This is ingenious but seems like speculation largely detached from evidence. In particular, if you want to be believed then you might do well to offer better grounds for saying …
… that Quine’s attitude to meanings or mental states resembles taboos in some actually religious sense (AIUI, the common colloquial use of “taboo” is by no means the same as the phenomena that go by that name in Polynesian societies)
… that when behaviourists said that only external behaviour should be looked at and didn’t mention the possibility of looking inside people’s skulls, the reason wasn’t simply that they hadn’t thought of doing that, or didn’t realise that the available techniques were sufficient to tell them anything useful, or thought those techniques were too seldom practical to be relevant, or something
… that any behaviourists were trying to “protect the mind from reductionism by denying that it exists”
And you might also do well to say more explicitly what you think this “parasitic religious doctrine” actually was, and who you think believed it, and what reasons you have for thinking that other than that it might explain the fact that Quine didn’t consider using brain scans or EEGs to resolve the problem of radical translation.
(AIUI, the common colloquial use of “taboo” is by no means the same as the phenomena that go by that name in Polynesian societies)
Indeed not. The English word “taboo” is from Fijian or Tongan, which I can’t speak to; but the Hawaiian cognate is “kapu” which means more or less “restricted” or “forbidden”.
It doesn’t mean something that can’t be discussed, or is shameful or unthinkable. It was typically used to refer to food prohibitions, structurally rather similar to kosher, halal, or for that matter hippie vegetarianism; but also for places that are off-limits to commoners, or are “private” to the chief or the gods (or someone else important) and not to be trespassed upon.
The English sense of “taboo” is a projection onto foreign cultures of a very Western notion of shame and the unspeakable. It reminds me of the expression “sacred cow”, which projects onto Hinduism the notion of an impractical but unquestionably revered thing, which is not at all what Hindus mean by protecting cattle.
This is ingenious but seems like speculation largely detached from evidence. In particular, if you want to be believed then you might do well to offer better grounds for saying …
It is speculation, and I don’t want to be believed. I want to float the idea that this is one aspect of behaviorism, and that even a scientific theory can be hijacked by what we want to believe.
OK, I’ll strengthen it: If you want to be taken seriously then you should consider doing those things. Because on the face of it, it seems like (1) you’ve got this frankly rather crazy theory suggesting that behaviourist ideas are commonly motivated by a quasi-religious horror of the idea that mental states might be reducible, (2) typical behaviourists’ thinking was pretty much the opposite of that, and (3) you’ve given no actual reason why your crazy-looking theory is at all likely to be right.
I’ve given enough reasons to suggest the ideas are plausible, which is all that is needed for a discussion, which is what we do in the DIscussion section.
I agree that it should be acceptable to pose hypotheses that one thinks are more likely to be false than to be true. There are ways to make it clearer that that is what one is doing.
This is ingenious but seems like speculation largely detached from evidence. In particular, if you want to be believed then you might do well to offer better grounds for saying …
… that Quine’s attitude to meanings or mental states resembles taboos in some actually religious sense (AIUI, the common colloquial use of “taboo” is by no means the same as the phenomena that go by that name in Polynesian societies)
… that when behaviourists said that only external behaviour should be looked at and didn’t mention the possibility of looking inside people’s skulls, the reason wasn’t simply that they hadn’t thought of doing that, or didn’t realise that the available techniques were sufficient to tell them anything useful, or thought those techniques were too seldom practical to be relevant, or something
… that any behaviourists were trying to “protect the mind from reductionism by denying that it exists”
And you might also do well to say more explicitly what you think this “parasitic religious doctrine” actually was, and who you think believed it, and what reasons you have for thinking that other than that it might explain the fact that Quine didn’t consider using brain scans or EEGs to resolve the problem of radical translation.
Indeed not. The English word “taboo” is from Fijian or Tongan, which I can’t speak to; but the Hawaiian cognate is “kapu” which means more or less “restricted” or “forbidden”.
It doesn’t mean something that can’t be discussed, or is shameful or unthinkable. It was typically used to refer to food prohibitions, structurally rather similar to kosher, halal, or for that matter hippie vegetarianism; but also for places that are off-limits to commoners, or are “private” to the chief or the gods (or someone else important) and not to be trespassed upon.
The English sense of “taboo” is a projection onto foreign cultures of a very Western notion of shame and the unspeakable. It reminds me of the expression “sacred cow”, which projects onto Hinduism the notion of an impractical but unquestionably revered thing, which is not at all what Hindus mean by protecting cattle.
It is speculation, and I don’t want to be believed. I want to float the idea that this is one aspect of behaviorism, and that even a scientific theory can be hijacked by what we want to believe.
OK, I’ll strengthen it: If you want to be taken seriously then you should consider doing those things. Because on the face of it, it seems like (1) you’ve got this frankly rather crazy theory suggesting that behaviourist ideas are commonly motivated by a quasi-religious horror of the idea that mental states might be reducible, (2) typical behaviourists’ thinking was pretty much the opposite of that, and (3) you’ve given no actual reason why your crazy-looking theory is at all likely to be right.
I’ve given enough reasons to suggest the ideas are plausible, which is all that is needed for a discussion, which is what we do in the DIscussion section.
I agree that it should be acceptable to pose hypotheses that one thinks are more likely to be false than to be true. There are ways to make it clearer that that is what one is doing.