Quantification and Necessity What is the connection between quantification and necessity? At first sight none: if you make a singular statement of necessity such as “This table is necessarily made of wood” you express no general proposition; you speak simply of a particular table and a property of it. The statement seems […]
A Puzzle About Perception Here is a strange fact about the universe: nothing that can be perceived from the inside can be perceived from the outside, and nothing that can be perceived from the outside can be perceived from the inside. You feel an intense pain—you plainly perceive the pain—but no one […]
Reading Matter I made on attempt on the mountain of Don Quixote and made it to page 400. I don’t intend to reach the summit, though I enjoyed the climb. It’s just a bit too repetitive and the joke starts to wear thin. Still it has a certain impressive monomania about it. The knight […]
An Interactive Theory of Meaning Theories of meaning are apt to emphasize one or other aspect of what is conceived as a polarity: either meaning is constituted by features of the mind (the subject, the brain) or it is constituted by features of mind-independent reality (objects, the environment). Thus we have internalist […]
Another Philosopher’s Day[1] Wake from a dream (that might be reality) Penetrate the veil of perception Check that one is not a brain in a vat Receive the given Will one’s right arm to rise Harness mind to body by tinkering with the pineal Quantify over a few numbers Imbibe some wisdom […]
There is another interview with me on YouTube, this time with Thom Jump. It’s about the mind of God.
Godless Matter Berkeley’s philosophy is built around the insight that the existence of matter and the existence of God are incompatible.[1] If God exists, then matter does not; if matter exists, then God does not. This incompatibility is not obvious: offhand it appears that matter and God are compatible entities—a world could […]
Best At Doing Philosophy I found myself wondering who is the best at actually doing philosophy—the activity, the skill. I mean as judged by such criteria as cleverness, ingenuity, argumentative power, intellectual penetration, insight, polemical punch, sheer philosophical IQ. This is independent of correctness or quantity of output. Here is my answer: Descartes, […]
Psychologist Here is an extra oddity: I was originally trained as a psychologist not a philosopher. And I don’t mean a philosophical psychologist but an experimental psychologist. I used to be a scientist. I got my B.A. in psychology from Manchester University in 1971 (first class) and went on to do an M.A. […]
One thing is clear: Roger Federer loved tennis, and still does. He loves his wife for letting him play; he loves his friends for playing with him; he loves to hold a racket in his hands. That’s why he cried: because he was leaving tennis behind. It’s what gave his life meaning. Roger is tennis.