A Paradox of Democracy A democratic state could decide democratically to abolish democracy. The people have come to the conclusion the democracy is dysfunctional, tyrannical (of the majority), and inefficient, so they vote to replace it with something better. According to democracy, they have a right to do that, and indeed a duty. Not […]
Potentiality Potentiality is not the same as possibility. Potentiality is a kind of power or capacity; possibility is a way things could be. Someone might have the potential to become a concert pianist but this might not actually be a possibility because of circumstances (no pianos to practice on, no teachers, etc.). And […]
Puzzles of the Unconscious When was the unconscious mind discovered? The question makes sense in a way the comparable question about the conscious mind does not. The conscious mind was “discovered” when it came to exist, just by being conscious: being conscious and knowing one is conscious are inseparable. But that isn’t true […]
Thinking and Speaking Is thinking a type of speaking? There is a tradition that says it is: thinking as “saying in one’s heart”, the language of thought, voices in the head, thoughts as sub-vocal speech. The idea is that just as we produce outward speech by using our speech organs so we […]
I’ve been wondering about Judas Iscariot recently. We are told he betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, a contemptible act. But what surprises me is that it took money to get him to betray Jesus, quite a bit of it. Surely it is more realistic to suppose that he did it for a much […]
A Linguistic Universal We are familiar with claims of linguistic universality: the noun-verb form, recursive embedding, quantificational structure, adverbial modification, discrete infinity, and the like. I want to add a different kind of linguistic universal, one that is less syntactic than semantic: I call it “material plurality”. A natural language like English […]
Song and Soul It is a truism that song touches the soul. Something about song and something about the soul naturally mesh: that is, song and the emotions are suited to one another. But why is this? What features suit song to the emotions and hence the soul? Song is clearly language […]
To be or not to be That is the fucking question
An Objectivist View of the Universe I will describe a metaphysical view aptly labeled objectivist. My aim is expository rather than argumentative, though I am inclined to accept the view. Objectivism says that the universe (reality, being) is fundamentally objective not subjective, with the emphasis on “fundamentally”. It isn’t that the universe […]
Ignorance, Error, and Mystery The extent of our ignorance is stupendous. We know next to nothing about vast tracts of reality. If the world is the totality of facts, then our knowledge is confined to a tiny proportion of these facts. Just think of the distant past and remote future: all those individual […]