thread: 2006-05-09 : My OTHER body of work
On 2006-06-02, SCS wrote:
Hi Vincent -
Came across this googling myself...it was a pleasure meeting you. Your site must be very well-linked, as you were on page 1 of the hits of a sudden, ousting such pikers as Oxford University Press and Daily Kos.
Let me tell you my favorite philosophy joke, delivered by my wife. In his book on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics, Crispin Wright is trying to motivate Michael Dummett's idea that anti-realism ought properly be thought of in relation to different ontological domains than as a general metaphysical position about the universe. Wright says something to the effect that no-one would be a realist about everything - after all, it would be crazy, Wright thinks, to defend the view that our "sense of humor" is a literal 'sense' which detects real comic values out there in the world. So, since we all ought (according to Wright) to be anti-realists about the objects which underwrite the funny-values of jokes, etc., perhaps there are other domains (such as mathematics) about which anti-realism might be a viable position as well.
I told my wife about the passage. Without skipping a beat, she said: "That's really funny."
So anyway, gamers, next time you're in a room full of people snickering "I waste him with my crossbow" in between snorting cheetos, don't feel so bad: you could be at a conference of academic philosophers instead.
