Ontology of Mind We have no clear ontology of the mental. We have no good way of talking generally about the mind. This has always been a source of awkwardness and embarrassment. We philosophers talk routinely of mental states, attributes, properties, traits, events, processes, and entities; but we volunteer very little in the way of […]
Semantical Considerations on Mental Language I am going to expound a view of the mind (and hence the mind-body problem) that I am disinclined to accept. Still, the view deserves careful articulation and may contain elements of truth; it should be added to the menu of options. And it is agreeably radical. It begins with […]
Philosophy at the Dentist Yesterday I was having a new crown fitted at the dentist (king at last!). It is not a pleasant procedure, though I’ve had worse. Apart from the discomfort, it is boring. I decided to try an experiment: see if I can think about philosophy while being drilled and scraped orally. Surprisingly, […]
Predicating and Necessity (Bear in mind Kripke’s Naming and Necessity when reading the following.) When a speaker uses a predicate (“man”, “cat”, “rose”, “square”, “red”, “runs”, “clever” etc.) he or she refers to a property or attribute: but how is this done? One answer is by means of ostension: the speaker points to an instance […]
Are There Two Types of Necessity? It used to be thought there was only one type of necessity, analytic necessity. All necessity is de dictonecessity, stemming from, and about, language. There is no necessity in the extralinguistic world; to suppose otherwise is a fallacy of projection. Necessity is in the head, a product of words […]
Contradiction and Synonymy This is to be an essay in the philosophy of logic. Regrettably, logic today is taught as mainly formula manipulation with little attention paid to philosophical questions. I will be engaged on foundational questions, not unlike the foundations of physics (crucial but ignored by the mainstream). No doubt this is all about […]
Can the Body be in the Mind? The classic mind-body problem can be stated as follows: How can attributes of the mind be attributes of the body? Attributes of the mind have been taken to include consciousness, subjectivity, intentionality, rationality, privacy, incorrigibility, and unity. How can these attributes exist side by side with bodily or […]
Dichotomous Knowledge There is a long tradition of recognizing two distinct categories of knowledge: knowledge of logic, meaning, and mathematics, on the one hand, and knowledge of geography, history, and chemistry, on the other (these lists are not exhaustive). We might name these “A-type knowledge” and “B-type Knowledge”, so as to be neutral about the […]
The Survival of the Fittest? Herbert Spencer’s phrase “the survival of the fittest” has done a lot of mischief, not only in biology, but also in politics, economics, ethics, history, and education. The phrase is riddled with confusion, ambiguity, and tendentious error. I will indict the phrase, first its use in biology and then in […]
Is Consciousness Shrinking? What is the ratio of the conscious mind to the unconscious mind? Is the human unconscious half the size of the conscious or twice the size? What percentage of mental activity is carried out unconsciously and what consciously? Does this proportion vary between species? Which species has the largest unconscious mind relative […]