'May I buy you a beer?'
I gestured towards my pitcher of stout. 'I'm fixed for the evening. Here's a question for you, Dr Wilcox. Does this pitcher truly hold four beers, or merely hold four potential beers, each awaiting the reification that will occur upon being poured?'
Wilcox gave me a blank look. 'No wonder philosophers can't get funding.'
UPDATE: More academic doco-realism:
The one time I'd delivered a paper at a conference, 'The Geist in the Machine', a précis of my Master's thesis on Schelling, I didn't meet any minds of Edwina Sabacthani's calibre, but I was memorably seduced by a tenured Utilitarian from Princeton named Frédérique Wintrebert, who said she'd become aroused by my use of the word 'praxis'.
That's category confusion IMO. The beer exists as a potential effect on the drinker, not a substance to hold. This is the principle behind "standard drinks": one nip of spirits being the same as a middy of full strength beer, or a 150ml glass of wine, and so on. I mean who buys perfectly good stout just to pour it into a glass and look at it?
ReplyDeleteIf you're reifying your beer through measurement and gaining enjoyment in quantification, you're DOING IT WRONG.
Agreed. It's like chocolate that claims to have '1 million kilojoules per serving' and then you find out that by 'a serving' they mean two tiny squares. Pffft.
ReplyDelete"I mean who buys perfectly good stout just to pour it into a glass and look at it?"
ReplyDeleteWash your fecking mouth out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MuEtGPXLPI
Why not? One Southwark stout, please, young person behind the bar.
ReplyDeleteOoh, noyce choyce. That's my idea of a cup of tea.
ReplyDeleteOr if you don't have that, make it a Sheaf. Umami-stout.
ReplyDelete