filkosophy

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1. Doug says:

   Sunday, 2004 October 24 at 18:34

   From archive.org:

   SCENE: BEDROOM IN AN AUSTRIAN MANSION, c.1937

   GRETEL: I don’t like his manner.
   KURT: His attitude worries me.
   LISEL: I am troubled by a general air of foreboding.
   MARIA: Yes, children: my life is also, on occasion, clouded by manners, attitudes and airs of foreboding.
   BRIGITA: So what do you do about it?
   MARIA: Why, I simply think of nominalistically respectable things instead.
   VON TRAPP CHILDREN (together): Nominalistically respectable things? What are they?
   MARIA: Well, let me explain …

   Properties, counterparts, tropes and relations,
   Promises, lies and confused explanations,
   Numbers and rhomboids, and this very list:
   These are all items which do not exist.

   Space-time and classes and Beethoven’s seventh,
   Earthquakes and sets and July the eleventh,
   Are, like the flutter of butterflies’ wings,
   Nominalistically dubious things …

   In my calm and
   Lucid moments,
   When I’m feeling fine,
   I scorn the existence of all of this stuff,
   I talk about all the time.

   MARIA: Come on children, tell me some nominalistically respectable things.
   KURT (doubtfully): Er … stones? Concrete?
   LISEL (even more doubtfully): Electrons?
   MARIA: Well – uh – yes, but there’s much more to it than that …

   Raindrops and temporal slices of kittens,
   Every third stitch in a pair of red mittens,
   Mereological bundles of string:
   These are all perfectly reasonable things.

   Barmaids and walnuts and sand that’s been hosed off,
   Silver and gold and the fusion composed of
   Alpha Centuri and Hitler’s left knee:
   All of these objects are okay by me …

   Things substantial,
   Made of matter:
   They are better, far,
   Than some abstract nonsense but one step removed
   From Rorty and Derrida.

   FRIDERIC: Exoskeletons!
   KURT: Time-slices of undetatched heads!
   LISEL (getting carried away): Statues of rottweilers! Dragons!
   REMAINING VON TRAPP CHILDREN (together): Dragons??
   MARIA: It’s all right, children! One need have no quarrel with dragons, qua nominalist! The number two would be a far greater stain on the world’s ontological purity than a mere dragon!

   Hobbits and wizards and weapons enchanted:
   Towering trees which Galadriel planted,
   Rhinemaidens, giants and Nibelung rings:
   These are a few of my favourite things.

   Underground kingdoms and magical potions,
   Atomless matter and bottomless oceans:
   Though they’re not terribly easy to find,
   Nominalistically, no-one should mind.

   Can you touch it?
   When you hit it,
   Does it make a “ping”?
   If you answered “yes”, then, by golly, it’s real:
   It gets to be called a THING.

   [Well, yeah, if you cheat. Thanks though!]

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