Michael Brady catches me here where, despite all my own preachments, I use
a potentially misleading word and fail to describe what I have in mind with
it. The word is 'weightless'. I wrote:
> Here's a fact about "thought": it is not
> stable; in a respectable mind, it starts as something weightless and, as
the
> thinker reflects, the thought is tested and advanced, it takes on
density,
> heft, and richness.
But Michael is wrong to poke fun at me by attributing to me a notion of
'weightless' I did not have. He tells me what "I mean":
"You mean, thoughts begin as no thing ("weightless") and grow in mass
("density," "heft") and actual value? Whoa. Didn't know that."
In fact the notion I had in mind with 'weightless' was one of
"light-weight", "trifling", inconsiderable. With almost every interesting word
I
encountered in philosophy -- like 'cause', 'meaning', 'belief' -- my initial
notions in Philosophy 101 were all those demeaning adjectives. And I suspect
Michael knew I did not think of 'weightless' as "no thing". So I cannot take
him
seriously here. In sum, I think Michael's objection to my use of
'weightless' is, call it, weightless.
