What a nice day. Sitting on the esplanade, reading Colin McGinn's The Making of a Philosopher (a personal memoir + thoughts on 20th century philosophy). And I come across this:
Nowadays psychology has pretty much the shape that Chomsky advocated, and it is hard to remember the time when behaviorism was the prevailing orthodoxy. I still think this provides a valuable lesson in questioning orthodoxies that go out of their way to deny obvious facts -- as behaviorism in effect denied that we have minds. The sure mark of an ideology, in science and philosophy as in politics, is the denying of obvious facts. A healthy dose of common sense is always a useful antidote to ideological bias.
This is what I had in mind the other day.
(speaking of "the esplanade" did any of you Bostonites see this today?)
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