AI Arms Race Mysterian politics avoids and deplores overconfident predictions. It rarely resorts to the speech act of assertion, preferring the conditional form, and uses the word “know” sparingly. But it has no objection to considering possibilities; indeed, it encourages the practice as an aid to thought and a device of precaution (it is fond […]
Politics and Mystery Everyone knows that universities are political places. Philosophy departments are political places too. This typically takes the form of competition for power and resources: what subjects are represented, who gets a job, who gets promoted, etc. Schools of thought are subject to academic politics (professorial power-grabs). Certain schools of thought acquire prominence […]
Philosophical Exaggeration I wish to put forward a meta-philosophy that I don’t like the sound of, not one bit. But I think it should be added to our menu of options; it is probably the most nihilistic view of philosophy ever invented, though it starts from innocuous observations. It is the view that traditional philosophy […]
Extraordinary Language Philosophy The legacy of commonsense philosophy and ordinary language philosophy is not dead.[1] It still haunts the precincts of academic philosophy. I wish to put on record my opposition to it (not that I hate everything about it, correctly understood). Taken literally, the idea of common sense is the idea of common sense—widespread, […]
The Miracle of Color Philosophers have spilt a lot of ink over color. It is indeed a very interesting phenomenon of nature. Since the seventeenth century it has been called a “secondary” quality, in contrast with the “primary” qualities germane to physics—a kind of second-class citizen in the grand republic of nature. But in some […]
Color and Consciousness What is the relationship between the problem of color and the problem of consciousness? Could they be fundamentally the same problem? It isn’t that consciousness is color, but that the problem of consciousness could be solved by solving the problem of color. Is the mystery basically the same? Consciousness of color is […]
Disappointment The Beatles were never disappointing. That’s why they are still with us and always will be. Each record was at least as good as the last and sometimes markedly superior. They couldn’t fail. John, Paul, George, and Ringo: they never disappointed. They dis-disappointed. They didn’t know the meaning of the word. But what about […]
English Jokes There aren’t enough racist-type jokes about the English, so I decided to invent some, aiming for maximum offensiveness and unfairness. It’s not an easy task, but at least I can make a start. We badly need a nasty stereotype associated with the English to compensate for all the stereotypes applied to other people […]
Communities Yesterday I watched Roger Federer being inducted into the tennis Hall of Fame. He gave a likably lachrymose speech and was his usual urbane self. He talked about how much he loved the game of tennis and especially tennis balls. Many professional tennis players attended. Roger’s wife Mirka gave a touching introductory speech. A […]
Indeterminacy Two types of indeterminacy have been propounded: ontological and semantic. I am referring to physics and linguistics—quantum-theoretic indeterminacy and Quine’s indeterminacy of translation. These indeterminacy theses are opposites of each other in the sense that indeterminacy of meaning presupposes determinacy of reality, while indeterminacy of physical reality contrasts with an assumed determinacy of meaning. […]