Subject: PKF: Re: A reintroduction
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 14:00:25 +0200


Hi,

Finally there comes something out of nothing...

> 10 points to the first person who can tell me who wrote the following
> paragraph.

Who is Alan Sokal?

> 10 more points to anyone who can convince me that the points the author
was
> orginally trying to make (A) have no basis, or (B) are no longer true.

I'll think about this (honestly I'm not sure what you mean), but first off
I'll say that there are no sentences that "have no meaning whatsoever". The
author is trying to create a line of demarcation for *real* science which
would free science from the scathing postmodern critique...? Neo-Popper all
the way down...
The author is inable to cope with the Postmodern critique and reverts to the
categories being criticized - claiming some intelligible reliability
therewithin.
So he's dependent upon some universalists notions and therefore he believes
that critique can not be expressed with out taking onboard the categories of
that which is being criticized.

Plato writes that the difference between Socrates and the Sophists is to be
found only intent.

Regards,
James



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Från: "meathorne-gould" <meathorne-gould-AT-business.otago.ac.nz>
Till: <feyerabend-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Skickat: Thursday, October 28, 2004 12:20
Ämne: PKF: A reintroduction


> Hi, its been a long long time since I have even thought about this list, I
> subscribed to it originally for a brief period in 1998 and I recall a lot
of
> fun discussions on all sorts of matters during that time. I enjoyed it all
> immensely.
>
> Sitting at my desk today for some reason I started thinking about my
> previous life as a would be academic and how joining this list was my
> attempt to keep in touch with that past self during a period when my life
> was changing and you know what, I thought heck why don't I go back and
just
> see what's happening on the list. Well! Looking at the archive I think the
> answer is not a lot for quite a while.
>
> First question, I know from my brief browsing of the archive that David
> Geelan is still active from that time, but who else is still around from
> then?
>
> I know this isn't a typical introduction but if you want to know a bit
more
> about me and weren't around then, have a browse through the archive
starting
> about mid 1998 for my first introductory post it's still a pretty accurate
> summery.
>
> Anyway down to business lets have some fun!
>
> 10 points to the first person who can tell me who wrote the following
> paragraph.
>
> ". my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths,
> falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have
no
> meaning whatsoever. (Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter: I
tried
> hard to produce them, but I found that, save for rare bursts of
inspiration,
> I just didn't have the knack.) I also employed some other strategies that
> are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in the genre:
appeals
> to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories passed off as
> established science; strained and even absurd analogies; rhetoric that
> sounds good but whose meaning is ambiguous; and confusion between the
> technical and everyday senses of English words."
>
> 10 more points to anyone who can convince me that the points the author
was
> orginally trying to make (A) have no basis, or (B) are no longer true.
>
>
> Cheers
> Mike Eathorne-Gould
> meathorne-gould-AT-business.otago.ac.nz
>
>
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