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 […]
Impossible Meaning Here is an argument purporting to show that the word “blue” is meaningless. There are many specific shades of blue that have their own names: aquamarine, navy blue, cobalt blue, azure, cerulean, indigo, etc. With respect to each of these we have a specific concept or idea, […]
The Word “Thing” In his Ethics Spinoza has a curious passage concerning the common word “thing”: “But not to omit anything it is necessary to know, I shall briefly add something about the causes from which the terms called Transcendental have had their origin—I mean terms like Being, Thing, and Something. These […]
A New Riddle of Induction Suppose that tomorrow the sun does not rise, bread does not nourish, and swans are blue. Does that show that nature is not uniform, that the past is not projectable to the future, and that induction has broken down? Can we conclude that what we observe tomorrow does not […]
Plurality Skepticism The skeptic characteristically maintains that we have a tendency to believe in too many things. We believe in other minds (not just our own) and we believe in external objects existing independently of our mental states. Strictly, we should believe in our own mind and nothing else. […]
Two Types of Skepticism It is common for philosophers to use the phrase “skepticism with regard to the external world” or “skepticism about other minds”. This is quite misleading, because it conflates two distinct questions: one relating to reality, the other to knowledge of reality. The dictionary definition of […]
Indefensible Knowledge Honest reflection on classical skeptical arguments leaves one with two conflicting conclusions: (a) that there is something undeniably cogent about skeptical arguments, and (b) that we nevertheless know more or less what we take ourselves to know. The two conclusions are in obvious tension with each other, […]
Emotional Skepticism Our emotions are set at a certain level: we feel a certain degree of anxiety, fear, happiness, and depression. Consider our fear of death: we fear it to a certain degree, neither more nor less. True, some people fear death more than others, and each of us can vary […]
Referring, Knowing, and Skepticism What would it take to defeat the skeptic? What conception of knowledge is best suited to fending off the skeptical challenge? If knowledge were simply identical to reality, then presumably skepticism would be impossible, since whatever reality contains knowledge does too. How could knowledge fail to match […]