Yesterday’s final in Rome between Federer and Djokovic was a fascinating spectacle, not only for the superb tennis but for the psychology of the event. Federer was thoroughly outclassed in two punishing sets. The look on his face at first said, “This guy is a better tennis player than I am”. Then the look deepened […]
People seem to have some very funny ideas about how two of my books were published by OUP: The Meaning of Disgust and Basic Structures of Reality. After presenting the material of these books in seminars and discussing them with colleagues I sent the completed books to OUP. They then engaged anonymous reviewers, experts in the field, […]
I read a very good article in the most recent NYRB (May 21) about Max Beerbohm, written by Phillip Lopate. I found myself resonating to the Beerbohm sensibility, which I would find hard to summarize. With the miracle of youtube I listened to an old broadcast of his (1956) on BBC radio about London, past […]
Let me recommend this BBC-PBS series about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. It’s not all pomp, pageantry, and patriotism; it’s about fear, power, and pettiness. Mark Rylance plays Cromwell with wonderful economy, inner life flashing behind still eyes. He is all intelligence and self-control, trying to manage a childish impetuous king, always in peril of […]
The other day I had a very interesting letter from someone who coaches varsity tennis at a major university. He had been reading my book Sport and had incorporated some of it into his training methods (it had to do with theoretical and practical knowledge), as well as mentioning it in an article on tennis for […]
Say what you like about Queen Elizabeth II, she has the poshest accent in the British Isles. By far. No one comes close. Her own family sound like right gor-blimeys compared to her. No one on Downton Abbey can hold a candle to the Queen’s accent. I even venture to suggest that it is not possible […]
I found myself at the British Consulate in Miami last evening, seeing in the election results. It struck me how essentially gentle, humorous, sensible, broadminded, and skeptical the British are–in contrast to the ferocity, humorlessness, gullibility, and narrow-mindedness of others I prefer not to mention. This was disturbing. We are so self-conscious about our words, […]
Are there quotation marks in the language of thought? Do we have a mental equivalent of quotation? It seems clear that we can have metalinguistic thoughts, as when I think that “five” has four letters; but can thought contain mental scare-quotes? Suppose I doubt that there are inner processes: can I think that “inner processes” […]
My review of Oliver Sacks’ On The Move has just appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It’s a marvelous book, though it might upset some people with its candor. This is the human being behind the image–and I greatly prefer the human being to the image. Here we find the passionate and intense motor-cycle rider and […]
Turing Tests The classic Turing test involves a robot that passes for a conscious human. The examiner spends time with the robot, asking questions, interacting, and the question is whether it presents a convincing appearance of intelligence and consciousness. It is like an audition for playing the part of a normal human being. […]