I'll start this in the morning, 9:36 AM, and finish when I have time or fee like it but sorry if the style, ideas, and overall tone change. I can be cranky in the morning and my German professor is sexy enough to cheer me up even though I can't understand her.

So, I want you to think about this while you read. It's something my philosophy professor said and you might want to get out now if you don't like thinking deeply. "Truth is the correspondence between the way things are and how we understand them."

A little background is needed so you can see the philosophical schools this comes from. We're reading Simon Blackburn's book called Truth. He's a modern philosopher reviewing older philosopher. First he attacked Williams James and defended R.K. Clifford (those initials might be wrong). James is a pragmatist, but also a relativist who gives people the right to believe anything that's believable. That might sound great if you're not a philosopher and have never thought about Truth, but it's pretty crazy if you do think for a second. "Wait, you think that tree is possessed by a bear's tormented soul because you once saw a bear peeing on it before it died? So its last urination is where its soul will spend all of eternity?" The correct answer is no. Clearly a crazy belief. It is one that has no evidence behind it. This is why I'll often tell you "Opinions are the uneducated call their shitty arguments." It is a belief that they came up with without thinking about it, based on nothing but their limited view of the subject, with nothing to base it on. Blackburn calls it "soggy relativism"  and "a distraction."

Then the next chapter is about Absolutism and Socrates and therefore Plato. If you aren't familiar with the Socratic method, it's asking a bunch of questions until your opponent realizes a fallacy in their argument. He does this with Gorgias and with Protagoras and probably every other person he met. But Blackburn is not backing him up. Instead, Blackburn says that this little judo-flip of his can easily be avoided if the relativist is crafty by saying "It seems to me that..." and when you respond with a logical argument, he'll say "Yes, that's how it seems to you based on what evidence you have at hand. But you can't say that's the truth because other evidence that is later discovered will disprove you," as often is the case with science. This is something that's kind of hard to argue with, but at the same time irrelevant because if there is no truth except how it seems to me, then we're not really saying anything. "It seems to me that peanut butter is made out of bee vomit." "Yeah, well it seems to me bee vomit is not a real thing." "Well we don't agree so that's that." It's ridiculous and I realize now that this is less about Absolutism as the next chapter is.

Absolutism and Realism are two schools pretty closely related. Absolutism says that there is a Truth and we have found it. Realism says, "We haven't found it, but there is a Truth." And Blackburn agrees with the relativist on this point saying that whatever Truth you find might easily be wrong. It might be reasonable based on the evidence at hand, but in later years Copernicus is going to come along and say "Tolomy, you were wrong." This is when we come to Minimalism, which says "There are truths. Small truths. Not giant overarching Truths to explain reality." An example would be "It is sunny." That will always be true that at this time, in my area, it is sunny. It's not some giant discovery, but it's true. No relativist can say "That's just how it seems to you," without looking like a moron. Minimalism professes the belief that overarching beliefs, like religions but not science, are irrelevant and we can't argue against them and you can't argue for them, but they're unimportant enough that people shouldn't care. I like this idea.

Then our professor gives us the statement above. "Truth is the correspondence between the way things are and how we understand them." I don't like that. I don't even know if that's a minimalist idea, because he said it while talking about Absolutism and Minimalism. But I don't like it because it admits that things are a certain way. That's reality. But then it adds "...how we understand them." What? Since when does my piss-poor understanding of yoga change the way yoga actually works? How am I suppose to argue that "This is how I understand ionic bonds and therefore it's the truth."

But I wanted to come up with a good example before bringing this up in front of the class, professor and the sexy Ostrich. So I looked around for things to argue about. My Blackburn book. Okay, my book is a certain way. It is full of certain words, made up of certain paper and cardboard and all of that. It is this way. But it's a book. It wouldn't have been written if people didn't understand it a certain way. Language is just convention and if he had written "Sprachenwissenschaft ennui smorgesborg 7qteen" and convention had said that it was a legitimate sentence, then I'd have to accept it. The truth is the book says this, but those are just ink blots that we turn into sound and only through the mind do we understand them. So is it true to say the book says everything I posted above? I mean, I'm paraphrasing it based on my understanding. But I could be wrong about it. So then how is truth wrong? That bothers me!

So I chose something else, something not open to interpretation. The table. The table is made up of wood, weighs a certain amount, is cold, has gum under it, yadda yadda yadda. But its purpose is to put things on. There's no truth that says we have to put our books on it. It's only convention that we do that instead of sitting on it or coloring on it. So that's out.

So I looked over at Silvia, the Austrian exchange student who I call the sexy Ostrich (because in German, Austria is called Osterreich). She was probably creeped out by my intensive study of her. I wanted to argue that Silvia is certain way, whether I understand that or not. She is blonde, she is large chested, intelligent, multi-lingual, Austrian. Right? I couldn't think of a good counter-argument for that, which usually means I haven't thought about it enough or it's a good argument. But then I came to the conclusion that words and their meanings are just convention, as stated above, so no matter what I say it's going to be about understanding.

I'm not admitting defeat. I'm admitting it's a worthy opponent. Is it because these words express concepts that are intelligible, regardless of the language used? It is a necessary evil that through convention we express these concepts.

-Cantwhistle

Aminimalism

My blog url Aminimalism looks like I switched the "m" and "n" in animalism and added an "im" because I got confused with which syllables I'd already said and came up with a new word. Animalism isn't a real word either. It sounds like a word. Like a philosophical belief that animals are the most moral creatures, and we should be like them. But wait! We are animals. Science says so.

AND! After some googling, I've found that George Orwell used Animalism in his classic Animal Farm as an allegory for communism. Also it's a band's album. I don't care enough to find out which band, what other famous people have used this word I've mangled, so I'll get on with it.

This is about my 50th blog, including livejournal, xanga, myspace, and even blogspot. But I've forgotten the names of them, email addresses and passwords and feel maybe I don't want to be associated with those ideas. I'm sure it was a rant. That's my usual reason for expressing myself: to complain.

I like complaining. Not about big things like the drug problems in South America, or popular things like the president, or even things that are important like the aliteracy of people. I like to complain about my flat soda. Or not having tacos. Or that I sweat too much when I'm nervous. Or the squeal my dorm's bathroom's faucet makes when you leave the water on for more than three seconds.

That last one, I'm sure, is a conspiracy of my college. They're pretty pragmatic and like to make shit up so you'll be more environmentally conscious. They told us that TVs suck up the same amount of power off as when turned on so long as the cord stays plugged in. I know it still sucks up a lot of power and we should unplug unused shit, but no sense exaggerating it.

And so the faucet. We have three faucets, two stalls, two showers and no urinals for an all-guys dorm that has always been an all-guys dorm since the early 1900s. It's not very big, so I understand that urinals aren't necessary but it seems odd. I'm conditioned to pee in urinals and feel effeminate somehow just peeing in a stall. Maybe not effeminate, but like I'm a nervous pee-er. And I'm not. The shower curtains get replaced every summer, the bathroom is cleaned twice a week, the shower head is replaced the day or the day after it stops working properly and spraying every which way. If a pipe under the sink is leaking, someone comes in to fix it.

My point is, they take care of us pretty well. But in the three years I've been using this bathroom (because I've had the exact same room for three years running), they've never fixed the two faucets that are more obviously broken than the other things they fix. The last sink has water fountain attachment so you can drink out of it more easily than sticking your head in the bowl to catch the running water. But it doesn't have any pressure. You have to suckle that attachment if you want to use it. I assume no one does. I don't. The middle sink squeals, as I said earlier. No matter how much you turn it on, so that just a little trickle comes down or a downpour, the thing squeaks. It's loud enough that I can hear it from my room at the other end of the hall (three 8' x 10' rooms away) and it often wakes me up in the middle of the night. Or it'll give me a dream about someone keying my car and I'm so pissed i have to track them down and rip their lungs out. I don't even care that much about my real car. But my dream car, which is the same type, age, and with the same damage of my real car, is very precious to me--apparently. And this faucet sprays. It doesn't reach me unless I turn it on all the way, but it's not an efficient use of water. I'll hold my hand under it, expecting gravity to take over, but it's like FUCK GRAVITY! and goes all around and hits the side of the bowl before my hands. And it's not consistent with its aim. I'll compensate and move my soap hand to where the stream was, but then it'll switch and aim at the back of the sink. Sometimes it'll even shoot upward so that it hits the faucet and then trickles down and there's no way I'm getting my hands rinsed.

The "good" faucet works perfectly and after the cleaning ladies clean it every Tuesday and Thursday, I am in there thanking it for surviving in pristine condition. But that only lasts for a night. College boys are disgusting, as many assume. They're worse than your imagination. We have these two Chinese boys who are real polite, but they like to cut their hair themselves. Just a little trim from time to time. And they do it over the good sink. Usually, it's not so bad. It's a few hairs they missed when rinsing it out. Sometimes though, I don't think they rinsed it at all! It actually has led me to the assumption that they never rinse and sometimes only cut five hairs at a time and leave them for the rest of us to admire. It is rather silky hair, I guess.

But they're not the worst of it. On top of the hair, we always have eco-friendly people who don't like to waste water. They follow the rule "If it's brown, flush it down; if it's yellow, let it mellow" (a disgusting rule because piss after marinating for a day or two reeks. And our dorm isn't big enough that my far-corner room can escape that smell). But with the faucet, they will spit their toothpaste on top of the hair and not rinse either. THEN, someone, who I assume is the same eco-friendly person as before, doesn't want to waste paper towels or toilet papers or tissues to blow their nose. So they do a farmer's blow. Do you know what that is? You close one nostril and shoot a snotty torpedo and hope your aim is true. And, as you can probably guess, they don't rinse this either.

I'm all for being environmentally conscious and saving Tasmanian Devils, polar bears, pandas and other cute but probably dangerous animals from extinction. But some of the sacrifices are too much. You want me to turn off my computer at night and unplug it? Fine, whatever. You want me to donate money to your cause? Sure, I can go without groceries for a week. You want me to donate my time? Well, I guess I don't need to sit in my dark room and watch Law and Order marathons. But hygiene is something I never want to sacrifice! If I've wiped my ass and there was no breach and no obvious smell from my finger tips, I'm still washing my hands.

But my college, I theorize, has left these sinks in the condition they're in, because it forces us to avoid the bathroom. To dehydrate rather than waste a cup of water.


By the way, Aminimalism was the result of TheMinimalist (I think that might've been my other blog's title), aMinimalist, Minimalism, and every other version of the word without adding numbers or an x or two or o's or whatever to make it unique. "A Minimalism" is weird grammar. Not necessarily wrong, but it does imply there are multiple minimalisms elsewhere and I'm just one of them. Maybe that's true. I haven't dabbled in enough philosophy to know that.

-Cantwhistle (I'll always sign it like this)