On what Quine was… 22 Jun 2008 Willard Van Ormond Quine was, I believe, one of the best of the 20th century philosophers, and is someone who has greatly influenced me. Here is a TV interview by Brian Magee, from the 1970s, if I am right. They discuss the nature of philosophy. This year marks the centenary of Quine’s birth. “The Ideas of Quine” on Youtube:Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Hat tip to Calculemus. The heading is a bad pun on one of Quine’s most famous essays: “On What There Is”. General Science
General Science More roundup 14 Oct 2008 … those weeds won’t ever go away. The inimitable Siris notes the problem with the myth that the US Electoral College is a restraint upon democracy (when it makes presidential elections possible where previously they weren’t, so how can it be a restraint?). The article in the New Yorker he… Read More
General Science Even the Good Guys get it wrong! 10 Sep 200818 Sep 2017 Another guest post by Thony Christie John recently provided a link to a review of Steve Fuller’s newest book by Anthony Grayling. On the whole I find Professor Grayling’s comments excellent and applaud his put-down of Fuller but then in the last section of his review he goes and spoils… Read More
Epistemology The undergraduate effect and the gravity wells of knowledge 7 May 201122 Jun 2018 As usual, Randall Munroe nails it (although if I were playing with that metaphor, I’d say that density distorts the sheet). But I like metaphors, because unfortunately I have the mathematical ability and skills of a drunken frog. So I am going to use a metaphor as a metaphor, if… Read More
One of my philosophy professors had a Quine Story. He was in town for a symposium on the somethingth anniversary of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and she was assigned to ferry him around, take him to dinner and fend off the grad students fawning at his feet (one brought Quine’s entire backlist for the man to sign). He had been given some little plaque or award thingy and in all the rushing about had been misplaced, and as my professor was driving him back to look for it, she ran a yellow on a left-hand turn and was almost hit by oncoming traffic… She told us ruefully that she almost became known as The Woman Who Killed W. V. O. Quine.
I took a semester focusing on philosophy at Harvard while Quine was there. But retired and unwilling to visit our seminars, so we never met. And all this was among phiso-symps in the anthro department. But it was kind of cool imagining that Quine might pay us a visit…
Jeez, Brian Magee is the spitting image of Jim Broadbent (he plays Indy’s Department Head in the “Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls”).