Entries by admin
Ethics, Epistemology, and Metaphysics
Ethics, Epistemology, and Metaphysics Ethics, as currently conceived and taught, is divided into three parts: metaethics, ethical theory (normative ethics), and practical ethics. This seems like a sensible division. Metaethics deals with issues concerning the status of moral discourse, what values ultimately consist in, how ethics is known (if it is), whether values are subjective […]
Consciousness and the Origin of Philosophy
Consciousness and the Origin of Philosophy What causes philosophy—the subject—to exist? I shall argue that consciousness is what causes philosophy to exist, or rather consciousness-in-the-world. The consciousness-world nexus is the origin of philosophy. It isn’t the world by itself or consciousness by itself; it’s the situation of consciousness in the world, or the situation of […]
Oliver Sacks’ Fabrications
Oliver Sacks’ Fabrications I have just come across an article by Rachel Aviv in the December 15 edition of the New Yorker about Oliver Sacks’ dubious case histories, especially in Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Apparently, Sacks acknowledged that he made things up in his private journals, to which […]
A Brief History of Knowledge
A Brief History of Knowledge I will continue here what I started earlier, dwelling on the later stages of the growth of human knowledge.[1]The overall sequence is as follows. First, we have bodily sensations such as pain, pleasure, hot and cold: these may be construed as themselves instances of knowledge of the body, or we […]