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Bennett and Hacker: Village Idiots or Philosophers?

Glen M. Sizemore gmsizemore2 at yahoo.com
Wed Feb 11 06:11:48 EST 2004


EO: Oh, memory is not of the past, great, then
perhaps it is of future? Trust me, this is non-sense.

GS: I remember that I have to give a lecture later today. If I said "I
remembered that I gave a lecture today." you would say that I am
"remembering the past event." By the same token if I say "I remember that I
have to give a lecture later today." we must say that I am remembering a
future event. That is certainly how the language game is played. Trust me.

"Eray Ozkural exa" <erayo at bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
news:fa69ae35.0402110159.5a3eee8f at posting.google.com...
> "AlphaOmega2004" <OmegaZero2003 at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<2b87008a9fd70789cb534988f584011a at news.teranews.com>...
> > I think the conceptual error these guys make is that one cannot explain
the
> > psychological terminology by reference to neuropsychological concepts.
> >
> > These are *all* bona fide *ways* of conceptualizing a space that is
> > multi-dimensional in the broadest sense.  TO think one can divorce the
> > psychological from the neuropsychological is non sense.
> >
>
> The problem with these authors is that they have published the book in
> 2003, while it seems to me it should have been published around 1930s
> or 1940s when Wittgenstein was worshipped by many. Ah, still the
> church of Wittgenstein thrives I guess, and I pity that I'm not a
> priest and true believer (in God) from time to time. Anyway, you get
> the idea. If it weren't for an absolute conviction in the truth of
> what Wittgenstein said and his followers, there wouldn't be such a
> book. That's an important point.
>
> Note also that the authors have written some serious non-sense. In
> particular, this one:
>
>   "It is wrong, *conceptually* wrong, to suppose that memory is always
> of the past, or to think that memories can be *stored* in the brain in
> the form of the strength of synaptic connections (Kandel, Squire,
> Bennett)."
>
> As a computer scientist, I know very well what "memory" is, and *that*
> our intuitive notion of "memory" coincides with the technical term of
> memory, *and* furthermore that it also corresponds to "memory" in
> neural associative memory models, etc. That is to say, there is *no*
> conceptual mistake. And I also direct your attention to the stupid
> blurb about "the past". Oh, memory is not of the past, great, then
> perhaps it is of future? Trust me, this is non-sense. I agree with the
> authors in that a good philosopher must be able to distinguish sense
> from non-sense, but so must a scientist and from both perspectives
> their statement is pure non-sense.
>
> That's why I think they sounded more like village idiots than
> philosophers when they said such things. They say even sillier things
> about computationalism as Pierre demonstrated, you can knock down
> their arguments with a single analogy.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Eray Ozkural





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