Biological Philosophy of Language Linguistics has grown accustomed to viewing human language as a biological phenomenon. This view stands opposed to two other views: supernaturalism and cultural determination. Ancient thought conceived of language as a gift from God, closely adjoined to the immaterial soul: this accounted for its origin, its seemingly […]
Believing Zombies Could there be zombies that believe they are conscious? [1] They have no consciousness, but they erroneously believe that they do. That may seem possible if we think of their beliefs as implanted at birth or something of the sort: couldn’t a super scientist simply interfere with their brain to install […]
Being Queer In section 196 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein writes: “In our failure to understand the use of a word we take it as the expression of a queer process. (As we think of time as a queer medium, of the mind as a queer kind of being.)” Earlier (section […]
Beauty and Objectification Beauty can be found in both people and things. In the case of people it is connected to sexual desire, while not so in the case of things. One finds the object of one’s desire beautiful, but one doesn’t desire all the things one finds beautiful. […]
Beauty and Life Judgments of beauty are always comparative and contrastive. One thing is deemed to be more beautiful than another or to contrast to something thought dowdy or ugly. There is no such thing as maximal or absolute beauty; the concept is essentially ordinal. If someone says that […]
Auto-Sexuality: A Puzzle We observe a great many varieties of sexuality in the human population: heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, and perhaps others. People can be sexually attracted to many things, and each category has non-trivial numbers of members. But there is one potential category that appears to have zero membership: sexual […]
Analysis of Matter What is the general nature of concepts of matter? How are such concepts to be analyzed? Is there a general nature or only a plurality of concept-types? Ryle wrote a book called The Concept of Mind (note the uniqueness implied by “the”), arguing that mental concepts are […]
Ambiguity as a Species Defect Ambiguity in natural languages is commonly regarded as a lapse from perfection. A perfect language would not contain ambiguity. Why is this? Because language is used for communication and ambiguity impedes communication. If an utterance is ambiguous, it is harder for the hearer to figure […]
Against Causal Epistemology It has been suggested that knowledge of the natural world enjoys a causal foundation not enjoyed elsewhere. Thus such knowledge is deemed intelligible while other kinds are not. Accordingly, we can accept a notion of robust truth in relation to propositions about the natural world while other […]
Achievement Concepts Knowledge is a certain kind of achievement, but belief is not. Belief aims at an achievement, but it is not in itself an achievement. To be an achievement something has to measure up to an ideal, and belief may not succeed in doing that (it may not be […]