Can There Be a Theory of Meaning? I will do what is never done: list all the important properties of meaning, in no particular order. First, meaning is combinatorial: meanings combine to form phrase-like and sentence-like structures. Second, meanings are world-correlated: they refer, link to reality, represent how things are. Third, they are use-determining: what […]
Performance Philosophy There is one aspect of being a philosophy professor that I don’t miss: the performance aspect. I mean the giving of lectures and conference presentations. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t much like it either. It doesn’t mesh with the essential work of being a philosopher, i.e., thinking, reading, and writing. You […]
A parody of the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun. Here Comes the Sun Again Here comes the sun again Smiling its salesman’s smile Sun, you are so seductive You want to hold me for a while Oh sun, you’re irresistible How can I turn you away When I feel your warmth on my face […]
I’m reading Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics and figured I needed to write a road song (compare Route 66). A Road Song I got my foot on the gas I got my hands on the wheel I’m heading down to Miami To seal the deal I’m a real estate broker If you really want to […]
This paper follows on from “The Cruel Gene” and “Pain and Unintelligent Design” on this blog. Evolution of Pain Pain has evolved over many millions of years. Presumably it had primitive forms that were subjected to natural selection. It was honed and whittled, modified and amplified. There are now several species of pain, each […]
Rejecting the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction If we cannot make sense of the idea of a synthetic truth, it looks as if we have to reject the analytic-synthetic distinction (the reverse of post-Quine orthodoxy).[1] There is nothing coherent for the concept of analytic truth to contrast with (a genuine distinction requires meaningful things to be distinct). Yet […]
Are There Synthetic Truths? There is a tradition, stemming from Quine (but not pre-dating him), claiming that the concept of analytic truth is undefined, or ill-defined, so that the analytic-synthetic distinction cannot be made sense of; accordingly, there are only synthetic truths. I think this is the opposite of the truth. Nothing is true but […]
The recent debacle involving the presidents of three top American universities is symptomatic of a deeper and more widespread malaise. The moral obtuseness and intellectual ineptitude of these three women is just part of a general degradation in American universities and intellectual life. I won’t go into the causes of this, but what appalls me […]
Consciousness, Paralysis, and Functionalism Paralysis has been regularly used to defeat behaviorism and its descendant functionalism. How can the mind consist of behavior if paralysis is consistent with having a mind? The objection is clear and strong: paralysis shows that behavior is not required for consciousness to exist. To have a conscious state is not […]
Macro and Micro Necessity A curious fact of necessity studies: although necessity is liberally spoken of, its extent is rarely tabulated. We find reference to necessities involving people and items of furniture (and the occasional cat) but little in the way of mapping the full distribution of necessities in the world, or their interconnections. We […]