I was thinking the other day that it was getting increasingly
difficult to tell what people intended to say in quite serious
newspapers-the Guardian? the Times? and essays--inthe TLS- because of
all the damn adjectives and figures of speech.
KAte Sullivan
-----Original Message-----
From: Cheerskep <[email protected]>
To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]>
Sent: Sat, Jul 28, 2012 11:16 am
Subject: Re: Henry Adams quote
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.
