Posted: Jan 17, 2017 2:23 pm
VazScep wrote:.........This stuff isn't decided a priori. We'll know what works when it does.
I do take those points.
But I might say that I didn't have any of the guys I mentioned, including Pinker, down as deciding anything a priori. At best, they have made contributions from the philosophical/theoretical point of view. Except when they were applying it themselves, and I see that Pinker has a rather long and impressive academic curriculum vitae and list of awards for his cognitive science, so I certainly don't feel qualified to dismiss him.
Not being a linguist, I could say something similar about Chomsky as I did about Pinker.
I only know one qualified linguist and while he might say that things have moved on since Chomsky and not necessarily agree with him, I think he'd still acknowledge that he made a big contribution to linguistics. As for his contributions to computer languages, sure, these may have gone out of favour, but it wasn't so long ago they were relevant.
As for Dennett, I think you suggested earlier that he might be one of those people who merely get cited briefly to add credibility to a paper, but the first Cognitive science paper I posted suggests that at least four Italian cognitive scientists wouldn't take that view.
I myself am not a Cognitive scientist. Coincidentally, I only know one of these also, and he is a huge Dennett fan.
