Abby and Jasmine
Abby and Jasmine Who are the two most fearsome people in today’s politics? Abby Phillip and Jasmine Crockett. And what do they have in common? Oh yes, intelligence.
Blog
Christmas
Christmas Speaking personally, there is not much about Christmas I like. I am not conventionally religious, still less Christian, so that angle carries little appeal for me. It is also quite exclusionary to dwell on this aspect, given that many people are not Christian and it is meant to be a holiday for anyone who […]
Living Consciousness
Living Consciousness Panpsychism is the doctrine that elements of mind exist in all physical things, down to atoms and their constituents. And yet we don’t see inanimate things tending towards mentality, despite their alleged quota of it. The mind is confined to animate things. Why should this be? A hypothesis suggests itself: elementary consciousness does […]
A Great Speech
A Great Speech I gave a great speech last night, possibly one of the greatest. Forceful, tough, commanding respect. I shouted it all the way through at full volume and top speed. No one else has ever given such a powerful speech. I would give it A+++. It shows what great shape I am in. […]
Hand Work
Hand Work I just had occasion to revisit my 2014 book Prehension: The Hand and the Emergence of Humanity (it is the topic of episode 8 of the long-form interview I am recording with my Turkish collaborators). I found myself rather impressed by it. It is really a science book with some philosophy thrown in. […]
Balls
Balls I was over at the Biltmore yesterday hitting as usual. The under 14 Orange Bowl was winding down. Two girls were playing table tennis with a tennis ball. I had a brief conversation with one of them who said it was hard. This set me thinking. When I got home, I ferreted out some […]
Solipsistic Realism
Solipsistic Realism Berkeley had a metaphysics and epistemology that dispensed with matter; he thought this gave us a better theory of the nature of objects and also delivered us from the skepticism generated by the idea of matter. But he was not a solipsist, not by any means: he believed in multiple “finite spirits” and […]
A Disproof of Other Minds
A Disproof of Other Minds We can’t prove the existence of other minds, but can we disprove their existence? Can we construct a plausible argument that other minds don’t exist, only one’s own mind does (solipsism)? That sounds improbable and I don’t know of any attempt to do it, but philosophy is full of surprising […]
Concepts of the Physical World
Concepts of the Physical World Here is an eloquent passage from Thomas Nagel: “The understanding of the physical world has been expanded enormously with the aid of theories and explanations that use concepts not tied to the specifically human perceptual viewpoint. Our senses provide the evidence from which we start, but the detached character of […]
Bertie’s Vocabulary
Bertie’s Vocabulary I was in the mood for a Jeeves and Wooster, so I gulped down (as Bertie might say) a tale of these two coves (viz. The Inimitable Jeeves). A large part of what makes these books so amusing is Bertie’s vocabulary (as contrasted with Jeeves’s). I found myself underlining the many words he […]