>>>> Katha Pollitt <kpollitt at thenation.com> 12/06/99 04:40PM >>>
>
>
> My sweetie's students at fourth-tier Adelphi U are complete
>relativists. right you are if you think you are. Everything is just
>opinion. So, if we all agree that Susie isn't really here in this room,
>she's not really here? That's right. And if some of us think she's here
>and others don't, then she's here for some and not for others? That's
>right. They don't really believe this, I suspect,since they're not
>crazy, but that's what they say.
What happens if you tell them that you don't belive they are relativists? Do they insist that they are?
>(((((((((((
>
>Charles: We used to call ourselves "Humean beings" when we did this. Then
there was the rumor that Bishop >Berkeley was constipated and angry at
matter when he came up with his subjective idealism.
>CB
It is quite likely that he was, given that constipation was an occupational disease of rich living in those days. IIRC, Martin Luther conceived the Protestant Reformation during a particularly long and (eventually) productive spell in the outhouse. Tangential to which, I personally doubt whether Dr Johnston ever did refute Berkeley by kicking a stone, as his gout would have caused this to hurt like merry hell.
It always used to be Descartes with us .... I remember the tutorials fondly ...
"And therefore, Descartes reached the bedrock of certainty -- he could be sure that he was thinking, for it was self-defeating to doubt this proposition"
"But is it really self-contradictory, Dr. Strawson? I mean, I could say right now "I doubt that I am thinking""
"I've been doubting that since the start of the course, Davies"
I suspect it was not the first time he had used the joke. I got my own back later by writing a paper on Wittgenstein -- 10 sides of A4, in rhyming couplets.
dd
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