There is an interesting discussion over at PEA Soup about when (if at all) to request a re-read. The discussion thread leads to an interesting discussion of a more general problem concerning the blind referee process.

There have been quite a few posts in the blogosphere highlighting problems with the peer review process in philosophy journals.

I wish there was more accountability in the journal referee process, but editing and refereeing seems to be such a thank-less job that it's difficult to see how to proceed.

Here's a new Chuck Norris Fact:
When Chuck Norris doesn't like your Chuck Norris Fact ...he sues you. Serioulsy, Chuck?

Erik Wielenberg on Chuck Norris Facts and Philosophy!
Also, a couple of years ago, some editor for the undergraduate run paper at DePauw University belittled someone for using a Chuck Norris fact in a philosophy paper. Erik Wielenberg wrote a clever response to that editorial. This didn't get nearly the attention it deserves.

Here it is.

The main idea is that a well-placed Chuck Norris fact could be a nice illustration of a philosophical concept. For example...

Teleological Explanation
Outer space exists because it's afraid to live on the same planet as Chuck Norris

Explicate the Notion of a Success Term
Chuck Norris doesn't go hunting. Chuck Norris goes killing.

So we're interested in time travel when we think about philosophy of time. This guy claims to have time traveled to the future and visited his future self. He's got video footage from his mobile phone that he hopes will prove it.




(For the record - I don't think this is legit. If I had traveled back in time, I would have chosen to bring back more (and better) evidence than what this guy did claims to have done.)

With things like Kagan's death course and Young Philosophers Lecture Series (don't forget to submit), your Ipod is going to help you love wisdom more than you already do.

However, all that listening to and watching philosophy on the go will put extra demands on your Ipod. The diggers out there have pointed out a nice handy solution to that...MacGyver would be so proud.

Mine is going to have a picture of David Lewis or Roderick Chisholm on it.

I just got an invitation to revise and resubmit a paper. Sweet! I thought, "This is pretty exciting. It's gonna be hard to top this one." As far as break plans were concerned, I was all set with something fun to do.
But then all the diggers out there pointed out this how-to-video. And now I have to ask...What should I do over break?

1. Work on a revise and resubmit.
OR
2. Build my own personal hovercraft.

I have a coffee addiction, but it's good for doing philosophy. I get my best work done at a coffee shop. I can read through several articles, pound out a rough draft, or revise something that I'm working on. It's great, but it's hard on the wallet. If you got a standard latte everyday of the semester, (at about $3.30 a latte) it would cost you close to $250 a semester. That sucks.

Well, at least I'm not buying the most expensive Starbucks drink ever.

This is pretty cool. Being able to listen to (or watch) philosophy on an IPOD is awesome.

So, it's time for the puzzle. First, a quick recap.

1. Ways-Millianism (Part One)
I explained how Millianism responds to Frege Puzzles using ways of believing.

2. Ways-Millianism (Part Two)
I explained how this strategy can be extended (and has already been extended) to respond to a variety of philosophical problems and puzzles.

Now for the puzzle...
The strategy in Part One and Part Two all have the following unifying feature. The diagnosis of the problem involves pointing out that we are confused in some way because we run the argument using two different ways of thinking about one and the same thing. Those different ways are embedded in the same propositional attitude verb. This is how we get confused, says the Millian.

Basically, I'm worried that this strategy if it can be adopted in Part One and Part Two, can be extended to undermine any counterexample to any conceptual analysis in philosophy!

Here's the idea. The following is the basic structure for any conceptual analysis and counterexample.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The Basic Structure for ANY CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS and COUNTEREXAMPLE

Schema for Analysis of Alpha in terms of Beta
X is an alpha iff X is a beta

Counterexample
I tell you a story where it is intuitive that something, call it Bob, is an alpha but not a beta.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Extreme Ways Millian Extension
The Ways Millian extension of the strategy from part one and part two would go like this...

"In your thought experiment you're thinking about one and the same thing using to different ways or modes of presentation. We can see this more clearly when you flesh out what your real evidence for non-identity is. Your real evidence is...

(A) It is intuitive that Bob is an alpha
(B) It is not intuitive that Bob is a beta

But look, you're just embedding your uses of 'alpha' and 'beta' inside the propositional attitude verb intuitive-that. There's your mistake," says the Extreme Ways-Millian.

The Options
1. Give up on Ways-Millianism.
2. Draw some distinction between permissible and impermissible uses of the strategy.
3. Accept Way-Millianism and the extension of the stragey - i.e., bye-bye conceptual analysis.

My money is on (2), and I think I have a way to draw the line. I'm currently hashing that out, though. I might post it a little later.

If anyone has any thoughts, comments are open.

1. Philosopher's Carnival is out

2. Young Philosophers - don't forget to send in those papers next month.

3. I promise that I will post my puzzle for Ways-Millianism. That should be my next post.

4. If you're grading papers (like me), then you're going to love this...

In Ways-Millianism: A Puzzle (Part One), I explained how ways of believing can be employed to respond to Frege Puzzles. In this post, I'll explain how this strategy gives us a nice tool for our philosopher's toolkit. However, adding that tool introduces what appears to me to be a serious puzzle. I'll discuss that puzzle in the next post.

Recalling the Ways Millian Strategy
Recall (C) and (D) from the first post.

(C) Sarah believes that Mark Twain wrote Huck Finn
(D) Sarah believes that Samuel Clemens wrote Huck Finn

Once you're on board with the Millian strategy of explaining our intuitions that (C) and (D) could differ in truth value by appeal to ways of thinking about one and the same thing under different ways of believing or modes of presentation - you've got a nice tool to add to your philosopher's toolkit. Here are some examples.

Ethical Naturalism
It has been suggested that The Open Question Argument against ethical naturalism is a kind of Frege Puzzle. Your intuitions about the following:

(E) X is good, but is X pleasant?
(F) X is good, but is X good?

We find it intuitive that (E) and (F) are different questions. So, 'good' must not mean pleasant. Good-ness must not equal pleasant-ness. Since you could do this for any natural property, good-ness (if it exists) must be a non-natural property.

Enter Ways - Your intutions about (E) and (F) can be explained by appeal to ways. You simply have two different ways of thinking about one and the same thing.

Materialism about the Mind
Here's a simplistic argument that the mental states are not identical to brain states. Imagine Little Johnny feels hungry. An identity theorist about the mind will hold that the state of being-hungry is identical to some brain state B. Call the state of being-hungry H and the brain state B.

(G) Little Johnny knows about H
(H) Little Johnny does not know about B

So, by Leibniz Law H does not equal B. Problem for the identity theorist.

Enter Ways - Johnny does know about B, he just knows about it using the H-way of thinking about it. He has two ways of thinking about one and the same thing.

Philosophy of Time
I won't go into the details here, but Ted Sider appeals to the idea that you can think about the same fact under two different propositional guises in Four-Dimensionalism. This is how he responds to the Thank-Goodness-That's-Over argument against eternalism.

Upgrading the Philosopher's Toolkit
My main point in this post is that once you've adopted the Ways-Millian metaphysics of belief, you can start using it to respond to a bunch of philosophical problems and puzzles. It's a wonderful little tool to add to your philosopher's toolkit. There are more examples of this, but these three are good enough now.

But, this leads to a puzzle. Stay tuned...

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a lecture series for young philosophers to get some experience and exposure? Wouldn't it be cool if this lecture series was podcast in video and audio format so that the entire philosophical community could watch it? Wouldn't it be cool if the young philosophers gave one talk on their research (for the advanced philosophers) and an introductory talk (for persons with no background in philosophy)?

I thought so. So, I pitched the idea to someone, and they gave me some money to get it started. Woo-Hoo!! Here's the website I've started.

www.youngphilosophers.org

The Basic Idea

SUNY Fredonia’s philosophy department will bring two young philosophers to campus each semester. Each philosopher will give two talks. The first talk will be a research talk pitched to the philosophical community. The second talk will be a shorter talk that is accessible to a broad audience with no background in philosophy.

One of the primary aims is to serve young philosophers by giving them experience and massive exposure to the philosophical community. This should also serve the philosophical community by giving them easy access to the work of some of the best new up and coming philosophers. By having each philosopher also give an introductory talk, we will serve people who have a more casual interest in philosophy.

Lectures will be podcasted in video and audio at www.youngphilosophers.org.

Our budget is still relatively modest, but will will be able to offer a small honorarium.

Check out the website for the CALL FOR PAPERS. Contact Andrew Cullison for more information.

SUBMISSIONS DUE: January 20, 2008

I want to discuss a puzzle for a view called Ways-Millianism. I'll do it in two parts. In this post I'm going to briefly present a Frege Puzzle for Millianism and the Ways-Millianism response. The puzzle I want to discuss relies on understanding how the Ways-Millian responds to Frege Puzzles.

If you're already familiar with this stuff, then you might want to just wait for the next post.

Frege Puzzles and Ways-Millianism

Millianism is the view that the semantic content of a proper name is its referent. This view faces certain problems that are called Frege Puzzles. Consider the following two sentences:

(A) Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn.
(B) Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn.

If Millianism is correct, then (A) and (B) express the same proposition. That seems problematic. It seems obvious that (A) and (B) do not express the same proposition.

While it might be easy to resist the intuition that simple sentences like (A) and (B) do not express the same proposition, the problem seems worse when we consider sentences, like the following, that contain propositional attitude verbs.

(C) Sarah believes that Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn.
(D) Sarah believes that Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn.

While one might simply insist that (A) and (B) express the same proposition, it seems that (C) and (D) clearly express different propositions. Surely, (C) and (D) could differ in truth value. If (C) and (D) could differ in truth value, then they do not express the same proposition. If (C) and (D) do not express the same proposition, then neither do (A) and (B). Millians have a problem.

A nice way to solve this problem is to invoke ways of believing. The solution takes belief to be a mediated relation. The belief relation is still a relation between a person and a proposition; however, persons believe propositions via some way of believing. A person believes a proposition in virtue of standing in some psychological relation to some third thing.

One theory of what ways are holds that ways are sentence-like mental representations. According to this theory, people believe propositions in virtue of standing in some relation to these representations. Let’s call this relation that a person bears to the sentence-like mental representation the accepting relation. So a person believes a proposition P by accepting a sentence-like mental representation that semantically expresses P.

Call the combination of this metaphysics of belief with Millianism, Ways-Millianism. Ways-Millianism can explain why we have the intuition that (C) and (D) could differ in truth value. Consider Sarah again. She could believe Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn by accepting the mentalese sentence ‘Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn.' However, she could fail to accept the mental sentence ‘Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn.’ We could say that Sarah believes Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn---in the Twain Way, but fails to believe Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn--- in the Clemens Way. Since Sarah could believe the same proposition in one way and fail to believe it in another way, it is easy to see how we might have the intuition that (C) and (D) could differ in truth value. We imagine Sarah accepting a sentence like ‘Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn’, so we think (C) could be true. However, we think that she could accept that sentence while also accepting the denial of the sentence ‘Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn’, so we think that (D) could be false. However, we are simply mistaken. (C) and (D) do not differ in truth value, but it is easy to see why we might think they could.

Stay tuned for the puzzle...

Some people have asked why I named the blog "Wide Scope" - Here's the reason. "Wide Scope" is a term that often gets used in philosophy and logic. Also, while I will mostly post stuff directly related to philosophy, I will occasionally post some stuff that's simply funny. "Wide Scope" seemed to be a fitting title for a philosophy blog that sometimes contains other cool stuff.

For example...

The Puzzle

A nearly omniscient being is going to put money in two boxes on Wednesday. No one will touch the boxes after that. Suppose you KNOW that the nearly omniscient being is 99% accurate in predicting whether the person on Thursday will open both boxes or just one box. The omniscient being will make a prediction on Wednesday and then place money in the boxes based on the prediction. Here's is what the nearly omniscient being (hereafter NOB) will do.

BOX A
NOB will place $1,000 in Box A no matter what the being predicts.

BOX B
NOB will place $1,000,000 in Box B only if the being predicts that you will only take Box B. NOB will leave Box B Empty if NOB predics that you will take both.

It's now Thursday. You may take either of the boxes you wish. You may also take both. What should you do?

Here are the camps divided into what people typically think you should do…

One boxers say…
Take Box B. Somehow, you’re decision will cost you $1,000,000 if you do anything else.

Two boxers say…
Come on…the money has already been put in the box. Surely, your decision NOW won’t affect anything. The practically rational thing to do is take both boxes…

My Favorite Response: I'm a ONE-BOXER
(I'm told William Lane Craig offers roughly this response...)
Here is my case for being a one-boxer. Our evidence RIGHT NOW might point to the fact that there is no way that our decision on Thursday affects the contents of the box. That’s why some have the intuition to be two boxers. However, if we imagine ourselves in a scenario where we know a person has been 99% accurate in predicting, we would have to ask what the best explanation of that phenomena is. You might think if you were in such a far fetched scenario that you would have some empirical evidence for a range of far fetched hypotheses that do entail your decision on Thursday affects the being decision on Wednesday. Here are two…

ETERNAL BEING – Perhaps the NOB has reliable immediate access to all truths past, present, and future. NOB could be outside of time or get reports from something that is outside of time. NOB (or at least NOB's source of information) sees me make my choice on Thursday when I do it, and bases his decision on that choice.

TIME TRAVELING BEING – NOB can time travel and at least glance into the future. The being bases his Wednesday decision on what he sees me do on Thursday.

In both cases, we have conceivable scenarios in which what I decide on Thursday has some direct causal bearing on the past. I’m not saying that these are even remote possibilities for something that could happen in the actual world. All I am saying is the following conditional is true.

(A) If you were in a scenario where you KNEW a nearly omniscient being was 99% accurate in determining what your future actions would be, then the hypothesis that your actions in the future affect what the being does in the past would be a LIVE OPTION.

Objection One: These aren’t plausible theses.
Response. It might not be plausible to suppose these are actually true, but they would certainly be live options if you knew there was a being with this remarkable ability. When we imagine we are in possible scenarios where our knowledge is radically different from the actual world, we have to make sure shift what our total evidence is. Given that they are live options in the scenario, you shouldn’t act as if your decision on Thursday has no impact on the contents of the box.

Objection Two: there would be better explanations of the beings ability than that it was eternal or that it time traveled…The being could be a really good cognitive psychologist with accurate brain reading software, and it could be that whenever brains of a certain arrangement play the game, they choose both. Whenever they do not exhibit that arrangement they choose one box.

Response. There might be a better explanations, but the probability of TIME-TRAVELER and ETERNAL BEING alternatives might be sufficiently high that you shouldn’t rule them out as a possibility when making practical decisions…You may not be justified in believing that the being was ETERNAL or TIME-TRAVELLER. I’m just saying it would be enough of a live option and the consequences so severe that it’s not rational to risk that one of these explanations in not true.

I’m told…that this is roughly what William Lane Craig has said in response to the problem. I’m wondering if anyone is aware of any responses to this solution?

So...this is kind of funny. My department chair just pointed it out to me.

UPDATE: I posted this same thing over at Prosblogion - there's been some discussion there.

We don’t have a complete science of the brain yet, but look at what recent neuro-science has shown. Don’t the recent successes of neuro-science give us good reason to believe that there will one day be adequate evidence for the proposition that the brain is completely scientifically explainable. Shouldn’t we then now think that the brain is completely scientifically explainable?

I think many would find something like the above reasoning plausible. I have to admit I find it plausible, and there are a few other kinds of arguments out there in philosophy that make a similar kind of move.

But here is where I start to get worried. For these strategies to work, something like the following principle must be true.

(1) If S is justified in believing that at some future time S will be justified in believing P, then S is justified in believing P now.

However, this won't do. I am justified in believing that, at some future time, it will be reasonable for me to believe that my dog is dead. After all, I'm pretty sure my dog isn't immortal. That doesn't mean I'm justified in believing that my dog is dead now. We might think there is a quick fix that can get around this.

(1*) If S is justified in believing (at T), both that
i. At some future time it S will be justified in believing P
AND
ii if P is true at some future time, then P is true at T,
then S is justified in believing P at T.

This gets around the dog worry, and would allow the inference in the first paragraph to go through. But suppose I have severe alzheimer's. My wife tells me that once I am to the point where I can't remember her anymore, she will insist to my face that she has never met me before. I am justified in believing right now that I will be justified in believing that I never met Sarah. I'm also justified in believing that if I never met Sarah at some future time, then I never met her now. So this revised principle doesn't work either.

You might think the problem is that in both counter examples the person in question is justified in believing at T that the relevant proposition is false at T.

(1**)
IF S is justified in believing (at T), both that
i. At some future time it S will be justified in believing P
AND
ii. if P is true at some future time, then P is true at T,
AND
iii. S is not justified in believing that P is false at T,
THEN S is justified in believing P at T.

But we can modify the alzheimer's case, suppose I learn that someone named Sue is going to do the same thing that my wife does. I am given very good reasons to believe that I should right not be skeptical whether or not I have ever met Sue. So, I'm not justified in believing (at T) that I have never met Sue. In this case, I would satisfy the antecedent of (1**), but I don't think I'm justified in believing (at T) that I never met Sue.

Thoughts?