Driving and Abortion It is legal to drive. But driving causes death. So if we are pro-life, we should be anti-driving. Therefore driving should be made illegal. Moreover, drivers know the risks they run by driving—there is a non-zero probability that they will kill someone in an accident—so it is unethical of them […]
Abortion and the Body We hear it argued that a woman has the right to abort her unborn baby because she has a right to choose what happens to her own body. This is a bad argument. First, it begs the question: an opponent will insist that the fetus is not part […]
Philosophy as Surgery The other day I was discussing a medical matter with my son, who is a surgeon, and he remarked, “I would take a knife to it”. The remark stuck with me and I began wondering if philosophy bears any analogy to surgery. Do we in philosophy ever “take a […]
Two Types of Empiricism Type I empiricism says that all knowledge comes through the five senses. Type II empiricism says that all knowledge derives from experience. Neither entails the other. The senses could be the sole source of knowledge without being conduits of experience: the process might be entirely physical-causal, or proceed […]
[1] This doesn’t mean there is nothing “erotic” about the unconscious: there is room for the erotic in all sorts of personal relations, and indeed in the joys of discovery (“Eureka!”). In psychoanalysis the erotic is understood as the “life force” (anima in Plato) and contrasted with Thanatos (the “death instinct”). We can preserve this […]
Social Cognition and the Unconscious It is generally recognized in psychology that a good deal of problem solving goes on unconsciously. We can solve problems as we sleep with no expression of this mental activity in consciousness. This can happen with scientific problems, mathematical problems, literary problems, and practical problems of various kinds. […]
Completely Empty Names It is time we faced up to some uncomfortable truths about proper names. There have been two theories about them, neither very intuitive, commonly known as the description theory and the direct reference theory. The two theories are radically opposed to each other and each faces formidable difficulties. The […]
[1] But as soon as he created the predicate “bachelor” (along with its usual meaning) he was up to his neck in analytic necessities. God made names for the convenience of Adam and Eve (they were somewhat lacking in the omniscience department—don’t ask me why), but he had no intention of endowing them with semantic […]
Naming and Contingency Let’s accept that names have no meaning, as a distinguished tradition contends.[1] They may have a reference or denotation but they have no sense or connotation. Names lack “descriptive content” and are not synonymous with definite descriptions. Predicates are alien to their semantic functioning. They belong to a different […]
[1] The concepts of particular and universal are theoretical concepts introduced to perform an explanatory role. They are not found fully formed in our ordinary conceptual scheme. They should therefore be evaluated in terms of their theoretical utility, which may trump any feeling of metaphysical repugnance they evoke. It is notable that they pull in […]