A (Really) Brief History of Knowledge This is a big subject—a long story—but I will keep it short, brevity being the soul of wisdom. We all know those books about the history of this or that area of human knowledge: physics, astronomy, mathematics, psychology (not so much biology). They are quite engaging, partly because they […]
Knowledge and Time I shall make some remarks about a topic neglected by epistemologists—the relationship between knowledge and time, particularly future time. The relationship is not simple or easily grasped; there is a reason for the neglect. I will try to keep it as uncontroversial as possible; this is to be preliminary groundwork. Truisms not […]
An Answer to the Skeptic Skepticism gains traction from the true justified belief theory of knowledge, because it can be argued that our beliefs are seldom if ever justified. But that is just one theory, not a datum. What if we adopt another type of theory? I observe, to begin with, that other types of […]
Augustine and Wittgenstein Wittgenstein opens the Philosophical Investigations with a quotation from Saint Augustine (in Latin). He then comments: “These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects—sentences are combinations of such names. In this picture of […]
Space, Time, and Logic Philosophy needs a metaphysical vision. Humbly (and pretentiously), I will provide one. As far as I know, it has no predecessor, though echoes of other theories will be apparent. Neither does it have a name: it might be called “Logical Spatio-Temporalism” (LST), or just “Spatialism” because space is central to it. […]
Nabokov and Music It is well known that Nabokov didn’t like music: “Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds.” But he doesn’t say why. The affliction didn’t run in his family and his son was an opera singer. Moreover, as has been remarked, his […]
Bernard Williams and Me One day, over twenty years ago, I ran into Bernard Williams in the corridor at NYU. He remarked: “The thing about you, Colin, is that you think you’ve either solved the problems of philosophy or they can’t be solved at all”. I paused for less than a second and replied, “I […]
Games and Meaning Imagine a philosopher, call him LW for short, with a lifelong interest in games. In his youth he writes a book called The Logical Structure of Games. As the name suggests, the book gives an analysis of the formal structure of games—a theory of the a priori essence of games which purports […]
