Philosophy & Ethics

Strangeness And Ambiguity In Language My major linguistic interest lies in the problem of getting a computer to interact with us humans using language in exactly the way that we do.  It is just…

Thinking Machines and The Semantic Quagmire What Is The Semantic Quagmire? I use the term "semantic quagmire" to refer to a peculiar state of mind which must ultimately be reached when thinking about…

Speak Out : Silence is the Enemy. Injustice promotes unrest.  Unrest promotes war.War promotes injustice. It is not possible to have a productive and stable society in which there is widespread…

Random Noise #15 : Noises In Noyes's Poetry. What is a noise, that it annoys us so?Noise is, in a given situation,  any sound or sounds which one or more listeners consider to be any of:…

African-Americans are significantly more likely to be sanctioned by the United States welfare system than Caucasians, according to research published in the June issue of the American Sociological…

The catholic church has long lost its race against islamism for the religious institution with more adepts. And they ache for it: you can tell from their resentful remarks on the matter. Bishops and…

How common is scientific misconduct?   It's a tough question to answer.   Scandals like Hwang Woo-Suk's faked stem-cell lines or Jon Sudbø's made-up cancer trials have demonstrated that…

The Moving Finger WritesI cannot agree that much of what is, these days, called poetry, is in fact poetry.I base that assessment on a simple rule: If it isn't memorable, it isn't poetry, q.e.d. …

Digging Beneath the Surface of Grammar How does language work? This article describes my own theoretical approach to the problem of how language works.  I speculate that language is the means by…

A Journey to the Centre of the Universe There has been debate for millenia amongst philosophers as to where the centre of the universe lies. There is a possibility that I may have found it. …