Some of these are fairly lame, I admit. And some are clever but opaque to the philosophically uninitiated. See if you can figure them out before I explain any of them. (I wouldn’t want to spoil a good joke with premature commentary.) Don’t put Descartes before the horse. One day Descartes walked into a pub… Read More »
I’m currently reading Quentin Smith’s book Language and Time, in chapter 1 of which he has a nice argument against a certain kind of skepticism (pp. 14-18). His argument runs as follows. Is it ever reasonable for you to believe something just because it seems true to you and, so far as you are aware,… Read More »
So far as I am aware, all philosophers agree that if it rains on a particular Tuesday then it will be the case every day thereafter that it rained on that particular Tuesday. If we let P stand for “it was the case that …”, F stand for “it will be the case that …”,… Read More »
Whenever someone says that something is relative–whether it be morality, truth, velocity, the color of emeralds, or what have you–you should always ask the question, “relative to what?” There are as many ways for something to be relative as there as ways to answer that question. For example, some people think that morality (by which… Read More »
Self-proclaimed “Maverick Philosopher” William Vallicella brought to my attention the following paradox: ‘Neologism’ is not a new word, but an old word. Hence, ‘neologism’ is not a neologism. ‘Paleologism’ is not a word at all; or at least it is not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. But it ought to be, so I hereby… Read More »