Are intuitions mysterious?

Heck yeah they are. But is there a way to make them less mysterious?

In a few recent papers, Ernest Sosa has said something like the following: "to intuit that p is to be consciously attracted to assenting to p." One's attraction to p comes from a reliable competence to discriminate the truth for propositions of p's type. We are left to question what reliable competence is.

One might think that the "reliable competence" might be like a perceptual or inferential faculty, but intuition cannot be either one because (1) there is no sensory experience that mediates intuition and (2) intuitions are not beliefs. One could say that we intuit p because of our grasp of certain concepts, such as knowledge in Gettier style cases. But one could worry that conceptual truths are not the same thing as necessary truths. So, it appears that "reliable competence" is not perceptual or inferential or conceptual.

If intuiting that p is not the result of perceptual, inferential, or conceptual competencies, then we are moving closer to treating intuitions as the product of some mysterious cognitive competency.

Right now, it appears that intuition is something mysterious. We don't want to equate it to perceptual, inferential, or conceptual competencies. But these competencies do not exhaust our potential competencies. Potential competencies are finite. If competencies are finite, we merely have to continue to study them to figure out what intuitions are. Once we figure out what intuitions are, they will no longer be mysterious.

Perhaps the reason that someone might say that intuitions are mysterious is that they turn out to be correct more often than not. That is the mystery.

Skeptical Vertigo

When I drive, I usually think of stupid little philosophical arguments that (sometimes) turn into presentable (but not publishable) papers. Here's something that consumed some of my time during my recent drive across Wyoming:

(Those of you who have driven across Wyoming will probably agree that my time would have been better spent thinking about deserted ontological landscapes. But I guess I'll have to live with what I worked on for a few minutes in the car.)

There are two tripartite arguments I'd like to consider in tandem (a colleague has used the term tripartite in a degrading manner because he contends that the approach to skepticism using the tripartite argument is outdated; I don't agree with my colleague's assessment). One is the argument from the skeptical hypothesis, and the other is (roughly) a Moorean response. Here are the arguments in schematic form:

Argument from the Skeptical Hypothesis
1. I don't know that there is an external world. (premise)
2. If I don't know that there is an external world, then I don't know that I have hands. (premise)
3. Therefore, I don't know that I have hands. (1,2)

(Roughly) A Moorean Response
1. If I don't know that there is an external world, then I don't know that I have hands. (premise)
2. I have hands. (premise)
3. Therefore, there is an external world. (1,2)

Both arguments are equally plausible, and all of the premises in each of the arguments are reasonably compelling. If both arguments are equally plausible and have reasonably compelling premises, then it seems that both arguments could be true.

The law of noncontradiction, i.e., It is not the case that p and not-p is true, tells us that both arguments cannot be true. Given that both arguments are compelling, we tend to fluctuate between the two arguments. For a moment we think one is correct; at another moment, we think the other is correct. Vertigo is a feeling of dizziness where either the external world is revolving around the individual (cited as "objective" vertigo) or the individual is revolving in space (cited as "subjective" vertigo). We cannot glom onto one or other of the arguments because once we do that, the other argument has refuted our position. Hence, we will have to accept our skeptical vertigo in order to move on from these two arguments.

Benedict XVI: "A son of the German people"

In the Rocky Mountain News, I read an article this morning (probably AP or syndicated) that Pope Benedict XVI visited Auschwitz-Berkeneau as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust (the Shoah).

Pope John Paul II visited Auschwitz in 1979 and he said that he was "a son of the German people" as a matter of showing solidarity with the German people, even though they had committed such heinous crimes only 34 years earlier. Coming from John Paul II, a Pole, his was a kind and charitable act - especially since Poles and Catholics were persecuted by the Germans too.

Many want to say the same of Benedict's visit. But we have to remember a few things about Benedict XVI. He was, in fact, a member of the "Hitler Youth" (I don't think it matters very much whether he was a "reluctant" member or not.) When Benedict XVI echoed John Paul II's statement this weekend, I don't believe that Benedict's statement had the same effect. To my mind, Benedict's statement has a different tone than one of solidarity and of forgiveness.

Nevertheless, Benedict does deserve respect for coming to terms with his own past.

Sweet Justice

There are very few things that annoy me when I'm driving. The one thing I (really) hate when I'm driving is some idiot approaching me quickly from behind when I'm trying to pass a tractor-trailer truck or a slower car. Don't they see that I'm trying to pass somebody? Once I pass the car or semi, I immediately return to the travelling lane (the "right" lane). Then, they can pass me up.

I drove across Wyoming yesterday, and such an incident occurred. A young couple in a grey Mazda 3 with Utah tags got right on my back bumper, began honking their horn, flashing their high-beams, and moving their arms about as if their car were infested with killer bees. They were going about 95 to 100 mph. They really pissed me off!

Then, I decided to use them to my advantage. I gave them about 1/4-mile lead and I began to go about 90 to 95 mph. By giving them the 1/4-mile lead, I would avoid being pulled over in the event we came across the Wyoming Highway Patrol. After about an hour's chase, I decided to stop that and I returned to my average speed of about 78 mph.

Approximately 2 hours later just outside of Rawlins, WY, I saw that a highway patrolman had pulled over a car. In Wyoming, when there is a car or truck in the breakdown lane, all motorists must pass them in the passing lane (the "left" lane). As I got closer to the highway patrolman and his latest victim and as the cars and trucks cleared the travelling lane, I recognized the car the highway patrol had pulled over - the grey Mazda 3 that only a few hours earlier had annoyed the heck out of me. Sweet justice!

Administrative "Paperwork" and More Work

Late last week was consumed by meetings with faculty members at the U and with human resources at Weber State. I barely had time to think about my dissertation - which is definitely not a good thing.

But I did have a chance to talk with Shaun Nichols about the experiment I have to run for the dissertation, and I hope my prediction jibes well with the results. He and I are hopeful the experiment will be beneficial.

In a meeting with Elijah Millgram, I recognized that there are a few positions I hadn't considered in the action individuation debate. The good news is that I'm not alone - I don't think anyone concerned with the action individuation debate has considered the positions Prof. Millgram suggested. So, I'll probably dedicate a blog entry or two to his suggestions. (He also suggested a problem for me that I have to take up in defending experimental philosophy; it's an objection I don't take seriously enough.)

I also met with Bryan Benham to discuss our project on deception. We definitely have to come up with a few vignettes to check whether there is an asymmetry in what researchers think about deception. Our prediction is that there is an asymmetry, but only time will tell.

Finally, most of my time was consumed by putting stuff in storage and preparing the paperwork necessary to officially defend my prospectus. Though my prospectus is written (as well as 3 draft chapters), I hadn't completed the paperwork until this weekend. I'm a bit slow on the up-take.

Health Promotion: An ethical issue?

I have thought for a long time that the primary goal of health promotion has been to promote the prevention of disease and illness. They promote good dietary habits and healthy lifestyles for people who live life in a way that could be considered unhealthy or risky. (Interestingly enough, many people do not listen to health promotion specialists because they don't have an M.D. or they are registered dieticians. Health promotion specialists want to get the word out about living healthfully, and I think that most - well, I could be wrong in some cases - know that they cannot give specific dietary advice to people and cannot give medical advice to people.) Living a healthy lifestyle increases the chances of living a more pleasurable life, and it decreases the chances of living a life full of pain - I think this is a reasonable goal.

Their basic message is that if people do not change their dietary habits and continue to live life unhealthfully, then they will increase their chances of contracting diseases, e.g., heart disease.

Why would we want to argue that health promotion specialists are unethical?

Is human agency dependent on the cooperation of others?

Here's a nifty little argument I have reconstructed from Elijah Millgram's "Does the Categorical Imperative Give Rise to a Contradiction in the Will?" (republished in his Ethics Done Right, p. 99f).

1. One chooses a course of action in ignorance of others' rules and policies, and vice versa. (premise)

2. Since each set of decisions is made in ignorance of the other, the possibility that each set is coordinated is very slim indeed. (1)

3. It is not feasible to expect that others' policies and rules will deliver the cooperation that one's own projects need from them. (premise)

4. Therefore, others have to make exceptions for one to exercise his own agency successfully. (2,3)

Millgram spends a paragraph defending premise 1 (see first and second full paragraph of p. 99). I want to suggest that there's two ways of reading the first premise. One reading of the premise makes it a fairly innocuous point - I imagine Millgram is not talking about ignorance in this way. The other reading of the premise makes it a majorly robust point - I believe this is Millgram's point. Let me review Millgram's robust reading first.

He has several points supporting that we choose our course of action in ignorance of others' rules and policies. First, most people do not announce what their rules or policies are. Second, and related to the first, even if most people did announce what their rules and policies are, we are not the kinds of beings who are able to track all of them; we have limited cognitive capabilities, and we are not able to process that many rules or policies at any one time. Finally, he raises the issue that even we do not know what our future ends will be. If we don't know our own future ends, then surely others will not be able to predict what our own ends will be either. All of this leads us to the idea that we are ignorant of one another's rules and policies. Call this the robust reading of ignorance and the reading that Millgram seems to endorse.

I agree that there is a robust reading of the ignorance premise, but I do not think it is the only reading. If it is not the only reading, then the conclusion does not follow. We are still left with the fact included in some Kantian arguments: human agency is dependent on the cooperation of others. Call this the innocuous reading, and I will now give some reasons for thinking it to be an optional reading of premise 1.

We do choose our course of action in ignorance of others' rules and policies, but we are not completely ignorant of them. For Millgram's premise to work in just the way he wants it to, we have to be completely ignorant of others' rules and policies. By completely ignorant, I mean that we know nothing about others' rules and policies. Millgram's first point is that we do not announce what our rules and policies are. I agree, and we do not have to do so because we know intuitively know what others' rules and policies are. When we are at a four-way stop, we know that the other driver knows whoever arrived at the four-way stop earliest can go first. If we were completely ignorant of others' rules and policies, the universe collapses at a four-way stop; we are rendered incapable of acting at all. All of the drivers would stare at one another.

Second, we are plastic enough to be able to adapt to any sort of environment, so we can process any number of rules or policies we may have to confront at any given time. We track all of them, even though we may not be consciously aware of the fact that we are tracking them. Millgram is correct to suggest that we cannot be consciously aware of others' rules and policies, but we can adapt to the environment such that we can accomodate them in order to act.

Finally, Millgram raises the idea that we may not now be aware of what our future ends will be. If he means that we do not know what we will be doing at 11:15a.m. on July 25, 2016, then I agree. No one has even begun to put that much effort into formulating such a detailed course of action. But we can know approximately what our future ends will be. For instance, I know now that I will be planning for a fiscally healthy retirement or helping my kids get into college or continuing to save for that BMW I've always wanted. We are ignorant of exactly what our future ends will be, but we are definitely not ignorant of what our approximate future ends will be.

Since it is questionable whether we are truly ignorant - in Millgram's robust sense - we can only conclude that the fact that human agency is dependent on the cooperation of others still stands, though somewhat more weakly than it has.

Is reasoning connected to intuition?

In yesterday's blog entry, a premise in the argument supporting the weaker version of identity says, "reasoning - broadly speaking - includes intuitions." The premise suggests that intuition and reasoning are connected. But is intuition a part of reasoning (practically or theoretically)? If it is, what sort of relation is it?

I want to address the first question. One typically makes some assumptions in order to prove that a particular conclusion follows. For example, someone might argue: (P1) All men are mortal. (P2) Socrates is man. (C) Therefore, Socrates is mortal. P1 is an assumption that one can make about all men (to be read as: all of mankind). There is good evidence that the premise is true. Every previously observed human has died. So, the assumption leads to the conclusion that Socrates indeed is mortal.

Assumptions are somtimes intuitive. In the case of Socrates, the assumption is intuitive because there is not much counterevidence to the belief that "all men are mortal." If intuitions and assumptions are related in just the way they appear in the premises of an argument, then it seems to follow that intuitions are a part of reasoning.

The (lack of) identity between philosopher's intuitions and peoples' intuitions

As always, the following problem is speculative.

I'm beginning to think about one sort of objection that all conceptual analysts use against the experimental philosopher. The objection I address here is the one that says we conceptual analysts are talking about the intuitions anyone would have if they had the right kind of view in hand.

Suppose that a philosopher said, "any person will say that the brain-in-a-vat scenario is feasible." If a person disagrees with the statement, then the disagreement implies that the philosopher's intuition and the person's intuition are not identical. I assume that the lack of identity is what experimental philosophers exploit to challenge the philosopher's position. But what kind of identity is at issue?

I take it that conceptual analysts and experimental philosophers could be talking about two kinds of identity. If they are indeed talking about two different kinds of identity, then the debate goes no where. The conceptual analyst talks about one kind, and the experimentalist another. Therefore, the debate ends in a stalemate.

Let me address the two types of identity I think are present. I will call one a strong version and the other a weak version. The strong version is similar to the logician's view of identity. For this view of identity, P and Q are identical if and only if every property of P is a property of Q, and vice versa (approx. Leibniz's Law, though I think this is debatable). If this is the kind of identity the conceptual analysts are talking about, then they have mistaken their own intuitions for the intuitions of other people.

The argument goes (roughly) as follows: Peoples' intuitions are x. The philosopher's intuitions are y. Every property of x is not a property of y. After all, in my example, people do not say y about the brain-in-the-vat scenarios. Therefore, the philosopher's intuitions and the peoples' intuitions are not identical according to the strong version of identity.

The weak version of identity does not uphold the logician's conception of identity. On the weak version, the peoples' intuitions are the same as the philosopher's intuitions. They are identical because people must realize that their own intuitions are mistaken. People do not have a good command of reasoning philosophically. If they had command of reasoning philosophically, then they would not have reacted to the scenario in the way they did. Once they realize that they have made a mistake, they will agree with the philosopher's intuition. So, peoples' intuitions and the philosopher's intuition are identical.

The weak version of identity asserts that the people are mistaken, while the strong version says that philosophers are mistaken about the peoples' intuition. Conceptual analysts seem to endorse the weak version of identity. They assert that people are generally mistaken. But once people see the error of their ways, they will agree with the philosopher's intuitions. So, the intuitions are identical.

A question remains: If we want a folk account of some philosophical issue, why should we endorse the weak version of identity?

POSTSCRIPT (5/24/06):

There is one argument for endorsing the weak version of identity. But I think that it is a bit uncharitable toward philosophers generally. So, I don't necessarily believe this is a good argument.

Philosophers are good at reasoning and critical thinking. They can identify when other people make mistakes in their reasoning. Reasoning - broadly speaking - includes intuitions. Therefore, philosophers can identify when people are mistaken about their intuitions.

Of course, there is a brief counterargument to that argument. Here goes: Philosophers are people too. People are bad judges of intuition. So, philosophers are bad judges of intuition.

Weintraub's "The Time of a Killing"

Suppose that Oswald pulls the trigger at t1, which releases a bullet that hits Kennedy, who dies, as a result of the wound, at t2. If we think that Oswald killed Kennedy at t1, then we implicitly accept that Oswald kiled Kennedy before Kennedy dies. If we think that the killing occurs only when Kennedy is dead, the we implicitly accept that Oswald can still be killing Kennedy when he is otherwise engaged, e.g., taking in a movie at a local theater. The question is "when does the killing occur?"

I want to suggest that Weintraub's analysis (Analysis [2003] 63: 178-82) begs for an experiment to be run. We could set up a scenario, similar to the one about Kennedy and Oswald, that determines whether people would agree with Weintraub. If they do not agree and if people think that causings are events, then what is the payoff of Weintraub's argument? Has Weintraub mistakenly attributed her intuitions to ordinary people?

If Weintraub wants to argue that our intuitions are mistaken because we fail to distinguish between the two readings of the time of the killing, then we should ask people whether they fail to see the problem in this way. If they see that there is a distinction, then Weintraub has mistakenly thought that our intuitions are "doubly mistaken."

The Future of Health Care - a round-table discussion

I attended a round-table discussion at the University of Denver on "The Future of Health Care" this evening. The speakers were prominent members of Denver's health care community. Most of them were business people, a few were public policy analysts, and one was a CEO of a hospital in Colorado.

At times, the discussion was - to say the least - disturbing. One of the panel members believed the most pressing question for the public and for politicians is: "are people entitled to health care?" He said that members of the business community should not be concerned with the question because it is a political question.

I agree that the entitlement question is an important political matter, but I don't think that businesses, particularly those businesses in the health care industry, should not be concerned with it. After all, why ought we think that business people should not be concerned with political issues? Health care is a service industry. The primary contributors to the sucess of the service industry are its customers. So, any health care business - insurance, hospital, primary-care facilities, etc. - is going to succeed only because of its customers.

If the success of the business depends on customers, then the business should be concerned with the needs and wants of its customers. Whether someone is entitled to something is a question of satisfying the person's needs and wants. Therefore, it seems that the health care industry should be concerned with the question of a patient's entitlement to health care.

Finally, there was a topic that the panel did not discuss. Nevertheless, I believe it is an important topic to breach when we want to talk about the entitlement of health care.

The entitlement question is closely linked to another question about the role and responsibility of doctors. Some believe that people are not entitled to health care because they do not take responsibility for their own health. After all, some people engage in risky behavior; they smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol excessively, or eat foods high in fat. As the argument goes, if they are not willing to live responsibly, then they are not entitled to health care.

It is true that some people live an unhealthly life, and it is their choice to live that way. But do bad lifestyle choices influence whether a doctor has an obligation to treat that patient? The doctor has a duty to improve the patient's quality of life. If the doctor refuses to treat the patient because the patient has made bad lifestyle choices, then the obligation of doctors to improve the patients' life has been breached. So, the entitlement question is closely linked to the question: "is the doctor obligated to treat a patient who engages in risky behavior?"

The entitlement question and the obligation question deserve equal consideration among the important questions the health care industry must address in the future.

The Problem of Relevant Descriptions

Kantian ethics begins with maxims. Maxims are subjective principles of action. In Kantian ethics, one uses the CI-procedure to test whether one should or should not act on the maxim that s/he has formulated.

For example, if I wanted to know whether to act on the maxim, "whenever I can get away with it, I should cheat my business partners," I subject it to the CI-tests (i.e., universalizability and treating humanity as an end in itself). CI1 tells us to "act only on those maxims that you can at the same time will it to become a universal law." I cannot will my maxim to become a universal law because every business person and government official would be suspicious of business activities. We would think that everyone would be trying to get away with something. Since it cannot pass the first CI-test of universalizability, I should not act on the maxim.

But there is a problem lingering in the background over maxims. Maxims can be described in many different ways. Since there are different descriptions of action, one way of devising the above maxim could pass the CI-test of universalizability. If it can pass the first CI-test, then we might have reason to think we should act on that maxim. Given that there are multiple descriptions of the same action, we could think that we should act on it and we should not act on it. This is a contradiction, so we need a way out of the problem.

One way around the problem is to explore action individuation. If actions can be individuated to show that there are different descriptions of action and if these descriptions designate different actions, then the contradiction does not follow. You're acting in each of these situations is different.

This is a preliminary look at a discussion of the problem of relevant descriptions and its relation to action individuation. I have to read Mark Timmons's piece on the problem of relevant descriptions this weekend. After that, I hope to have a better take on the problem and its relation to individuation of action.

"Gait" Analysis, Eadweard Muybridge, and Experimental Philosophy

Brian at SML Coffee (my Denver, Colorado coffee hangout) alerted me to an interesting historical example related to experimental philosophy (or at least its method), perhaps indirectly, and action theory.

For many centuries, artists rendered horses as having at least one hoof on the ground while they were in a gallop. In fact, it was (and maybe still is) a popular belief that at least one hoof remained planted firmly on the ground when a horse is in a gallop even among non-artists. The popular belief was due to one's intuition that it would be impossible for a horse to gallop if all of its hooves were fully airborne.

The advent of high-speed time-lapse photography changed our misconceived intuition. In 1892, Leland Stanford paid Eadweard Muybridge to devise an apparatus with multiple trip wires attached to camera shutters. The photographs Muybridge showed that the horse was fully airborne when in a gallop.

The moral of the story is that we can test our intuitions using empirically informed methods (in the gait analysis case: photography). If the outcome of the test shows our intuitions are false, then we should reject our intuitions. Once our intuitions are rejected, we may form an argument that is consistent with the data.

This is how empirically informed arguments win the day.

POSTSCRIPT (added 5/19/06):

The Muybridge issue also overlaps with my interest in talking about action individuation. If the horse's actions can be described as "the horse gallops" and "the horse gallops gracefully," then we have two designations of one and the same action. So, Davidson's account wins the day. But an equally coherent interpretation could argue that the two act-tokens designate two act-types. Therefore, the action descriptions designate different actions. So, Goldman's account wins the day.

Muybridge's accomplishments in high-speed photography can give action theorists some insight into how to identify actions. If we can identify actions successfully, then telling how many actions an agent performs becomes much easier.

On Mele's Agnostic View of Action Individuation

I'm beginning to think that Alfred Mele has a well-staked out position in the debate on action individuation. He may have worked out the dimensions of this view without realizing it. The view consists in not taking sides in the debate.

I will call his view the agnostic view of action individuation. I call it this because he does not deny that one can take a position one way or another, but that he will remain neutral with respect to each of the minimizing, maximizing, or componential views of action individuation.

I am not wedded to the idea that the neutrality of the agnostic view is a view at all. One could probably easily convince me that Mele's position is not a position at all. After all, he has not worked out an argument for it, and he certainly has not considered objections to it. But let me try to explain what I think Mele's agnostic position is.

Mele (1992, 1997, 2003) discusses intentional action. He notes that a part of such discussions sometimes involves an explanation of the constitution, identification and individuation of actions. An account of intentional action is consistent with any of the theories of action individuation, including the minimizing view of Davidson and Anscombe, the maximizing view of Goldman, or the componential view of Ginet, etc. If each view is consistent with an account of intentional action, then it is possible to remain neutral on the most plausible conceptions in the debate of action individuation. Therefore, Mele remains agnostic with respect to a view of action individuation.

Since Mele admits that any of the views of action individuation can apply to a view on intentional action, he sees that there is a connection between the two. If there is a connection between the two, then the position one takes up - even if that position is not well defined or positively conceived - is indeed a position. Therefore, Mele's agnosticism with respect to theories of action individuation is a view worthy of consideration in discussions of action individuation.

NOTE: Mele (online ms) is the only place that he takes up a particular view of action individuation. In the paper, he endorses a Davidsonian or minimizing view of action individuation. Zhu and Buckareff, commentators of Mele, point out that his view is not consistent with Goldman's maximizing view, in spite of his claim to the contrary: "I... believe that the results can be translated into the language of the other main competing theories of individuation" (Mele ms, 9).

Quest for 48

create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

7 states remaining in my quest for visiting all of the lower 48. I have a feeling that I'll be able to knock out New Mexico and Montana this year.

I got a link to creating my own personalized map of the USA from Matthew Mullins's blog (Ektopos).

POSTSCRIPT:

In thinking about it, I've been to some interesting places. But one of the things I like to track (b/c I'm a little more than a little weird) is which interstates I've been to at their beginning and at their ending. Here's my running list:

West-to-East Interstates
The beginning of I-10 in Santa Monica, CA, and the end of I-10 in Jacksonville, FL.
The beginning of I-80 in San Francisco, CA, and the end of I-80 in Ridgefield Park, N.J.
The beginning of I-70 in Central UT, and the end of I-70 in Baltimore, MD.

South-to-North Interstates
The beginning of I-85 in Montgomery, AL, and the end of I-85 in Richmond, VA.
The beginning of I-55 in New Orleans, LA, and the endo of I-55 in Chicago, IL.

Tenured Professor at CU-Boulder could be Fired!

The Denver Post is reporting this morning that CU-Boulder professor Ward Churchill is in danger of losing his post at the university. If he does not lose his post at the university, he could be suspended without pay (see the story here).

Officials at CU-Boulder do not explicitly say that Churchill plagiarized any material, but they do believe he is guilty of "academic misconduct." Their months-long investigation of Churchill's work has turned up many discrepancies, "fabrications" they call it.

Churchill has chastized the officials findings because they are not experts in his field. In fact, he claimed in an interview with 9News (Denver's NBC affiliate) that experts in his field were excluded from the investigative committee.

Firing a tenured professor is delicate affair because tenure makes professors virtually untouchable. If no other job comes with the security of tenure, then why should we continue to think that tenure should be granted to professors?

What does the (relatively immediate) future hold in store for me?

I hate to engage in navel-gazing on my blog, but I've been told by friends that it is worthwhile to mention the following news item. The news reflects well on me and the University of Utah's Philosophy department.

For the academic year 2006-2007, I have been hired as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Philosophy at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. I will fill in for Peter Vernezze while he is on leave. (Peter specializes in Ancient philosophy, and he is co-editor of Bob Dylan and Philosophy (Open Court 2006) and The Sopranos and Philosophy (Open Court 2004).)

Throughout the school year, I'll be teaching Intro to Philosophy, Critical Thinking, and Philosophy of Western Religion. Syllabi for each course will be available on my website soon.

I am very excited about joining the department! I look forward to teaching and to working with and discussing philosophy with Richard Greene and Robert Fudge. If you don't know already, Richard is the Executive Director of the Society for Skeptical Studies and he is co-editor of The Sopranos and Philosophy and co-editor of The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless (Open Court forthcoming), and Bob is the Director of the Utah Consortium on Cognitive Science and Ethics and his specialization is moral psychology with current interest in empathy.

The Liar-Like Problem of Validity

A friend (and colleague) emailed me a version of the following problem (I'm willing to disclose his original if he agrees to let me do it).

I'm not sure I've figured out a way around it, but I thought that by posting it here, someone may have a solution to it and be willing to share their solution with me (us). Below is a version of the problem that I devised in response to his original worry.

(1) If an argument is invalid, then it is unsound. (premise)

(2) This argument is invalid. (premise)

(3) Therefore, this argument is unsound. (1,2)

The second premise refers to its own truth value so long as we accept that (1) is true. If we accept both premises as true, then the conclusion follows (soundly) from the argument. So, the argument is both sound and unsound.

Eee-gadds! This is another problem/paradox that will consume my "free" time!

The Problem with Non-philosophers

Richard - Philosophy et Cetera - has posted a commentary on non-philosophers here. It's interesting, so I've posted a link to it on my blog.

POSTSCRIPT:

I would suggest that much of the discussion occurring on Richard's blog concerns the question of what we should count as philosophy? The demarcation of philosophy and non-philosophy has arisen in the debate about experimental philosophy.

Many non-experimentalists feel that experimental philosophy is not philosophy. Philosophy is in the business of giving normative arguments for normative conclusions. For example, philosophers seek to answer why ought we believe x? Or, why ought we do y? Experimental data cannot result in normative arguments or conclusions. So, experimental philosophy is not philosophy.

I agree that philosophy is in the business of giving normative arguments for normative conclusions. But I disagree that experimental philosophy cannot advance the field.

Experimental philosophy gives us the data we need to undermine currently accepted arguments. We can choose to reject the normative conclusions because the data about peoples' intuitions do not match what the philosopher has claimed people would say. When we reject the argument, we can formulate another one that is more in line with peoples' intuitions. (We would not be susceptible to the same problem.)

If my argument is even remotely close to correct, then it seems that the demarcation of philosophy from non-philosophy is not as clear as we might think. More posts like Richard's will prompt greater discussion of this seemingly intractable problem.

(Yet) Another Stab at Buridan's Bridgekeeper Paradox

Anyone who knows me has gathered that Buridan's Bridgekeeper paradox really bothers me (see my research webpage for one of my papers on the problem of Buridan's Bridge). I've never devised a satisfactory solution to the paradox. A student emailed me a potential solution a few months ago, and I want to address it in this post (He sent it to me a few months ago, and I did not have a chance to respond to him directly. So, I want to devote some time to it in my blog).

The student concludes that Plato should not do anything. Socrates's statement "you will throw me into the water" is either true or false, but Plato does not know whether Socrates's statement is true or false (at the present time). So, Plato's lack of knowledge at the present time renders him incapable of action.

To support his conclusion, the student considers whether an unjustified empirical claim is either true or false. Since it is neither true nor false, he concludes Plato should not do anything. If Socrates had said "there is a planet in the universe populated by little green men," then Plato would be incapable of acting; he could not throw Socrates into the water or let him pass because there is no empirical justification for the claim being true or false.

As I see it, the main problem with the student's solution is that the paradox depends on the truth-condition of Socrates's statement, not whether the statement is justified. Plato said he would throw Socrates into the water (let him pass) if his statement was false (true). He did not say what he would do if he asserted an unjustified (justified) statement. Plato should do something because there is a fact of the matter whether there is a planet in the universe populated by little green men and whether Plato will throw Socrates into the water. Once we know what the fact is, Plato will be able to perform some action.

One potential problem with my response to the student is that it assumes there is a fact of the matter. If there is no fact of the matter, then the student is correct. Plato should not do anything.

It is a fact that either "there is a planet populated by little green men" is true or "there is a planet populated by little green men" is false. If it is neither true nor false, then it is not an empirical claim. The proposition would be supererogatory. The statement would not be empirical because empirical statements can be confirmed by supporting evidence, i.e., experience, and the statement would not be analytic because analytic statements are true or false by definition. So, we would have to say that the statement is not empirical. The claim is empirical because it is a claim about the existence of green men on a planet in the universe. Existential claims are empirical claims. Therefore, the claim "there is a planet populated by little green men" cannot be supererogatory. There has to be a fact of the matter in the case of Buridan's bridgekeeper paradox.

Silence is Golden

Swain, Alexander, and Weinberg's ("SAW") paper, "The Instability of Philosophical Intuitions," has received many comments at the Online Philosophy Conference (go here for comments). I'd like to respond to one of them here. The comment is authored by Ari Krupnik. (Since he calls on the authors to respond, I think it is inappropriate for me to respond at the conference website.)

Krupnick argues that SAW does not in fact challenge philosophers' reliance on intuitions. He believes this is the case for several reasons. No philosophical argument is shown to be unsound by showing that intuitions vary according to culture or educational background. No philosophical argument includes a premise that explicitly say most people have a certain intuition or that intuitions do not vary. Finally, no philosophical argument says that a particular group's intuitions serve as a good guide to truth. If a philosopher's argument included one or more of these claims, then indeed SAW would be challenging a philosopher's reliance on intuitions. But since a philosopher's argument does not include any of these claims, SAW's argument - and presumably, along with them, x-phil'ers - fails.

Where do I begin?

The fact is that some philosophers seek a folk account. A folk account is one that should be consistent with what ordinary people would agree is the case. If the claims of the philosopher's folk account are inconsistent with what the folk - in fact - say, then it is inconsistent (and possibly incoherent) to say that the philosopher has given what he has sought - a folk account. So, it would seem that a philosophical argument is shown to be unsound by showing that intuitions vary according to philosopher/non-philosopher status.

On several occassions, philosophers have claimed things like "what any ordinary person would say is x..." or "what people believe is y..." Though such claims may not be included among the premises of the philosophical argument they give, I find it hard to believe we cannot challenge the claim. The claim is empirical. Empirical claims should be supported by hard data. If there is no data to support the empirical claim, then it follows that the philosopher's argument is unsound.

There are some serious problems Krupnick raises for experimental philosophy. I imagine that these problems will have to be addressed in the not-too-distant future. One of them concerns whether a philosopher has to be explicit about intuitions if experimental philosophers are to challenge a philosopher's argument. I'm not sure how to settle this debate. So, I will leave it an open quesion (at least for now): do experimental philosophers have to restrict themselves to explicit claims that philosophers make about peoples' intuitions?

Philosophical Gourmet Report Update - Draft Faculty Lists Now Available

Brian Leiter has posted the draft faculty lists for the upcoming 2006 Gourmet Report evaluation (go here to view his blog post and a hyperlink to the draft list).

In his blog post he mentions the departments that have been dropped from the overall survey. The list includes (among others): SUNY-Albany, SUNY-Stony Brook, Oklahoma, and Cinncinati. The list does not include Utah.

I assume that Utah was not included b/c it wasn't on the 2004 survey, but I am a bit skeptical about my assumption. Leiter's reason for not including Cincinnati, Oklahoma, etc. is that "they appear to have no chance of making the US top 50, the UK top 15, the Canadian top 10, or the Australasian top 5." So, if the listed schools have no chance of making the top 50 US schools, then this might suggest that Utah wasn't even worthy of making the list of those schools that have no chance of making the US top 50.

Is Mele right about Davidson's account of action individuation?

I hope that everyone is enjoying the first annual Online Philosophy Conference. You can view the papers, commentaries, rebuttals, and questions or criticisms from the virtual audience at: http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/online_philosophy_confere. The following is a first draft of a comment I will post at the website. I decided to post it here first for several reasons. I will spare you my reasons.

In Section 2 of Mele's "Practical Mistakes and Intentional Actions," he tries to "sort things out" by showing that it would be useful for his project to "put things in terms of one or another of these theories" of action individuation. He chooses to follow Davidson's coarse-grained theory, and he mentions that the results could be translated into another theory. I tend to agree with him on this count, even though Zhu and Buckareff do not (see their commentary; p. 4), and I point to Ginet's On Action (1990), esp. chapter 3, for support.

My problem with Mele's argument is that he ascribes to Davidson an account of action individuation that seems to support the non-identity of two actions. I believe that Mele's account of Davidson's theory of action individuation is inaccurate.

According to Davidson's theory of action individuation, all of the descriptions that can be generated for an action designate the same basic action. Surely, then, if what Al did at the time is intentional under the description "Al turns left," then it is intentional under the description "Al turns away from the beer and chips store." Similarly, if what Al did at the time is unintentional under the description "Al turns away from the beer and chips store," then it is unintentional under the description "Al turns left." That the two action descriptions are not identical would violate the identity thesis Davidson's account of action individuation supports.

On page 10, Mele argues that, in story 2, if Al had been aware of his turning away from the beer and chips store, then he would have recognized that he should have driven to the store instead of turning left. If Al recognizes that he has erred by driving home and by turning away from the beer and chips store, then his "turning away from the beer and chips store" is not intentional under that description.

If Mele asserts that is view is consistent with the coarse-grained view of action individuation (at least in this case anyway), then "Al turns left onto Home Street" and "Al turns away from the beer and chips store" are two descriptions of the same action. All of the properties of one are included in the properties of the other. If these two descriptions are not identical, then they are not an example of Davidson's coarse-grained view.

Slightly earlier in the paper (9f), Mele justifies the claim that on Davidson's account some actions are intentional and others are unintentional with the following argument:

1. Every action is intentional under some description. (premise)

2. Action requires that what the agent does is intentional under some description. (premise)

3. If what an agent does can be described in a way that makes it intentional, then he is the agent of an act. (premise)

4. Therefore, x is an action if and only if x is intentional under some description. (1-3)

I think there is something missing from this argument that would fit well with Davidson's account of action individuation. It is consistent to think that any action description that exemplifies all of the properties of the intentional action is intentional itself. So, if we say that Al turned left onto Home Street is an intentional action, then, according to Davidson's theory of action individuation, any action description that exemplifies the properties of that statement is also an intentional action, e.g., "Al turned away from the beer and chips store" or "Al turned toward Canada" or "Al turned away from the African coast." To say that these examples are "obviously" false would be inconsistent with Davidson's account of action individuation.

(I will with Mele if he thinks that "Al turned away from the African coast" is an odd description of Al's actions. But the description is equivalent to "Al turned left onto Home Street." If Davidson's account of action individuation asserts that there are equivalent descriptions of a basic action, then it is consistent to think that "Al turned ontol Home Street" is equivalent to "Al turned away from the African coast" or some other odd description of Al's action. Odd does not mean false.)