tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-191970732024-03-07T15:11:56.128-06:00the boundaries of language'Put conventional logic to one side and enjoy. Well, I say enjoy.............' (Garth Marenghi's Darkplace)Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.comBlogger232125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-40296193777601367482008-09-08T11:57:00.004-05:002008-09-08T12:01:28.129-05:00Politicians' LogicOver at <a href="http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/09/spot-the-logica.html">Leiter Reports</a>, Brian Leiter has publicized a 'Spot the Logical Fallacy' party to happen during the build up to the election. It's obviously time to air this old gem again then:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vidzkYnaf6Y&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vidzkYnaf6Y&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-64007897725926837062008-08-26T23:52:00.002-05:002008-08-26T23:54:28.483-05:00Fetishes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fetishes.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fetishes.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Proving that <a href="http://xkcd.com/">xkcd</a> still has it.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-68708525250646228722008-08-18T17:11:00.002-05:002008-08-18T17:15:51.352-05:00The Man Who Told EverythingI've never understood this video, and I probably never will. It's somewhat disturbing in places, but the song is a classic from one of my favourite bands, and there's definitely something quite beautiful about the video, even its darker images. Here's Doves:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7QNB9mwBPus&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7QNB9mwBPus&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-75390789116687025452008-08-17T10:59:00.002-05:002008-08-17T11:26:49.133-05:00UT Methodology Workshop PicturesThe UT Methodology workshop is finally over. We had sessions from Jeff King, Marc Moffett, Ernie Sosa, Josh Dever, Dan Bonevac, Roy Sorensen, Derek Ball, Dan Korman and John Bengson, plus round-table discussions on the place of data about natural language in philosophy, paradoxes, and thought-experiments. It's been an exhausting five days, but I've learned a lot from it, and the visiting speakers were great to have around.<br /><br /><a href="http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/08/17/ut-austin-methodology-conference-photos/">Colleen</a> has put up some really good photos of the event on her <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/arbitrarymarks/sets/72157606754599543/">Flickr site</a>, so check those out if you want a flavour of the event. There were a bunch more photos taken last night by other people, and hopefully some of those will be online at some point.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-17057383885230607102008-08-12T09:00:00.002-05:002008-08-12T09:06:46.048-05:00UT Methodology WorkshopWell, it's finally that time. I'll be spending the next 5 days at the <a href="http://utmethodology.googlepages.com/">Methodology Workshop</a>, which kicks off today with Roy Sorensen's 'What Makes Something Interesting?' and our own Josh Dever's 'Linguistic Idealism.<br /><br />Alex G and Alex B have done a fantastic job putting this all together, and I'm anticipating it being a really fun event.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-19105868933129611392008-08-11T00:16:00.003-05:002008-08-11T00:25:45.728-05:00And I Was a Boy From SchoolI heard this being played really loudly in Fopp on Union Street last time I was back in Glasgow, and fell in love with it immediately. I was hugely surprised to learn it was by Hot Chip, since I'd really detested what I'd heard by them previously. Anyway, great song, interesting video. Good combination:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MtxAou8c28k&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MtxAou8c28k&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-13394428028265321922008-08-10T10:31:00.013-05:002008-08-10T12:28:38.606-05:00Knowing How to Hold Your BoozeIn this post, I'd like to bring together a couple more thoughts about knowledge how that have been bouncing around my dome for the past eight months or so. As those of you who have read my previous posts on this topic will know, I tend to find myself torn in two directions. On the one hand, the linguistic evidence and my intuitive reactions to several cases discussed in the literature push me towards holding that - contra Neo-Ryleans, who hold that possession of the corresponding ability is necessary and sufficient for knowing how - some kind of propositional attitude is necessary. If this isn't intellectualism, it's damn close. On the other hand, I've been reluctant to accept, despite some of the linguistic evidence clearly pointing in this direction, that the propositional attitude one must have must be knowledge. Moreover, I've found the suggestion that knowledge how attributions don't entail the corresponding attribution of ability or success in action hard to swallow. In particular, I've <a href="http://aidanmcglynn.blogspot.com/2008/05/knowledge-how-and-abilites.html">expressed</a> some sympathy for No<span style="">ë and Hawley's suggestions that knowledge how attributions entail some kind of counterfactual success condition. My earlier posts on knowledge how were part of my ongoing attempts to balance these competing considerations.<br /><br />Another source of reluctance towards accepting any version of intellectualism is that to me it intuitively mishandles particular cases. For example, I find it very hard to buy:<br /><br />'Jane knows how to speak English' is true in a given context iff for some contextually relevant way <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span>, Jane stands in the knowledge-that relation to the proposition that <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span> is a way for her to speak English, and Jane entertains this proposition under a practical mode of presentation.<br /><br />Now, I don't have any specific argument against this, and Stanley and Williamson would quite rightly be unimpressed by the mere fact that I find it implausible. But I do find it implausible, and that fact plays a role in my own thinking, even if it's rightly considered dialectically ineffectual.<br /><br />A perhaps more interesting example is this one:</span><span style=""><br /></span><span style=""><br />'Jane knows how to hold her booze' is true in a given context iff for some contextually relevant way <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span>, Jane stands in the knowledge-that relation to the proposition that <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span> is a way for her to hold her booze, and Jane entertains this proposition under a practical mode of presentation.<br /><br />Again, I find this pretty hard to believe. Similarly with John and Marc's account:<br /><br />Jane knows how to hold her booze just in case Jane knows for some way <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span> that <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span> is a way for her to hold her booze, and she minimally understands <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span>, where to minimally understand a way <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span>, is to have a correct and complete (possibly implicit) conception <span style="font-style: italic;">C</span> of <span style="font-style: italic;">w</span> and reasonably mastery of the concepts in <span style="font-style: italic;">C</span> and their mode of combination, and where one has reasonable mastery of a concept just in case one is able, under normal conditions, to correctly apply that concept in core cases.<br /><br />I guess the worry I had before was that these accounts of knowledge how over-intellectualize knowing how to hold one's booze. The charge of over-intellectualization is considered and rejected by Jenn, John and Marc in <a href="http://www.uwyo.edu/moffett/research/folkintellectualism.pdf">'The Folk on Knowing How'</a> on the grounds that folk attributions of knowledge how seem to be sensitive to whether the subject possesses a certain item of propositional knowledge rather than whether she possesses the corresponding ability. But I wonder if we'd keep getting those kinds of results if we focused on a different set of examples.<br /><br />In particular, I suspect that people will judge that one knows how to hold one's booze only if one is able to hold one's booze. I can at the very least report my intuitions here; it doesn't matter what a subject knows or believes, if they invariably pass out in the fetal position after one Smirnoff Ice, they don't know how to hold their booze. Of course, sometimes one will be ill, and so on. But if one would pass out after one drink even when there are no mitigating factors of this sort, one does not know how to handle one's booze.<br /><br />Let me offer a new reason for regarding this example as particularly interesting, before anticipating an objection one might have. The counterfactual I just invoked can seem suspect because of cases in which a subject can manifest her knowledge how without exercising the corresponding ability. As Snowdon writes (p9):<br /><br />'To construct such examples we need to describe cases in which the subject can show, teach, or tell (or otherwise convey to) us how to do something, and hence <span style="font-style: italic;">must</span> be credited with knowing how to do it, but is for some reason or other unable to do it.'<br /><br />The paradigm here is Jeff King's ski instructor, who is in great demand to teach particular stunts, but who is unable to perform them himself. We don't, it will be claimed, need to regard him as meeting any reasonable counterfactual success condition in order to regard him as knowing how to perform the stunts.<br /><br />There is, I think, much to be said about this case. But for now, I want to just suggest that the possessive pronoun in 'Jane knows how to hold her booze' seems to block an analogous move here. Jane might be able to teach Steve to hold his booze, Michael to hold his booze, and Sarah to hold her booze. But none of this would remotely incline me to think that she knows her to hold <span style="font-style: italic;">her</span> booze. Again, my intuition is that she can teach people left, right and center, but if she's the one singing 'Sweet Caroline' after one drink, she doesn't know how to hold <span style="font-style: italic;">her</span> booze.<br /><br />Let me turn, as promised, to the consideration of an objection that might have occurred to a reader by now. One might think that holding one's booze shouldn't be considered as falling in the scope of a proposal about the nature of knowledge how, just as we're not interested in the digestion of food, to take an oft discussed example. But it's wrong to assimilate holding one's booze to digesting one's food. Knowing how to hold one's booze usually requires practice, and it is something one can systematically work towards (indeed, I have a good friend who did just that the summer before he started college). It's not just something one's body does under normal conditions, like breathing or digesting one's food. Of course that's vague, but there does seem to be a world of difference here. This manifests itself, I think, in the fact that that we're uncomfortable attributing knowledge how to breathe or how to digest food, while it's perfectly natural to speak of someone knowing how to hold their booze. This asymmetry doesn't seem to be due to Gricean effects: notice that 'Jane knows how to breathe - not that I mean to suggest that was in question' seems weird, suggesting that the asymmetry is not explained by our typically assuming people know how to breathe but not that they know how to hold their booze. We just don't naturally think or speak in those terms at all.<br /><br />Moreover, there are other examples which don't seem at all like the case of digestion of food, but which display the same behavior. Consider, for instance:<br /><br />'Jane knows how to handle herself.'<br /><br />Now, one worry I do have is that these examples both seem a little idiomatic. So I end with a couple of questions I'm unable to answer. First of all, if they are idiomatic, does that mess up the points I've been trying to make with them here? Second, are there any examples which don't feel so idiomatic, but which can be used to make those points? To try to be clearer, the crucial features of such examples seem to be this: 1. It is very plausible that one possesses the relevant know how only if one meets a counterfactual success condition; 2. one cannot construct counterexamples to the necessity of the counterfactual success condition by focusing on instructor cases, since a possessive or reflexive pronoun gets in the way of successful instruction being a mark of possession of the relevant item of knowledge how. How about:<br /><br />'Jane knows how to look after herself'?<br /></span><span style=""> </span>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-60518743309374867402008-08-04T19:19:00.003-05:002008-08-04T19:28:57.796-05:00Certain Doubters on EvidenceIn the absence of a post here, there's a very interesting and active <a href="http://fleetwood.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=851">thread over at Certain Doubts</a> about a paper by Ram Neta (who's visiting Austin in a few weeks time) and Mark Phelan. The paper argues that the 'folk' aren't anti-intellectualists about evidence, a conclusion which they take to cause trouble for Jason Stanley, who has expressed considerable sympathy for the view that evidence is interest-relative. So far the discussion has drawn in the authors, Kvanvig, Fantl, DeRose, Stanley, and others. Worth checking out.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-90088154702354309222008-08-04T00:41:00.002-05:002008-08-04T00:46:23.862-05:00The Only Moment We Were Alone TogetherTen of the greatest minutes of the three years I've spent in Austin so far were spent watching the city's own Explosions in the Sky pour everything they had to offer into recreating this wonderful piece of music live at Emos. I'll try to get some philosophy up here soon, but for now, just enjoy:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nzj-ksNOMfU&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nzj-ksNOMfU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-32662028331466158952008-07-29T12:00:00.004-05:002008-12-10T04:43:20.641-06:00Grice, Dino-styleFrom this week's <a href="http://www.qwantz.com/">Dinosaur Comics</a>:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLBOInXZylZftLbGrWlsV_vLK8kdyPkYnQkNk6XVDe_cq-E8OOZUsQTnlC7PR6lp38SdsxTfTDdXE6cVClVJwnNoGBnQ5oPSFQldxO1g1FNx0MwvnldYfxPTOmgpF0o8DfGdL9mg/s1600-h/Grice+1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLBOInXZylZftLbGrWlsV_vLK8kdyPkYnQkNk6XVDe_cq-E8OOZUsQTnlC7PR6lp38SdsxTfTDdXE6cVClVJwnNoGBnQ5oPSFQldxO1g1FNx0MwvnldYfxPTOmgpF0o8DfGdL9mg/s400/Grice+1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228482183867714482" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpI_JctOP_20imuZPfEl3jP-408Df7dP3vu29nEl2huJavMJLcQTpSo9O14nze9EEIim3J7ZHw6NH5C_Ax62eCKJBbrzxl-VrJIQ8nmD1Kcy2K7uuibOtoxaQrmzRQNHoNhbW_qg/s1600-h/Grice+2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpI_JctOP_20imuZPfEl3jP-408Df7dP3vu29nEl2huJavMJLcQTpSo9O14nze9EEIim3J7ZHw6NH5C_Ax62eCKJBbrzxl-VrJIQ8nmD1Kcy2K7uuibOtoxaQrmzRQNHoNhbW_qg/s400/Grice+2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228482430894783026" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />HT: <a href="http://snowiswhite.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/i-am-loveable-and-trustworthy-and-good-at-conversations/">Tom</a>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-32785557303730768302008-07-28T23:50:00.002-05:002008-07-28T23:54:47.949-05:00The Mind That Knows ItselfHere's the beautiful 'The Mistress Witch McClure' by Sufjan Stevens, randomly set to shots of Buffalo:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dNxSjKvNV8c&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dNxSjKvNV8c&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />And there's an added <a href="http://philosophyjobmarket.blogspot.com/2008/04/still-we-figure-out-keys.html">bonus</a> for anyone who tries to spot the references in the titles of posts over at the Philosophy Job Market Blog.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-21068312049394026272008-07-28T13:15:00.005-05:002008-07-28T14:23:11.643-05:00Hawthorne BlegI'd be very grateful if someone with a pdf of Hawthorne's 'Reply to Cohen', or with access to 2000's <span style="font-style: italic;">Philosophical Issues</span> which it appeared in, would please email me a copy. UT's access to <span style="font-style: italic;">PI</span> has a gaping hole in it (1999-2002).<br /><br />Cheers.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Update</span>: A reader kindly sent me a copy of the paper.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-48984357623570718422008-07-24T15:47:00.004-05:002008-07-24T16:03:35.058-05:00The Dark TALauren and I went to see 'The Dark Knight' last Friday, and I thought it was pretty rubbish. Not in the same league of terribleness as 'Batman Begins', but not very good at all. Anyway, <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/a_little_preliminary_heresy.php">this review</a> from <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/">Pharyngula</a> seemed right on the money, and I can't resist quoting this line:<br /><br />"As a plot mover, the Joker was less an agent of chaos and more like the TA for a freshman philosophy course, leading everyone through twisty little exercises in artificial circumstances that present the poor student with difficult choices."<br /><br />HT: <a href="http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/07/24/pz-myers-on-the-joker/">Colleen</a>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-34372163951447953282008-07-21T17:52:00.001-05:002008-07-24T00:30:00.172-05:00DolphinsHere's Fred Neil singing 'Dolphins', just because it's Monday. Enjoy:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QKjAlICPF8M&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QKjAlICPF8M&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-17904333550314563532008-07-19T16:14:00.002-05:002008-07-19T16:17:37.063-05:00NYU PhilMath Conference Date ChangeAs Justin has <a href="http://aidanmcglynn.blogspot.com/2008/06/nyu-philmath-conference.html">pointed out</a>, the philosophy of maths conference he and Shieva are organizing has been shifted from October to April 10-12 2009. Check out the website of the conference <a href="http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Esjk362/NYU_Conference.html">here</a>.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-27885771878858083292008-07-19T10:33:00.003-05:002008-07-19T10:39:04.042-05:00Wright on Becoming a PhilosopherA while ago I <a href="http://aidanmcglynn.blogspot.com/2008/03/synthese-volume-on-crispin-wright.html">noted</a> that the Synthese volume featuring Crispin Wright's students reflecting on his work had started to filter into the 'Online first' section. Now you can get Crispin's foreword telling the story of how he became a philosopher, his first encounters with Dummett and with Frege's <span style="font-style: italic;">Grundlagen</span>, etc.<br /><br />HT: <a href="http://andreasstokke.blogspot.com/2008/07/wright-reminisces.html">Andreas</a>.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-10766261289440326692008-07-14T12:06:00.002-05:002008-07-14T12:10:13.834-05:00Philosopher's Carnival #73The <a href="http://megankime.blogspot.com/2008/07/philosophers-carnival_14.html">most recent Philosopher's Carnival</a> is now over at Megan Kime's <a href="http://megankime.blogspot.com/">Beyond Borders</a>. It features one of my recent posts, plus two discussions I've been involved in: one on how to Fitch-Church non-factive operators, and another on minimal-Fregeanism and Kripke puzzles.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-17835123010943017522008-07-12T16:26:00.009-05:002008-07-12T23:42:40.944-05:00Hawthorne on ClosureI'm nearly done with a draft of a paper on Hawthorne's treatment of Closure, but I'm not quite sure I fully understand how the 'practical environments' idea in chapter 4 is supposed to enable us to respect Closure. Most of the details are clear enough, but some of them require inferences from things Hawthorne has written elsewhere in the book. I don't know how good a job I've done of reconstructing what Hawthorne had in mind, or of presenting the reconstruction. Any comments on the following attempt, lifted from the draft, would be very much appreciated - it's clearly in need of improvement.<br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">According to interest-relative invariantism, in contrast, the interpretation of ‘knows’ and its relatives is invariant across different contexts. Nonetheless its <i style="">extension</i> can shift in more or less the manner suggested by contextualism because whether one’s true belief counts as knowledge is not determined entirely by truth-conducive factors—such as whether it was formed by a reliable mechanism—but also by factors concerning the subject’s practical interests; the direness of the consequences of the her being mistaken, for instance. We can see how this kind of account of knowledge might help save closure by briefly examining John Hawthorne’s preferred treatment of the lottery paradox. When one needs to consider whether one’s lottery ticket (or a ticket someone is offering you) will win for one’s present practical purposes—one is contemplating whether to sell the ticket for a cent, to take Hawthorne’s favorite example—one does not know what one’s spending power will be after the draw has been announced. However, when the outcome of the lottery isn’t an issue, given one’s practical interests, one can know where the ceiling on one’s spending power after the draw will lie. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So far all that has been suggested is that whether one knows the minor premise of the lottery paradox is sensitive to one's practical environment. We now need to consider three kinds of cases to establish whether such an account of knowledge respects closure. The first kind of case is one in which a subject S knows <i style="">p</i>, and knows that <i style="">p</i> entails <i style="">q</i>, but does not draw the consequences of these pieces of knowledge. Such cases are fully compatible with closure. The closure principle we are working with requires that one actually have made the inference in question, and so there can be no failure of closure when one simply doesn’t make the inference. The second kind of case is one in which a subject knows <i style="">p</i>, knows that <i style="">p</i> entails <i style="">q</i>, and has competently deduced <i style="">q</i> from <i style="">p</i> <i style="">at some point in the past</i>. So suppose again that S is in the bookstore, and the outcome of the draw is the last thing on S’s mind. However, S deduced yesterday that her ticket is a loser from her inability to afford to visit <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Mauritius</st1:place></st1:country-region> in two weeks time. <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hawthorne</st1:place></st1:city>’s discussion seems to suggest that in these cases S knows that her ticket is a loser, though her knowledge is ‘idle’ since it is not of practical relevance to S, and that in some such cases S may even be able to assert that her ticket is a loser. (This, anyway, is how I take <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hawthorne</st1:place></st1:city>’s view of these cases based on 2004: 161 and 183).<o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The third kind of case, in which one starts off in a practical environment such that one knows that <i style="">p</i> and then competently deduces <i style="">q</i>, is a little trickier. Suppose once more that S's practical interests are such that whether her lottery ticket wins or loses is not of practical relevance to S, and so she knows that she will not be able to afford to visit <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Mauritius</st1:place></st1:country-region> in two weeks time. S competently deduces that her lottery ticket is a loser, but upon reaching the conclusion her practical environment shifts such that S no longer knows what she will or will not be able to afford in a couple of weeks; knowing <i style="">p</i> requires that it be acceptable for one to use <i style="">p</i> as a premise in one’s practical reasoning <span style="">(see, e.g., 2004: 176)</span>, and S should no longer use the premise that she will not be able to afford to visit Mauritius in two weeks time as a premise in her practical reasoning. S now knows neither the premises nor the conclusion, and so closure is still respected. Parallel to the contextualist resolution of the closure-driven puzzles, what appear to be counterexamples to closure are really just shifts in the subject’s practical environment, bringing shifts in the extension of ‘knows’ in their wake. So understood, both contextualism and Hawthorne’s invariantism are instances of a general strategy of maintaining that ‘the Closure Principle only <i style="">appears</i> to fail, as the result of an epistemically important switch that takes place in the course of our thinking about the example’ (Vogel 1990: 20).</p>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-60741626575241510102008-07-09T13:27:00.005-05:002008-07-09T15:22:10.334-05:00DeRose on the Tracking AccountWhile reading back through Keith DeRose's fantastic 'Solving the Skeptical Problem', I came across a claim that I'd previously taken on trust from DeRose, but which came to seem quite puzzling in conversation with John Bengson. In a footnote, DeRose writes:<br /><br />'I've skipped entirely Nozick's fourth condition, but I believe this fourth condition to be redundant, anyway: It automatically holds whenever true belief is present.' (27fn27)<br /><br />Now, this redundancy claim might be encouraged by Nozick's presentation of the four conditions of his tracking account of knowledge:<br /><br />S knows that p iff:<br /><br />(1) p is true<br />(2) S believes that p<br />(3) ~(1) -> not ~(2)<br />(4) (1) -> (2),<br /><br />where -> is a subjective conditional, rather than an indicative condition.<br /><br />But this bare-bones presentation of the account isn't very helpful, and we have to look to Nozick's surrounding discussion to fill it out a bit. What's suggested is that condition (4) should be understood like this:<br /><br />Were it, in changed circumstances, still the case that p, S would still believe that p.<br />(Adapted from Wright's 'Keeping Track of Nozick': 135. Wright ignores the needed relativization to methods, and for the purposes of this post I can afford to follow.)<br /><br />Now, my question is this; why does DeRose think that this condition is redundant given conditions (1) and (2)? For that matter, why isn't the example Nozick used to motivate (4) a counterexample to DeRose's claim that (4) 'automatically holds whenever true belief is present'?<br /><br />Nozick asks us to imagine a poor envatted subject having his brain manipulated by scientists so that he comes to believe that he is envatted and that scientists are inducing beliefs in him by manipulating his brain. He has a true belief that he's envatted and that scientists are inducing beliefs in him by manipulating his brain. But does this belief satisfy (4)? Nozick argues it doesn't:<br /><br />'The person in the tank does not satify the subjunctive condition 4. [...] It is not true of him that if he were in the tank he would believe it; for in the close world (or situation) to his own where he is in the tank but they don't give him the belief that he is (much less instill the belief that he isn't) he doesn't believe he is in the tank. Of the person actually in the tank and believing it, it is not true to make the further statement that if he were in the tank he would believe it - so he does not know he is in the tank.'<br /><br />Even leaving aside Nozick's final claim that the person in the tank doesn't know that they are, the example is a little hard to evaluate since, as usual, claims about the relative closeness of worlds are always somewhat slippery. But it seems plausible enough, and there seem to be other examples of this form readily available. For instance, Nozick mentions Harman's case of the guy who reads about the death of the dictator of his country, but fails to be exposed to the massive cover-up that follows. Structurally similar examples seem to abound.<br /><br />Any thoughts on what DeRose had in mind? And does the point stand or fall with an analogous complaint against safety (S believes that p -> p)?Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-11499209015168092652008-07-09T10:15:00.002-05:002008-07-09T10:22:49.410-05:00Teach the ControversyI've blogged about Jeremy of Amorphia Apparel <a href="http://aidanmcglynn.blogspot.com/2007/11/and-so-we-watch-sun-come-up-from-edge.html">before</a>, when he launched his new <a href="http://wearscience.com/">Science!</a> range. But he's come to realize that he shouldn't let modern science tell its side of the story without extending the same opportunity to other points of view. That's why he's created a new set of designs, which are available on his new <a href="http://controversy.wearscience.com/">Teach the Controversy</a> site. As the site explains, these are:<br /><br />'Intelligently designed t-shirts urging you to show both sides of every story.'<br /><br />Austinites can expect to see me sporting the turtle design, in the interests of keeping an open mind of course, in the new Semester.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-58473399334312866662008-07-06T18:51:00.004-05:002008-07-06T19:00:40.264-05:00What Computer Proofs Don't Tell UsKenny has <a href="http://antimeta.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/computer-proofs-give-a-priori-knowledge/">an interesting post over at Antimeta</a> on an old paper of Tyler Burge's on apriority and computer proofs, and there's an interesting exchange with Carrie Jenkins in the comment thread. I've never got around to reading that paper, though it seems of a piece with 'Content Preservation' and other papers of that period.<br /><br />But what I want to know is why my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/World-Map-Shower-Curtain/dp/B000P655MM">map of the world shower curtain</a>, which uses <span style="font-style: italic;">six</span> colours to represent political regions, has Chile and Peru both <span style="color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">orange</span>.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-64862837711926509822008-07-03T18:54:00.002-05:002008-07-03T18:59:04.138-05:00CMM Graduate ConferenceAs Ross noted in the comments to my earlier post, the <a href="http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/%7Ephsk/cmmgc08/index.htm">CMM Graduate conference</a> in Leeds is taking place on the 4th of September, not the 5th to the 7th as I'd originally written. The excellent-looking <a href="http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/%7Ephlrpc/Perspectives%20on%20Ontology.htm">Perspectives on Ontology Conference</a> takes place in Leeds from the 5th to the 7th, which presumably explains my confusion.Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-75278181024459476922008-07-03T17:35:00.013-05:002008-07-03T22:48:29.016-05:00Grice and Doxastic Voluntarism<p class="MsoNormal">It's generally seen as an objectionable consequence of an account that it entail a robust form of doxastic voluntarism. For instance, take epistemic deontologicalism, which has it that we should understand epistemic justification in deontic terms such as 'requirement', 'blame' and 'obligation'. This view has been criticized on the grounds that it is committed to the appropriateness of assessments of beliefs in these terms, even though such assessments seem to presuppose that we are responsible for our beliefs - that we have voluntary control over what we believe. It is taken as pretty obvious that we have no such control.<br /><br />Feldman, Heironymi, and others have offered a partial response to this argument by questioning whether the appropriateness of assessing beliefs in deontic terms really does commit us to doxastic volutarism. My concern here is not with this dialectic, however, but with a parallel issue that arises once one adopts certain aspects of Grice's philosophy of language. In 'Meaning', Grice writes:<br /><br />'Suppose I discovered some person so constituted that, when I told him that whenever I grunted in a special way I wanted him to blush or to incur some physical malady, thereafter whenever he recognized the grunt (and with it my intention), he did blush or incur the malady. Should we then want to say that the grunt meant(nn) something? I do not think so. This points to the fact that for <i>x</i> to have meaning(nn), the intended effect must be something which in some sense is within the control of the audience, or that in some sense of "reason" the recognition of the intention behind <i>x</i> is for the audience a reason and not merely a cause. [...] It looks, then as if the intended effect must be something within the control of the audience, or at least the <i>sort </i>of thing which is within its control.'<br />(p221 in <i>Studies in the Way of Words</i>)<br /><br />Now, Grice's account of imperatives looks okay here; the view he comes to in the William James Lectures is that the intended effect should be that one's audience forms a particular kind of intention, and a sufficiently robust voluntarism about intention-formation doesn't seem problematic. But in the case of 'informative' utterances, Grice suggests the intended effect is that a particular belief is induced in one's audience. So, assuming that doxastic voluntarism really is a bad consequence, we seem to have a straightforward objection to Grice on our hands.<br /><br />Some contemporary Griceans have suggested weakening the intended result in the case of informative utterances to the following: one intends one's audience to entertain a particular thought, rather than to form a particular belief. (For example, see Ray Buchanan and Gary Ostertag's <a href="http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/114/456/889">contribution</a> to the <i>Mind</i> volume celebrating the centenary of 'On Denoting'.) Here again a sufficiently robust voluntarism doesn't seem too objectionable - at the very least, the weakening seems to do better with respect to the problem I've sketched than Grice's original suggestion, so some progress seems to have been made.<br /><br />But the problem still seems to remain for Gricean accounts of <i>assertion</i>. Consider Bach and Harnish's familiar Grice-inspired proposal (<i>Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts</i>: 42):<br /><br />In uttering <i>e</i>, <i>S</i> asserts that <i>p</i> if <i>S</i> expresses:<br /><br />1. the belief that <i>p</i>, and<br /><br />2. the intention that her audience believe that <i>p</i>.<br /><br />For the purposes of Gricean accounts of meaning, saying and communicating, it might be satisfactory to suggest that the intended result is that one's audience entertain a particular thought. But I'm worried that an attempt to amend Bach and Harnish's (2) along these lines is too weak - that something of the force of assertion, in contrast to mere saying, gets lost. Clearly some work needs to be done clarifying and defending this last point, but hopefully the basic idea is clear enough for now.<br /><br />Additionally, if this inchoate line of thought is to be developed into an objection to Gricean accounts of assertion, Grice had better be right that the intended result must be under the audience's voluntary control, and doxastic voluntarism had better be genuinely problematic. So there are a lot of interesting issues to be considered before the force of the objection I'm trying to mount can be properly assessed.</p> <span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-size:180%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-87112484199862309062008-06-19T15:02:00.005-05:002008-06-19T15:06:44.271-05:00NYU Philmath ConferenceWhile we're on the subject of conferences, let me draw the attention of those of you not on Facebook to Justin and Sheiva's <a href="http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Esjk362/NYU_Conference.html">philosophy of maths conference</a> at NYU in October. I'm going to do my best to be there, and the lineup is very exciting. So (at least) two reasons to go!Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19197073.post-67624504460444313852008-06-19T14:35:00.003-05:002008-07-03T18:54:29.510-05:00Update and Calls for PapersI've been quiet the last while as Lauren's been visiting me in Glasgow, and I've been trying to make the most of my time here. Tomorrow I fly back to Austin, and I'll be back to work properly on Monday. Expect posting to pick up again around then.<br /><br />In the meantime, there are a couple of CFPs out for excellent looking conferences in Europe. First, there's the third annual CMM grad conference at Leeds. Papers are to be on metaphysics (construed very broadly) or mind, and are due no later than Friday the 18th of July. The conference will be on September 4th. There will be a panel on grad-student publishing with two former Archeans, <a href="http://theoriesnthings.wordpress.com/">Robbie</a> and <a href="http://metaphysicalvalues.blogspot.com/">Ross</a>. The CFP is <a href="http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/%7Ephsk/cmmgc08/cfp.htm">here</a>. The grad conference is just a couple of days earlier than a grown-ups conference, <a href="http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/%7Ephlrpc/Perspectives%20on%20Ontology.htm">Perspectives on Ontology</a>, which has a great line-up.<br /><br />The Arche/CSMN conference is being held in Oslo this year! They're looking for high-quality papers on topics in their core areas, due by the first of September. The conference itself will be held on November 14th-16th. The keynotes announced so far are Zoltan Szabo and Carrie Jenkins (whose forthcoming book, <a href="http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199231577">Grounding Concepts</a>, is released in August). See the CFP <a href="http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/%7Earche/acgc/call.shtml">here</a> for further details.<br /><br />Lastly, on the other side of the Pond, there's a graduate conference on Essentialism being held at UC Davis. The official webpage is <a href="http://essentialism.conference.googlepages.com/home">here</a>, but the actual call is a .doc file, so let me offer a more web-friendly version here:<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;" align="center"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:24;" >Graduate Conference on Essentialism<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:14;" >U.C. Davis, 26-27 September, 2008<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:14;" >Keynote Speaker: L.A. Paul<span style=""> </span>(University of Arizona)<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:14;" >Submission Deadline: 1 July 2008<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;color:black;" >About the Conference<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;color:black;" >The conference is directed primarily at graduate students who are ABD and who are writing in metaphysics.<span style=""> </span>The aim of the conference is to facilitate the exchange of ideas among graduate students working in metaphysics.<span style=""> </span>Authors of accepted papers will be expected to present, not read, their papers.<span style=""> </span>There will be six graduate papers presented.<span style=""> </span>Participants will be expected to pre-read accepted papers.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >Submission Guidelines<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >Topic</span></u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >: Papers on any area of metaphysics will be reviewed.<span style=""> </span>However, preference will be given <span style=""> </span>to papers addressing topics within Essentialism or ontology.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >Length</span></u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >: 4000 - 6000 words<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >Cover Letter</span></u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >: name, paper title, email address, abstract (max. 500 words)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >Submit in PDF form to</span></u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >: essentialism.conference@gmail.com<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >Please ensure that papers are suitable for blind review.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >If you are interested in participating in the conference via chairing or commenting, please email Dana at </span><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >essentialism.conference@gmail.com</span><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" >.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Aidanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16164506970522004673noreply@blogger.com1