IUBio

Bennett and Hacker: Village Idiots or Philosophers?

Eray Ozkural exa erayo at bilkent.edu.tr
Tue Feb 10 20:43:14 EST 2004


David Longley <David at longley.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<OIhMTrQqqMKAFwqJ at longley.demon.co.uk>...
> I haven't read it, but I will now (unless someone such as Glen, Wolf, 
> Rolf etc suggest that it isn't worth it - I've read parts of Baker and 
> Hacker's "Language, Sense & Nonsense" 1984 which was a hatchet job on 
> theoretical linguistics and semantics). From what I've just read of the 
> reviews of the new 2003 book, it looks like they may well cover some of 
> the same issues which have been outlined and discussed in this newsgroup 
> over recent months (if not years)

It may be worth the read actually. It recapitulates a good deal of
history of and developments in neuroscience in addition to their
arguments. I think I might agree with some of their criticism, but I
know that I don't agree with a significant part of their criticism
which seems to be sheer non-sense. Of course, they are saying that
philosophy is concerned with discovering boundaries of sense, and
maybe that makes some sense given how they indulge in non-sense. They
may have been influenced too much by Wittgenstein. ;)
 
They are also stressing that not all their criticism is negative, they
are proposing ways to counteract the conceptual confusions which they
see.

[snip]

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural



More information about the Neur-sci mailing list

Send comments to us at biosci-help [At] net.bio.net