I was just watching Jimmy Kimmel in which people were asked which of the above they preferred. Some people preferred one, others preferred the other. No one knew they were the same. Sense and reference! Who said analytical philosophy isn’t useful?

The recent collapse of this psychological theory is not even a bit surprising. Five minutes thought could have persuaded anyone that this was yet another rickety psychological concoction. But people are gullible and will believe virtually anything if a psychologist tells them it is so. I gave up psychology over forty years ago because of methodological problems (among other reasons). Philosophers, in particular, should not accept uncritically what psychologists claim to have discovered.

It could be argued that philosophy has always had suicidal tendencies. In the age of logical positivism philosophy tried to kill itself. Philosophy is a nuisance, a headache, a source of misery. I don’t think philosophy will ever die of natural causes (though science might). It is too pressing. But I can see that its practitioners might try to put an end to it. That could succeed, as a matter of institutional reality. That would be a bad thing, but bad things happen.

Every day I wake up and think how bizarre it is that I am not teaching at a university. I feel like Alice–I’ve entered an alternative reality that makes no sense.