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Article 1868 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rooney@oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,alt.postmodern,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Heidegger
Message-ID: <198612@tiger.oxy.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 91 02:05:57 GMT
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA  90041
Lines: 111

In article <1991Nov30.111458.6007@husc3.harvard.edu>,
zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>JMC: [John McCarthy]
>>1. The difference between analytic philosophy and "continental"
>>philosophy is worldwide.  There are analytic philosophers in
>>continental Europe also.
>
>Correction: there are logicians and semioticians.
>
>Aside from Paul Ricoeur, a borderline case, whom would you classify
>as a Continental analytic philosopher?

      Currently?  How about Francois Recanti (_Les enonces performatifs_),
or Francis Jacques (_Dialogiques_)?  Or if they are mere "semioticians",
then perhaps Denis Zaslawsky, whose _Analyse de l'etre_ is subtitled
"an essay in analytical philosophy"?  Still not satisfied?  Try the most
outspoken of French analytic philosophers, Jacques Bourveresse (and a
Wittgensteinian at that).  And these are among the French, the least
analytically inclined of the "Continentals".  The Germans are quite
familiar with the analytic approach:  Karl-Otto Apel springs to mind, and
if I was more familiar with German I'm sure I could name more.	Deutsch
philosophy has really come to think of Heidegger as something of an
aberration of the thirties (along with much else), and with the decline
of Marxism's influence, even the tradition of the Frankfurt school has
been neglected or put in the hands of more traditional `social sciences'
(e.g., Claus Offe's works).  Habermas isn't just complaining about
political "conservatives".

      As for Ricoeur, I'd hardly label him even a borderline case,
unless you broaden analytic to include Husserl or anyone who isn't
a poststructuralist (which would include most French philosophers).

>JMC:
>>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.

      "Progress" being defined as...?  (In the sense of understanding
things now that weren't `understood' before, I rather think that both
Heidegger and Derrida, just to cite the two foremost subjects of anti-
Continental pillory, have contributed significantly to understanding
the nature of "philosophical progress" itself (e.g., Derrida's "White
Mythology")

>"There is no doctrine put forward which cannot cite in its defence some
>explicit statement of one of this group of thinkers [i.e. philosophers from
>Descartes to Hume], or of one of the two founders of all Western thought,
>Plato and Aristotle." (A.N.Whitehead)
>
>Heidegger with his fondness for Heraclitus the Dark may be a conspicuous
>exception to the above;

      Doubtful; Heidegger was, at least for a while in the 20s and 30s,
was intensely interested in Aristotle, who...

>on the other hand, the father of analytical
>philosophy is surely none other than Aristotle.

      For someone who might be a genuine exception to Whitehead's
epigraph, try Michel Serres (who, of course, Whitehead [and others]
would never recognize as a philosopher).

> While it is true that
>progress in philosophy is actually being made, in the sense that some
>things are understood now that weren't understood until recently, it is
>also true that the new, improved, mathematical (remember Spinoza) arguments
>still have to rely on good old philosophical intuition, appeals to which
>are to be found in the writings of analytic philosophers as diverse as
>Church, Quine, Putnam, Kripke, and Dummett.

      A good point.

>Worse, a renegade like Rorty
>can appropriate the analytic methodology in order to argue on behalf of
>nihilistic Heideggerian obscurantism (not to be confused with obscurity).

      A cheap shot.

>The Great Questions are still with us; most are quite unlikely to be
>resolved with any standard of reasoning whatsoever.

      Indeed, the very concept of a "standard of reasoning" may become
as questionable as The Great Questions.

>>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.

      At which point it will merely be the analytic philosophy of
artificial intelligence, or "cognitive science" or whatever...
Bertrand Russell would be proud.

>All of AI presupposes a particular choice of epistemology and philosophy of
>mind; consequently, it is as likely to "straighten out" these disciplines,
>as Baron Munchausen -- to pull himself up by his hair.

      Mikhail, if I didn't know you to be the rationalist relic that
you are, I'd almost think from this (very apt) statement that you were
edging into the Rortyean relativism you so despise.

Cordially,

M.S. Rooney

"Il n'est de pur mythe que l'idee d'une science pure de tout mythe."


