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Re: Completing the Revolution
by Scott Bakker on Tuesday March 11, @02:43PM
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| First, no, I haven't read the book, though I have read two of Lakoff's previous works and attended a presentation of his. Great guy.
My response is based on parallel arguments he makes regarding semantics in general. The problem he faces is one that looms large in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind: the problem of NATURALIZING semantics. Unless he's come up an account of meaning that commands scientific consensus (which is the holy grail), then he's simply philosophizing with the aid of science, pure and simple, and all he's offering us a possible interpretation of a possible state of affairs. Valuable in it's own right, no doubt, but far from 'scientific proof of the falsity of mathematical platonism.'
From a strictly scientific view, the threat is not that there's no such thing as platonic forms, but that there's no such thing as meaning period, and that what we experience as meaning is simply an illusion generated by certain hardware and evolutionary limitations of our brain. My suspicion is that it's the loaded interpretative apparatus that Lakoff brings to neurophysiological observations that does much of his work. |
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