On another topic, and more informative than opinionated is this piece. Modern pirates are apparently quite sophisticated and hardly come out of nowhere.

For a while it looked like Timothy Williamson had good chances of winning the contest. Witness: “If the original question, read literally, had too obvious an answer, either positive or negative, that would give us reason to suspect that someone who uttered it had some other meaning in mind, to which the overt compositional structure of the question might be a poor guide. But competent speakers of English may find themselves quite unsure how to answer the question, read literally, so we have no such reason for interpreting it non-literally.” (from: The Philosophy of Philosophy)

So, basically, anybody not gripped by the problem of vagueness (hidden in the “original question” referred to) is most likely not a competent speaker of English. But notice that Williamson fails to really rule out all other options. He consciously weakens the claim about linguistic competence to a ‘may’. (Of course, competent English speakers may also “find themselves quite unsure how to answer the question” not because they are unsure what the answer, if any, to the question is, but because they “find themselves quite unsure” about what the hell the original question was supposed to mean, literally understood. But that’s a separate issue.)

Williamson’s attempt, at any rate, is toppled by Theodore Sider’s more concise and less cautious claim: “The very idea of distinguished structure itself, once grasped, is one that must surely be acknowledged.” (from: Ontological Realism) Marvellous. If you disagree with the idea of distinguished structure that just shows you haven’t really grasped it (yet). It’s not just that you are not a competent speaker. It’s more like: you are not a competent thinker. The ‘surely’ gives it away, a little bit, but other than that: there’s really nothing left to argue about, is there? Davidson would be proud.

But isn’t there a legitimate worry? What if the president gets seriously ill? Or dies? Well, that what vice-presidents are for. No, this public concern for the candidates’ health is much more expression of the kind of fetish health has become than expression of a legitimate worry.

But healthy doesn’t mean invincible. Just the other day, ever healthy and youthful seeming Jörg Haider of Austria killed himself in car crash, drunk and speeding, but still unexpectedly. But at least in his case we now know for sure he’s dead, which is more than can be said for another “beloved leader”, Kim Jong Il. He has disappeared from the public sphere (insofar as this is possible in the absence of a public sphere), but speculations about his death are denied.

How is Fidel Castro doing these days?

The great experimenter obviously had no professional mereologist at hand…