The upside: the relatively wide common ground between Travis and the contributors allows for deeper discussions about shared commitments, views, and interests. The reader may sometimes wish (I did) that views less sympathetic to Travis’s were better represented. These, Travis’s replies are often instructive in identifying. To various degrees, they offer views sympathetic to Travis’s, though distances still remain. Instead, the contributions helpfully correct misunderstandings of Travis’s views. Travis actually apologizes for this particular sentence, and says the grammar is necessary.) The volume aims not to make Travis easier to read, or to spare the reader the work of getting though his arguments. (Example: “What all of what was then to be understood to be being presumed so makes something now recognizable as to what we were, in fact, then speaking of in speaking of ‘whales’” (292). Travis’s philosophy is often misunderstood. However, to get a fuller view of Travis’s philosophical commitments, e.g., the distinctions between logic and psychology and between the conceptual and non-conceptual (which Travis’s replies help clarify) and the ways his philosophy maintains contact with the history of philosophy (as opposed to some current analytic philosophy), one would have to do more than read a few essays. (It would have been convenient if the replies followed the essays immediately.) I expect many will choose to read only a few essays, as collections are often treated. The volume has four parts: “Thought”, “Language”, “Perception”, and Travis’s replies. It is a good collection primarily because of the quality and variety of the twelve contributions and Travis’s replies. It requires some familiarity with the issues and with Travis’s positions. More realistic, our professor, Gilead Bar-Eli, told us: “You think you’ll get answers you’re only going to get more philosophy.” Apart from its other virtues, this excellent collection manages to get ‘more philosophy’ out of Charles Travis - often illuminating, often thought-provoking. We hoped to get clarifications from him about his views. A famous philosopher once visited my school when I was studying for my MA.
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