Jerry Fodor

I’m in a pout about this book; I’m conflicted. On the one hand, there are several respects in which it seems to me to be very good. Mithen knows a great deal and he writes well by the received standards of cognitive science (which are not daunting). So his book is both edifying and a pleasure to read. If you’re in the market for a summary of what’s known (a little) and...

“Here’s the basic idea. One drops the traditional thesis that necessary propositions are linguistic or conceptual, and one substitutes a metaphysical account of necessity. Philosophy is to recognise not just the actual world we live in but also a plethora of ‘possible worlds’. The actual world is itself possible, of course; but so, too, is the world that’s just like this one except that Mr James (a domestic feline who’s currently having a nap) is awake and chasing mice. Similarly, there are worlds that are just like ours except that there’s nobody in them, and worlds just like ours except that everybody is in them except President Bush. Likewise there are (brave, new) worlds in which I get Foucault’s royalties and he gets mine. And so on.”

Wagner’s operas in general, and the Ring cycle in particular, have been goading the criticising classes into print for a century and a half, with still no end in sight, but the sacrifice of all those trees has produced very little in the way of a critical consensus; not even on such basic matters as what the Ring is about. Many of the enthusiasts I know hold that there really...

The philosophical novel is a well-established genre. Comp. Lit. 102: readings in Dostoevsky, Kafka, Mann, Gide, Sartre (and Martin Amis if time permits); little or no philosophical sophistication required. In the paradigmatic instances, the form is used to show how things look when viewed from the perspective of some or other philosophical assumptions, the philosophy itself being exemplified...

‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ Stanley was spot on: it was Dr Livingstone. Elsewise his presuming so wouldn’t have become the stuff of legend. A question suggests itself: how did he manage to presume so cleverly? Of all the things that Stanley might have presumed, how did he hit on the one that was both pertinent and true? Why didn’t he presume Queen Victoria, for...