Within a week of each other, Windows and Apple declared legal war on Google in two separate arenas.
Windows
Earlier last week the European commission started an anti-trust probe. There were suspicions that Microsoft was behind some of the complaints. Last Friday, Microsoft acknowledged that they were. (Aside: If Google is guilty of anti-trust violation, then they should face the music - but I find it awesomely ironic that it’s Microsoft sounding the alarm). You can read up on this story here.
Apple
Then just today Apple filed a patent lawsuit against HTC over 20 patents. Why HTC? HTC is the one making all of those awesome Android powered phones (e.g. G1, Droid Eris, and Nexus One). For those of you reading this who don’t know, Android is the Google backed mobile OS that is threatening to takeover the smartphone industry.
It’s going to be interesting, but it looks like Google is now in the middle of a two front war against Windows and Apple at the same time.
A team of computer scientists from Rutgers University recently revealed a range of nasty things a hacker can do with some simple, difficult to detect, malware. A hacker could text your phone and drain your battery, turn on your microphone and eavesdrop on important conversations, or even turn on your GPS receiver and figure out where you are.
The good news is that the team did not demo ways for hackers to get these programs on your phone, and they have not identified any Android-specific vulnerabilities that would allow them to do so. The demo only shows what could be done if the malware gets on your smartphone.
While this might be good news for now, the researchers call for developing detection techniques so that average users won’t be significantly affected by these types of attacks. [HT: inc.com]
I now have rooms and times officially booked for our remaining three Young Philosophers visits. Here is all of the information regarding our three remaining speaker visits.
Dennis Whitcomb
Western Washington University
(Ph.D., 2007, Rutgers University)
“Grounding Precludes Omniscience” (Research Talk)
February 25, 6PM
Fenton 105
“Two Branches of Wisdom” (Intro Talk)
February 26 @ 12PM
Fenton 105
Todd Long
California Polytechnic State University (Ph.D., 2003, University of Rochester)
“Assets of Mentalism Revealed by Super-Blooper Epistemic Design” (Research Talk)
March 25 @ 6PM
Fenton 105
Intro-level Talk: TITLE TBA
March 26 @ 12 PM
Fenton 105
Richard Brown
La Guardia College, CUNY
(PhD, 2008, Graduate Center, CUNY)
“Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness and the Phenomenology of Belief” (Research Talk)
April 29 @ 6PM
Fenton 105
“Zombies, Super-Scientists, and the Metaphysics of Consciousness” (Intro Talk)
Part of Williamson’s case against the possibility of analyzing knowledge involves rejecting three candidate arguments for the thesis that belief is conceptually prior to knowledge.
These all come up in the introduction of Knowledge and Its Limits.1 Here is my best attempt to extract these arguments. The labels are my own.
The Argument from Non-reflexive Entailment
Knowledge entails belief
Belief does not entail knowledge.
If concept A entails concept B, but concept B doesn’t entail concept A, then B is conceptually prior to A.
Therefore, belief is conceptually prior to knowledge.
Williamson’s Objection: It’s actually not clear to me what the objection is. I’m going to post something separately about this later. For now, I’d like to simply present all three arguments.
The Argument from Analysis
There is a true, informative analysis of knowledge in terms of belief.
If there is a true, informative analysis of knowledge in terms of belief, then belief is conceptually prior to knowledge.
Therefore, belief is conceptually prior to knowledge.
Williamson’s Objection: There is no informative analysis in terms of belief. Reject premise (1).2
The Argument from Good Approximate Analysis
There is a candidate conceptual analysis of knowledge that is a good approximation of a true analysis in terms of belief.
If there is a candidate conceptual analysis of knowledge that is a good approximation of a true analysis in terms of belief, then belief is conceptually prior to knowledge.
Therefore, belief is conceptually prior to knowledge.
Williamson’s Objection: Good approximations in terms of A in terms of B is not good evidence that B is conceptually prior to A.3
All I’ll do for now is get these arguments up so I have something to link back to if I ever discuss them in more detail in the future. If you’ve got any thoughts/objections to the arguments, fire away.
notes
1 Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford University Press, USA.
2 Before you get mad at Williamson here, he does note that for the purposes of his book will assume this. He also acknowledges that this is controversial. (Williamson 2000: 4)
3 He has an example with a ballpark/close approximation of analyzing parent in terms of ancestor that he thinks helps establish this point. (Williamson 2000:4)
Young Philosophers was just approved to distribute to the Roku Player on the Blip.TV channel. So if you have a Roku Player, you can watch Young Philosophers on your big TV from the comfort of your couch.
I don’t see any way to browse to the show. The easiest way to find it (more…)
Now I have a useful tool on my hands. Part of my reason for posting to my blog is to test out ideas for further development. The idea is that I might write a paper someday using material from a post.
If I write the post in Google Docs, I can slowly develop a draft of a paper and shave off some steps from turning the post into a rough draft of a paper. The post will naturally turn into a rough draft, and at the end there is no additional step needed to get the text into a Word processor. It will already be in a word processor.
What will be really awesome is if I can write a full-blown scholarly piece, complete with footnotes, that posts neatly into Wordpress. Let’s see how footnotes from Google Docs will port into Wordpress.1
Aren’t there analyses of knowledge that do less violence to our intuitions than JTB, but also have about as good a claim to analyze knowledge in terms of a natural property as JTB (e.g. JTB that isn’t based on false grounds)?
If that’s right, then it seems that Weatherson’s defense of JTB in “What Good Are Counterexamples” would motivate a defense of one of these alternative analyses rather than JTB.
I’m going to come back and say a lot more about this. I just wanted to throw this little note out there while I’m thinking about it.
My main reason for being so quick on this, is that I’m testing Google Docs posting to Wordpress again.
