Octopus philosophy
I reviewed Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday. Nice book, great subject, fascinating animal.
Blog
President Trump
I am going to make a prediction–a possibility not a certainty. The sybaritic businessman will quickly find that he is (a) not up to the job of president and (b) he doesn’t like the job. He doesn’t have the knowledge or the patience or the skills to do it adequately, and he chafes at the […]
Democracy
Democracy and Desire The essence of democracy is collective decision. Each citizen is accorded equal power to determine the outcome of elections and hence to influence public policy. The simplest version of the democratic principle is majority rule: what the majority wants determines the decisions of the state. There have been criticisms of […]
A Pronunciation Puzzle
Why do people pronounce “ing” as “in” in such words as “singing”? This is often called “g”-dropping, though there was never any “g” sound there to start with. One answer is that it is a form of laziness or sloppiness, as if it takes more effort to say “ing” than “in”. But there is a […]
Interview with Trump
I recommend watching George Stephanopoulos’ interview with Trump and family, aired today on Good Morning America, but likely to be repeated on This Week on Sunday. He really brings out the bluster, paranoia, and delusions of the man.
Forthcoming book
Just to keep my faithful readers up to date, I’ve just been correcting the copy-edited ms of my book Philosophical Provocations: 55 Short Essays for MIT Press. There are seven sections on Mind, Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Biology, Ethics, and Religion. My sense reading the essays over is that they are pretty damn provocative, though often quite […]
Trump’s paranoia
The Trump psychodrama is a thing to behold: his mind is a complete mess. He will say anything to try to get himself out of trouble but only gets himself in more trouble. He is clearly paranoid as well as untruthful–and I doubt he knows where the one ends and the other begins. He is […]
Politics
It’s hard not to be obsessed by recent American politics. I try not be, but I fail. Every day I have to keep my eye on the news. Clinton’s recent illness terrified me. Trump’s support seems horribly solid, no matter what he says or does. I do thoroughly approve of Colin Kaepernick’s protests, though.
Projection
People tend to project their bad qualities onto other people, but not so much their good qualities. Why? One explanation is that they are lazy and find it easier to assume that everyone is like them. Freud’s explanation was that projection is a mechanism of ego defense: we can’t bear the thought of our own […]
Usain and Me
I have to concede victory to Usain Bolt: he has achieved the triple triple. I have only achieved the double triple. But I console myself that I am taller, younger, and can run faster than him. (I hope readers can detect the irony in these remarks, but if they cannot I give up. Compare a […]