Susan, 

I notice that you had no desire to deal with my observations on why any scientific discipline raises fundamental philosophical questions.  So, let's get to cases.

What does it mean to know a language?  

How is that knowledge acquired? 

Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri



>>> Susan van Druten <[log in to unmask]> 11/15/10 5:57 PM >>>
Hi Bob, do you think philosophy is a science in the same way that physics is a science?  You will need a more precise definition of science to follow my argument.  But perhaps that is what you don't want to do.


On Nov 15, 2010, at 11:09 AM, Robert Yates wrote:

> Susan,
> 
> I have no idea what your background is, but you need to have a wider definition of philosophy and science. Two crucial questions in philosophy are determining what is knowledge and figuring out how we come to that knowledge.  In any scientific discipline, two crucial question are determining the domain of knowledge that discipline is concerned with and what are the appropriate ways of gathering that knowledge.
> 
> Let's consider language.  What does it mean to know a language?  Is "knowing" a language a unitary kind of knowledge or does it have, let's say, two aspects: knowing what is possible in the language (let's call that competence) and knowing how to use what is possible in the language (let's call that performance)?  That question is both fundamental to how one studies language and a fundamental philosophical question. 
> 
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
> 
>>>> Susan van Druten <[log in to unmask]> 11/14/2010 9:55 PM >>>
> I had never heard of Kuhn.  So I did a quick search and he, too, is not a scientist when he is writing about what science is.  He is a philosopher.   When you want to use what he says to counter what science is, he can't do it because he is a philosopher, and a philosopher can't counter a scientific definition.  And a good philosopher doesn't try.  The definition of science is not a philosophic concern.  I don't think either Popper or Kuhn would have agreed to your using their ideas to defend definitions of grammar as being scientific.
> 
> If Michael Jordan tries to sell you tennis shoes, consider buying what he says is good.  But if Michael Jordan tries to tell you what a noun is, don't buy it any more than you would what Popper or Carl Sagan tells you what a noun is.
> 
> 
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