How to Study Philosophy I have two proposals for the curriculum, which I believe would have salutary effects. The first is that philosophy should be studied only after studying a science, or concurrently with studying a science. Oxford has no pure philosophy degree; you have to study it with another subject, generally scientific—economics (also politics), […]
Crime and Punishment I keep on hearing the same refrain from people on the left and the right: deport criminals! Send them back here they came from! The motive is clearly to protect law-abiding citizens from further crimes, and that is not a silly idea. Some are even extending this policy to “homegrown” criminals. But […]
Table Tennis Reinvented I am able to report on the results of changing the service rules. I drew chalk lines on a regular table tennis table, one line twelve inches from the end of the table, the other twenty-four inches. This produced two possible service areas, one smaller than the other. I played with two […]
Classical Conditioning There is something puzzling and not quite believable about Pavlov and his dogs. The dogs instinctively salivate to the sight and smell of food—this is an inborn reflex reaction. The claim is that if you sound a bell a number of times at the same time as presenting food you will get the […]
Causality and Perception The causal theory of perception states that it is necessary condition of perceiving an object that the object causes the perception of it. The theory is very plausible, given the counterexamples to a theory without such a causal condition. If the object is causally cut off from the sense impression, we get […]
Bill Maher and Donald Trump Bill Maher gave an unexpected report of his dinner with Donald Trump. The president, according to the comedian, was gracious, warm, undogmatic, and quite different from the person we see all the time on television. Bill seemed to think the real Donald was the one he had dinner with not […]
Skepticism and the Mind-Body Problem It is sometimes illuminating to compare disparate areas of philosophy in order to find shared patterns, e.g., ethics and mathematics. I will do the same with respect to skepticism and the mind-body problem. These two problems have a similar structure and arise from similar origins, surprising as that may seem. […]
On Knowledge, Consciousness, and Philosophy Some philosophers have maintained that the proper subject of philosophy is thought. The idea is not wide of the mark (better than the thesis that philosophy is about language), but it is surely a mischaracterization. For it can hardly be true that philosophy is concerned with false thought, or incoherent […]
