Brian Garrett

Some Comments on Evans’s Proof

In this chapter, I examine in some detail Gareth Evans’s famous one-page article ‘Can there be vague objects?’. I argue that Evans’s proof of the impossibility of vague identity (presented in his second paragraph) is flawed but suggest an alternative way in which Evans’s desired conclusion might be secured. I also point out some oddities in Evans’s final paragraph.

Bermúdez on Self–Consciousness

I argue that Jose Luis Bermudez has not shown that there is a paradox in our concept of self–consciousness. The deflationary theory is not a plausible theory of self–consciousness, so its paradoxicality is irrelevant. A more plausible theory, ‘the simple theory’, is not paradoxical. However, I do think there is a puzzle about the connection between self–consciousness and ‘I’–thoughts.

Time, Space, Dummett and McTaggart

Abstract Michael Dummett’s fecund and uncharacteristically brief article “A Defence of McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of Time” offers a well-known interpretation of McTaggart’s proof, and makes a number of controversial claims about a range of inter-connected theses concerning time and space. I want to sort out what is plausible in what Dummett says from what is not, and identify which theses should be endorsed by A theorists and which by B theorists. It is important, even today, to get clear about these issues and their bearing on Dummett’s interpretation of McTaggart.