"Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ"

[e_dog]

as i think Castro said, famously, "i am a (groucho) marxist-lennonist (john)" or somethin.

[perezoso]

Quine a pragmatist, yes; a physicalist, debatable. He takes the physicalist position but admits it is a useful posit. And he is often a classical mathematical "realist"--as was Russell in early writings-- and holds to an ontology in which universals--be they real numbers, relations, concepts, equations, newton's constants, etc---"exist " or reside somewhere: are they all cognitively and chemically realized? I would seem so, but cog sci or neurobiology should be able to pinpoint the mental syntax and chemical code associated with them....which has not been done. Perhaps it will be. If materialism holds--and thought is all identical to biochemical brain processes-- then it seems that each of our perceptions, our translations of syntax into thought, our logical concepts, our representations should be traceable.

Anyways, then, philosophers and psychologists holding to a materialist viewpoint are really forced into examining bio-consciousness/brain science/ processing ( as Dennett is doing) or social psychology ala Milgram if not Skinner; either neurobiology or some form of behaviorism. Freud's little couch inferences--dream "intepretation", ego psychology, complexes, etc.-- are as useless as Descartes--even more so. IF we are going to do psych. I'll stick with Pavlov, stimulus-response, and up to Watson and Skinner, etc., though I will admit to having read some RD Laing.