George Soros and Me George Soros is now 92 years old. I first met him at his home in Bedford, New York, in 2007, when he was one year older than I am now, at his invitation. It came about as follows. Robert Silvers, then editor of the New York Review of Books, had asked […]
De Re Necessity Reconsidered The necessity of origin is a beguiling thesis, instantly plausible. It sounds right. Queen Elizabeth II was necessarily born to her actual parents; in no possible world does she have different parents. If she exists in a world, so do her parents, dutifully giving rise to her. If she exists, those […]
Skateboarding I already had a skateboard, but it hadn’t ventured much beyond my living room. It seemed like asking for trouble (too small, too unstable). Then I saw someone using a longer type of skateboard at my local park (I was throwing discus and frisbee left-handed at the time). I went on Amazon and found […]
Morality of Life and Death Morality is often presented as a list of commandments, imperatives, duties, requirements, rules. Among these we have the commandment not to kill—along with commandments not to steal, lie, betray, break promises, be ungrateful, etc. These are treated as much on a par; together they form a moral whole—a code, a […]
Pain, Consciousness, and Morality Consciousness (sentience) evolved at a certain time on planet Earth, many millions of years ago. It didn’t emerge all at once but piecemeal: a certain type of consciousness evolved first, with additions later. What was this type? We don’t know; we can only guess. What we do know is that, whatever […]
Coach Colin Redux I had an interesting experience yesterday. I arrived at the Biltmore tennis center for my daily practice and was confronted by a mob of high school students—not dressed in tennis gear. My first concern was whether this would interfere with my hitting session. As I parked my bicycle one of them, a […]
David Lewis I have in my possession a long letter from David Lewis replying to my paper “Modal Reality” (1981). Several years ago, I was contacted about this letter because no copy of it existed in Lewis’s files, but at that time I didn’t know where it was or even if it had survived. I […]
Romantic Harassment We hear a lot about sexual harassment these days, but not much about romantic harassment. Indeed, I just invented the phrase (and perhaps the concept). What is it? Suppose A falls in love with B and wants B to fall in love with him. He begins a series of efforts to secure this […]
Trumps How should we cope with Trump’s looming presidency? I think we need a conceptual switch: stop thinking of Trump as a man and start thinking of him instead as a disease. Trump is an epidemic that is sweeping the land. This disease has infected the minds of a great many people: they are suffering […]
Academic Freedom and Sex I apologize for discussing such a sordid subject. I don’t mean the subject of sex; I mean the threats to academic freedom this subject invites—from the right and the left. Nominally, we are all in favor of academic freedom, but that tolerance is apt to waver when sex is the topic. […]