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May 26, 2006
pranging out
I’ve been to two top class workshops this week, both on topics which interest philosophers as well as linguists, pragmatists and psycholinguists. Lots of interesting ideas, mixed with the feeling that the interlocutors (it was the kind of context where we use words like that without blinking) weren’t really having the same conversation (explaining exactly what ‘the same conversation’ might mean being exactly the kind of thing we were talking about). As well as the serious ideas, I enjoyed the in-jokes about Quine, Searle, Grice, etc. and the personal anecdotes about some of the big names back in the day. But I think my favourite moment was when one of the philosophers responded to another and illustrated something interesting about full stops by saying, ‘Suppose I say to you: ‘Jeffrey Skilling has committed suicide. He was found guilty on 19 out of 28 counts.’ The other philosopher was shocked and replied , ‘DID he?!!’ I guess the example was so appropriate that he forgot we were in a hypothetical context. (It’s about Enron btw)
B-)
Posted by Billy at May 26, 2006 11:58 PM
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