Oddly enough, I thought there was more a concensus about the unlikelihood of strong AI in analytic philosophy than anywhere else. So on that count I think eyebeams is misrepresenting your discipline as much as you're misrepresenting his with some of your comments. But maybe I've just been spending too much time with Searle, and everybody else thinks strong AI is in fact right around the corner.Akrasia said:I’m not sure what you’re claiming here. There are many interesting positions concerning ‘consciousness’ being advanced by contemporary analytical philosophers of mind. None of these positions have clearly emerged as the most plausible one – but at least they are presented in a clear, rigorous manner, and thus their claims can be critically evaluated and considered. Sadly, clarity and rigour are generally considered to be intellectual vices in ‘postmodernism’.
But anyway, a few points: most analytic philosophy is both postmodern and poststructural. These aren't antithetical movements in the least. As you say, analytic philosophy is a method, not a set of ideas; postmodernism and poststructuralism, on the other hand, are precisely sets of ideas. Continental philosophy, to be sure, has a very different style than analytic, but to say it has a general lack of clarity or rigor is simply wrong. It's practically a different language, but one that makes perfect sense if you speak it. Now, other humanities people, like English and X Studies Ph.D.'s, who are wasting an enormous amount of paper right now regurgitating these ideas in the worst ways, certainly make it look bad; but if you're actually reading Gadamer or Foucault or Rorty you'll see the value in what they're doing. There's a reason analytic thinkers like Rorty and Donald Davidson have spent time making sure continentals like Gadamer get a fair shake in America. (Hell, once you get past the different discourses, Quine and Derrida, for example, are practically saying the same things. And if you know Searle's--and pretty much everyone else's--reply to Quine's indeterminacy thesis, it's the same damn counter Derrida got pwnz0rr3d with when he debated Gadamer. edit: eyebeams indirectly referred to this bit in his post as well.)
The hostility is misplaced, on both ends. Continental philosophers are already doing what analytic philosophers are doing and vice versa; each side just has different ways of going about their work. Postmodernism, at least, has the distinction of encouraging this diversity of method, and you see this encouragement as well in the best thinkers on both sides.
Can't we all just get along?
Akrasia said:END of Tangent. Please resume the Forge-bashing.