Linguistic Structures We are familiar with the three levels of linguistic structure: semantic, syntactic, and phonetic. But what is the relation between them? What determines what? Take the semantic and syntactic levels: does semantics determine syntax or syntax determine semantics? Which came first? Which is basic? Did meaning exist first and then grammar supervene on […]
Is Philosophy Erotic? Plato certainly thought so: the Symposium is all about sex and philosophy, Eros and Logos. He believed that the two things are deeply intertwined but that the connection is obscure. This is another iteration of the mind-body problem: the erotic body and the intellectual mind. Plato thought that the connection indubitably exists […]
Thoughtless Language We normally suppose that adding language to an animal mind would enrich it, but might this be the opposite of the truth? Might language subtract from the mind? Might language act like a prison of thought rather than opening up new vistas? Might a cat or dog have a richer mental life than […]
Sexual Ethics What would a sex-based normative ethics look like? It would make the concepts of sex and procreation the central concepts of ethics not the concepts of happiness or duty, as in utilitarianism and deontology. If those theories recommend maximizing happiness and duty-obedience, then sexual ethics would recommend maximizing sex. I rush to add […]
An Argument Against Panpsychism Panpsychism holds that elementary particles have mentality, attenuated perhaps, but capable of yielding consciousness as we know it. Yet particles don’t generally instantiate many properties—mass, charge, spin, motion, and that’s about it. So, if they also instantiate mental properties, these too must be few in number—say, three or four (or maybe […]
On Perception, Belief, and Knowledge Consciousness gets defined as there being something it is like. This isn’t a classical analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but it manages to elucidate what consciousness is (more or less); it captures the concept intuitively, if gnomically. In that spirit, I define knowledge as the world impinging […]
