The concept of analysis crops up in a variety of disciplines: we have chemical analysis, spectral analysis, psychoanalysis, linguistic analysis, anatomical analysis, analysis of political systems, market analysis, literary analysis, dream analysis, conceptual analysis, and so on. We can ask what all these types of analysis have in common, i.e. what the correct analysis of […]
We have five senses and five types of sensory experience. This is doubly contingent: we might have had fewer or more senses, and we might not have had a different phenomenological type of experience corresponding to each sense. The second claim is less obvious than the first, but evident on reflection. First, note that the […]
The privacy of the mind is generally treated as a platitude, but it is seldom (if ever) asked what explains this platitude. Privacy here is best understood perceptually: states of mind are not perceptible by means of the senses. It is not denied that they may be subjects of legitimate inference, or even of interpretative […]
I can imagine four types of position on this question: (i) there are only subjective concepts (none are objective); (ii) there are only objective concepts (none are subjective); (iii) there are both subjective concepts and objective concepts; (iv) all concepts are both subjective and objective (in some respects). I am inclined to accept (iv), with […]
In Naming and Necessity, Kripke gives a number of examples of essential properties in order to show that not all necessities are a priori or analytic. He is not concerned to develop a general metaphysics of modality, a systematic classification of necessities and possibilities. But that project is a worthwhile one, and relatively unexplored. I […]
Truisms are welcome in the theory of truth. Here is one: the sentence “London is rainy” if true if and only if the entity referred to by “London” has the property expressed by “rainy”. Generalizing, a sentence (or proposition) is true just in case the reference of the subject expression instantiates the property expressed by […]
Would it be quixotic to suppose that quantifiers hold the secret to human success?[1] Could the student of quantification theory be studying the ultimate differentia that separates humans from the rest of nature? That would be a delightful result for the logically minded; and I think there is actually a good deal to be said […]
The concept of meaning is recalcitrant to analysis, elucidation, or theory. There is almost no consensus about what constitutes meaning. We possess the concept, but we don’t know what to say about it—it is opaque to us. Thus we are treated to a wide variety of opposed suggestions: mental images, dispositions to behavior, truth conditions, […]
