Tag: quotations

“Usefulness” in psychometrics

“Consider, for example, instrumentalism. This view does not invoke truth but usefulness as the primary criterion for the adequacy of scientific theories and measurements. However, we are surely not seriously considering the idea that we have to rule out rivals to the hypothesis that intelligence tests are useful. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS; Wechsler, 1955) comes in a big heavy box, which is very useful to hit people on the head with, but the hypothesis that the WAIS is valid for inflicting physical injury is certainly not the kind of hypothesis we are interested in.”

Borsboom, D., Mellenbergh, G.J., & Van Heerden (2004, p. 1065).  The concept of validity. Psychological Review, 111, 1061-1071.

Some bits from Baudrillard’s “Fragments: Cool Memories III 1990-1995”

“Either you have not to be serious and seem it, or to be serious and not seem it. Those who combine being serious with seeming serious are insignificant” (p. 5)

“Is it perhaps the case that Rossif filmed animals so well only because he secretly detested them? Everyone hides some measure of cruelty towards their object. There is no point in imputing this cruelty to unconscious motivations or some trite psychology: it is a symbolic rule. Analysis is part of the theatre of cruelty. Destruction is part of the (loving) understanding of the object.” (pps. 9-10)

“I found her so beautiful in black only because I dreamt of her dead. In fact, it was because I dreamt of her as a widow. What I was in love with in her was the allegory of my own death. But I possessed that allegory physically — which is an original form of the work of mourning.” (p. 33)

“Just as haemophiliacs are unable to staunch the flow of blood, so, semiophiliacs that we are, we are unable to staunch the flow of meaning.” (p. 77)

“The ‘therapeutic window’. What a delicious term for the interruption of medical treatment! Might you perhaps hurl yourself into the void through this therapeutic window? How about a hermeneutic window from which to hurl yourself beyond meaning. Or an existential window from which to hurl yourself out of existence and the perpetual reasons for existing.” (p. 95)

“Looking in the mirror, everyone adopts a flattering pose. In front of the cash dispenser screen, everyone takes on an air of death. Such is the terrible reflection of money on a face — or rather the abstraction of money on the absence of face. The faces are those of hostages on television, which light up only when they are released.” (p. 99)

(Page numbers from the Verso 2007 edition)

“Semantics”

“… there can hardly be any question that what ‘semantics’ conveyed and conveys to the mind of the general reader is a theory of meaning, which Tarski’s theory most emphatically was not. By calling his theory ‘semantics,’ Tarski opened the door to endless misunderstandings on this point. There has been significant damage to logic arising from such misunderstandings, from confusion of model theory or ‘semantics’ improperly so-called with meaning theory or ‘semantics’ properly so-called.”
—From Tarski’s Tort by John P. Burgess

Half of Autechre on intuition and will

“Disagreements only happen when you enter the conscious world, when you try to consider things.”

“Sometimes you have to accept that you’re a product of your environment and no matter what input you want to put into that environment, that’s just your personal taste, the culmination of all your influences, being creatively voiced one way or another, like a painter might do.”

“Some people are so tied up with the whole issue of understanding — they think you need to understand something in order to like it.”

“You don’t realise where routine and schedule become habits, and then become rules. […] It’s good sometimes to remove a lot of the conscious process.”

—Sean Booth, of Autechre, an interview, Wire (2008, March)

Particulars

“In my belief that a large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep, I have loaded the lectures with concrete examples…”

—William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Fodor on evolution

Over the years, people keep proposing theories that go: “what everybody really wants is just …” (fill in the blank). Versions fashionable in their times have included: money, power, sex, death, freedom, happiness, Mother, The Good, pleasure, success, status, salvation, immortality, self-realization, reinforcement, penises (in the case of women), larger penises (in the case of men), and so on. The track record of such theories has not been good; in retrospect they often look foolish or vulgar or both. Maybe it will turn out differently for “what everybody really wants is to maximize his relative contribution to the gene pool”. But I don’t know any reason to think that it will, and I sure wouldn’t advise you to bet the farm.

—spotted over here in an old Mindhacks post.

Protection

I like this, but the analogy is a bit… crude.

“Zoos display an irresistible passion for the preservation of endangered species. A number of these are being protected, later to be released back into the wild. In the meantime, however, ‘the wild’ has disappeared! It is the same with human beings: ideally, they are recycled in human isolation cells (thalassotherapy, psychoanalysis, luxury health clubs, hospitals or asylums), and later released back into social life — in the meantime, however, the social environment has disappeared!”

—Jean Baudrillard, in Fragments

Weary?

“Discussions of minor problems in traditional logic are in these days generally regarded as a bore. They are commonly prefaced by an apology, and the people who chance to see such things in print, wearily remark, ‘Good Lord, yet another one!’ Such is the fashion. We are apt to forget that boredom is often the shadow cast by an enthusiasm; and that the wailing from him who is bored, is the complaint of one who can neither escape from, nor enter into, the interest which, for these very reasons, is to him so exasperatingly stale and unprofitable. This does not mean that all men are under a moral obligation to delight in what interests any one of them. But neither should the lone individual tremble at the possibility that what interests him may weary others. Rather let him state his interest plainly, and to those who fail to share it, wish a kindly ‘God speed’ as they depart.”

– Roelofs, H. D. (1927). The Distribution of Terms. Mind, 36, 281-291.