This will be of interest to many philosophers.

Arthur Shapiro, an associate professor at Bucknell, has started an Illusions Blog. You're gonna get a new illusion every week. Awesome.

[HT: Cognitive Daily]

...and yes some poor student took a bite. Fortunately, the student wasn't injured.

[HT: A Philosophy Job Market Blog]

Here's one standard way to formulate the skeptical paradox.

1. I know that I have hands.
2. I don't know I'm not a brain-in-a-vat.
3. If I don't know that I'm not a brain-in-a-vat, then I don't know that I have hands.
   

These three sentences cannot all be true, and yet each one seems plausible. Here are the standard replies.

The Standard Replies

Option One: Skepticism
We deny (1.)

Option Two: Dogmatist
We deny (2.)

Option Three: Closure Hater
Most people think that knowledge is closed under entailment. If we deny that, we're in a position to deny (3.)

Option Four: Contextualist
Utterances of (1.) and (2.) are never true in the same context. Which of the two we deny will depend on the context in which the sentences are uttered.

All of these responses treat the knowledge relation (or relations if you're a contextualist) as binary relations between a person and proposition.

Enter Contrastivism
Contrastivism holds that knowledge ascriptions do not express a binary relation. Knowledge ascriptions express a ternary relation between a person, a proposition, and a second contrast proposition. (see Contrastive Knowledge.)

I won't get into the details of the constrastivist resolution of the paradox just yet, I'm more interested in a passage from Schaffer criticizing the skeptic and dogmatist.

I object to skepticism and dogmatism on two parallel counts. First, the denials of [1] and [2] strike me as absurd. At least, some explanation is needed of their plausibility. Second, skepticism and dogmatism collapse distinctions. Suppose that Student, Assistant, and Professor are visiting the zebras at the zoo. Student is remarkably ignorant, and can’t even discern a zebra from a mule; Assistant can discern a zebra from a mule by its stripes, but cannot discern a zebra from a cleverly pained mule; Professor can discern a zebra even from a cleverly painted mule by anatomical features that no mere paint job can disguise. The skeptic confuses Student with Assistant, denying that either knows that the beast is a zebra, since neither can eliminate the painted mule hypothesis. The dogmatist confuses Assistant with Professor, maintaining that both know that the beast is a zebra, since both can eliminate the unpainted mule hypothesis. Both skepticism and dogmatism thereby distort partial knowledge. [emphasis added]

I'm interested in the last few sentences. My money is on dogmatism, so maybe I'm missing something rather simple here. Why can't the dogmatist capture intuitions about partial knowledge in the following way?

A. The student doesn't know it's a zebra
B. The assistant knows it's a zebra, but the degree of justification (or warrant) is moderate.
C. The professor knows it's a zebra, and the degree of justification (or warrant) is really high.

The basic idea is that I would not need contrastivism to capture any intuitions that someone like Schaffer has about partial knowledge - all I would need is that justification (or warrant) comes in degrees. Am I overlooking something here?

Isn't this picture amazing? The newspaper running this story claims that this is the first time an orangutan has been spotted using a tool to hunt.

If you read the article it turns out that he's not very good at it, but it's pretty impressive none the less.

There are a lot of areas in philosophy where it is sometimes useful to think about non-human animals that are close to us in the evolutionary chain (e.g., metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and ethics)

With that in mind, I thought people would enjoy this article and the photo.

[HT: Daily Mail.]

Joshua Thurow is here for our second set of lectures in the Young Philosophers Lecture Series. He gave a great talk yesterday developing and defending BonJour's Generality Argument for the conclusion that we have some a priori knowledge.

Today he is giving an introductory level talk titled "Is Morality Real, or Do We Make it Up?" Both talks will be available at the website sometime next week.

A couple of really interesting issues came up in his research talk last night. I'll post about those soon.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Our call for papers for the Fall 2008 Young Philosophers Lecture Series is out! Deadline is August 15th. If you'd be interested in presenting in the Young Philosophers Lecture Series - check out the call for papers at www.youngphilosophers.org

Alexander Pruss just posted an interesting argument against Presentism. Here is the thought experiment that gets the ball rolling.

You and I are watching an exciting game of tennis. Our particular interest is drawn by Federer's next serve which is at a match point. With eager anticipation I speculate about how the serve will go. Federer is serving. You briefly respond to my remark during the serve itself, saying that my speculation doesn't look right. Federer has served and wins the match. We continue disagreeing about the serve for the next fifteen minutes. Such a conversation is perfectly natural.

As Pruss notes, this conversation is perfectly natural. Furthermore, you and I seem to be talking about the same event. Presentism seems committed to saying that we're not. That's a problem for presentism.

Here's a link to the whole discussion.

Attention all philosophers - be careful when you teach your students about freewill. You may end up with a classroom full of cheaters.

A recent article in Psychological Science argues that when students believe that they do not have freewill, they are more likely to cheat.

In one of the studies students were given literature on freewill and determinism. They were then asked to rate their confidence that they had freewill. Once they determined which students believed in determinism, they conducted a series of tests where an obvious cheating option was made available.

One of the experiments involved two groups that took a test with a monetary incentive for correct answers. The first group was scored by the experimenter. The second group was left to score themselves. Look at how the believers in determinism in the self-scoring group differ on the chart with respect to everyone else across both test groups.

Here's the link to the full article over at Cognitive Daily.

The article is two years old, so this may not be news to some people - but it's a pretty interesting breakdown of the percentage of people who accept evolution by country.

That graphic to your left is from the livescience.com article. It's pretty amazing where the US is on that graphic.

Evolution is, of course, relevant to a number of philosophical debates. One of my favorites are the many arguments that purport to show that we should draw some interesting philosophical conclusion from facts about wide spread disagreement.

Evolution is one of my favorite examples to talk about when students are inclined to argue that widespread disagreement with respect to P entails that there is no fact of the matter with respect to P (or that the truth of P is relative).

It seems obvious that somebody is definitely wrong here. There is a fact of the matter. Either evolution is true or it isn't, and it's truth certainly isn't relative. I make sure to emphasize to my students that I'm not saying which side is wrong. I only argue that we can know that someone is wrong.

The reason I like evolution so much when we discuss these disagreement arguments is that the class will typically divide concerning the truth of evolution, but everyone seems to be in agreement about the claim that someone in the room is wrong. Neither side is willing to go no objective truth in this case.

I'm sure many of you like to talk about evolution in your philosophy classes at some point, and so I thought this would be of interest to those who do.

If you're like me and interested in philosophy of time, you may have thought this article which is titled "You Can't Travel Back in Time, Scientists Say" might involve some recent research that shows that time travel (contrary to what we think now) is incompatible with the current laws of physics.

It doesn't.

It basically says that the laws of physics do not rule out time travel, and that even if it is theoretically possible people shouldn't expect that we are going to have the technical ability anytime soon. But this is simply something that a lot of people already acknowledge. Talk about a misleading title.

It's a good lesson in modal ambiguity.

I'm hoping readers will oblige me with a little intuition check. Consider the following scenario.

Cross-Check Your Perception with Another Person's Perception
You seem to see a tiger. You're very surprised to see a tiger. They don't live around these parts. You ask a friend. Do you seem to see a tiger. Your friend says, "Yes. I see a tiger."

Remember this is just a test of your intuitions. It's also a test of PollDaddy. If this works well, I may use this to do more intuition checks in the future.

I'm off to Chicago today for the Central APA. Assuming I have access to the internet, I'll post about some of the philosophy going on there.

I'm commenting on a paper by Matthew Pianalto called "Moral Realism and Ways of Life." He discusses an issue that Walter Sinnott-Armstrong raises for moral realism that's fun to think about. Here's the abstract for Matthew's Paper.

Moral Realism and Ways of Life (IV-K)
Matthew Pianalto (University of Arkansas)

This paper examines Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s claim that a person’s commitment to a way of life is a relevant factor in deciding what it is true that the agent ought to do in a moral dilemma. Sinnott-Armstrong argues that his view shows that extreme universal moral realism, which claims that facts about the agent make no contribution to the truth of what an agent ought to do, is false. I use Sinnott-Armstrong’s as a starting point to consider how a different kind of moral realism can account for the relevance of ways of life, and argue that they can be regarded as “realistic factors” in moral deliberation because they are grounded in morally permissible commitments which serve to shape the agent’s perspective on his or her situation, rather then serving as additional reasons the agent weighs in his or her decision.

In a previous post I presented an argument from Jubien aimed at direct reference theory that relied on mereological essentialism. Here is the post. Below is the argument again so you don't have to click away.



Michael Jubien's Argument Against Direct Reference

1. If Direct Reference theory is true, then 'Venus' in 'Venus could have had different parts' contributes a physical object to the proposition expressed and nothing more.
   
   
2. If 'Venus' in 'Venus could have had different parts' contributes a physical object to the proposition expressed and nothing more, then the sentence 'Venus could have had different parts' expresses a falsehood.
   
   
3. The sentence 'Venus could have had different parts' does not express a falsehood.
   
   
4. Therefore, it's not true that 'Venus' in 'Venus could have had different parts' contributes a physical object to the proposition expressed and nothing more.
   
   
5. Therefore, Direct Reference theory is not true.

I've been thinking about this all week. The comments from the previous post noted two very plausible ways to go. Give up on mereological essentialism, and reject (2). I'm inclined to give up on mereological essentialism too, but I must confess I have my moments where I wake up groggy and ask myself - why should I reject that view again?

The other option suggested was to give up on (3). If you're a mereological essentialist, why not stick to those guns and say that Venus couldn't have had different parts?

Let's pursue this option of rejecting (3) a little further. I think if you're a mereological essentialist, you're going to have a tough time finding a plausible semantic theory that allows you to keep (3).

Jubien takes it for granted that his descriptivism would allow us to keep (3). But consider the sentence.

(V) Venus could have had different parts.

It seems that Jubien's version of descriptivism entails that (V) is synonymous with (V*)

(V*) There is an X such that X has the property being-Venus and X could have had different parts.

(V*) is false if you're a mereological essentialist. If you're a mereological essentialist and a standard descriptivist then you'd have to say that (V) doesn't express a truth. It seems like Jubien would have to reject (3) in his own argument. Or make it more clear how his version of descriptivism when combined with mereological essentialism doesn't entail that (V) is false.

I'm curious how many people out there discuss the Analysis of Knowledge literature when they teach Epistemology in their general Introduction to Philosophy courses. I suspect there are a lot of people who don't.

I thought it would be worth saying why I like to include Gettier discussions when I start epistemology in my introduction to philosophy courses.t.

1. Epistemology isn't just about skepticism.

Epistemologists don't sit around all day trying to come up with responses to skepticism. If you think skepticism is mistaken, there are still a wide range of really interesting issues and puzzles to think about in epistemology.

2. Conceptual Analysis

I like to draw attention to that wonderful tool we call conceptual analysis. What do you do when you want to analyze the concept of a person? Step One: Start with some obvious cases of persons and some obvious cases of non-persons. Step Two: See what sorts of properties the obvious cases of persons have that the non-obvious cases lack. Step Three: Use those properties to construct a candidate analysis. Step Four: See what interesting consequences this analysis has and test analysis against other intuitions.

The analysis of knowledge debate is one more example of a kind of skill I think philosophy should help students develop.

3. Familiarity with the Analysis of Knowledge Debate Helps One Discuss Skepticism

A lot of skeptical arguments place some very stringent constraint on knowledge. Something like:

(I) If S knows that P, then it is not possible for S to believe P on the basis of S's current evidence and be wrong.

One way to respond to the skeptic is to try and explain away our infallibilist intuitions.

Having students start epistemology by discussing The Analysis of Knowledge and Gettier cases puts them in a position to see that these infallibilist intuitions aren't usually this wide-spread.

I remind my students about something that happened when I walked them through the 4-step process for analyzing knowledge. First, we listed what many would regard as obvious cases of knowledge. When we got to step 2 and started trying to figure out what the obvious cases of knowledge had in common that at least some of the cases of non-knowledge lack, students were very quick to say, "All of those cases of knowledge are true, " "All of those knowledge cases are believed," or "All of those knowledge cases have good evidence for them..." - rarely does anything like impossibility of error come up.

Add that interesting fact to some other attempts in the literature to explain away infallibilist intuitions, and you've got a case for fallibilism that doesn't look so bad.

The call for papers for the 5th Rochester Graduate Epistemology Conference is now available.

This conference is GREAT! One thing that everyone should know is that most of the professors attend all of the presentations. From what I gather this is not the norm at many other graduate student conferences. Also, the keynote speaker is expected to participate in and attend all of the sessions.

Any grad student presenting, will have an awesome line-up of people participating and giving them feedback.

If you're a graduate student with an epistemology paper in the works, you need to send it to this conference.

Neil Levy (over at Garden of the Forking Paths) just pointed out a pretty interesting study that may be of interest to philosophers interested in freewill.

The short version: A group of scientists have some confirmation of the hypothesis that the neural activity correlated with conscious decisions happens a full 7 seconds before the conscious decision is registered by the person making the decision.

In the comments from this post - Joshua writes:

Google images has taught me that I have several false views. Here are some questions that I asked and my interpretation of the answers:

Q: Is endurantism or perdurantism true?
A: Perdurantism

Q: Is the pointy view of simples true?
A: Yes

Q: Is there a God?
A: Yes and he is Muslim.

You can verify that these are the correct interpretations of the answers yourself.

I decided to go and ask Google Images Joshua's questions. Google images has spoken to me, and I concur with Joshua's interpretation of the Google Image answers. You can verify these. Here they are.

Q: Is endurantism or perdurantism true?















Q: Is the pointy view of simples true?














Q: Is there a God?

This might be a stronger way to frame the argument for freewill and eternalism incompatibilism. It's more difficult to dismantle than the argument I presented here.

First let's do a warm-up exercise. Here's an argument for Incompatibilism.

An Argument For Incompatibilism

1. If determinism is true, then facts outside of your control entail your actions.
2. If facts outside of your control entail your actions, then you do not have freewill.
3. Therefore, if determinism is true, then you do not have freewill.
   

This one is just a warm-up exercise. I'm sure we've all encountered something like this argument. Now something similar to this argument can be run for eternalism and freewill incompatibilism.

An Argument that Freewill and Eternalism are Incompatible

1. If eternalism is true, then facts outside of your control entail your actions.
2. If facts outside your control entail your actions, then you do not have freewill.
3. Therefore, if eternalism is true, then you do not have freewill.

Motivation for (1)
If eternalism is true, then the universe is supposed to be like a big frozen block that (in some sense) always has and always will exist. One might think that the existence of this big frozen block is something that I could have absolutely no control over. Since my actions are a part of that big frozen block, one might think that the existence of the block entails my actions. So if eternalism is true, then there is something I have no control over (the existence of this block) and it entails my actions.

Motivation for (2)
Whatever motivates this premise in the first argument should motivate it here.

This argument seems a bit better to me than the previous argument. I'll say something more about it after I've thought more. (I haven't forgotten that I want to say something about the argument against Direct Reference Theory that I posted this morning.)

Is Concrete Modal Realism true?
I think the answer here is clearly, yes! I used to be a linguistic ersatz kind of guy, but thanks to Google images I stand corrected. This is clearly a snap-shot of that possible world where not only is Santa clearly concrete, but I think that's David Lewis' counterpart.

(ok...back to work)

A friend of mine introduced me to a fun time waster. I'm told it's called Ask Google Images. Here's what you do.

1. Go to Google Image Search
2. Type in a Question
3. The first image in the results is your answer. (Don't ask me how images can be answers!)

I thought - this is going to be really funny with philosophical questions. Here are the answers we philosophers have really been looking for.

1. Is Direct Reference Theory True?


(I really don't even know what to do with that...)

2. Is Internalism About Epistemic Justification True?


(Hey, Matthias Steup is the winner! Sorry BonJour and Sosa...It looks like you guys were the second best answer to the question...)

(Your image was also blurry which indicates that it lacks the sort of clarity we're looking for in good philosophical answers to questions)


3. Is the Problem of Evil a sound argument?


(Wow! I really wasn't expecting that one...take that J.L. Mackie! A little Van Inwagen in your face! Note the sharpness and clarity of the image. This is a much more impressive answer.)

OK...enough time wasting. I've gotta get back to grading.

Informal Logic just switched over to open access. Consequently.org has a post about it here.
[HT: Mark and Andrei]

I knew it had to be possible for a closed access journal to migrate over to an online open access format, and I even suggested that this would be a way for the discipline to get more open access journals.

My knowledge that it's possible is now more secure (because it's actual). Now all we need is for some general philosophy journals at the top to follow suit.

This seems like a very quick and hasty objection to direct reference theory from Michael Jubien, but it's interesting. Direct Reference Theory recall is the thesis that the meaning of a name is the thing to which it refers (and nothing more).

From the present perspective [direct reference] cannot be right. It is an indisputable modal fact that (the planet) Venus could have had some different parts. If the name 'Venus' simply contributed a physical object to the claims expressed with the help of that name, it would follow that some physical object could have had different parts. But we have apparently just seen that no physical object could have different parts. And all we needed to see it was a seemingly innocent and naturalistic conception of physical stuff. The falsity of direct reference theory is a very important consequence of these seemingly innocent and straightforward metaphysical considerations. (Michael Jubien. 2007. "Analyzing Modality" in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics: Volume 3: pp. 116-117)

Wow. So some kind of mereological essentialism leads to the denial of Millianism? Let's grant Jubien the consequences of his thought experiment and assume that no physical object could have different parts. I may lay that out in a future post soon, but for now I'll leave it as homework.

Michael Jubien's Argument Against Direct Reference

1. If Direct Reference theory is true, then 'Venus' in 'Venus could have had different parts' contributes a physical object to the proposition expressed and nothing more.
   
   
2. If 'Venus' in 'Venus could have had different parts' contributes a physical object to the proposition expressed and nothing more, then the sentence 'Venus could have had different parts' expresses a falsehood.
   
   
3. The sentence 'Venus could have had different parts' does not express a falsehood.
   
   
4. Therefore, it's not true that 'Venus' in 'Venus could have had different parts' contributes a physical object to the proposition expressed and nothing more.
   
   
5. Therefore, Direct Reference theory is not true.
   

That's my summary of the argument. Let me know if you think I'm being uncharitable. I've got a lot to say about this argument. This may involve laying out Jubien's thought experiment that alleges to show that physical objects could not have had different parts. This will all have to wait. I have to get to school.

Great article from the New York Times. Philosophy majors are on the rise. To which I say...good.

[HT: Jason Stanley over at Leiter Reports]

I just got back from the West Virginia University second annual undergraduate conference.

It was great! I was invited to give one of the keynote talks. The title of my talk was Epistemic Circularity, and I received some terrific feedback from faculty and students.

The other keynote talk was given by Hud Hudson. The title of his talk is Omnipresence. The main point of his paper to articulate some allegedly possible views about the nature of location and explain how these views could resolve puzzles about omnipresence. It's a great paper.

The undergraduates were the real highlight. All four papers were very impressive, and the caliber of the presentations was incredible. It was the sort of thing you would see at a professional philosophy conference. Kudos to the presenters, and to the undergraduates at WVU for selecting such high quality papers.

The undergraduates at WVU also gave great comments. All around it was a great time.
Thanks to all the WVU folks for having me back!

I was promised pictures. As soon as I get them, I'll post them here.

(Note: Click on the banner above if you want to see the line-up of papers)

Here is a tale of journal woe with a happy ending.

Now I'm going to reveal the ending. After fifteen years with no luck they sent their paper on the Two-Envelope Problem to an open-access online journal SORITES, and it got published.

Don't be fooled by the eye-irritating 1995 HTML version of the website. SORITES' has clean PDF versions of their issues. Here's the PDF version of the issues that Schwitzgebel and Dever's article appeared in.

Let me wrap this post up with a little list of things that need to be appreciated:

1. Schwitzgebel and Dever Went Open-Access

Schwitzgebel and Dever are both Associate Professors of Philosophy at very prestigious graduate programs. They both have very impressive publication records, and are clearly capable of publishing in the top print journals.

2. SORITES' mission statement is awesome.

...dedicated to the promotion of analytical standards of rigour and clarity, favours no particular school or tendency within analytical philosophy. Its only allegiance is to a [fuzzy] set of methodological standards of rigour, clarity and careful argumentation, which characterize any rational way of doing philosophy. Submission of manuscripts written in accordance with such guidelines is welcome, in all fields of pure and applied philosophy.

3. SORITES' Roll of Referees boasts some incredible philosophers.

Here are just a few...Ernest Sosa, Terrence Horgan, Mark Sainsbury, Phillip Pettit, Peter Simons, and Graham Priest.
(to see the full list open the PDF version of the March 2008 issue)

4. I'm probably going to have to submit my next paper to SORITES.

P.S. If the editor's of SORITES ever read this post, I humbly suggest changing the HTML version of the site - with black text on white background. It's a little jarring on the eyes, and it's reminiscent of the internet circa 1995)

Gmail introduces Custom Time. Who says that backwards causation isn't possible? Never be late with your email again!

A pretty funny April Fool's Day prank. Well, it better be one. Note that in the testimonials column one of the beta testers occupation is listed as an epistemology professor. They also give a shout out to the Grandfather Paradox.

Couldn't a widely read Open Access Journal pay its referees for timely reports with advertising revenues? (Yes, I'm back to thinking about this issue again.)

Imagine you're an editor and you manage to get your open access journal into the top tier. Suppose you get 500 submissions a year that you deem are worth having an external referee look at. Suppose you offer to pay your referee $50 if the referee gets the paper back to you with substantive comments within 1 month. The referee gets nothing otherwise. If the referee fails to get the comments back within say 2 months, they are not asked to referee again. To pull this off a journal would need to pull in $10,000 a year annually.

A top-tier open access journal could probably do that. Assume a top tier journal could charge what Brian Leiter charges for advertisements on his blog. If Leiter gets his asking price for every month out of the year, then the two tiny ads in the left and right hand column of his blog could generate $9,400 a year. (Note: Leiter appears to be filling his ad spaces.)

Now, a journal wouldn't be able to charge Leiter rates until it had a Leiter-sized audience. If an open-access journal were at the top, it might get there, and that journal could provide incentives to resolve its peer review issues. The operating costs of an open-access journal would be so low that most of the ad revenue could go directly to the referees.

Note: There may be some objection to providing referees with monetary incentives. One possible objection is that this might encourage hasty reviews that are not well thought out because the reviewer is just trying to get the review in time to get the money. But I think I'd rather take my chances on a hasty review than a risk a 12 month hold up on the paper.

Another Note: I was going to add this to the list of pros under The Case for Open Access Journals, but it's highly speculative. I'm going to think more about it before I add it to the list. For one, I'm a little doubtful that even a top-tier journal would acheive Leiter-sized audiences. I'd be interested to see what Philosophers' Imprint web stats are.