The Alien Philosopher's Dog

After balancing my wheel on the sidewalk after class I was pretty proud of myself, plus I still had half an hour before tutorial. I rode up to University College, used the washroom and then sat outside our classroom to work on my essay until it was time to go in.

Cilia began by talking about our essays that would be due in a week. She reminded us that Augustine thinks that the types of knowledge that he mentions are certain. She warned us not to write a summary but rather to illuminate the structure of Augustine’s argument in such a way that the reader will understand better what Augustine is trying to prove. Then state whether he is successful or not and explain why by pointing to the easiest to come up with inferences that work or don’t work, offering counter examples. She said the height of our marks would be based on the quality of our objections. If what we claim can be easily refuted we won’t get a high mark. We will also be judged by our creativity and independence of thought. She said she doesn’t care which citation style we use but whatever one we pick we should stay with it and not mix them up.

We spent the tutorial discussing Anselm’s concept of that than which nothing greater can be thought (NGT). The NGT is a being.

If you could think of the most perfect chocolate cake imaginable would you want it to exist in reality?

Ask a five year old to list the qualities of Santa Clause. Santa exists in the mind but not in reality.

The NGT is not enough.

◊ □ P → □ P

◊ - possibly

□ - necessarily

→ - means  

Possibly necessarily P means necessarily P.

            Necessarily P means that P is true in all possible worlds.

NGT = Necessarily P. NGT has to necessarily exist.

If the NGT is in the mind in one world it creates a contradiction.

NGT has to exist outside the mind but that is not guaranteed unless one thinks that existence is a perfection that exists as the ruler of the universe. We are only halfway in with just the NGT.

The lost island example does not work because it is material. Its islandness rules it out.

I asked her if she were to try explaining the NGT to Anselm using the modal logic formula and possible worlds, if she thought he would understand. She hesitated and said hat Anselm would have had a different heuristic but she thinks he would have gotten it. My point was that he and none of these philosophers of that era used that kind of logic. I commented that I assume she thinks it makes things simpler. She confirmed that she thinks it does. She offered that maybe I don’t think so and I admitted that was definitely the case. Suggesting that perhaps it’s a left-brain thing to think so.

I also wondered why in conceiving of that than which no greater can be thought, Anselm he would conclude that that greatest thought would be an entity. Someone pointed out that anything can be an entity and I realized that I’d misunderstood the meaning of the word. I had thought it was a synonym for an intelligent being. So I rephrased my question. Cilia explained that we are coming in late on this and that he earlier explained that he is aiming for god with the NGT.

I suggested that maybe only that than which no greater can be thought would be that which would think of the NGT.

The painting can exist in the painter but the painter must be the right kind of causal agent.

Gaunilo might be drawing on Augustine with his objection.

To understand what a dodecahedron is all one needs is to know the number 12 and to know planes and sides.

If you understand the concept of a rational animal then you can understand the nature of man.

Gaunilo says the NGT is not the definition of the nature of god and so we cannot understand. If god’s nature does not exist in us we lose god in all possible worlds.

Anselm says we only know the imperfect through the perfect.

One can understand the NGT if we understand that it exists in the mind but if it exists only in the mind then it is not the NGT.

Cilia says the argument is valid but the premise is weak.

After tutorial I headed immediately for St George and Bloor because this was the day and time of Professor Black’s office hours and I wanted to show her my essay. There were no other students ahead of me so I got to see her right away but she said she wouldn’t look at my essay but I could tell her about it. Cilia had already told me that she wouldn’t read essays either. I gave her an overview and asked her a few questions about format. She seemed interested in my opinion that Augustine’s dwelling on knowing that one knows that one knows and suggesting that it could go on to infinity seems like a trick to piss off the skeptics. There’s value in knowing that you know because then you have self-observation, but beyond that it just seems like a mind game.

We chatted about a few other things while I was getting ready to leave. I told her about my idea that only the NGT could actually think of the NGT and she thought that was interesting. I thanked her and left, but when I got downstairs I realized that I’d forgotten in Deborah Black’s office the hardcover atlas in which I’d carried my essay so that it wouldn’t get bent. I went back up to retrieve it and then went downstairs again.

I still had an hour before Cilia’s office hour so I sat and read W. E. Du Bois in the lobby for a while but found the light dim so I went outside to sit on one of the metal mesh benches. Soon though one of the maintenance guys for the Jackman building came outside to smoke beside the opposite bench and so I got up and went onto the sidewalk and a little north until I was upwind of the smoke. My standing and reading time was further extended when an older woman in a red coat came to the bench and smoked a cigarette as well. When she was finished she went inside and I went back to the bench.

At about 15:15 Cilia walked past me on her way in but I don't think she saw me because she probably had visions of modal logic symbols dancing in her head. Ten minutes later I went upstairs. The office that Cilia would be using was already occupied by another TA who was holding her lonely office hours and getting paid to sit in an empty room. I waited outside and read the names on the mailboxes of some of the philosophy professors. Three of them in one row made for an interesting sequence when read together: “Dickie; Stank; Redstick …” “Dickie” would be Imogen Dickie, who was my professor for “Knowledge and Reality”. She claims that she is from New Zealand but I think that she is not from the country of New Zealand that exists here on Earth, southeast of Australia, but rather from a planet that is coincidentally also called “New Zealand” but exists in a distant solar system and is entirely populated by robots.

As I was waiting, a door opened down the hall and out came a young man and a shaggy old cavachon dog came out. The man was bent over and holding the dog by the collar as it skated towards me on the smooth. The dog wanted to stop and sniff me but was pulled past me then around the corner and past the elevators to stop at a familiar office. I realized that the animal was Imogen Dickie’s dog, Jack, just as Cilia arrived.

Once we were settled into chairs I offered the observation that the policy of a professor or TA not reading at least a section of a student essay is new to me. She just smiled silently in a bored way that said, “Get on with talking about your essay!”

I got a few more formatting tips, like that I shouldn’t list Augustine’s examples of knowledge in my first paragraph but rather just mention them and the fact that I have some objections. She said that I should explain Augustine to the reader of my essay as if as if they have no understanding of his thoughts on knowledge at all. She told me that I should point out what degree of certitude he brings about each example. I stated that it seems to me that his first examples are strongest and his last, about other people’s accounts of their experiences being something you can depend upon as knowledge, are much weaker. I told her that I couldn’t be absolutely sure that I exist. She said she’d love to hear me explain my doubts about my existence. I looked through my paper to see if I had any more questions but she said she had someone else waiting but if I wanted I could come back later if I had more questions. I said, “No, I’ll go and see what I can do with this.” As I got up she blurted out nervously, “I’m sure you’ll do fine! You already have opinions and that’s halfway there!”

I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought a lot of my usual things including grapes, apples and bread. I got a whole chicken for $4.15 and some old cheddar. The express cashier was the big girl who looks like she spends an hour just putting on her false eyelashes before work.

That night I watched the first half of the David Byrne film, “True Stories”. It’s done mostly as if it’s a documentary about a fictional town in Texas called Virgil. John Goodman is one of the stars at a time before he became famous on Rosanne. He plays a lonely man looking for matrimony. At one point he goes on a date with a woman who can’t speak without telling impossible lies about herself. Another character is a rich woman who never gets out of bed.