Do We Have Access to Nonverbal Reality? Can Simple Writing Help Us Stick to the Truth?

In his very engagingly written, clear, and interesting book Winning Arguments, Stanley Fish beats up on poor old George Orwell. In his essay, “Politics and the English Language”, Orwell had argued that if we let words do our thinking for us then this will result in bad political consequences, such as fascism, because we will …

The Overlooked Dogmatism of Naturalism and Social Constructionism

I believe all sorts of things. I don’t know that I could offer philosophical arguments to support these beliefs that would satisfy anyone. But I believe things anyway. And I doubt the so-called evidentialists, who insist we must never belief on insufficient evidence, could provide sufficient evidence for many of their beliefs, including their own …

Dennett Offers a Reasonable, Commonsense Rejection of Rorty’s Alethic Relativism

I disagree with Daniel Dennett on consciousness and religion, but in this old article I think he offers a reasonable airing of common sense doubts about the limits and risks of Richard Rorty's brand of postmodern alethic relativism: Richard Rorty deserves his large and enthralled readership in the arts and humanities, and in the "humanistic" …