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Article 1752 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Heidegger
Message-ID: <JMC.91Nov29102229@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 29 Nov 91 15:22:29 GMT
References: <5710@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Nov29.082020.22315@trl.oz.au>
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Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
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In-Reply-To: louis@medici.trl.OZ.AU's message of 29 Nov 91 08:20:20 GMT

In article <1991Nov29.082020.22315@trl.oz.au> louis@medici.trl.OZ.AU (Louis Denger) writes:

   From article <5710@skye.ed.ac.uk>, by jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton):
   > In article <1991Nov25.065412.19783@trl.oz.au> louis@medici.trl.OZ.AU (Louis Denger) writes:
   >>Et c'est bien evident que du point de vue empirique Anglo-Saxon,
   >>Martin est impenetrable.
   > 
   > 
   > It certainly seems to be the case that "continental" philosophy
   > is harder to read than Anglo-Saxon "analytic" philosophy, at least
   > as the two appear in English.  Are we suffering, perhaps, from bad
   > translations?  Or just from impatience with a less direct style.

   It is clear that European continental philosophy is different from
   Anglo-Saxon one.
   Both contribute in their own way to understanding
   and knowledge.
   As to whether this is good or bad is rather irrelevant.
   Writing that a philosopher is impenetrable and irrelevant may indicate
   that persons who pass such subjective judgements
   are misunderstanding the problem, and are out of tune
   with reality. This never adds to understanding.

It is nice of Louis Denger to advocate tolerance of all kinds of
philosophical writing - European and America.  He should include
Chinese, Japanese and Indian while he is at it.  There are two
things wrong with it, however.

1. The difference between analytic philosophy and "continental"
philosophy is worldwide.  There are analytic philosophers in
continental Europe also.

2. Progress in philosophy is actually being made, i.e. some things
are understood now that weren't understood until recently.  This
progress is being made entirely with the analytic methodology.
"Continental" philosophy has no real standard of argument.
Heidegger is incoherent in any language.

3. My opinion is that AI will cause big changes in analytic
philosophy.  Contemplating how to make programs that acquire
information and reason with it will straighten out epistemology
and philosophy of mind.  I expect it will be another 30 years
before all analytic philosophy graduate students know a reasonable
amount about AI.  (My course is cross-listed in formalizing
common sense is cross-listed in philosophy, and my former
colleague Vladimir Lifschitz has a joint appointment in
computer science and philosophy).
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.


