Knowledge of the mind and knowledge of the brain (2007)

This is the text of the 3rd ‘Brain and Mind’ public lecture in the University of Copenhagen, given in April 2007. I argue that the problem of consciousness is not a result of ignorance, but of confusion; we will not understand consciousness by coming to know some extra fact, but by re-arranging what we already know. In particular, reflection on consciousness shows that it is not a simple quality which attaches to every conscious state, and that it is therefore unlikely that it will be explained by being ‘correlated’ with a simple neural quality.

The Rector of the University, Ralf Hemmingsen, was there, and reported it on his blog. Responsible for the whole event was Dan Zahavi, director of the University’s excellent Center for Subjectivity Research. According to the BBC, the Danes are the happiest people in Europe. Spending time in Copenhagen in the spring can give you some idea why.

Why Humanism? (2007)

This is my Bentham Lecture, given at UCL in November 2007. The Bentham lecture is an annual event, sponsored by the UCL Philosophy Department and the British Humanist Association. I thought I would take this opportunity to criticise (from an atheist’s point of view) some aspects of contemporary humanism: its tendency to see itself as an alternative to a religion as a world view; its exaggeration of the role played by religion as the cause of the world’s problems; its insistence that religion is irrational and not merely false; and its exaggeration of the importance of cosmological belief, both as a part of religion and as part of the response to it.

I argue that rather than taking the combative attitude which many humanists do, we should tolerate the religious, so long as they obey the rule of law. This is not because their views are necessarily worthy of respect, but because we should be trying to achieve what John Gray calls ‘a type of toleration whose goal is not truth but peace’.

Some people told me afterwards that none of the ideas I attributed to humanism are really essential to it, and that the BHA was (as I had urged it should be) only a pressure group, not a defender of a world view.

If humanism is not one thing, then this would explain why I found so many bad ideas among the good ones. But the bad ones are there, written down in the name of humanism, and my lecture provides some of the evidence.

Wine as an Aesthetic Object (2007)

This is my contribution to Barry C. Smith’s wonderful collection Questions of Taste (Signal Books 2007). The book arose out of a one-day conference he and I organised at the Institute of Philosophy in London in 2004. The essays by Roger Scruton, Kent Bach and Barry himself were presented at the conference. But the book also contains a wide range of essays by other excellent writers, including Jamie Goode (the wine anorak). The book also has a foreword by Jancis Robinson, one of the world’s leading wine writers, who studied philosophy and maths at Oxford.

In my essay I claim that it is wrong to say that a great wine is a work of art; though it is, in an obvious sense, an aesthetic object. Nonetheless, the appreciation of wine has something in common with the appreciation of music.

Excess (2004)

I wrote this for the luxurious journal The World of Fine Wine in 2004. My question was: what is the connection between being interested in wine and getting drunk? Someone who read the enormous wine literature might be forgiven for thinking that there was no connection at all. But would we be so interested in wine if it tasted exactly the same and yet did not intoxicate? I doubt it. Even excess, I claim, can be an integral part of the whole business -- though only in moderation. This article owes a lot to Mike Ratledge, as anyone who knows him will be able to tell.

The Soul (2004)

This is the text of my inaugural lecture as Professor at UCL in 2004. It was intended to communicate to a nonspecialist audience (I’m not sure whether it was successful in this). It has not been published. The lecture outlines and defends the importance of the Aristotelian concept of substance for understanding the mind and its place in nature.

Philosophy and Wine (2003)

This was published in Harpers magazine (the wine and spirit trade magazine, not the wordy American monthly). Wine is a good example to illustrate the problem of how to relate the scientific description of the world to its phenomenological description. Thanks to Tim Atkin for the encouragement to ramble on in this way. This is the only one of my articles which has been illustrated by Ralph Steadman. Much more professional things have now been written about this theme by Barry Smith (see above).

Obituary of David Lewis (2001)

An edited version was published in The Independent on the 23rd October 2001.

On this page are some thing I have written which are either outside my main areas of research, or which have not otherwise been published.