In this entry I want to take issue with some of my otherwise-fellow travellers on their understanding of science. On two fronts. The first is about something they call ‘the scientific method’. And the second is about what they think… Read More ›
ontology
FROM THE LET’S-SETTLE-THIS-ONCE-AND-FOR-ALL FILE: THE TRANS ISSUE
If, as its etymology suggests, by ontology were meant the study of being, it wouldn’t have much to say, because being is an unanalysable primitive. That is, if you don’t know what it is for something to be, then I… Read More ›
ONTOLOGY – FIFTH INSTALMENT
V. OCCAM’S RAZOR AND ATOMISM The core axiom driving any cognitive system is to treat like alike. So naturally, whenever there’s such an option, the mind would prefer to think that things are, at some fundamental level, alike, so they… Read More ›
ONTOLOGY – FOURTH INSTALMENT
IV. IN PRINCIPLE VERSUS EPISTEMIC So we’ve decided that ‘being’ is itself an unanalysable primitive, but an enabler concept nonetheless. And we’ve decided that by kind of being we mean a closed set of causal relations. So there can really… Read More ›
ONTOLOGY (continued)
II. BEING By ontology-full-stop is meant the study of being. Well that’s not very helpful, now is it? So try this. Of the things that are, as distinct from those that aren’t, what exactly are the former busy doing that… Read More ›
ONTOLOGY
This is the first in a series of entries on ontology, by which is meant the study of being. What about being? Well, for one thing what it is to be. For another, what kinds of being are there? And,… Read More ›
The Myth of Civilian Immunity — Why There ‘Could’ Be No Such Law —
Abstract. Busting the myth of civilian immunity has long since been standard, albeit unpalatable, philosophical fare. But such myth-busting has invariably appealed to either a) Hobbes’ argument for the incoherence of the very idea of international law, or else b)… Read More ›
CHARLES DARWIN AND DAVID LEWIS
I’m not sure we needed Charles Darwin to alert us to this tautology: Things that persist over time do and things that don’t don’t. I’m not sure this explains anything, but yes, a Monarch butterfly keeps its markings over the… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 