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 […]
Absolute Deontology Kant’s position that there cannot be a case of morally permissible lying has not been met with much enthusiasm. The idea of absolute moral rules thus seems mistaken. W.D. Ross sought to remedy the problem for deontological ethics by qualifying the force of moral rules: instead of saying that […]
A Psychology of Philosophy Most philosophers would agree that philosophy is a very difficult subject, in their heart of hearts if not in their practice. The problems of philosophy are difficult problems. They are not easily solved (sometimes not easily stated). The difficulty might be rated differently by different philosophers—from […]
A Problem in Hume Early in the Treatise Hume sets out to establish what he calls a “general proposition”, namely: “That all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent” (Book I, Section I, p.52). [1] What […]
A Plurality of Selves Human beings are persons or selves and they have a specific nature: they have a certain type of psychology and a certain type of biological make-up. Not all possible sentient beings share this nature. For instance, humans have personal memories, consciousness, self-reflection, rationality, and a brain […]