Re: Creativity

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Eray 
Ozkural  exa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> David Longley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message 
> news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > Do yourself a favour - treat yourself to a long overdue cerebral enema:
> >
> > http://www.bfskinner.org/media/Having_a_Poem.ram
> >
> > (PS it's not about poetry........ honest!)
>
> I don't doubt that he lacked literary talent as well as scientific skill.

I think you risk committing yourself to a popular programme that may 
have little or nothing but literary merits to commend itself to anyone. 
It may well be that history will look back on the last forty years or so 
as the routing of a group of academic disciplines after some hitherto 
poorly examined assumptions of empiricism were finally analysed & found 
to be empty dogmas. Having previously defined themselves as the study of 
what was subsequently revealed to be chimerical, large numbers of 
linguists, psychologists, philosophers, computer scientists & other 
academics who had a vested interest in intensions saw their professions 
become anachronisms with nowhere to go, and flocked together for 
protection under the auspices of the "Cognitive Sciences".

Furthermore, I suspect that people such as yourself may gravitate to 
this vacuous creationism for quite naive and misguided reasons, 
subscribing to a coherence rather than deflationary (or disquotational) 
theory of truth. We are all shaped by our idiosyncratic history, but in 
the above cases one can see how specific classes of verbal behaviour, 
e.g. mathematical problem solving and computing/programming are prone to 
reinforce a coherence theory of truth (at least until one is forced to 
consider how one might support oneself financially through the practice 
of such skills). There are many now making a literary or academic career 
out of their own, and others' interests in this 'white art' of course. 
It does no real good outside itself, but like the rest of art, it does 
no harm either, and like the large number of psychotics (1:100 at least) 
now living in our communities, as practising it does no harm and one can 
make a living from such practices, there's no reason why they shouldn't 
be pursued like any other human activity.

However, there are good reasons to believe that this may be all there is 
to "Cognitive Science". For some folk, their commitment to it might well 
change quite dramatically once they see how obviously the functionalism 
of the 60s and 70s mostly caches out as behaviourism, and where it 
doesn't, it collapses instead into literature - an austere and rather 
unattractive form perhaps, but creative writing nonetheless.

What it certainly isn't (for all that that matters) - is science or 
technology.

Perhaps you might like to give this possibility some thought.
--
David Longley