[lit-ideas] Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful Boy

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 21:51:55 EDT
Before you cross the street take my hand, 
Life is just what happens to  you while your busy making other plans. 
 
Beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful boy.
 
Yes, but there is the _protreptic_. Grice notes that there's subliminal  
publicity in things. If I say,
 
                  "Emmanuelle Beart is beautiful"
 
then surely the _perlocutionary_ intention is that you _share_ my  
judgement.
 
It _works_. I come to think that Sean Lennon _is_ a beautiful beautiful  
beautiful beautiful boy just because his beautiful dad says so.
 
Witten may be another animal. So let's consider E. Yost's argument in some  
more detail:

"Witten says the mathematics of superstring theory is too beautiful not  to 
be true."
 
I don't like "too". I have never been able to find a positive, enriching,  
constructive, context for 'too'. In Spanish is even worse.
 
         "demasiado" can be  "demasiado poco" (too little)
 
but in general, I found, people find the phrase
 
                                         "demasiado mucho" otiose when they 
SHOULDN'T!
 
If you find a Hispanic who does not think 'demasiado mucho' otiose let me  
know.
 
The presence of "~" ('not') in "not to be true" is also slightly confusing, 
 grammatical. So what Witten is saying is
 
                     superstring theory is beautiful
                     __________________________
                   
                     Ergo, superstring theory is _true_
 
Via Reductio ad absurdum
 
                    Enthymema:
 
                    Beautiful  things are true.
 
-----
 
Yost brings this to his personal terrain:
 
>Yost cannot follow the mathematics that Witten finds beautiful. 
 
But surely you can follow the yellow brick road. There are 45 uses of  
'follow'. Only 34-44 refer to "understand". 
 
And 'finds' is _factive_. "Captain Cook found some ugly wilde natives down  
under". -- but the didn't. That's odd. So if you claim that Witten finds  
superstring theory beautiful, you have too. 

E. Yost continues, in a sort of poetical nonsequitur:
 
>Therefore superstring theory's truth, for Yost, is not 
>only aesthetic, but vicariously aesthetic, 
>that is, beauty as an appeal to Witten as authority. 

Well, Geary and I would say,
 
         Now, that's a beautiful  superstring-witten.
 
where 'witten' is the subscript attached to the feature you want to  
'subjectivize' to some utterer.
 
And is authority to do with beauty. Suppose the owner of the harem  says,
 
          "You have to make  love to Scherehazade. She is the most 
             beautiful of our eunuchs".
 
Surely I can refuse!
 
--- And wouldn't you apply 'vicariously' directly to _beautiful_ rather  
than 'aesthetic' (for surely frogs are aesthetically ugly). Thus D. Ritchie 
may  find Emmanuelle Beart _vicariously_ beautiful. But that's _NOT_ something 
he can  possibly communicate by the direct expression of a Kantian 
universal judgement  of beauty. _Others_ may. I use 'allegedly'.
 
       Patricia is allegedly beautiful.
 
This only _IMPLICATES_ she is not beautiful. ("Patricia is allegedly  
beautiful, and rightly so").
 
Eric Yost continues:
 
>Fortunately, again according to authority, the 
>standard model has predictive value and many remaining puzzles. 
 
-- Well, it's like my 'ugly truth' and _warts_ and all. Call each puzzle a  
wart.
 
Cheers,
 
JL Speranza
    Buenos Aires, Argentina
**************Recession-proof vacation ideas.  Find free things to do in 
the U.S. 
(http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002)
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[lit-ideas] Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful Boy

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