In a message dated 5/25/2015 5:37:03 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
_omarkusto@gmail.com_ (mailto:omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx) writes: "That Russell
was sitting down isn't much of an argument either, for I would be sitting
down just as well as in a dream. There is no particular reason to assume
that I should be acting differently in a dream world, even knowing that it
is a dream world, from the way I am acting now. (Since my subjective
feelings, sensations etc. would be the same as they are now.) That is why
Hume
can conclude his skeptical examination cheerfully by saying that he will go
on acting just the same way as he did before. If Hume could sit down
without contradicting himself, so could Russell."
The thing is that apparently this took place in conversation with Moore:
Russell: I am sitting down.
Moore: Are you sure?
Russell: Well, now that you ask, I'm not. I may be dreaming.
Moore: Dreaming of me, too -- how charmingly romantic.
(Or alternatively Moore would pinch Russell's arm to wake him up -- cfr.
"The daemon knows".)
---
In the London revue, "Beyond the Fringe", J. Miller presented a monologue,
"Portrait from Memory". The hand programme reads, "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: 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 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," Moore said.
I decided to wait a while, in order to test the *validity* of Moore's
*proposition*.
"Come in," Moore 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.
He 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.
This left me in a logical cleff 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."
Cheers,
Speranza
--- Moore remarks that despite Lord Russell's frequent sceptical
professions, Lord Russell was nonetheless perfectly SURE, without a shadow of
doubt,
on thousands of occasions, that he (Lord Russell) was sitting down.
-- "The [Malignant] Daemon Knows," the enigmatic title of Bloom’s newest
work of oracular criticism, is strangely intransitive.
What is it that the malignant daemon knows?
We are meant to understand that the malignant daemon is an incarnation of
an intuition beyond ordinary apperception, and that this knowing lies in the
halo of feeling that glows out of the language of poetry.
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
