Bloomfield, like most scientists of the period who concerned themselves with philosophy, attended much more to the predicate of the verification principle than its subject, and one word was particularly eye-catching. — 26: 723-725
Negative arguments have a very short shelf-life, and, regardless of conviction and oratorical prowess, if they don’t come with a positive program, there is little hope for widespread assent. — 60: 1557-1559
Empiricism: all knowledge is acquired through the senses. Rationalism: no knowledge is acquired through the senses. — 66: 1717-1719
Empiricism: most knowledge is acquired through the senses. Rationalism: most knowledge is not acquired through the senses. — 66: 1725-1727
the people involved in our story, probably Halle is the only one who knows where Chomsky’s heart is. — 77: 2015-2015
(Harris, always a little extreme, defined langue as “merely the scientific arrangement of [parole]”—1941:345.) — 96: 2513-2514
The rub, then: while following on some of Chomsky’s general comments, abstract syntax was forced to reject or modify many of his specific analyses. Where there is a rub, there is friction. — 120: 3112-3114
That is, they would all involve the primitive definition for dead (something like NOT ALIVE), but die would additionally be marked to undergo the transformation, Inchoative, and kill would be further marked to undergo Causative, capturing rather smoothly that dead means not alive, that die means become not alive, and kill means cause to become not alive. Among — 129: 3384-3387
Beliefs are most clearly and systematically articulated when they are formed via negativa. The boundaries of what is true and acceptable are marked through a systematic identification of what is false and unacceptable…. It is through battles with heresies and heretics that orthodoxy is most sharply delineated. Lester Kurz — 135: 3512-3515
I will not consider Reichling’s criticisms of generative grammar here. The cited remark is just one illustration of his complete lack of comprehension of the goals, concerns, and specific content of the work he was discussing, and his discussion is based on such gross misrepresentations of this work that comment is hardly called for. (1966b [1964]:9) — 143: 3740-3742
“For base men,” Empedocles warns us, “it is indeed possible to withhold belief from strong proofs” (fragment 55), but baseness, like beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder. When scientists across the way refuse to grant the force of an argument that its sponsor finds compelling, they are base by definition, which is why the most common accusations in science are forms of ad hominems—implications of personal failings, like stupidity, sloppy scholarship, and often, dishonesty. Personal attacks are far more common in science than is generally thought (suggesting, among other things, that thin veils such as x is confused, or y fails to understand the issue, or z misrepresents my position actually work). Even the parched and stolid pages of professional journals are full of them, and they cluster fructiferously around paradigm disputes. It isn’t difficult to see why. Most immediately, mudslinging is easy. If you find an observation disagreeable, says Hawking, “you can always question the competence of the person who carried the observation out” (1988:10). — 160: 4165-4173