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   RE: [xml-dev] Linguistic Philosophy Reading and URI Related Readi ng Mat

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I'd tend to recommend anything that leaves you especially confused and
unlikely to believe that anything philosophical is genuinely certain.

Toward that end, I'd recommend:

George Berkeley, _Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonus_. (I don't
think Berkeley anywhere near proves his idealist case, but he exposes
the complexity of perception quite nicely.)

Paul Feyerabend, _Against Method_. (In case you thought there was an
orderly progress of knowledge.)

Martin Heidegger, _Basic Writings_. (Requires a carton of cigarettes or
several.  For a lighter version, try Robert Solomon's From Rationalism
to Existentialism.)

Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life. (Emphasizes contingency, pointing out
the odds against our even having this conversation, never mind us all
being humans speaking English.)

Ferdinand De Saussure, _Course in General Linguistics_. (Explains
signified/signifier, doesn't reach hard for certainty in their
relationship.)

I find even the later Wittgenstein too likely to promote belief in
semantic certainty, so I doubt my selections or the reasons for them
will prove popular with a semantically-minded crowd, never mind the
authors of the books I've noted.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org




 

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