Philosophy

I've been reading a bit of philosophy recently - namely, Hume's Treatise Concerning Human Understanding, and A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic. It's an interesting combination to read, especially since I'm still only halfway through Dawkins' book. Dawkins spends some time referring to Hume, and Ayer does, too. Meanwhile, some of the things Ayer writes about are so clearly antecedent to Chomky's way of doing linguistics, it's quite fascinating! It's times like these when I wish I was a little more of a linguist than I am; but it's also times like these when I'm glad to be a linguist. :-) It seems that one thing Chomsky can be credited for is the proof (if that's the right word) that philosophy in every language looks the same. Put another way, critical thinking is not under the jurisdiction of one or a handful of languages, but is open to all languages. Furthermore, this blows Sapir-Whorf right out of the water. (The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, named for Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf, put simply, states that one's language affects the way one thinks. One of the paradigm examples (now rejected after further analysis) is the Hopi, who were thought to be unable to conceive of time because their language had no past or future verb tenses.) Aside from linguistics, I wonder what a Christian philosophy on a par with these guys would look like, especially in the biomedical world. Hmmmm........