Fodor’s RTM Here is a telling passage in Hume Variations written by my old friend and fellow mysterian Jerry Fodor: “For a number of interlocking reasons, it remains fully plausible that cognitive processes are constituted by causal interactions among mental representations, that is, among semantically evaluable particulars. Either that, or we really are entirely in […]

A Fortiori I noticed with mounting irritation that Jerry Fodor keeps using the Latin phrase “a fortiori” to mean “it follows that” in Hume Variations. It doesn’t mean that; it means “with stronger reason” (look it up). The correct construction is “it follows a fortiori that p”. You can’t say “a fortiori a fortiori”—as if […]

Two-handed Tennis There I was on the court, as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then I noticed that the guy on the next court was playing two-handed, as I do. It turned out that the guy I was playing with, Robert, knew the guy and introduced me. We belonged to a rare breed, on […]

Truth as Consistency I will present a new theory of truth. It can be stated thus: for a proposition to be true is for it to be consistent with reality.[1] For “snow is white” to be true is for it to be consistent with the fact that snow is white; “snow is black” is not […]