You ask..
...about any matters arising from the lectures.
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You ask..If you are right that it is a fundamental mistake to apply truth to sentences rather than messages, then how come so many experienced philosophers and logicians do exactly that? How come the experts are making fundamental errors?
A very good question. It is a long, long story, I fear. Far too long for these pages. And perhaps anyway a story with no definitive answer. Part of the answer is....[A] Our Intellectual History
When we look back on the origins of our present aproach to Logic and Language, we focus on Frege as founding father. Some of you will later come to study him. He no doubt has many virtues, but on this matter he set the entire discipline off on the wrong foot. The Academy suffers from a chronic disease: Fregitis. Later in term I shall expand upon this matter. For now, I ask you to recall that Frege was utterly obsessed with Mathematics. But Mathematics is not English.
And another part of the anwer is...
[B] The Bureaucratisation of Academia
Once standing is measured by non-philosophers, through such devices as counting publications, or counting citations, Gresham's Law applies. The golden rule - publish when and only when you have something worthwhile to say - is now observed by few. There are many consequences of this development, but one of them is to reinforce any orthodoxy. Postgraduates and tenure-track professors are risking their careers if they do not follow current fads and fashions, and if they stray too far from orthodox doctrine. Thus it can be that accurate, seminal work lies unread.
But more important than either of these is that in this matter, as elsewhere in life...
[C] Deep Forces in Human Nature
...are at work. Tolstoy puts it beautifully:
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.