Beyond Necessity

The Maverick Philosopher  links to a global warming article by a Harvard Physics professor. The gist of it is that the current “climate cru...

I read through chapter X of Isaac Watts’ Philosophical Essays , where he talks about light from stars. My memory was bad: it is nothing to d...

Hunting through the internet to find something about Hubble's constant I found something on Olbers' paradox.  The Wikipedia article ...

I reply to the third of the four arguments  for direct reference.  The argument was that definition proceeds by genus and specific differen...

To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are ...

I've been quiet for a few days, but with good reason: my phone line has gone down.  British Telecom have a helpful booklet including a n...

Here’s an example I love, and which illustrates my problem with sceptics who are too keen on ‘argument from authority’. There's more abo...

I continue to be perplexed by the strange hypothesis of Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz which I discussed yesterday . Namely that the early middle ...

I nearly bought a Fortean Times today (surprisingly our newsagent keeps a number of copies in his shelf) but resisted the temptation.  What ...

Vallicella of Phoenix has an interesting and worthwhile series of posts on the burden of proof, of which the latest is here . In that, he wr...

I reply to the second  argument of the four arguments for direct reference. The argument was that a name cannot be significant or intelligi...

And here is another interesting paper by Greg Frost-Arnold, “ Too much reference ”. He considers the case in some way opposite to empty sin...

I just spotted this excellent post from May 2008, by philosopher Greg Frost-Arnold. He says that, in negative free logic (a variety of whic...

I reply to the first argument of the four arguments for direct reference .  The argument was that a proper name does not signify something ...

I've been away for a week.  Now I am back, and it is time to review the arguments for direct reference that we considered earlier, and t...

Tractatus 5.5303 - "Roughly speaking, to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is id...

Ex -climate scientist William Connolley questions  the logic of an earlier post, saying that I'm not really sure exactly what claim ab...

Today is May 26, the anniversary of my namesake William of Ockham's flight from Avignon after a dispute with the Pope about Franciscan p...

I had a mild disagreement with climate scientist William Connolley here  on my use of the term 'plagiarism'.  He objected that the a...

Yes really .  You can tell it's the internet because someone has commented "that's an awesome argument" and puts a smiley...