Since you complain about Harris overstating a trivial issue, like the instability of signs, I wonder why you exercise the same triviality in your constant and grim harping about meaning when everyone here and everywhere all the way to Tibet agrees that meaning is in the use. Cheerskep, you're lacking one feature of intellectual acuity, humor. Don't think for a moment that a definition of genius is implied in my remarks. On the contrary, I tried to indicate how silly the term is since it comes and goes, depending, in one way, by something as arbitrary as age. What could be more deadly to the otion of a fixed state of genius than to say it is related to age, from youth to old age? Oy, indeed.
I await your book on the philosophy of language. When will it appear? Meanwhile, I've just enjoyed a most engaging lunch with historian Timothy Breen, one of the great scholars of Early American Studies. I know of nothing that exceeds the delight of intelligent conversation with a genius. Incidentally, I once scored in the third percentile on an 'art aptitude' test. That means that 97% of people taking the test scored higher than me. I was overjoyed because I know that the test images were actually very crummy and measured only mediocre taste WC ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, May 20, 2012 11:48:04 AM Subject: Re: On Roy Harris 2 0f 2 In a message dated 5/20/12 1:01:18 AM, [email protected] writes: > Haha! I used to be a genius too: Amazingly easy at 16. A trivial > challenge > at 22 as a full fellowship student at the Univ. Chicago. After 30 it got > a > little harder and after 40 almost impossible, by which time I was > surrounded by > dozens of 4.0 GPA students and fellow faculty from Ivys but not a single > one of > them was a genius. Naturally, I was surprised to be the only former > genius I > ever knew, except for a pal who, like me, quit school at 16. > > Genuine acuity of intellect and genius requires a huge faculty (your > meaning > intended) for associative thinking... > Oy. A shouting match. One in which you apparently feel the term 'genius' has a "the real meaning". For that reason, I'm not heartened to hear you feel you were a "genius" at 16. Though I'd be interested to hear a description of the notion you have in mind when you use that term. I once took a long aptitude test given to 500,000 G.I.s. I got the highest score, which their arithmetic extrapolated to an IQ score of 193. I was less chuffed than you might assume, for two reasons. First, I was so self-convinced at the time, that I would have been surprised if I did NOT get the highest aptitude score. (I'd had previous experience with such tests - which, I emphasize, were of aptitude, not of achievement. After eyeing my scores, the psychometricians were using me to test new tests.) The second curtailment of delight came from this realization: One can get a zooming high IQ score by simply being pretty good at all the various abilities they try to measure - math, verbal, visual, logic, memory... But consider this: If today you score in the 99th percentile in, say, math, you are one of 3,000,000 people in the U.S. alone. In sum, a high conglomerate score on an IQ test does not imply that you are world class at any particular thing. That insight is properly deflating. In a sense, after my deluding marks in youth, my adult life has been an education in the things I CAN'T do. I don't say this in any Aw-shucks-poor-me way. I've also confirmed to my satisfaction that there are some things I CAN do. Philosophy of language is one of them. ----- Original Message ---- From: Tom McCormack <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, May 19, 2012 6:00:21 PM Subject: Re: On Roy Harris 2 0f 2 On May 19, 2012, at 5:47 PM, William Conger wrote: > It just kills me to have to say, sadly, with deep remorse and downcast eyes > that I wonder why people who have never published in linguistic theory are so > much smarter field than those who have. Maybe it's like sports when the > spectators are always better players and coaches than those actually on the > field playing the game. William -- I wouldn't begin to put myself in a class with Harris about Attic Greek, Indo European, the Zero Copula status of Chinese, Indonesian, etc. That sort of thing is what I have in mind when I say "linguistics". But the Harris topics I've been attacking have all been philosophy of language, of mind and ontology. I was a shallow lout in college, but I did manage to get the first 4.0 GPA in my Ivy League college since before WWII, and I was a philosophy major, so I brought some equipment to the job. And I've now spent a good part of the last ten years reading in the areas of philosophy pertinent to Harris's topics in this discussion. I feel qualified in equipment and "learning" to comment on Harris.
