Back to School It is now twelve years since I stopped teaching philosophy, after thirty-eight years of doing it. There is no back-to-school for me. That always meant stopping work on my own stuff, beginning to teach classes again, meetings and hellos. What are my feelings on the subject? Many–some good, some bad. I think […]
What is it Like to be a Paper Clip? I know what it’s like to be me, because I experience it directly every day. I also know what it’s like to be you, more or less, because I know you are psychologically similar to me. I even know what it’s like to be a bat […]
A Bombing The recent bombing of a boat off the coast of Venezuela is probably the worst atrocity committed by the Trump administration so far. It was suspected of being a drug-smuggling boat and summarily blown up, killing all on board. No interception, no search, no due process—just destroyed under suspicion of illegality. The US […]
Best Ever Tennis Player Alcaraz and Sinner are clearly the best tennis players ever, as is generally acknowledged. Federer and Nadal wouldn’t stand much of a chance against them, even in their prime, and Djokovic is unable to best them now, or ever was. They are well ahead of their current rivals. They are the […]
Other Ontologies It would be generally agreed that ethics, logic, and mathematics suffer from ontological uncertainties. We don’t know what they are about. There are ontological disagreements that never get resolved. The metaphysics is obscure. I don’t need to spell this out. Is ethics about certain special objects and properties—the Good, the non-natural property of […]
Airport Anecdote On the way to Barbados, at the Miami airport, I joined a long shuffling line at 7 in the morning. After about an hour, we were close to security; an official instructed the person behind me to stand by my side so that we could walk a short distance together, as if a […]
Blog Facts Readers may be interested to hear some blog facts. The top ten countries to read this blog are in descending order: the USA, the UK, China, France, Mexico, Canada, Sweden, India, Germany, Australia. It varies from week to week but the USA and the UK are always in the top two positions. The […]
On Being the Best A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that I am the best philosopher who ever lived. It was hard to take in at first. But I had to accept it; I could no longer deny it. It was true. Facts are facts. I kept it to myself for a […]
Knowing Other Minds We are only too familiar with the other minds problem: from liars to bats, the inverted spectrum to total zombies. But all is not dark—we do sometimes know what is on, or in, another mind. In fact, we have a great deal of knowledge of this type, generally taken for granted. But […]
Material Selves The self and the mind: what are they? Are they material or immaterial? These questions are usually discussed separately: one under the heading “personal identity”, the other under the heading “the mind-body problem”. Thus, we discuss whether the self is the body and whether mental states are physical states. But these questions are […]