Patricia had strolled about the park for a short while. If Nell was getting tired of her moody outbreaks and general confusion already, then their early friendship seemed destined to last shortly. She had seemed grumpy or gloomy when they separated a few hours earlier. Perhaps Patricia needed to think just a tad too often, when her head was full.

The thought had the same taste as when someone rubbed in her face that she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. Patricia had felt the same air of inadequacy during her recent reading that she felt during her other futile attempts at understanding philosophy.

No, this was different: This time she was being treated as an equal by a person who was unpretentious. Talking with Nell was enriching. When they were together, she felt she could discuss any topic with a little introduction.

There was just another side to Nell which Patricia found harder to read. Perhaps Nell just pretended. Perhaps she pitied Patricia, seeped in stupidity as she were.

No, no reason to be dark about it. As long as Nell’s aura of sincere interest persisted, Patricia might as well carry on like everything was okay.

P: “Nell, there you are! I had to wait for almost half an hour.”

N: “I’m sorry! I embarked on a long walk and didn’t notice the time! The last ten minutes I have been practically running. I truly am sorry.”

P: “No no, it’s fine. I got through two ice creams.”

N: “… And I got to take a step back and look at things from a distance.”

P: “I tried, I really did. But I feel none the wiser now”. And the pain returned. “Oh Nell, I am useless in these conversations am I not? My vacation is soon over and you can go back to your own circles with real knowledgable people”, and Patricia knew she had the face of a cry girl.

N: “Where did that come from? This is the first time in years I have had fun just talking. We work together so well! Don’t you dare disappearing on me now, you hear me! I’m a little bit cross with you right now.”

Being scorned for her resignation brought a big smile back on Patricia’s face. Nell was not about to let her go!

And Nell finally caved in to her impulses and wantonly seized the opportunity to grab Patricia’s body like a warm plaything and hold her, assuring her of her devotion. The situation demanded it anyway and she correctly assumed Patricia would never notice the sheer physicality of the act. She let her go after having bathed in her scent and soft sweetness and hurriedly picked up the trail. An ugly feeling of shame lurked at the depths of her conscience.

N: “Come let’s walk. I want to talk linguistics with you. I read the rest of the essay and looked up a few things. Something much more interesting happens next in the essay.”

P: “Oh? What is that?”

N: “What have we been doing right from the start? Something Kant did as well, and all the others?”

Patricia walked for a few paces and immediately picked up the hint.

P: “We say: »It must obviously be so that …«!”

N: “Exactly. Imagine that poor innocent Kant got close to a cognitive tarpit as old as thinking man itself and was attracted to a luring scent of analyticity. An irresistible logic that had craved many victims before him and many renowned ones after him.”

P: “Oh what a horrible thought. So here is our candidate prey sitting by himself and thinking: »If Holmes killed Sikes, then Sikes must be dead — logically there is no way around that!«. He write about it, formalizes it, but never realizes that his brain is whispering lies to him! Oh god, what a sinister thought.”

N: “Is it? We are caught in the machinations of a cruel nature with one incentive only: To perpetuate the species by adhering to the program. Wouldn’t evolution naturally select for those cognitive traits that masqueraded the program completely?”

P: “We are rewarded when we look the other way… towards rationalism? Oh Nell, I won’t think like that. You are in a dark mood now.”

N: “Stay with me, I implore you. Analyze your feeling. How do you feel when you have worked out a mathematical proof? How do you feel when you can ground a suspicion in solid fact?”

P: “I feel. Elevated. Touched by immortality.”

N: “Other-worldly? Transcendentally enraptured?.”

P: “Yes! On the trail of something eternally true.”

N: “In what way is that not a neurological reward system roaring its head?”

Patricia thought like a madwoman.

P: “But Nell — that has got nothing to do with the sociological perspective that our ideals herald from the class relationship, does it?”

N: “I don’t know. Will you help me find out?”

At this point, Nell became the luckiest woman in the universe as Patricia unhesitatingly took her hand and walked for a while.

If it is just the mind, it can’t be the world… or can it?

P: “The article didn’t mention any of that at all, did it?”

N: “Not at all. But it certainly got interesting nevertheless. We need to prepare our mind for a second for what’s coming. My approach is this: How would you describe logic or indeed mathematics?”

P: “Rigorous. Perfect.”

N: “In other words a far cry from the way our brain works, right?”

P: “We think sloppily and slowly. Mathematics takes a long time to evolve because it needs to be bullet proof. It’s like the difference between a mathematically straight line and an uneven line drawn on a chalkboard. The ideal cannot exist.”

N: “Exactly. So imagine a laser beam. Very straight, right. In fact, you can immediately spot that it is way more perfect than your pencil line drawn by hand.”

Pause.

P: “I see what you mean. If I can perceive a straight line, it must exist in my neurons as something that can be triggered. So in a way, the idealized line is psychological too, though seldom realized.”

N: “That’s my point. True, mathematics seems like something else, even to the point that Kant and others thought of it as synthetic rather than analytic. But our thinking about how it must be purely analytic comes from our notion that anything logically necessary cannot be of the mind but must be of the world itself. The mathematician is luring out the secrets from a world that cannot ever exist anywhere but in the mind.”

P: “Why linguistics?”

N: “Honestly, we are not about to close something. We have only just started on something. I think in a year from now you and I will still be having this conversation.

It would seem that Quine’s behaviorist approach — the meaning holism argument — left a long scar on the analytic dream. A lot of the ensuing polemics have to do with trying to reground judgements in something more stable than Quine’s sliding web. Something that could be tested. What follows is a series of suggestions that are so technical, that it would take ages for me to understand them. The whole thing basically explodes into a labyrinthine world of language, representation, existence and whatnot. Look, Patricia, we can’t do anything fast here. But we can decide to try.”

P: “I would love to try. If that means you and I reading linguistics and semantics, then fine with me.”

N: “Linguistics is forced to come up with a model for mental processes usually hidden. Really, any idea that can bring useful answers unscathed by critique will at some point be proposed. There’s a bench. Can we sit?”

P: “I’d love to. My feet are hurting.”

Nell took out her phone and showed Patricia various articles on first order logic versus propositional logic. Then they went over the supplement to the article on Chomskyan linguistics and searched for topics on semantics and linguistics. The prospect was overwhelming. Patricia regained her bleak, pale look.

N: “We have to get good at these things. Together. Understand me?”

P: “What’s the point!”, she despairingly exclaimed loudly and turned her face away.

Nell ventured to reach her chin and turn her head back again. It felt nice, holding her sad face like that. Oh the things she could do to her right now.

N: “The point is that I promise you to loyally and faithfully work for a whole year to learn the language myself and make sure you do as well. Will you make a similar promise to me?”

Patricia let Nell hold her head in that position, effectively abandoning responsibility for herself to her older sister-in-spirit. She muttered with Nells fingers squeezing her chin:

P: “M’okay then. I promise.”

And smiled like it was all a game. But in her heart she was happy for once.

•P•A•R•A•D•O•X•