Descartes without Dualism There is something right about Descartes’ metaphysics of mind and body and something wrong. He is right in supposing there is a kind of symmetrical duality with respect to mind and body, but wrong in supposing there is a corresponding dualism of substances. A body is an extended […]
Degrees of Determinism People usually talk about determinism and indeterminism as if it were a binary affair. But there are different strengths of determinism and indeterminism, with some more plausible than others. Let me first define the strongest possible kind of determinism: if a cause from the actual world is […]
It is helpful to distinguish between what I shall call deep common sense (DCS) and local common sense (LCS). DCS is the kind of common sense that all humans share and which has existed for hundreds and thousands of years (and may well have been present in earlier hominids). It is a human […]
Dark Mind Dark matter pre-dates its detection by billions of years: hence its name. It is dark precisely in the sense that it does not emit or reflect light—it doesn’t interact with electromagnetic radiation at all. It is detectable only by means of remote gravitational effects. It is nowhere to […]
Cosmic Consciousness There was a time when none of the matter of the universe was caught up in consciousness—the time at which not even animal life had evolved. There were no brains, no minds, and no consciousness–just insentient stuff. But now some quantity of matter is caught up in […]
Consciousness and the Atomic Bomb The atomic bomb was invented and produced because the Allies feared that Germany was on the brink of developing just such a bomb. After World War II a cold war between Russia and America led to the proliferation of atomic weapons and their increased destructive power. […]
Conceptual Schemes There has been much debate about whether different groups of people diverge in their conceptual schemes (according to some criterion of identity for conceptual schemes). But it has not been questioned that each group has a single conceptual scheme, still less that an individual has one and […]
Attributes of the Self I say that I think and I say that I weigh 150 lbs: I ascribe mental and physical characteristics to myself. But there is a significant asymmetry in what I mean by these attributions: when I say that I weigh 150 lbs I am saying that my body weighs […]
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 […]