Hey! It's an in-joke that, as one of the few readers who understand it, I couldn't possibly discuss without pissing off a lot of people who might harm me in my future career!
Anyway, Gary's writing style isn't nearly as jokey as Fodor's, ISTM.
Look, people, you'll just have to take my word for it: this is one funny injoke. Hilariously, given its origins in Wittgenstein, only I can understand it.
Fodor:
I'm aware that there is rumored to be an argument, vaguely Viennese in provenance, that proves that 'original' underived intentionality must inhere, not in mental representations nor in thoughts, but precisely in the formulas of public languages. I would be very pleased if such an argument actually turned up, since then pretty nearly everything I believe about language and mind would have been refuted, and I could stop worrying about RTM, and about what concepts are, and take off and go sailing, a pastime that I vastly prefer. Unfortunately, however, either nobody can remember how the argument goes or it's a secret they're unprepared to share with me. So I'll forge on.
Mmm. That's something I would love to get back into, and just don't have the time. I raced Sunfish semi-seriously in high school summers (my big sister was quite serious), and had a great couple of years crewing on a salty old guy's J-24. We used to kick ass in the Orient Yacht Club's summer race series.
This reminds me of a game I used to play as an undergrad: Whenever a professor pointed out startling parallels between one philosopher and another, I would gloss it as "X is Y," and then would draw a chart showing which philosophers had been proved to be identical (using the transitivity of identity). There was a nice two-step proof of the identity of Heidegger and Carnap, bridged by Thomas Kuhn. I realize that this comment is in tension with 2.
Weiner, that sounds like the "and" series of philosophical books which I was promoting. "Abelard and Quine". "Leibniz and Zizek". "Popper and Ibn Arabi".
You have to choose the two names carefully. It would be no fun if it was "Leibniz and Frege", though "Leibiz vs. Frege: whither Western civilization?" might fly.
Jerry does indeed love to sail, and once claimed that only one thing might possibly be worse than relativism, namely fiber-glass power boats. His other great love is opera, but since he lives opposite Lincoln Center, he doesn't have to retire in order to go to the opera all the time.
Oh, and John,: Larry Laudan once imagined a positivist work called "The History of Philosophy: Great Thinkers From Frege to Carnap".
Who's Jerry Fodor?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 9:44 AM
Hey! It's an in-joke that, as one of the few readers who understand it, I couldn't possibly discuss without pissing off a lot of people who might harm me in my future career!
Anyway, Gary's writing style isn't nearly as jokey as Fodor's, ISTM.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 9:52 AM
I imagine we'll be seeing Gary's eulogy for Stanislaw Lem soon.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 9:54 AM
Is anyone going to explain this post to the proles? I.e., me?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 9:56 AM
For context, Matt, it was F's passive-aggressive dismissal of the private language argument in Concepts that prompted the post.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 9:56 AM
Farber wrote a book called Concepts in which he dismissed the private language argument?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 9:58 AM
Stanislaw Lem's dead? That sucks.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 9:59 AM
Maybe they share a Granny. (At the mineshaft.)
Posted by argle | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 10:07 AM
Look, people, you'll just have to take my word for it: this is one funny injoke. Hilariously, given its origins in Wittgenstein, only I can understand it.
Fodor:
I'm aware that there is rumored to be an argument, vaguely Viennese in provenance, that proves that 'original' underived intentionality must inhere, not in mental representations nor in thoughts, but precisely in the formulas of public languages. I would be very pleased if such an argument actually turned up, since then pretty nearly everything I believe about language and mind would have been refuted, and I could stop worrying about RTM, and about what concepts are, and take off and go sailing, a pastime that I vastly prefer. Unfortunately, however, either nobody can remember how the argument goes or it's a secret they're unprepared to share with me. So I'll forge on.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 10:25 AM
go sailing, a pastime that I vastly prefer.
Is 'sailing' literal, or just a placeholder for 'fun things in general'?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 10:29 AM
Socrates, too. And Diogenes of Sinope.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 10:31 AM
I'd expect he means it literally, although a Bobby Darin general-fun-things concept is a pleasant reverberation of the way he said it.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 10:34 AM
Mmm. That's something I would love to get back into, and just don't have the time. I raced Sunfish semi-seriously in high school summers (my big sister was quite serious), and had a great couple of years crewing on a salty old guy's J-24. We used to kick ass in the Orient Yacht Club's summer race series.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 10:41 AM
Wow, that is funny.
This reminds me of a game I used to play as an undergrad: Whenever a professor pointed out startling parallels between one philosopher and another, I would gloss it as "X is Y," and then would draw a chart showing which philosophers had been proved to be identical (using the transitivity of identity). There was a nice two-step proof of the identity of Heidegger and Carnap, bridged by Thomas Kuhn. I realize that this comment is in tension with 2.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 10:43 AM
about RTM
Rockin' the Mineshaft?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 10:50 AM
There's some interesting alt-text you may want to check out somewhere on the main page.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 12:46 PM
Weiner, that sounds like the "and" series of philosophical books which I was promoting. "Abelard and Quine". "Leibniz and Zizek". "Popper and Ibn Arabi".
You have to choose the two names carefully. It would be no fun if it was "Leibniz and Frege", though "Leibiz vs. Frege: whither Western civilization?" might fly.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 3:55 PM
Spaghetti and Meatballs.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 3:59 PM
Jerry does indeed love to sail, and once claimed that only one thing might possibly be worse than relativism, namely fiber-glass power boats. His other great love is opera, but since he lives opposite Lincoln Center, he doesn't have to retire in order to go to the opera all the time.
Oh, and John,: Larry Laudan once imagined a positivist work called "The History of Philosophy: Great Thinkers From Frege to Carnap".
Posted by dominic | Link to this comment | 03-27-06 4:14 PM