Yes and No The words “yes” and “no” are among the most familiar words of the English language, perpetually tripping off the tongue. But what do they mean—what kind of meaning do they have? They don’t have sense and reference: there is nothing they denote and there is no mode of presentation attached to them. […]
Metaphysical Necessity We appear to have (at least) two concepts of necessity, usually known as epistemic necessity and metaphysical necessity. Epistemic necessity concerns what could turn out to be the case—what might be true “for all we know”; it correlates with certainty (the Cogito is an epistemic necessity). Metaphysical necessity concerns what could really be the case—how […]
Possibility and Actuality How do possibility and actuality differ? Is there anything intrinsically different about them? Some metaphysicians have supposed that the difference is entirely extrinsic: actual states of affairs and possible states of affairs are intrinsically the same, but the former constitute what we call the actual world and the latter constitute possible worlds. […]
Logic and Morality Are there any affinities between logic and morality? The question may appear perverse: aren’t logic and morality at opposite ends of the spectrum? Isn’t logic dry and abstract while morality is human and practical? Isn’t one about proofs and the other about opinions? I think the affinities are real, however, and I […]
Is Neutral Monism Possible? My aims here are limited, as befits the topic. I will make some remarks about the proper formulation of neutral monism with a view to demonstrating its obscurity, not to say infeasibility. The thought is that we should seek a level of description of reality that is neutral between the mental […]
Memory and Knowledge What is the connection between memory and knowledge? To judge from the standard literature, very little—in a typical treatise on knowledge memory is hardly mentioned. I wish to urge a strong connection: all knowledge is memory knowledge. Memory enters into every instance of knowledge; all knowledge presupposes memory knowledge. That is, all […]
Trump is of course a massive liar, as last night’s debate demonstrated yet again, but everything about him is a lie: his hair, his skin, his fake success, his marriage, his accent, his teeth, his clothes. It is all deception from head to toe. He is a living lie. Nothing about him is real–except the […]
Phenomenological Behaviorism Could it be that there is an element of truth in behaviorism? Behaviorism is usually presented as a third-person view of the human mind—what we know of the mind by external observation. It often goes with a materialist metaphysics. It therefore naturally incurs the charge of ignoring the first-person perspective—of overlooking the mind’s […]
The Logical Form of Omission Sentences There is an undeniable appeal to Davidson’s treatment of action sentences, in which adverbs appear as predicates of events quantified over.[1] Thus “John buttered some toast quickly in the kitchen” becomes “There was an event esuch that e was a buttering and e was by John and e was quick and e was in the kitchen”. Events have properties […]
Epiphenomenal Facts Epiphenomenalism is the doctrine that mental facts (properties, events, states) are causally idle. When it seems as if mental facts are causing behavior it is really correlated neural facts that are doing the causing—electrical signals sent from the brain down the efferent nerves and into the muscles. This is taken to be a […]