There is valuable but inconsistent empirical evidence here: http://www.carlysimon.com/vain/vain.html . The evidence suggests that it is possible that the song is about one of Warren Beatty, James Taylor and Mick Jagger. If that is the case, then if you are that person, then it is 100% true that the song is about you. If you are not, then it is 100% false that the song is about you. The evidence also suggests, alternatively, that the song is about a ‘composite character’. I take that to be a fictional character, like Eleanor Rigby or the Urban Spaceman. Salient properties of this fictional character would have been based on those of real persons of Carly’s acquaintance, probably including Beatty, Taylor and Jagger, and possibly some others too. If that is the case, then, if you are an existing human being, the song isn’t strictly speaking, about you at all. But it may be that in the song, Carly is drawing attention to a certain type of individual. Then if you are an individual of that...

That is an interesting question. 'Love' is a tricky word. It appears to mean various different things that are akin in complex ways. Think of paradigm cases of romantic love, love of a parent for their child, platonic love between friends. It seems to me there is more than one reasonable use of 'love' in which it would be right to say 'One can love and resent someone at the same time'. So, for example, take the case of the child whose father mistreats her mother. The child could certainly care very deeply for the father, be extremely distressed by his anguish and, in the event of his death, be disposed to grieve deeply and miss him for the rest of her life. In such a case, the love would almost certainly be marred by the resentment. But not destroyed. If that is right, then it leaves us with the question: is there another good sense of 'love' in which it would right to say 'One can't love and resent someone at the same time - that wouldn't be *real* love'. I am not sure I know he answer to that.

The idea has had a mixed reception. There are many professional philosophers of mind who are not at all sympathic to it.

On my website there is a draft of a paper, labelled ''Poverty of Stimulus arguments', which provides a reasonably comprehensive review of the evidence that favours the hypothesis that humans have some innate special-purpose machinery dedicated to language acquisition.

I suggest also that some women simply don't like the argumentative, combative interactions that philosophy typically involves. That might be one among several good reasons for philosophers to consider adopting different and more co-operative modes of interaction.

Just to respond to afew of Jyl's points. (1) We practice philosophy according to a sort of lawyers-in-courtmodel. This practice has its downside. It encourages aggression, whichoften impedes rather than promotes progress. And it leads people oftento defend views that they do not strongly believe in, and certainlywouldn't, if they reflected honestly and outside of the context ofthe good fight that they are enjoying. This also can impedeprogress. Sometimes we'd do better to admit that none of us understands thesubject matter very well - because it is so extremely difficult, notbecause we are thick - and tried to muddle along together. (2) The combative nature of the practice, and the aggression that thisencourages, have indeed caused very talented philosophers not to enterthe profession. Some of these are men. But I strongly suspect thatmore are women. If that empirical suspicion of mine were correct, thenthat wouldprovide one among several good reasons for philosophers to...

I think it probably has been reasonably well established. There is a plausible article about this by Susan Daffon at www.pet-tails.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=234 Sleeping dogs exhibit a lot of behavioural signs of dreaming: they make running motions, lick their lips and so on. They exhibit rapid-eye movement sleep. And some tests have been done that tend to indicate that what goes in their brains when they sleep is pretty similar to what goes on in ours. The best explanation for all this is that they do indeed dream. As Richard says, this doesn't constitute 'proof'. But it does give us reason to believe.

The argument from definition was actually put forward in the Canadian courts a few years ago, when they were debating the question of whether gay marriage should legalised. It was argued (roughly speaking) that it makes no sense to try to legalise gay marriage, because, by definition, marriage is a union between people of different sexes. So - it was argued - trying to lagalise gay marriage would be like trying to legalise married bachelors or male vixens. The argument was rejected. One unsubtle problem with the argument is that the premise seems to be false. Here is a quote from the Random House Dictionary (1983 edition): "Marriage: a relationship in which two people have pledged themselves to each other in the manner of a husband and wife, without legal sanction: trial marriage, homosexual marriage" It seems to me that this is a common occurrence: people fairly often try to argue for some conclusion or other by appealing to the definition of some key term, when they actually don...

I concur with Richard. The idea of positing the subconscious was first taken seriously by Freud. It was a theoretical posit, posited to explain a large number of phenomena, including slips of the tongue, dreams and a whole variety of psychological conditions such as obsessional neurosis. Freud actually got the idea from hypnosis. Under hypnosis people perform actions without knowing their own reasons for so acting (the reasons having been put into their minds by the hypnotist). Freud's 'New Introductory Lectures' provide a very good introduction to his ideas on the topic. According to Freud, all dreams are symbolic. You just don't know how to interpret the symbolism. Freud's theories, and those of later psychoanalysts, are extremely sophisticated and address a very wide range of data. Their status, however, is very controversial amongst philosophers and psychologists.

Or, just following up on Amy's response, maybe the right answer is 'both'. Rather than thinking of the meaning of 'glory' in Humpty's mouth, we might think of what the word meant in Humpty's idiolect and what the word meant in English. Many linguists and philosophers (including Noam Chomksy) have doubts about whether there really is such a thing as English, because there are no very significant linguistic features in common among all and only those whom we call 'English speakers'. But even if that's right, we can still distinguish what 'glory' meant in Humpty's idiolect and what it meant to those he was addressing. It was easy for him to change the menaing of 'glory' in his idiolect. But that didn't suffice to change the way anyone else understood it. I think the issue of how malleable meaning is depends on how many people are involved. It's easy to change the meaning of a word in your own idiolect. It is a little harder to change the menaing of a word in a bit of language shared by two people...

I will just talk ab0ut words, but the ideas apply to concepts as well. It is very reasonbale to suppose that a typical word, such as 'apple', has a definite meaning. But then it can't be that all definitions are equally valid, since many will be inconsistent with the truth about what the word means, thus e.g. "'apple': a small glass or vessel for applying lotion to the eye." I guess the question 'how can definitions be rooted in reality and truth' then boils to the quesiton of what determines the meaning of a word. And that's one of the really big issues in the philosophies of language and mind. There are real issues about the extent to which words can be defined. People sometimes start out thinking that each word or concept has a definition in terms of conceptually necessary and sufficient conditions, on the model of "vixen': female fox". But in fact the vast majority of words seem not to have definitions like that: we just can't find ways of saying exactly what they mean. It...

I will just talk ab0ut words, but the ideas apply to concepts as well. It is very reasonbale to suppose that a typical word, such as 'apple', has a definite meaning. But then it can't be that all definitions are equally valid, since many will be inconsistent with the truth about what the word means, thus e.g. "'apple': a small glass or vessel for applying lotion to the eye." I guess the question 'how can definitions be rooted in reality and truth' then boils to the quesiton of what determines the meaning of a word. And that's one of the really big issues in the philosophies of language and mind. There are real issues about the extent to which words can be defined. People sometimes start out thinking that each word or concept has a definition in terms of conceptually necessary and sufficient conditions, on the model of "vixen': female fox". But in fact the vast majority of words seem not to have definitions like that: we just can't find ways of saying exactly what they mean. It...