Developmental Philosophy of Mind Developmental philosophy of mind is an undeveloped field. There are two questions: phylogenetic and ontogenetic. How did the mind as it now exists develop over evolutionary time, and how does it develop in the individual? Like developmental psychology, it is natural to adopt a stage conception of these processes: what stages […]
Stephen Hawking: Logical Positivist Reading Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), I came upon the following passage: “Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According […]
Is the Universe Large? If you study astronomy, it will be impressed upon you that the universe is large—very very very large, unimaginably so. The galaxies, their number, the distance between them, the travel times (even for light)—the universe is an extremely big object, much bigger than you thought, much bigger than anyone thought until […]
Bad Philosophers Time for a bit of academic sociology. Who are the world’s worst philosophers? I don’t mean which individual philosophers from within philosophy; I mean academics in other fields who like to comment on philosophy. What disciplines produce the worst philosophical commentators? We have quite a full list to choose from: physicists, mathematicians, psychologists, […]
Proof of an External World Kant famously (and ruefully) remarked that it was a scandal of philosophy that it has been unable to come up with a proof of the external world. He was right: it is a matter of some embarrassment that philosophy should be unable to prove something so obvious, so commonsensical. What […]
Subjective and Objective The distinction between subjective and objective is often used in philosophy, but it is less often articulated, still less analyzed.[1] I will do that. The task is not particularly difficult, though there are glitches to be ironed out. The distinction is well-founded and its basic nature easily understood. We can begin with […]
My Left Foot An update on my left hand, and then a corollary on my left foot. I can now stick a knife from about 18 feet throwing with my left hand, no spin. This is substantial progress from a month ago. I also find that my two-handed backhand, which is governed by the left […]
Is Causation Necessary? I don’t mean to be asking Hume’s question about the need for necessary connection in the causal relation; I mean to be asking whether causation (causal power) is a necessary feature of things. Granted that something has a causal power, does it necessarily have that power? Are its causal powers part of […]
Is Speaking Acting? We have grown accustomed to the phrase “speech act”, so much so that we regard it as a truism: of coursespeech is a type of action! It is an action we perform with our mouth and larynx as opposed to our hands or feet. Assertion is something we do—it is an intentional […]
Attitudes to Memory Let me distinguish memories from our attitudes towards them. Memories, though changeable, are relatively static compared to our emotional response to them. The memory may fade or disappear with time (or it may not) but our feelings about it are quite plastic and can even reverse valence. A painful memory can become […]