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 […]
The New York Times and Me I used to write for the New York Times. It started in 1999 when they asked me to review three books on AI. They printed this review on the front page of the Book Review section and I received a lot of correspondence about it. This was quickly followed […]
On the Multiplicity of Species We can explain the origin of species: where they came from and how (other species by mutation and natural selection). We can explain the diversity of species: how and why they differ from each other (adaptation to different environments). We can explain the complexity of species (progressive evolution with increasing […]
A Proof of Man’s Apish Origins For the purposes of this proof, I will assume that general Creationism is false: animals evolved over billions of years by mutation and natural selection. The question at issue is how to establish that the species Homo sapiens evolved from an apelike ancestor.[1] It is not that I think […]
Transitional Trump Trump has finally made the transition (he’s a “trans”): from falsehood to nonsense. He has long been unconstrained by truth and tells whopping lies all the time. We are accustomed to that. But now he has gone a stage further: he has descended into nonsense (very Lewis Carroll). He is no longer constrained […]
Another Skateboarding Story There I was, happily skateboarding. But this time I had company: a little girl was out on her little scooter. She waved to me; I waved back. Her father was in the driveway, cleaning up leaves. Soon she was scootering next to me and we were having a bit of a race. […]
An Essay Concerning Worm Understanding Your average worm has quite a bit of worm know-how. It knows how to dig a burrow of the right width, depth, and angle; it knows how to plug up the mouth of the burrow with leaves of various shapes and sizes; it knows how to produce castings of the […]
Authoritarian Future What proportion of people who voted for Trump would support his overthrow of electoral democracy in his favor? Nearly all. The evidence is overwhelming. That way they get what they want without the inconvenience of democracy. Democracy is an instrumental value not an intrinsic value, so they support it only when it gives […]
Education and Error In education we seek to impart knowledge to the student. The logic of the process is additive: we add to the student’s stock of knowledge. But this has not always been the way education has been conceived: sometimes the aim is to subtract something—not knowledge, to be sure, but error. That was […]