Only Consciousness is Physical As formulated by Descartes and others, mechanism is the doctrine that the objects of sense (“material bodies”) are characterized by extension, solidity, and contact causation. Specifically, the causation involved does not require divine intervention (“occasionalism”) or a scholastic notion of the transfer of forms or Aristotelian teleology […]
Contradiction Contradictions arise quite naturally in several areas of thought and it is not easy to resolve them. [1] It is generally felt that contradictions are unacceptable for two reasons: (a) contradictions entail anything and (b) they violate the logical law of non-contradiction. But some have questioned these reasons for rejecting contradictions, […]
Bivalence and States of Affairs It is sometimes maintained that bivalence fails for certain kinds of sentences or propositions. What I will argue is that if bivalence holds for states of affairs it holds for sentences and propositions. Moreover, it is plausible that bivalence does hold for states of affairs, so we […]
Difference and Necessity Essentialists have found in identity a shining example of their creed. Any object is necessarily identical to itself—how could that not be so? It has even been thought that the necessity of identity can be proved from Leibniz’ Law: given that a is necessarily identical to a […]
Psychic Structures It is interesting to read a book like Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures while thinking about thinking. To what extent does the structure of thought mirror the structure of language? Does thought have a grammar in the way languages have a grammar? Does the apparatus of linguistic theory carry over to thinking? […]
Raindrops and Persons Consider a single raindrop: it exists for a certain period of time, eventually meeting its end through evaporation. But suppose instead that it divides into two before that happens—by wind or human intervention. Now we have two raindrops where before we had one: what is the relationship between […]
