----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Doss" <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
>Thanks for the post. I had forgotten all that Quinean
rabbit stuff. Man am I glad I studied Heidegger
instead!
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Ah, you should check out Richard Matthews great essay "Heidegger and Quine on the (Ir)relevance of Logic for Philosophy"
>Really, all the stuff about how "there are no mental
states" reminds me of why I turned off to analytical
philosophy in the first place. Despite all the talk
about how Continental philosophy is woolly-headed,
it's things like that really make my eyes roll.
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Would you settle for cognitive/emotive *dynamics*?
Q and D are right; there can be no comparative static[s] of mind, in a manner akin to the claim that comparative statics is a horrible way to do political economy whatever one's political inclinations...
>So -- before acquiring language, KoKo the Gorilla (or
Helen Keller) was incapable of thinking. Then they
discover a means of communication and lo and behold
thinking is born. Give me Heidegger and the
pre-theoretical understanding of the world any day. ;)
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Your example begs the question re the plurality of descriptions/interpretations/explanations of the situations involved regarding the quest for a cognitive-emotive ethology.
If you're inclined to get an easy and wonderfully short *use* of Q. you could read Paul Churchland's "Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind" and accept his extremely rigorous *argument* that pre-theoretical understanding is an impossibility and still bypass the eliminativism he espoused. Or Dale Jacquette's lucid text "Ontology" which demonstrates from a different approach than PC just how much hot air H. spewed.
Lastly, for those who would prefer to bypass refracting the issues involving animals through the analytic/continental divide with all the androcentrisms involved :-), the edited collection "Cognitive Ecology" [U. of Chicago Press, 1998] is a fascinating read.
Ian