🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <dubin.724099279@spot.Colorado.EDU> dubin@spot.colorado.edu writes:
>csa33@keele.ac.uk (H.S. Nwana) writes:
>
>>Mentioning the name Searle seems to provoke so much bashing.
>
>>We all know these arguments will go on and on. Perhaps spelling 
>>out the implications of whatever belief/view we hold will be of more use.
>
>I want to agree strongly with these last two thoughts.  I am strongly
>persuasded by Benson Mates in his book Skeptical Essays that not only
>will these arguments go on and on, but indeed they MUST because they
>are philosophically intrinsically intractible, in the same way as the
>Liar's Paradox IS a paradox.
>

I see no reason to believe that the issues that Searle discusses are
philosophically intrinsically intractible.  If you look at the history
of philosophy, you can see definate progress and the solution of many
philosophical problems.  Quine in his paper ``Five Milestone's of
Empiricism'' mentions five issues on which modern philosophy is superior
to older empiricism.  Eg, we know talk about words and language rather
than ideas (as Hume, et al. talked about); most philosophers will see
the sentence as the primary bearer of meaning rather than the word;
I've forgotton the others except for the fifth which is that many
philosophers have given up the idea of a first philosophy.


Antoni Diller