Darwin’s Worms I happen to be reading Charles Darwin’s The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. I’ve already read The Origin of Species, The Voyage of the Beagle, and The Descent of Man—all excellent books—but I thought it would be nice to round out my Darwin reading with this lesser-known work. It’s […]
Are the Laws of psychology Necessary? There are laws of physics and laws of psychology, but are these laws of the same kind? Of course, they are about different things, but do they have the same modal status? Are they both nomologically necessary? The laws of physics are: they are universal and unalterable by human […]
Conceptual Analysis Mathematized Frege mathematized meaning by invoking the concept of a function, the central concept in modern mathematics. Concepts are conceived as functions from objects to truth-values, etc. This enables Frege to give a systematic rigorous account of the workings of language, modelled on mathematical notation. I propose to do the same for conceptual […]
Evil Opaque There is an interesting epistemic asymmetry between good and evil: you can be doing evil and not know it, but you can’t be doing good and not know it. You can think you are doing good and really be doing evil, but you can’t think you are doing evil and really be doing […]
Analysis and Mathematics Mathematics is an analytical discipline (a branch of it is even called Analysis). It analyzes shapes (geometry), numbers (arithmetic), populations (statistics), motion (calculus), logical relations (mathematical logic), chance (probability theory), games (game theory). The OED gives us two definitions of “analysis”: “a detailed examination of something in order to explain or interpret […]
Trump Squared I don’t think Trump is going far enough in his immigration policies. He wants all the illegal migrant criminals out—good, we don’t want criminals in our midst. No criminal, no crime. But the same argument applies to allcriminals—we want them gone, so they won’t commit crimes on us. We could send them all […]
A Proof of Simulation I have come to the conclusion that we are living in a simulation. We have the proof to hand: a character named Donald J. Trump has become president of the United States—twice. It is impossible to believe; and what is impossible cannot be true—therefore, it is not true. But all the […]
A Puzzle Regarding Color Color has long intrigued philosophers and others. Is it objective or subjective, or something in between? Is an inverted spectrum possible? What is the nature of logical truths about color? I will raise a different question: do things have the colors they have contingently or necessarily? Is color arbitrary or grounded […]
Medical Update I was driving over to Eddy’s today for a game of tennis. I had just been reading my friend Oliver Sacks’ wonderfully revealing Letters (2024) and had reached nearly the end when cancer had invaded his body. It began as a small melanoma in his right eye, depriving him of some vision in […]