Metaphysical Taxonomy What are the most fundamental kinds of things in nature? What are the ultimate natural kinds? A glance at the history of human thought reveals three recurring suggestions: mathematical, material, and mental—the three M’s. Some thinkers have picked one category as basic: Pythagoras picked mathematics, Hobbes picked matter, Berkeley picked mind—along with countless […]
How Old Am I? Today I am 74 years old. But am I? Is it that simple? Maybe the referent of my “I” is younger, if new selves grow during a single life, or possibly a little older if we go back to the womb (that’s when I started aging). How old is my body, […]
Is Immaterialism the True Materialism? I will argue for a position that may strike readers as willfully paradoxical—that immaterialism is closer to the spirit of materialism than materialism is. That is, what is officially called “materialism” violates the essence of what is distinctive about the philosophical position so named, and that the doctrine called “immaterialism” […]
On Not Knowing What it is Like We have picked up the habit of saying that we don’t know what it is like to be a bat, and this feeds into skepticism about materialism.[1] But we don’t stop and ask what kind of ignorance this is—about the nature or analysis of the type of knowledge […]
I’m interested to see that Poland has suddenly entered the rankings on this website at number 2, following the USA at number 1 and then the UK. I wonder whether any Polish visitors would care to tell me why–I’m curious.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of giving a lecture by Zoom to a group of philosophers in Budapest. It was the first lecture I have given in over ten years (I wonder why). I spoke on the topic of personal identity, and it is true that I don’t feel like I am the same person […]
Meaningless Names If an expression has meaning, it should be possible to say what that meaning is. Meaning should not be something ineffable. Dictionaries say what meaning is—they specify the meaning of words. But they don’t contain names (or very few).[1] What would they look like if they did? They would certainly be extremely long: […]
Things I Can Do Intellectual (in descending order of competence): philosophy, psychology, economics, linguistics, biology, physics, chemistry, literature, film. Novelist and short story writer. Athletic: tennis, table tennis, squash, badminton, football, cricket, basketball, gymnastics, pole vault, discus, trampoline, swimming, diving, kayaking, surfing, windsurfing, kiteboarding, skim boarding, skiing, ice skating, bowling, knife throwing, darts, archery, weightlifting, […]
Dictionaries and Meaning Let’s stipulate that a theory of meaning is a specification of the meanings of all words, phrases, and sentences of a language.[1] If we knew that, we would know what meaning is, presumably. What form should such a theory take? I will suggest that it should take the form of a dictionary. […]
Psychological Economics Economics tells us the relationship between supply, demand, and price: the higher the supply the lower the price; the higher the demand the higher the price; the higher the price the higher the supply; the lower the price the higher the demand. But what are supply, demand, and price? If by supply we […]