Marathon Interview I have just completed approximately 80 hours of interviews with my Turkish associates (now friends) Ugur and Burcu Polat. The interviews take the form of detailed written questions, submitted in advance, and presented to me by Burcu (who is a neurologist) while Ugur listens. They cover all aspects of my life and work […]
Inconsistent Perception There are two aspects to our concept of perception and hence to perception: an intentional object aspect and a causal object aspect. There has to be an object you directly perceive and an object that causes your act of perceiving. To see (say) an object x is for x to be both the […]
Certainty, Causality, and Knowledge I am going to argue that our concept of knowledge is essentially contradictory. This fact is written into the history of epistemology. It lurks just below the surface. It is both surprising and predictable, given how we use the concept. Arguably, knowledge is logically impossible–conceptually, by definition. We can still usefully […]
Stereotypes We are all too familiar with stereotypes of other people—people of other races, people of other sexes, people with other accents. We are less familiar with stereotypes of other animals, but we don’t need much persuading that they exist—say, rats. But I want to ask a stranger question: do we harbor stereotypes of ourselves? […]
Possible Worlds (Again) There are many worlds: the human world, the chimp world, the dance world, the philosophical world, etc. We can quantify over them.[1] There are also possible such worlds, such as non-actual human worlds or Martian dance worlds. There is the actual human world and various possible human worlds, e.g., worlds in which […]
Bowling It is 64 years since I first went bowling, in Gillingham, Kent, at the age of 12. It was my first exposure to the American lifestyle and I loved it: the high-gloss high-tech world of expensive leisure; the heavy shiny bowling balls; the long gleaming lanes and big solid pins. The sound of ball-pin […]
Political Philosophy Politics is largely philosophical, but is philosophy largely political?[1] Is the practice of philosophy governed partly (mainly?) by political forces? Most people would agree that science and mathematics are not seriously political subjects, being governed by scientific norms, but is philosophy as a discipline strongly influenced by political considerations? Is it more political […]
Consciousness and Subjectivity According to some, consciousness is the heart of the mind-body problem—specifically the “what-it’s-likeness” of consciousness.[1] This is held to be explained by the fact that we can’t grasp the nature of a conscious state, like a bat’s echolocation experience, except by sharing it, whereas the same thing is not true of the […]
