The Operated Jew and the Thinking Machine

In support of the thesis that much of the Behaviorist inspired thought-experiment horror (Zombies, Swampmen, Inhumanly raised Marys, even soulless Chinese Speakers and HAL’s), in the field of Philosophy of MInd, is really a philo-sociological issue, and issue between the difference between a person and a thing, and the concordant fears of what might erupt if [...]

White and Black Lists: Evolution and Rule Following

  A Prospective View Towards Thinking about the nature of Proscription It is said that one of the primary weakness of the early concept of evolution as adaptation to an environment was the idea that the environment was prescribing changes in an organism or species, that is telling them how to be. What it seems [...]

Amanda’s “Private Language”

Pace Wittgenstein?   Wittgenstein argued, in a rather slick and convincing way, that there is no such thing as a “Private Language”, a language that in principle cannot be learned by anyone else. He argued that logically the kinds of internal, untranslatable rule followings that anyone might do privately, can only be at most the [...]

The Buzz of Wittgenstein’s Builders

honey_bee_dance: “Can an Insect Speak? The Case of the Honeybee Dance Language,” Eileen Crist     Eileen Crist argues that the Honey Bee Dance in fact fulfills some very important, perhaps conclusive, criteria of what make a language, a language. It is: rule-governed, complex, flexible, symbolic and performative. Leaning on philosophers of language Wittgenstein and [...]