Kinds of Kind Kinds are of many kinds. Sortals are of many sorts. We should not assimilate one to another. Some kinds are obscurely defined. My question concerns mental kinds—what kind of kind are they? First, consider chemical and physical kinds, such as heat, water, and light. The modern theory of these is well known: […]
Intellectual Romance What is an intellectual romance? A romance of the intellect, of course; it isn’t a romance between intellectuals, as in a love affair between intellectual people. Here is a standard definition: “The connection between two people in a relationship where they share ideals, thoughts, and opinions, finding stimulation and enjoyment in each other’s […]
Colin Through the Looking Glass Now I know why I am not allowed on campus: I might enter into a (non-romantic) romantic relationship with a student and fail to report it because it would be bad for the student. It’s perfectly clear: it’s wrong to not report (non-romantic) romantic relationships even if to make such […]
De Re Consciousness of the Brain Do I have de re consciousness of my brain when I have de dicto consciousness of my mind? I speak of de reconsciousness not of de re belief or perception: the locution “conscious of” admits of a de re-de dicto ambiguity—does it mean a relation or a content? Suppose […]
Perception De Dicto and De Re Locke held that all we ever perceive of external objects is their powers and not their intrinsic qualities: we do perceive their powers to produce sensations in us, and we don’t perceive the basis of these powers in the object. This seems doubly wrong: we don’t perceive powers and […]
Origins of Intentionality What is the origin of intentionality? There are three main areas to consider: perception, thought, and language. In the twentieth century it was fashionable to take linguistic intentionality as basic; the other two are then derived from it. The classical empiricists took perceptual intentionality as basic with thought and language parasitic on […]
Alienation The OED defines “alienate” as “cause to feel isolated”; “alienation” is then “the state or experience of being alienated”. I have lived in the United States for 35 years and I am now officially alienated: I feel isolated, cut off, removed. It wasn’t always so—I used to feel integrated, joined. This is really the […]
Blog Thoughts I sometimes search this blog in order to remind myself of what I have written on such-and-such a topic. I am always surprised. I have completely forgotten about this paper or that, and I read the paper with genuine interest, as if written by someone else. I find myself entering an old-new world. […]
The Unconscious Body We are thought to have an unconscious mind, or minds. The idea is that we have two minds (or more) only one of which are we conscious of. We are aware of one mind but not of the other; hence, we know what is going on in the conscious mind but not […]
Mechanism, Mystery, and Miracle Locke thought that the external world is a mystery: we know there is such a world, but we don’t and can’t know how it works or what it’s like. Physics is a mysterious science (Newton agreed). But he didn’t think the mind is a mystery, specifically knowledge: he thought he knew […]