Finally, an update!  Here's how the 2007-2008 academic year stands: I will be in Aix-en-Provence all year teaching English!  So, a year off from coursework, dedicated instead to keeping Vanderbilt's French program looking squeaky clean abroad.  I'll also have plenty of time to read and write; I'm thinking about a general "critique of mind and language"--Kant style.  Summer, by the way, has been spent mostly painlessly in CA; I'm basking in the warmth of my newly awarded M.A.  Only one more possible degree left--let's get it done early while I've still got some young life in me!

Something to think about...

Is 2 + 2 = 4 an absolutely true statement about the universe?  In order to be such, it seems obvious that it should relate to or describe some actual state of affairs in the world.  Yet, it is this very notion of relating to and describing that is problematic.  There are no facts about the universe that exist in and of themselves; a fact, insomuch as it requires an observation, requires a consciousness.  But we cannot say that the universe is conscious of itself.  So, can we say that “facts” about the universe exist in and of themselves and outside of our thinking about the universe?  We cannot – facts are only  descriptions of actual states of affairs in the world; they are not those states of affairs themselves.  It is not as if the universe goes about adding two and two together to get four.  Saying that 2 + 2 = 4 is simply the way in which human beings choose to describe a certain state of affairs (relating to quantities) in the world.  The universe does not ordain these states of affairs; it simply provides them.  So, then, is 2 + 2 = 4 an absolutely true statement about the universe?  It is to the extent that making observations and coming to facts about the nature of reality are worthwhile endeavors.  And indeed they are – in the interest of the progress of science and human thought, we ought to accept that statements such as 2 + 2 = 4 are “facts”.  They are absolute enough; this kind of thinking will allow us to get on with our lives.