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April 20, 2008
Excuses, Dinner and Seeming Irrelevancies
I spent most of yesterday and part of today trying to whip a paper into the proper format for submission to a journal. While software automates some of this work, I must do other parts of it by hand. I'm rather bad and slow at this type of editing and the job is still not done. I also need to go back and confirm every citation. I have a tendency to invert numbers. Page numbers, dates and references to texts are no exception. I do hope to resume abnormal blogging Monday.
Last night, Shirley and I had dinner with Jay Atlas. Jay is a good friend and a very important person in the lives of both of our children. He is also the Peter W. Stanley Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy and the chair of the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Pomona College. In addition, he is a member of Pomona College's Philosophy Department from which the Linguistics and Cognitive Science Department spawned. We talked about a wide range of things including his current work on reflexive expressions involving belief. "I, myself, believe in the goodness of mankind," is an example. Does this mean anything other than, "I believe in the goodness of mankind?" And can such reflexive expressions ever be (analytically) false? In addition to the linguistic and philosophical concerns Jay is, of course, interacting with Descartes, Wittgenstein and other, more recent, thinkers. I will await the completion of Jay's work before reporting the definitive answer to these questions.
Now, if the subject of Jay's current research lifts the corners of your mouth, you are not alone. Even Jay would smile at his work if one placed it within the context of the larger issues of our world. But it is exactly in this grubbing around with these little vexing problems, these small details, that challenges old big ideas. It is likewise the work from which new syntheses emerge. One never learns much from pondering the big ideas alone. We do learn something new when we ponder the big ideas in the light of new details or new understandings of the old details. I'm not claiming that Jay's work will revolutionize philosophy, linguistics or cognitive studies. I'm not claiming that it won't. I am claiming that without such work, these disciplines will have no new big ideas nor will they settle conflicts between current big ideas. All this makes me wonder how anyone can think that he or she can overthrow the theoretical foundations of whole disciplines, even scientific disciplines, without engaging in all the grubby details of those disciplines.
The three of us also talked about the deep philosophical implications of his having a former student and us having a daughter who turned 40 on Friday.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 20, 2008 8:15 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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