Comments on: Elsewhere

By: Lawrence Krubner

Lawrence Krubner — Fri, 28 Nov 2003 18:58:19 +0000

“How about a link to sci.lang?” That’s an odd request. It’s a newsgroup. If your ISP doesn’t connect you, then you can try going through the portal that Google has set up: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=sci.lang&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:30:15 +0000

How about a link to sci.lang? Linguistic wrangles are always interesting.

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 28 Nov 2003 16:13:41 +0000

Truth isn’t beyond the purview of a ‘pragmatist’ like Fish, neo- or other otherwise, as long as s/he gets to define the terms by which one understands ‘truth’ as such. For somebody like Fish, truth is certainly not a metaphysical property or goal that stands outside the academic endeavour; but it is definitely something that the academic endeavour can define for itself and then seek accordingly.

By: des

des — Fri, 28 Nov 2003 10:02:02 +0000

Over at sci.lang, where there are several real linguists, this Nature study (by yet another random collection of non-linguists doing fairly random things with techniques from biology) is being treated with the same contempt as all its predecessors. Nature is second only to the NYT in its willingness to publish any old junk about linguistics as long as the conclusions are spectacular and no reputable linguists were involved.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Thu, 27 Nov 2003 23:56:03 +0000

That’s a very interesting piece by Fish. I was particularly struck by this remark – “Intellectual diversity is not a respectable intellectual goal. The only respectable intellectual goal is the pursuit of truth…” I thought Fish was something of a pragmatist. That’s not a very pragmatist-like thing to say, is it? At least it’s certainly not a very Rortyish thing to say – Rorty says he tends to think we should stop using words like ‘truth’.