William writes;
> Not good enough Cheerskep. Say why you agree [with every word of Michael > Brady's posting], > William has me here, I think. As I wrote that posting praising Michael, my stomach told me I was being too sparse and too extreme. But I thought Michael's central point was so correct, I didn't want to becloud the praise with reservations that would have served only to protect my butt. By any reading of the word 'content', Joseph's notion that one could possibly have "content" without any "style" whatever strikes me as absurd -- so absurd that when I first read Joseph's posting I decided it was beneath responding to. But Michael was sturdier than I, and he rose to the challenge, and his central point was right. "... For instance, one a recent post you dismiss Barthes and Foucault as empty or some such but those fellows have the status that demands much more than a dismissive grunt one might expect from a provincial Luddite." I quite often chew on myself off camera for spending time producing detailed analyses of "out of the question" stuff when there's so much worthier stuff I want to examine. Barthes's and Foucault's "contributions" have always struck me as a thorough waste of time -- because, as I said, in one line after another I found them either painfully obvious or quite wrong. The size of their reputations does not impress me, and certainly does not intimidate me. (I hesitate to mention again here a man whom William esteems, but Roy Harris comes to mind. After reading not all of, but a good deal of, the writing of Harris, I embarked on a detailed description of my objections. Several thousand words into my analysis, I judged I was only about a third of the way through, when I pulled up and said to myself, "What the hell am I doing here? I'm spending hours saying why, given his initial errors, his consequent thinking isn't worth ten minutes. This is madness." (Would I have learned more items of language erudition if I read more Harris? I'm certain I would. He is a learned linguist. But what was pertinent to philosophy of languge was his theory of integrationism. I judged the theory to be dead wrong. So there came a time when I decided I should put no further time in on Harris, and that entailed spending no further time explaining why he wasn't worth any further time.) Same with Barthes and Foucault. Not the same with, say, Saul Kripke, because he still has so many intimidated acolytes. Because Kripke's theory of "rigid designators" still occupies many philosophers -- not in questioning it, but in spinning out ostensible implications -- it would be worthwhile spending time detailing why that theory is wrong. But I have many personal agendas here that I want to address, so a usefully ample address of Kripke will have to wait. (E.g., here is too sparse an address: There are no "real" "rigid designators" because there are no mind-independent, "designators" at all. Meantime all stipulative definitions of the actions of alleged notional entities like so-called "names" are mere mental concoctions. Stipulations can't create "real" heavens, angels, words, meanings, sets, categories or even "relations".) > "...especially since Michael has > always been skeptical of your extreme subjectivity." > I'm not sure what postings of Michael's you have in mind there, but in any case, wonderfully broad-minded chap that I am, if another guy criticizes me I don't feel that I always thereafter must reject everything he says.
