George Soros and Me George Soros is now 92 years old. I first met him at his home in Bedford, New York, in 2007, when he was one year older than I am now, at his invitation. It came about as follows. Robert Silvers, then editor of the New York Review of Books, had asked […]

Skateboarding I already had a skateboard, but it hadn’t ventured much beyond my living room. It seemed like asking for trouble (too small, too unstable). Then I saw someone using a longer type of skateboard at my local park (I was throwing discus and frisbee left-handed at the time). I went on Amazon and found […]

Pain, Consciousness, and Morality Consciousness (sentience) evolved at a certain time on planet Earth, many millions of years ago. It didn’t emerge all at once but piecemeal: a certain type of consciousness evolved first, with additions later. What was this type? We don’t know; we can only guess. What we do know is that, whatever […]

David Lewis I have in my possession a long letter from David Lewis replying to my paper “Modal Reality” (1981). Several years ago, I was contacted about this letter because no copy of it existed in Lewis’s files, but at that time I didn’t know where it was or even if it had survived. I […]