Book Reviews

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Notes

¹‘Although the phrase “politically correct” can be traced back to a remote early instance by Justice James Wilson in a Supreme Court case in 1793’ (p. 61), [it] ‘started as a policy concept denoting the orthodox party line of Chinese Communism as enunciated by Mao Tse-Tung in the 1930s. […] Paradoxically, political correctness increased in vogue in America precisely when hard-line Communism was waning’ (p. 60).

²Given our current rules of political correctness it is highly probable that Descartes would have censored himself and not have written the following: ‘Ceux qui on le raisonnement le plus fort, et qui digèrent le mieux leurs pensées, afin de les rendre claires et intelligibles, peuvent toujours le mieux persuader ce qu'ils proposent, encore qu'ils ne parlassent que bas-breton, et qu'ils n'eussent jamais appris de rhétorique’ (‘Those who have the strongest power of reasoning, and who most skilfully arrange their thoughts in order to render them clear and intelligible, have the best power of persuasion even if they can but speak the language of Lower Brittany and have never learned rhetoric’) (Descartes 1637/1973: 7, my emphasis).

³Goodman borrowed the expression ‘category-mistake’ from Ryle (1949: 16ff).

⁴In fact, Fergusson's (1986) Penguin Dictionary of English Synonyms and Antonyms does not provide any entry for the adjective seminal. In contrast the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2010) provides creative and original as synonyms of seminal. Again one can ask oneself whether creative and original are synonyms or hyperonyms of seminal.

⁵See http://www.laverdad.es/murcia/20080408/comarcas/aguilas-equipo-mineros-asturias-20080408.html (accessed 10 May 2010).