From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wupost!uunet!brunix!Allen Tue Feb 11 15:25:32 EST 1992
Article 3565 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: Allen Renear
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: MUST Philosopy be a Waste of Time?
Message-ID: <100931@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 7 Feb 92 03:24:08 GMT
References: <1992Feb04.011418.5433@norton.com> <1992Feb04.060419.21963@convex.com> <1992Feb4.070739.21211@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb04.172250.19040@convex.com>
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Organization: Brown University  CIS
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In article <1992Feb04.172250.19040@convex.com> cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)
writes:
>In article <1992Feb4.070739.21211@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>>... e.g. I hate to think about the results of a vote about
>>what constitutes "psychology" in the 1940's, say.  I'd say it's very
>>likely that voters would simply have been *wrong*.
>
>I would say that they _can't_ be wrong about this; I would say that
>psychology has changed considerably since the forties. 

Imagine this: a group of philosophers practicing classical foundationalist
epistemology -- looking for the "4th condition", say, by conjecturing
definitions and principles, constructing counterexamples, weighing intuitions
about whether in such and such case J *knows* that P... 

Ok. Now they suddenly are overcome by an urge to do a little meta-philosophy
and try to decide if their method is empirical or not.  Only they turn out to
be *lousy* meta-philosophers: their attention wanders, their memories grow
short, their powers of analysis fade, they get grouchy, distracted, and eager
to go home to bed. And, moreover, they fall under the spell of a mercenary
advocate of the view that classical foundationalism is empirical, like biology
and meteorology, and unlike logic, geometry, and analytic metaphysics. Perhaps
he hypnotizes them, or perhaps they are over-impressed with a cleverly
fallacious argument (one of those mystifying ones that trade on a formal
fallacy to prove anything whatsoever).  Anyway, he is very effective, whatever
he does, and so when our foundationalists vote... &c.

It seems to me practitioners of a discipline can believe the craziest things
about their discipline: they can be wrong about its method, and they can be
wrong about whether such and so is an instance of its practice.

So I cast another vote for disciplines as rigidly designated natural kinds.  


