18 January 2009

From Yahoo! Answers

Trolling Yahoo!Answers again for inspiration for this blog, I encountered the following naif-seeming question: "What are the 3 most important PHILOSOPHERS and why?"

I tried to think that through, and had trouble wrapping my mind around it. Important from what perspective?

So I just arbitrarily focused on one issue, one that occupies my mind a good deal, the mind-body problem. From this point of view, I gave the question the following answer.

Descartes, for bringing clarity to (certainly not for solving!) the question of how interaction between things and thoughts, between body and mind, is even possible.

William James, for stressing the true nature of the mind as a continuous unitary stream-of-consciousness in which each babble of the ongoing brook appropriates the babbles behind it.

And John Searle, for showing how the arrival of digital computers hasn't really solved or change the nature of the problem -- we are NOT a conjunction of software with hardware, whatever else we are.
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Pragmatism Refreshed

Knowledge is warranted belief -- it is the body of belief that we build up because, while living in this world, we've developed good reasons for believing it. What we know, then, is what works -- and it is, necessarily, what has worked for us, each of us individually, as a first approximation. For my other blog, on the struggles for control in the corporate suites, see www.proxypartisans.blogspot.com.