Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Last week AKMA struggled with the precise meanings of genotext and phenotext. I have no idea what either term means, but there is a certain joy in watching someone as smart and honest as AKMA trying to understand something in public. Before blogging, where would we have had the opportunity to see this?

AKMA writes that he thought that an Eric Idle sketch in which a talk show is conducted in enthusiastic gibberish provided a good example of the distinction between the two terms. (Remember Andy Kaufman's foreign man routine?) And that reminded me of the following unrelated cheap shot:

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself. — John Searle, Intentionality, Introduction, p. x.

The key to meaning is simply that it can be part of the conditions of satisfaction (in the sense of requirement) of my intention that its conditions of satisfaction (in the sense of things required) should themselves be conditions of satisfaction. — Intentionality, p. 28.

Got it?