Comments | paulhope: A mere ripple in cow-infested waters

paulhope

A mere ripple in cow-infested waters

Nov 25, 2006 02:00

I finally did my part and updated Good Sense is the Master of Human Life. The Other Paul may want to edit the latest contribution some more--I won't blame him, it's not my finest--but it feels good to not be the bottleneck any longer ( Read more... )

sensemaster, cows, colloquialism, academic, double colon, theory of content, style, fodor, italics, other paul

Comments 16

awwh_snap November 25 2006, 07:31:18 UTC

Haha. Fodor certainly is colorful and snarky, that's for sure. He also has an obsession with Winnie the Pooh.

unnamed525 November 25 2006, 07:32:22 UTC

That's be Winnie the Pooh is great.

rachiestar November 25 2006, 15:44:30 UTC

If you're still Fodoring, try The Expert and the Elm rather than Holism: A Shopper's Guide. If you like conversational, you'll love this - it was originally a lecture. It did a lot to settle my nerves about what I was committed to metaphysically by being such a fan of broad content, etc.

awwh_snap November 25 2006, 17:05:05 UTC

I haven't picked up or read Holism but Rachel's recommendation for the former is definitely worth looking into. It's a good book, although I had a hard time trying to figure out how he resolves his opposing theses of computationalism, folk-psychology and broad content. I need to go back to the Elm and probably will post a series of Fodor posts in my journal sometime after I graduate, including on Psychosemantics.

rachiestar November 25 2006, 17:14:32 UTC

The problem with Holism is that it's uneven; reads more like a bunch of strung-together lecture notes than a coherent book-length argument. I mean, that's nice if you want a whirlwind-but-incomplete tour of Quine and Davidson, et al. on the theory. But yeah. What I like about Elm is that it's short and tight; you can read it in, like, an afternoon or two.

paulhope November 25 2006, 17:37:21 UTC

Cool beans. Given how much I suck at getting around to reading, my intention with Holism was just to read his objection to Block's CRS, since it's what I care about most, and then move on.

I've never heard of Elm before, but it sounds like I could use it. I've been antsy about semantic externalism ever since I encountered it, but then realized I was slowly committing myself to it. One nice thing about Fodor's theory that I just read is that I think you can adopt it without accepting Putnam's argument against BIV skepticism, which always seemed to me to suck ( ... )

Thread 13

theshowmustgo0n November 26 2006, 01:13:13 UTC

Fodor's editor must have had quite a respect for her writer's "voice."