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amirbey's picture

metaphors...

Reading Dennett is a bit difficult because he uses a lot of metaphors.  We saw in class on Thursday that the metaphors are always wrong because they give the definition of only one aspect of the object being described.  Therefore, we can get confused very easily if the image does not get across (if the picture of the metaphor does not match the object) and if we try to make it fit with the full definition of the metaphor, our understanding can be completely different.  This example happened to a lot of us for the definition of foundationalist.  With the word “foundation”, I had assimilated the image of something that was based on a support and therefore, when Professor Grobstein said that a skyhook could be called foundationalist, I did not understand what he meant, and I thought he was himself confused about this affirmation that he had made.  How could something that comes from nowhere have a foundation?  But, if we take the definition of foundationalist as something that has fixed ideas, unchanging, eternal, and not to be questioned, we can understand better what Professor Grobstein meant when he said a skyhook was foundationalist.  Indeed, skyhooks are foundationalist because they are fixed ideas, not to be questioned and they have another foundation in another world! (Maybe the world of imagination?)

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