🚀 go-pugleaf

eric@snark.UUCP:
>> To put forward an approach to the human sciences as a paradigm
>> candidate requires that one accept the analogy to natural science
>> according to which human actions can be fixed in their meaning by
>> being subsumed under the law like operations of the epistemic
>> subject.  
>
>I'm not sure that last sentence even makes sense.

It makes more sense if you read "law-like" for "law like".

At the moment I haven't time to respond to the various insights and
profundities in Eric Raymond's article.  I was puzzled at first,
until I recollected that he describes himself as a libertarian.  Ah,
now we're getting somewhere.

In the meantime I would like to draw Mr. Raymond's attention to the
*Philosophical Papers* (Cambridge U. Press, 2 vols.) of Charles
Taylor, an advocate of the hermeneutic approach in the human sciences
(this may be summarized very roughly as the claim that it is futile
to search for ``natural laws'' governing the human world as
distinguished from the natural world, and the proper approach is the
interpretation and explication of meanings).  A similar critique from
Mr. Raymond of one of Taylor's papers, say ``Interpretation and the
Sciences of Man'' or ``Atomism'', would be interesting and
enlightening.

Richard Carnes
The highest to which man may aspire is wonder. --Goethe