THE WAR ON LEARNING

OGDEN & RICHARDS VS CHOMSKY

“if an account of sign situations is to be scientific it must take its observations from the most suitable instances, and must not derive its general principles from an exceptional case. The person actually interpreting a sign is not well placed for observing what is happening: We should develop our theory of signs from observations of other people, and only admit evidence drawn from introspection when we know how to appraise it.”

“The adoption of the other method, on the ground that all our knowledge of others is inferred from knowledge of our own states, can only lead to the impasse of solipsism from which modern speculation has yet to recoil. Those who allow beyond question that there are people like themselves also interpreting signs and open to study should not find it difficult to admit that their observation of the behaviour of others may provide at least a framework within which their own introspection, that special and deceptive case, may be fitted. That this is the practice of all the sciences need hardly be pointed out. Any sensible doctor when stricken by disease distrusts his own introspective diagnosis and calls in a colleague.”

P. 19-20