The Splintered Mind

What is "experimental philosophy"? There is, I think, some tension in how philosophers use the term -- tension between a narrow a...

I have long advocated a dispositional approach to belief (e.g., here ). But I have been cagey about trying to extend that account to other ...

My oral presentation to the Neuphi group at Tufts, here .

Most recent Anglophone philosophers appear to favor what I will call architectural accounts of the attitudes. On such accounts, what is es...

If you're in the Boston area, you're welcome to come to my talk at Harvard tomorrow (Thursday) and/or at Tufts on Friday. Thursday...

I woke this morning to find my Facebook feed full of reminders to "never forget" the September 11 terrorist attacks. I am reminde...

From a certain perspective, current liberal Western civilization seems to be a moral pinnacle. We have rejected slavery. We have substantial...

Philosophers typically think of belief as one thing and desire as quite another. Beliefs, for example, represent the world as it is; desires...

A major sociological divide in recent Anglophone philosophy is the divide between philosophers who see themselves as working in the traditio...

Charity sounds like a good thing. And it sounds like a good thing when reading the history of philosophy. If a philosopher seems to be incoh...

(collaborative with Alan Moore ) It occurs to me to doubt whether the external world exists -- that is, whether anything exists other than...

As fans of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy well know, the Vogons are an evil alien race who use their hideous poetry to torture priso...

If the universe is infinite, either in space or time, or if there is an infinite number of finite universes, or if there is even one actuall...

Different classical Chinese philosophers have drawn different amounts of discussion in the Anglophone world over the past seventy years.  I ...

If contemporary analytic philosophers are to believed, "propositional attitudes" are a central feature of mentality, perhaps the c...

One of the highest forms of recognition a philosopher in the U.S. can receive is the presidency of an APA division. Lists of the APA divisi...

Ethics professors don't appear to behave any better than do non-ethicists. (See here for my most recent work on this topic, collaborati...

Regular readers will have noticed over the past year a so a variety of posts on group consciousness.  I have finally synthesized my thoughts...

I just came across this passage in Karl Schroeder 's science fiction novel Sun of Suns  (from a conversation between high-tech engineer ...

In 2007 , I analyzed data on student charitable giving at University of Zurich, broken down by major.  When paying registration fees, studen...

Imagine this change to  Macbeth:  Macbeth kills King Duncan and some other inconvenient people, he feels briefly anxious and guilty, and the...

(by guest blogger  Carrie Figdor ) I've discussed growing public anger and confusion about science, and the role of scientists , the ...