American Psyche Suppose you wanted to explain why it is that people in America speak English. America is far from England and its native people were not English speakers. The obvious answer is that Americans speak the language of the British immigrants who founded the country. They spoke English and their descendants […]
Cosmic Compression Many a student of cosmology reels at the idea of the universe squeezed into a tiny dense point. How could all the matter (and space!) of the known universe be condensed into such a point? There is just too much of it! Our student is not bemused by another feat of […]
Big Bang Metaphysics Metaphysics typically deals with the universe as it now exists: material objects, space, time, mind, moral values, and so on. But it wasn’t always like that: at the time of the big bang it was very different and didn’t include any of those things. Shouldn’t there also be a […]
Reply to Michael Huemer I had hoped to send this reply to Huemer by email but the department website apparently blocks email sent to faculty (I have no idea why). So with some reluctance I am posting it here in the hope that it comes to his attention. Dear Professor Huemer, I […]
Is the World Vague? Either the world is intrinsically vague or our words and concepts are but the world is not. We say that “bald” is a vague predicate and bald is a vague concept. We don’t mean they are vague as such—that the predicate is a vague linguistic entity and the concept […]
Skeptical Certainty There is something of a paradox at the heart of skepticism. On the one hand, we are told that we can have no certainty with respect to a certain subject matter (the external world, other minds, etc.), no adequate justification, and no knowledge—that all such epistemic claims are false. On […]
Is Gravity a Mystery? Gravity was certainly viewed as a mystery upon its introduction into the learned world, on account of its action-at-a-distance powers. How can one body affect another across great distances without any connecting medium? But that is not the aspect of gravity I want to focus on; my concern […]
Readers may wish to read an interview I recently did with Andrew van Wagner called “Is Philosophy Useful?” It’s on substack and is easily googled.
Organs and Organisms At first sight the distinction between organs and organisms looks clear and principled: an organism is an individual animal or plant while an organ is a functional part of an organism. An organ functions on behalf of an organism while an organism functions only on behalf of itself. But […]
Creativity and Humor I will discuss two topics that have defied attempts at clarification. Perhaps if we put them together we will shed some reciprocal light. Humor is clearly creative, but is creativity humorous? If it is the connection is not immediate, but it is noteworthy that creative people tend also to […]