Friday Book Report: An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth

“Words, from the earliest times of which we have historical records, have been objects of superstitious awe.  The man who knew his enemy’s name could, by means of it, acquire magic powers over him… This view underlies the philosophies of Plato and Carnap and of most of the intermediate metaphysicians.” (p. 23)

“Thus the difference between a statement which is disjunctive and one which is not does not consist in any difference in the state of affairs which would make it true, but solely in the question whether the difference between the possibilities which our statement leaves open is interesting to us or not.” (p. 87)

These two passages from Bertrand Russell’s An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth serve as a handy summary of what I love and hate about philosophy.  On one hand, there is the magic power that deep thinking brings when we examine what we are actually saying.  On the other, there is the suspicion that, in the end, we are just playing games with words that are more or less interesting.

Somewhere in the middle, there are some useful things.  Philosophical prose is kind of like the barre exercises of writing, useful for training and sometimes beautiful, but ultimately there to underpin (we hope) something beautiful later.  Parsing out the sentences and following the laborious chains of reasoning are good for the brain, but not precisely fun.

Those of us interested in how brains work and one possible way that language captures experience may find this book an interesting project.  If not, there are many other places to explore.

The positives of negatives

There is a lot to be said for having a positive attitude.  However, there is also a lot to be said for having a negative one.

Complaining is allowed.  There are some exercises (burpees, I am looking at you!) that just aren’t fun.  We do them, but we don’t have to like it.  I made up an entire song, once, about how much I hate lunges.  It got me through the workout.

It would be great if we could all float happily through our workouts, stepping up to every challenge with equanimity and grace.  It’s still great if we get done with a new record for number of curse words in a fifty-minute period.  It’s the workout that counts.  If smiling works too many muscles and distracts from the ones that are supposed to be working, we don’t have to do it!

It can be a relief to know that we don’t have to pretend to like something.  We can hate the process and still go through with it because we want the results.

Dragons fly...

Much of the time, change is a gradual process.  We take baby steps and then more baby steps.  Eventually, we look back and realize we have come pretty darn far with those little steps.

Other times, change is more dramatic.  Consider the dragonfly.  Dragonflies, when the time comes to metamorphose from their larval state to their adult form, split open along their backs and lever themselves out of their old skin, allowing their new exoskeleton to harden and their wings to emerge. 

Sometimes, if we want to fly, we need to make big changes.