• Philosophy of Mind

Ned Block first got me interested in pure philosophy.  He taught a class called:  Minds and Machines.  The philosophy of mind is the crux and crucible of all philosophy.  From instrospection, one works outwards.  One searches for truth.

  • Philosophy of Language

If you are going to say something true, you need a language to say it in.  So it turns out there are a lot of interesting and deeply philosophical things you can say about language. Naturally, you need to start from first principles and to consider every conceivable language.  You need to approach it from the first person point of view.  But then you need to figure out what Saul Kripke was doing and why his musings turned everything upside down!

Practical Philosophy

Truly large scale conditional contracts can be used to replace government for just about everything.  It is ridiculous that we haven't all gotten together and pledged 25 cents per year for the rest of our lives in order to fund Wikipedia.

When I woke up the day after the election and heard Al Gore had lost the presidency, the thought struck me - bam! - really, it wouldn't be too bad because I saw how government could be replaced by web-based contracts.

I called them floating contracts, and I told a few people at M. I. T. about them.  In a decade, they were invented by other people, too.  But people appear to have missed the larger point.  Their purpose is to overcome the prisoner's dilemma.   The point is not replace business! A new way to overcome startup costs?  Big deal.  The point is to replace government.  To fund our parks.  To eradicate evil.

Academic Philosophy