Justice and Justification These two words are very similar; indeed, they both derive from the Latin justus. For “just” the OED gives “morally right or fair” and “well founded” in application to opinion. For “justify” we get “prove to be right or reasonable” and “be a good reason for”. A legal ruling can be just […]
Neuropolitics I quite like the idea of neuropolitics, despite its air of science fiction. I don’t like the idea of neuroethics or neurophilosophy or even neuropsychology, but I see a point to couching political discourse in neurological language. What is the unit (the ontology) of political discourse? It goes by various names: men, people, human […]
Equality and Humanity We are told that all men are created equal. This dictum takes some parsing.[1] First, there is the word “men”: surely, we don’t mean to exclude women and children, neither of whom are men. This is easily done: swap the word “men” for “human beings” or “members of the human race”—this is […]
Can We Solve the No-Mind-Body Problem? We usually ask what gives rise to the mind in the body—what the secret ingredient is. This is the positive mind-body problem. But there is also the negative mind-body problem: what explains the lack of mind. Some things have a mind (consciousness) and some things lack it—what is the […]
ABC Interview The interview last night of President Trump by Terry Moran of ABC News was an unbelievable display of petulance, egotism, mendacity, vindictiveness, and rank stupidity. It was an embarrassment to the country. The man’s mind is a slag heap of prejudices, stereotypes, grievances, vague generalities, and petty rivalry. He appears to lack a […]
This is a reply I wrote to an email from Tom Nagel. It may be helpful even without his prompting email. A Reply My OED gives as the primary meaning of “world” “the earth with all its countries and peoples”, immediately followed by “one’s life and activities”. The first is not philosophically relevant except as […]
The World The word “world” is a slippery customer. It seems to have two meanings, ordinary and philosophical. In one use it refers to one’s world-view or world of activity, as in “the tortoise’s world” or “How are things in your world?” Here the word is qualified by “of”—the world of X. There are many […]
Future Trump Trump’s law is this: it is always much worse than you think it will be. I am constantly surprised at how bad it keeps getting. With this in mind let’s contemplate the likely future unless things radically change. First, Trump withdraws support to Ukraine and the Russians take over the country. Unimaginable horrors […]
Bodily Identity Suppose you are interested in the nature of bodily survival: under what conditions does a body survive into the future? Your initial theory is that identity through time is a necessary and sufficient condition: the body then must be numerically identical to the body now. This is generally how it is and you […]
The Eternal City Chapter 39 of Catch-22, “The Eternal City”, is the heart of the novel, though it stands out like an amputated thumb. It is stylistically quite unlike the rest of this five-hundred-page work. There is no humor in it. It is bleak to the point of pugilism: it pulverizes the reader. Yossarian is […]