Boston, in brief

The city of Boston has changed since I visited in the summer. While visiting in the summer, the usual skepticism about the performance of the Red Sox prevailed. Fans, and non-fans (the ordinary folk), did not believe the Red Sox would be the wild card team heading to the ALCS or World Series. If asked whether the Red Sox had a chance to be in the ALCS or the World Series, I am sure a person would respond, "I dunno."

Now, Boston is Red Sox crazy. Everywhere I turn there are Red Sox jerseys, bumper sticker, t-shirts, or hats. Everyone wants the Red Sox to repeat as World Series champions. Instead of a nation of sketpics, Red Sox fans, and non-fans, believe the Red Sox have a chance to win in 2005.

I cannot help to ask: Is this belief a disguised wish?

The Principles of Justice Among Free and Democratic Peoples

Rawls asserts that there are 8 principles of justice among free and democratic peoples. Two principles seem contradictory (see Law of Peoples, p. 37).

5. Peoples have the right of self-defense but no right to instigate war for
reasons other than self-defense.

8. Peoples have a duty to assist other people living under unfavorable
conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social
regime.

For #5 and #8, Rawls has left unsettled why peoples should defend other people living under unfavorable conditions if peoples only have a right to wage war in cases of self-defense. If a commonwealth defends people living under unfavorable conditions, then they have violated principle #5.

I assume Rawls will clarify the issue later, but I am wondering whether principle #8 should be tweaked in such a way to say that peoples have a duty to defend others only in cases where their freedom is threatened. For example, if some group invaded Canada, the United States has a duty to defend Canadiens against the aggressors because the aggressors threaten the safety and well-being of every American. The proximity, both geographically speaking and socio-politically speaking, of Canadiens gives us a reason to defend ourselves against the invaders. In this case, we may assume that the aggressors invaded a country with similar values. So, if they have attacked a country with similar values, then the invaders have no reason not to attack us. Going to war against the Canadien invaders would be an act of self-defense. Therefore, according to principle #5, Americans have a right to wage war since it is an act of self-defense.

The worry is how far we can extend an argument of self-defense to cover not only proximity issues but also more general topics, e.g., natural resource governance.

Peoples vs. States

Rawls distinguishes between peoples and states. He asserts that states have "the powers of sovereignty" (Law of Peoples, p. 25ff). With sovereignty, there are two powers that states hold: (1) the right to go to war in pursuit of state policies and (2) a certain autonomy in dealing with the state's own people. He thinks that states should not have these powers.

Granted, states should not have the right to persecute its citizens unjustly. If, however, the person has committed a crime against other citizens, then the state does have a right to sanction the offender. The extent of the state's power over its people seems debatable, but it must have the right to sanction offenders - any offender. If this is what we mean by a state's autonomy - which seems to be a narrower definition than Rawls assumes but it is still a definition - then the state has a certain autonomy in dealing with its citizens.

Also, if one of the state's policies is to defend any (or all) of its citizens, then the state has not only a right to go to war in pursuit of the state's policy but it might be seen to have an obligation to do so. Is the obligation what Rawls wants to avoid?

Eastbound and the Pipeline

The semester has ended, and I am leaving Salt Lake City for the Hub of the Universe, i.e., Boston. Blogging might be sporadic since I don't know what sort of connection I will have while I am in Boston - though I do plan on checking whether a local cafe has free wi-fi internet access.

I have some posts in the pipeline that I have not posted yet. There will be several back-dated posts on my reading of Rawls's Law of Peoples over the course of the next few days. So, if a post looks like it has something to do with Rawls's work, check it out. It is probably new.

Realistic Utopia, a fantasy?

Some may object to Rawls's idea of a reasonably just constitutional democratic society by insisting that this type of society is purely fantasy. Dreadfully evil events, like the Holocaust and the Inquisition for instance, prove that the hopes expressed by Rawls's realistic utopia are fantastic.

Rawls presents an awkward argument to defend himself against this objection. He wants to show that the past and present evils fail to undermine hope for the future of a society as belonging to a Society of liberal and decent Peoples (Law of Peoples, p. 22f).

Ultimately, his argument rests on the idea of the "reasonableness" of the Law of Peoples. There are two ways we could interpret "reasonableness." The first way is that any reasonable person would agree that x is reasonable. There is something fundamentally true or fundamentally valuable about x that makes it reasonable. The second way is that given a, b, c, etc., x is reasonable. In this case, reasonable means that if certain conditions are met, then we consider x the most plausible or most reasonable.

If Rawls uses the first sense of reasonable, then his view has not addressed the fantasy charge. If Rawls uses the second sense of reasonable, then his view fails to have any force. Rawls's idea of "reasonableness" is not clear.

Rawls, The Law of Peoples, Part 1

I'm beginning John Rawls's The Law of Peoples this weekend, and I'll probably blog on it over the course of the next few weeks (I'll probably blog about Hobbes's Leviathan and Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust War too).

In the Introduction, Rawls mentions that as a consequence of focusing on the idea of a realistic utopia - something I don't understand yet but hope to in the next few days - he will leave aside discussion of issues in foreign policy, particularly "unjust war, immigration, and weapons of mass destruction." But he does give a low key argument toward the end of the introduction (p. 9) about keeping outlaw states in check by the threat of possible nuclear attack.

Here's the passage: "so long as there are outlaw states - as we suppose - some nuclear weapons need to be retained to keep those states at bay and to make sure they do not obtain and use those weapons against liberal or decent peoples."

Events, since Rawls published this book, have proved him incorrect. Retaining nuclear weapons against rogue states do not act as a deterrent. Outlaw states use alternative tactics against superpowers, e.g., guerrilla warfare, ambush, sniper. They use these sorts of tactics because they know that they cannot compete with the more technologically advanced weaponry of the liberal or decent peoples. So, even if liberal or decent peoples retain a large cache of nuclear weapons, it does not keep rogue states (or terrorists) at bay. The outlaws find new and interesting ways of fighting the super power. They use tactics the super power is not equipped to handle very well.

I think the argument could be made that if liberal or decent peoples have a large cache of nuclear weapons, then outlaw states will have more reason to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Large caches of nuclear weapons are a threat to states that do not have them. So, they have reason to seek nuclear weapons for their protection.

Let me assure the reader that the last argument does not imply I will argue that liberal or decent peoples surrender all of their nuclear weapons to the United Nations, or some other unaligned political entity. What I think follows is that there needs to be more than nuclear deterrence in play when it comes to keeping outlaw states at bay.

Do "old" feelings go away?

Suppose that Margie attends a convention where she sees an old friend, Cleavis, she was greatly drawn to, but never dated, in graduate school. Cleavis was drawn to Margie in graduate school too, but thought she was "out of his league." After some friendly conversation, Cleavis walks Margie back to her room. They embrace, begin kissing, and make love. The next day, Margie and Cleavis have no desire to repeat the amorous interlude.

The problem is that both Margie and Cleavis were "drawn to" one another in graduate school. Neither Margie nor Cleavis acted on their impulse until the convention several years after graduate school. If they both act on their "old" feelings, then they must still feel attracted to one another. If they feel attracted to one another, then their feelings might be more intense than just a friendly bond. They may be in love with one another. Therefore, both parties might be acting out of some feelings of love they share for one another.

Is it possible that the "old" feelings Margie and Cleavis had in graduate school went away and reappeared only during the time of the convention? Did Margie and Cleavis commit adultery?

If neither Margie nor Cleavis want to have intercourse again, then there is no feeling of love between them. Since a component of adultery might include falling out of love with one's spouse and falling in love with the extramarital partner, neither have committed adultery. They have had a sexual romp, but nothing further than that.

New Blogs to Report

In scurrying around the internet earlier today, I found a handful of new blogs that I need to add to my blogroll. I try to be selective in adding new blogs to the roll, but these look like great blogs. So, I have no hesitation in adding them.

One blog I've failed to add (b/c of all the work I've had to do over the past few weeks), but I have meant to add is Majikthise's blog by Lindsay Beyerstein of Tufts. There are several interesting blogs to mention from her site, especially one on Normativity and Conceptual Analysis.

Other blogs include: Scottish Nous, the kinda-new FSU Philosophy Blog, and Fidlet.com.

I will add hyperlinks to other blogs soon. Also, Oohlah's Blog-Space will be undergo a renovation in the next few days. It will take on a more Philosophy, Etc. look soon - the blogroll will be minimized to include only active blogs (I am not in the business of judging good blogs from bad ones b/c I find that each blog contributes something very important to the larger blogging community), but a more extensive blogroll will be available by hyperlink.

Hobbes-Nobbing

During my two-hour commute to-and-from Alta on Monday, I had a chance to re-visit and re-read a few chapters of Hobbes's Leviathan. I was struck by the fact that there seems to be a peculiar relationship between Hobbes and Hayek. Though I think they agree that there is some sort of spontaneous order that arises, they disagree on how society's order ought to be handled.

Hayek thinks that we ought to leave the spontaneous order alone. Citizens should continue about their daily life. Some will become politicians, but these people are there merely to guide society. There is nothing more for the politicians to do than to administer the affairs of state with the understanding that they do what the citizenry wants them to do. They are not to interfere with the order that arises out of each individual pursuing their own interests.

Hobbes, on the other hand, sees an order arising out of individual self-interest, but if this self-interest goes unchecked, then a war of all against all will erupt. So, this justifies the idea of an absolute leader - someone who will prevent the war from starting.

To my mind, the question is whether there could be some state that arises in between the two extremes. One of the decrees of a community in Hayek's state could be that there is an elected leader whose control is absolute. The person could have the control that Hobbes's system calls for but the person could accommodate Hayek's plan of spontaneous order.

2005 Intermountain West Student Philosophy Conference

I'm writing a blog to (further) advertise the student philosophy conference that the University of Utah will host in February 2005 (Those familiar with the philosophical blogging community will have already read about the conference here and here). The keynote speaker will be Kim Sterelny, of Victoria University of Wellington (NZ) and Australian National University.

Submissions are due by December 15, 2004 and the conference committee prefers electronic submissions (in pdf, dvi, or doc format) to utahphilgrad@msn.com. At least one copy of the paper must be prepared for blind review. Undergraduates and graduate students are welcome to submit papers in any area of philosophic research, analytic or continental.

Any questions about the conference can be directed to the email above or left as a comment to this post.

Gone Skiing!

The semester has come to an end for me, so I've decided to reward my hard work by heading to Alta Ski Resort for a little R'nR. Anyone who is not familiar with Alta will want to check out the resort's website by clicking here.

If you check at the right time, you may see me passing the Albion base webcam.

What is a feeling?

For several years, epistemology - epistemology proper, not naturalistic - has dismissed the notion of intuition because it is too close to what we understand by feeling. We cannot justify feelings; we can only 'have' them. Since they are not justifiable, (I take it) epistemology rejects them.

There is little evidence, besides outward behavioral manifestations and the twinkling colors occurring on a CAT scan, that we have feelings. But I don't want to endorse a behaviorist account of feelings or an eliminativist account of feelings for the following reasons: (1) when I see someone holding his jaw and wincing, I don't want to say that "that's feeling" and (2) when I see colors flashing on a computer screen, I don't want to say that "that's feeling." The flashes of light and the person's expression do not seem to capture what we mean by "feelings." There is something missing in these accounts.

The question is whether epistemology rejects feelings because we can doubt that we have evidence of feelings or because we can doubt that there is any evidence for feelings? But, the more important question - for epistemologists and for metaphysicians - is what is a feeling?

To say that feelings (or more broadly emotions) fail to justify beliefs is to grasp what a feeling is.

Wrong on So Many Levels

Recent developments - reported by Washington Post, New York Times, etc. - have shown that the soldier who asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of protective armor on U.S. "Humm-vees" was manipulated by an embedded reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free Press to ask it. As the reporter mentions in an email, "we [the soldier and I] worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor" [emphasis added]. Blogicus has a good overview of the story here.

Blogicus and others, including Drudge, conclude that we should be outraged by the reporter's actions. The reporter should not have coached the soldier into asking a question that is critical of the Bush administration's defense policy.

Manipulating someone to do anything is usually a bad thing. For example, forcing someone to do something illegal or immoral is a bad thing. But if the reporter thinks that soldiers ought to be protected from shrapnel caused by roadside bombs and from small-arms fire, then we shouldn't find the reporter's actions so bad. He believes that keeping soldiers out of harm's way (alive) is above his own reputation.

Forcing active-duty combat soldiers to ride in military vehicles that lack protective armor the military has developed and already uses on other vehicles is an outrage. Should we find the reporter's actions offensive? Or, should we kowtow to a government that sets an agenda without regard for the safety of it's soldiers?

There's Nothing Super About This Hero

How do your superpowers work? drinking a 1/5th of Jack Daniels or a bottle of Moon Dog

Does Ought Imply Must?

I've always taken the 'ought implies can' principle to say the following: a person ought to perform an action only if she can perform the action. But if a person ought to perform an action only if she can perform that action, then must she do it? If she doesn't do it, then we can ding her by saying that she ought to have performed the action. If she does it, then she's morally praiseworthy. No one prefers to be dinged for not acting on something they can do. So, it follows that she must perform the action.

Meantime, Try the New Left2Right

In my blogging absence, check out, using this link, the new politically oriented blog featuring many highly regarded philosophy professors.

Minimal Blogging Activity

Blogging will be light for today and tomorrow because I'm completing papers and dealing with departmental administrative issues. I hope to have my next post up by Thursday night or Friday.

Coordination Issues & Conflict of Interest

The following problem was presented in class today, and one of the students suggested we take an empirical straw poll for reactions. I decided to volunteer my blog site for the exercise. Your reaction is greatly encouraged.

Suppose that A loses some money, and B finds it. Under the house rules, A cannot have his money back until s/he agrees with the finder on a suitable reward, and B cannot keep any except what A agrees to. If no agreement is reached, then the money goes to the house. The amount is $16, and A offers $2 as a reward. B refuses, demanding half the money. An argument ensues, and the house intervenes, insisting that each write a claim, once for all, without further communication. If the claims are consistent with the $16 total, then each will receive exactly what s/he claims; but if they claim more than $16, then the funds will go to the house.

As A and B ponder their claims, a well-known and well-respected mediator enters and offers to help. He cannot, he says, participate in any bargaining, but he can make a "fair" proposal. He approaches A and says, "I think a reasonable division under the circumstances would be a 2-1 split, the original owner getting two-thirds and the finder one-third, perhaps rounded off to $11 and $5, respectively. I shall make the same suggestion to B as well." Without waiting for any response, he approaches the finder, makes the same suggestion, and says that he made the same suggestion to the original owner. Again without waiting for a response, he departs. You are A; what do you claim?

Write for Rights

A friend invited me to an Amnesty International Write-a-thon event to be held this Sunday afternoon. I take this means to (a) make more people aware of the event and (b) encourage others to participate.

The 2004 Global Write-a-thon will occur December 10-12, 2004 and will coincide with the 56th annual observance of Human Rights Day.

For more information, please see the 2004 Global Write-a-thon's website.

I encourage all bloggers to take a moment out of their busy blogging schedule to write a letter that could change a prisoner of conscience's life for the better.

Philosopher's Carnival 6

Philosopher's Carnival 6 is now available at MelbournePhilosopher's blog.

Ought we legislate marriage?

Voters in several states (including Utah) were able to vote on amendments restricting marriage to "a man and a woman" or "prohibiting civil unions" in the last election. Presumably, these amendments were worded in such a way as to prevent homosexuals from seeking marriage licenses and to prevent cohabitating heterosexuals from seeking rights married heterosexuals enjoy.

Several friends - both conservative and liberal - have thought that voting on the issue of marriage is degrading. They claim that marriage is a spiritual bond between two people. So, entrusting the definition of marriage to voters destroys the sanctity of marriage.

The claim that there is a spiritual bond between two people seems to admit that a principle - perhaps a moral principle - underlies what we understand marriage to be. If there is such a principle, then ought we legislate it? Is there some reason to think that moral principles - pardoning for the moment the metaethical question - should be enacted as law?

Receiving vs. Earning a Degree

I have noticed that many academics' biographical descriptions include a line like, "I received my PhD from University of XYZ," and I have always thought there's something wrong in saying this.

Receiving something seems like a passive way of talking about the studying and writing required for obtaining a PhD. For instance, the most common examples I think of when I think of "receiving something" include: a football player receives a pass, or I received a check for $1miL from Publishers' Clearinghouse ("PC"). There is very little the receivers have to do in these instances. The football player only needs to be in the right place for him to catch the ball, and I only need to be home when PC comes knocking on my door. There's not much we have to do in receiving something. To obtain a PhD, students have to do many things, like passing examinations, writing high-quality papers, etc. So, when someone uses the phrase "I received a PhD," it sounds like the person went to school for a few years and the degree landed in his lap.

"I earned my PhD" sounds more realistic. After all, the person had to complete all of the requirements of the PhD. The student has been actively involved in the departmental and university community. The student probably has spent a great deal of time in completing the requirements for the degree. It would be senseless to say that the time spent completing these requirements came at little or no cost. Part of earning something is the cost of one's time or energy. So, "earning" something is more proactive than "receiving" something, and it is consistent with the requirements of completing a PhD.

There is a sense in which it is appropriate to say that you received an education, but this is different than saying that you received a degree. Receiving an education involves going to class and learning the material from a (well, hopefully) competent instructor. These are passive descrpitions and rightfully belong to the idea of receiving an education. Just as a person earns a grade for a class, so too does a person (broadly speaking) earn a degree.

Philosopher's Carnival - seeking submissions

Philosopher's Carnival #6 is due out December 6, 2004. If you have something to submit, then submit it by clicking here. MelbournePhilosopher is #6's host; his blog has an interesting mixture of philosophical and political material. Check it out!

Buridan's Ass - Another Pass

Those of you who are interested in the problem of Buridan's Ass - a discussion me and Richard Chapell had and one that Mixing Memory covered - see the Third Floor. I am a contributor to the Third Floor, and I decided to post there for a change.

Also, thanks to the assistance of Richard Chapell, in-post comments are now available. No longer do commentators have to sign-in to blogger.com.

Marriage and Childrearing

There's an interesting discussion occurring at Philosophy, et cetera that others might be interested in reading. The blog concerns - broadly speaking - the traditional family paradigm, childrearing, and the state's definition of marriage. Here's the link.

Liberal Arts Education

For those readers interested in the ongoing debate regarding the value of liberal arts education, you should check out this blog at Prosthesis.

Why is 1 box not enough and 2 boxes too many?

I don't think I need to rehearse Newcomb's paradox, but I have provided a link to a good outline of the problem here and here for those unfamiliar with it. I am not an expert on the problem, so what I have to say here probably doesn't matter, or it has been said before.

There are two arguments that show the agent ("Smith") a way out. The arguments' conclusions conflict because one conclusion suggests that the agent choose both boxes and the other conclusion suggests that the agent choose only one box. I want to suggest that based upon what Nozick has taught us in The Nature of Rationality (1993) we should understand that the motivation of the conflict actually serves as a resolution of the problem. When we have command of the motivation, the problem dissolves.

Nozick (1993, p. 44f) has done a fine job of showing that if we change the contents of box 1 (to either $1 or $997,000), then people's choices change too. Basically, in changing the contents of box 1 to $1, people who initially chose both boxes are unwilling to follow the dominance argument; in changing the contents of box 1 to $997,000, people who initially chose only box 2 are unwilling to follow the expected utility argument. He thinks that "this implies no one has complete confidence in the argument s/he follows."

Under the circumstances, it appears that Smith has no confidence in her arguing one way rather than another if she changes her mind given that the contents of box 1 change. This presumes that Smith has forfeited her decision to choose one box or both boxes because of the change in the content of box 1. Smith might have changed her mind because she wants to choose whatever will yield the most amount of money. She knows that the predictor makes successful predictions. So, in supposing that the content of box 1 has reduced to $1, if she takes both boxes (and the predictor knows she will take both boxes), then she will be stuck with a measly sawbuck. If she takes one box, box 2 that contains the $1 miL, and box 1 contains $997,000, then she should take both boxes. The result is either $1.997 miL or $997,000 - Smith might as well take both boxes for a possible net loss of $3,000.

Smith wants the most money. Whatever outcome yields the most money is the choice Smith should decide to pursue. Well, this doesn't work well for utility theorists all the time because this could lead to irrational paralysis. Potentially, Smith would not want to get out of bed in the morning for fear of losing money in doing so. If Smith realizes that greed motivates her decisions, then she should go with the outcome that will best suit her desire for more money without trying to make the most money. So, from a motivational perspective, Smith should choose 1 box over both boxes. Also, with the realization that motivations drive her decisions, she will not change her mind about her decision.