What is this thing called somnolence?

What is this thing called pain?

To paraphrase Cole Porter's famous 1926 song, "What is this thing called pain? This funny thing called pain, just who can solve its mystery?" Pain, like love, is all consuming: when you have it, not much else matters, and there is nothing you can do about it. Unlike love, however, we are actually beginning to tease apart the mystery of pain. The substantial progress made over the last decade in...

Welcome to virosphere

Viruses may seem alien, but they are the most abundant and, arguably, the most important organisms on Earth. They are found just about everywhere, from oceans and forests to the people around you and, of course, in and on you as well. This world of strange, quasi-living things has been dubbed the virosphere, and it is a mysterious one – we know less about viruses than any other life form. But t...

What Is That Thing Called Philosophy of Technology?

How shall a thing be called.

The most deliberate part of first-language teaching is the business of telling a child what each thing is called. We ordinarily speak of the name of a thing as if there were just one, but in fact, of course, every referent has many names. The dime in my pocket is not only a dime. It is also money, a metal object, a thing, and, moving to subordinates, it is a 1952 dime, in fact a particular 1952...

Plato Seeking for “One Real Explanation” in Phaedo

What this essay is to discuss is Plato''s theory of explanation in Phaedo. In this dialogue, we observe that Socrates criticizes both the natural scientists’ explanations and Anaxagoras’ theory of Mind since he thinks they could not explain all things, firstly, in a unitary and, secondary, in a real way. Thence, we are to call what Plato is seeking as his ideal explanation in Phaedo “One Real E...