Notes from June 08, 2012

—It's possible to develop a strange relationship with a book, maybe a kind of obsession or a kind of love. 

But in love, we come to expect a response from our partner, and we expect to watch our partner change and grow. 

This presents a problem since books are static objects and can't respond to us or change. 

So we must be continually seeking to understand them in different terms than we are accustomed to.

This continual reinterpretation allows for the illusion of change in an otherwise static object. 

Meaning as "use"

-Wittgenstein is usually held to have believed that the meaning of a word is identical with its use in human life.

There is a good counter-example to this. You can imagine something like Being There, a dim-witted politician who knows just when to use the appropriate words and phrases but has actually no idea what they mean.