Well, you did answer the question I asked, so it’s my fault that I didn’t word the question right. It’s practically a philosophical tradition to bury philosophy and then do philosophy on the grave of philosophy. For example the positivists sought to bury metaphysics. The king is dead, long live the king. So, sure, there are many examples of that.
The issue I was interested in was not this, but was whether it is probable that Eliezer independently reproduced Quine’s philosophy. I did not think it was likely. Certain of our ideas really do arise spontaneously among the clever generation after generation, but other ideas do not but are discovered rarely, at which point the ideas may be widely disseminated. I don’t number Quine’s ideas as among those that arise spontaneously, but among those that are rarely discovered and then may be widely disseminated. My evidence for this was Quine’s seeming originality. In response, it was argued that until Quine, the discoverers went on to do something else, which is why it wasn’t until Quine that the ideas were brought to the attention of philosophers. I argued in response that at least some fraction should, like Eliezer, have written about it, and then I asked, so where are these pre-Quine Quines who wrote about it? Only, I worded the question badly, and instead asked, where are the philosophers who dismissed philosophy. Of which there are, of course, many.
It’s hard to trace those causal lines, but here’s one data point: Dennett’s ideas have spread rather widely, and Dennett is an enthusiastic Quinean naturalist, and indeed was a student of Quine. Here’s Dennett:
...Quine’s book, ‘From a Logical Point of View’, which I read in despair in the math library late at night that freshman year, because I was taking a very difficult course in logic. And the next morning I’d read the whole book and I decided to transfer to Harvard to work with him.
Also: Stich, who might be called the ‘founder’ of experimental philosophy, was also an enthusiastic student of Quine’s. And experimental philosophy is the kind of philosophy getting all the major press in the last 10 years, it seems to me.
Well, you did answer the question I asked, so it’s my fault that I didn’t word the question right. It’s practically a philosophical tradition to bury philosophy and then do philosophy on the grave of philosophy. For example the positivists sought to bury metaphysics. The king is dead, long live the king. So, sure, there are many examples of that.
The issue I was interested in was not this, but was whether it is probable that Eliezer independently reproduced Quine’s philosophy. I did not think it was likely. Certain of our ideas really do arise spontaneously among the clever generation after generation, but other ideas do not but are discovered rarely, at which point the ideas may be widely disseminated. I don’t number Quine’s ideas as among those that arise spontaneously, but among those that are rarely discovered and then may be widely disseminated. My evidence for this was Quine’s seeming originality. In response, it was argued that until Quine, the discoverers went on to do something else, which is why it wasn’t until Quine that the ideas were brought to the attention of philosophers. I argued in response that at least some fraction should, like Eliezer, have written about it, and then I asked, so where are these pre-Quine Quines who wrote about it? Only, I worded the question badly, and instead asked, where are the philosophers who dismissed philosophy. Of which there are, of course, many.
It’s hard to trace those causal lines, but here’s one data point: Dennett’s ideas have spread rather widely, and Dennett is an enthusiastic Quinean naturalist, and indeed was a student of Quine. Here’s Dennett:
Also: Stich, who might be called the ‘founder’ of experimental philosophy, was also an enthusiastic student of Quine’s. And experimental philosophy is the kind of philosophy getting all the major press in the last 10 years, it seems to me.