The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

January 18, 2016

January 18, 2015

Eric Schwitzgebel is an American philosopher. His faculty page at U. C. Riverside  says that he got his doctorate at U.C. Berkeley, in 1997. There we read his areas of concentration are
philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, moral psychology, classical                         Chinese philosophy, epistemology, metaphilosophy, and metaphysics.

His Perplexities of Consciousness (2011) illustrates the brave skepticism of Schwitzgebel's thinking.  A small instance therein is his questioning  whether "a cat behind a picket fence  “look[s] like several cat slices."

His  father, Kirkland R. Gable,
 who died recently, (January 18, 2015),  was possibly the source of Eric Schwitzgebel's love for tough questions.  Of his father Eric Schwitzgabel recalls

Kirkland R. Gable (born Ralph Schwitzgebel)... was a beloved psychology professor at California Lutheran University.....As a graduate student and then assistant professor at Harvard in the 1960s and 1970s, he shared the idealism of his mentors Timothy Leary and B.F. Skinner, who thought that through understanding the human mind we can transform and radically improve the human condition...



There is a lengthy and informative bibliography available. which lists Eric Schwitzgebel's science fiction as well as philosophical research.

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