Appearance Without Reality Is it possible for everything to be an appearance? Might there be nothing in the world but appearances? Granted, there may be many appearances for which there is no corresponding reality (of the kind that we normally suppose), but could this be universally true? Is the pure-appearance world […]
Anti-Referentialism I introduce the neologism of the title to refer (!) to a particular type of philosophical position—namely, one which contests whether a particular class of expressions is genuinely referential. It is supposed that there is apparent reference for the class in question but the position denies that such apparent reference […]
Anti-Realism Refuted How would we talk if anti-realism were true and we knew it to be true? We would talk as if it were true, presumably. For example, we would utter hypothetical statements about sense-experience, not categorical statements about material objects, assuming we knew phenomenalism to be […]
Alien Skepticism Suppose you are brought up to believe that you are a brain in a vat supervised by intelligent machines. Long ago humans abandoned their frail bodies for a safer life as a detached brain (it had something to do with global warming—bodies getting too hot and […]
A Quick Argument for Property Realism Property realism is the view that objects instantiate properties independently of mind or language. A standard argument for this view is that objects could have properties in the absence of mind and language. The anti-realist about properties must deny this, and sometimes he is sanguine […]
A Multimodal Theory of Film Experience Films come in many varieties, and they have changed significantly since their inception. There are comedies and dramas, horror flicks and science fiction, love stories and Biblical epics, dance movies and action movies, cartoons and crime thrillers. Some films are short and some are long. […]
Is Solipsism Logically Possible? It has been commonly assumed that solipsism is logically or metaphysically possible. I could exist without anything else existing. There are possible worlds in which I exist and nothing else does. I can imagine myself completely alone. Seductive as such thoughts may appear, I think they are […]
A Puzzle About Concepts When concepts enter into thoughts they occur attributively: that is, they are attributed to some designated particular or particulars. They are constituents of thoughts, and thoughts are true or false according to whether the concepts attributed hold of the things to which they are attributed. They occur in […]
Invisible Hands Here is a simple experiment you can do at home. Hold your hand a foot in front of your face with the thumb turned towards you, so that you are seeing your hand in profile. Have a look at it: it will look like a normal solid object in […]
Indexical Semantics in the Language of Thought Accepting that there is an innate and universal language of thought, we can inquire into its formal characteristics. It will have two components: a syntactic component and a lexical component. These components will be found in every human being’s cognitive-linguistic repertoire (barring pathology), like […]