Being and Doing Two highly general concepts run through the history of philosophy (and science): being and doing. They shape how the subject is conceptualized, yet they don’t tend to be considered in their own right. It is true that both concepts are hard to articulate, and their interrelations are obscure. Here I will describe […]
Coco played beautifully and thoroughly deserved her win. But the weakness in her forehand is undeniable (and frequently commented upon). By contrast her backhand is solid as a rock and very powerful. Why the difference? Because she uses a two-handed backhand and a one-handed forehand: she obviously gets help from her left hand on the […]
Metaphysical Necessity Reexamined When Kripke introduced the phrase “metaphysical necessity” in Naming and Necessity he didn’t say much about the nature of this type of necessity beyond distinguishing it from the a priori and so-called epistemic necessity. These are his words: “The second concept which is in question is that of necessity. Sometimes this is […]
Easy Cosmology It took over 2000 years to discover the correct cosmology: the one formulated by Isaac Newton. The features of this cosmology include a heliocentric solar system, a moving earth (diurnal and annual), a unified theory of terrestrial and celestial motion, a universal force of gravity, elliptical orbits, and an account of moons, comets, […]
Yesterday the Stones released their first album of original material in 18 years. I watched the video of the new single “Angry With Me” and am happy to report that it is a triumph. The record rocks. Good drumming, great guitar licks, and Mick in fine voice. The video stars the incomparable Sydney Sweeney who […]
An Argument Against Skepticism The skeptic claims that we are wrong to credit ourselves with knowledge. Our belief that we possess knowledge is a false belief: we make an error when we ascribe knowledge to ourselves. But why do we make this error? On this question the skeptic is strangely silent: we are not told […]
Astronomy, Mysticism, and Mechanism Astronomy has always been linked with mysticism. The gods of the sun, moon, and stars; the belief in astrology; the supposed geometrical perfection of celestial motions; the Empyrean Heaven; the spiritual meaning of celestial phenomena; the awe inspired by the “starry heavens” (Kant); the assumption of a superlunary realm of being […]
Novels Someone once described my first novel Bad Patches as a “punk existentialist” novel. I thought this an apt description. Written in the early Eighties, when punk was still alive and kicking in the UK (“Anarchy In”), the central character, Dave Green, is abrasive, abusive, resentful, unpleasant to be around, and generally repellent—though not without […]
Einstein and Hume It is well known that Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was influenced by his reading of Hume’s Treatise. People sometimes applaud this for revealing Einstein’s openness to philosophy. To me it suggests a different lesson. Einstein will have read Hume from the perspective of contemporary positivism, interpreting him accordingly. A.J. Ayer also […]
Easy and Hard Problems It has become customary to speak of “the hard problem of consciousness” and “easy problems [of consciousness]”. I think this is an unhelpful way to talk; it is too simple-minded. In the first place, we should not say that consciousness itself is a hard problem; rather, its relation to the brain […]