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Old 09-25-2010, 09:18 AM   #50
Peter Goldsbury
 
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Re: Breaking the will of the ego.

Quote:
Keith Larman wrote: View Post
Oh, and in the interests of completeness and giving credit where credit is due, I can't believe I left out one of my most important influences -- W.V.O. Quine. It is very difficult to find anyone today somehow not influenced by his work. His insights ripple through everything right down to even more "popularly known" writers/philosophers like Dennett and Hofstadter.
Hello Keith,

Well, I would take issue with you about Quine, but this would cause too much thread drift. I know nothing about Hofstadter, except that he has written bestselling books. As has Dennett. When I was at Harvard in the mid 1970s, I took a course from Daniel Dennett, which was really a discussion of his first book. During the course, it became clear that he was not amenable to reasoned argument, so my respect for him diminished somewhat. By comparison John Rawls (A Theory of Justice) was an excellent teacher. His lectures and seminars were deathly, because he had a stutter. Harvard had 'pro-seminars', which in the case of Rawls meant three hours on Kant's ethical theory. But he supervised my thesis on Socrates and I found him a kind and caring teacher.

We will obviously have to discuss these and other issues when I come to the US.

Best wishes,

PAG

P A Goldsbury
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