The End of Linguistics

[Kerim Friedman]

If something is logically false it can't be probably true.

If something is not true of the model we often use to define what we mean by "science" then it is certainly not true of something which is perhapse only tangentially a science. I think Celso and I are making a similar point here.

In making this argument I did not set out to prove that linguistics is a science, only that the argument that he made for proving it was not a science was false. This does not make linguistics a science by any means. That would be another discussion. I just meant to show that the use of this argument to argue for the "end of linguistics" was questionable. I personally don't really care if what I am doing counts as science or not. We certainly don't get paid what scientists get paid!

kerim


>My criticism is that you have read as a syllogism a probabilistic argument
>which is, ipso facto, not a syllogism and requires a judgement concerning
>the degree to which (1) is true which is then taken as a basis for
>estimating whether (3) is likely to be true in some foreseeable future.

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P. KERIM FRIEDMAN
			Anthropology, Temple University
			<mailto:kerim.friedman at oxus.net>
			<http://kerim.oxus.net>
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