A quote from Lewis Carroll 11 Jun 202411 Jun 2024 Well, it’s actually from Charles Dodgson’s The Game of Logic 1887: The world contains many Things (such as “Buns”, “Babies”, “Beetles”, “Battledores”, &c.) ; and the Things possess many Attributes (such as “baked”, “beautiful”, “black”, “broken”, &c: in fact, whatever can be “attributed to”, that is “said to belong to”, any Thing, is an Attribute). Whenever we wish to mention a Thing, we use a Substantive : when we wish to mention an Attribute, we use an Adjective. People have asked the question “Can a Thing exist without any Attributes belonging to it?” It is a very puzzling question, and I’m not going to try to answer it : let us turn up our noses, and treat it with contemptuous silence, as if it really wasn’t worth noticing. But, if they put it the other way, and ask “Can an Attribute exist without any Thing for it to belong to?”, we may say at once “No: no more than a Baby could go a railway-journey with no one to take care of it ! ” You never saw “beautiful” floating about in the air, or littered about on the floor, without any Thing to be beautiful, now did you ? Chapter 1, §1, page 2 The really lovely thing here, apart from the wonderful alliteration [“Buns”, “Babies”, “Beetles”, and “Battledores” is my new band name] is that Dodgson gives, in one paragraph, a summary of metaphysics, philosophy of language, and logical classification. The rest of the book is pretty good too. Logic and philosophy Metaphysics Philosophy
Biology Domains, disciplines and levels 10 Aug 201110 Aug 2011 I have to get this out of my head so I can go do some real work (like finding some real work). Next time someone wants me to do metaphysics, they better come armed with a cheque. So if, as I have argued, reduction is one-layered in ontological terms, however… Read More
Epistemology Tautology 7: Conclusions 6 Sep 2009 So to finish, I will repeat the conclusion, and then make some comments on Fodor’s attack on “Darwinism”. Here is the complete series: The tautology problem Tautology 1a: corrections Tautology 1b: Butler Tautology 2: The problem arises Tautology 3: The problem spreads Tautology 4: What is a tautology? Tautology 5a:… Read More
Philosophy Latest developments on the Synthese affair 6 Apr 2013 Readers will recall that a couple of years ago, Synthese published a special issue on evolution that carried a scandalous disclaimer by the editors in chief that the papers included were not up to par. I had a paper in that edition. One of the editors in chief, Gualteiro Piccini, has… Read More