Re: bad poetry?

Jim writes:
<< Yep, I did define "generality" -- I think I called it something along the
lines of a single statement used to describe a wide range or class of
subjects. I distinguished this from [. . . .] >>

I did read your saying this -- there was one post in particular, and a few
others, I believe, where you further contrasted generalities from summaries
and "specific judgments." It just didn't seem to me to act well as a
definition; perhaps it was incorrect of me to ask, specifically, for a
definition, rather than for some sort of elaboration.

What really had me scratching my head were the things you said were not
generalities. Like "to generalize is to be an idiot," for instance. I
believe Luke pointed out that this rings suspiciously like a generalization,
and to my knowledge this irony was loud and pointed in every instance I'd
witnessed someone deliver the quotation. I believe you insisted that it is
not one, didn't explain well enough for MY understanding why it isn't
(because it's true? A "specific judgment," you called it.) and repeatedly
scorned Luke for not listening. This troubled me because *I* WAS listening
and didn't get it, either.

It seemed to me that any statement following something like the form "To
have/be/do X is to have/be/do Y" ought to be called a generality. For the
variables you can substitute racial or religious characteristics with
corresponding stereotypes, or symptoms with corresponding diagnoses, or, in
fact, the substance of the touted Blake quotation. All generalize, one way
or another.

Those of us here who are not plants do an awful lot of this. To have the
notion in your noggin, for instance, that the thing in front of you is a
computer, or a tree, or a man, or a white person, must be some sort of
generalizing. Perhaps even the notion that your cut hairs fallen on the
floor are somehow yours (or are themselves something), or that the flesh at
the end of your thumb is a part of YOU, requires something of this sort.
Recognizing unities must contain a component of generalizing the parts.
Moving from specific to general in any circumstances must be some sort of
generalizing. To see the one in the many (perhaps this would be Plato's
definition). Inductive reasoning, it seems to me, is itself some sort of
generalizing.

To say it another way, it seems to me that we don't have a very clear
structural cause to say that something like "People who generalize are
idiots" is NOT a generality but that "Jews are stingy" IS one. It seems to
me that you could call both of them generalities or you could call both of
them summaries or you could call both of them "specific judgments."
Attempts at sorting them out structurally sound to me like some sort of
failure to recognize the generalities that one believes in, while trying
(perhaps justly) to belittle those that one doesn't.

Of course, I'm sure that you recognize all of this, and were merely using
what seemed to me an awkwardly narrow sort of "generality" in the original
posts (it seemed to me so specific and narrow as to often make unclear what
it included and what it didn't). As I said, Daniel soon chimed in with the
contribution that some generalities are perfectly good and useful, and you
did seem to acknowledge a wider meaning to the word.

-robbie
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Received on Sat Jul 12 16:14:45 2003