logicandlanguage.net

My list would be Aristotle, Austen, Habermas, Hamblin, Kripke, Russell B., Russell G. (of course!), and Toulmin, but then I'm a computer scientist and these folks have been influential for us.

I was trying to explain the indispensability argument to a chemist friend the other day (he saw Mark Colyvan's book on my coffee table) and he had a whole lot of trouble understanding the notion that people actually had platonist views of mathematics, or thought that numbers might be things.

Borges story: I was waiting for Hugo, seated on a leather couch at the back of the Biting Dog in Salvador, when I discovered an old paperback book, wedged between the seat and the back of my couch. The book was called "Introductione de Great Philosopherse" and was written in an unfamiliar dialect of English. It had ten chapters, each directed at the work of a great philosopher: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Hamblin and Toulmin. When Hugo arrived - he was a little late leaving the library owing to an incident with a grenade - I sheepishly confessed that I had never encountered the latter two philosophers with the similar names. Hugo said that he had read bits and pieces of their joint work but considered it inferior to that of Hume, or Hamboul, and we ordered more wine and began to discuss the political situation. Not 20 minutes after he had arrived, Hugo stood, swearing and gasping and clutching at his braids. He apologised but said he must leave on urgent business. I began to thumb through "Introductione de Great Philosopherse" as I finished my drink. Apparently, Toulmin would never write anything without Hamblin, though Hamblin had occasionally been known to publish short treatises of his own. At least, this is what was claimed in the chapter on Toulmin, but when I reached the final chapter I discovered that it was really the other way around. The final chapter also noted that after the second world war Toulmin and Hamblin's joint work had been suppressed by the guild, so that any novice found in possession of a tract was forced to drink sufficient hemlock to kill an ass. Such was the fear of this punishment that study of Toulmin and Hamblin had fallen out of favour and it was feared that they would soon be forgotten altogether, given that the younger scholars never encountered them, and the power of wishful thinking-whereby a scholar believes that which it is most prudential for him to believe - had such a powerful grip on the minds of the elderly that few now believed the two philosophers had written anything.
When I returned home, I sought their works in the library at Geneva, but with no success. Hugo, it turned out, died that night from a large piece of shrapnel lodged - unsuspected - in his brain.

A couple of years ago I met Eric Scerri (UCLA) who is a specialist in philosophical aspects of chemistry:

http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/scerri/

As a rule I'm a pretty big fan of the BBC, their forward thinking attitude to dissemination and the internet, the way they encourage innovation, the generally excellent content they produce, all contribute to British culture in incalculable ways. However, my feelings on the consuming public are somewhat more ambivalent and considering it's that public which has recently voted the bicycle (I ask you) as the World's Greatest Invention, I have to wonder if this particular foray into the highbrow is a doomed attempt from the off.

Loved the Borges story.

However, in case anyone doubts the existence of either philosopher, Stephen Toulmin, student of Wittgenstein and one-time brother-in-law of Austin, gave the invited address at the OSSA Meeting last month (Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation), the major North American conference in the philosophy of argumentation.

See here.

And of Charles Hamblin, see my biography written for the Australian Computer Museum Society, here.

Funny. My dad has the same fear about philosophy - that it is a conspiracy against science - inspired by reading Thomas Nagel's book, "What does it all mean?" (which I foolishly gave him). I haven't been able to dislodge it since.

It's too tough to pick just one...

I just wish some more interesting celebrities were asked.