Scientific controversies: a case involving Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch
Keywords:
Controversy, epistemology, origin of language, evolution of languageAbstract
Scientific controversy, which appears as frequently as ideas themselves, are not always welcome by everybody, but they can contribute significantly to the advance of human knowledge. Philosopher Marcelo Dascal proposes an interesting generalization for controversies, claiming that they bring cognitive profit and make science advance. Although I believe in this, I attempt to show that a specific controversy about evolution of language between two groups of influential scientists does not actually satisfy some conditions which Dascal describes as epistemic gain, because the authors neither make a great effort to clarify their divergent opinions, nor move toward conciliation.
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References
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