If "I am" is analytic it is no 'wonder', Popper had problems with Cartesian
and post-Cartesian (as in Gearyan) philosophy.
Geary was offering a cri de coeur, or cri de cœur, as Palma might prefer to
spell it ("it IS after all, a Latin expression"), about existence not
being Cartesian in not recognising "thinking", but 'feeling' -- cfr. Hassall's
memoir of Rupert Brooke -- "I hate when people say "I think" when what they
mean is "I feel" -- as in "I feel it's going to rain").
McEvoy chooses to stick with the use of the comma, which is only indirectly
related to the non-Cartesian project Geary is into.
In a message dated 7/9/2015 11:22:42 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, entitled,
"Commas and commies", jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes about the
implicatures behind the 'signs' such as commas, dots, and semi-colons. In
particular, regarding the commas, he writes:
"My commas are like commies, they give of themselves freely,"
The keyword here is "Ontological Marxism": Commas work; therefore, they
exist.
"believing in the brotherhood of grammar, and recognizing the equally
essential role of all the parts of speech in language usage."
The reference to the term of art, 'part of speech' is Platonic in spirit.
Heraclitus recognised only ONE part of speech: "The word" (this influenced
St. John, as he then wasn't: "In the beginning was the word"). Plato was the
first to pluralise the 'part': the noted (in "Cratylus") that there were
TWO parts of speech: the noun and the rhema. His student, Aristotle,
multiplied the parts to speech to ten. But he forgot the comma, which was
always
otiose in the rather provincial dialect of Greek he spoke anyway (and which
he alas taught to his student, Alexander Magnus).
Geary goes on:
"I, in as, much as I am, know and appreciate the service that the quotidian
commas play in our beastly attempts to shake meaning out of the tenuous
grip of theorematic existence."
The above is a play on the comma-less variant:
ii. I, in as much as I am, know the service of the comma.
By writing,
i. I, in as, much as I am, know the service of the comma.
Geary is refuting (in Popper's sense) the idea that the comma's 'work' is
gratuitious. Rather, it is, as Geary notes, 'communistic' (only he uses
Marx's 'capital' K).
This is different from saying that commas are common.
Geary goes on:
"Should could turn to would and all the users of English signed Union
cards, we could abolish grammar as certainly we should, in much as in being
anarchists one and all. Throw off your grammar chains and be as you is.
Grammar has no meaning, it's just a traffic cop out."
So, back to the utterance that provoked a response from McEvoy:
The original context by Geary is:
"OK, as in OK, not as in Omar Kustruica. So Omar says no, Ursula says
yes, and Carol's been too busy with sex, drugs and rock 'n roll to notice
anything. Thanks, for the response though it doesn't help. Life is just so
gwissy.
McEvoy takes the third sentence in the above (although Geary would perpahs
not use the concept of 'sentence', either):
Thanks, for the response though it doesn't help.>
