The Language of Emotion Proponents of the language of thought typically don’t have much to say about emotion. We are said to deploy an internal language when we think, but it is not suggested that we do so when we feel. Internal speech is characteristic of thought but not of emotion—we […]
Symmetry and the Mind Symmetry is a pervasive feature of nature. We find it in atoms, molecules, crystals, planets and stars, as well as in the entire biological world, and also in human artifacts. Some things show no symmetry, such as rocks or puddles of water or sponges; but these are […]
Science and Philosophy What does the value of science consist in? There are two possible answers: its usefulness and its interest. Nothing needs to be said about the first, but the second raises the question of what kind of interest science has. Let me distinguish specialist interest and general […]
Proving the Self Is it possible to prove that the self exists? First let’s consider the existence of material objects, particularly the relationship between property instantiation and object-hood. An ordinary material object, such as a table or a bee, does not instantiate a single property but a collection of properties—a cluster of […]
Principles of Radical Interpretation How should we set about interpreting an alien language and the people who speak it? Specifically, how should we ascribe beliefs to others? One idea is that we should use a principle of charity: ascribe to others the beliefs that we have, so that interpreter and interpreted […]
Parables in Philosophy Parables have their uses and merits in philosophy, even in these desiccated days. They can impart vivid life to elusive abstractions. Plato’s parable of the cave is the most famous philosophical parable, and it is powerfully memorable. It has its defects: notably, the cave wall and the […]
Our Knowledge of Other Minds How do we know the contents of other people’s minds? By what method do we know about other minds? The options are the following: by sense perception, by inference, by introspection, and by a priori reasoning (I exclude telepathy, at least as the standard […]
Do we really have a concept of nothing? It may appear obvious that we do, but I am not so sure. We have the concept of non-existence, but it doesn’t follow that we have the concept of nothing—that is, the concept of nothing at all. When an object goes out of existence it […]
Mysticism and Matter Consider a community of disembodied minds cut off from material reality. Not only are they immaterial themselves, they have no contact with matter, not even space. Their perceptions are purely abstract and psychological. They communicate with each other about things that interest them, but there is no talk […]
In the Epilogue to my book The Character of Mind (1982), entitled “The Place of the Philosophy of Mind”, I wrote: “It would be misguided to infer from the points we have been making that the philosophy of mind is the most basic area of philosophy: probably no part of philosophy can claim […]