Blindsight and Empiricism Imagine a person with blindsight in every sense: no conscious perceptual experience at all but able to receive information subconsciously from the external world. This person nevertheless has ordinary fully conscious reason: she is capable of forming beliefs that count as knowledge in virtue of the informational input. It would […]
Saying and Showing Wittgenstein famously introduced the distinction between saying and showing in the Tractatus. I won’t be concerned with his treatment of the distinction, either by way of interpretation or evaluation; but I will be using the terminology. I want to say that every speech act includes an act of showing, […]
Time and Truth Truth relates to time in an interesting way: once a fact obtains a corresponding proposition is instantaneously true. On the one hand is a fact, say the fact that it just started raining at a certain place, while on the other is a proposition (a belief or assertion), say that […]
Action As Externalization The causal theory of action says that actions consist of a causal link between an inner mental state (a reason, an intention, a willing) and a piece of behavior (an arm rising, flicking the switch). The mental state causes the behavior in the same way a tap on the knee […]
Perception As Internalization We have become accustomed to thinking of perception as a type of causal relation, sharing its logical (metaphysical) features. As earthquakes cause buildings to collapse, so external objects cause experiences to occur. Cause and effect are external to each other; neither is contained in the other. But this picture fails […]
Ed Erwin Again It’s nice to receive two laudatory messages about Ed Erwin from Michael Tooley and Alan Goldman, both old colleagues of Ed’s at Miami (now posted under my brief notice of his death in May 2022). I observe, however, that neither the Brian Leiter blog nor Daily Nous has posted any notice […]
Concepts and Philosophical Puzzlement Michael Dummett has suggested that philosophical puzzlement is caused by our “imperfect mastery” of our concepts (he is by no means the only person to think this way).[1] He gives the example of the concepts past and future: we understand these concepts well enough to make judgments about […]
What is Mathematics About? Various suggestions have been made about this question: mathematics is about symbols, or mental constructions, or abstract Platonic entities. We can also ask what physics is about and expect a variety of answers: the sensations of the physicist, mind-independent material bodies, an all-pervading consciousness, abstract structure. In the […]
Extended Ban A thought occurs to me: would other university administrators take a similar line? I have to admit that the idea that I would ever be forbidden to attend an academic gathering never entered my head, but that is the reality I now face. So far as I know it is unprecedented. But […]
Banned I recently expressed an interest in attending colloquia at the University of Miami, where I used to teach (I live nearby). I was told by the chairman, Professor Mark Rowlands, that I was banned from campus at the direction of university administrators. No reason was given. There was no protest from members of […]