Absurdity Every now and then I am struck by the sheer absurdity of my current situation. I live approximately a mile from the University of Miami, where I used to be a philosophy professor. I drive by there frequently. For twelve years I have had no contact with the people in the philosophy department. I […]
President and Pope The president was seething in his presidential bathroom. This time it wasn’t his political enemies or the fake news media or Robert de Niro. It was the pope. The new pope. The American new pope. The problem was obvious: he was drawing big crowds, he was on TV a lot, he was […]
On Empiricism What if empiricism had never been invented? It wasn’t invented till the seventeenth century: there is no trace of it in Plato and Aristotle, or their followers. It took a long time till philosophers got round to it; and it originated only in England not as a world-wide trend. It came from nowhere. […]
Alone I was watching American Idol the other day and Carrie Underwood performed a belting version of the song Alone. I had only faint memories of the song from way back, but it intrigued me as a challenge. It switches from a talky intro to a power ballad chorus. I soon discovered it had been […]
Deficiencies of Trump As a qualified psychologist, I would like to state my opinion of Trump’s mental health (for want of a better term). Is he aware of his ethical and intellectual deficiencies (also athletic)? Some may say that he is not—that he is self-deluded. My own theory is that he is keenly aware of […]
Against the Identity Theory of Physical Objects The identity theory of physical objects says that a perceived object is identical to an object described in physics (or perhaps in physiology). For example, the table before me is identical to an object described in physics as consisting of a collection of atoms. Logically, it is like […]
Anatomical Philosophy Philosophers have not shown much interest in anatomy, whether they be analytical or phenomenological, linguistic or empirical-scientific. Nor have psychologists, with the exception of Freud (oral, anal, and genital). I propose to rectify this. Of course, anatomists and physiologists have shown such an interest, but they have focused on dissection and functional studies, […]
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 […]