Our words' relationship to reality is far more complicated than we realize. Thus, when we say things we think we state facts but we also endorse certain uses of words. That has consequences, which causes public discourse to become a war zone where we fight for control over our common pool of mental and social equipment. Read more (13 min, 3300 words).
In response to an article by Kevin Simler I complain about how often people mistake "selfishness" in an evolutionary sense for selfishness in the normal sense. Read more (12 min, 2900 words).
We feel there should be a clear answer to the question of whether some thing exists or not. I argue that often there isn't, because follwing our self-contradictory intuitions leads us to weird places. Instead we should interpret talk about what exists as talk about how we best represent the world. Read more (12 min, 3100 words)
Part 7 of a series adapted from my 2009 Bachelor's Thesis in philosophy. This last part is a summary and some thoughts on how to deal with the problems described in the series, why a hardline attitude is counterproductive and how we want freedom and responsibility to be metaphysically real. Also criticism from present-me. Read more (15 min, 3700 words)
Part 6 of a series adapted from my 2009 Bachelor's Thesis in philosophy. The reasons why the traditional view persists when prescientific thinking on other topics often doesn’t: freedom and responsibility. Read more (9 min, 2300 words)
Part 5 of a series adapted from my 2009 Bachelor's Thesis in philosophy. I discuss some examples of people expressing a quasi-mystical view of the self online. Read more (8 min, 2100 words)
Part 4 of a series adapted from my 2009 Bachelor's Thesis in philosophy. It discusses some scientific disciplines with bearing on the self, and how their results are interpreted differently by the traditional paradigm vs. the scientific. Read more (11 min, 2700 words)
Part 3 of a series adapted from my 2009 Bachelor's Thesis in philosophy. A sketch of a naturalist view of the self, assembled from background assumptions in the physical sciences. Read more (17 min, 4300 words)
Part 2 of a series adapted from my 2009 Bachelor's Thesis in philosophy. Describes the traditional view of the self, using the philosopher C.A. Campbell as a representative. Read more (11 min, 2800 words)
An adaptation of my 2009 Bachelor's Thesis in philosophy about how scientific statements about the self and the will are interpreted differently inside and outside science, with dangerous consequences. Part 1 of 7. Read more (4 min, 900 words)
Everything Studies 