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+[HST spent too long trying to get the astonishing fact of language
+ evolution on the table as something which deserves a place in GA]
+
+The inscrutability of the size of Universe is another thing that
+defies comprehension.
+
+If it's just chance that we happen to have come to be in a corner of
+that Universe where recursive compositional expressive mechanisms are
+possible the unlikelihood isn't an argument against it being the case.
+
+Suppose I were to say to a high-school class we agree to have
+recursively-specifiable syntactic and semantic language, and have a
+brain that produces and consumes its product, and yes, it's unlikely
+in the extreme, but so-be-it.
+
+Is there anything to conclude from that.
+
+Imagine the course we're teaching, and a typology of unlikelihoods,
+smallness and small-enough-ness.  Very^4 unlikely that we'll gasp for
+breath because the oxygen has all left the room.  Do we have to have a
+view on whether there's a universe almost like ours where the same
+UUID _does_ get minted for two different objects?  
+
+What are we doing?  We want to...  MacIntyre says we need 'real'
+language to reflect on/assess our beliefs and desires.  Evolved
+corners of the universe that have the requisite properties that [this
+process] can be enjoined are astonishingly unlikely, but we are
+evidently in one.
+
+What more do we need, in order to have intentionality.
+
+[HST] MacIntyre grants (persistent of) categorisations
+[BCS] Sufficient, or Necessary?  [HST] I'll take that as a homework assignment
+
+[BCS] Suppose we have a minimal 'higher' animal: persistent individuals and
+categorisation.  Do you have anything yet that reeks of the religious?
+My intuition is 'no'.  The critter has to stand up on its hind legs
+and _wonder_, in order for there to be... in order for its finitude,
+one might say, to lead it to [HST ask Why?][ref. _Child's Christmas in
+Wales]
+
+MacIntyre on Davidson? Counterfactuals are crucial to practical
+reasoning.  BCS says I could imagine a counterfactual toting rational
+argumenter, who still lacks this openness to God and to wonder.
+
+And until an AI system can wonder, I won't be particularly
+interested/concerned, it will still be a mere machine.
+
+Haugeland distinguishes the impossible from the possible but not
+actual from the actual.
+
+"A blue proton" gets you in to trouble.
+
+With respect of our project, and the opening salvos of GA, there is a
+need to characterise the territory that we want to open up, and
+something has to be very open to not reduce to boring behaviourism.
+
+The speaker has to be gripped by a certain openness, a certain
+possibility, will this cake rise whatever.  How to open the space
+enough for wonder to be genuinely gripping, seems important.
+
+We want people to want to read this after the first page or two, even
+if they can't say exactly why.