A Puzzle About Perception Here is a strange fact about the universe: nothing that can be perceived from the inside can be perceived from the outside, and nothing that can be perceived from the outside can be perceived from the inside. You feel an intense pain—you plainly perceive the pain—but no one […]
An Interactive Theory of Meaning Theories of meaning are apt to emphasize one or other aspect of what is conceived as a polarity: either meaning is constituted by features of the mind (the subject, the brain) or it is constituted by features of mind-independent reality (objects, the environment). Thus we have internalist […]
Godless Matter Berkeley’s philosophy is built around the insight that the existence of matter and the existence of God are incompatible.[1] If God exists, then matter does not; if matter exists, then God does not. This incompatibility is not obvious: offhand it appears that matter and God are compatible entities—a world could […]
Best At Doing Philosophy I found myself wondering who is the best at actually doing philosophy—the activity, the skill. I mean as judged by such criteria as cleverness, ingenuity, argumentative power, intellectual penetration, insight, polemical punch, sheer philosophical IQ. This is independent of correctness or quantity of output. Here is my answer: Descartes, […]
Psychologist Here is an extra oddity: I was originally trained as a psychologist not a philosopher. And I don’t mean a philosophical psychologist but an experimental psychologist. I used to be a scientist. I got my B.A. in psychology from Manchester University in 1971 (first class) and went on to do an M.A. […]
