examples of "thought" or
"thinking. From these examples proffered, we see that the terms, as
understood
by RP can refer to:
1. an argument
2. a belief
3. a thought dreamt (this one sort of begs the question, I would think)
4. a decision made or report on a decision made
5. a phenomenon or word to which "weird" could be attributed
6. an activity
…………………
But RP must still be firmly ensconced in the lap of family and friends
since he
resists the labour of the concept called for by the philosophical question
I
posed.
*It’s not so much that I resist it; it’s that I don’t understand it. I
really don’t know what ‘the labour of the concept’ means.
Walter spells out what I would have to do in order order to adequately
answer that question.
[I would have to provide us ] not with a laundry-list, a bag, of examples
of "thought"/"thinking" but rather with the criteria [I use] in identifying
all these examples as examples *of* "thought"/"thinking." [For I] surely
must be in possession of such criteria, else [I] would not be able to
differentiate "thought"/"thinking" from anything else in the world (i.e.,
pizza, doggy-bags, birdfeeders, a 40 yr old Highland Park) and thus would
be unable to identify some things and events as "examples."
*Something has gone slightly wrong. Apparently Walter is providing a list
of things that aren’t and could not be thoughts, yet how he knows they
aren’t thoughts isn’t entirely clear. The items in this motley are
apparently related to each other only insofar as they are not thoughts. How
this is known a priori is not obvious.
I don’t think that how a thought differs from a birdfeeder e.g. is an
empirical problem.
And yet…
How did I identify the things on the list in my last post as thoughts or
thinking? What criteria did
I use? That is a question for another post. The stuff above is just
skirmishing. I’ll get right on it.
Robert Paul
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