theoretical Application

[a_priori]

I put together this list more than a month ago, when perpetua54 advertised at academics_anon. Then I sat on it for awhile, until the early semester crazy faded and I now am just a bit more available to parry your challenges, quench your queries, and prostrate my intellect for your procrastinatory amusement. So have at it!

Comments

logistical note

[a_priori]

Thanks for the great comments so far!

I've responded to all of the first-rounds first, and I'll come back for the followups later. Right now I'm off to a colloquium, then a post-colloquium reception and post-post-colloquium dinner. There being a good chance I'll return home late and drop-down-sleepy, please don't be offended if you hear no more from me until tomorrow.

(By the way, I'm not getting email notification of your comments, not even to my spam folder. I don't know why this is. Once the comments start piling up, I'll have a difficult time noticing new followups to old questions. If I don't reply to you within a half-day or so, please draw my attention to your comment!)

[zentiger]

So many things to talk about! Let's start with the Quine, since I just lectured on that last week.

First, a warm-up. Is this on your list just because it's generally important, or is there a more particular reason you've chosen it? Because, with the Grice and the Nagel up there, I'd think "Two Dogmas" or especially "Web of Belief" would fit more closely.

[a_priori]

I haven't read "Web of Belief" but probably ought to.

I picked this over "Two Dogmas" mainly for quasi-stylistic reasons. For one, I think the writing in "On What There Is" is just exemplary. More importantly, though, I enjoy how Quine sets up the dialectic and moves through some incredibly complex material really effectively for just a single piece. "Two Dogmas" is less clear in some crucial places.

Really, though, this article is just a placeholder for Quine's view as a whole - that's what I really appreciate. But I do think that "On What There Is" is the best statement of it (that I've read at any rate).

I should mention, though, that I don't specialize in metaphysics, epistemology, or the philosophy of language. So my appreciation is decidedly of the only-partly-informed variety!

[zentiger]

So, since you're not a metaphysician, an epistemologist, or a ... well, a languageizer, I suppose, why include Quine at all? This seems especially odd given the Grice on your list.

[a_priori]

Methodology. Holism is really useful, and the quantification-over-whatever stuff is a really powerful theoretical tool. In the areas where I do work (ethics and the philosophy of mind) it's really nice to have ways to handle what look like surface-language commitments to various entities (e.g. moral facts, irreducible mental states) which may not turn out to be such. I rarely explicitly use ideas from Quine, but I regularly find that the course of my thinking has been channeled by having read him.

Grice I use much more explicitly - I think many of our purported intuitions about test cases (in, among other domains, ethics and the philosophy of mind) are best explained by pragmatic facts of assertoric context. I believe this is compatible with recognizing that, when pragmatics aren't the full answer, a Quinean approach can help explain what we actually are doing in making theoretical claims.

[poldyb]

I can't forgive Eliot's depiction of Casaubon.

[ceciliaj]

why not?

[poldyb]

Isaac did not deserve it

[ceciliaj]

It was totally weird to me in class that everyone said "you know from the beginning she shouldn't marry Casaubon." I thought she made a very sound decision. But I have an overly identificatory reading practice.

[apperception]

What do you like about Spinoza? And why are the first three books so much better theory than the rest of the book?

[a_priori]

Two things. The first is what everyone who likes Spinoza says. It's just a fascinatingly self-contained worldview. Absolutely everything fits neatly into his system - or at least he seems to have the resources to accommodate anything.

More particularly - and why I love book 3 so much - I'm amazed at his insights into human psychology. While ostensibly reasoning in an a priori fashion from first principles of the material constitution of the universe, he goes on to derive some remarkably accurate generalizations about the functioning of the mind, many of which wouldn't be picked up by empirical psychology for another 250 years. I don't have my marginalia in front of me, so I can't give you precise examples, but I remember that he basically describes operant conditioning, and several major cognitive biases. I take it as a mark of really nice theory that it gives you the power to anticipate discoveries centuries ahead of everyone else!

[ceciliaj]

Re: the second part of your argument, that kind of argument is becoming very common among literary scholars with cognitive leanings. However, some traditionalists lament that the best we can currently say about someone like Proust is that he "anticipated" neuroscience, implying that the scientific approach to the mind has (whether temporarily or permanently) replaced the humanities. What do you make of this complaint?

[apperception]

This is a good question, too.

[poldyb]

Is that just? Or do I mean fair? Oh well, they are the same thing anyway.

[a_priori]

Depending on why you are ughing, I might agree with you.