Re: [Wittrs] Searle at Simply Wittgenstein
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 09:25:28 -0700 (PDT)
(Kirby)
... I think that is an excellent point. Those who divide the world between
Analytics and Continentals, and who endear toward the former, are more likely
to see Wittgenstein as only an "important figure" in the venture, not as some
sort of pantheon for the club. You see this all the time. Ayer talks of
Wittgenstein being a brilliant genius who was just wrong on several important
"arguments." Go to Analytic (the discussion group), and you will see them
bringing out Wittgenstein as a play toy here and there -- as though
Wittgenstein's contributions reduce to argument X or Y, the validity of which
any person trained in the symbolic logics could cipher.
That gets back to my point that people who have a certain orientation --
probably related in some way to cognitive traits -- tend not to "see" the
greater significance of Wittgenstein's thought to both intellectual culture
generally and to philosophy-the-club in particular.
Compare, for example, someone like Ray Monk with some like Searle. Just watch
how their minds work. Watch what they do with information, how the process or
absorb context. Watch what they do with ideas. I think there is a reason
someone like Monk picks Wittgenstein as having so many of philosophy's greatest
books while leaving Searle's "bigs" neglected on the list. And why Cambridge
was more indulged with Wittgenstein than Oxford.
If you just watch the way Searle behaves in public when he talks philosophy,
you see something in the way his mind works that leaves you with not much
confidence about, perhaps, certain kinds of abilities or traits that you would
want to see when specific issues are being considered. One wants to say:
analytics are intellectually boring in certain respects.
It's not that one couldn't make correlative observations about the
opposite-inclined, of course. Surely Wittgensteinians are "weird" in their own
right. But the point is only this: all that Searle has done is confess his
framework bias, which reveals to us something about the way he is suited
(perhaps) for attachment with orientation.
Regards and thanks.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
[spoiler]Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://tinyurl.com/3eatnrx
Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs[/spoiler]
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