Matt said: In other words, I think you read too much into it, though in your professional nit-picky role you have to choose and articulate these nits over those. In my role to oppose yours, though, I want to counter with, "There are fewer nits here to choose over than I think you think."
DMB said: Hmmm. I'm pretty sure that you've got the wrong idea about what I'm saying. In fact, I don't think it is at all a matter of picking nits. Quite the opposite. Matt: No, I think you got it right just the other day: our main difference is that you think there's a big difference and I don't. Our dance primarily consists in you blowing up to big size, and me reducing to minimal size, what we both regard to be a difference. DMB said: I can understand why you'd want to distance yourself from Skinner but this seemed a little unfair to me, so I looked into it. Admittedly, I'm just going by the superficial treatment given by Wikipedia but the fact is that Quine drew upon Skinner, particularly with respect to his analysis of language in terms of verbal behavior and was editor of the journal BEHAVIORISM. At least some large portions of Sellars work also is said to have been done from "within a strict behaviorist worldview". Matt: Yeah, but the "behaviorism" that follows from what Quine was doing doesn't really have all that much to do with what Skinner was doing, let alone Rorty's extrapolations of Quine. In my opinion, Skinner has nothing much to do at all with the best analytic philosophers of the late 20th century. You could know nothing about Skinner and get along fine. Matt p.s. On further reflection, my choice in classicist to sit on the other side of Campbell should have been E.R. Dodds. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: E-mail. Chat. Share. Get more ways to connect. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_allup_explore_012009 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
