- A brief account of the history of logic, from the The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (edited by Ted Honderich), OUP 1997, 497-500.
- A biography of Peter Abelard, published in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 115, edited by Jeremiah Hackett, Detroit: Gale Publishing, 3-15.
- Philosophy in the Latin Christian West, 750-1050, in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by Jorge Gracia and Tim Noone, Blackwell 2003, 32-35.
- Ockham wielding his razor!
- Review of The Beatles Anthology, Chronicle Books 2000 (367pp).
- A brief discussion note about Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy.
- Review of St. Thomas Aquinas by Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame Press 1982 (172pp). From International Philosophical Quarterly23 (1983), 227-229.
- Review of William Heytesbury on Maxima and Minima by John Longeway, D.Reidel 1984 (x+201pp). From The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 146-149.
- Review of That Most Subtle Question by D. P. Henry, Manchester University Press 1984 (xviii+337pp). From The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 149-152.
- Review of Introduction to the Problem of Individuation in the Early Middle Ages by Jorge Gracia, Catholic University of America Press 1984 (303pp). From The Philosophical Review 97 (1988), 564-567.
- Review of Introduction to Medieval Logic by Alexander Broadie, OUP 1987 (vi+150pp). From The Philosophical Review 99 (1990), 299-302.
Monday, December 21, 2009
"Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Mind" by Noam Chomsky,1968
The classical questions of language and mind receive no final solution,
or even the hint of a final solution,
from the work that is being actively pursued today.
For the first time in many years,it seems, there is some real opportunity for substantial progress in the study of the contribution of the mind to perception and the innate basis for acquisition of knowledge.
Still, in many respects, we have not made the first approach to a real answer to the classical problems.
For example, the central problems relating to :
the creative aspect of language use remain as inaccessible as they have always been.
And the study of universal semantics, surely crucial to the full investigation of language structure, has barely advanced since the medieval period.
Many other critical areas might be mentioned where progress has been slow or nonexistent.
Real progress has been made in the study of the mechanisms of language,
the formal principles that make possible the creative aspect of language use and that determine the phonetic form and semantic content of utterances.
Our understanding of these mechanisms, though only fragmentary, does seem to me to have real implications for the study of human psychology.
By pursuing the kinds of research that now seem feasible and by focusing attention on certain problems that are now accessible to study, we may be able to spell out in some detail the elaborate and abstract computations that determine, in part, the nature of percepts and the character of the knowledge that we can acquire the highly specific ways of interpreting phenomena that are, in large measure, beyond our consciousness and control and that may be unique to man.
or even the hint of a final solution,
from the work that is being actively pursued today.
For the first time in many years,it seems, there is some real opportunity for substantial progress in the study of the contribution of the mind to perception and the innate basis for acquisition of knowledge.
Still, in many respects, we have not made the first approach to a real answer to the classical problems.
For example, the central problems relating to :
the creative aspect of language use remain as inaccessible as they have always been.
And the study of universal semantics, surely crucial to the full investigation of language structure, has barely advanced since the medieval period.
Many other critical areas might be mentioned where progress has been slow or nonexistent.
Real progress has been made in the study of the mechanisms of language,
the formal principles that make possible the creative aspect of language use and that determine the phonetic form and semantic content of utterances.
Our understanding of these mechanisms, though only fragmentary, does seem to me to have real implications for the study of human psychology.
By pursuing the kinds of research that now seem feasible and by focusing attention on certain problems that are now accessible to study, we may be able to spell out in some detail the elaborate and abstract computations that determine, in part, the nature of percepts and the character of the knowledge that we can acquire the highly specific ways of interpreting phenomena that are, in large measure, beyond our consciousness and control and that may be unique to man.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment