Weather

Well, if the leaves changing and the landscapes weren't enough, I finally got the definitive indication that I am in a new meteorological climate: I could see my breath this morning while walking to school! Sure, we got rain the day before yesterday, but this colder weather only came in last night, and doesn't seem to be a function of the rain. Thankfully, I will be getting all of my weather clothes this weekend from Virginia.

I am driving to Virginia for my grandfather's wedding on Sunday. I am really glad to be a part of his wedding, but I must admit that I am not looking forward to 9+ hour drive tonight, and then again next Monday. But, I will get to see my parents and brothers, and extended family that I haven't seen in years. And if I remember, I will take pictures and post them as this will be a rare occurrence in which I will be in a suit (as well as my brothers). So, if any of you get random calls tonight or in the next few days, it's me trying to stay awake while driving 95 south for 550 miles.

On a scholastic note: I got my first problem set back in my Symbolic Logic class, and I made a 96 on it, but I am really not liking this whole formal language business. I tend to start thinking things over, but usually end up overthinking those things. So, a 30 minute exercise took me almost two hours. And I know that the purpose of this class is to differentiate valid arguments from invalid arguments, and the best way to facilitate that is to turn the sentences into equations so that it isn't the meaning that is in question, but the form of the argument. One could then extrapolate these rules to other arguments and better decide an argument's validity. What I have a problem with is this need to purge meaning from a statement and turn it into a variable. While it is always possible to re-translate the variable back into the statement, I don't like this. Part of the adventure of dealing with others is language: implications, subtleties, indicators. These attributes are all lost once converted to symbols. I also think that this is a very weak (semantically) enterprise. One must translate the variable back into the statement, and then analyze the statement to discover the meaning of the word: it's the translation of a translation. If there was one unified language in which all words had one meaning (a la Tower of Babel) then I would have less of a problem of this. To take it even further: English evolved primarily from French and German, both of which were formed from dialects of two other parent languages. There are thousands of years of meaning inherent in any statement and yet logicians would have this reduced to "x." It is a fact that in Philosophy one must have cogent, valid arguments in order to clearly communicate, but does this necessitate a formulaic rendering and logical judgment call? I don't think that it does. Now, I hope that all of my conclusions are based on valid and sound premises, but it seems that if one starts thinking in terms of ONLY thinking logical terms, what happens to epiphany, creativity, error? I know that this argument could easily be torn down, but I don't care, this is how I feel and no logical equation can impart emotion or context. It seems to me that we are prompted to say things based on our personal context, and formalizing the verbal offspring of that context withdraws one from that context, distracts from that context, and makes all arguments fall into two categories: valid or invalid. It is argued that one just needs to translate the variables back into their sentential forms and one has the original argument. And one could also argue that in fact, sentences, words, letters are variables in themselves, pointing to accepted sounds or meanings, but I think that that path leads to a nihilistic, or relativistic view of language and meaning. What I am talking about is the notion of something being "lost in translation." Other than there not always being a semantically equivalent translation from one natural language to another, I think that through the formal process of translating one loses the aforementioned context, and the more that one translates and re-translates the more watered-down the original thought becomes until it is either gibberish, or devoid of any usable content (semantic, emotional, or otherwise).*

So I will continue to take this class, as I have to have the Logic credit, but I won't like it!

Anyhow, I hope you have a wonderful day and that something meaningful happens to you.




*This is not so much an attack on Symbolic Logic as it seems, rather that is just my point of departure to talk about the act of translating as creating an a-contextual version of language.