Klarinet Archive - Posting 000842.txt from 2002/10

From: "WILLIAM SEMPLE" <wsemple@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] This thing on my front door
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:14:01 -0500

No, the point is not a real one. There is absolutely no relationship, except
the barest logical construct, between a lock and a key and the chain that
leads to far more complex result.

In the case of the key and lock, the result is opening a door. In the case
of the clarinet, the result is sound, which conditioned on many more
variables.

By your analogy, no one would need to spend time doing regressive analyses
to single out variables in a complex economic equation and researchers could
all go home.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Pay" <Tony@-----.uk>
Subject: Re: [kl] This thing on my front door

> On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 15:51:01 -0800 (PST), b5w@-----.net said:
>
> > Tony Pay wrote:
> >
> > > The point is a real one.
> >
> > No argument, Tony. *But* if you turn the key in the wrong direction,
> > or if you have chewing gum stuck on the key....
> >
> > So I think it's meaningful to point out that few devices can be reduced
> > entirely to their mechanisms alone. The human element is (a) what
> > makes the difference and (b) can seldom be completely explained.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Bill <who didn't mean to abuse the analogy>
>
> OK. But you did abuse it, because it wasn't what I meant at all. (I
> obviously have to take some responsibility for that, because I made the
> typo.)
>
> The point of my post was to imagine dividing the lock/key system into
> two parts, and then to ask, nonsensically, which was 'more important'.
>
> It's another case of using the analytical knife to divide up a situation
> inappropriately, and then going on to worry about the resulting
> philosophical puzzle without seeing that you actually *created* it by
> making the division.
>
> A blind man walks along the road, using his stick to guide him. As
> we look at his behaviour, where do we think his mental system -- what we
> call 'him' -- stops?
>
> Is it bounded by the handle of his stick? Is it bounded by his skin?
> Does it start at the tip of his stick?
>
> Obviously it's a nonsense in this case to divide the situation into
> 'him' and 'his stick'; just as it's a nonsense to divide someone looking
> at something into 'them' and 'their eyes', or someone speaking into
> 'them' and 'their voice'; or finally, a clarinet player playing a
> clarinet into 'them' and 'their clarinet'.
>
> Tony
> --
> _________ Tony Pay
> |ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
> | |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
> tel/fax 01865 553339
>
> ... Damnit Jim, I'm a doctor not a Tagline
>
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>

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