Second-Best Philosopher Ever Skipping preliminaries, I am going immediately to nominate Bertrand Russell. It might be thought that he can be ruled out by the principle that later philosophers have absorbed his work and so surpass him trivially. That would certainly be true of his contemporaries and predecessors, but Russell wrote so much that it […]
Descriptions and Non-Existence Semantics would be easier if there was no such thing as non-existence (if non-existence didn’t exist). Then we could simply assign an existing reference to any referential-looking term. We wouldn’t have the problem of empty terms: all meaning would be explicable by means of existing entities. We would have a fully denotational […]
Expressions of Belief and Desire Darwin investigates the expression of emotion, leaving out thought. He also says nothing directly about belief and desire, but we can attempt to fill that gap. Are there characteristic expressions of belief, disbelief, desire, and lack of desire (antipathy)? We can think of emotional expressions as the extended psychological phenotype […]
Dumbocracy It’s official, we are now living in a dumbocracy (OED “government by the dumbest”). We used to live in a democracy, but (as Plato predicted) democracy has an inherent tendency to degenerate into dumbocratic rule. The causes are somewhat mysterious (political scientists are baffled) but it is marked by the rise of ignorance, stupidity, […]
Expressing Mind In The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals Darwin goes into great (indeed excruciating) detail about the ways emotions are expressed in the body—the face, the voice, the hands, the posture. He leaves no doubt that animals and man express their emotions in characteristic bodily configurations, particularly facial expressions. But he never […]
Anger I read with interest Darwin’s discussion of anger in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (I am very familiar with that emotion, unfortunately). His discusses in detail the expression of anger in bodily posture, hand gestures, and the baring of the teeth. It made me think of Melville’s Billy Budd, a […]
Animal Respect The modern animal rights movement is now over half a century old. Someone should write a history of it. I will venture some alternative history. I was in on it from the beginning, but not at the very beginning. That can be traced to the book Animals, Men, and Morals, edited by John […]
Am I a Naturalist? There comes a point in every philosopher’s life when he or she asks himself or herself what kind of philosopher she or he (or possibly it) is. So, what kind of philosopher am I? Heretofore, I would have described myself as a rationalist realist mysterian evolutionist—quite a mouthful. But now I […]
Integrity and Intelligence Integrity and intelligence are not givens but choices. They are acts of will as well as brain power. They require effort, sometimes courage. Their opposites—stupidity and malice (or weakness)—have their attractions. We are witnessing their erosion, indeed gleeful abandonment. I am not just referring to the current political era but to a […]
The London Review of Books and Me I used to write regularly for the London Review of Books, beginning in 1985 with a piece on Donald Davidson. At that time Karl Miller was the editor (I used to spot him around UCL where we both then worked). I liked Karl (also his brother-in-law Jonathan Miller—no […]