I Want To Block Some Common Misunderstandings

The Assertion Fallacy Is The Fallacy Of Confusing The Conditions For The Performance Of The Speech Act Of Assertion With The Analysis Of The Meaning Of Particular Words Occurring In Certain Assertions.

There Is No Success Or Failure In Nature.

It Seemed To A Number Of Philosophers Of Language, Myself Included, That We Should Attempt To Achieve A Unification Of Chomsky's Syntax, With The Results Of The Researches That Were Going On In Semantics And Pragmatics. I Believe That This Effort Has Proven To Be A Failure. Though Chomsky Did Indeed Revolutionize The Subject Of Linguistics, It Is Not At All Clear, At The End The Century, What The Solid Results Of This Revolution Are. As Far As I Can Tell There Is Not A Single Rule Of Syntax That All, Or Even Most, Competent Linguists Are Prepared To Agree Is A Rule.

Materialism Ends Up Denying The Existence Of Any Irreducible Subjective Qualitative States Of Sentience Or Awareness.

Where Questions Of Style And Exposition Are Concerned I Try To Follow A Simple Maxim: If You Can't Say It Clearly You Don't Understand It Yourself.