Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)  Timothy Williamson (1955-present) In “Kant, Williamson, and the Future of Analytic Philosophy,” Robert Hanna points out that it’s a truth not generally acknowledged, that all Anglo-American-&-European philosophy since Kant—i.e., since the end of the 18th century—is post-Kantian. This is of course trivially true, in that all Anglo-American-&-European philosophy since the end of … [continue reading]

(Andersen, 2020) You can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of this essay by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Download icon. When Space and Time Dissolve: The Challenge to Mechanistic Thinking 1. Introduction Classical mechanism, based in Newton’s physics and developed during … [continue reading]

(Wikimedia Commons, 2026) Literacy emerged in Sumeria roughly 5500 years ago, but the emergence of philosophy in ancient Greece roughly 2500 years ago seems to have been closely bound up with the emergence of the first alphabetic writing-&-reading system there in the 8th century BCE (Rayner et al., 2012: ch. 2). Certainly, in the 6th … [continue reading]

(Sci Am, 2017) TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. The Easy Part: Why 1=0.999 … 3. The Hard Part: Why ~ (1=0.999 …) is True as Well 4. Compatibility with the Standard Real Number Axioms 5. The Archimedean Principle Objection 6. A Tangent: Refuting Cantor’s Diagonal Argument 7. Conclusion The essay below has been published … [continue reading]

(Revoy, 2025)[ii] PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS #1: Introduction #2: From Astrology to “Artificial Intelligence” #3: Patterns and Algorithms #4: Extending Algorithms #5: Enumeration and Incompleteness #6: Changing the Vantage Point #7: The Creativity Hypothesis You can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of this essay by scrolling down to the bottom … [continue reading]

(Kyiv Mohyla Academy, 2023) In “What Good is Philosophy? My Answer.,” inspired by the title of an international conference in 2023, Robert Hanna attempts to provide an answer to the conference’s titular question himself. Now, like most philosophical questions, the question, “what good is philosophy?” is in fact a complex question that should be decomposed … [continue reading]

(Sci Am, 2017) TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. The Easy Part: Why 1=0.999 … 3. The Hard Part: Why ~ (1=0.999 …) is True as Well 4. Compatibility with the Standard Real Number Axioms 5. The Archimedean Principle Objection 6. A Tangent: Refuting Cantor’s Diagonal Argument 7. Conclusion The essay below will be published … [continue reading]

Kant Futurized (Quintessential Mind, 2023) The future of philosophy and the future of humankind-in-the-world are intimately related, not only (i) in the obvious sense that all philosophers are “human, all-too-human” animals—i.e., members of the biological species Homo sapiens, and also finite, fallible, and thoroughly normative imperfect in every other way too—hence the natural fate of … [continue reading]

(Murray, 2024) TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. Cronin-Walker Assembly Theory and the Anti-Reductionist Turn 3. Physics is Not Causally Closed: Nicolas Gisin’s Anti-Mechanism 4. Barbara Drossel’s Anti-Reductionism 5. Donald Hoffman’s Case Against Reality: There are No Brains 6. Colin McGinn’s Basic Structures of Reality: A Philosophical Analysis of Physics-Based Metaphysics and Structural Realism 7. … [continue reading]

“Girl with a Book,” by Alexander Deineka  (1934) In “Caveat Lector: From Wittgenstein to The Philosophy of Reading,” Robert Hanna explores, against the grain of Analytic philosophy’s general avoidance of the fact or phenomenon of reading, and starting out with Wittgenstein’s compact sub-investigation in Philosophical Investigations into “the part the word [‘reading’] plays in our … [continue reading]