Cartoon for the New Yorker
Trump and a terrorist stand together with fists raised; caption reads, “Death to reasonable people!”
Blog
Silver Lining
Since I retired from my job four years ago I have dedicated myself to philosophy. I have never worked so long and hard. This is a consequence of the freedom afforded by retirement: no more teaching, professional obligations, faculty meetings. That’s the thing about retirement: you can get some work done! Partly it’s a matter […]
Alternative Facts
I have a new definition of truth: correspondence to the alternative facts. Thus “snow is black” corresponds to the alternative fact that snow is black. I also have a new definition of moral rightness: an action is right if and only if it promotes the alternative good (suffering, injustice, etc). Also logical validity: entailment within […]
Obamacare=The Affordable Care Act
I was just watching Jimmy Kimmel in which people were asked which of the above they preferred. Some people preferred one, others preferred the other. No one knew they were the same. Sense and reference! Who said analytical philosophy isn’t useful?
Inauguration
This will be a bizarre and uncomfortable event. The coverage will be embarrassed and sheepish. The celebration will be muted to the point of mumbling. It will be hollow and awkward. It will lead to national depression rather than national hope. The reality will finally sink in. By next week things will turn fissile. What […]
Implicit Bias
The recent collapse of this psychological theory is not even a bit surprising. Five minutes thought could have persuaded anyone that this was yet another rickety psychological concoction. But people are gullible and will believe virtually anything if a psychologist tells them it is so. I gave up psychology over forty years ago because of […]
2016
What a dreadful dismal year that was. If you started the year with any faith in humanity, you surely didn’t end it that way. The dominant emotion of the year was disbelief and a sense of futility. You felt you were living through a bad dream. Perhaps strangely, I had a productive year philosophically: I […]
The Death of Philosophy
It could be argued that philosophy has always had suicidal tendencies. In the age of logical positivism philosophy tried to kill itself. Philosophy is a nuisance, a headache, a source of misery. I don’t think philosophy will ever die of natural causes (though science might). It is too pressing. But I can see that its […]
Fake News
The recent revelations about the effects of fake news disseminated on the internet suggests that credulity is the main enemy of democracy today. What we need is anti-credulity training: that is, lessons in epistemology. I wish I could say that philosophers are immune to fake news–if it fits their ideological preconceptions.
Alice and Colin
Every day I wake up and think how bizarre it is that I am not teaching at a university. I feel like Alice–I’ve entered an alternative reality that makes no sense.