Language Identity Given plausible empirical assumptions, we can argue on conceptual grounds for two counterintuitive theses: (1) there is only one human language, and (2) this language is not learnable. It will turn out that these statements are not as counterintuitive as they seem. In fact, they follow from well-known considerations advanced by Noam Chomsky, […]
On Reading I am going to tackle a question that has baffled our finest minds: why reading is so pleasurable. Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, your uncle Tony—all these have ignored, or avoided, the question. Too hard, I guess. But this leaves us with a rich field for startling discovery—who will be the first to […]
Intelligence Assessment There is something I used to do routinely that I don’t do anymore: assess other people’s intelligence. As a professor, it’s part of the job—forming opinions about other people’s intellectual abilities. Sometimes it seems like the main part of the job. It comes in many forms: grading, admissions, letters of recommendation, job interviews, […]
On the Origin of Heavenly Bodies The main thesis of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is that species evolve from other species. They arise from natural variations found within a given species that are selected for or against. They do not arise spontaneously and independently, or by dint of divine or extraterrestrial intervention. […]
Art Miami I went to the annual Art Miami festival yesterday with my friend and tennis partner Eddy. The people were as interesting to look at as the art; indeed, they were works of art themselves. Obviously from the art world, they knew how to put on a good sartorial show. What particularly caught my […]
A New Law of Biology I believe I have discovered a new law of biology. I call it “the law of differential adaptation”. It is fairly easily derivable from established principles, but I have not seen it enunciated before. It strikes me as illuminating. We begin by making a distinction: between the animate environment and […]
Real Americans Several years ago, I was driving down I95 with my wife, Cathy. At some point I found it necessary to change lanes and moved into the outermost lane. This caused an incoming car to slow down a bit—it was moving pretty fast. I then went back to my original lane. Nothing very remarkable—happens […]
Freud Generalized Freud’s psychoanalytic system was built around the idea of sexual repression. Sexual taboos expressed as societal pressures lead to the repression of the sexual instinct, resulting in distinctive psychological consequences. These include: neurosis, sexually charged dreams, dirty jokes, the artistic drive, and a general feeling of malaise. The basic mechanism is the repressive […]
Perceptual Intuition Perception and intuition are usually opposed to each other: what is perceived is not intuited and what is intuited is not perceived. The senses perceive and reason (intellect) intuits. We know material objects by perception and abstract objects by intuition. Empiricism declares perception to be the basis of knowledge (and the criterion of […]
Embarrassed Empiricism Let empiricism be the doctrine that all reality is observable, in principle if not in practice (that last qualification covers a multitude of sins). There is no reality but observable reality, i.e., what is perceivable by the five human senses, particularly vision. This is surely the main dogma of empiricism. The doctrine can […]