I recently installed a full size competition-level trampoline in my garden, having left trampolining some forty-seven years ago. I used to be a keen trampolinist back in my gymnast/pole vaulter/diver days. It’s gradually coming back, though the fear factor is more pronounced these days. Everyone agrees that trampolining is fun (though strenuous) but what is […]
I was saddened to hear of the death of Jonathan Lowe. He was an excellent philosopher, with a strong independent mind, and very productive. Also a very likable and decent man. When I last saw him in Miami a couple of years ago, he reminded me that he had sat behind me during our B.Phil […]
The “royal pardon” of Alan Turing is far too little far too late. But I am glad to see it. This story is so shameful that it needs to be etched firmly into everyone’s mind. When I used to lecture to students about the Turing Test I always made a point of telling the story. […]
Nelson Mandela was the only truly great man on the political scene in my lifetime. Enough said.
In the next few days I will be publishing on Amazon a new edition of my 1992 novel, The Space Trap. It was originally published in hardback by Duckworth, before the advent of e-books. I have now (with invaluable help) prepared an electronic version of it with extensive revisions. It will be available on Kindle […]
A Review I don’t as a rule reply to reviews of my books, but every rule has exceptions. Kerry McKenzie’s review of my Basic Structures of Reality in Mind calls for brief comment. There is much I could say about this review but I will confine myself to one very telling point. She pours […]
It was never completely you You came in black and blue Nothing through and through Miley, I salute you!
“Logical Positivism” That’s an odd label for the view it purports to describe. The most conspicuous feature of the doctrine in question is its negative attitude toward traditional metaphysics: it is a form of philosophical “negativism” i.e. metaphysics is meaningless and should be abandoned. And what is with the adjective “logical” here? Doesn’t every philosophical doctrine […]
The Origin of Ideas Where do our ideas come from? What gives ideas their content? There is an old and natural story about this: call it the “exemplar theory”. Consider the idea of blue (the concept blue, the meaning of “blue”): it arises in the mind by virtue of perceptual contact with exemplary blue things—this contact […]
Hitchens I’ve just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch 22, a sad but stimulating experience. Among many sage observations, he tells us how much he values a sense of the absurd and an ironic mind, as well as linguistic playfulness. Despotisms always seem to be literal-minded, pedestrian, humorless, and linguistically repressive—as well as fanatical and violent. […]