E.G.

Society-level "ought" and "can."

You might think that people who support marginal politicians like Ralph Nader or Ron Paul have different values than people who support mainstream politicians like John McCain or Barack Obama, but that doesn't have to be the case.  Suppose I support Ralph Nader because I think he would make the best president.  And suppose you agree that Ralph Nader would make the best president -- but you support Barack Obama, your second choice, because you think Nader has no chance to win.  In that case, it could well be that you and I have the same values, and rank the available candidates in the same order.  What we disagree about is how a candidate's viability ought to be taken into account.

I think it is actually very common for people to differ in this way.  How can we explain this phenomenon?  Maybe the root of it is that you and I follow different procedures for allocating limited energy and motivation for politics.  When I go out and (say) make phone calls for Nader rather than Obama, I'm raising the already-low odds of an outcome which we both agree is highly desirable; when you make phone calls for Obama rather than Nader, you're raising the already-high odds of an outcome which we both agree is middlingly desirable.  So maybe it's just that I'm more of a high-risk, high-reward kind of political activist than you are.

But I don't think this kind of explanation will work, at least not in all cases.  For one thing, almost no one is capable of appreciably affecting the odds of any given electoral outcome, and most people know this.  When you volunteer for a candidate, you might think, in a vague way, that you are helping him or her to be elected; but you probably do not deceive yourself into thinking your candidate's odds are really any different than they would have been if you'd just stayed home and watched TV.  For another thing, this phenomenon occurs even in cases where no one is under any illusions about affecting the outcome.  It occurs in sports, for instance: When the odds that the Cardinals will win the World Series diminishes, some fans switch to rooting for a more successful team, while others remain loyal.  Given this, we need to be able to explain why some people support an unlikely best outcome, whereas others support a more likely second- (or third-, or 200,000th-) best outcome, even when supporting that outcome does not involve affecting its odds.

Maybe you support Obama because you tend to become very emotionally invested in the person you're supporting, and you want to cut the chances that you'll be disappointed.  And maybe I support Nader because I don't mind much if my candidate loses.  Maybe I even like it when my candidate loses, because it gives me something to complain about.  In fact, I think this might be a satisfactory explanation in many cases.  But how upset do you really get when your candidate loses?  There are a lot of people who support Obama even though they would prefer other, more marginal candidates.  It is hard to believe that all those people have chosen to support Obama just because they're afraid, consciously or unconsciously, of having to endure the pain of supporting the loser.  So I think that, for those who are exceptions, we need a different story.

The herd mentality may be a further factor, but such explanations don't really get to the point that interests me here.  What I'm most interested in is this question: Is there any good reason to shift allegiance from your top choice to a lower-tier, more likely choice, in cases where (a) you are not in a position to affect the odds in any way, and (b) shifting allegiances won't make the loss of your top choice any more endurable?

Here's one possibility.  Perhaps when you support a given candidate, you are saying the candidate ought to win.  But if the candidate is very unlikely to win, perhaps that means that she cannot win.  In that case (if you believe that "ought" implies "can"), you should not support candidates whose chances fall below a certain cut-off.  Then we just need to decide how poor the chances can be before they fall below that cut-off.  Maybe this is the judgment-call about which the Nader supporter and the Obama supporter disagree. 

But what is really the connection between improbable and cannot?  Whether I can clean up the dishes has little to do with whether it is probable that I will clean up the dishes.  Certainly, if it is improbable that I will clean up the dishes because (say) I'm handcuffed to the couch, then that is a reason to think I cannot clean up the dishes.  But if it is improbable that I will clean up the dishes just because I'm very lazy and have never bothered to clean up the dishes before, then there has not yet been given any reason to think I cannot clean up the dishes.

However, with regard to entities like societies, cities, countries, and so on, the situation might be a little different.  Societies can be lazy, I think.  And I suppose that if a society is too lazy to do something, e.g. curb global warming, then that it is a reason to think that global warming cannot be curbed.  For example, if 99% of the electorate opposes reform just because reform will make people uncomfortable in the near-term, I think that shows laziness.  It also shows that it is very improbable for a reform-minded candidate to win an election.  And if the probability of a reform-minded candidate winning is low enough, that seems like sufficient reason to say that a reform-minded candidate cannot win.

So maybe what's going on here is something like this.  All agree that marginal candidates are unlikely to win.  Some people think that marginal candidates are so unlikely to win that they cannot win, so they decide not to support such candidates (on the implicit or explicit assumption that "ought" implies "can," and "support" implies "ought").  Others set the bar lower: they think the same marginal candidates are not so unlikely to win that they cannot win, which frees them to support such candidates without falling afoul of the ought-implies-can principle.  If that is right, then the open questions are: (1) How unlikely does an electoral (or more generally, societal) outcome really have to be before it is fair to say that it cannot happen? and (2) Does "ought," in the sense in which that word is used when we say things like "Nader ought to win," really imply "can"? 

Libertarians should be dirty-hands libertarians.

It's not easy to give an exact, non-controverisal description of the rights that libertarians say we have.  The phrase "individual rights" evokes a picture that is very rough, but is adequate for the present purpose.  But there's a further issue: although it is clear that libertarians like individual rights, it's less clear what that means.  Consider a familiar type of case: Suppose you could raise a bunch of taxes, fund a large army, invade Burma, and replace its current government with one that is more friendly to individual rights.  If you're a typical libertarian, you think raising those taxes would violate some individual rights.  But (assume that) overthrowing the government of Burma would prevent many more (and more egregious) violations of individual rights.  Does that positive trade-off make it OK to invade Burma on your citizens' dime?

No, according to (what we can call) dirty-hands libertarianism.  Dirty-hands libertarianism says that one must never violate individual rights, even if doing so will prevent a very large number of rights-violations from occurring.  As many have noticed, it's not obvious that we can make such a view respectable.  It seems as though the dirty-hands libertarian doesn't really care about whether individual rights are violated; what she really cares about is whether she herself violates any individual rights.  This kind of self-centeredness seems objectionable -- it seems to involve an undue emphasis on keeping one's own hands clean of rights-violations.

There's more to say about this objection and I think there are interesting replies to it.  But if the libertarian is moved by it, she might switch to another view, which we can call rights-promotion libertarianism.  On this view, one should simply try to make the overall number of individual rights-violations as small as possible.  Sometimes that means refraining from violating individual rights oneself; but sometimes, e.g. in the Burma case, rights-promotion libertarianism calls for violating rights in order to prevent a larger number of rights-violations.

At minimum, rights-promotion libertarianism needs some tweaking.  For example, it seems as though a good rights-promotion libertarian shouldn't reproduce, since your kids' rights are bound to be violated now and then, and you can prevent all that simply by not having them in the first place.  This is probably an unwelcome implication; and there are other similar issues that come up.  But maybe these sorts of problems aren't huge -- maybe they can be avoided by fiddling with the view, e.g. by saying that the rights of merely potential persons don't count (or count in a different way than the rights of actual persons), or whatever.

But I think the view has some deeper problems.  Rights-promotion libertarianism looks like a version of maximizing consequentialism.  But to produce a version of maximizing consequentialism equivalent to rights-promotion libertarianism, you'd have to think that (a) violation of individual rights is the only thing that is non-instrumentally bad, and (b) nothing whatsoever is non-instrumentally good.  This is a weird and improbable view.  You could get around this by abandoning the maximizing-consequentialist framework, and say that there is an obligation to minimize rights-violations even when doing so fails to maximize overall value.  But then I think you'll have a hard time making sense of the view.  On this view, you may violate others' rights in order to do one type of good (i.e. prevent rights-violations) but not in order to do any other type of good (e.g. feed the poor).  This seems arbitrary.

So I suspect that if you think it's permissible to violate rights in order to ensure that fewer rights are violated, you're going to have trouble explaining why it's not permissible to violate rights in order to, say, bring about lots of pleasure, or satisfy intense desires, etc.  But I think all genuine libertarians must be able to say (and explain why) it's not permissible to violate rights just to secure those sorts of values.  So it seems to me that if you want to be a genuine libertarian, you probably have to be a dirty-hands libertarian, and just do your best to handle the problems facing that view.

A defense of Morissettean irony

I've decided to start blogging here again (though we'll see how long this resolution lasts).  And as I see it, there is no better way to start again than by providing the internets with something they seem to lack (based on 5 minutes' worth of googling): An irrefutable defense of Alanis Morissette's widely criticized usage of the word "ironic" in the (aptly-named, as I will show) 90's hit song, "Ironic."  This will also provide me with motivation to continue blogging, since I will not want this ridiculous post to be associated with my name in google searches forever.

The Wikipedia page on this issue says that in response to her critics, Alanis has granted that her song contains no genuine irony, but claims that this is precisely what makes the song ironic.  This strategy is cheating and I will not use it.  Instead, I want to show that Alanis should have stuck to her guns.  I think the scenarios in her song are ironic in several widely accepted senses of the word.

In the song, Alanis suggests that

(1) You have 10,000 spoons and all you need is a knife.

is ironic.  This guy suggests that (1) is not ironic, but

(2) You have 10,000 spoons and all you need is a knife, and you're in the break room of a cutlery factory.

is ironic.  How's that?  Presumably, (2) is ironic because it's the opposite of what you'd expect: you'd expect the break room of a cutlery factory to contain at least one knife.  But (1) is also the opposite of what you'd expect: you'd expect anyone who has 10,000 spoons to have at least one knife.  So it seems to me that if (2) succeeds in being ironic, (1) does, too.

A complaint about a different line is suggested by a parody, here.  On Alanis's view,

(3) An 88-year-old man wins the lottery, then dies the next day.

is ironic.  The author of the parody seems to think that (3) isn't ironic, but

(4) An 88-year-old man wins the lottery, then dies the next day "of chronic emphysema from inhalation of the latex particles scratched off decades' worth of lottery tickets."

is ironic.  Well, if we suppose unexpectedness is the criterion, then (4) might actually be less ironic than (3) (since, ceteris paribus, people who have chronic emphysema are more likely to die than those who don't).  Of course, there is something odd, and perhaps unexpected, about being killed by the very activity that provides you with vast riches, and that's not what happens in (3).  But there is also something odd and unexpected about dying the day after acquiring vast riches. 

In light of these considerations, I suppose charity requires us to assume that the above critics of Alanis don't take unexpectedness to be the criterion of irony.  What else might they mean?  Dictionary.com defines irony:

1.	containing or exemplifying irony: an ironic novel; an ironic remark.

2.

ironical.

3.	coincidental; unexpected: It was ironic that I was seated next to my ex-husband at the dinner.

3 is the only immediately helpful part, and I'm not going to bother with anything that isn't immediately helpful.  3, we have seen, is a count in Alanis's favor.  But the usage note on the same page seems to be at odds with Dictionary.com's own definition:

The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply "coincidental" or "improbable," in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly.

OK; so maybe Alanis's critics are taking it as required that a genuinely ironic scenario must contain a "lesson about human vanity or folly."  The critics might rightly point out, for example, that there is no obvious vanity-folly lesson in (1).  And I'm inclined to agree to this.  But there's no obvious such lesson in (2), either.  Further, the situation with (3) and (4) is reversed: Perhaps there's a vanity-folly lesson in (4), but it seems to me there might also be such a lesson in (3).

Anyway, I think that if critics are faulting Alanis for calling her scenarios ironic even though they contain no vanity-folly lessons, then their case against her is likely to be very weak.  Arguably, there are lessons about human vanity and folly in just about everything that happens.  In any case, it's certainly never obvious that any given event contains no such lesson.  (Exception: events that involve inanimate matter.  But no such events are described in "Ironic.")  Of course, I'll grant that any lessons contained in Alanis's song aren't obvious, and probably aren't interesting if they are there; but there is no requirement that one needs obvious or interesting vanity-folly lessons in order to be ironic.

So, by two different accepted criteria for irony -- unexpectedness and vanity-folly lessons -- I think Alanis's attribution of irony to scenarios (1) and (3) are defensible.  What about the other scenarios in the song?  A few of them seem especially suspect.  For example, Alanis thinks this is ironic:

(5) Alanis meets the man of her dreams, and then she meets his beautiful wife.

But for all we know, this happens to Alanis all the time.  Anyway, there's nothing in general unusual about someone being attracted to a married person.  Similarly,

(6) You're in a traffic jam, and you're already late.

is the sort of thing that happens all the time.

Is there any hope for Alanis's view that these scenarios are ironic?  I think that these scenarios may be considered unexpected if one assumes a very optimistic view of life in which we normally get what we want.  I think a lot of people hold this sort of view; a lucky few are even justified in holding it.  For them, when any of their desires are frustrated, as in (5) and (6), it comes as unexpected.  So I think (5) and (6) are, after all, unexpected: they are unexpected by extremely optimistic people. 

Further note that (5) and (6) arguably contain vanity-folly lessons.  (Again, I'm not claiming that the lessons are good lessons, and my case doesn't require them to be.)

So, I think Alanis succeeds in providing irony of at least two types.  But perhaps the critics have in mind some other sense(s) of irony.  And there are plenty of alternatives out there.  Many are listed in Wikipedia, which says that

There is some argument about what is or is not ironic, but all the different senses of irony revolve around the perceived notion of an incongruity between (i) what is said and what is meant; or (ii) between an understanding of reality, or an expectation of a reality, and what actually happens.  [my numbering]

I think my argument above strongly supports thinking Alanis's scenarios are ironic in the (ii) senses.  But perhaps Alanis's critics are assuming that all genuine forms irony are along the lines of (i).  And it does seem fair to say Alanis has failed to be (i)-style ironic.  So it seems everything hinges on whether (ii)-style irony is a genuine form of irony.  But it seems to me to be generally accepted that it is.  QED.

What's outside the domain of moral judgment?

There are features of things which make moral judgments about them true.  For instance, in a certain case it may be that the fact that a given act is an act of killing-for-fun is the feature of it which makes it wrong.  It might be thought that there are some types of things which never have these sorts of features.  For instance, it might be thought that the motions of inanimate objects never have these features.  If so, then whereas any given human action might be wrong, or right, or permissible, or obligatory, or supererogatory, or whatever, the motion of any given inanimate object is never any of these things; such motions are "outside the moral domain," as it were, and no moral judgment is ever true of them.  So for instance, on this view, while there are true moral judgments about Bush's decision to invade Iraq, there are no true moral judgments about the motions of Mars, since there are no features of that motion which would make any such judgment true.

A short argument against this view can be written as follows:

1. Either (a) the motion of Mars is morally permissible, or (b) the motion of Mars is not morally permissible.
2. (a) is a moral judgment.
3. (b) is a moral judgment.
4. Thus, there is at least one true moral judgment about the motion of Mars.

We can obviously extend this argument into any "domain" we please, and therefore we can show that there is no kind of thing about which there are no true moral judgments. 

If we want to avoid the conclusion, what should we do?  1 has got to be true.  2 seems true enough; if I say something is morally permissible, I have certainly made a moral judgment (even though in the present case I've clearly made a false one).  So 3 seems to me to be the premise we'll need to attack if we want to avoid 4.  To deny 3 is to say that (b) (i.e. the claim "the motion of Mars is not morally permissible") is not a moral judgment.  But there seem to be genuine moral judgments which take this form; for instance, it seems clear that (c) "Killing innocent children is not morally permissible" is a moral judgment.  So we should want to say that (c) is a moral judgment, even if (b) isn't one.  But there seems to be no principled way to get away with this.  That is, there seems to be nothing about (b) which would keep it from being a moral judgment without keeping (c) from being one, too.  It seems to me that if any sentence of the form "______ is not morally permissible" is not a moral judgment, then none of them are.  If so, then a principled 4-denier should say that sentences of the form "_______ is not morally permissible" are never moral judgments.  But that is an unpleasant thing to have to say.

A similar set of problems may obtain in other areas.  We may be tempted to say, for instance, that while there are some sorts of things about which there are true "color judgments" (e.g. there are true color judgments about ketchup, such as the judgment "Ketchup is red"), there are other sorts of things about which there are no true color judgments.  For instance, molecules are colorless, "outside the domain of color," so we might be tempted to say that any "color judgment" about a molecule has to be false.  Similarly, no number has a color, so we may want to say that all judgments about the color of, say, 7, are false.  But any molecule, and any number, is either green or not, and in either case it seems to follow that there is at least one true color judgment.  So we'll be faced with the same pair of options: either (1) "X is not green" is not a color judgment, or (2) there are true color judgments about molecules and numbers.   

I expect that, with regard to color judgments, it will not matter very much which of the two options we choose.  Nothing much hangs on whether "X is not green" is classified as a color judgment or not.  I am not sure, however, whether anything important hangs on the corresponding question about moral judgments.  If we say that there are true moral judgments about dogs and planets and so on, it will follow that the sorts of features which make moral judgments true are features had by every type of thing.  This might be an interesting result.  Or, if we say that there aren't any true moral judgments about dogs, planets, etc., then we may be committed to say that "negative" judgments of the form "____ is not [permissible, obligatory, right, wrong, etc.]" are not genuine moral judgments.  This again may be an interesting result.

Ginny Arnell's "Dumb Head"

I heard this old song on the radio the other day.  Listen to it while thinking about the issues addressed in this post by Neil the Werewolf.  This page says that it is "one of" the "only hits ever to include an extended kazoo solo."

Two thoughts about obligations of charity.

1. Pete is starving to death on a distant continent, and I can keep him alive by giving $10/month to charity.  There are other people on Pete's continent who are starving to death, too, and $10/month could save them just as well.  Suppose that anything less than $10 will be useless to these people, so that if I give $5.00, then I help no one; if I give $10.00, I help only Pete; if I give $15.00, I still help only Pete; if I give $20.00, I help Pete and one other person; etc. 

A claim: "If Pete were the only one in need, I might have an obligation to help him; but when the number of people starving on Pete's continent becomes sufficiently large, I have no obligation to help anyone at all."  This is a weird-sounding claim, but I think that many people believe it; anyway, I think many people behave as though they believe this claim and others similar to it.  Here I will present an argument which might get at some of the reasons people may have for believing such claims.

Say that the "needy group" is the group of people who, like Pete, are starving and can be saved by a donation of $10/month.  Let's begin with the assumption that if Pete is the only member of the needy group, then I have an obligation to help him, i.e. to give $10/month to charity.  We want to know: What happens to my obligation when the number of people in the needy group increases?  To see what happens to it, suppose now that there are two people in the needy group -- call them Pete and Sue -- and suppose that we know nothing about Pete and Sue except that they are members of the needy group.  In that case, Pete and Sue are similar to one another in all (known) morally relevant respects, which means that I must have the same obligation (if any) to Pete as I have to Sue.  Thus, I may have an obligation to help Pete and Sue (i.e. to give $20/month to charity); or I may have an obligation to help neither Pete nor Sue (i.e. to give 0/month); but I cannot possibly have an obligation to Pete without having the same obligation to Sue.  Something similar will be true when we suppose that there are three members of the needy group: I will be obligated to give either $30/month to help all three, or will have no obligation to help anyone.  And in general, the following disjunction will be true: Either I am obligated to give X*$10 or I am obligated to give 0, with "X" representing the number of members of the needy group.

For X=1, we have supposed, the left disjunct is true: I am obligated to give $10/month.  As X grows, two things happen: The number of people in the needy group grows, and the number in the left disjunct grows.  It might be thought that, as the number of people in the needy group grows, my obligation to lend a hand becomes stronger and more pressing.  But as the number in the left disjunct grows, any potential obligation I might have becomes increasingly unreasonable.  When X=1,000,000, for instance, I am (given the above disjunction) either required to give $10,000,000 per month or I am required to give nothing.  But I do not have $10,000,000 per month to give; thus, I must not be obligated to give anything at all.  So: When the needy group is sufficiently large, I have no obligation to help Pete, nor do I have any obligation to help anyone else in the needy group.

Where has this argument gone wrong?

2. Suppose you are designing an advertisement for a charity.  You know the ad will feature a photo of a starving boy, and you know that the photo will be displayed alongside text like this:

By donating only $____ per month, you can save the life of a boy just like this one.

Your assignment is to fill in the blank.  Your only goal is to maximize the amount of donations which will be given in response to the ad; you don't care whether the way in which the blank is filled yields a true or false sentence.  How should you fill in the blank?

It seems to me that if you fill the blank with a very large number, the ad will be discouraging to people.  If people think, for instance, that in order to save the boy's life, they need to donate $500 per month, they will feel that they must choose between the boy's life and (say) being able to make rent.  Given such a choice, most people will choose rent.  On the other hand, if you fill the blank with a very small number, then people are unlikely to donate very much money.  If people think, for instance, that they can save the boy's life by donating only 50 cents per month, then their consciences will be satisfied even if they donate only that much.  This game will have some things in common with Blackjack.

Marriage.

Jonathan Ichikawa writes:

Here is the full text of the newly proposed section of Article I of the Texas Constitution, proposed by HJR 6, which has been passed by both chambers:

Sec. 32. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

As Jonathan points out, this bit would have the effect of banning marriage itself, since marriage is a legal status which is identical to marriage.  This is clearly not what the authors of the amendment intend to do.  So it seems clear that the authors of the amendment have made a mistake, and that what they meant to write is something other than what they did write.  But I think it's actually sort of difficult to figure out what, exactly, they should have written instead.  It looks like the word "identical" is causing the problem, so we might try simply dropping that word.  For instance, we might try:

(b2) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status similar to marriage.

But (b2) still has problems.  Marriage is identical to marriage, but marriage is at least aruably similar to marriage as well.  If so, then (b2) bans all marriage, just like the original (b) does.  You might try to avoid this consequence by saying that marriage is not similar to marriage; you might want to say, for instance, that two things can be similar to one another, or identical to one another, but not both.  Even if we say this, however, it is not clear how close a status must be to marriage in order to be considered "similar" to it.  For instance: Being a person's business partner certainly has some things in common with being married to that person.  If this means that being a business partner is "similar to" being married, then (b2) would prevent the state from recognizing business partnerships.  That's bad.

So maybe we will want to leave aside talk of "similarity," as well as talk of identity.  Here's a stab in that direction:

(b3) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status other than marriage.

But (b3) is even worse than (b2).  The state will want to recognize the status of being divorced, or the status of being an immigrant, or the status of being a convicted criminal, but these are all statuses other than marriage.  So we clearly need some talk of similarity in our formulation. 

Perhaps the problem with (b2) wasn't that it mentioned similarity, but that it did not say what kind of similarity was at issue.  Perhaps what is needed is to talk about relevant similarities.  For instance:

(b4) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status relevantly similar to marriage.

Since marriage is arguably "relevantly similar" to itself, we again have the problem of prohibiting marriage.  But we can avoid this by adding a few words to (b4) to yield:

(b5)  This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status relevantly similar to marriage, other than marriage itself.

(b5) has a few clear advantages.  First, (b5) wouldn't result in a ban on all marriage.  Second, (b5) would allow the state to recognize the statuses of being divorced, of being an immigrant, and of being a convicted criminal, since these statuses are not relevantly similar to the status of being married.  Third, it is at least probable that (b5) would not result in a ban on, say, state recognition of business partnerships, since (probably) business partnerships are not similar to marriage in whatever respects are supposed to be relevant.  However, (b5) has the problem that it leaves open what "relevance" is supposed to be.  Since it is unclear how to tell whether a particular status is "relevantly similar" to marriage, it is unclear how to tell whether a particular status is permitted or prohibited by (b5).  It might turn out that certain statuses which the state needs to recognize are relevantly similar to the status of marriage; if so, then (b5) is fatally flawed.  More importantly (from the perspective of the amendment's authors), it might turn out that "civil union," or some other legal status which is supposed to be a substitute for marriage for gay couples, is not relevantly similar to the status of marriage.  If so, then (b5) would allow civil unions, in which case (b5) clearly does not do the thing which its authors intend it to do.  In any case, we won't be able to tell what, exactly, (b5) says until we know what relevant similarity to marriage is, and how to determine whether it obtains in a given case.

I suspect that (b5) is probably very close to what the authors of the amendment wanted to get across.  However, I think the ambiguity of the notion of "relevance" as it is employed in (b5) is probably too obvious for (b5) to be considered acceptable to lawyers.  Perhaps this is why the authors chose not to use a formulation along the lines of (b5), and instead chose to use the original (b) as it appears above.  The original (b) has the advantage of being less obviously ambiguous, and perhaps this advantage was thought to outweigh the disadvantage of having the obviously unintended consequence of banning all marriage.

The new Pope.

A lot of people are criticizing the new Pope for having been a member of the Hitler Youth.  I think there is very good evidence that his membership in that organization was non-blameworthy.  First of all, he was very young when he was a member; younger people are not to be held responsible for their actions in the same way that older people are.  Second, the evidence seems to show that he was not an especially enthusiastic member.  Third, he was probably, in some sense, "forced to" join; if he had refused to join, he or his family would probably have faced quite severe negative consequences.  And finally, my impression is that the routine activities of the Hitler Youth were not, on the whole, all that morally troubling.  Hitler Youths were, I think, indoctrinated into the Nazi worldview, which is bad; but I do not think they were ordinarily involved in doing wrong actions.  My understanding is that they were more likely to be found exercising or chanting slogans than (say) persecuting Jews or what-have-you.  None of this means, however, that having been a Hitler Youth cannot hurt one's ability to soundly arrive at correct moral judgments. 

Suppose a child is strapped to a chair and forced to listen to Jeffrey Dahmer argue that serial killing is permissible.  The child is not permitted to argue back.  In fact, the child is forced to pretend to agree with everything that is being said.  After a very long time -- say, 1000 hours -- the child is set free to go about his business.  We would not blame the child for what has just happened to him.  Indeed, we would feel overwhelming pity for the child.  Nevertheless, it's probable that by undergoing such an experience, the child's moral sensibilities will have been damaged.  If you wanted to get advice on how to resolve a tricky moral problem, for instance, you would prefer to get advice from someone who has not been subjected to this experience, than to get advice from someone who has been subjected to it, all else equal.

I'm guessing that a typical member of the Hitler Youth spent many hours listening to people argue that domination is a virtue, that the weak should be crushed by the strong, that anyone who was born Jewish is one of the "weak", etc.  And, like the child in the above example, a typical member of the Hitler Youth was probably expected to pretend to agree.  Probably, most of the people who were subjected to this experience are not to blame for having been subjected to it.  Nevertheless, this sort of experience is not the best way to prepare to give advice to people who are dealing with tricky moral problems.  But this is precisely what the new Pope will be doing.

I'm not saying that having been a member of the Hitler Youth should automatically disqualify you from dispensing moral advice.  I am quite sure that someone could be subjected to the experience of being a Hitler Youth and, in the end, become a morally exemplary person.  For all I know, the new Pope has done exactly that.

Governed by stars.

From CT:

Backword Dave notes, cogently:

I hate those in power. I look up, and others see the stars; I see the shit up our leader’s arses.

I actually think the star-metaphor is more apt.  A star is remote and gigantic.  It can affect you (as when, for instance, the sun gives you a sunburn), but you cannot affect it.  On the other hand, very few "arses" are remote or gigantic; you can easily affect someone's arse, e.g. by kicking it.  Looked at this way, Backword Dave's statement is actually kind of hopeful.  It expresses the sentiment that government is something bad, and corrupt; but it also expresses the sentiment that its corruption is something personal, local, and changeable by ordinary people.  Changing the government, the metaphor seems to suggest, is nothing more profound or impossible than wiping after a bowel movement.  Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case.  The government is remote and gigantic; no one of us can affect its course.  One may as well try to stop the stars from twinkling.

Monasticism.

From this page:

Monasticism (from the Greek monos, meaning "single" or "alone") usually refers to the way of life--communitarian or solitary--adopted by those individuals, male or female, who have elected to pursue an ideal of perfection or a higher level of religious experience through leaving the world. Monastic orders historically have been organized around a rule or a teacher, the activities of the members being closely regulated in accordance with the rule adopted. The practice is ancient, having existed in India almost 10 centuries before Christ. It can be found in some form among most developed religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, the Sufi branch of Islam, and Christianity.

Apparently, almost all the world's religions have developed some sort of monastic institution.  Why is this?  Here's a simple theory: Perhaps these religions were meeting a felt need.  Maybe a certain percentage of people, within any given society, are simply best-suited to a life of poverty, chastity, and retreat from society.  Such people make good monks, but probably turn out to be rotten coworkers, rotten parents, rotten drinking buddies, and/or rotten spouses.  If so, then monasteries perform a very simple function in society: Monasteries provide these monastically-inclined people with a place to live the sort of life to which they are best-suited.

If every society contains some such people, then our own society must contain some of them.  But unlike most societies throughout history, our society no longer provides any sort of monastic institution to accommodate their needs.  Catholics, of course, can join the priesthood, but my understanding is that nowadays, being a Catholic priest almost invariably means being assigned to a parish, and thereby being "immersed in the world": Shaking hands after Mass on Sundays, going to church socials, organizing charity raffles, etc.  Protestants, I would guess, provide their clergy even fewer opportunities for monasticism than Catholics do.  And of course, if you are not religious, then your chances of living a monastic life are dimmer still.

Some people go off to live by themselves as hermits in some place like Montana.  Every now and then, one of these people blows a gasket and does something weird or horrible, like sending bombs through the mail.  I suspect that had they been born 500 years ago, the Montanan hermits of the world would probably have become monks instead.  They might have been happier that way.

Invisible senses of knowledge.

This post is part of my gradual progress toward an argument against knowledge closure.

Consider four propositions:

1. I know that I saw a zebra at the zoo.
2. I don't know that what I saw wasn't really just a cleverly disguised mule at the zoo.
3. If I know that I saw a zebra at the zoo, then I know that what I saw wasn't a cleverly disguised mule at the zoo.
4. 1, 2 and 3 are inconsistent.

(This is a stolen example.) 

If I've just been to the zoo and had a look at the zebras, I probably am inclined to say that the first proposition is true.  But I may also be inclined to assent to 2, at least once 2 is presented to me for consideration.  3 seems plausible (3 is a consequence of knowledge closure combined with plausible background assumptions).  Finally, 4 seems very plausible; 4 appears to be a rather straightforward logical truth.  So there are reasons to accept 1 through 4.  But 1 through 4 are inconsistent, so we will have to deny at least one of them.  Which one should we deny?

Contextualists can deny 4.  Contextualists about knowledge think that the truth conditions for knowledge ascriptions are context-dependent; on the contextualist account, the same ascription of knowledge could be true in one context and false in another.  So, at least in certain contexts (e.g. "everyday contexts"), 1 might be true, even though in other contexts (e.g. "skeptical contexts"), 2 might be true.  In that case, even if 3 is true in every context, 1-3 are not inconsistent, provided that 1 and 2 aren't both true in the same context.

Invariantism is the denial of contextualism.  If one were an invariantist, would one need to affirm 4?  I want to show that the answer to this question is "no."

Contextualism is obviously true of certain propositions.  "Michael Jordan is tall," for instance, may be true in the context of a discussion about the people on a city bus, but false in the context of a discussion about professional basketball players.  In both cases, the same concept, "tallness," is employed; it just so happens that "tallness" is the sort of concept for which context-dependence is "built in."  Contextualism about knowledge is the view that context-dependence is built into knowledge.  It is this "conceptually built-in" context-dependence which allows the contextualist to affirm 1 through 3 without contradiction.

"A&M Savings is a bank" is a sentence which superficially resembles "Michael Jordan is tall."  If I say "A&M Savings is a bank" in the course of a conversation about "business establishments in which money is kept for saving purposes," then I may well have said something true; but if I say "A&M Savings is a bank" in the course of a conversation about "slopes of land adjoining a body of water, especially a river," then I probably have said something false.  So "...is a bank" appears to be context-dependent in the same way that "...is tall" is.  The crucial difference, however, is that the single word "bank" is used to invoke two different concepts (i.e., the concept of a certain kind of financial business, and the concept of a certain kind of geographical feature), whereas "tall" always invokes the same concept.  "Bank," therefore, has two senses, neither of which is context-dependent, whereas "tall" has a single, context-dependent, sense.  (It may turn out that "bank" does exhibit a certain kind of context-dependence.  If so, it is only because the context in which the word "bank" is uttered may help to fix which sense of "bank" is intended by a speaker. )

One ought not be a contextualist about the predicate "...is a bank."  Rather, one ought to be (what we might call) a "sense pluralist" about "...is a bank."  That is, one ought to think that the word "bank" has multiple senses, each of which is context-independent.

One could be a sense pluralist about knowledge, too.  That is, one could say that there is more than one concept which the word "knowledge" represents.  If that were the case, then 1 and 2 might both be true, even if 3 were also true, so long as the sense of "know" employed in 1 is different from the sense of "know" employed in 2.  So a sense pluralist about knowledge can deny 4 even though she denies contextualism.  But since a sense pluralist is not a contextualist, she is an invariantist.  So it follows that invariantism does not commit one to affirm 4.

If one wants to affirm 1-3, then one needs to deny 4.  Both sense pluralism and contextualism provide the means to deny 4.  But one needs an excuse to deny 4, because ordinary speakers tend to think that 4 is true.  Question: Who can muster the best excuse -- the contextualist or the sense pluralist?

The contextualist can produce an excuse to deny 4 by analogy with certain context-dependent adjectives like "tall."  To the ordinary speaker, "Michael Jordan is tall and Michael Jordan is not tall" looks like a contradiction, because ordinary speakers are accustomed to assume that both sides of a conjunction are meant to be understood within the same context.  This assumption is usually correct.  After all, it is "conversationally inappropriate" to say "Michael Jordan is tall and Michael Jordan is not tall"; it is more appropriate to say, e.g.: "Michael Jordan is tall compared to regular people, but not tall compared to typical basketball players."  But conversational inappropriateness is not contradiction, although it sometimes appears to be.

The contextualist can argue that, likewise, the appearance that 1-3 are inconsistent derives from the conversational inappropriateness of their presentation.  1 is true within an "everyday" context, while 2 is true within a "skeptical" context, and it is inappropriate not make these contexts explicit.  But this does not show that there is any contradiction which results from omitting explicit acknowledgement of the differing contexts.  Indeed, if the analogy with "tall" succeeds, then we should think that there probably is not any contradiction.

The problem for the contextualist, however, is that the analogy with "tall" does not seem to succeed.  It is obvious that "tall" is context-dependent; it is not anything like obvious that "knows" is context-dependent.  Many ordinary speakers will be satisfied with our explanation of how "Michael Jordan is tall and Michael Jordan is not tall" does not have to produce a contradiction, but significantly fewer of them will be able to see that 1-3 might not produce a contradiction.  So to come up with an adequate excuse to deny 4, the contextualist cannot just provide an analogy with "tall."  The contextualist must also give an explanation of how the context-dependence of "knows" could be so difficult to see, given that the context-dependence of "tall" can be so obvious.

Now for the sense pluralist's excuse.  Just as the contextualist can provide an analogy with "...is tall," the sense pluralist can provide an analogy with "...is a bank" to show how the appearance of a contradiction might be generated by 1-3 without there being any actual contradiction.  If she takes this route, the sense pluralist will have a problem similar to the one faced by the contextualist: The sense pluralist will need to explain why sense pluralism about knowledge is so difficult to see, while sense pluralism about "...is a bank" is so obviously true.  But it is here, I think, that the sense pluralist has resources which are unavailable to the contextualist.

Question: How do we know that "bank" has more than one sense?  Suppose I am just learning English.  One day, I hear my parents say that a building where money is kept is a bank.  The next day, I hear my teacher say that a slope alongside a river is a bank.  These might seem to be two very powerful clues that "bank" has more than one sense.  But why should they be?  Why shouldn't I think that there is just one concept to which the word "bank" points, but that that concept is so broad that its extension can include both a building where money is kept, and a slope alongside a river?  I claim that we would not be able to tell that there is more than one sense of "bank" simply by observing the way competent speakers use that word.  These observations might lead us to guess that "bank" has more than one sense; but I suspect they could lead us instead to guess that "bank" has just one, extremely broad, sense.

So: How do we learn that there is more than one sense of "bank"?  I am not sure, but I suspect it helps that we are able to provide analyses of the two senses of "bank."  We can list features which would make something a "bank" in one sense, and list features which would make something a "bank" in the other sense.  We can then compare the two lists, and notice that they are not the same -- that the items on one list do not appear on the other list, and vice-versa.  It is the availability of such differing analyses which, I think, provides one with the means to know that there is more than one sense of "bank."

It is possible -- perhaps probable -- that no correct, non-recursive analysis of knowledge is available.  If so (and if I am right that analysis is the primary direct way to distinguish different senses of the same term), then it is possible that we simply do not have the tools to determine that there is more than one sense of knowledge.  So, it seems to me, the sense pluralist might have a way to explain why sense pluralism about knowledge is so difficult to see, while sense pluralism about "...is a bank" is so obviously true.  We can see that sense pluralism about "bank" is true because we can analyze the different senses of "bank."  But no analysis of knowledge appears to be possible, so if there is more than one sense of knowledge, we might never be able to tell.

Project Misty.

Project Misty is an organization which sends episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and other cult/sci-fi TV shows and movies, to troops stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.  Somehow, I kind of doubt that very many American soldiers are fans of such an obscure show, but I guess a handful of them must be, since there are an awful lot of soldiers.  Project Misty also has a blog.  Here's a note from a post entitled "Super Important!  Don't Send Sexually Explicit Donations!":

If it involves crushing small animals or anything mixing sex with death, it’s sexually explicit. Also, anything like “Faces of Death” is out, okay? Don’t send us any of that weird crap.

Good to know.

Investment, insurance, and Social Security.

There is some disagreement over whether we should think of social security as a form of investment, or as a form of insurance.  In order to answer this question, we should first be able to distinguish investments from insurances.  To understand this distinction, one could consult the work of economists and accountants, who I am sure have already worked it out in great detail; or one could engage in baseless, uninformed armchair speculation.  In this post, I will do the latter.

People ordinarily say that insurance is meant to insure against events.  So, for instance, people take out insurance against medical emergencies, and it is said that this form of insurance insures one against the event of a medical emergency.  Investments, on the other hand, need not be "against" any particular event.  For instance, if I buy a bunch of stocks, I might do so in order to be financially prepared for some future event (e.g., retirement), or I might do so simply in order to make my money grow.

So, initially, we might say that insurance is the sort of "financial product" which is purchased with particular future events in mind, while an investment is the sort of financial product which may or may not be purchased with future events in mind.  But this is not a very careful way to draw the distinction.  For there probably are some sorts of investments which are always purchased with some particular future event in mind.  A "college fund," for instance, is a type of investment, yet when one purchases a college fund, one does seem always to have in mind a certain kind of event, i.e. the event of "going to college."

Thus: Both insurances and investments can be purchased with an eye toward some future event, so that is not the important difference between them.  Still, it is possible that we can distinguish between insurances and investments by looking at the kinds of events to which each of them are related.  I take it that this is what Will Wilkinson is doing in this post.  In that post, Wilkinson seems to think that one insures oneself only against unlikely events.  I might buy insurance against, say, losing my arm in a combine, but it would be absurd to buy insurance against paying my rent.  Losing my arm in a combine is highly unlikely, but I am fairly certain I will have to pay my rent.  So if I buy a financial product which is meant to help me pay my rent in the future, it would not make sense to classify that product as a form of "insurance"; we would instead want to call it an "investment."

So Wilkinson's idea, I take it, is that if one buys a product to help prepare one for some unlikely future event, then it is a form of insurance, whereas if one buys a product to help prepare one for some likely future event, then it is an investment.  I do not think this is quite right; anyway, it does not seem to square with our ordinary use of the words "insurance" and "investment."  Two counterexamples: 1. I have medical insurance which will pay for a doctor visit when I get the flu.  I am virtually certain that I will get the flu sometime in the next few years, but I still want to say that my medical insurance really is insurance, and not just an investment masquerading as insurance.  2. Some wealthy people, I have heard, choose not to buy medical insurance, opting instead to invest some money in some sort of low-risk, low-yield investment fund.  They reserve this fund for the unlikely event that they will have an expensive medical emergency.  I take it that this fund is an alternative to insurance; it is not simply another form of insurance. 

The counterexamples just discussed show, I think, that a person could be insured against highly likely events, and could buy an investment with an eye toward some highly unlikely event.  So, it seems to me, the likelihood of the event with which a financial product is concerned does not determine whether the product is a form of insurance or a form of investment.

Here's how I want to distinguish investments from insurances.  Consider that, typically anyway, one only "gets paid" by one's insurance company if the event against which one is insured actually happens.  So for instance, if I have insurance against some natural disaster, and the natural disaster never happens, I never see a penny; but if the natural disaster does happen, then I will receive some form of compensation.  But suppose that, instead of buying insurance against the disaster, I simply set aside a sum of money in, say, a savings account, and plan to use the money only in case of a natural disaster.  In that case, I get paid either way.  Whether the natural disaster happens or not, I get the same interest rate at the bank.

So, I think, the difference between an investment and an insurance is this: When one invests a sum of money with an "eye toward" some future event, one gets a return on that money whether the future event happens or not.  On the other hand, when one uses money to purchase insurance with an "eye toward" some future event, one gets a return on one's money only if the future event actually happens.  (Usually, the "future event" in question is something bad, but I don't think it needs to be.  One could conceivably buy insurance against the possibility that one's children will get into an extremely expensive college.  I think this would count as insurance as long as one will only get paid if one's children do in fact get in to such a college.  And, incidentally, I think it would still count as insurance in that case even if it is highly likely that one's children would get into such a college.)

So: Is Social Security an investment or is it an insurance?  I don't know the actual workings of Social Security well enough to answer this question, but my lack of knowledge hasn't stopped me up to this point, so I won't let it stop me now.  The person behind Sick Transit provides the following two scenarios for our consideration:

1. A 55-year-old factory worker gets laid off. At his age, it makes no economic sense to go back to school and learn a new profession. As manufacturing jobs are scarce, he ends up spending the last 10 years of his working life as a WalMart greeter. By basing his pension on his 35 highest years of income, Social Security insures him against this risk.

2. An office worker invests a third of her 401k in her employer’s stock. (As boneheaded as this is, a lot of people do it. Remember, close to half of all people are below-average investors.) As the employer declares bankruptcy and the stock tanks, a third of her retirement savings go out the window. Because Social Security has a defined rate of return, she is insured against that risk.

In both these scenarios, the worker's plans for retirement somehow fall through, and the worker is left with much less to live on than the worker had planned to have.  Let's assume it is this sort of event which Social Security is supposed to "guard against."  In that case, to know whether Social Security functions as an investment or as an insurance, we should ask: Does the worker get paid even if this sort of event never occurs?  For instance, if the factory worker hadn't gotten laid off, would he have still gotten his Social Security benefits?  If so, then I think Social Security ought to be characterized as investment which society makes on behalf of workers; if not, then I think Social Security ought to be characterized as a form of insurance which society provides to workers.

My impression is that workers "get paid" by Social Security whether their normal retirement plans fall through or not.  If that's right, then Social Security, I think, is a form of investment.  The bigger question, of course, is whether Social Security ought to be an investment, or a form of insurance, or something else entirely.  I won't try to answer that question here.

Being a fan.

What is it about one's home team that makes one hope it will win?  I do not understand it.  There is nothing particularly "St. Louis-y" about the St. Louis Cardinals except that the Cardinals play their home games at Busch Stadium, and the word "St. Louis" appears in the name of the team.  These rather nominal relations appear to be the extent of the Cardinals' relation to the city of St. Louis.  If anyone involved with the Cardinals, from the owners to the players, happens to have some relation to the city of St. Louis beyond the nominal relations already mentioned, it is purely an accident.

I have to admit that I do not see any point in being a sports fan.  I see no reason for a St. Louisan to hope that a particular team will win just because it has the word "St. Louis" in its name; nor do I see any reason for a St. Louisan to stop hoping that that team will win the moment "St. Louis" is replaced by, say, "Kansas City" in the name of the team.  Yet many, many people are sports fans.  They cannot all be irrational.  So I assume that there is some good reason to be a sports fan.

I think being a member of a major political party might be something like being a sports fan.  The players, management, coach staff, and owners of a team can all change, and a loyal sports fan will keep on cheering just the same.  Likewise, a major political party can radically reverse its positions, personalities, and lines of argument, and the vast majority of voters will keep on voting and thinking in line with the same party. 

Just a few years ago, the notions of federalism and states' rights were core Republican doctrine.  It is now obvious that today's Republican leadership holds precisely opposite views on those subjects.  Similar reversals are observable in mainstream Republican foreign policy.  These major "flip-flops" have occurred within the space of less than a decade, so that in many respects, today's Republican leadership holds views more like those of yesterday's Democrats than yesterday's Republicans.  Yet it appears that the vast majority of those who were Republicans ten years ago are Republicans still. 

This kind of loyalty is inexplicable if you think that people join parties because they share those parties' positions on issues.  But maybe that is the wrong way to think about being a member of a party.  Perhaps being a member of a party is something like being a fan of a team; perhaps the vast majority of Republicans are simply fans of the Republican party.  This would explain why it appears that you can change almost anything you like about the Republican party, and as long as the name does not change, most Republicans will stay loyal.  After all, you can change anything you like about the St. Louis Cardinals, too, and as long as the name does not change (to "Kansas City Cardinals," for instance), most St. Louisans will stay loyal.

Similar points, of course, could be made about the Democrats.

Moral reasoning in action movies.

The movie "Speed" makes an effort to show that the hero (the Keanu Reeves character) is not stupid.  For instance: Throughout the movie there are several scenes in which the hero pauses, stares ahead for a moment, and then produces an accurate prediction of the villain's next move.  Such scenes are meant to establish that the hero is smart, or at least insightful.  But despite being smart, the hero isn't supposed to be very wordy; he does not speak much, and it's hard to imagine him engaging in extended conversation.  By contrast, the villain (the Dennis Hopper character) speaks often and excitedly; he is delighted by the cleverness of his evil plot, and seems barely able to restrain himself from explaining it in full detail to anyone who is willing to listen.  As I recall, he even explains it to himself when nobody is around.

I think "Speed" is, in this regard, a fairly typical action movie.  Action heroes are generally supposed to be just as smart as action villains, though smart in a much different way.  Action heroes can often "just see" what is the best or right thing to do; there is often "no time to explain" how the hero knows what he knows, though the hero always does turn out to know it.  On the other hand, villains almost always seem to have time to explain.  Action movies tend to give their villains plenty of time to go over their plans and motives with their underlings, with their victims, and eventually even with the hero himself.  As a result, action movies usually contain a villain's elaborate attempt at justification for doing evil, but fail to include any counterargument. 

Another example: Consider "Apocalypse Now," in which the Marlon Brando character (the villain) provides an engaging and potentially persuasive, though mostly incoherent, defense of his weird death cult.  The movie does not provide any real response to Brando's diatribe.  Nobody, to my recollection, ever gives any reasons against Marlon Brando's view.  The Martin Sheen character, who is the movie's hero (if the movie has a hero), simply sits quietly, listening and waiting, while Brando explains.  Of course, in his voice-over, Sheen does say that the Brando character is obviously insane, but that is not a counterargument; Sheen does not say where or how Brando is mistaken.  (Anyway, that is how I remember the movie; I may have forgotten important details.)

Generally speaking: Heroes pronounce, and report what they know; villains explain, and attempt to compel assent.  Why is this so often the case in action movies?  Maybe the explanation is simple.  Anyone can come up with a bad argument, but it is sometimes difficult to come up with a good one.  But any argument for doing evil is going to be a bad one (hopefully), so writers have no problem coming up with arguments to give to their villains.  But perhaps writers don't want to go to the trouble of coming up with a good argument for the hero's view, so they just give him a kind of deep, inexplicable insight into the truth of his view instead.

Maybe that's not right; maybe the explanation lies in audiences' demands rather than in writers' choices or limitations.  Maybe audiences would be suspicious of any attempt to explain how what is right is right; perhaps they feel that they can "just see" what is the right thing to do in their own lives, so they think that any good hero will "just see" it as well.  Or maybe audiences think it would be undignified for a hero to engage in debate with a villain.  Submitting to a debate carries the risk of losing the debate; what does the hero gain from taking such a risk?  At any rate, if the hero is perceived to have lost a debate with the villain, this would significantly diminish the amount of satisfaction the audience is able to feel when the villain is eventually slain by the hero. 

For one reason or another, anyway, it seems that action heroes tend to keep the verbiage to a minimum, leave the reasons to the villains, and simply kill villains whenever given the chance.  I wonder if this has any negative effects on audiences.  Maybe it makes people feel entitled to refuse to give reasons for their views.  Or maybe it leaves people with the impression that rightness does not require, or cannot be given, an explanation.

Robots on C-Span.

This is old but good.  (Via CSOTD.)

Another pass at entitlement closure.

This post will just be a reiteration of my previous argument in what I hope will be a clearer and more correct form.

Here is how I now want to put the thing I am calling "entitlement closure": "For any propositions p and q, if I know p, and I know p=>q, then I am in a position to be weak epistemically entitled to write 'q.'"  And here is how I now want to put the thing I am calling "knowledge closure": "For any propositions p and q, if I know p, and I know p=>q, then I am in a position to know q."

The proposition "(p, and p=>q) => q" is always and necessarily true.  Let us call this the "underlying fact" of modus ponens.  As argued previously, this underlying fact of modus ponens is not modus ponens itself, because modus ponens is not a fact at all; it is a rule.  I want to understand modus ponens as a rule which entitles one to write some proposition q under certain circumstances.  In the previous post, I suggested three ways to understand how this rule is supposed to work:

(i) Logical MP: For any p and q, whenever I have already written "p," and already written "p=>q," then logical MP entitles me to write "q."
(ii) Weak Epistemic MP ("WEMP" for short): For any p and q, whenever I believe p, and believe p=>q, then weak epistemic MP entitles me to write "q."
(iii) Strong Epistemic MP ("SEMP" for short): For any p and q, whenever I know p, and know p=>q, then strong epistemic MP entitles me to write "q."

I think there are more than three senses in which a person can be "entitled to write q."  But I think the three rules above highlight three of the most important of these senses.  I will say a person is "logically entitled" to write q whenever it is Logical MP which entitles her to write q; a person is "weak epistemically entitled" to write q whenever it is WEMP which entitles her to write q; and a person is "strong epistemically entitled" to write q whenever it is SEMP which entitles her to write q.  I will say a rule "works" when the rule really does provide the sort of entitlement it is supposed to provide, and that a rule "always works" when the rule always provides such entitlement.

Here's my argument for the view that "entitlement to write" is closed (i.e., for the view that "entitlement closure" is true):

1. If WEMP does not "always work," then Logical MP is an arbitrary rule; it cannot be given a plausible rationale. (Assumption)
2. If "entitlement to write" is not closed, then WEMP does not "always work." (Assumption)
3. Logical MP is not an arbitrary rule. (Assumption)
4. So, WEMP does "always work." (1,3)
5. Thus, entitlement is closed.  (2,4)

I take it that premise 3 is obviously true.  Given the way I've defined terms above, I think premise 2 has to be true.  So premise 1 is hopefully the only premise which might be controversial.  That is the premise I will try to defend here.  Premise 1 would be true if (a) the claim that WEMP always works provides a plausible rationale for adopting Logical MP as a rule, and (b) no other rationale for adopting Logical MP as a rule would be plausible. 

We can see that (a) is true simply by considering an example.  Suppose that Pete is trying to explain basic logic to John.  Pete has written the following things on the blackboard:

(1) George Bush is made of iron;
(2) If George Bush is made of iron, then ketchup glows.

Pete claims that he is now entitled to write "(3) Ketchup glows."  John objects: "Why should you be allowed to write such an absurd thing?  It's obviously false."  Pete replies: "Yes, (3) is obviously false, but it follows from (1) and (2)."  John: "But (1) and (2) are obviously false also."  John: "Well, in logic, we are acting as though we believe the assumed premises of any argument under consideration.  And surely you see that, if I did believe (1) and (2), then I would be entitled, in some sense or other, to write (3).  In other words: I am logically entitled to write (3) because, if I did believe (1) and (2), then I would be entitled to write (3)."

In this example, I think Pete hopes that John will intuitively "see" that, given belief in some "p" and some "p=>q," no matter how absurd "p" and "p=>q" happen to be, one would be entitled in some sense to write "q."  That is, Pete hopes that John will have an intuition that WEMP "works."  And this hoped-for intuition plays a central role in Pete's attempt to motivate logical entitlement to write (3).  At any rate, this line of support would probably not succeed if John thought there were exceptions to WEMP.  For instance, if John were to say: "I can imagine cases in which I believe (1) and believe (2), but am still not entitled in any sense to write (3)," then Pete would not be able to appeal to WEMP to get John to see that Pete is logically entitled to write (3); Pete would need to appeal to something else.

This example makes it reasonable to think that it is at least possible to use WEMP to support Logical MP.  Is there any other way to support Logical MP?  Of course, I cannot show that there is not any other way; at best, I can only show that a few of the main other ways which have been proposed cannot succeed.

Sometimes people try to support Logical MP by appeal to what I have called the "underlying fact" of modus ponens -- the fact that "(p, and p=>q) => q" is true.  But this clearly cannot provide full support for Logical MP, because "(p, and p=>q) => q" is always true, but Logical MP does not always entitle me to write any q.  However, one might be able to use the underlying fact of modus ponens in conjunction with something else to motivate acceptance of Logical MP.  We can get an example of that kind of strategy by returning to Pete and John.  Suppose John is still not convinced that Pete is entitled to write "(3)," so Pete tries another line:

Pete: "If (1) is true, and (2) is true, then (3) must be true.  You see that, don't you, John?"
John: "Yes, I see it; but I see no reason to think that (1) or (2) might be true."
Pete: "Well, suppose (1) and (2) were true.  Then (3) would have to be true."
John: "I agree.  But how does that entitle you to write (3)?  You have not shown that (1) and (2) are true; you've only written (1) and (2)."
Pete: "When I write (1) and (2), I'm asking you to suppose they are true.  If you make that supposition, you're committed to say that (3) has got to be true.  I'm entitled to write anything which has got to be true, so, given the supposition that (1) and (2) are true, which I have asked you to make by writing (1) and (2), you have to admit that I am entitled to write (3)."

In the first line, Pete tries to support his employment of Logical MP by direct appeal to the underlying fact of modus ponens.  John is not satisfied by this, so Pete brings in the supposition that (1) and (2) are true.  This supposition, in conjunction with the underlying fact of modus ponens, should get John to admit that Pete is entitled, in some sense at least, to write (3).  But of course to "suppose" (1) and (2) is merely to assume (1) and (2) are true.  And to "assume (1) and (2) are true" is nothing more than to proceed as though one believes (1) and (2).  But now we are back to an appeal to WEMP; for it is WEMP which entitles one to write (3) whenever one believes (1) and (2).

In this case, then, it seems to me that some sort of implicit use of WEMP is necessary in order to bridge the gap between the underlying fact of modus ponens, and the claim that Logical MP "works."  I do not see any way to motivate acceptance of Logical MP without appealing to WEMP.  My failure to see such a way does not, of course, show that no such way exists, but perhaps it gives us reason to think no such way exists.  If no such way exists, then we have good reason to accept premise 1 in the argument above.  So, if I am right that premises 2 and 3 are clearly true, then it should follow that we have good reason to accept the conclusion of the argument: "Entitlement to write" is closed.

Songs.

I think that natural languages are primarily supposed to be instruments of communication.  In this regard, I assume some languages are better than others; probably, some languages enable their speakers to get ideas across more quickly, clearly, and precisely than others do.  However, even if there are languages which are extremely bad at enabling their speakers to communicate, I think that this is still primarily what such a language is supposed to do.  The ability to enable us to communicate is, I think, the "essence" of language: it makes any given language what it is, i.e. a language.

Even so, one can use the words of a language to do things other than to communicate.  For instance, one can utter a string of words primarily in order to comfort a crying baby, rather than to communicate with it.  When one does this, the words retain their meaning, but they could perform their present function just as well (or just as poorly) even if they had no meaning whatsoever.  This, I suppose, explains why parents so often speak gibberish to their babies: a parent's words do not need to mean anything in order to have their intended effect.

Song-writers usually need to meet two requirements: (1) Each word in the song must "mean something"; it must not be gibberish (although this rule is occasionally suspended); (2) Each word must meet the formal requirements of the song (i.e., the last words of each line must rhyme with one another; each line must contain a sequence of words with the correct number of syllables; etc.) (this rule seems very rarely to be suspended, although it is clear that different songs have different structures).

I want to suggest that these requirements at best make communication difficult, and at worst make communication impossible.  Let's consider the song "Sweet Betsy From Pike":

Oh don't you remember sweet Betsy from Pike,
Who crossed the wide prairie with her lover Ike,
With two yoke of oxen, a big yellow dog,
A tall Shangai rooster, and one spotted hog?

Here, it has to be admitted, a very simple set of ideas are communicated.  The song tells us that there was a person named Betsy, her husband was named Ike, they had a lot of animals, and they went on a journey.  Betsy might have actually existed, although that would involve a remarkable set of coincidences; it would require, for instance, that Betsy's husband's name just happened to rhyme perfectly with the name of her own home town.  It's probably more likely that the details of Betsy's life, along with possibly even Betsy herself, were mostly made up in order to satisfy demands of the song structure.  So the meaning of the song is probably, at least in large part, determined by the song-writer's effort to conform to the song structure.  Nevertheless, the song clearly does mean something.

Incidentally, even this rudimentary level of meaningfulness breaks down in the chorus:

Singing dang fol dee dido,
Singing dang fol dee day.

None of this means, of course, that "Sweet Betsy from Pike" is a bad song; it only means that it does a bad job of getting across the song-writer's intended meaning (if the song-writer had any intended meaning at all before sitting down to write).  We should forgive the song-writer for this; after all, only a finite number of words rhyme with "dog," so if the song-writer wanted to say anything other than "hog" at the end of the fourth line, he was probably simply unable to say it without starting over or abandoning the song structure.

At least in this case, I think it is clear that the song structure impedes the communication of certain ideas.  But is it possible that the song structure makes it easier to get other ideas across?  Perhaps the song structure can enhance meaningfulness in some ways, even as it diminishes or prevents meaningfulness in other ways.  But I see no reason to believe this might be the case.  In what way does rhyming or syllable-counting enhance meaning?  The number of syllables in a word, line, or sentence have nothing to do with its meaning.  So, it seems to me, if your goal is to get something across to your listeners, the song structure will not help you to do this; it is a set of hurdles you will need jump in order to meet your goal.  Perhaps you will successfully jump those hurdles, or perhaps not, but in any case, I think that they remain hurdles. 

So: If you have a specific set of ideas you want to get across, and this is your primary goal, you're better off abandoning the song structure.  At best, the imposition of the song structure frustrates the aim of communicating quickly, clearly and precisely; at worst, it can prevent you from being able to communicate certain ideas at all.  Thus: If, as I have claimed, language "essentially" communicates, then the song structure does a certain kind of violence to language; it makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for language to do the very thing which language essentially does.

All this sounds like a horrible thing to do to language, but I don't think so.  A parent trying to quiet her baby might lapse into gibberish without doing anyone or anything any harm.  What is coming out of her mouth cannot properly be said to be language anymore, of course; but she has not claimed that it is, and there is no reason to think that it ought to be.  Similarly, the writer of "Sweet Betsy From Pike" has, in adopting the song structure, accepted a set of limitations on his ability to communicate; but this only matters if communication was his primary goal.  Probably, his primary goal was to create a catchy, happy tune, or something along those lines.  I suppose he succeeded at this.

In general, however, I think all of this means that communication is rarely the primary goal of a song-writer.  Song-writing would be an incredibly frustrating experience if communication were the goal; song-writing would be like trying to write an essay in which all the words begin with the letter "N."  Such a rule would be utterly arbitrary with respect to your purpose, and you would have no reason to conform to it unless someone forced you.  But nobody forces song-writers to adopt the song structure; they generally seem to think that the song structure is not an arbitrary hurdle, but an essential part of whatever it is they are trying to do.  So I think we should assume that the song-writer's primary goal is not to get across any particular meaning; probably, they have other goals in mind. 

If song-writers really want to communicate with us, I think, they should write an essay or otherwise speak to us like normal people do.

"Entitlement closure."

If modus ponens is a valid form of argument, then the proposition "If (p&(If p, then q)), then q" is true.  But this does not mean modus ponens just is that proposition.  In fact, modus ponens is not a proposition at all; it's a rule. 

Rules do two things: They entitle you to do certain things, and they bar you from doing other things.  For instance, perhaps there's a rule in the library which says you may not use a cell phone in Quiet Areas, but may use it in other areas.  This rule entitles you to use your cell phone in any area which is not designated as "quiet," and bars you from using it in the other areas.  Rules usually apply within certain domains; and usually, a rule is inapplicable in any domain other the domain to which it belongs.  For instance, suppose I'm on an airplane and I turn my cell phone on.  The stewardess asks me to turn it off.  I cannot respond by claiming to be entitled to use my cell phone on the airplane just because I am not currently in one of the Quiet Areas.

If modus ponens is a rule, what does it entitle me to do or say?  In a logical context, modus ponens simply entitles me to write "q" whenever I have already written "p" and "If p, then q."  It does not matter, in a logical context, whether "p" or "If p, then q" are true or false.  It also does not matter whether I know or even believe "p" or "If p, then q."  Indeed, it might turn out that "p" and "If p, then q" are known by me to be wildly false.  Even in such a case, as long as I have already written these propositions, modus ponens, as a rule of logic, entitles me to write q.

This "logical sense" of modus ponens is, perhaps, the one which most people have in mind when they talk about modus ponens.  But I believe there is another, wider, sense of modus ponens; let us call it the epistemic sense of modus ponens.  We can divide epistemic modus ponens into two parts: weak epistemic modus ponens, and strong epistemic modus ponens.  According to weak epistemic modus ponens, I am entitled to write "q" as long as I already believe that "p" and "If p, then q" are true.  According to strong epistemic modus ponens, I am entitled to write "q" as long as I already know that "p" and "If p, then q" are true. 

Consider that when people explain the idea behind modus ponens, they usually say something like: "If p is true, and "If p, then q" is true, then q must also be true."  This fact does indeed explain what motivates the adoption of a rule like modus ponens, but it is important to note that the truth of "If (p&(If p, then q)), then q" probably never, on its own, entitles me to write "q."  For if I have not already written "p" or "If p, then q," it does not matter what else happens to be the case; I am not logically entitled to write "q."  Likewise, if I do not believe "p" or "If p, then q," I am not "weak epistemically" entitled to write "q"; and if do not know "p" or "If p, then q," I am not "strong epistemically" entitled to write "q."  Indeed, there probably isn't any meaningful rule which is justified solely by the truth of "If (p&(If p, then q)), then q."  For "If (p&(If p, then q)), then q" is always true; yet there is no meaningful rule according to which I am always entitled to write "q."

Which of these senses of modus ponens is the primary one?  I am not sure whether the answer to this question matters very much.  It probably doesn't matter, either, whether you think that one of these "senses of modus ponens" does not properly deserve the name "modus ponens" at all; the important thing is that the three senses are distinguishable and have been given different names.

Now consider two "closure principles."  According to what I'll call "entitlement closure," if one knows "p," and knows "If p, then q," then one is in a position to be entitled to believe q.  According what I'll call "knowledge closure," if one knows "p," and knows "If p, then q," then one is in a position to know q.  (The "in a position to" clause just functions to ensure that these forms of closure don't fail for uninteresting reasons.)  In this post, I will try to show that to deny entitlement closure would be very bad.  In a future post, I will argue that to deny knowledge closure might not be so bad; as things stand now, in fact, I think that knowledge closure probably does fail.

Straightforwardly, if entitlement closure fails, then strong epistemic modus ponens would not "work."  Indeed, the negation of entitlement closure is really just a statement of the conditions under which strong epistemic modus ponens would be an bad rule.  Similarly, weak epistemic modus ponens would not "work" either, since knowledge entails belief.

These facts alone might not show that entitlement closure has to be upheld.  Certainly, if your view implies that modus ponens is a bad rule, then your view has extremely counterintuitive consequences.  But if you think that the epistemic senses of modus ponens which I have suggested are not "really" representative of modus ponens, then denying entitlement closure does not entail that modus ponens is a bad rule.  So a view on which entitlement closure fails does not, at least not yet, entail that modus ponens is a bad rule.

Let's consider the logical sense of modus ponens.  If neither of the two epistemic senses of modus ponens are the "real" modus ponens, then, I suppose, the logical sense of modus ponens must be the real one.  According to the logical sense of modus ponens, as long as you have already written "p" and "If p, then q," then you are entitled to write "q."  But why should you be entitled to write "q" under these circumstances?  Perhaps it is simply because, if "p&(If p, then q)" is true, then "q" must be true.  But this, I think, cannot be the whole reason.  I have merely written "p&(If p, then q)"; that does not mean it is true, nor does it mean q is true, and still less, I think, does it mean I am entitled to write q.  I claim that the following is a non sequitur:

1. I have written "p&(If p, then q)"
2. If "p&(If p, then q)" is true, then q must be true
3. Therefore, I am entitled to write q

Something, I think, must come between 2 and 3 to make this a complete line of reasoning.  What must come between?

When one wants to explain what is "right" about modus ponens in its logical sense, one typically says something like this: "Logically, modus ponens works whether the premises are true or not, and it works whether you believe the premises or not.  But it works because if you did believe p, and you did believe p entails q, then you would (or should) believe q.  Indeed, if you believe "p&(If p, then q)," then you really must believe q; if you were to deny q, then you couldn't really believe both of the premises after all.  But in logic, we are acting as though we believe everything which has already been written."  This line of reasoning, I think, is very close to a formulation of weak epistemic modus ponens.  I suggest, then, that weak epistemic modus ponens provides the rationale for the logical sense of modus ponens.  If weak epistemic modus ponens didn't "work," then one would be left without any compelling reason to think that modus ponens in its logical sense does "work."  Logical modus ponens would become an arbitrary rule without any available justification.

You might, of course, think that logical modus ponens is just an "arbitrary rule without any available justification".  But I think most people would want to avoid this consequence, if possible.  You might also think that logical modus ponens has a justification other than the ones which have been considered thus far.  So I have not proved that denying entitlement closure has very bad consequences.  But perhaps I have given the outlines of an argument which could show this.

In this post, I have been extremely vague about what I have meant by "entitlement."  I hope, however, that context has made my meaning something less than completely obscure.  I have said that there are rules in various domains, and that these rules entitle one to do certain things.  In the epistemic domain, I think, one is entitled or not entitled to believe various things, and one's entitlement or lack of entitlement derives from whether one has "followed the rules" in arriving at one's belief.

[UPDATE: Rereading this post, I notice a few confusions in my argument.  In the next post on this topic, I'll try to de-confuse myself.]

Bullshit.

I just watched Harry Frankfurt's appearance on the Daily Show.  I liked the interview, but I wish I could have seen the two of them have a longer conversation.  Jon Stewart has drawn a lot of attention to himself by calling bullshit on various media personalities (e.g. in the Crossfire appearance); it seems to me that Harry Frankfurt and Jon Stewart each have relatively thought-out views about bullshit.  It would be interesting to see the two of them discuss that topic at greater length.

By the way, I am not sure whether Frankfurt is right to say that bullshitting is worse than lying.  Specifically, I don't see why bullshitting is supposed to show less "respect for the truth" than lying.  Deliberately ramming your car into pedestrians is probably worse -- and probably shows less respect for human life -- than driving recklessly without caring whether you hit anyone.  Perhaps something similar is the case with utterances: Deliberately uttering things which are false, i.e. lying, is worse than uttering things without caring whether they are true or false, i.e. bullshitting.  As Frankfurt says, the liar does care about the truth, but he cares about it in precisely the wrong way; perhaps it's better not to care about it at all. 

Another analogy: The bullshitter is to Han Solo as the liar is to Darth Vader.  Han Solo doesn't care about the Force; he just wants to fly the Millenium Falcon around and around.  Darth Vader, on the other hand, does care about the Force, but he cares about it in precisely the wrong way.  But when we watch Star Wars, we're supposed to think that being like Darth Vader is worse than being like Han Solo.

Oh, and another thing: I think having the notion of "bullshit" would have been useful during the election, when everyone was arguing about the lead-up to the Iraq war.  For instance, a lot of people have accused Bush of having lied about weapons of mass destruction.  Bush supporters typically respond to this by saying that Bush didn't know whether Saddam had WMD's.  Once that response is made, the conversation typically degenerates into a discussion about the circumstances under which a person can be said to have lied.  Bush may or may not have lied, but he probably did bullshit about the WMD's.  That is, he probably did claim that there were WMD's in Iraq without caring whether there were or were not.  Bullshitting may be worse than lying, or it may not be as bad as lying, as I suspect; but whatever the case, bullshitting is still clearly wrong.  Perhaps the election would have gone differently if we had had a polite way to talk about whether Bush bullshitted us into Iraq.

Beauty.

When I was little, I was familiar with the word "beauty," but I don't think I ever really understood what the word was supposed to mean.  Of course, I had heard people say that certain women were beautiful or not beautiful, and I think I pretty well understood what was meant in those cases.  "Beautiful," when applied to women, meant something like "attractive," although I knew one could say a woman was beautiful without raising the issue of attraction.  But I also knew that people sometimes said that things, such as sunsets or paintings, were beautiful or not beautiful.  This was the more confusing usage.  I still don't know what "beautiful" is supposed to mean when it's applied to sunsets or paintings. 

In this post, Ken Taylor asks whether we should choose a life which contains many useful things, but very little of beauty, or a life which contains many beautiful things, but very little of use.  Ken says he would choose the former life.  I don't know which life I would choose, but here's another question.  People use a lot words which might be synonyms for "beauty": they say that certain things are "interesting," or "fun," or "funny," or "strange," or "exciting."  But can something be interesting, fun, funny, strange and exciting without being beautiful?  I think the answer is probably "yes."  If the answer is "yes", then I think most of us could be pretty happy even if we never laid eyes on one beautiful thing, as long as we had enough interesting, fun, funny, strange and exciting things around.  The reverse, however, is probably not the case. 

At any rate, if I had to choose between a life which contains many interesting, fun, funny, strange and exciting things, on the one hand, and a life which contains many beautiful things, on the other, I'd probably take the first life over the second.  At least I know roughly what I would get if I chose the first life.  The second life is sort of a coin toss.

Overdetermination.

It is often said that overdetermination is not or cannot be "widespread."  Whether this is true or false depends on just how common something needs to be in order to qualify as "widespread." 

Nobody should deny that overdetermination of events can happen, and probably has happened.  There probably has been at least one occasion on which someone has been shot in the heart by two simultaneous bullets, for instance.  After all, I think I've heard that it was at one time common practice to execute criminals by having a dozen or so men simultaneously shoot the criminal.  This kind of practice provides a lot of opportunities for overdetermination to occur.  So even if, in each such case, it is highly unlikely for overdetermination to occur, the fact that there have been so many such cases makes it fairly reasonable to suppose that overdetermination has occurred at least once.

But how many times has overdetermination occurred?  Does the claim that overdetermination is not "widespread" amount to the claim that less than 1% of all events are overdetermined?  Or to the claim that less than .00001% are?  Or even less than that?

I don't know the answer to this question, but I think we can put some tentative limits on the answer by considering some examples.  Suppose I am unsure why, exactly, rocks fall to the ground.  But I have two theories in mind.  The first theory is that there is a force called "gravity," and this force acts on rocks to make them fall.  The second theory is that rocks have some kind of intrinsic tendency to move toward the center of the Earth.  Suppose I am torn between these two theories; I think there are reasons to believe each one.

These two theories are not mutually exclusive; it is logically possible that rocks both tend to move toward the center of the Earth "intrinsically," and are acted on by an "extrinsic" force which compels them to do the same.  In such a case, the event in which a rock falls would be overdetermined: there would be two sufficient causes for that event.

If I accept the view that overdetermination is not "widespread," I should think that there is a good chance that one theory is correct, and a good chance that the other theory is correct, but not very much chance that both theories are correct.  Perhaps I should believe that there is almost no chance that both theories are correct.  But does this commit me to say that overdetermination almost never occurs?  Does it commit me to say, for instance, that it is extremely difficult to find any cases of overdetermination?  I do not think so.  In fact, I think that in the case just described, one could think that overdetermination is fairly common, and fairly easy to find, even if one thinks that that overdetermination is highly unlikely in any given case.

To illustrate this, consider another case.  I've just gotten home.  My roommate is usually home from work by now, but he is nowhere to be found.  Two explanations spring to mind: 1. My roommate was delayed at work; 2. My roommate was hit by a drunk driver on the way home from work.  I probably have very little reason to believe 2; I should probably believe 1.  After all, it is highly unlikely that my roommate, in particular, was hit by a drunk driver.  But this does not commit me to say that nobody is ever hit by a drunk driver; nor does it commit me to say that it is hard to find a case in which someone is hit by a drunk driver.  Indeed, if I turn on the evening news, I am fairly likely to find that someone was hit by a drunk driver.  So I can believe that "getting hit by a drink driver" is a fairly common event even if I think it is not widespread enough to support the hypothesis that someone in particular is missing because he was hit by a drunk driver.

I think that those who hold the view that "overdetermination is not widespread" can take a similar line.  Perhaps overdetermination happens all the time; perhaps it is extremely easy to find cases of overdetermination, if you know where to look.  But this is compatible with the view that overdetermination is quite rare -- rare enough, anyway, that one should usually assume, when trying to explain a given event, that overdetermination has not occurred in this particular case.  And this more modest result is, I think, the one at which people are usually aiming when they make the claim that overdetermination is not "widespread."

Right Reason.

As most of you probably know already, the newer conservative philosophers' blog is here.

Intuitions.

Enwe's been putting up a lot of interesting posts about the role of intuitions in philosophical practice.  Here are my two cents.

I assume that an "intuition" is supposed to be a certain kind of reason to believe that some proposition is true.  Two questions: 1. What is the best way to characterize this kind of reason?  2. Under what circumstances would a person be entitled to use this sort of reason in an argument?

One way to answer the first question is contained in the following passage, in which Enwe quotes Bealer:

According to Bealer, intuition is a “sui generis, irreducible, natural (i.e., non-Cambridge-like) propositional attitude that occurs episodically, […] an intellectual seeming…”. Bealer argues that the fact that something seems to be true can be independent from the fact that we believe it to be true. Bealer is not the only one who thinks that this last thesis is quite obviously true.

That some proposition seems true is certainly a reason to believe it is true.  But it's not an indefeasible reason.  In this respect, "seeming to be true" is like many (most?) other reasons to believe a proposition.  For instance, I can have empirical reasons to believe P is true even if I have even better reasons to believe P is false.  Indeed, I might have the former kind of reasons even when the latter reasons are so good that my belief that P is false counts as knowledge.

But in many respects, this particular reason -- "seeming to be true" -- is very different from many other sorts of reasons to believe.  For instance, in the quotation of Bealer provided by Enwe, these reasons are supposed to be irreducible.  I take this to mean that they provide a non-inferential reason for belief.  In this respect they differ importantly from empirical reasons for belief.

What, if anything, would entitle us to use these sorts of reasons, i.e. intuitions, in an argument?  We would be entitled to use intuitions in an argument whenever such reasons can justify belief.  It is possible to offer a regress argument to show that some such reasons have to justify at least some beliefs, if any beliefs at all are justified.  Such an argument would be especially strong if we were entitled to assume that all non-inferential reasons for belief are intuitions.  If we make that assumption, then one could simply argue as follows:

Any given belief is either inferentially justified or non-inferentially justified.  If it is non-inferentially justified, then (per our assumption) it is justified through intuition; in that case there is at least one intuitively justified belief.  If it is inferentially justified, then it is justified by inference from some other belief.  Proceeding in the same way, we can show that this "other belief" is either justified through intuition or justified by inference from yet another belief.  Eventually, we must either arrive at a non-inferentially justified (hence intuitively justified) belief or continue indefinitely.  But we cannot continue indefinitely; this would be an unacceptable infinite regress.  Thus, there must be at least one intuitively justified belief.

This line of argument mirrors typical foundationalist arguments.  It assumes, of course, that an infinite regress really would be unacceptable; in this way it is assumes that coherentism and "linearism" (or "infinitism") are unacceptable.  This assumption may or may not justifiable through other arguments.

At any rate, I think we can infer from the above that if you believe (1) The typical foundationalist regress argument succeeds, and (2) All non-inferentially justified beliefs are justified through intuition, then you are committed to say that intuition justifies at least some beliefs.  This, of course, does not say under what circumstances intuition can justify some beliefs, so we haven't answered the first question above.  It only says that there must be such circumstances. 

Weird audio.

Is it inappropriate for me to link to this?  It's on a public website, but perhaps it's supposed to be private.  Anyway, it's a video from the newest PEA Souper's website.  The audio is sort of surreal.

More on consequentialism and the desire for wrong.

[This post may change significantly over time.]

Define "ODS Consequentialism" as follows:

ODS Consequentialism: One ought always act in such a way as to maximize value.  Only satisfaction of desire has value -- and the stronger a desire, the more value is produced by its satisfaction.

I have previously argued that something like ODS consequentialism has a problem when it comes to a case such as the following one:

Young Augustine strongly desires to do something wrong.  (He does not care what, as long as it is wrong.)  There is a pear tree whose owner would be only slightly bothered if the pears were stolen.  Augustine decides to steal the pears because he believes it would be wrong to do so.

The problem I've seen for ODS consequentialism is as follows: 

(a) If Augustine ought to steal the pears, then doing so would, of course, not be wrong.  In that case, Augustine's desire to do something wrong would not be satisfied by stealing the pears.  But then, given ODS consequentialism, Augustine ought not steal the pears, because stealing the pears would frustrate the owner's (very slight) desire to keep his pears, without satisfying Augustine's desires. 

(b) On the other hand, if Augustine ought not steal the pears, then doing so would be wrong.  In that case, Augustine's desire to do something wrong would be satisfied by stealing the pears.  But then, given ODS consequentialism, Augustine ought to steal the pears, because Augustine's strong desire to do something wrong would outweigh the owner's weak desire to keep his pears.

Thus, it seems that, given ODS consequentialism, if Augustine ought to steal the pears, then Augustine ought not steal the pears, while if Augustine ought not steal the pears, then Augustine ought to steal the pears.

At his blog, Richard has discussed this problem and several related problems.  I take Richard to think that Augustine's desire would be somehow meaningless or impossible.  I'm not sure Richard is still as concerned with the problem for ODS consequentialism as I (still) am; I think Richard may be concerned with a slightly wider class of problems.  However, I think we can make use of some of Richard's thoughts for our purposes here, even if Richard has by now moved on to somewhat greener pastures.

Consider this paragraph of Richard's from this recent post:

Imagine a sheet of paper headed with the sentence: "Most statements on this page are false." But suppose the rest of the page contains an equal number of true and false statements. The original statement would now be true iff it is false. In other words, the context converts it into the liar sentence. Contradictions are impossible. Since it's impossible to have a statement truly asserting a contradiction, we must conclude that the apparent sentence is in fact meaningless (it refers to no proposition) in this context.

I will say something in a moment about what this case has to do with the case of young Augustine, but let's first consider this case on its own.  Richard is right to say that, in the given context, "Most statements on this page are false" is true if and only if it is false.  But does this make it meaningless?

Let's flesh out the example.  Imagine a page on which three statements are written:

(a) Most statements on this page are false.
(b) Paris is the capital of France.
(c) 2+2=5.

Suppose the person who writes up this page mistakenly believes that Paris is the  capital of Italy, not France.  This person believes that (b) and (c) are false, and therefore that (a) is true.  Since this person has good reason to believe (a) is true, she also has good reason to believe that (a) has meaning.  Of course, this does not show that (a) does have meaning.  We can be mistaken about whether our utterances have meaning, just as we can be mistaken about whether our utterances are true.

Under what circumstances is a proposition meaningless?  Perhaps some people think that

(i) P is meaningless when: P is true if and only if P is false.

We can subdivide the condition in (i):

(i.i) Necessarily, P is true if and only if it is false.
(i.ii) Contingently, P is true if and only if it is false.

"This sentence is false" is an example of a proposition meeting condition (i.i); in every imaginable scenario, "This sentence is false" is true if and only if it is false.  "Most statements on this page are false" is an example of a proposition meeting condition (i.ii): We can imagine scenarios in which the truth of "Most statements on this page are false" does not imply its falsity (nor vice-versa); it just so happens that in the scenario which actually obtains, its truth does imply its falsity (and vice-versa).

I think that propositions meeting condition (i.i) are always meaningless, but propositions meeting condition (i.ii) are sometimes meaningful.  But I am not that concerned about whether this can be shown or not.  I suppose a lot will depend on what is meant by "meaningful," and it's all right if others disagree with me about what that word means.  But I think it's worth pointing out some important differences between propositions meeting condition (i.i), and propositions meeting condition (i.ii).

One can't really believe propositions meeting condition (i.i).  Consider the proposition "This sentence is false."  I might mistakenly believe I believe this proposition, but there is no proposition there to believe; the sentence is a mere combination of words.  But one easily could believe propositions meeting condition (i.ii).  For instance, in the above example, I can believe "Most sentences on this page are false" as long as I believe that Paris is not the capital of France.  Indeed, I can believe "Most sentences on this page are false" even if Paris really is the capital of France, so long as I am ignorant of this fact.  Put another way: I can believe "Most sentences on this page are false" regardless of context, even though I may need to be mistaken about the context in order to believe "Most sentences are false."

So: If we say that propositions meeting conditions (i.i) and (i.ii) are all "meaningless," we should remember that they are each meaningless in "different ways."  Propositions meeting condition (i.i) are not rationally believable; I must have some wires crossed in order to believe they are true (or to believe they are false).  Propositions meeting condition (i.ii) do not all have this property.  I may sometimes need to be mistaken in order to believe such propositions, but such propositions can usually be coherently incorporated into a possible body of beliefs.

What does any of this have to do with anything?  Return to the case of young Augustine.  I have claimed that given ODS consequentialism, if Augustine ought to steal the pears, then Augustine ought not steal the pears, while if Augustine ought not steal the pears, then Augustine ought to steal the pears.  The proposition "Augustine ought to steal the pears" thus appears to be true if and only if it is false, given ODS consequentialism.  But "Augustine ought to steal the pears" meets condition (i.ii), not condition (i.i).  For if Augustine wanted to steal the pears because he is extremely hungry, and not because he wants to do something wrong, then "Augustine ought to steal the pears" would not be true if and only if it is false, even given ODS consequentialism.  So "Augustine ought to steal the pears" is, it appears, rationally believable for the ODS consequentialist.  Its truth implies its falsehood, and its falsehood implies its truth, but only in the context where Augustine really does desire to do something wrong. 

This may seem like good news for the ODS consequentialist.  After all, the ODS consequentialist should want to be able to say whether Augustine ought to steal the pears.  This shows that the ODS consequentialist can do this, at least in certain contexts.  In a context such as the one in which Augustine finds himself, of course, the ODS consequentialist cannot do this.  But this is only problematic if the context such as the one in which Augustine finds himself can actually obtain.  Perhaps it cannot.

We can size up the situation for the ODS consequentialist by once again considering the proposition "Most statements on this page are false."  As we've seen, in the example considered above, either "Most statements on this page are false" is true iff it is false, or Paris is not the capital of France.  A similar situation obtains for the ODS consequentialist.  For the ODS consequentialist, either "Augustine ought to steal the pears" is true iff it is false, or Augustine does not desire to do something wrong.  (This is an "exclusive-or"; one, but not both, of the disjuncts has to be true.)  The ODS consequentialist should want to deny the left disjunct, and therefore to affirm the right disjunct.  The ODS consequentialist is certainly free to deny the left disjunct.  However, it seems to me that the ODS consequentialist cannot deny the left disjunct just because the left disjunct would make problems for ODS consequentialism.

As things turn out, Paris is the capital of France.  But Paris is the capital of France for reasons entirely independent of whether I have written "Most sentences on this page are false" on a page.  To know what makes Paris the capital of France, I guess you have to look away from the page and consider some historical facts.  Perhaps a similar thing is true of young Augustine.  Young Augustine claims he desires to do something wrong.  Perhaps this claim is false; perhaps what he really desires is to look cool in front of his friends -- a desire he could conceivably satisfy without doing anything wrong.  But, it seems to me, whatever would make this claim of Augustine's true or false should be kept separate from the problem we are facing here.  "What does Augustine really desire to do?"  This is a psychological question, I think.  I do not think we can answer it by considering the incompatibility of ODS consequentialism with a desire to do wrong.

Augustine claims that he desired to do something wrong.  Many other people seem to desire the same thing (e.g. Nazis, maybe).  It is possible -- perhaps probable -- that all these people do not really desire what they seem to desire.  But I do not think we can say that a person could not hold such a desire simply because holding such a desire would cause the problem with which we have been concerned here.

Libertarian ethics.

Jacqueline recently summarized her moral views as follows:

(J1) Knowingly harming someone or their property through force or fraud is immoral.  Aiding in this harm is immoral.  The exception to this is necessary force for self defense.

(J2) Harming someone accidentally (without knowledge that your actions would cause harm), allowing someone to come to harm through your inaction, and actions that have nothing to do with helping or hurting anyone other than one's self are amoral.

(J3) Intentionally acting in such a way as to prevent harm to others, or actively helping them, is moral.

(Above, I've inserted "(J1)," etc., for ease of reference.)

Jacqueline seems to take "moral" to mean "worthy of praise," and "immoral" to mean "worthy of condemnation."  So for Jacqueline, "moral" is probably not equivalent to "morally permissible," since some morally permissible actions (e.g. chewing gum) are not worthy of praise.  Perhaps Jacqueline's "moral" isn't equivalent to "morally obligatory," either, since many morally obligatory actions are not worthy of praise.  (For instance: We do not normally pat one another on the back for not-raping.)

I think Jacqueline's view is interesting, and in this post I'll try to say what I think is interesting about it.  But before beginning it's worth noting that Jacqueline's view seems clearly false.  For instance, it seems that "allowing someone to come to harm through inaction" can be immoral, at least sometimes, despite (J2)'s implication to the contrary.  To illustrate: Suppose I am a paramedic, and have performed the Heimlich maneuver many times.  I am eating lunch with my mother when she begins to choke.  Undoubtedly, it would be immoral -- i.e., "worthy of condemnation" -- if I were to sit quietly in my chair and watch while my mother is suffocated by a piece of ham.  Given this susceptibility of Jacqueline's view to such obvious counterexamples, it is interesting to ask the question: What considerations could possibly motivate this view?

Politically, Jacqueline is a libertarian, and some parts of Jacqueline's moral view sound like certain typical formulations of libertarianism.  For instance, if you substitute "ought to be illegal" for "immoral" in (J1), you get:

(L1) Knowingly harming someone or their property through force or fraud [ought to be illegal].  Aiding in this harm [ought to be illegal].  The exception to this is necessary force for self defense.

(L1) is the sort of thing that libertarians are usually inclined to say, so let's assume that (L1) is a consequence of libertarianism.  Now, it is usually worthy of moral condemnation to do something which ought to be illegal.  (There are exceptions to this, but they are uninteresting for our purposes).  From this it follows that if (L1) is true, then (J1) is probably true, as well.  Therefore: Since we have assumed that (L1) is a consequence of libertarianism, (J1) seems to be a consequence of libertarianism, as well.

The fact that (J1) seems to follow from libertarianism might lead us to believe that (J2) and (J3) could also be derived from libertarianism.  If so, then perhaps what motivates Jacqueline's moral view is simply Jacqueline's libertarianism.  But this turns out not to be the case.  For though (J1) does seem to follow from libertarianism, I do not think the other components of Jacqueline's moral view can be similarly derived.  Consider two action-types:

(a) Allowing someone to come to harm through inaction
(b) Intentionally acting in such a way as to prevent harm to others

According to libertarianism, I take it, both of these kinds of actions have precisely the same status: Neither of them ought to be illegal; the state "should stay out of" them.  But according to Jacqueline, the first action is "amoral" (given (J2)), while the second is "moral" (given (J3)).  Since libertarianism fails to distinguish between (a) and (b), while Jacqueline's moral view does distinguish between them, it should follow that Jacqueline's moral view cannot be motivated solely by libertarianism. 

In fact, it would be perfectly consistent with libertarianism to say that actions of type (a) are immoral, as most of us will want to say, and as Jacqueline, apparently, does not want to say.  Libertarians think that actions of type (a) ought not be illegal, of course -- but this does not commit them to say that actions of type (a) are not immoral.  After all, intuitively, there seem to be many things which are immoral even though they ought not be illegal (e.g. cheating on one's partner).  So the libertarian is able to consistently condemn actions of type (a).  Yet Jacqueline's view holds back from doing this.

I do not see any easy way to explain this aspect of Jacqueline's moral code.  I suspect that parts of Jacqueline's views (e.g. (J1)) are inspired by libertarianism, but I do not understand the other parts.  Perhaps the best way to understand Jacqueline's view is as an attempt to graft the categories of legality onto the categories of morality.  One should expect such attempts to be made, since in the popular media, discussions about morality and legality often intertwine and flow into one another, and pundits from both the left and the right often seem to see no important difference between these two types of categories.  I suspect that this tendency to conflate legality and morality has led many people to believe that to say that something is immoral is the same as to say that it ought to be illegal.  As a consequence, many people seem to exhibit two different, though logically related, tendencies:

(i) If you think that something is immoral, you will tend to believe that it ought to be illegal;

(ii) If you think that something ought not be illegal, you will tend to believe that it is not immoral. 

Possibly, Jacqueline's (J2) can be explained as a consequence of tendency (ii).  Jacqueline clearly believes that allowing someone to come to harm through inaction ought not be illegal.  Perhaps she infers from this that allowing someone to come to harm through inaction is therefore not immoral.  If so, I think this would be an invalid inference.

Activity.

The Philosophers' Carnival yesterday generated something like 500 visits.  The vast majority of these arrived via Leiter's blog.  It was fun to write the Carnival; I read a lot of posts I probably wouldn't have read otherwise.  Thanks to Richard for having me host it, and thanks to everyone else for reading.

Philosophers' Carnival #10.

I initially considered using Borges's famous taxonomy of animals to classify the posts in this Carnival.  I decided against this for three reasons: (1) Some people might be offended by having their posts classified as "belonging to the emperor"; (2) nearly all of these posts "look from a long way off like flies";  and (3) there doesn't seem to be any fair way of deciding whose post should get to fall into the "fabulous" category.  So I've decided to present these posts in no particular order at all.

(1) In this post from Dissoi Blogoi, Michael raises some questions:

Given developments in science since the time of Plato and Aristotle, are the accounts offered by these philosophers even close to being ones that we can regard as true?

and suggests that students of ancient philosophy are faced with a dilemma:

Either admit that you are simply doing history of ideas, or justify--in a way that contemporary philosophers and scientists would regard as reasonable, if not compelling--this talk of 'nature', 'form', 'matter', and 'ends'.

I think these questions should provoke an interesting discussion, so I hope that readers of this Carnival who are qualified to address Michael's points will do so in comments over at Dissoi Blogoi.

(2) A post on Peirce and common sense from Mormon Metaphysics touches on a bunch of interesting aspects of Peirce's thought, including his views of vagueness, the scientific method, signs, and more.

(3) There's an interesting post by Siris on Darwin's logic.  I think it's the first in a series of posts which will discuss Darwin's argument for evolution.

(4) At Philosoraptor, there's a post by Winston Smith on the "obnoxiousness" of discourse in analytic philosophy.  Winston thinks that many philosophers engage in "sophistry."  He provides an anecdote to support this claim.  He says that many philosophers follow the "Crossfire model" of discourse:

start the discussion with the goal of ending the discussion with the same position you started with. Any change of position signals that you have lost what is, in effect, a fight. When problems are raised for your position, the goal is not to consider them honestly, but to say something—anything—to muddy the waters or change the subject.

Winston's claim seems to be mainly about how spoken philosophy gets done, as when, e.g., papers are presented in public.  I'd be interested to know whether Winston has a similar view about written philosophy.  Would the same dirty tricks work in writing?  If not, does this mean that writing about philosophy is less likely to lead one into error than talking about it?

(5) In a post on thought experiments by Jonah at Bishop Berkeley, Jonah discusses the role of thought experiments in scientific theory-testing.  Jonah argues that thought experiments teach us "something new" about the world.  Among other interesting things, this post contains a list of historically-useful thought experiments, and some brief descriptions of competing views about the role of thought experiments in science.

(6) The inimitable Enwe has an interesting post at her meta-blog on a recent paper by Janet Levin on the proper role of philosophical intuition.  Apparently, Levin thinks that since the objects of philosophical inquiry aren't natural kinds, philosophers are better equipped to study them than non-philosophers (e.g. scientists) are.  Enwe gives reasons to think that Levin has failed to demonstrate this conclusion.  For instance, according to Enwe, Levin argues from intuitions for the view that intutions are useful in determining the essences of "philosophical kinds" (e.g. knowledge).  Enwe thinks that taking this line of argument is already to presuppose the intended conclusion.  I take Enwe's view to be that Levin's argument is thus methodologically circular -- i.e., it attempts to show the validity of a method by using the same method.

(7) In a post on personal identity, Richard of Philosophy, et cetera shows that what he calls the "common sense" conception of self is problematic.  He says:

The common-sense view seems to involve a separately existing 'self', or 'Cartesian ego', to which our bodies and minds belong. This ego is the subject of conscious experiences. We can imagine magically finding ourselves in someone else's body. We may even be able to imagine having total amnesia and a sudden change in personality. So neither physical nor psychological continuity seems necessary for the folk conception of personal identity. All that matters is that it's me that has the conscious experiences.

Richard goes on to raise a lot of interesting questions about personal identity.  Parfit comes up.  A follow-up post is located here.

(8) Here's a good post from Mumblings of a Platonist which is difficult to summarize.  A distinction between two different approaches to rationality is offered here.  I'm afraid to say anything more, for fear of misrepresenting a very interesting but inconclusive post. 

(9) There's a post on truth in fiction by Jonathan from Fake Barn Country.  Jonathan aims to show that David Lewis's account of fictional truth is flawed.  According to Jonathan,

Roughly, Lewis’s view amounts to this: a proposition is true in the fiction if and only if it is true in all of the possible worlds that are maximally close in which the fiction is told as known fact. With this theory we can hold, as we wanted to, that it is fictionally false that Harry put his left shoe on first, and false that he put his right shoe on first, but true that he put one shoe on first.

Jonathan thinks that this account has problematic consequences, which arise from its involving the phrase "told as known fact."

(10) A post on the theory-ladenness of observations, from Hugo at Studi Galileiani, argues that observations are theory-laden "all the way down."  Hugo argues that this is not as bad a thing as it has sometimes been taken to be.

(11) Chris from Mixing Memory has a post, "Concepts I," on the "classical view" of concepts.  It's the first in a series; the others are located in archives.  This post contains a useful overview of some historical views of concepts.

(12) Adam Potthast of Metatome has a post on teaching logic.  This post includes instructions and files to be used for creating a game of Fallacy Jeopardy for your students.

(13) Apparently, some people think that abortion is sometimes genocidal.  A Parableman post argues that

a good case can be made for the thesis that abortion is not just the decision of the individual person but is at least partially coerced in enough cases, particularly those of young girls and especially in lower-income environements, which is likely to include many of the cases that those using genocide-language have in mind.

(14) Jason Kuznicki, of Positive Liberty, has this post on "evolutionary psychology and the blank slate."  Here's a representative paragraph from the post:

Another take on tabula rasa may be that it is not a statement precisely about human minds--but rather about our capacity to know or to control the minds of our neighbors: We ought to think of people as if the proposition were true, for thinking of them otherwise tends strongly to bring out our worst authoritarian impulses. In this formulation, tabula rasa is not so much true as it is useful and good. It is no longer a scientific claim, but a moral one.

(15) Chris of Mumblings and Grumblings asks whether we perceive negative facts.  For instance: Chris wants to know whether we perceive that a box is empty, or merely perceive that the lining of a box is visible.

(16) At Obsidian Wings, Hilzoy examines a "confused" National Geographic News article and ends up asking some interesting questions from bioethics:

The one part of the body that really does seem to make us who we are is the brain. Now: no one is now proposing injecting animal neurons or neural stem cells into human brains, and if they did, I can't see how it would pass normal ethics review. But scientists are transplanting human neural stem cells (which go on to form human neurons) into animals. Is this wrong?

(17) A post at Universal Acid

tries to refute John Searle's "Chinese room" argument by using a combination of the Systems Reply and the Virtual Mind Reply. It also points out that the use of "Chinese room" as an intuition pump is somewhat racist and offensive.

(18) A post from Pragmatik suggests that dissatisfaction with Bush will drive people to read Sartre. 

(19) Max Goss has a post on conservatism and rootedness.  "Rootedness" is a condition attaching to an individual who is situated

firmly and, if possible, permanently - within a particular social network of family and neighbors where everyone knows you or, if not, can find someone who does.

Max argues that

conservatives, for the most part, share with the ancient Greeks a recognition that rootedness is an absolute prerequisite to both a civilized society and a cultivated individual, and that, consequently, the anonymous man can only be a bad man.

In the post, Max sketches the beginnings of a distinctively conservative view of the value attaching to being a "rooted man."  Max acknowledges that many liberals claim to value "community" -- a concept closely related to Max's "rootedness."  But Max gives reasons to think that conservatives approach rootedness differently than liberals would or do.

(20) At Left2Right, David Velleman has a post which draws on Nagel's views of privacy and sexual identity.  The title of the post was changed from "A Closet Heterosexual" to "A Closet Private Heterosexual" in response to commenters' objections to the original title.  This is an example of Velleman's generally admirable way of dealing with readers' criticisms.  Left2Right's commenters are notoriously passionate; a few of them are rude.  So Velleman's almost invariable willingness to take seriously all comers is commendable.

(21) Philosophical discussion occasionally transpires in comments over at 1 or 2.

(22) Finally, this post seems to have something to do with forgiveness.

The Philosophers' Carnival homepage is here.

Supererogation and consequentialism.

Here are four claims:

(1) Any outcome of any action is either more valuable than, less valuable than, or equally as valuable as any other outcome of any other action.
(2) When choosing among possible actions, one ought to do that action whose outcome has the greatest value.
(3) When choosing among possible actions, it is one's duty to do that action whose outcome has the greatest value.
(4) When choosing among possible actions, one ought most to do that action whose outcome has the greatest value; one ought least to do that action whose outcome has the lowest value; one ought more to do an action whose outcome has higher value than one with lower value; etc.

I think that a person who believed none of these claims could not properly be called a consequentialist.  Many consequentialists, I think, believe all four of these claims, but I take claims (1) and (4) to be the most "central" to consequentialism.  (2) may follow from (4).  (3), I think, does not follow from the others.  In the course of this post I will try to give reasons to think that consequentialists should to reject (3).

Actions are "supererogatory" when they "go beyond the call of duty."  If moral reality were a high school class, then supererogatory actions would be done for extra-credit points.  You wouldn't lose points if you failed to perform these actions; you could pass the class without ever once performing one.  But you'd certainly be encouraged to perform them, and all the best students would perform them.

Sometimes it is said that consequentialists are unable to classify any actions at all as supererogatory.  This would be bad for consequentialism, since supererogation seems to occupy a central place in everyday moral reasoning.  I think (3) is likely to commit consequentialists to this bad result, but I think that if consequentialists reject (3), then they can avoid this bad result.

Consider the following example.  Suppose that, after Monica has budgeted for groceries and other necessities, 30% of her annual income is unaccounted for.  Monica is trying to decide how to spend that 30%.  She has four choices:

(a) Give the money to a charity.
(b) Spend the money on an expensive car.
(c) Throw the money into a river.
(d) Give the money to a fascist dictator.

Let's assume that these choices are presented in descending order of value, so that if Monica wants to maximize the amount of value resulting from her action, she will choose to do (a).  In that case, if (3) is true, then doing (a) would be Monica's duty.  And in that case, there does not seem to be any room for supererogation.  For the only possible supererogatory actions left are (b), (c) and (d).  But these actions all result in less value than would the action we have identified as Monica's duty.  It seems highly unlikely that one could go beyond one's duty by doing something with a outcome than one's duty itself.

Suppose, then, we reject (3).  Then Monica's duty is not necessarily to do (a).  Perhaps she has no duty.  I think this would be consistent with (1), (2) and (4); after all, those claims do not mention duty.  Or perhaps Monica does have a duty -- perhaps her duty is to do (b).  This is also compatible with (1), (2) and (4).  In that case Monica would be going beyond her duty to do (a), since doing (a) would result in greater value than doing her duty itself, i.e. (b).  So, by rejecting (3), it appears that room is made for supererogation, at least in the example just discussed.

What would a consequentialism without (3) look like?  Obviously, it would be a consequentialism according to which one's duty is sometimes to do something other than maximize value.  This might sound like a non-consequentialist theory.  But I would still want to classify it as a consequentialist theory if it held on to (1), (2) and (4).  For if it held on to those claims, then it would say that one could always morally do better by maximizing value, and it would say that one always ought most to do whatever must be done in order to maximize value.

There appears to be an inconsistency between (2) and the denial of (3).  For if one always ought to maximize value, as (2) says, then how can it be that one's duty is not always to maximize value, as not-(3) says?  I think it is true that one ought always to do one's duty.  But I think it is also true that one ought always go beyond one's duty.  "Duty" seems to be a kind of moral "zero-marker."  Any action "below" one's duty is "negative," and ought not be performed; any action "above," or "at," one's duty is "positive," and ought to be performed.  This means that if one always ought to maximize value, then maximizing value is either one's duty, or is beyond one's duty.  So, if one holds (1), then one can consistently deny (3), as long as one continues to classify actions which maximize value as beyond duty.

Posting.

My apologies for the lack of posts.  I've been a little busier than normal recently.  Regular posting will resume shortly.

Philosophers' Carnival.

The next Philosophers' Carnival will be up on the 28th, hosted here at E.G.  If you'd like to submit a post, you can do so here.

More on the "Stolen Photo" problem.

In this post, I won't really answer any of the insightful objections that have been raised against my "Stolen Photo" argument.  I'm writing this post in order to improve my own understanding of what is at stake in the problem or pseudo-problem of "Stolen Photo."  I hope none of those who have offered objections to the previous argument will be annoyed when I repeat the same errors here.

Value is often a function of morality.  The "Stolen Photo" case is a case where value varies inversely with moral status.  Before discussing that case, and its possible implications for consequentialism, consider another case in which value varies positively with moral status. 

(a) I assign value to an act of charity A.  A receives 1 value-point for being such that it helps others, receives 1 point for invariably giving me a warm feeling inside, and receives 1 point just in case it is the right thing to do.  Thus, its total value is equal to 3 in cases where A is the right thing to do, and is equal to 2 in cases where A is the wrong thing to do.

(b) In circumstance C, I have to choose between act of charity A, and act of selfish indulgence B.  If I choose B, the total value which results will be equal to 2.7.  (Suppose this resultant value of B is fixed by factors other than morality, so is not dependent on whether B is right or wrong.)

(c) According to consequentialism, I ought to maximize value.  (Assume, for present purposes, that to "maximize value" is to maximize my own value assignments.)  Suppose consequentialism is the correct moral theory.

(d) If A is right, then A results in a total value of 3.  In that case, A is right according to consequentialism, since the alternative course of action produces only 2.7 units of value.  If A is wrong, then A results in a total value of 2.  In that case, A is wrong according to consequentialism, since greater value could be produced by pursuing action B.

Is there a problem for consequentialism here?  I don't think so.  There is nothing contradictory about (d).  (d) may sound weird, but I don't think (d) is incoherent.  Perhaps the lesson we should learn from (d) is just that consequentialism "underdetermines" rightness -- that is, that consequentialism cannot always say whether a given act is right or wrong.  But this is not really a knock against consequentialism.  Many other moral theories are "incomplete" in this way, and need to be supplemented by other considerations in order to produce a determinate result.  There's no reason to think consequentialism won't be similar in this regard.

Now consider another case.

a) I assign value to an artwork A.  A receives 1 point for being beautiful, receives 1 point for being fabulous, and receives 1 point for having been produced in an immoral way.  Thus, A's total value is equal to 3 in cases where A has been produced in an immoral way, and is equal to 2 in cases where A has not been produced in an immoral way.

(b) In circumstance C, I have to choose between financing the production of A, or spending my money on selfish indulgence B instead.  If I choose B, the total value which results will be equal to 2.7.  (Suppose this resultant value of B is fixed by factors other than morality, so is not dependent on whether B is right or wrong.)

(c) According to consequentialism, I ought to maximize value.  (Assume, for present purposes, that to "maximize value" is to maximize my own value assignments.)  Suppose consequentialism is the correct moral theory.

(d) If financing the production of A is right, then financing the production of A results in a total value of 2.  In that case, financing the production of A is wrong according to consequentialism, since the alternative course of action produces 2.7 units of value.  If financing the production of A is wrong, then A results in a total value of 3.  In that case, financing the production of A is right according to consequentialism, since no greater value could be produced by pursuing action B.

I think the consequentialist does need to deny (d).  Assuming that any given action is either right or wrong, (d) results in a contradiction.  If your moral theory results in a contradiction, then it is probably false.  I suppose the best thing for the consequentialist to do, in this case, is to deny that (a) is possible; (b) and (c) seem clearly possible.  I, for one, don't see any reason to think that (a) is impossible.  However, the consequentialist does seem clearly committed to denying the possibility of (a).  So if nothing else, this argument seems to show that consequentialists are committed to deny that value can increase in inverse proportion with immorality, or at least to deny something along those lines.  For consequentialists who accept desire-satisfaction theories of value, this amounts to the declaration that wrong-doing cannot be a component of anyone's desires.  But I think this declaration would probably be false.  People do seem to be able to perversely desire that wrong is done.

Fake badgers.

Fake badgers are now officially below the median.  I'm afraid this is my fault, at least in part.

A potential objection against consequentialism.

I've been thinking about Mark Miller's paintings (discussed in the previous post).  I think I might have been a little unfair to Miller in that post.  However, I think a case like that of Miller's paintings can be constructed for the purpose of mounting an objection against consequentialism.  Here's the kind of case I have in mind:

Clark Schmiller, a painter, steals a roll of photographs and uses them as a source for a painting.  Schmiller's painting, entitled "Stolen Photo," becomes a huge hit in the art world; collectors are willing to pay thousands of dollars for the painting.  Collectors find it interesting to contemplate a beautiful painting whose production required the commission of an immoral act.  In other words: Collectors value "Stolen Photo" because it is (1) beautiful, and (2) produced in an immoral way.  Collectors say that if "Stolen Photo" were either not beautiful or not produced in an immoral way, then the painting would have very little value.  In fact, they say that if the painting were either not beautiful or not produced in an immoral way, then it would be disgusting.

Suppose that stealing the photographs produces very little harm; they were stolen from someone who didn't really value his privacy, and wasn't much bothered by being deprived of his photos.  Suppose also that producing the painting produces a huge amount of good; contemplating the painting produces a nearly ecstatic experience in many people.

Versions of consequentialism may have a difficult time explaining what is going on here.  Let's define "consequentialism" as the view that one ought always to maximize the amount of value in the world.  According to consequentialism, should Schmiller have stolen the photos in order to produce his painting, or not?  Since stealing the photos did very little harm, and producing the painting did an awful lot of good, it appears that according to consequentialism, Schmiller ought to have done what he did.  But in that case, (2) above is false -- the painting was not produced in an immoral way.  This means the painting does not have great value after all; in fact, the painting is disgusting.  In that case, Schmiller ought not have stolen the photos, since doing so caused some (small) harm to the owner of the photos.  But this means the painting is produced in an immoral way; therefore, on a consequentialist view, Schmiller was right to do what he did.  Etc.  It appears that, unless this circle can be interrupted, the consequentialist cannot say whether Schmiller ought to have done what he did or not. 

There are probably several ways in which consequentialists can interrupt this circle.  For one thing, consequentialists could simply deny the value-assignments in the example; they could say either that stealing the photos does great harm, or that the painting itself does not have great value.  If this strategy doesn't work, then consequentialists can say that the painting's great value does not, strictly speaking, derive from its having been produced in an immoral way.  Rather, it has value because people think it was produced in an immoral way.  The consequentialist can say that people will probably go on thinking that it was produced in an immoral way no matter what the truth of the matter turns out to be.  In that case, the value of the painting ceases to be "unstable"; it becomes fixed by people's perceptions, and by fixing the value of the painting, the circle is interrupted.  It becomes the case that Schmiller was right to produce the paintings.

I don't know if this response is adequate; its adequacy depends on questions about the nature of value.  People do seem to sometimes value facts and states of affairs themselves, apart from their perceptions of them.  It is possible that this is the case for the collectors.  The collectors might value the immorality of Schiller's act, wholly separately from their perception that the act is immoral.  That is, it is possible that, for the collectors, the painting has great value if and only if it really is both (1) beautiful and (2) produced in an immoral way.  If this turns out to be the case, then its value again becomes "unstable": If it really is produced in an immoral way, then (assuming that it also really is beautiful), it has high value.  But in that case, Schmiller can be excused for stealing the photos, so it is not produced in an immoral way.  Thus it now has low value.  But in that case...etc.

I am not sure that the case of Schmiller and "Stolen Photo" is the best one to illustrate the sort of "value-instability" I have in mind here.  Maybe the case from the Confessions, in which a young St. Augustine who steals pears is pleased by the act of stealing "all the more because it was forbidden," would work better.  I believe, though, that with some work, a case adequate for the present purpose could be constructed.

"An invasive and hostile act."

[For Weatherson readers: You may also be interested in my follow-up post here, which is the one at which Richard's objection is aimed.  And by the way, while you're here: If one of you happens to provide a way to solve this problem, I will be much obliged.]

Via CSOTD, I came across the website of Mark Takamichi Miller, a painter.  Miller has produced a series of paintings which have an interesting origin.  Costco, a retail store, offers film-developing services.  Apparently, at one time, you could claim a set of developed prints without having to provide any proof that they were yours.  So Miller just walked into a Costco store and claimed a set of prints at random.  Miller paid for the prints, but they weren't his; he stole them.  Then he took the prints home and used them as a source for his paintings.

It is wrong to steal photographs.  Miller acknowledges this.  But Miller seems to think that, in this case, he was justified in stealing them because he needed to do so in order to produce his paintings.  The idea, I take it, is that stealing the photos didn't do much harm, whereas producing the paintings did a lot of good.  So, when you tally everything up, you're supposed to think Miller can be excused for his actions.

A problem arises, however, when we consider that the wrongfulness of stealing the photographs seems to be part of the value the paintings are supposed to have.  Consider this passage from Miller's website: 

These are private photos not intended for public viewing. I looked at them very carefully as I reproduced them as paintings for public viewing. This was an invasive and hostile act and is inherent to the work. They are intentional. They expose as an unwilling documentary the private lives of the subjects and the social rituals they engage in. But they also invade someone's privacy. There is no excuse for it except to say that the abrasive hostile act has always been one of the primary attractions to doing and viewing art. ... But this does not excuse the action. After doing this project, even I am afraid someone will have done something with my photos I leave for development. However, within the hostility, the paintings marry the engaged to the mundane, and in doing so make something beautiful where it was not.

There's a lot in this passage that seems unintelligible to me; I don't know what it means to "marry the engaged to the mundane," for instance.  But I get the impression that Miller thinks that the paintings are interesting precisely because they represent a wrongful invasion of some random person's privacy.  In other words: The paintings are good precisely because the way in which they were produced was wrong.

Here's the problem.  If the value of the paintings really does excuse the way in which they were produced, then the way in which they were produced is not wrong.  This makes the paintings valueless, or at least quite a bit less valuable, since the wrongful "abrasive hostility" of the act is supposed to be one of the "primary attractions" of his art.  But since the paintings are now much less valuable, their value probably no longer excuses the way in which they were produced.  So now the way in which they were produced is wrong.  This wrongfulness gives the paintings back their value.  But now we are where we started.

I don't know how or whether this circularity can be interrupted.  In any case, I think Miller is just wrong if he thinks that the invasiveness of his paintings makes them valuable.  I think their deliberate invasiveness makes them sort of depraved.  The fact that stealing people's photographs is nearly harmless adds a pettiness to the act which somehow makes it seem worse.  I am reminded of this passage from Augustine's Confessions:

There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night -- having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was -- a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart -- which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error -- not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.  (Book 2, chapter 4)

Kiddofspeed.

I came across this site maybe a year ago, when it was circulating around the internet.  It disappeared; I think it was an Angelfire page and was overloaded by the number of visitors.  But it's back now.  Also, it seems that the same person has two other sites: The Serpent's Wall and Stolen Election.

Are there any trivially luminous conditions?

I don't know the answer to this question.  I suspect the answer is no, but I hope the answer is yes.

If a condition is "luminous," then if one is in that condition, one is in a position to know one is in that condition.  For instance: If "feeling cold" is a luminous condition, then whenever one feels cold, one is in a position to know that one is cold.

A condition would be "trivially luminous" if it were luminous by definition.  For instance, "feeling cold" would be trivially luminous if it were part of the definition of "feeling cold" that one who feels cold is in a position to know one feels cold. 

It seems that there must be trivially luminous conditions.  In fact, "feeling cold" seems like it might well be one of them; I suspect that many people would say that if one is not in a position to know that one feels cold, then clearly, one does not and could not feel cold.  Nevertheless, even if "feeling cold" is not trivially luminous, it seems surely possible to invent a trivially luminous condition.  For instance: Suppose "feeling cold" is not luminous.  In that case, it is not contradictory to say that one feels cold but does not know one feels cold.  But it seems that one could easily invent another condition -- call it "schmold" -- and say that one is schmold if and only if one feels cold and knows it.  In that case, it appears that "schmold" would be trivially luminous.

Here's the problem.  If we define

Schmold1: The condition of feeling cold and knowing that one feels cold

then "schmold1" is not trivially luminous.  For one could conceivably feel cold and know that one feels cold (and therefore be "schmold1"), yet without being in a position to know that one is schmold1.  But if "schmold1" were trivially luminous, then it would be a contradiction to say that one were schmold1 without being in a position to know that one were schmold1.

So, we can try again:

Schmold2: The condition of feeling cold and knowing that one is schmold

"Schmold2" appears to be trivially luminous.  The problem now, though, is that "schmold2" is problematically self-reflexive; it includes itself in its own definition.  To see why this is a problem, notice that the above definition of "schmold2" can be expanded out, as follows:

Schmold2: The condition of feeling and knowing that [one is in the condition of feeling cold and knowing that [one is in the condition of feeling cold and knowing that [...

Since we never get a chance to close off the brackets, "schmold2" appears not to specify a real condition.

These are the only two attempts I've made at defining a trivially luminous condition.  I'm having trouble thinking of a third way to try.  It seems like it should be possible to specify a trivially luminous condition; as I indicated above, there initially seems to be a chance that "feeling cold" is one.  But in light of these two failures, I'm not so sure.  Anyone have any ideas?

Truth in fiction (part II).

[See also Richard's response to this post at Philosophy, et cetera, Jonathan's original post on this topic at Fake Barn Country, and my previous post on this topic.]

The following post is deeply flawed.  Comments and criticisms are welcome.

Some kinds of fictions (such as novels) come in the form of sentences, which (normally) represent propositions; other kinds of fictions (such as movies) come in other forms (e.g., series of moving images).  This is only one of several significant differences between different kinds of fictions.  Until the consequences of such differences are worked out, it seems to me that we cannot say that a theory of truth which is correct for (say) novels won't turn out to be incorrect for movies.  So I think it's possible (perhaps even probable) that there is not just one correct theory of fictional truth. 

However, in this post, I will pretend to know that there is just one correct theory of fictional truth, and will argue that on that one correct theory, all propositions are either true or false in any fictional world.  That is, I'll argue that fictional worlds are "complete."  For this purpose, I will restrict myself to consideration of fictional worlds which attain a minimal level of coherence, self-consistency, and "sanity."  For instance, my discussion here won't necessarily apply to truth in the world of Atlanta Nights.

To begin, consider these propositions:

(a) In Harry Potter's world, there are wizards in England.
(b) In Harry Potter's world, Harry put his shoes on before flying away.
(c) In HP's world, Harry put on either his left shoe or his right shoe before flying away.
(d) In HP's world, Harry put on his left shoe before flying away.
(e) In HP's world, there are an even number of stars.

I hope the following claims are uncontroversial:

1. In Harry Potter's world, (a) and (b) are true, and we have a way to know that they are true. 

2. We do not have any obvious way to know whether (d) or (e) are true or false (in HP's world), and it is highly probable that we will never have a way to know whether (d) or (e) are true or false. 

In this post, I want to show that

3. (c) is true in HP's world, and we have a way to know whether it is true; and

4. (d) and (e) are either true or false (i.e. not neither true nor false) in HP's world, even though we have no obvious way to know which. 

Jonathan appears to agree with me about 3 (given his Feb15/12:15 comment in the previous post); the main point of contention seems to be about 4.

It is easy (for me) to become confused when thinking about whether completeness is part of a fictional world.  Certainly, there is a sense in which Harry Potter must live in a complete world.  After all, it might be interesting to write a story in which some propositions are neither true nor false, but JK Rowling has not done this.  JK Rowling has written a series of stories about a boy in a world which is logically predictable and regular (despite the fact that it contains wizards and magic).  Rowling has never given us any reason to think that there are propositions which are neither true or false in her invented world, so it's fair to assume that they all are either true or false in that world.

But it does not follow from this, at least not immediately, that there is not another sense in which, in Rowling's invented world, some propositions are not either true or false.  We sometimes think that propositions are true or false in fictional worlds because the author said they were true or false.  For instance: If Rowling were to find my blog, and leave a comment which says that, yes, there are an even number of stars in Harry's world, then it would be the case that there are an even number of stars in Harry's world.  But Rowling (I assume) has never said or written anything about this question, and probably never will.  Since Rowling has never said or written anything about whether (e) above is true or false, there appears to be nothing that makes (e) true or makes (e) false.  In that case, it seems that (e) must be neither true nor false.

But what does make a proposition true in a fictional world?  Consider two more claims:

(f) In HP's world, HP put his shoes on before flying away because he did not want his feet to get dirty when he came down to land.
(g) In HP's world, HP put his shoes on before flying away because JK Rowling said he did.

Both (f) and (g) are true, I think, but they are true from different perspectives.  (f) (or anyway, something like (f)) is true because the people in Rowling's invented world do things for reasons, and (f) describes Harry's reason for doing what he did do.  (g) is true because everything that happens in fictional worlds is fictional, i.e. invented by someone, and normally something which is invented is explicable in terms of the inventor.  As we switch perspectives, either (f) or (g) becomes more useful, but it seems to me that there is a sense in which both (f) and (g) are always true, no matter which perspective we adopt.  Let's give names to the two perspectives.  Let's say that from the internal perspective, (f) is the most useful truth, while from the external perspective, (g) is the most useful truth.

From the internal perspective, (e) is true (or false).  It wouldn't surprise me, in fact, if some wizard in Harry's world knew that (e) is true (or false); wizards seem often to know those sorts of things.  From the external perspective, however, (e) is neither true nor false.  After all, as we've seen, (we're assuming that) Rowling has never said anything about whether (e) is true or false; and Rowling saying whether (e) is true or false appears to be the only thing which could make (e) true or false from the external perspective.

I want to show two things.  First, I want to show that the external perspective is abnormal; when people think about fictional worlds, they normally do so from the internal perspective.  Second, I want to show that, given this, the internal perspective ought to be our "default position"; when we want to understand truth in fictional worlds, we ought to do so primarily from the internal perspective.

Suppose Rowling decides to write a murder mystery.  In her story, the identity of the murderer is left for the audience to figure out, but clues are dropped here and there, so that an attentive reader would be able to determine that the maid must have committed the murder.  In that case, most of us will say that, in the mystery's fictional world, it is true that the maid is the murderer, even though the author does not make explicit whether it is true or false that the maid is the murderer. 

In that case, clearly, "the maid is the murderer" is true from the internal perspective.  It's not obvious, however, that "the maid is the murderer" is either true or false from the external perspective.  If the author has to have explicitly indicated that a proposition is true (or false) in her fictional world in order for that proposition to be true (or false) from the external perspective, then "the maid is the murderer" is neither true nor false from the external perspective.  But perhaps you think that the author has to have merely believed that some proposition is true (or false) in order for it to be true (or false) from the external perspective.  In that case (assuming Rowling does believe that the maid is the murderer), "the maid is the murderer" is true from the external perspective, even though such has never been explicitly indicated. 

However: Suppose now that Rowling doesn't believe the maid is the murderer -- she believes that the clues are indecisive -- but she is simply wrong about this.  For instance: Suppose that several events in the story, taken in conjunction, imply that nobody but the maid could have committed the murder -- but Rowling has not noticed the implication, and mistakenly believes that she has left the identity of the murderer as an open question.  Then what would be the case from the external perspective?  I am not sure.

I think the case just examined illustrates two things.  First, it illustrates that it is not clear what the external perspective is.  That is, it is not clear exactly how we are looking at a fictional world when we look at it from the external perspective.  Second, it illustrates that when we think about fictional worlds, we normally do so from the internal perspective.  Most people, I submit, would be happy to say that, in Rowling's mystery, the maid really is the murderer, no matter what Rowling herself believes.  I claim that they can say this with such confidence because they are taking up the internal perspective -- and from that perspective, it is quite obvious that the maid is the murderer.

Another, perhaps more important, difficulty with the external perspective is illustrated by considering the interaction of claims (b), (c) and (d) above.  (b) implies (c).  (c) implies (d) is either true or false.  Indeed, (c) is really just the claim that (d) is either true or false.  Now, claim (b) is clearly true from the external perspective; Rowling wrote that (b) is true, and that is what makes something true from the external perspective.  In that case, it seems, (c) must be true from the external perspective.  (In fact, Jonathan has said (c) is true, and I take Jonathan to want to think of fiction from the external perspective).  But then it follows that (d) is either true or false from the external perspective.  But (d) is supposed to be neither true nor false from the external perspective.

This is not necessarily incoherent.  It might make sense to say that (d) is both either true or false, and neither true nor false, from the external perspective.  But again: I do not think we typically think about fictional worlds from a perspective so logically strange.  This suggests that we ordinarily do not look at fictional worlds from the external perspective.    

So, I (tentatively) conclude that our primary way of thinking about fictional worlds ought to be from the internal perspective.  From the internal perspective, all propositions are either true or false; fictional worlds are complete from the internal perspective.  So, it seems to me, the primary theory of fictional truth ought to be a theory of truth in "complete worlds."

Truth in fiction.

This post on Lewis's analysis of truth in fiction, by Jonathan at Fake Barn Country, is interesting.  I think it's possible, though, that both Lewis and Jonathan might be doing more work than they need to do. 

There is a straightforward analysis of truth in fiction.  On this analysis, when we say that a proposition is true in some fiction, we mean that there is some world (i.e., the fictional, non-actual world) in which that proposition is true.  For instance, to use Jonathan's example: It is true in the world of Harry Potter that there are wizards in England.  The straightforward way to understand this is to say that (1) the world of Harry Potter is a possible world, and (2) in that world, there is a place called England where wizards live.

The problem of fictional truth "gets off the ground" (i.e. becomes interesting and complicated) only when this straightforward analysis is rejected.  Lewis and Jonathan are in agreement, apparently, that it needs to be rejected.  Jonathan says:

[A]s Lewis recognizes, worlds specify too much. Worlds are complete; every proposition is true or false1 in each possible world. But fictions are not complete in this way. It is true in the fiction that Harry puts on shoes before flying away. But there is no fictional truth about which shoe he puts on first. Since there is no possible world in which Harry puts on shoes, but neither puts his left shoe on first, or puts his right shoe on first, or puts them on simultaneously, truth in the fiction cannot be truth in some possible world.

In possible worlds, all propositions are either true or false.  But, if Lewis and Jonathan are right, not all propositions are either true or false in fictional worlds such as the world of Harry Potter.  Thus the world of Harry Potter is not a possible world.  In that case, (1) above cannot be part of a coherent analysis of fictional truth.  Since (1) is part of the "straightforward" analysis of fictional truth, we cannot accept the straightforward analysis of fictional truth.

I like the straightforward analysis and would like to salvage it if possible.  I see two ways to do that: (a) One could claim that not all possible worlds are "complete," and therefore that the incompleteness of the world of Harry Potter does not show that it is not a possible world.  (b) One could argue that the world of Harry Potter is "complete," and therefore that even if all possible worlds are complete, the world of Harry Potter might still be a possible world.  Way (a) is problematic; there seems to be something decidedly impossible about an incomplete world.  But way (b), I think, has a chance.  Certainly, we are not told which shoe Harry put on first; but it does not follow from this alone that there is no fact of the matter about which shoe he did put on first.  Why not say that he must have put one or the other on first, even if we will never know which?

Mother Teresa and universalizability.

R.M. Hare says that the "universalizability principle" requires of us that, when making moral judgments,

we accept only those moral prescriptions which we are prepared to prescribe for all similar cases, no matter what position we ourselves occupy in them. This is a version of Kant's Categorical Imperative, similar to one kind of utilitarianism; for this method makes us treat all others on equal terms with ourselves and seek the good of all equally.  (From this page.)

In this review of Hare's 1997 by Georg Kamp, Kamp summarizes Hare's requirement of universalizability as follows:

Whoever claims that a certain act is or was good or wrong is bound to claim that any other act of the same type, performed under circumstances of the same type, by actors of the same type, is good or wrong too.

If I understand him, Hare thinks (well, thought) that judgments must be universalizable in order to qualify as properly moral ones.  That is, Hare doesn't just think that the correct moral judgments are all universalizable; he thinks that if your judgment is not universalizable, it isn't really a moral judgment at all -- not even an incorrect one. 

I think it might turn out to be the case that all correct moral judgments are universalizable.  However, I think there are genuinely moral judgments which are not universalizable.  In this post, I'll provide an example of a moral code which, I think, yields non-universalizable, yet genuinely moral, judgments.  But first, it will be worthwhile to say a few things about how the universalizability requirement is supposed to work. 

Suppose I make this judgment: "If I am a salseperson, it is permissible for me to swindle customers if I can get away with it."  If the roles were reversed, and I were the customer and the customer were the salesperson, I would probably object to being swindled.  That is, I would probably believe that I have been wronged, even though the act, circumstances, and actors are all of the same type as those which appear in my original judgment.  If, in such a case, I would believe that I have been wronged, then my judgment that I may swindle customers if I can get away with it is not a universalizable one.

Of course, if I really want to hold on to this judgment, it is possible for me to say that, if the roles were reversed, and I were the customer, I wouldn't object, and wouldn't feel wronged, if someone swindled me and got away with it.  If I say this (and am not lying or mistaken), then my judgment, though clearly incorrect, would be universalizable.

This possibility may be troubling, but it cannot provide the basis of an objection against Hare's view.  Hare claims that all moral judgments are universalizable.  He does not claim that all universalizable judgments are moral; still less does he claim that all universalizable judgments are correct.  So the appearance of a clearly incorrect universalizable judgment does not counterexample Hare's view.  To counterexample Hare's view, we need to find a genuinely moral judgment which isn't universalizable.  I have in mind what I think is one such counterexample.

Suppose that Mother Teresa always insists on acting for the benefit of others.  If Mother Teresa were a salesperson, she would insist on giving discounts to all her customers, because that would benefit the customers.  But if Mother Teresa were a customer, she would insist on paying extra, because that would benefit the salespeople.  Mother Teresa's moral code, in that case, is a sort of "inverted egoism" (i.e., it is a form of altruism).  Like an egoist, she thinks the distinction between herself and others is morally relevant.  The difference, however, is that she treats herself the way egoism would have her treat others, and treats others the way egoism would have her treat herself.

Some versions of egoism, of course, are universalizable.  For instance, a version of egoism according to which everyone ought to act for his or her own selfish interests is universalizable.  But a version of egoism according to which I ought to act for my own selfish interests, but everyone else ought to act selflessly in order to benefit me, is not universalizable.  Let's assume Mother Teresa's altruism is an inversion of that latter form of egoism.  That is, let's assume Mother Teresa thinks that she ought to act in order to benefit others, but thinks that everyone else ought to act in order to benefit themselves.  Then Mother Theresa's moral code, and therefore all the judgments entailed by it, are not universalizable. 

Probably, the real Mother Teresa would not have endorsed the "inverted egoism" I have attributed to her here.  But I think she may have formed judgments in accordance with something like this "inverted egoism."  At any rate, it appears that the real Mother Teresa believed she had special obligations (e.g., obligations to extraordinary acts of charity) which nobody else had, even though there was no "relevant difference" between her and anybody else.  If so, then even if Mother Teresa were not exactly an "inverted egoist," her moral judgments would still not have been universalizable.

If so, then if Hare is right, and all genuinely moral judgments are universalizable, then Mother Teresa was not making genuine moral judgments.  But I think Mother Teresa obviously was making genuine moral judgments.  Mother Teresa's judgments may have been incorrect -- that is, Mother Teresa may have been mistaken in thinking that she had special obligations to perform certain actions in certain circumstances which others did not have in the same circumstances.  But even if that is the case, I think Mother Teresa's judgments were clearly moral ones.  If so, then it follows that Hare is wrong; not all genuinely moral judgments are universalizable.

Update: Dan says in comments that "Mama T" may not have been so altruistic after all.  Obviously, if that's so, it doesn't affect my central point here.  If you think Mother Teresa was a bad person, just substitute some other saintly person's name into the post wherever you see "Mother Teresa."

Enwe and the Conservative Philosopher blog.

Enwe says that today's CP post on why many conservatives vote Republican is "too conservative," so she's decided not to link to it.

The post is definitely flawed.  For one thing, it includes this claim:

The dilution of the institutional protection of marriage through marriage-like civil unions for unmarried couples is exactly the wrong step to take. Here again, it is the Republican party that aligns with the conservative position.

Bush has said, more than once, that he would support, or would be willing to permit, civil unions for gay couples.  My impression is that the Republican party is somewhat torn on this issue.  Some Republicans oppose civil unions for the same reasons they oppose gay marriage, but other Republicans seem to think that civil unions would be an acceptable compromise with gay marriage proponents.  The issue is complicated, I think, and RCK fails to take account of its complexity.  This tendency to oversimplify persists throughout RCK's post.

Ethics and blogging survey.

A group of undergraduate students is conducting an online survey of bloggers about blogging and ethics (i.e., the ethics of blogging -- not blogging about ethics).  The survey is here. 

The Constitution.

In this post, Don Herzog attacks the view he calls "Strict Construction."  Strict Construction is a view about the proper role of judges.  It says that judges ought to apply "the language of the Constitution to what it straightforwardly refers to," rather than use it as a "springboard to make stuff up."  Herzog's view seems to be that Strict Construction is overly simplistic and impractical.  He provides a few examples in which some part of the constitution simply cannot be "straightforwardly applied" without doing some sort of interpretive work.  Apparently, we usually need to make something up in order to decide what the constitution is telling us.  For instance, here is the first amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And here is Herzog's analysis of it:

Judges and other interpreters have to decide what every one of those terms means.  "Freedom of speech" has to be a term of art.  If you think it just means "speech," so that Congress is forbidden to abridge speech, you'll have to swallow some remarkable implications:  no laws against commercial fraud, criminal conspiracy, price-fixing (an agreement to change prices is criminally actionable even if neither firm acts on it), and on and on.  So too, I don't myself believe that "separation of church and state" is an illuminating abstraction, but you can't rule it out as a sensible interpretation of the amendment by insisting that "those words don't appear" there.

Strict Construction strikes me as the correct way to read a constitution.  I thought the whole point of a constitution was to encode basic principles before they're needed so that the people in government don't have to make them up.  The problem is that our constitution just doesn't allow us to do that.  As Herzog says, Strict Construction, as applied to our constitution, gets us that the president has to be at least 35 years old; it doesn't get us much further than that.   

I think this means that our constitution just isn't a very good one.  It's too vague in some places, and absurdly specific in other places.  It's also extremely short.  It's no wonder that if you take the constitution at its word, you're not going to get enough information.  But that's not a problem with taking the constitution at its word per se; rather, that's a problem with the constitution itself, and its inability to be taken at its word. 

I take it that the standard view is that the vagueness of the constitution is a good thing.  On this view, an overly precise constitution would quickly become obsolete.  By leaving certain interpretive questions "open," then, the constitution allows us to continually "reinterpret" its meaning and to reapply it in new ways each generation.  But there's a difference between abstraction and vagueness.  A suitable principle regarding freedom of speech, for instance, would need to attain a certain level of abstraction, so it would not be able to tell us whether this or that specific activity is to be permitted.  But  it would tell us how to determine the answer to that question for ourselves.  The constitution fails to do this.  "Freedom," "of" and "speech" all have meanings in English, of course; but those meanings are too vague to be expected to provide the right sort of guidance in deciding specific questions.  So in each generation, we are not simply applying the same principle, "freedom of speech," in new ways; we are actually making up new principles which each bear that name.  Of course, thus far in our country's history, each made-up principle has been fairly reasonable.  That's been lucky.

Experimental philosophy.

In this post I'll offer a few reasons to be pessimistic about the possibilities for experimental philosophy.  I should admit at the outset that I am not very well familiar with experimental philosophy.  Corrections of any wildly false claims made below would be much appreciated.

Consider the following scenario.  Suppose claims 1, 2 and 3 each seem to be intuitively appealing for independent reasons, yet the conjunction "1 and 2 and 3" yields a contradiction.  At least one of these claims has got to go.  Suppose philosophers have been talking for a long time about the question: Which of these claims can be discarded with the fewest associated philosophic and intuitive costs?  Schools of thought on this question have emerged.  "Anti-1ism" is the view that claim 1 has the least intuitive appeal; "anti-2ism" is the view that claim 2 has the least intuitive appeal; etc.  No consensus seems to be forthcoming; there are respected and prolific anti-1ists, anti-2ists, and anti-3ists.  Anti-1ism, anti-2ism and anti-3ism have thus each become "entrenched in the literature," and each view has developed its own philosophical tradition.

In an environment like this, people with extensive backgrounds in philosophy will be virtually certain to be very familiar with the anti-1ism/anti-2ism/anti-3ism debate.  In that case, it's likely that their intuitions will have become "polluted."  They will no longer be in a position to know which way their intuitions are telling them to go.  It's possible, in fact, that what they claim to be "intuitively plausible" will seem downright absurd to an ordinary non-philosopher.  This, I take it, is where experimental philosophy is supposed to come in.  To approach a solution to the "1 2 3 problem," an experimental philosopher might present versions of claims 1, 2 and 3 to a group of ordinary people and ask each subject whether she finds any of the claims difficult to reject.  It might turn out that although ordinary people find it very difficult to reject claims 1 and 3, claim 2 doesn't have any intuitive appeal at all to them.  If this happens, then the case for anti-2ism will become quite strong.  Progress will have been made on a problem which philosophers have long been unable to solve.

I don't have any principled objections to the basic approach just described.  The problem I have is somewhat more practical.  To get at the problem I have in mind, suppose that around 75% of philosophers are anti-2ists, 15% are anti-1ists, and 10% are anti-3ists.  If the views are distributed in this way, has the "1 2 3 problem" been solved?  In many disciplines (such as, say, physics), problems which have been "solved" command universal assent.  If only three quarters of all physicists believe X, for instance, then X is fairly controversial, and the "problem of X" should not be regarded as solved.  Perhaps the bar should be lowered for philosophy, though I don't think so.  Let's assume, at any rate, that in the scenario above, where the majority view commands the assent of only 75% of all philosophers, the "1 2 3 problem" is not solved; some number higher than 75% would be necessary.

Now suppose that experimental philosophers go out and find a similar distribution of views among educated laypeople.  That is, suppose they find that 75% of laypeople want to reject 2, 15% want to reject 1, and 10% want to reject 3.  What would these experimental philosophers conclude from this finding?  I suspect that they may conclude that rejecting 1 and 3 would come with a very high intuitive cost, and that the numbers strongly favor rejecting 2.  That is, they would take their results to strongly favor anti-2ism.  But this, I claim, wouldn't be "fair."  It would mean that experimental philosophy would be thought to have "succeeded" without having outperformed the purportedly "failed" traditional philosophical approach.  Why should ordinary philosophy be deemed a failure at 75% if experimental philosophy can succeed with the same number?

As just one example chosen at random, consider this quotation from Nahmias at Experimental Philosophy:

We ran variations with positive action (saving a child from a burning building) and neutral action (going jogging). But in all three cases, a significant majority of subjects (68-79%) judged that Jeremy acted of his own free will or that he was praiseworthy for saving kid (89%) or blameworthy for robbing bank (83%).

For the background on this quotation, I encourage you to follow the link provided above.  The point I want to make is independent of the context in which these results are reported.  My point is this: If 68-79% of all physicists believed that if I let go of this ball, then it might not fall, I'd say there's no consensus in physics about the laws obeyed by gravity.  Similarly, if only 68-79% of all philosophers would say that in some imagined scenario, Jeremy acted of his own free will, then I'd guess that there's significant controversy among philosophers about free will.  I claim that the same standards should be applied to the population of laypersons whose intuitions are studied by experimental philosophers. 

At this point, though, I think experimental philosophy faces a dilemma.  If experimental philosophy "lowers the bar," and claims (for instance) that 75% of laypeople is a conclusive result (a success), whereas 75% of philosophers is inconclusive (and a failure), then someone will need to explain why the bar is so much lower for experimental philosophy than it is for regular philosophy.  But if experimental philosophy doesn't lower the bar, then it seems doubtful that experimental philosophers will be able to provide the high numbers they'll need to outperform "regular" philosophy. 

Agreement.

Which, if any, of the following claims are true?

(1) Conservatives are able and willing to reasonably disagree with their opponents.  Liberals cannot stand to have others disagree with them; liberals will do anything to compel assent.

(2) Conservatives don't really want to find consensus on issues; they just like to argue, and they engage in argument as an end in itself.  Liberals, on the other hand, sincerely care whether their arguments are convincing to their opponents.

(3) Liberals don't really believe anything.  Liberals care only about consensus, and are willing to compromise their deepest values in order to acheive it.

(4) Conservatives are stubborn and pig-headed; they can see only one side of any given issue.  Conservatives are unwilling to concede anything, even when doing so would make their position stronger and closer to the truth.

There's a theme running through all these claims.  In all four claims, liberals are associated with agreement, consensus, and compromise; conservatives are associated with disagreement, controversy, and stubbornness.  I've recently seen variations on all four of these claims in various comment threads around the internet.  Is there some common source?  For my part, I don't see much truth in any of these four claims.  I assume that there are a fair share of stubborn liberals, and that there are also a fair share of compromise-happy conservatives.  Even as extremely rough generalizations, I'm not sure I see reason to think any of the above claims are true.  But it's odd that these themes are popping up somewhat frequently in discussion threads. 

Philosophers' Carnival #9.

The new Philosophers' Carnival is up at Studi Galileiani.  Looks like a lot of good stuff.  I'm amused by the summary of my post on Dreier's Conjecture:

Staying with moral theory, Andrew Sullivan at E.G. considers Dreier’s Conjecture; namely, that non-consequentialist approaches can be reduced to consequentialism. Sullivan disagrees that the distinction between the two is empty and sets out a detailed argument to this effect, concentrating on the premise that for any non-consequentialist theory there is a "counterpart" consequentialist theory leading to the same verdict in identical circumstances (with the caveat that both have to be characterised as “plausible“).

This is a pretty fair summary of my post, but I have one minor quibble: I am not Andrew Sullivan.  I guess the person who wrote this summary noticed that I had written a post entitled "Andrew Sullivan" and assumed that I wouldn't be writing about Andrew Sullivan unless I was Andrew Sullivan.  That is an incorrect, but forgivable, assumption.

UPDATE: As Hugo mentions in comments below, he has amended the post so that the first mention of Andrew Sullivan is corrected.  There still remains a second mention of Sullivan in the post, but that's OK.  It's not a bad thing to be confused for a talented and successful pundit like Andrew Sullivan.  I'm just glad the summary didn't read something like this:

Staying with moral theory, Bill O'Reilly at E.G. considers Dreier’s Conjecture; namely, that...

UPDATE (five minutes later): Hugo's fixed all the Sullivan-mentions in the summary now.  Thanks, Hugo! :)

Inevitability in movies.

From Ebert's Glossary of Movie Terms:

We're Alive! Let's Kiss!

Inevitable conclusion to any scene in which hero and heroine take cover from gunfire by diving side-by-side into a ditch, and find themselves in each other's arms, usually for the first time. Cf. HIGH ROAD TO CHINA.

There is usually something bad about concluding a scene in this way.  But what is bad about it, exactly?

Participatory website.

This site looks interesting, although I haven't had time to really explore it yet.

Kidnapping.

Connard points out that Islamist terrorists have finally captured G.I. Joe.  This is a sad day for the war on terror/war on Cobra.

Here are some pictures of Cobra Commander.  Here is a picture of someone else.