Kant and the Platypus: Essays

I read the review of Simon Blackburn trashing the book: Eco made a few mistakes concerning the two dogmas of empiricism (he confused Davidson's work with Quine's first dogma). So I am sure many readers hesitated after a review by such a rigorous big gun thinker as Blackburn.When I started reading the book I was taken aback by the combination of depth and the vividness of the style. Eco is sprightly and alive, something that cannot be said of many philosophers dealing with the subject of categories.The notion of categories is not trivial: you need a simple conditional prior to identify an object; it is a simple mathematical fact. You need to know what a table is to see it in the background separated from its surroundings. You need to know what a face is so when it rotates you know it is still the same face. Computers have had a hard time with such pattern recognition. A PRIOR category is a necessity. This was Kant's intuition (the so-called "rationalism"). This is also the field of semiotics as initially conceived. Eco took it to greater levels with his notion of what I would call in scientific language a compression, a "simplifation". This leads to the major problem we face today: what if the act of compressing is arbitrary?Not just very deep but it is a breath of fresh air to see such a philosophical discussion nondull, nondry, alive!

I give this book two platypuses up for its outstanding, superb, and insightful analyses of language and cognition. The end was disappointing but only compared to the exceptional beginning and middle. All fans of Kant and marsupials are in for a treat.

What is the boundary between cognition and mere philosophy of language? What is the role of language in cognition? What is the platypus' place in a mammalian dominated world? These are just a few of the probing questions that Umberto Eco asks and brillantly answers in Kant and the Platypus. There should be no cognition issues involved in the purchase of this book: it simply is a must-own.

I am a student at Rutgers University and this novel is the crown jewel of the philosophy program. Enchanting and mystical, this book is to the field of philosophy of language what the Bible is to Christians. Umberto Eco is to philosophy of language and cognition as Henry Kissinger is to foreign policy. Kant and the Platypus is as easy to read as USA Today, but is as powerful as a yoga session. You simply must own it.

Excellent, extraordinary, and entertaining Eco excels in this enduring, erudite, and encompassing essay. His theory of cognition is the best I have seen. A genuine pleasure to read.