Perception, Thought, and Language I will reflect loosely (though not I hope sloppily) on some very general properties of the items listed in the title, with special emphasis on their interrelations. There has been a tendency to assimilate these three things, as if they are all variations on a single theme. Empiricism […]
Heat, Color, Shape, and Taste Galileo’s 1623 discussion of heat and related matters bears revisiting.[1] In it he formulates with particular clarity what later came to be called the primary and secondary quality distinction, using it to address the question of whether motion is the cause of heat. He begins by saying […]
Existential Beliefs It is generally assumed in philosophy that we have a great many existential beliefs. We believe that objects in the external world exist, that other people exist, that we ourselves exist, that mental states exist, that space and time exist, etc. Maybe not everyone believes that atoms and numbers exist […]
Skepticism and Self-Knowledge From the point of view of skepticism, self-knowledge is an anomaly. How is it that facts about a person’s psychology can be known with certainty when everything else is uncertain? It’s not as if first-person ascriptions of mental states are analytic or a priori; they report the same […]
Roots of Skepticism The roots of skepticism run deep; they are not merely the invention of insecure philosophers. Perhaps the most primitive form of skepticism begins from a simple thought: belief is not the same as fact. Beliefs are in the mind; facts are in the world. Thus beliefs and […]
Evolution and the Self We must assume that the self evolved, given that it exists and is not a social construct. That means it arose by mutation and natural selection, serving some biological purpose. And not just in humans but also across the animal kingdom: all those animal selves are biological adaptations, […]
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Ethics and the Self The self is perhaps the most elusive subject in philosophy. It seems impossible to say what the self is. Doubts about its existence are perfectly understandable, if exaggerated. The self seems intensely real, but its nature remains opaque. This is why all the standard theories are wide of […]
History and Mystery How does the history of philosophy look to a mysterian? As follows: the history of philosophy is the history of our consciousness of mystery. Philosophy consists of a set of mysteries, possibly open-ended, and philosophers, as conscious beings, are aware of these mysteries—and aware of them as mysteries (no […]
World and Head When Hilary Putnam made the claim that meanings are not “in the head” he emphasized the indexical character of natural kind terms. His point was that terms like “water” have their reference fixed by demonstratives like “that liquid”, and demonstratives have their reference as a function of context not descriptions […]