The Bald Ape Desmond Morris christened us “the naked ape” in his 1967 book The Naked Ape.[1] His reason was that we are hairless compared to other apes; that is what marks us out from them. But this is wrong, because we are neither hairless nor naked. We are not hairless because we have a […]
A Puzzle about Pornography Sex and food are clearly powerful forces in the psychic life of human beings. The question may be raised as to which is more powerful (is there a power imbalance?). But there is a curious asymmetry between them: we like to watch pornography but not its culinary equivalent. We like sex […]
Laughter in the Dark I have just read Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark (1938), a spare and unsparing cinematic novel about a love affair between a rich middle-aged man, Albinus, and a young penniless usherette, Margot. Except that the love is one-sided. In it, Albinus leaves his wife and child for Margot who doesn’t love […]
Food and Language The central place of food in animal life is undeniable.[1] An animal is a food machine. The reason is fundamental: animals need energy to survive and food is the source of energy (it would be different if they could just get charged up like an electric car). It is fair to say […]
Reactive Philosophy The trouble with philosophy is that it is too reactive. This is particularly true of the twentieth century, when philosophy picked up the pace. Analytical philosophy is marked and marred by its negativity—its urge to reject. Russell and Moore rejected Hegel, going to extremes in the process. Logical positivism rejected idealist metaphysics and […]
Objectifying the Fluid Mind I have argued that our ordinary language and thought about the mind involves an alien imposition or intrusion originating in our concepts of the external world.[1] Here I will expand on this viewpoint, detailing the types of imposition involved and the nature of that on which they are impositions. The second […]
The Anatomy of Concepts According to empirical rationalism, concepts have a dual architecture, consisting of both an innate component and an acquired component. They are part instinctual and part experiential, part genes and part history. Here I will offer a more detailed account of how they are structured, introducing some technical terms.[1] First, the innate […]
My Novels How should my novels be interpreted? I wrote them, so I should know. There are two: Bad Patches and The Space Trap. The first title suggests both bad patches in a life and bad patches in a person—and their interplay. The second title might suggest a science fiction story, but actually refers to […]
Quasi-Empiricism Let’s go boldly into the dark belly of the whale, where the mysteries are as thick as whale blubber. We will strain to see, but we may come back with some nuggets of gold. No one knows the origin of concepts, or their inner nature, or even their appearance (do they ever actually appear?); […]
Concepts of Mind We have concepts of mind, but where do they come from? According to a hallowed tradition, they come from the mind itself, or rather our perception of it. Just as we get our concepts of external objects from external objects (in both senses of “object”), so we get our concepts of internal […]