Car Evolution Suppose a particular car is designed and built. No other car is created. The car is then copied by technicians multiple times over many years, say one thousand. Errors in the copying are sometimes made, resulting in a car slightly different from the original. Suppose a million new cars are built, so many […]
Office Vacation I remember the day, fourteen years ago, when I vacated my office. The university had given me a short deadline to get this done, so I requested an extension. They denied my request (without explanation) and told me they would charge me for every day I went over the announced date. I therefore […]
Evolution by Nutritional Selection Animals need food. They cannot survive and reproduce without it. They therefore have adaptations that ensure that enough food is consumed: traits that enable them to find food and consume it. This is not selfishly confined to the individual animal; animals also procure food for their young, often going without themselves. […]
For Unemotional Ethics It is often said that ethics (morality) is concerned with the passions not the intellect. It is about feelings not knowledge, desires not beliefs. Hence, ethical non-cognitivism. On the other hand, subjects like physics, mathematics, and philosophy are cognitive pursuits, quite removed from emotion. Ethics is motivating, so it needs passionate motive […]
Counterfactual Empiricism Classical empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is knowledge of impressions: you know what, and only what, you have perceived with your senses. This doctrine runs into trouble with things you know but have not perceived—concepts of the unperceived. It would appear to imply that you can’t have concepts of, and knowledge […]
The Problem of Psychology Everyone knows that psychology is a difficult subject, especially psychologists. But why? Why isn’t it as advanced as physics and chemistry, or even biology? The mind has been around for a long time and so have our cognitive faculties (though less time), and it’s not as if we are not curious […]
Existence Explained Probably the most infuriating question in philosophy is the nature of existence. I have racked my brains over it lo these many years and come up with nothing.[1] Now at last I think I have found the solution, and it’s not what you would think. It fits the facts. So, right here, right […]
Do Events Exist? We have become accustomed to the idea of an “ontology of events”, either as a total world ontology or as part of our ontology. Are events all there is (no objects or substances), or are they just a part of what there is? Events exist—we think. Donald Davidson was a great proponent […]
Song Therapy The therapeutic power of music is well-attested (see Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia). But we don’t hear much about song specifically—that is, singing. With no scientific basis whatsoever, I am going to assert that singing is therapeutic (and I will brook no dissent). Oddly enough, I think this is particularly true for the vocally challenged. […]
Causal Reality Consider Michelangelo’s statue of David: heavy, large, made of marble, beautifully shaped. Aristotle would say that it consists of matter and form—its composition and shape. According to him, these are both causes of the statue—material cause and formal cause. Together, they make the statue what it is; they cause it to be what […]