Self-worth and intellectuals

A long time ago, a friend told me that his young niece had just received an $800 fur coat (that's $1250 in today's dollars) as a gift from her parents, and that her reaction was to complain that it wasn't expensive enough. We both took this as a clear sign that she was absurdly spoiled: What child is so lavished upon, so showered with riches, that an $800 fur coat does not meet her expectations?

I now think that we were wrong. (Granted, the act of giving that coat was itself spoiling.) Her reaction was motivated not by her expectations, but by a desire to prop up her self-image. People who have no real concept of self-worth often try to raise themselves up by placing things beneath them. (I suspect that this relates to the insane popularity games that schoolchildren play: Picking on or ostracizing someone indicates that they are beneath you, and by some social version of Newton's third law of motion, putting them down raises you up.) The price of the fur coat enabled this child (so she thought) to show her worth by declaring it beneath her. The more expensive, the better it was for this purpose. She is an adult now, and likely, she has since learned to value people by their actions, by the happiness and well-being that they create and/or preserve, or by any measure at all other than what they don't like.

An even longer time ago, my oldest friend shared a quote with me: "My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger." (If you're younger, substitute "'Hey Beautiful' without thinking of "The Big Bang Theory'" (and imagine that "Hey Beautiful" was written by Tchaikovsky).) We were kids, and took it as amusing and possibly accurate. More recently, I have come to regard the quote's sentiment as revealing the same pathos displayed by the niece: Without a schema for understanding one's own worth, even an adult may attempt to create it by placing him- or herself "above" popular culture. (Though I think that doesn't describe "intellectuals" so much as "hipsters" (and I'm not even sure about them).) A web search turned up the quote's author, comedian Billy Connolly. This reassured me, for I had feared that, despite its tongue-in-cheek nature, the quote had been meant in earnest. There are people like that, but at least its author was not one of them.

As an aside, I no longer know what an "intellectual" is. I think I had some idea of it when I was a child: An intellectual might study "pure" (as opposed to applied) math and science, or philosophy, and engage in acts of purely intellectual pleasure. But as I've grown up, I've had decreasing regard for the idea that what is nebulously termed "intelligence" correlates to anything at all other than the ability to learn quickly. My martial arts class challenges me intellectually more (and more engagingly) than any college course did. Applying science to the real world yields far more interesting puzzles (and revelations) than pushing numbers around with a pencil (while disregarding friction and air resistance) does. And for fuck's sake, playing chess just means that you haven't found something better to do with your time. (Yes, I was in my high school's chess club. Shut up.)

For me, all that's left of the idea of the "intellectual" is the presentation: Something like Brian from "Family Guy," whose affectations of culture and intellect mask the fact that he's no smarter than average. Given that, I can hardly imagine how the term "pseudointellectual" can mean anything at all. I mean, if you're claiming an image, whether it's "goth" or "steampunk" or "intellectual," who has the authority to call you a poser? Some pitiable schmuck who claims the same image, trying desperately to establish that you are beneath them?

Difference between natural language and formal logic rules.

I believe that the confusion that some students experience with conditional statements in math and formal logic courses, over the idea that one cannot assume the inverse/converse of a conditional, stems from their intuitive understanding of Grice's maxim of Quantity. I think it would be most helpful, upon the introduction of this subject, for the teacher (or the course material) to explain roughly as follows:

Conditional statements take the form of "If something, then something else." Like, "If it's raining, then I wear a hat." Let's say I told you, "If anyone's around, I don't pick my nose." So what do you think I do when I'm alone? [Pause.] I pick my nose, right! But do you really know that? If I never picked my nose, my statement would still be true, right? [Longer pause, possibly repeating the original statement for consideration.] You're right: If I never picked my nose, I wouldn't have said it like that. I would have just said, "I don't pick my nose." What we just demonstrated is a linguistic rule called Grice's maxim of Quantity, which states that I don't tack on phrases like "If anyone's around," unless I actually have a reason to do so. I said it, so you figured I had a reason for saying it, and that's how you knew that I pick my nose when nobody's around. Incidentally, the statement "If nobody's around, I pick my nose" is the inverse of my original statement, "If anyone's around, I don't pick my nose." You get the inverse just by negating both parts of the statement.

The maxim of Quantity, the rule that you used to figure out the inverse, is not a rule in formal logic! It's just a rule of natural language. In formal logic, I could say, "If anyone's around, I don't pick my nose," and you would have no way of knowing what I do if nobody's around. Unlike with natural language, when you're given a conditional statement in formal logic, that's not enough information to know whether the inverse of that statement is true. That should be obvious with the statement, "If it's raining, then I wear a hat." Can you conclude the inverse, that if it's not raining, then I don't wear a hat? Of course not! Maybe I'll also wear a hat to keep the sun off my face, or just because it's stylish. So we can't assume the inverse.

Now let's look at the contrapositive, which is just a fancy name for a concept that you already understand, as illustrated by the famous quote by Dan Quayle, "If Al Gore invented the Internet, then I invented spell check..."