Knowing Minds What is the main thing that minds do? A survey of psychological (and philosophical) theories through the centuries suggests a variety of answers: copy, interpret, react, introspect, sense, repress, think, remember, reason, imagine, learn, believe, create, compute, process information, and no doubt others. Each of these might be proposed as the central operation […]
Skateboard Encounter The other day I was practicing skateboarding at my usual location—round the corner on a slight incline, around 5pm. Suddenly a red car drew up next to me and the driver opened the passenger side window. She said: “I see you every day as I’m driving home from work and I just want […]
Christmas With You I don’t care for jingle bells I’m not fond of the Christmas tree Santa Claus can go to hell I’d like to set his reindeer free I’m not one for turkey and stuffing I don’t love all that Christmas cheer Don’t give me carol huffing and puffing I don’t even […]
Is Belief Necessary for Knowledge? It has always seemed that the stipulation that belief is a necessary condition for knowledge is a touch unrealistic. One wants to say, “I don’t just believe it, I know it”. Belief goes with opinion, uncertainty, faith—but knowledge is a matter of being indisputably right, in the know (as we […]
Analyzing Knowledge We are familiar with Gettier problems, which bring out the insufficiency of the classic analysis of knowledge as true justified belief. But there are other problems with that analysis, centering on circularity. They question the pretensions of such an analysis to provide conditions that don’t presuppose the concept of knowledge but together add […]
Philosophy as Science, Literature, and Religion What kind of subject is philosophy? Is it a type of science? Is it a form of literature? Is it a religious calling? Or is it all three? I think it is all three: philosophy is a literary science touching on religious themes (among other things). Once this is […]
How to Take Your Cat to the Vet I wish to impart some practical advice concerning the cat-vet problem. It comes from bitter experience that I have reason to believe is common. It is designed to spare you and your cat from distress and injury. How do you get the cat in the carrier? First, […]
Consciousness and Evolution Evolution by natural selection is a gradual process, not a jumpy jerky one.[1] Small modifications not sudden leaps forward. Complex organs don’t spring into existence from nowhere as a result of spectacular random mutations. This basic Darwinian principle applies as much to the mind as the body. And it applies to consciousness […]
Moral Seeming In moral philosophy we find distinctions between moral language, moral psychology, and moral reality. Interrelations between these areas are explored. Moral psychology tends to dwell on questions about moral motivation—does it consist in moral beliefs, moral desires, or moral sentiments? I wish to add a further topic: what I call moral seeming.[1] There […]
Advice for Obituarists I have reached that point in life at which a man starts to wonder about his obituaries, and whether there will even be any. In my case cancellation might go that far. It’s a nasty question. In a close counterfactual world, I would be perfectly sanguine, given my life history; but as […]