Utilitarianism maintains that the value of a state of affairs depends solely on its level of utility. For a state of affairs to be good (desirable, valuable) it is necessary and sufficient that it contains the best possible level of wellbeing (pleasure, happiness, preference satisfaction). So if two situations contain the same level […]
I am planning to put my unpublished papers on this blog so as to have a publicly available record of them. So expect to see quite a lot of stuff appear in the forthcoming weeks.
Two Concepts of Freedom It is hard not to feel the pull of both of the standard positions on free will. On the one hand, it seems right to say that a free action is one that is in accordance with the agent’s desires, as opposed to one that is forced on […]
Freedom As Determination John goes into a café for lunch. He looks over the menu, carefully considering each option (John is a fastidious eater): he reviews the possible alternatives and weighs up which will please him the most, the price of each, what is most healthy, and what sort of figure […]
Desire and Understanding In the course of a perceptive description of a cat James Joyce writes: “She understands all she wants to” (Ulysses, p.48). The cat doesn’t try to understand what she has no wish to understand, let alone what she cannot understand; she doesn’t try to acquire knowledge that doesn’t interest […]
Lolita and Quilty It is hard to fault Lolita artistically and morally, but there is one aspect of it that troubles me artistically, and possibly also morally: Lolita’s relationship with Quilty. Dare I suggest that it is a weakness in the novel? It has not always seemed so to me, but […]
Meaning, Use, and Time I propose to do a Kripke: I will describe an argument that was prompted by reading Wittgenstein—which I neither attribute to Wittgenstein nor endorse myself. [1] I think it fits many of the things he says, and I also think it is interesting and compelling; but I don’t want […]
Consciousness and Punctuation Molly Bloom’s famous stream-of-consciousness monologue in James Joyce’s Ulysses goes on for over forty pages without any punctuation. Here is a brief extract: “I dont see anything so terrible about it Ill tell him about that some day not now and surprise him ay and Ill take him there […]
Personality Theory Personal identity has an established place in the philosophical universe but personality is not so sedulously studied. People have personalities (some animals too) but not much is said about them by philosophers (by psychologists, yes, where personality theory is part of the curriculum). Why not? There are some good philosophical […]
Philosophy of Memory Memory is a subject amply covered in literature and science (especially psychology) but we hear little about it in philosophy. We find books on consciousness, perception, imagination, language, emotion, the will, and the unconscious: but I don’t recall ever seeing a philosophy book devoted to memory. Memory is the forgotten […]