Is Solipsism Logically Possible? It has been commonly assumed that solipsism is logically or metaphysically possible. I could exist without anything else existing. There are possible worlds in which I exist and nothing else does. I can imagine myself completely alone. Seductive as such thoughts may appear, I think they are […]
A Puzzle About Concepts When concepts enter into thoughts they occur attributively: that is, they are attributed to some designated particular or particulars. They are constituents of thoughts, and thoughts are true or false according to whether the concepts attributed hold of the things to which they are attributed. They occur in […]
Indexical Semantics in the Language of Thought Accepting that there is an innate and universal language of thought, we can inquire into its formal characteristics. It will have two components: a syntactic component and a lexical component. These components will be found in every human being’s cognitive-linguistic repertoire (barring pathology), like […]
The Word “Thing” In his Ethics Spinoza has a curious passage concerning the common word “thing”: “But not to omit anything it is necessary to know, I shall briefly add something about the causes from which the terms called Transcendental have had their origin—I mean terms like Being, Thing, and Something. These […]
A New Riddle of Induction Suppose that tomorrow the sun does not rise, bread does not nourish, and swans are blue. Does that show that nature is not uniform, that the past is not projectable to the future, and that induction has broken down? Can we conclude that what we observe tomorrow does not […]
Plurality Skepticism The skeptic characteristically maintains that we have a tendency to believe in too many things. We believe in other minds (not just our own) and we believe in external objects existing independently of our mental states. Strictly, we should believe in our own mind and nothing else. […]
