Give me your best attempt at a jargon laden ridiculous account of what some philosophy professor or writer might say about something in popular culture. It doesn’t have to be current, but someone giving a philosophical explanation of a Brittney Spears album might be pretty good.
A movie
An album
A cultural or academic revolution
WHATEVER…
I think you may have put people off with your desultory tone, though if you click on the picture in my sig it takes you to my blog where just the other day I posted an essay on Robocop and transhumanism.
“Far from being harmless entertainment for children, the animated production Spongebob Squarepants expresses a will to instigate within the juvenile soul an appreciation of base humor and decadent ideals during the most formative period of the development of their psyche.”
Bump! This thread deserves more attention (or, should I say, more attempts at superfluous intellectuality).
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ2YeHK3Gic[/youtube]
“I don’t know where he’s not.”
In other words, Pinocchio says he doesn’t have knowledge of the places where Shrek currently is not. This is false, because he knows of at least one place where Shrek is not, namely the room he’s in. Of course for it to be a lie Pinocchio would have to have said something he himself believed was not true, and not what was actually false, but it is reasonable to assume Pinocchio did believe Shrek was not in the room. But even if we grant him this we can’t grant him that he doesn’t know Shrek isn’t in the same immediate location as he himself is. Pinocchio is not Shrek. They are two different beings, and two different beings cannot occupy the same space or location at the same time. Assuming therefore Pinocchio is aware of this, and assuming he believed Shrek was not in the same immedate location as himself, he would have lied! But his nose didn’t grow, so it wasn’t a lie, which means Pinocchio would have either had to have lacked all beliefs about where Shrek isn’t (including the room and his own immediate location), or he would have had to have held the belief that he did not know Shrek was not in the same immedate location as himself. The latter implies Pinocchio has no philosophical training, and that’s hard to believe given all this, so it’s probably the former.
Assuming then that Pinocchio did in fact lack knowledge of all the locations Shrek was not, and was therefore telling the truth when he said that he lacked knowledge of the places Shrek isn’t, would that warrant Prince Charming’s assumption, “Your telling me, you don’t know where Shrek is?” He is definitely not saying that. Pinocchio hasn’t indicated he lacks knowledge of where Shrek is, just that he lacks knowledge of where he’s not. Pinocchio could know all the locations Shrek is not except the location where he is, because he can’t know that Shrek isn’t in some place if he knows (or even if he merely believes) that Shrek is there. It’s an unwarranted assumption on the Prince’s part.
In the next sentence Pinocchio comments on this assumption. Lets break it down into three parts:
(1)It wouldn’t be inaccurate to assume
Technically the phrase “It would not be inaccurate to assume” means the assumption is somewhere between accurate and less than inaccurate, but for convenience’s sake lets assume it’s a euphemism for “It is accurate to assume.”
[It would be accurate to assume]
(2)I couldn’t exactly not say
It’s difficult to understand what “I couldn’t exactly not say” means until you see just what is being negated with the “not”. So lets remove it and see what Pinocchio is not-ing. Without the “not” the phrase is “I couldn’t exactly say.” Simple enough. By adding the “not” Pinocchio is saying it is false that he couldn’t exactly say, and that translates into “I could exactly say”.
[It would be accurate to assume that I could exactly say…]
Basically, all that Pinocchio has done thus far is preface his yet to come response with, “I believe that it is true that…,” or, “the following is not a lie…”
And now the actual response which according to Pinocchio is not a lie, meaning that it is what he thinks is the truth:
(3)it [size=85](Prince Charming’s assumption that Pinocchio doesn’t know where Shrek is)[/size] is or isn’t almost partially incorrect
Let me break the disjunction down by removing and then placing back some of the negations, and for the purposes of this lets do only one of the disjunctions and whatever we come up with this one will be the the opposite for the second disjunct.
“It is almost partially incorrect”
Hence, lets start clear of any qualifiers and negations with, “It is correct.” The assumption is correct.
Add one negation, “It is incorrect.” The assumption is incorrect.
Add a qualifier, “It is partially incorrect.” Part of the assumption is incorrect.
And now the other one, “It is almost partially incorrect.” At least one part of the assumption is almost incorrect. Almost is a tricky term to diffuse. Is he using “almost,” to mean simply, “not” as when one for example says, “I almost got killed,” to mean I did not get killed? I don’t know, and it’s fucking late. I’m gonna wrap it up right here.
Whatever the precise meaning is, it would seem the disjunction is meaningful, which is to say it is either true or false, and therefore not neither true nor false. It is true that Prince Charming’s assumption can be either true or false. I don’t have to break it down anymore than this, because the statement is essentially of the form [P or not-P] and that’s always a tautology; and, being that the statement itself is not meaningless, we can safely infer, assuming first of all that he’s a rational being who has had symbolic logic training, that Pinocchio is indeed telling the truth when he says he believes he knows it is true that Prince Charming’s assumption is either true or false. Although the truth he’s saying isn’t in the least bit helpful to Prince Charming.