Posts

Make It So

I have found an excellent way to fall asleep. The default is that at 9:00 p.m. I stop whatever I’ve been doing, usually working at the computer, and perform my evening ablutions. (It’s later if I’ve been out late.) Then I dim the lights and read a novel in the comfy chair by the bed until I can no longer keep my eyes open. At that point it’s all I can do to move to the bed. Sleep follows.  If instead I had stayed at the computer or got involved in some other activity with the lights on (not to mention, eaten a meal or drunk some coffee just before bedtime, etc.), sleep would have been indefinitely elusive, even if I were fatigued. But I’m an early to bed person because I like to get up early and well rested, so I have developed this method for inducing sleep.  But what I cannot do is will myself to sleep. I am sure you have had the common experience of needing to be up early the next morning and trying to get to sleep, to no avail. The method is actually counterproductive, as th
Read more

An Argument for Materialism

A philosopher (like a scientist) can never prove anything but only at best provide evidence or reasons for (or against) believing something. Nevertheless a philosopher, like anyone, can still believe things, and we philosophers in particular fancy that our beliefs are at least rational if not proven. To me this means simply that whatever we believe, we do so in light of careful reflection on the evidence and arguments adduced pro and con.  That is all preamble to my stating that I am a materialist, that   is, I believe that human beings are wholly physical animals; and so even our consciousness, which seems “nonphysical” and for which, frankly, there is still no adequate explanation, is either nothing but the firing of synapses in the brain or does not even exist in its own terms but is illusory. [1]   But how could I possibly believe such a thing, when the counterevidence seems to stare us in the face (almost literally)? Indeed, I know the pull of this (what I now believe to
Read more

How a Philosopher’s Mind Works, or, The Usefulness of Philosophy

For a long time I have conceived philosophy as the examination of assumptions that most people never question or are even aware of, especially the fundamental ones, such as that we have a mind or soul separate from our body or that we have free will or even that we exist at all. What philosophers then do is consider the reasons to believe or deny the assumption, and also whether the assumption might be reinterpreted. It is my considered view after a career in philosophy that none of these issues is ever decided once for all. Nevertheless I find value in the enterprise from the very turning of assumptions into questions, that is, issues about which people may reasonably disagree. This has the benign effect of supporting a greater mutual tolerance and respect among people who disagree even fundamentally.             A further benefit of – and way to characterize – philosophy is that it generates hypotheses. For by turning an assumption into a question, it in effect creates the hypothes
Read more

Rational Irrationality

For some time now I have been arguing that concepts are polysemous, which is to say that they have multiple meanings. I derive this claim from the common usage of terms, which seem to be referring to the same thing and yet have distinct, even conflicting meanings. I have argued that this is not always a case of mere homonymy but evidences the deep ambiguity of language and even thought. Nevertheless I need not press that strong claim in most cases, since the practical upshot may be the same either way: No matter whether due to homonymy or polysemy, ambiguity abounds, and it is often helpful to dispel it by the careful explication of what one means, that is, of how one is using a particular word.             Thus my general preface to the topic of this essay, which is rationality. I have already written much about what this concept means in its various meanings. See especially “ What Is It to be Rational? ” Right now I want only to add a peculiar case (which itself no doubt has severa
Read more

chatGPT R Us

first take: I am a materialist, by which I mean I believe that in the case of human beings in particular, there is no substance other than the physical body to account for our having a soul or mind or spirit – there is no “ghost in the machine.” Somehow the functioning of this brain and body in the context of a world and universe, which themselves contain no substance other than what we are accustomed to characterizing as physical, produces in us the impression of our having a soul or mind etc. It then becomes a matter of choice or utility whether we continue to posit the existence of souls and minds etc., albeit understood as not composed of any distinct substance from the body, or to banish them from our ontology, except as illusions or hallucinations or delusions.             Now let us consider the remarkable new AI phenom chatGPT. Apparently the fundamental operation that makes this app tick is as follows: Compile a humongous body of digitized text – for example, Wikipedia – an
Read more

Floaters

As one ages, black specks can appear in one’s visual field. These are called floaters. They are caused by bits of fiber detaching from the retina and are normally not a serious issue. A particularly large piece became noticeable to me not too long ago, like a little black spider hanging in the right periphery of my visual field. I went to a retinal specialist, who found no problem and said it might just stay there although after a while I wouldn’t even notice it anymore. Well, it’s still there, and I do still notice it occasionally. But it is even more on my mind than in my visual field. For the philosopher in me finds this commonplace phenomenon to be quite intriguing. The problem arises from how to speak about it. It seems perfectly natural for me to say that I see the floater. But wait a minute. Normally when we say we see something, we mean that we are looking at it with our eyes. More specifically, there are several conditions that need to be met, including: 1.       Our vis
Read more

Dialogue versus Dialectic

The basic instinct and behavior of analytic philosophers is to jump on the first expression of a thought by someone and start to clean it up … like a swarm of dung beetles attacking a newly deposited wad of scat. I now think this is a mistake. For one thing, in practical and social terms, it can immediately shut down meaningful dialogue between two interlocutors. Granted, for two analytic philosophers, it is a joyful activity, and may even be productive. But I submit, as an empirical hypothesis, that this approach to conversation serves with most people to shut them up or to wall them behind a wall of defensiveness, thereby aborting the development of a thought that could otherwise have been midwifed. But even more essentially – and this is my new thought now , which an analytic philosopher would be salivating to dissect and dismantle with counterexamples – I now view the activity as resting on a mistaken worldview. By “world” here I mean the world of our experience, the world as
Read more