Specter of Reason

 Here are links to my philosophical writing at Specter of Reason (2007-2014). Philosophy Philosophy of Mind Intentionality Knowing How Consciousness The Conceivability Argument Zombie Mary and The Incompatibility Argument The Knowledge Argument Swampkinds Gilbert Ryle Ethics Free Will Epistemology Gettier Problems Philosophy of Language Meaning Knowing How The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction science Naturalism neuroscience atheism Dennett Jason Stanley Kant Kripke religion Sam Harris Philosophy of Mathematics

 Just a heads up.  I've started a new blog where I'm going to carry on all of my philosophical work. (You can find it here: A Study In Philosophy .) I will continue writing (sporadically) about film and politics here at Specter of Reason. However, for reasons I explain at the other blog, I've decided to create a new, separate space for new philosophical endeavors.

My wife and I were talking about it this evening, how her paternal ancestry was rooted in a part of Poland that doesn't exist anymore. The land exists, and many of the villages exist, but it stopped being Poland in 1945. Today it is part of Ukraine. We discussed how this might be similar to what happened around the same time with Palestine in the Middle East. After WWII, Britain and the Soviet Union negotiated new Polish borders. On the one hand, northeastern Germany was absorbed by Poland. (That's why the city we live in now is called Szczecin, and not Stettin, and why Danzig is now Gdańsk.) On the other hand, eastern Poland went to the Soviet Union. Over one million Poles were forced to relocate. Looking at the map below (Poland gained the brightly coloured areas and lost the grey area), it's easy to see that Poland also got smaller in the process. Poland's borders before and after WWII This was only about two years before Britain abandoned its Palestine Mandate, leav