Tag: Specifications

• February 5, 2014

  The tentative, provisional, and presumptive

  A common error in thinking is to believe that a request, an invitation, or an offer is structured according to a Yes or a  No. Either I accept or I reject. Either I assent or else dissent. However, in many cases a binary operator may not be accurate or appropriate. Thus, one needs to consider,…
• April 13, 2013

  The magical coat room

  You hand the man your ticket but either the ticket, which looks pretty ratty, coincides with some other performance, or else its matching partner to this performance is nowhere to be found. Either way, your coat is gone and the coat check man has no recollection of having seen the coat you describe. Try as…
• April 12, 2013

  Finding your lost coat, finding a better life

  Here’s a thought experiment for you: suppose you gave your coat to the man working at coat check and the man gave you a ticket. Upon returning from the performance, you go to hand the worker your ticket, only to realize that it is nowhere to be found. The man asks you to describe the…
• April 11, 2013

  Specify and inquire, you hear

  You don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know what’s setting things off. Time was that things made sense but that was long ago. Vaguely long ago. Now, there’s something you’d like to figure out or find out about yourself, the world, life–something–but you don’t know what it is or how. How to do so.…
• April 9, 2013

  Looking for the man you’ve never met… On specifying

  Let’s suppose that you’re a detective and that you’re looking for a man you’ve never met before. Let’s suppose further that your initial specification–‘a man I’ve never met before’–is correct: namely, that you are looking for a man (not a woman, an animal, a child, a god, an angel, or a spirit) and that you’ve…