Consciousness and the Origin of Philosophy What causes philosophy—the subject—to exist? I shall argue that consciousness is what causes philosophy to exist, or rather consciousness-in-the-world. The consciousness-world nexus is the origin of philosophy. It isn’t the world by itself or consciousness by itself; it’s the situation of consciousness in the world, or the situation of […]
Oliver Sacks’ Fabrications I have just come across an article by Rachel Aviv in the December 15 edition of the New Yorker about Oliver Sacks’ dubious case histories, especially in Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Apparently, Sacks acknowledged that he made things up in his private journals, to which […]
Book Reviewer Released I am a recovering book reviewer. I used to do it all the time; now not so much, if at all. It started when I was twenty-two in Manchester, England, when I wrote a couple of reviews for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology at the request of Wolfe Mays, […]
A Brief History of Knowledge I will continue here what I started earlier, dwelling on the later stages of the growth of human knowledge.[1]The overall sequence is as follows. First, we have bodily sensations such as pain, pleasure, hot and cold: these may be construed as themselves instances of knowledge of the body, or we […]
Are Space and Time Identical? I wish someone would get to the bottom of space and time, because for the life of me I can’t. They reduce me to tears, intellectually (personally, I find them congenial companions). But I think I can ask some intelligible questions about them (at least I think I can). On […]
Coyne on McGinn I will reply to Jerry Coyne’s comments (January 23rd, 2026) on my blog post “A (Really) Brief History of Knowledge”. I will keep this as brief and factual as possible without restating his criticisms. 1.I am not just a philosopher of mind but have written on many philosophical subjects. I was also […]
Spatial Logic Does logic have a real essence, and what might it be? And what exactly is logic? These are not easy questions; they invite us to dig deep. First, what is real essence? The paradigms are material substances and animal species: gold and tigers being the favorite examples. I won’t rehash all this; I […]
Logic and Space There is a gleam in the eye of this metaphysician, or a glimmer of a gleam. Might logic be derivable from space? Then we would have a metaphysics based solely on space (assuming time can be regarded as a dimension of space).[1] By “logic” I don’t just mean the logical systems studied […]
On What It’s Like It has become orthodox to state the mind-body problem using the locution “what it’s like”. Consciousness is defined as there being something it’s like. Pain is conscious because there is something it’s like to be in pain (it feels a certain way). I will argue that this is neither necessary nor […]