The soft impeachment

responding to Margolis

R. W. Sleeper

pp. 355-364

in: Herbert Otto, James Tuedio (eds), Perspectives on mind, Berlin, Springer, 1988

Abstract

Margolis puts to himself the question: "What are the prospects of reconciling analytic and Continental theories of the psychological sciences?" Surveying these prospects optimistically, Margolis is nevertheless struck by the fact that not all participants in the analytic tradition are as well prepared for negotiating their differences with members of the Continental tradition as others are. It is evident to Margolis that only analysts who have foresworn "reductionism" are eligible, and that these "born again" analysts are those who have taken the message of pragmatism to heart. The trouble is that not all those who accept the new dispensation do so with the purity of heart that Margolis would require of them, for they maintain still—Margolis argues at length—a hidden allegiance to the old dogmas. Even Willard Quine, whose attack on the old dogmas has long been regarded as a paradigm of the new confession, fails to escape the soft impeachment. There is something "subversive," Margolis tells us, about Quine's teaching that corrupts his pupils, and he offers the work of Donald Davidson as a case in point.

Cited authors

Davidson Donald

Quine Willard Van Orman