month. When Waldo called the next month, thedoctor asked him how things were with his wife. “Fine, I’mvery relaxed, but I’m three hundred miles from home!”
The moral is obvious. Suppositions, assumptions, presuppositions, whatever you want to call them, are necessaryin order to do science or to “do” life, but they can be misleading and even dangerous when made unthinkingly.Unfortunately (or fortunately), they usually must be madeunthinkingly.
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Once entrenched, theories can be difficult to displace.Just as Ptolemy added epicycle to epicycle to save his theoryof planetary orbit, people tend to embellish and embroiderany barely serviceable theory and often even prefer suchbaroque theories to simpler ones.Dr. Paul Watzlawick (1977) relates a story about a relevant piece of research due to Professor A. Bavelas: Two subjects A and B are asked to try by trial and error to recognizethe difference between healthy and sick cells. They can onlyrespond “Healthy” or “Sick” to the slides that are shownthem. They are told that a light will signal when they haveanswered correctly. In fact, however, only A’s correctresponses are always greeted by the light signal. Unknown toB, who is seated across the room (and who sees the sameslides in the same order), B’s responses are greeted by thelight signal only when A responds correctly. Whether Bresponds “Healthy” or “Sick” has no effect on the reinforcing light signal that he sees.Afterward, when asked to explain their “theory ofhealthy cells,” A’s theory is simple, concrete, and straightforward. B’s ideas, on the other hand, are complex, convoluted, and elaborate. Most surprisingly, A is impressed bythe “brilliance” of B’s theory and in a subsequent trial doesconsiderably worse than in his first trial, presumably havingbeen influenced by B’s abstruse (Ptolemaic) ideas.Of course, no formal research is needed to note that,everything being equal, people are often more impressed by
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mumbo-jumbo that they don’t understand than by simpleobservations and deductions that they do understand. Theyprefer hairy hypotheses to shaving with Occam’s razor.
The mathematician Howard Eves (1958) recounts thetale of a man who loved to walk. His problem was that (likeWaldo earlier) he often found himself far from home atnightfall. He thus decided to buy a house on the side of abig hill and walked around the hill once each day, startingin the morning with the rising sun behind him and endingback at his house at dusk with the setting sun ahead of him.After a few years of this he discovered to his horror that hisuphill leg had shortened considerably. The man thendecided to walk in the other direction for a few years untilhe evened the length of his legs. When neighbors doubtedhis story, he always responded by pulling up his trousers andsaying, “Look, aren’t my two legs the same length?”Needless to say, therapists (“She had such and such adepressive disorder and now she’s cured”), economic forecasters, political pundits (“There was a tremendous backlash, but now attitudes toward such and such have becomestable”), and the proverbial man in the street (as well as theproverbial man on the hill) are all sometimes prone to support their diagnoses and “cures” with similar arguments.
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Assumptions structure one’s thinking, and hence attimes obstruct the seeing of certain “obvious” phenomenaand ensure the seeing of certain “nonexistent” phenomena.(The quotes indicate that what is obvious or nonexistentdepends to some extent on one’s theoretical assumptions.)For example, chemists before Lavoisier did not observemany of the phenomena associated with rust and oxidation,since their theoretical assumptions concerning phlogistonmade it unlikely that these phenomena would be noticed.Biologists before Harvey, though they could not find any,were convinced there were holes between the left and righthalves of the heart, since their theories pointed to such aconclusion.Scientists often behave like Van Dumholtz does in thefollowing story, though the esoteric nature of their concerns helps to keep this relatively secret:Van Dumholtz has two large jars before him, one containing many fleas, the other empty. He gently removes aflea from the flea jar, places it on the table before the emptyjar, steps back, and commands “Jump,” whereupon the fleajumps into the empty jar. Methodically he gently removeseach flea, places it on the table, says “Jump,” and the fleajumps into the originally empty jar.When he has transferred all the fleas in this way, heremoves one from the now full jar, carefully pulls off itsback legs, and places it on the table before the original jar.He commands “Jump,” but the flea does not move. He takesanother flea from the jar, carefully pulls off its back legs,and places it on the table. Again he commands “Jump,” but
the flea does not move. Methodically he goes through thissame procedure with the remaining fleas, and gets the sameresults.Van Dumholtz beamingly records in his notebook: “Aflea when its back legs are pulled off, cannot hear.”
Finally, teleological explanations make reference to theend state or purpose of some phenomenon in order toexplain that phenomenon. Such explanations, for example,were (and still are) used to counter Darwin’s theory of evolution. Voltairean parodies of them—rabbits have white tailsso as to be more easily hunted, noses have bridges to ensurethe comfortable placement of eyeglasses, etc.—are wellknown. Much less known is the argument advanced by HyMarx (Groucho’s great-uncle and a famous teleologicalphysiologist) to account for the foul odor associated withflatulence: the smell, Hy explained, was for the benefit ofthe deaf.In contrast, there are also legitimate uses of teleologicalexplanation, especially if such explanations (“the thermostat is trying to keep the house at a steady temperature,”e.g.) can be reformulated in nonpurposive terms or, inmore complex cases, in terms of the stability of systems withinteracting parts. Kant, in fact, wrote that the ability to recognize purposiveness in nature, or teleological judgment ashe called it, is intimately connected with “common sense.”Another legitimate variant of teleological explanationwill be discussed in the next chapter.
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Context, Complexity, andArtificial IntelligenceREAD : Out of Sight, Out of MindPRINT : Blind Idiot
Researchers in the field of artificial intelligence have beenconcerned with the construction of programs to translatearticles from one natural language to another. Earlierworkers vastly underestimated the complexity of the task,however. Something of the flavor of the problems encountered is given by the following apocryphal story: An earlyRussian-English, English-Russian translating programtook “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” translatedit into Russian, and then retranslated this Russian translation back into English. The result was “The vodka is agreeable, but the meat is too tender.”Whenever there is a metaphoric component to a passage, as above, or a dependence on context or backgroundknowledge, similar problems arise. On the other hand, ifthe task if formal, if there are hard-and-fast rules to follow,as in the game of chess, the performance is, of course,much more impressive. In fact it is incomparably easier fora computer to determine trajectories for space vehicles, say,than it is for it to carry on an ordinary open-ended conversation (via video screens) with a human interlocutor.The latter feat is not even close to being accomplished. If
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and when a computer is programmed with enough structured factual knowledge, memory, and self-modifiability tocarry on such a conversation in a manner indistinguishablefrom that of another person, it will have passed (Alan)Turing’s test for machine intelligence.To pass the Turing test, not only must an awesomeamount of informal and mundane knowledge be formalized(mustard is not put on bananas or in one’s shoes, cats donot grow on trees, raincoats are not made out of rain) butdifferences in significance due to context must also somehow be provided for. How, to cite a common example, is acomputer to evaluate a remark about a man touching hishead without knowing the context in which it occurs? Itcould mean indefinitely many things, depending on indefinitely many ever-changing human contexts. Even ifenough knowledge of the most likely contexts is programmed in, it is commonly the case in conversation thatthe context of a term is supplied only within the bit of dialogue in which it appears. A specific example is provided bythe following story, but this openness and sensitivity to context, this being-thereness, is pervasive.A young man on vacation calls home and speaks to hisbrother. “How’s Oscar the cat?”“The cat’s dead, died this morning.”“That’s terrible. You know how attached I was to him.Couldn’t you have broken the news more gently?”“How?”“You could’ve said that he’s on the roof. Then the next
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time I called you could have said that you haven’t been ableto get him down, and gradually like this you could’ve broken the news.”“Okay, I see. Sorry.”“Anyway, how’s Mom?”“She’s on the roof.”
The dog moves his rook to KB4 with his paw. Georgemoves his queen to QB6 and announces, “Checkmate. Thatwas a stupid move, dog. Besides having bad breath, you’rereally dumb. I’ve beaten you five out of seven games.”There is an interesting tendency that workers in artificial intelligence (the least critical, most gung-ho of whomare sometimes castigated as members of the “artificial intelligentsia” by disgruntled art historians) often complainabout: Any activity or task—such as translating novel passages from one natural language to another—that is resistantto performance by a computer is defined as requiring “real”intelligence. Conversely, anytime a program is written thataccomplishes some task or other, such as the many chessplaying programs, many people dismiss the task as notrequiring real intelligence. This tendency to dismiss as notreally constitutive of intelligence those activities formalizedenough to be captured by a program should not, I think, beconsidered an after-the-fact redefinition of intelligence,but rather a reevaluation of the various kinds of intelligence.
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Performing many different tasks, using many differentprocedures, determining when one rather than another isappropriate, discovering the limits of a method’s applicability, modifying a system to adapt to different circumstances—these activities are all of a different order of difficulty and require a more flexible sort of integrative intelligence than does working within a well-defined formal system such as chess or celestial mechanics. Necessary in orderfor this “integrative intelligence” to function in puttingtogether the disparate and incongruous details of an informal situation and making them coherent is a personality ofsorts—wants, interests, a sense of self.It is tempting to speculate that the high-status jobs ofthe future will be those that place a premium on these selfmediated integrative activities, rather than on any particular formalized skill. Generally, the more interesting andimportant a job, the less well-defined it is. Housewives andhousehusbands, handymen, humorists, philosophers, goodconversationalists, friends, and lovers—all may be valuedeven more highly in the future than they are today.
Marvin Minsky, an eminent computer scientist, haswritten, “When intelligent machines are constructed, weshould not be surprised to find them as confused and asstubborn as men on their convictions about mind-matter,consciousness, free will, and the like.” This seems to makesome sense, though I would substitute an “if” for the
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“when” above.In addition to philosophical concerns, these intelligent“machines” will probably have a sense of humor. In fact, avariation of the Turing test for machine intelligence wouldbe to construct a program that recognizes jokes. All theintellectual integrative skills mentioned earlier would berequired, along with an appreciation of emotional nuance.This combination of skills is not so common, come to thinkof it, even among humans.A very old married couple in their nineties visit adivorce lawyer. He asks, “Why now? You’re both in yournineties, you’ve been married for more than seventy years,why get divorced now?”They explain, “We wanted to wait until the childrenwere dead.”If you chuckled, you probably don’t have silicon in yourbrain (steel in your heart maybe, but not silicon in yourbrain).
It’s conceivable that with the advance of artificial intelligence, ethnic jokes will be replaced by robot jokes:Two robot bear hunters were driving along when theycame upon a sign that said “Bear Left,” whereupon theyreturned home.
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The robot pharmacist quit his job. He couldn’t fit thelittle prescription bottles into the typewriter.
An important distinction in computer science is thatbetween the hardware and the software of the computer.Although the distinction is not always clear-cut, “hardware”refers to the physical aspects of the computer (tapes, disks,transistors, chips, etc.), whereas “software” refers to theprograms that run on the computer. The program determines what the computer does, what the sequence of logicalor programmatic states must be. Corresponding to theselogical or programmatic states of the computer are thephysical states of its hardware.Hilary Putnam has noted that the logical and linguisticquestions and issues that arise concerning this softwarehardware distinction are similar in some important respectsto those arising in the traditional mind-body problem ofDescartes. What is the relationship between mind and brain(body)? How does one affect the other? Are the mental andphysical incommensurable, or are they different aspects ofthe same phenomenon? These problems, Putnam claims,have in some respects solutions (or dissolutions) identicalto those of the following analogous problems: What is therelationship between program and hardware? How doesone affect the other? Are programmatic and hardwareproperties incommensurable, or different aspects of thesame phenomenon?
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Compare:(1) I want George to cry at this point in the play, sowhile he’s backstage either have him think of something very sad or, if he can’t, drip onion juice intohis eyes.(2) I want that strange helical pattern to appear on themonitor at this point in the presentation, so eitherprogram its appearance or, if you can’t, rub a magnet over the interface cable like this.The topic of the next section (intensional explanations)sheds a little light on some related questions.
Why Did He Just NowTo u c h Hi s Head ?“And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact thatmy arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?”—Ludwig Wittgenstein
myrtle: Why do you think that man over there just touchedhis head?george: He’s the third-base coach and he’s giving the buntsignal to the batter.martha: It’s a windy day and he’s making sure his hairpieceis snug.waldo: A complex set of neuron firings and muscle contractions brought about by an even more complex set ofchemical and physical phenomena caused the upperright appendage to move at such and such an angle andrate of speed to the lateral part of the uppermost centralextremity.myrtle: Huh?The explanations of George and Martha differ fromWaldo’s in a crucial way: they explain by giving a reason forthe behavior in question, rather than by citing causal laws.By giving a rationale for the behavior, George and Martha
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make it reasonable in light of certain socially accepted rulesand norms, and the beliefs and intentions of the agent.Explanations of this type, which presuppose the rationalityof the agents involved, are called intensional explanations.Waldo’s explanation, on the other hand, is a causal one: Ifthese general covering laws are valid, and if these conditionsobtain, then that will result.Note that there is no conflict between the two types ofexplanation. Both types can be invoked to explain the samebit of behavior (Princess Diana’s becoming pregnant, theWatergate tapes being erased), though one or the other maybe more appropriate in any given context.It’s interesting that Freud, who started out as a “hard”scientist, attempted in his “Scientific Project” to reconcilecausal (neurophysiological) explanation and intensional(psychoanalytic in this case) explanation. He wrote that hewanted “to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural science: that is, to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate states of specifiable material particles,thus making those processes perspicuous and free fromcontradiction” (1966). He failed, of course, since his neurological knowledge was limited, his psychoanalytic theorieswere flawed (to be kind), and the connection, even betweentwo ideal approaches, was and is almost unimaginably complex.Even in purely physical contexts, intensional explanations may sometimes be the only manageable ones. Playingchess with a computer, for example, requires that one adoptwhat Daniel Dennett (1978) calls an “intentional stance”
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toward it rather than a physical one. One predicts (andexplains) the computer’s moves by asking oneself what is themost rational move given the goal of the program (winning), the constraints on it (the rules of chess), its store ofinformation (perfect memory of all past moves), and its“personality” as so far revealed (tendency to castle, move itsqueen, and so on). One does not try to predict or explainthe computer’s moves by examining the physical state of itscircuits, chips, and disks, because to do so is again much,much too difficult, and prohibitively time-consuming.The notion of an action is useful in clarifying the relation between intensional and causal explanations. Anaction is a bit of behavior for which the agent’s reasons arethe cause. The erratic movement of an epileptic is not anaction, nor is the backward fall of a man sitting on a ricketychair that collapses suddenly; a causal explanation is mostappropriate in these cases. On the other hand, jumpingaround energetically to alert an airplane overhead and abackward double somersault, though they resemble the previous behaviors, are both actions. It should be clear alsofrom the example of a man touching his head that a bit ofbehavior can be seen as indefinitely many different actionsdepending on the person, his background, the immediatecontext of the behavior, and the general culture. The manmight have touched his head in the belief that he would thusappear relaxed and unconcerned while his neighbors discussed a local burglary, a burglary the man himself committed. Causal explanations do not have the variety and dependence on context that intensional explanations do.
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Though the reasons of an action are its cause, it isimportant to remember that they cannot be determinedexcept in the context of an intensional explanation. Onefirst determines what action a person is performing, why itis rational, and then identifies that person’s reasons as thecause of the action.
My son often fights with my daughter, and sometimesin defense he explains, “I didn’t punch her. My arm was justmoving and her face was in the way.”
The French writer Henri Bergson attributed laughterto the “mechanical encrusted on something living” (1911).By this rather celebrated phrase he meant that a person whobecomes rigid, machinelike, and repetitive becomes laughable, since the essence of humanity is its (relative) flexibility and spirit. “Any incident is comic that calls our attentionto the physical in a person when it is the moral side that isconcerned. . . . We laugh everytime a person gives theimpression of being a thing” (1911). Slipping, falling,digesting, twitching—none of these are actions, none admitof intentional explanations, and all, in a suitable context,are funny.Hamlet hiccoughs, the president burps, or the mobboss slips on a banana peel, and we laugh. On a somewhat
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higher level, philosophers (which most people are, to someextent) laugh when someone makes a category mistake ofsome sort. Philosophy is devoted to the never-ending taskof seeing beyond the “mechanical encrustations” on ourunderstanding.
george: This talk of intentional explanations is sloppy.Why don’t we use only causal explanations?martha: You’re right. Let’s just decide right now to do that.We both want to clarify, and causal explanations seemclearer and more precise.The joke, such as it is, is that Martha is offering anintentional explanation of why she and George are planning to use only causal explanations. Intentional notionsare built into the fabric of our communication. TheAmerican philosopher H. P. Grice has even analyzed “S’smeaning something by x” as “S’s intending the utterance ofx to produce some effect in a hearer by means of the hearer’s recognition of S’s intention to produce that effect”(1957). For practical purposes, causal explanation correlates of intentional explanations are quite useless.
An important way in which the logic of intentionalexplanations differs from that of causal ones is in the fail-
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ure of extensionality. That is, the substitution of an expression referring to a person or thing for another expressionreferring to that same person or thing can change thetruth-value of intentional statements and the cogency ofintentional explanations. This is not the case for causalstatements or explanations. For example, consider againGeorge’s explanation of why the man was touching his head.(He’s the third-base coach and he’s giving the bunt signal tothe batter.) Suppose that the third-base coach is HenryMalone’s cousin and the batter is the only Greek on thefield. Upon substitution of these expressions, the “explanation” of the man’s touching his head becomes “He’s HenryMalone’s cousin and he’s giving the bunt signal to theGreek.” One could even replace “giving the bunt signal to”with “stroking his temple for,” an expression referring tothe same movement, and lose all explanatory power. Thesubstitution of an expression having the same referent foran expression in Waldo’s causal explanation—say, by using adifferent coordinate system, or a different description of“upper right appendage”—does not affect the truth-value ofany statement, or the explanatory power of the explanation.Thus in intentional, but not in causal, explanations, how aperson or thing is referred to or described is important.Even though Oedipus wanted to marry Jocasta, Jocasta washis mother, and presumably Oedipus did not want to marryhis mother.
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A confusion or conflation of subject and object alwaysresults in undecidable, open questions. Recall the brilliantcomputer whose yes-no device turned the attached lightbulb off and on. The subject-object conflation resulted inthe undecidability by the machine of certain questionsinvolving the lightbulb.More commonly one forms a model of a situation, andif one is a part of that situation, one objectifies that part ofoneself so involved. The account of the situation is thennecessarily incomplete,however, since a part of the subjectobserver is always doing the observing and that part is notbeing self-observed. This logical problem represents a“problem,” of course, only when one wants a “complete”account or explanation of something, when one becomestoo greedy a scientist. There’s no problem if one is simplydancing or fighting, making love or practicing Zen, pickinggrapes or picking one’s nose.Intentional explanations in general involve such subject-object blurs, since they require of one enough empathyto understand the rules, values, and beliefs of another person whose responses and actions are in turn thereby affected. Compare Grice’s account of communication above.Except in the case of quantum phenomena (Heisenberguncertainty principle), causal explanations generally don’thave this property. A rock is not affected by any calculationsor explanations of its trajectory, for example.
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george: Hi, Martha.martha: What’s the matter, George? Are you mad at me?george: No, of course not.martha: Yes you are. Why are you mad?george: I’m not, I told you.martha: You are. I can tell by the tone of your voice.george: Martha, I am trying not to be angry with you.martha: See, you’re seething with hostility toward me.Why? What did I ever do to deserve such anger?George stalks away, slamming the door behind him.
The National Inquirer, a strange yet intriguing gossipfilled tabloid of news and pseudo-news, often carries storiesabout why show-business celebrities X and Y are in love. Thestories, I would guess, often play a role in the subsequentappearance of stories about why celebrities X and Y are nowinvolved with Z and W, respectively. Even “neutral, objective” observation of people often significantly affects theirbehavior; consider surveys of the frequency of various sexual practices, for example. However, people sometimesoverestimate the effect that their doings will have on others.Such may be the case with the confused statistician in thefollowing story:Howard Eves (1958) tells about a statistician who traveled widely giving lectures. He was, however, apprehensiveabout flying, especially since there had been some recent
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bomb scares aboard airplanes. He calculated the probability of a bomb being aboard a plane and was reassured that itwas reasonably small. Then he calculated the probability ofthere being two bombs aboard a plane and found it to beabsolutely infinitesimal. Hence he always traveled with abomb in his suitcase.
Intentional explanations are probabilistic for severalreasons. First is the subject-object blur just discussed.Explaining, even observing, often changes what is explainedor observed, certainly with respect to oneself and thoseclose to oneself. The second reason is the nature and levelof the explanation. Providing a plausible, broad-scalerationale for an action is not the same as providing a set ofsufficient causal conditions for it. A (or many) rationale(s)for a potential action is (are) never sufficient to ensure thatthe action will take place. No matter how many cogent reasons there are to do something, a person (or other intelligence) may still decide not to do it.Microphysical indeterminism may, as I’ve alreadynoted, be a third source for the probabilistic nature ofintentional explanations. It is conceivable that this quantum indeterminism is somehow filtered through the structured complexity of the mind-brain, resulting in the possibility of metaphysically free action. (Bertrand Russell oncespeculated, “It might be that without infringing the laws ofphysics, intelligence could make improbable things happen,
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as Maxwell’s demon would have defeated the second law ofthermodynamics by opening the trap door to fast-movingparticles and closing it to slow-moving particles.”) Ideas(some unconscious) might be generated in part by an indeterministic process, the viable ones surviving the tests ofreality and consciousness. The similarity to biological natural selection is especially appealing. In any case, this thirdsource is not required, as even intentional explanations orpredictions of the moves of fully determined chess-playingcomputers are still, practically speaking, only probabilistic.
Finally, it should not be assumed that the value of anexplanation is measured by how probable its conclusion is,as George shows Waldo:waldo: The value of an explanation is only as good as theprobability of its conclusion.george: What am I doing?waldo: It looks like you’re rolling a pair of dice.george: You’re right. I just rolled a seven. Why?waldo: Chance. One-sixth of the time you’ll roll a seven,that’s all.george: Now I’ve rolled a twelve. Why?waldo: Chance again. One-thirty-sixth of the time you’llroll a twelve.george: The explanations seem to be the same even thoughthe probabilities of their conclusions differ.
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In intentional explanations as well as causal ones, a lowprobability for the conclusion does not necessarily mean apoor explanation. Our specific, personal genetic makeup,for example, is an improbable accident: a different spermmight have united with the same or a different egg and wewouldn’t have been. Still, the explanation for our personalgenetic makeup depends on the particular sperm and eggthat did, however improbably, unite.
Arrow, Prisoners, andCompromiseA young boy is quietly masturbating in his room when his motherwalks in. “Don’t do that, son, or you’ll go blind.”“Mom, couldn’t I do it just until I need glasses?”Two dangers threaten the world—order and disorder.—Paul Valéry
Moderation has been recognized as a virtue since the timeof the Greeks. The problem with the injunction “Be moderate,” however, is that it’s almost meaningless withoutsome standard scale against which to measure oneself andone’s actions. Even in elementary mathematics, “Be moderate” faces difficulties. If the side of a cube ranges between0 and 2 inches, then, assuming we know nothing else of thedistribution of cube sizes, the average cube might be said tohave a side of 1 inch. Yet if instead we consider the volumesof these cubes, which must range between 0 and 8 cubicinches, we might say that the average cube has a volume of 4cubic inches. Thus, using two different standards, the“average” cube has a side of 1 inch and a volume of 4 cubicinches.Late in the eighteenth century Jeremy Bentham tried todevelop a “hedonic calculus” that would measure the utilities and disutilities of an action. With the aid of such a tool
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we could “act so as to maximize the net amount of utility”(1948). How then does this wonderful calculus measureutilities and disutilities, or, more plainly, pleasure andpains? Unfortunately (or more likely, fortunately), it doesn’t exist. Bentham and others since him have failed to findany reasonable way to add up the incommensurables ofhuman life. (There is no trick in finding unreasonable orarbitrary ways, or even reasonable ways in narrow contexts.)Though Bentham said little about how to compare theutility of disparate qualities—beauty vs. intelligence, wealthvs. health—he did suggest that for any one quality, “extent,”“duration,” and “intensity” were reasonable dimensions toconsider. They are, of course; but problems remain. Howdoes one measure even these dimensions of a quality? Forwhat duration, for example, does a conversation with afriend afford one happiness—a half-hour, a week, a lifetime? How are the values of these dimensions related to thequality in question? What is the relation between the number of jokes, say, and the humorousness of a book? How dothese dimensions interact with each other and with othermore subtle dimensions of a quality? Can interpersonalcomparisons of intensity be made? Does it make sense to saythat George loves his son more than Martha loves her husband? In short, not only is there no way to compare appleswith oranges, there is not even an all-purpose way to gradeapples.Still, there are special-purpose ways of grading apples—weight, sugar content, skin thickness, number of worms,and so on. Likewise, there are special-purpose ways of grad-
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ing beauty (hair color, skin oiliness, size of ears, and soon), intelligence (special intuition, vocabulary, memory,and so on), health (weight, various blood counts, numberof operations, and so on). As long as these special-purposeorderings and rankings are recognized as rough, circumstantial, and conditional, much of the crassness of suchrankings can be avoided.martha: Is he smart?myrtle: Yeah, his IQ is 160.martha: Is he rich?myrtle: He makes $400,000 a year.martha: Is he good-looking?myrtle: He makes Paul Newman look like RodneyDangerfield.martha: Is he friendly, sexy?myrtle: Everyone knows him. He’s always at some party orother, girls draped all over him.martha: Do you like him?myrt