May 21, 2008

• The present tense died. But wait..that means it’s dead.

  “Hey, I need help over here.”
  “I don’t know that.”
  “What? Yes you do, I just told you!”
  “Yeah, but I forgot what you said.”
  “But we’re talking about it.”
  “About what?”
  “Ok. I’ll say it again: I need help.”
  “I don’t know that.”
  “Know what?”
  “What you just said.”
  “Ah! Well how do you know that you don’t know what I just said if you don’t even know what it is that I just said.”
  “Precisely.  I don’t.”
  “But you said ‘I don’t know that.’  You must know what it is you’re talking about.  You used the present tense.”
  “Did I?”
  “Yes.”
  “Well it doesn’t really matter now since it’s in the past.”
  “What!  In using the present tense you affirmed both that you knew what I was talking about, and that you didn’t.  Now which is it?”
  “But right now I have forgotten what you said, and thus in the past there was a moment in the present during which I didn’t know what you said.”
  “But if you forgot that means at one point you did have knowledge of what I said.”
  “That’s right.  When you said it.”
  “Ah, but you said you didn’t know it!”
  “I didn’t.”
  “But you said you knew it when I said it.”
  “Yes, and then I forgot it, which means I didn’t know it.”
  “But how could you have forgotten so quickly?”
  “Well, when a person forgets something that means there is an instance when they don’t know it.  When I said ‘I don’t know that’ was when that was for me.  Thus, now ‘I forgot,’ then ‘I don’t know.’”
  “So, when you said ‘I don’t know’ you were forgetting what I said?”
  “Yes.”
  “But that means it wasn’t true when you said it.”
  “Yes it does.  Once I said it, it was true.”
  “Oh, okay, while you were saying it.”
  “But I hadn’t said it yet, so it didn’t need to be true.  It was true at the moment it ended, so it was true.”
  “But since you were saying it in the present, it needed to be true in the present.”
  “But there is no moment while one is saying something that the statement being said is complete.  And then once the statement using the present tense was complete, it was in the past.”
  “But that’s what the meaning of the present tense is: the present.”
  “Yes, but the statement didn’t even exist until it was over.  So it ended up being in the past.  And in the past, it was true.”
  “But it can’t just be true in the future past, it had to be true in the actual present.”
  “When is the actual present?”
  “Well, like right now for instance.”
  “What, you mean then?”
  “No, like now.”
  “Ah, then again.”
  “Uh!”
  “You see there are the presents in the future and presents in the past, but there is really no present in the present.  Thus, my statement was said in the present tense because, since there are only are past (and future) presents, we need to speak about things that will be true only if said in the present tense, so we are being consistent.”
  “Wow.  Just wow.  So you might have well just said ‘I forgot’ because by the end of it it would have been true.”
  “I suppose, but if I just said ‘I forgot’ out of nowhere you wouldn’t have any idea what I was talking about.  But the principle is correct that it’s always true to say ’This sentence is over.’”
  “I hate you.”   
  “Because ‘I forgot’ is only true if the statement ‘I don’t know that’ is true when I said it, and since ‘I forgot’ is true, that statement is also true.  So it seems to work better that way.”
  “I don’t know that.”
  “Hey, you look a little behind over there.”
  “Yeah, I am even more so now.  Wanna help?”
  “With what?” 

   

  As usual…no point.  One just gets tired of always posting in the same format.  Anways.  This post is now finished. 

  • 2:13 am
  • 4 Comments