Points of View We are not good at talking about consciousness. The best we have been able to come up with is the what-it’s-like formula, inaugurated by Brian Farrell and Timothy Sprigge and popularized by Thomas Nagel. But this formula has resisted illuminating paraphrase and remains a vernacular catch-phrase. What is its analysis? Can we […]
‘Against Identity Theories’, “The Deep Problem’ and the ‘is’ of definition I agree with the gist of both papers. However…. Aristotle distinguished ‘real’ from ‘nominal’ definition. The latter is just a way of identifying what a name names. So (to modify and build on an actual Aristotelian example) “‘Lightening’ names the flashes in the sky […]
Introspection Some remarks on introspection in the light of recent papers. Is introspection a source of knowledge about the mind? On the one hand, it qualifies as a perceptual faculty, since it provides direct consciousness of the mind; and this means it is a source of genuine knowledge. We “see” what is currently in our […]
Non-Perceptual Knowledge Perceptual knowledge is quite sharply limited, though clearly a type of knowledge. But we don’t customarily stop there; we generally extend the concept of knowledge beyond this restricted domain, well beyond it. Thus, we recognize several kinds of inferential knowledge—knowledge about things we don’t and can’t perceive. Are there any reasons to doubt […]
Perceptual Knowledge The thesis to be defended here is that perception is knowledge and the most basic kind of knowledge.[1] This knowledge has nothing essentially to do with belief, except by way of repudiation. Perceiving is knowing and knowing is perceiving (more or less). In practice this comes down to the thesis that knowing and […]
Bajan Philosophy The last three papers have been metaphysics Barbados-style, boldly black and white, bright as a beach. Now I will turn to Bajan epistemology, in which clear lines are drawn and compromise not tolerated. You either know or you don’t know. You either see it or you don’t. It is sturdy or it is […]
Language, Self, and Substance I will offer some sketchy remarks on meaning and the self in the light of the anti-substantialist view of the mind. First, there has to be something wrong with the Cogito as traditionally conceived, since the self (reference of “I”) is not a substance. We can’t say, “I think, therefore I […]
Ontology of Mind What is the ontology of the physical world? What is its ontology and how do we conceive it? The best answer to this is that it is a substance ontology: the physical world consists of physical substances qualified by what are traditionally called accidents.[1] For example, animals, artifacts, and inanimate lumps—cats, tables, […]
What Makes Consciousness Mysterious? Today it would be widely agreed that consciousness is mysterious, rather mysterious or extremely mysterious. It would not, however, be widely agreed what makes it mysterious—what precise characteristic confers the mystery. Some would say there is no mystery at all: consciousness is nothing but higher-order thought or self-ascription or not being […]
The Barbados Files My trip to Barbados was not intended to be a “working holiday”. On the contrary, it was intended to be a non-working holiday (totally in vacanza). I made a point of not taking my computer with me just in case I felt tempted to write something. (I had a companion.) However, a […]