al-mofhariz

"Weird." That was my reaction to Morris' ashtray story when I first heard it in on a Princeton University podcast. Lukas has since offered his own reaction---one that's much more sophisticated than mine, in which he argues that the positivists and truth seekers care about the limits and limitations of language too.

Sad. That's how I feel now that I've finished reading Morris' expansion on that story in the NYT Opinionator Blog. More on why in a moment.

Pleased (to have anyone talking about philosophy). That's the consensus over at "Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog." There's some fascinating debate in the comments, with varied points of view, but I stand by my characterization. I see their point: I knew nothing about Kripke before this.

Laudatory. That's the dominant feeling of the comments following Morris' blog. One gets the sense that most commenters were just happy to have something that challenged them to think a bit, even as t…

Errol Morris published the fourth installment of his five-part personal essay on Kuhn in today’s NY Times.  All of it is worth reading (except perhaps part III, which drags on somewhat), and I definitely encourage everyone to take a look!

What is Morris’ beef with Kuhn?  In a nutshell, he thinks that Kuhn provided volatile ammunition for “postmodernists” (that’s Morris’ term): people who want to deny there is a truth (rather than many truths), a real world (rather than multiple realities), and a compelling distinction between ethical and unethical actions (rather than just social mores).  Now, I suspect that Morris is mostly tilting at windmills here, or, at the very least, that his argument is about ten years behind the times.  But for historians of science, I think, it is worth thinking about what’s got him so upset. 

Morris’ central objection centers on the relationship between paradigms and incommensurability.  What is a paradigm and what does it mean for two paradigms to be incomm…