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>From: smoliar@jit.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Subject: Re: linguistics vs philosophy vs cogsci / Whorf vs Grice?
Message-ID: <1992Mar24.004147.26051@nuscc.nus.sg>
Sender: usenet@nuscc.nus.sg
Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
References: <1992Mar23.154322.1199@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1992 00:41:47 GMT
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In article <1992Mar23.154322.1199@midway.uchicago.edu> gal2@midway.uchicago.edu
writes:
>
>First, let me explain my situation: I am sick of the term
>"interdisciplinary!" What is so interdisciplinary about studying
>the lower levels of thought process? The only answer I have been
>able to provide for myself is that my field is simply newer than
>philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science, which
>all currently occupy different parts of the niche which I expect
>cognitive science to take over in about thirty or fifty years.
>I really hate to sound like there are big concrete walls with
>razor wire and armed guards between these fields, but I am finding
>it very difficult to do what I want to as an undergraduate at the
>University of Chicago. I have to work around departmental rivalries
>and can only study this thing from the perspective of one department
>at a time! My recent AI professor said to a linguistics grad student
>taking his class: "Do they know you're over here?" (Incidentally,
>we were reading Schank's _Scripts Plans Goals and Understanding_
>at the time.) Of course he was kidding, but why should this be funny?
>
>I'm getting fed up. Maybe someone out there can help me feel better
>about the current state of things.

As long as money is tight, calling a field "interdisciplinary" is simply
granting a license to a researcher in field A to go after funding sources
allocated to field B.  When there is not enough pie to go around, it is very
hard to find folks cooperating over sharing that pie.  The only thing which
is likely to make you feel better is a radical shift in economic priorities
regarding education and research.

> Maybe you can give me a reasonable
>answer to this question:
>
>Why is Whorf considered a linguist, when Austin and Grice are considered
>philosophers?
>
I suppose it depends on who is doing the considering.  People who work in
natural language processing do not seem to care that much whether or not
useful ideas come from "card-carrying linguists."  Given recent interest
in intentions in communication, it is hard to do natural language processing
these days and ignore Austin, Grice, and Searle (even if Searle gave his book
the subtitle AN ESSAY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE).
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg


