Do Bats Know What it is Like to be Human? One answer would be that we don’t know whether they do or can know what it’s like to be human, because of the problem of bat other minds. That is a boring answer and, I think, incorrect; in any case, I will ignore it. We […]
A Fortiori I noticed with mounting irritation that Jerry Fodor keeps using the Latin phrase “a fortiori” to mean “it follows that” in Hume Variations. It doesn’t mean that; it means “with stronger reason” (look it up). The correct construction is “it follows a fortiori that p”. You can’t say “a fortiori a fortiori”—as if […]
Asleep and Awake Listen, do you want to know a secret? The government has been withholding it from us. When we are asleep, we are awake, and when we are awake, we are asleep. We have been bamboozled into thinking that in sleep we are not awake and when awake not asleep. Sheer propaganda and […]
Two-handed Tennis There I was on the court, as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then I noticed that the guy on the next court was playing two-handed, as I do. It turned out that the guy I was playing with, Robert, knew the guy and introduced me. We belonged to a rare breed, on […]
John Lennon and Me John Lennon was assassinated near where I used to live. I used to live at West End Avenue and 73rd Street in Manhattan. The Dakota is on 72nd Street and Central Park West. I would walk by it all the time and always thought of him. The memorial to him is […]
Truth as Consistency I will present a new theory of truth. It can be stated thus: for a proposition to be true is for it to be consistent with reality.[1] For “snow is white” to be true is for it to be consistent with the fact that snow is white; “snow is black” is not […]
Beatle Genius Big news: I have changed my opinion of the genius of the Beatles. I used to think that John and Paul were the true geniuses, with George and Ringo excellent but not at the same genius level. I now think that is wrong: George and Ringo were geniuses too! We need to distinguish […]
More on Skateboarding Yesterday’s New York Times carried an article about skateboarding, in the business section of all places. I read it with interest. It was all about skateboarding in middle age. The author passionately described his sessions in a Costco parking lot. The emphasis was on bonding with his middle-aged buddies, learning tricks and […]
Counterfactuals In a world with less gravity, the birds would be huge. In a world with more gravity, only insects would fly. In a world with more light and plant predators, plants would have consciousness and advanced intelligence. In a world with greater water resistance, whales would be small. In a colder world, there would […]
Fodor on Concept Possession Jerry Fodor holds that to possess a concept is to be able to think about its referent—and that’s all. He asks, rhetorically, “So what’s wrong with identifying having a concept C with being able to think about Cs as such?” (21: italics all his, for some reason.) Later we read: “To […]