Romantic Overtures We really need to get tougher on romance, especially at universities. As things stand, people can make romantic overtures to other people and face no consequences. They can even make declarations of love and get away with it! This can lead to all sorts of discomfort and loss of focus on one’s studies, […]
No Reply I recently wrote to the University of Miami philosophy department asking when, if ever, the ban on my visiting the campus would be lifted (I live five minutes from there). I also asked what the reason for the ban was. I got no reply. Then I wrote offering to make a donation to […]
Bad Bunny I was looking forward to the half-time performance from Bad Bunny (less so the Superbowl itself). In the event my response was divided: I approved of it politically and personally (many of my best friends are Latin) and I really wanted to like the music more, but Latin music has little appeal for […]
Can Dogs Talk? I watched a very interesting documentary last night on PBS about whether dogs can talk. Of course, they do talk—they talk dog. There could be an interesting documentary on whether humans can talk…dog language. They might to a limited degree, but not as well as dogs. But the documentary was about whether […]
Possible Language Semantics The theory of meaning is supposed to concern the semantics of our language: in virtue of what does human language have the meaning it has? But do all possible languages share the same semantics? Might a semantic theory that is incorrect for our language correctly describe the semantics of some alien language? If […]
Meaning Explained (Finally) It’s really very strange that we can’t say what meaning is. Surely, we know what we mean! Meaning is a mental act and we know our mental acts, don’t we? Yet all attempts hitherto have foundered, often embarrassingly so. Mental images, sensations, definite descriptions, objects in the world, rules of use, behavioral […]
A page from my first (unpublished) novel, written circa 1984–punk existentialist as someone once described it. Sent from my iPhone
Ethics, Epistemology, and Metaphysics Ethics, as currently conceived and taught, is divided into three parts: metaethics, ethical theory (normative ethics), and practical ethics. This seems like a sensible division. Metaethics deals with issues concerning the status of moral discourse, what values ultimately consist in, how ethics is known (if it is), whether values are subjective […]
Consciousness and the Origin of Philosophy What causes philosophy—the subject—to exist? I shall argue that consciousness is what causes philosophy to exist, or rather consciousness-in-the-world. The consciousness-world nexus is the origin of philosophy. It isn’t the world by itself or consciousness by itself; it’s the situation of consciousness in the world, or the situation of […]