“Alfred,” I said, laying my pencil across my pad and leaning back in the leather wingchair, “I know you really are trying to save me pages of semiological hair-splitting, but you are also standing in my way — interfering, if you will, with the modular context I have been trying to establish between the rain and my drawing pad. Could you be a pal and see if you can get us some coffee…?”
As English summers will, that one soon ended.
As happens, a year later an Italian summer replaced it. I was spending a sunny week in a villa outside Florence. The news came from my hostess, one morning over coffee in the garden, that we were to be joined shortly by — of all people! I had thought he was somewhere in Nepal; indeed, I hadn’t thought of him for six months! And who, sure enough, should come striding across the grass ten minutes later, in rather worn-out sneakers, his bald spot not noticeably larger but his shoulder-length hair definitely longer, thumbs tucked under his knapsack straps, and a Persian vest over an out-at-the-elbow American workshirt, from the pocket of which stuck the stem of what, from the bulge at the pocket’s base, I recognized as his Van Vogtian meerschaum — Alfred!
He came across the lawn, grinning hawkishly, and said: “Do you know what you left behind in England and I have carried all the way to India and back?”
“What…?” I asked, quite surprised at his introduction and charmed by this dispensing with phatic chatter.
“Your sketch pad! Hello, Vanessa…” to our hostess, and gave her a large hug. The high, aluminum rack of his backpack swayed above his shoulders.
To explain what happened that afternoon, I might mention explicitly several things implicit already about both Alfred and Vanessa. She, for instance, is very generous, a far more talented painter than I, and has several easels in her studio — the converted top floor of the villa. And Alfred, as I’m sure you’ve realized, has a rather strange mind at the best of times, which also entails a rather strange sense of humor.
At any rate, some hours later, I was walking through the white dining room, with its sparse brass and wood decoration, when I noticed, through the open iron casement, out in the sunlit Italian garden, one of Vanessa’s easels set up a few yards from the window; and set up on the easel was my sketch pad, with my drawing of last year’s rain-battered, English sycamore.
While I looked at it, Alfred came climbing in over the windowsill, dropped to the floor, spilling a few cinders onto the waxed floorboards, and, kicking at them, gave me a great grin: “There,” he said, “Go on! Make a true statement — an accurate verbal model of the situation outside the window! Quick!”
“Well,” I said, smiling and a bit puzzled, “it seems that there’s…” I paused, about to say ‘my picture outside,’ but I remembered our colloquy back in rainy Britain: “… that there’s my model outside!”
“Just what I was hoping you would say,” Alfred said. “It saves even more pages of semiological hair-splitting!”
“And,” I said, encouraged by this, “the model outside is true, too! Alfred, what have you been doing in India?”
“Amazing amounts of shit,” Alfred said warmly. “Do you know, Plato was right, after all — at least about method. As far as semiological hairsplitting is concerned, we just dispensed with practically a chapter and a half! A dialogue that you can make up as you go along really is the only way to get anything done in philosophy.”
I looked out at my picture again. “Then it is my model. And my model is true.”
“Your first statement is true.” Alfred’s smile became warmer still. ‘Your second is nonsense — no, don’t look so crestfallen. Just listen a moment: whether your model is a statement, a drawing, or even a thought, it is still a thing like any other thing: that is, it has its particular internal structure, and its various elements are undergoing their various processes, be that merely the process of enduring. Now you may have chosen any aspect of this thing — part of its material, part of its structure, or part of its process — to do the bulk of the modeling for you, while it was in the modular context. And, yes, outside that context, the model is still the same thing. But it is outside the context. Therefore, pointing out this window at that picture and calling it, or any part of it — material, structure, or process — ‘true’ or ‘false’ is just as nonsensical now as it would have been for you, back in that abysmal May we spent in South Bernham, to point out the window and call some thing out there ‘true’ or ‘false’… the rain, the shape of the drops, or the falling. A fine distinction has to be made. Whether the model functions as true or functions as false within the context may have something to do with the internal structure of the model. But whether the model functions (as true or false) has to do with the structure of the context. If you would like to, look at it this way: ‘true’ and ‘false’ merely model two mutually exclusive ways a given model (which is a thing) may function in a given context, depending on other things, which may, in different contextual positions, function as models. But the meaningfulness of the ascription of true or false is dependent on the context, not the thing.” Alfred took another draw on his pipe, found it was out, and frowned. “Um… now why don’t you take out that piece of paper you have folded up in the breast pocket of your Pendleton and look at it again — excuse me, I could have suggested you take it out of your wallet and avoided the implication that you hadn’t washed your shirt since last summer, but now I am just trying to save you pages of semiological elaboration.”
Feeling a bit strange, I fingered into my breast pocket, found the paper I had so summarily folded up a summer before, and unfolded it, while Alfred went on: “Think of it in this wise: if something is in the proper, logical position, it may be called true or false. If it moves out of that position, though it is still the same thing, you can’t call it true or false.”
And, creased through horizontally, I read:
The statement on the other side of this paper is true.
“Alfred — ” I frowned — “if there is a statement on the other side of this paper (and, unless my memory plays tricks, there is) and it is meaningful to call that statement true or false — now I’m only letting the internal structure of this statement suggest a line of reasoning, I’m not accepting from it any information about its ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’, ‘meaningfulness’ or ‘meaninglessness’—that means (does it not?) that it is in the proper position in the modular context to do some modeling.”