An Answer to the Skeptic Skepticism gains traction from the true justified belief theory of knowledge, because it can be argued that our beliefs are seldom if ever justified. But that is just one theory, not a datum. What if we adopt another type of theory? I observe, to begin with, that other types of […]
Augustine and Wittgenstein Wittgenstein opens the Philosophical Investigations with a quotation from Saint Augustine (in Latin). He then comments: “These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects—sentences are combinations of such names. In this picture of […]
Space, Time, and Logic Philosophy needs a metaphysical vision. Humbly (and pretentiously), I will provide one. As far as I know, it has no predecessor, though echoes of other theories will be apparent. Neither does it have a name: it might be called “Logical Spatio-Temporalism” (LST), or just “Spatialism” because space is central to it. […]
Nabokov and Music It is well known that Nabokov didn’t like music: “Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds.” But he doesn’t say why. The affliction didn’t run in his family and his son was an opera singer. Moreover, as has been remarked, his […]
Bernard Williams and Me One day, over twenty years ago, I ran into Bernard Williams in the corridor at NYU. He remarked: “The thing about you, Colin, is that you think you’ve either solved the problems of philosophy or they can’t be solved at all”. I paused for less than a second and replied, “I […]
Games and Meaning Imagine a philosopher, call him LW for short, with a lifelong interest in games. In his youth he writes a book called The Logical Structure of Games. As the name suggests, the book gives an analysis of the formal structure of games—a theory of the a priori essence of games which purports […]
A Law of Subjectivity and Objectivity Things can be subjective or objective, and so can conceptions of things. The former distinction pertains to types of objects and concerns their proximity to the mind: are they explicitly mental or at any rate mind-dependent? In this use, we say that color is subjective but shape is not. […]
This is from Bill Reagan: I thoroughly enjoyed Colin McGinn’s post on Reflexes because it is a solid, concise work on the subject, with dabs of humour throughout. I am keeping it close-by as a reference for my own project on instincts, and guide to what the body is capable of doing to protect our […]
Accents Nowadays people recommend speaking in the same accent you were brought up to speak, whatever that may be, in the interests of linguistic diversity. I disagree. I myself first spoke in a Geordie accent, because I was born in Newcastle; my parents spoke Geordie their whole life. My family moved to Gillingham Kent when […]
Objective Truth We can take subjective and objective views of the same facts: we can conceive of the object by reference to ourselves (“the object I am seeing now”) or by abstracting away from our specific characteristics and thinking from no particular point of view (“the planet next to planet Earth”).[1] This general point applies […]