In one of Ted Sider's recent papers, he's got a nice section trying to explain why philosophers should care about the metaphysical possibility of time travel. Here's a passage.

Before expending too much energy on the topic, it is worth thinking a bit about
its point. Beyond the (perfectly legitimate) desire to set the record straight, is
there any reason to care about time travel?

The most straightforward reason to care is that today’s physics community
cares. Whether the actual laws of nature permit time travel is a live debate
in contemporary physics journals (Earman, 1995). Suppose the arguments
to be discussed in this paper against the possibility of time travel (without
shackles) succeeded. Then, given that many physicists tell us otherwise, that is
a problem! Whatever else metaphysicians must do, they should at least try to
make metaphysical sense out of what physicists take seriously.

I started to wonder exactly how seriously the physics community cares. That led to this post last week.

I found another interesting news story this week. The article is a bit sensationalist, and it's a little older - but it does report on a physicist, Amos Ori, who explains how he thinks we could make time travel happen. I assume this is the Physical Review article the newspaper is referring to. (Note: Amos Ori has an even earlier article here)

Too bad you can only read the abstracts online.

SUNY-Fredonia's own, Neil Feit, has a book coming out this summer.

OUP has a description - plus some nice blurbs from Andy Egan and John Perry on their website. I'm pasting all of that below.

Description

Philosophers typically suppose that the contents of our beliefs and other cognitive attitudes are propositions-things that might be true or false, and their truth values do not vary from time to time, place to place, or person to person. Neil Feit argues that this view breaks down in the face of beliefs about the self. These are beliefs that we express by means of a first-person pronoun. Feit maintains-following David Lewis, Roderick Chisholm, and others-that in general, the contents of our beliefs are properties. Unlike propositions, properties lack absolute truth values that do not vary with time, place, or person.

Belief about the Self offers a sustained defense of the Property Theory of Content, according to which the content of every cognitive attitude is a property rather than a proposition. The theory is supported with an array of new arguments, defended from various objections, and applied to some important problems and puzzles in the philosophy of mind.

Reviews

"Feit's discussion of the arguments for and against the property theory of content is philosophically sophisticated, generous, and fair-minded, and he finds some extremely interesting applications for his version of the property theory."
--Andy Egan, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan

"Belief about the Self is an important contribution to the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, and useful for the broader field of cognitive science."
--John Perry, Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University

Introducing Philosophy Journal Mashups!

Any philosophy journal with an RSS feed can be run through a mashup program. Mashups combine multiple RSS feeds and automatically screen those feeds for specific content. Once you've screened the journal articles for the kind of content you want, you can turn the results into a widget to post on a blog.

I tried one out for epistemology. I plugged in the feeds from some of the top philosophy journals and then entered in search criteria so that only journal articles with the right epistemology words in the title made it through. The result was a pretty awesome blog widget that cherry picks many (but not all) of the most recent epistemology articles from some of the top philosophy journals. How awesome is that?

Right now I just have an epistemology mashup, but I'll eventually put up mashups for metaphysics, philosophy of language, mind, ethics, and philosophy of religion. (You may have noticed the new look - the new left-hand column will be for philosophy journal mashups).

Below is more information concerning the search criteria for the mashups, so you can have some idea of what will be caught by the widget and what will not be caught by the widget. I welcome any suggestions for perfecting the widget (especially with respect to keywords that - when in a title - pretty much guarantee an article on the topic of the mashup).


Enjoy the mashups!

Journals Tracked (for all Mashups)
Journals Screened:
Analysis (Blackwell)
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (Blackwell)
Mind
Nous (Blackwell site)
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Blackwell site)
Philosophical Quarterly (Blackwell)
Philosophical Review
(I'll be adding more journals soon)

Journals Attempted
Journal of Philosophy (no feed)

Epistemology Mashup (Keywords: Title Search)
knowledge
epistemic
evidentialism
reliabilism
proper functionalism
foundationalism
coherentism
internalism (I'm worried that this might be too permissive)
externalism (I'm worried that this might be too permissive)
contextualism (this one sometimes brings up 'moral contextualism')
justification
gettier
skepticism
scepticism (I found that both spellings are necessary)
safety
a priori
testimony
testimonial
common sense
proper functionalism
proper function
accessibilism
epistemic luck
fallibilism
infallibilism
warrant

Tracking Rule Disclaimer
As of right now the mashup only tracks the above listed journals. It only screens the titles from those journal for one of the above keywords. If one of the above keywords appears in the title of any recent articles from the above listed journals, then the mashup permits the article through to the widget (so don't get lazy. This IS NOT going to catch all the wonderful epistemology that's out there.)

I'll add more journals and tracking rules when I have time. I welcome any suggestions.

Lying is prima facie morally wrong. But most people are willing to acknowledge that it is sometimes OK to lie.

Cognitive Daily has an interesting post concerning a study designed to assess when teenagers think it's OK to lie. You might be amazed at what teenagers regard as permissible defeating circumstances. Here is the link to the article.

Why should philosopher professors be interested in this? First, the data is interesting. Second, it may come in handy if you ever talk about lying as a case of wrongness in intro or ethics. Third, it may tell us some interesting things about student/teacher relationships. Fourth, it should motivate us to be careful about how we argue with students when we argue that plagiarism is wrong.

Plagiarism
When most students are told about the evils of plagiarism, it's usually cashed out in terms of lying. We often do give students other reasons, but I bet that these other reasons don't always sink in. If the student has an overly permissive attitude as to when it's OK to lie - they will not be terribly moved by plagiarism-is-lying-arguments for the wrongness of plagiarism.

I've always suspected that this was true, which is why I like to stress other reasons for thinking that plagiarism is wrong. These reasons have little to do with lying, and I think these are more compelling reasons for why plagiarism is wrong.

One of the primary reasons I give for thinking that plagiarism is wrong is that it harms (or risks harm) to the other students. Word gets travels fast - particularly in the local area about how easy it is to get through the local college with a degree. The more plagiarism that happens, the more it devalues other student's degrees.

I like to give my students the following analogy. Imagine all of your classmates bought a $20,000 plot of land and you poured salt all over it. Plagiarism is like doing that. It pours salt over a degree and makes it worthless in the eyes of some potential employers.

So, an interesting result of the study is that perhaps it should move us to emphasize the wrongness of plagiarism that does not merely reduce the wrongness of plagiarism to the wrongness of lying.

(Aside: The other reason I like to emphasize the Harm-To-Other-Students argument over other reasons is it gives non-plagiarizing students a very reason to be angry about plagiarism at their school.)

I just arrived in Madison for the Wisconsin Epistemology Conference. It's going to be awesome. The line-up of speakers is great.

Kudos to Juan Comesaña for organizing this.

I've got some ideas that occurred to me on the plane. I'll post them in a bit, but right now I'm going to go find breakfast.

Stay tuned.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

About a month ago, I posted about an article that presents some interesting experiments involving perception. You don't have to click that link...here's the relevant bit.

It turns out that there are many cases in which what people expect to see tricks them into thinking they saw it. For example, they had people watch someone throw two balls. The thrower then pretended to throw a third ball. Most people think they see a third ball that suddenly disappears in mid-air. They don't even realize that a third ball wasn't thrown. Their first thought is usually that the person somehow made the third ball disappear.

I started having some vague concerns about how these findings might impact recent attempts from in experimental philosophy to undermine the claim that intuitions can yield justified beliefs.

I decided that I need to start looking more closely at some of the experimental philosophy literature. In my search, I just discovered that Ethics Etc is doing a review of a new book out called Experiments in Ethics. Here's the review of chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three. This book has just been added to my to do list. (My summer is going to be great!)

I'm want to look into this more before I really start mouthing off, but here's my vague worry.

In the case of the experiment involving perception it seems that some mechanism stepped in and yielded a false perception. The existence of this mechanism isn't enough to show that perceptions are generally unreliable. I bet there are other experiments out there involving perception. I think they're going to be worth tracking down. They're going to be relevant to fleshing out precisely what experiments involving intuitions should tell us about the general reliability of intuitions.

Many of the experiments (that I've come across) attempting to show that intuitions are unreliable seem to involve certain kinds of priming. If you prime people with certain kinds of questions or set up the cases in which they have certain expectations or assumptions about the cases, they'll intuitions will vary. Set up the cases one way - they'll have an intuition that an action is wrong. Set it up another way - they'll have an intuition that an action is permissible.

The conclusion that some philosophers draw from these experiments is that intuitions are generally unreliable and cannot justify moral beliefs.

My suspicion (and it is merely that - a suspicion) is that it will be tricky to explain why these experiments involving intuition cut against the general reliability of intuitions, but the perception experiments do not cut against the general reliability of perception. That said - I think I should wait until I've looked into both sets of experiments in more detail before I say more.

(For those of you who know more about the literature, feel free to mouth-off in the comments.)

Calling all metaphysicians! Would you like a simplified explanation of the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics? Would you like it to be presented to you using Super Mario World? Well, look no further.

Interesting Philosophical Applications
Metaphysical Modality
Some people think that the parallel universes in the multiverse hypothesis could play the role of Lewisian Possible Worlds. I have serious doubts about this. The main issue is that the multiverse that some physicists take seriously probably won't have enough universes to represent all metaphysical possibility.

The Fine-Tuning Argument for the Existence of God.
One possible response to The Fine-Tuning Argument for the Existence of God involves appealing to some kind of Multiverse Hypothesis. (Shameless plug - Check out Beebe's presentation of the Fine-Tuning Argument over at Young Philosophers)

Anyway, whatever your thoughts about the potential philosophical applications of the multiverse hypothesis - the video is pretty excellent. Enjoy.

[HT: Popsci.com - Checkout the full article here]

Thanks for the prodding in the previous post. Also, thanks to the anonymous comment with that list of readings. I knew there had to be literature on this.

Here is a quick and dirty formulation of the argument that eternalism is incompatible with some robust conception of freewill. Three different people have given me something like this argument. Ultimately, I think it's unsound.

Past Entails Future Argument

1. If eternalism is true, then there is some past fact that entails all of my future actions.
2. If there is some past fact that entails all of my future actions, then I do not have freewill.
3. Therefore, If eternalism is true, then I do not have freewill.
   

Motivation for One:
If eternalism is true, then for any of my future actions A, there will be some past fact at any past time of the form Andy will A. But if that's true, then there will be an entailment relation between that past fact and my future actions.

Motivation for Two:
The freewill literature is loaded with premises that fit this form. The idea is that if past facts entail what you do in the future, then what you do in the future is somehow not under your control. So, learning that the past facts entail what you do in the future should be sufficient to think that you're not free in the future.

My Main Problem:
Premise 2 - is only plausible if you're thinking like a presentist. If eternalism is true, it may be true that there is an entailment relation between some past fact and what you do in the future, but that past fact is made true by what you do in the future.

It's only true in the past that you will do some future action (according to the eternalist) because you're future self is there freely doing it in the future doing it.

If we learn that past facts entail our future actions, we're inclined to think that this entails we don't have freedom because we're inclined to think that we simply cannot have any control whatsoever over the past facts - but we can have control over the past facts if eternalism is true. It's our engrained presentist way of thinking that (I submit) inclines people to accept (2).

I've had some other versions of the argument presented to me, but I'm going to hold off for now.

In other news:
I've been reading Paul Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge and Timothy Williamson's The Philosophy of Philosophy. Interesting stuff in both. I may be posting something about this soon.

I thought it was obvious that libertarian freedom was compatible with eternalism, but I'm starting to realize that this isn't true across the board. Some colleagues here think that the two are likely incompatible. After talking with some folks at the Pacific APA, I discovered others who thought that the two are obviously incompatible.

I was also told that there isn't much in the literature on this - so I think I'm going to start posting some more thoughts on this.

First, let's get some terms out of the way.

Eternalism - The past, present, and future all exist and are equally real.

Libertarian Freewill - While there is little agreement about how to define freedom, the Libertarian Conception of freedom is supposed to be the robust notion of freedom that we're after. A cluster of concepts get thrown around as part of this robust notion including - could-have-done-otherwise, and not-caused-by-events-that-are-not-under-your-control.


(...more on this soon...)

I'm off to the Pacific APA in a couple of days. The following week is our spring break. I assume that I'll have decent internet access while in California, so posting should continue.

I'm commenting on a good paper on causation by Jonathan Matheson. Here's the abstract (pulled from the Pacific APA website).

Fragile Events and the Causal Relation by Jonathan Matheson In this paper I defend the claim that maximally-fragile-events are the proper relata of the causal relation. In other words, the things that are causes and effects are maximally-fragile-events alone. Call this thesis the Fragility Thesis. It is standard, though not uncontroversial, to take events as the relata of the causal relation; but it is highly contested that maximally-fragile-events alone play this role. In this paper I show how a counterfactual account of causation coupled with FT can provide a simple conceptual account that avoids the problems that have faced other counterfactual accounts of causation, as well as suggest that the consequences of adopting such an account are not as outrageous as they may seem.

...the April 2008 edition of Analysis just posted to my RSS feed. Here's the Blackwell Link. Here's the Link for those of you with Ingenta Connect. This edition looks like it is simply loaded with good stuff.

Also, I just noticed that the January 2008 edition of Analysis is available for FREE at Blackwell.

In a previous post, I argued that philosophy should push toward publishing in Open Access Journals. Here's a list of things I think we need to start doing to realize that shift. Some of these will seem quite obvious, but we might as well have the list anyway.

1. Everyone Start Submitting to Open Access Journals

I think everyone should start submitting to open access journals, but the issues for junior faculty are tricky. A good open access publication will surely count for tenure. (See how Philosophers' Imprint fairs in Brian Weatherson's survey of journals). However, there simply are not enough Open Access Journals of Philosophers' Imprint caliber for a Junior Person to put together a successful tenure file based solely on Open Access Publications. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this).

Another issue for junior faculty is there aren't any open access journals that have Mind, Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Review, or Nous level prestige. Until we have an open access journal that is one of the top two or three journals in the field, it may not be in a junior's interests to submit to an open access publication (until they've been rejected by all of the top journals). In many cases, it's in a junior's interests to submit that Mind caliber publication to Mind.

Perhaps juniors with a lot of papers in the works can afford to submit their best work to open access journals. Perhaps juniors at departments that weigh all peer-reviewed publications equally can afford to send their best work to open access journals. But juniors at schools with stringent tenure requirements, or juniors concerned about mobility cannot. Until there are two or three online journals that are clearly in the top ten, it will be difficult to make the shift.

(However, the bottom line is that anyone who can afford to should start submitting more to open access journals.)

2. Big Names Start Submitting to Open Access Journals

The real issue with the shift to open access journals is that we need to get an open access journal to the point where it is widely regarded as one of the top two or three journals in the field. The push to Open Access will have to come from people who are already secure in their career. One of the best ways for an online open access journal to rocket to the top is for people already secure in their career to forgo that 18th top journal publication and start sending their best work to Online Open Access Journals. Moves like this will eventually push open access journals to the top.

3. Create More Open Access Journal

Of course, a big issue with (1) and (2) is that there aren't many Open Access Journals. We need more of them. One way to get more is for people to start them, but I recommend that the new journals be started by leaders in the field at some of our top research institutions. I'm not saying that a quality journal can't be started by good, serious philosophers at a non-research institution - but it may be a longer up hill battle to have the journal acheive a level that would encourage juniors to submit that Mind publication. People will be more likely to take a chance on a start up journal that is housed at a top research institution and run by familiar names. The quickest route to the top for a new journal is on the backs of scholars who are top in the field.

Note: If any of you readers are confident that you've got the connections to start up a journal - I'd like to see an online journal like Analysis. Analysis gets about 500 submissions year, and only accepts about 10%. I bet you the next 5%-10% are pretty good. Many of them might require some work before they fit another journal's style. Wouldn't you like to see those in an Open Access Journal? I sure would. I would start that journal today if I thought I had enough clout.

Note: The new journal wouldn't have to be run by leaders in the field, but it would have to be widely known that the start-up was taken very seriously by leaders in the field if the journal was going to quickly rocket to the top.

4. Top Tier Journals Move to Open Access

An even quicker way to get a Top Tier Open Access Journal would be for the top journals in our field to migrate to an online open-access format. There are legal issues here. Fortunately, I suspect there are two main scenarios, and either way there we can quickly get a top tier journal that is open access.

Scenario One - The Editor/Board Can Switch Publishers
If the editor has the authority to migrate the journal from one publisher to another, then surely they can migrate the journal to an open access format. Moving a top journal to open access format should be EASY if the editor has what I'll call migration authority.

Scenario Two - The Publishing Company Owns the Journal
If the editor doesn't have migration authority, then here is my radical proposal - Walk out! Take your editorial skills, take your editorial board, take your list of great referees and leave. Start your own Open Access Philosophy Journal with your current editorial crew. The philosophical community will know what the deal is. They'll know that this new journal Schmilosophical Studies is the same great journal they've always known and loved.

Note: Rock Bands do this all the time. Rather than kick out the annoying guy and risk a legal battle over the name, they simply disband and start up a New Band without the annoying guy.

5. Mid-tier Journals Move to Open Access

Another option to get the ball rolling would be if mid-tier journals with migration authority migrate to open access. Note that a mid-tier journal with migratory rights has some incentive to move to Open Access. They could attract submissions from big name philosophers who feel the moral impetus for open access. A mid-tier journal could easily rocket to being a top journal by switching to open access.

6. Somebody Create An Open Access Version of Analysis!

I know I pretty much covered this one in (3), but an Open Access Online Version of Analysis is so important to me that I want it this issues to have its own number in my list. Will someone please create an Open Access competitor to Analysis! I'll referee articles for you. I'll cough up server space. I'll make you coffee. I'll make sure your office is always stocked with a bowl of green M&Ms. Whatever it takes for you to get this off the ground, I am ON BOARD!

This is a very interesting article in Seed Magazine that should definitely be of interest to LEMMings and anyone interested in metaphysics and philosophy of mind.

They're trying to build a model of the brain from the bottom up. Each neuron in the model is an IBM microchip. It's pretty fascinating stuff, and it may help shed some light on issues concerning the possibility of thinking machines and the possibility of reducing mental events to brain events.

Jon Cogburn has been on a roll with some interesting posts discussing the ethics of blind review. Here is his most recent installment. He argues that blind reviewers ought to take what he calls The Good Samaritan approach to reviewing (as opposed to the Professor Angrypants or Joe Friday approach).

What are those approaches? Read his blog and find out.

UPDATE [3/9/2007] - How To Make the Move To Open Access Journals
UPDATE [3/8/2007] - I just thought of Pro #12 this morning. See below.
UPDATE [3/8/2007] - I just thought of Pro #13 this afternoon. See below.
UPDATE [3/8/2007] - I'm also addressing - Con #6. See below.

In a previous post, I claimed that philosophy journals should push to open access publishers and eliminate the publisher middle-man. Philosophy editors work for free. Reviewers work for free. Philosophers have their articles published without getting paid. Why in the age of internet and computers do we have publishers play the role of circulation middle-man?

It used to be that there were no other means of circulation, type-setting, or binding. There were many very expensive processes that publishers provided, but now with computers and the internet - anyone can create a professional looking journal that is widely-circulated. So why don't we push away from publishers?

In addition, there are so many good reasons to have the top philosophy journals be open-access journals. Below is a list of those pros. After that, I address a a list of potential cons.

I imagine many of these pros and cons are obvious. It's just so striking to see them laid out side-by-side that I thought it was worth posting about.

Note: I intend to update this list when new pros or cons come to mind. Let me know if you think of any I should add.

Pros
1. Free

This is obvious. Free philosophy for everyone (with internet access).

2. Wide-Circulation

Anyone with internet could access the journals. You can't get much wider than that.

3. Tracking

The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy allows authors to track can track how many times their article is downloaded. If the top philosophy journals were online with this feature, we would have a new powerful instrument for measuring impact of professors and departments. Professors could track their impact which they could use to make tenure and promotion cases stronger. We could also assess the impact of an entire department. I have my worries about factoring impact into tenure decisions (or ranking philosophy departments), but if we're going to do it - this would be great data to have.

4. Professors and Students At Low-Budget Schools Can Research With the Big Dogs

There are a lot of small colleges out there with good, serious philosophers doing good, serious research. However, these colleges don't have the budgets that larger research institutions have. This would make it easier for everyone to stay current and informed.

5. Independent Scholars Can Research With the Big Dogs

There are good, serious philosophers who don't have teaching positions, and they don't have access to even a meager selection of philosophy journals.

6. Professors Can Post Their Actual Articles!

When philosophers post articles to their published material, they often post penultimate drafts to avoid crossing the publishers. If we want to write responses to these papers, we have to track down the article to get the pagination. Open Access would eliminate this silly dance. (Also, wouldn't it be great if you could go to your favorite contemporary philosophers' website and read ALL of his or her actual journal articles)

7. More Specialty Journals

Start-up costs for journals are, I suspect, prohibitively expensive. I suspect that if the norm were open access online journals we could expect to see more specialized journals (e.g., Lewisian Studies, Chisholmian Studies, the Journal of Contemporary Analytic Epistemology, The Journal for Metaethics, The Journal of Experimental Philosophy, or LEMMings: The Journal for LEMMings)

8. Lower Student Costs

If the highest quality philosophy were being published in Open Access journals, most philosophy classes could be taught using cheaper resources. Even if you were to require your students to print all of them out, or get them bound via some PDF-binding service - it would still be remarkably cheaper.

Note: This one might take awhile. We'd need a lot of high quality, accessible research to build up. But over time we would start to see this benefit.

Also note: There is certainly no getting around the fact that we need our students to read some of the really good philosophy that has already been published in proprietary formats. But the sooner we can get the really good philosophy in non-proprietary formats the better.

9. Research From Anywhere

Think about it. If most of the high-quality philosophy research is available for free online you've got access to high quality philosophy - anywhere you have internet!

10. Take Strain Off Library Budgets

It is REALLY expensive for libraries to pay for journal subscriptions. This would free up already strained library budgets for other resources.

11. Philosophy For the Masses

Part of the reason philosophy doesn't impact everyday life as much as some philosophers would like has to do with the difficult, abstract nature of some of the puzzles. But part of the problem is that even the accessible stuff is largely in formats that the masses simply don't have access to. For those of you who wish what we did had more impact on non-philosophers - open access journals would be a huge step in that direction.

12. Data-Mining and Article Recommendation

You know how when you browse Amazon.com, they always give you a list of recommendations that is magically geared toward your interests. A non-proprietary version of that data-mining software could be put to good use to find journal articles you didn't even know were out there. The software would recognize that people who download articles A, B, and C also tend to download articles X, Y, and Z. When you download A, B, and C, it could recommend X, Y, and Z.

13. More Money For Philosophers

It is certainly a rare occasion, but every now and then a philosopher who publishes a book might actually make some money. Open Access Journals might make this a bit less rare. If Open Access Journals would make philosophy more accessible and widely read, we could expect to see increase market demand for the kinds of publications that actually might actually earn a philosopher some money. Some may think this is unlikely, but it is certainly a possibility worth considering. If the masses have regular access to high quality, accessible philosophy - there are going to be more lay persons who are into reading philosophy on a regular basis. It seems that would broaden the market for philosophy books.

Potential Cons (with responses)
1. Legitimacy and Prestige

Con: Some might argue that when a journal comes packaged by an established publisher you've got some guarantee that this journal is quality. On the internet, any hack can put together a journal. This tarnishes electronic journals. Electronic journals lack the seal of legitimacy that a publisher would give it, and they are less prestigious.

Response: Regarding the claim about legitimacy, universities are also well-established institutions. As long as the journals were being housed by established good Universities and Colleges they could have the same seal of legitimate scholarship that publishers might give a journal (if publishers even can do that at all).

Regarding the concerns about prestige: I already think this is a concern that some are starting to shed. Whether a journal is prestigious or not is a function of how good the editorial staff is, the quality of the material they publish, and the selectivity. The transition from print to open access will be gradual, and this will be less and less of a concern. (I intend to post an entry with recommendations for how to push philosophy into an open access format - some of those recommendations would help address this concern even more)

2. Risk Losing Our Best Philosophy

Con: Some will argue that it's easier to lose something on a computer server than it is to lose something that's printed thousands of times and circulated all over the world. If there were one con that I think seriously has the potential to stall open access - this is it.

Response: I think we can alleviate this worry with proper backups. A good open access journal should indicate precisely what it's doing to ensure proper backup. They should secure more server space, and perhaps even contract with an outside proprietary backup company.

A better option, would be for journals to partner up with other Universities and have several mirror sites. A journal could be updated by a single university, but hosted by several hundred.

Keep in mind that server space is so cheap (See #5 below) that it would be so easy for a university to foot the bill for a journal, especially if doing so kept the subscription costs down. In fact, most Universities probably pay enough for server space and bandwidth that most universities already could house at least one journal without incurring any additional costs.

Also note, I think publishing companies are already trying to push content online to maximize profits. The content may well be moving online, whether we like it or not. Why allow publishers to continue to charge for it?

[UPDATE: The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy has a clause in the Editorial Policy that explains their backup procedures and that they are supported for the indefinite future.]

4. I like the LOOK and FEEL of paper journals.

Con: Some people simply like the look and feel of a paper journal, and don't want to give that up for aesthetic reasons.

Response: Regarding the LOOK...
It's easy to have an electonic journal that look just as clean and professional as a PDF of a print journal. Philosophers' Imprint and the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy have nice PDF layouts of all articles that formatted to look just like a print journal.

Response: Regarding the FEEL...
If by FEEL you mean simply have a paper copy to make notes on, then print the article.

If by FEEL you mean having a bound copy of the recent issue...there are several PDF-binding services that will mail you nice paperback bound volumes of whatever you PDF give them at super-low costs. Journals could even put together a custom volume with these services and you could have an automatic arrangment to have this sent to you.

BONUS: You could give your students custom readers for your classes via these services.

SUPER BONUS: Philosophers could easily put together a BEST OF THE YEAR volume with these PDF-binding services. Imagine at the end of the spring semester, a volume delivered to your door chock-full of the best philosophy articles for the previous academic year. You wouldn't be limited to a single journal. You could select from all of the top journals a la carte.

5. There's Still a Cost

Con: Online journals take up bandwidth and server space. This costs money.

Response: This is true, but it's a cost that universities already absorb. Chances are Universities already pay for enough server space and bandwidth to house a journal. Even if they don't, buying the extra space is CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP compared to journal subscription fees. It really is a drop in the bucket. Example - (At bluehost.com you can get 1,500 GB of server space and 15,000 GB of transfer for 6.95/mo.)

6. No Stable Citations

Con: Online URLs are always subject to change. Given standard citations styles for online content, this would make citation a messy affair. What if you cite an online journal and the URL changes?

Response: This is why journals like Philosophers' Imprint and JESP continue to publish their journals in PDF format so that they look like an online copy of a traditional print journal. They even adhere to the traditional method of indexing their journals with Volume Numbers. To cite Philosophers' Imprint, you need not cite the URL - you can simpy cite the volume # and page# like you would any traditional print journal. Even if those PDFs are housed under a different URL 100 or 200 years from now - the Volume # and Page # will always remain the same.

So there's the case, as I see it. All things considered, I just can't see why we don't start pushing in this direction. Hopefully, Philosophers' Imprint and JESP are a sign of good things to come. I've got some ideas about how we could push in this direction, and I'll probably post about that soon.

Jon Cogburn has an interesting post on the blind review process for philosophy journals here. He also gives us a promissory note to post more on this issue.

UPDATE: Here's the promissory note.

You've gotta love it when a car commercial picks up on the semantic/pragmatic confusion that sometimes goes with the logical connective 'and'...

I've been writing about Weak Substantivalism. Here are the two previous posts.

1. Two Kinds of Substantivalism
2. They Are There: Some Consequences for Weak Substantivalism

In the second post, I promised to post about some more counter-intuitive consequences of weak substantivalism. Here they are.

More Counter-Intuitive Consequences for Weak Substantivalism
Suppose we have an Andy-shaped bag of turnips. Suppose I pick out the region of space that it occupies with the word 'there' - Now consider proposition (C).

(C) I could have been there.

(C) seems true. If Weak Substantivalism is true, then (C) is committed to the claim that I could have been a bag of turnips - which is false.

If you think it is metaphysically possible for me to have been a bag of turnips (which it's not), we can press this point a bit more. Suppose I'm trying to make a point to the class about Weak Substantivalism, and I bring an Andy-Shaped Bag of Turnips to class to talk about the view. I can't decide where to stand. I'm about to stand to the left, but at the last minute decide to stand more toward the right. I place Andy-shaped bag of turnips in the spot where I was going to stand. Then an anvil drops from the ceiling and crushes the turnips. I say, "Whew, I'm glad I wasn't there. I almost was there." Consider (D)

(D) I was almost there

If Weak Substantivalism is true, then (D) says that I was almost a bag of turnips. That's definitely false. However, (D) is definitely true.

Note: All of this is on the assumption that weak substantivalists will collapse the location relation to the identity relation - In the comments to my previous post, I noted that weak substantivalists could collapse the location relation to the part-whole relation. However, I think many of the counter-intuitive consequences will remain.

A few days ago I laid out three views about the nature of space-time. Here's a quick summary of those views. For those of you who read the last post, you can probably skip down to the section titled "They are There"

Relationalism - Space is not real. Talk about space is reducible to talk about objects.

Strong Substantivalism
Space is a real, genuine entity. Objects that occupy space are real. Regions of space are distinct from the objects that occupy them.

Weak Substantivalism
Space is a real, genuine entity. And material objects JUST ARE regions of space.

In my last post, I briefly mentioned some counter-intuitive consequences for Weak Substantivalism, and I promised to offer more. Here are some more.

They are There
The pronoun ‘they’ is an indexical that when used in a particular context can pick out a group of objects. The pronoun ‘there’ is an indexical that when used in a particular context can pick out a region of space (and I assume a scattered region).

Suppose I use ‘they’ in a particular context to pick out Alex, Bobbi, Sam, and Jackson. Suppose I then use ‘there’ to pick out the region of space that I think they occupy. Here are some odd consequences of Weak Substantivalism.

First: My use of ‘they’ and ‘there’ are synonymous. That alone is a little odd.

Second: 'They are watching' is synonymous with 'There are watching'

Now of course this assumes some kind of direct reference theory meaning and compositionality of meaning. Those seem like OK assumptions to me, but suppose you're not convinced that these consequences are problematic. You might reject my linguistic assumptions, or (if you accept the assumptions) employ a Ways-Millian strategy.

If you are not worried about the above consequences, we can generate some consequences that may still seem problematic to you. I assume that, according to Weak Substantivalism, location relations would collapse into identity relations. Assuming that's true, consider the following proposition.

(B) They are there

It seems that if Weak Substantivalism is true, then (B) is an identity claim. It sure doesn't seem like an identity claim. Furthermore, assuming identity is necessary - (B) would be necessary. It certainly doesn't seem like a necessary truth. I've got some more counter-intuitive consequences for Weak Substantivalism. Stay tuned.

[Update: Here are some more counter-intuitive consequences for Weak Substantivalism]

Substantivalism is the view that space is a real entity. A lot of substantivalists believe that there are (at least) two fundamental kinds - there is space and there are the material objects that occupy space. These kinds of objects are distinct from each other and equally real

It’s easier to understand what Substantivalism is by contrasting it with the main rival, relationalism. Relationalism is the view that all talk about space can be reduced to talk about the material objects that many substantivalists think occupy space. We don’t need space, says the relationalist. Space is not a real entity. Anything you say that you think commits you to the reality of space can be translated into talk about relations between objects.

The relationalist looks at the substantivalist and says, “You’ve got too many kinds of things in your ontology! You’ve got this stuff called space (whatever that is), and you’ve got these material objects. I can get by with just material objects. So I will.”

There is a third way to go. I was a little misleading above. I suggested that Substantivalism is the view that there are two kinds of substances – space and material objects. It is probably best to call that view Strong Substantivalism. Strong Substantivalists keep space and objects. Relationalists think this is unnecessary, and they get rid of space. You could agree with the relationalist that both kinds of substances are unnecessary, but instead of getting rid of space, you could get rid of material objects and reduce them to talk about space. This view maintains that space is a real genuine entity. Let’s call this view Weak Substantivalism. According to Weak Substantivalism, what we call material objects just are regions of space, and space is the real thing.

Ted Sider briefly mentions these two substantivalist views in Four-Dimensionalism (page 110). The main pro for Weak Substantivalism over Strong Substantivalism is that it posits the existence of fewer kinds of things. Of course there are some cons. Some odd sentences of English end up being true – e.g. A region of space-time bounded out the door and barked at the mailman. I bet you can think of many more.

Sider doesn’t think these cons are enough to give up on the view. I want to add some more things to the con list. I doubt the cons that I want to add to this list would persuade Sider, but they strike me as even more odd than the con listed above. I’ll post those cons soon.

Finally! They're doing a Terminator in the future when all the robot war stuff happens. I've wanted this movie ever since I saw the first one (way back when). Christian Bale is playing the adult John Conner.

I gained a new respect for the Terminator movies when I first discovered philosophy of time, read "Paradoxes of Time Travel" and realized that Terminator 1 and 2 were consistent. If I'm not mistaken (and somebody correct me if I'm wrong) Terminator 3 did something toward the end that made it an inconsistent time travel story; however, now I can't remember what that was.

(Bleg, can someone tell me if I'm right about Terminator 3 being inconsistent. Whatever it was it struck me as being pretty minor - e.g., the time of judgement day ended up being off by just a few seconds or something like that.)

Hopefully, Terminator 4 will be (a.) good and (b.) consistent.

In the last few hours, I've stumbled on quite a few cool bits of philosophy...

1. Mike Almeida has a pretty interesting post on Multiverse responses to a variety of versions of the Problem of Evil here.

2. Carrie Jenkins just suggested that we might be able to handle Kripkenstein Undetermination Worries in a (roughly) analogous way that epistemologists might handle Drestke Cleverly Disguised Mule cases.

3. Lewis Powell just pointed out some very cool papers by Mark Schroeder. The one I've been reading through argues that a common argument against Divine Command Theory generalizes to just about any moral theory. We then get a diagnosis of where the original argument goes wrong. I'm only about half-way through the paper, but it's a good read so far. Here's the link.

(HT: Justin over at Show Me The Argument)

Ralph Wedgewood over at PEA Soup presents an interesting puzzle that David Velleman recently discussed at a conference.

Here is the puzzle...

Suppose that Karen, a 14-year old girl, decides to conceive a child. Having a child at such a young age will make life very hard for Karen, and for her child as well: in general, Karen will have a much better life if she delays having a child for another 10 years or so; and the child whom she would have 10 years later would also have a much better life than any child whom she conceives today. So we might accept the statement that she ought not to have a child at her age.

But then Karen's child is born; she names him Max. Max is now a member of the community, and we are committed to treating him with concern and respect. So we are now most reluctant to accept the statement that Max ought not to have been brought into existence. But we know that if Karen had not had a child at the age of 14, Max would not have been brought into existence.

If you accept all of the ought-judgements above, it seems like you're committed to a contradiction. Ralph has an interesting (and complex) solution to the problem, but I wonder why we shouldn't just give up on the principle of necessity of origin. That's the principle being assumed in the last sentence of the the passage above.

A couple of months ago Adam Arico over at Aspring Lemming noted that the TV Show Numb3rs gave a quick and dirty presentation of Searle's Chinese Room argument.

I decided to see if I could find the clip on YouTube - Here it is...



The clip cuts off short...but Adam says that the presentation fails to note that Searle's Thought Experiment is supposed to show that machines can't think.

I really want to find time to read Trenton Merrick's new book Truth and Ontology. It looks really interesting.

There are a wide range of metaphysical theses that are rejected because they are alleged to be incompatible with any kind of truth maker principle (or Truth Supervenes on Being Principle). Presentism is example of one of these views.

Defenders of these views usually try to find a way to explain how there views are compatible with some plausible truth maker principle.

Merricks takes a different tack. He denies the main candidate truth maker principles (including the Truth Supervenes on Being Principle).

Ben Caplan's review of the book just came out here.

Truth and Ontology Added to My To Do List','resizable,location,menubar,toolbar,scrollbars,status'));">

Jonathan Ichikawa justed posted about the lengthy journal review process here.
I feel his pain. Today (and, I kid you not, it really is today) a journal has had one of my papers for exactly one year.

In a recent post, I led up to the problem sentence for Nominalism.

(3) Red resembles Orange more than Square-ness.

The task for nominalism is to find an acceptable paraphrase for (3). (3) seems true, so whatever the paraphrase we come up with - it better be true too. We left off with (3**) as our candidate paraphrase.

(3**) The red-set resembles the orange-set more than the square-set

(Note: Red-set = set of all red things. Orange-set = set of all orange things. square-set = set of all square things.)

(3**) seems true. Imagine if you could have a God's eye view of all the red objects out there, and you could compare them side by side with the set of all the orange objects and the set of all the square objects. I bet you'd be inclined to say that this set (or grouping, or fusion, or whatever) of red things does resemble the set of orange things more than the set of square things.

My New Concern
I think my knowledge that (3) is true substantially different from my knowledge that (3**). First, I know (3) immediately and directly on the basis of perception. I can know that the property red that I am looking at right now is more similar to the property orange than it is the property square, merely by looking at any collection of a red, an orange, and a square object. It doesn't seem like my knowledge that (3**) works like that.

Now on the face of it, this looks like another one of those arguments where someone argues that one thing is not identical to another thing, because of the different ways in which the two things are knowable - (Think: Arguments from Introspection for Dualism - check out the bottom of page 14).

However, now I think the problem might run a little deeper and that there is another way to cast the argument. I think my knowledge that (3**) is true evidentially depends on my knowledge that (3) is true. How do I know that from a God's eye view the set of red things would resemble the set of orange things more than the set of square things? It's because I know that red resembles orange more than square.

Now, does that lend more support to the claim that (3**) cannot be an adequate paraphrase of (3)?

One version of nominalism holds that properties just are sets of things. There is no abstract universal red-ness. There just is a set of red things. The problem is that ordinary sentences of English look like they are talking about something that could only be something like a universal. There is no talk of sets.

Consider the following three sentences.

(1) The ball is red
(2) Red is a color
(3) Red resembles orange more than square-ness

Each of these appears to be talking about a property, and proponents of abstract universals maintain that their view makes more sense of the truth of (1)-(3) than nominalism.
Nominalism can handle (1) pretty easily, by offering an acceptable paraphrase.

(1*) The ball is a member of the red-set.

Apparent talk about universals turns into talk about the the ball, and how that ball is a member of some particular set. No universal talk is required.
Paraphrasing (2) is a bit trickier since it seems that red-ness is referred to in the subject slot, but nominalists have offered (2*)

(2*) All things that are members of the red-set are members of the colored-set.

Again, (2*) gets rid of talk about universals. All we have in (2*) is talk about particular objects and sets.
It's when we get to (3) that Nominalists have difficulties. (3*) is clearly unacceptable.

(3*) All things that are members of the red-set resemble all things that are members of the orange-set more than things that are members of the square set

Why is (3*) unacceptable? Because (3) is true, but (3*) is false. A red square does not resemble an orange goldfish more than a yellow square. That's enough to falsify (3*), and since you can't translate a true sentence to a false sentence and have succeeded in preserving the meaning - we have an unacceptable paraphrase.
For a while, I thought that nominalists actually might have a good translation of (3). I thought that the nominalist could translate (3) as...

(3**) The red-set resembles the orange-set more than the square-set.

I thought that you might be able to talk about resemblance relations between properties as resemblance relations between the actual sets.

I'm now worried about this...More on that in a moment...

When I teach personal identity in Intro and Metaphysics, I often have a student suggest that what it takes to have the same person across time is for the persons to have the same DNA structure.

A good response to this has always been to point out that identical twins have the same DNA structure, but are not the same persons. That won't work anymore. According to this article, we've discovered that we were wrong in thinking that identical twins have identical DNA structures.

Of course, I think there is still a pretty decent counterexample that would involved identical twins in the neighborhood. It turns out that identical twins differ only slightly in their DNA structure. So, imagine we discovered that there were twins who lacked those slight differences. I take it they wouldn't be the same person. So the counterexample, isn't completely undermined - but we do need to run it using nearby possible worlds. We can't rely on something that's actually true.

That seems interesting and worthy of note.

A common view in philosophy is that counterfactual conditionals with impossible antecedents are all vacuously true. But I'm very worried about that view. There are several counterfactuals with impossible antecedents that seem false. Here are some examples.

Counterfactuals involving Metaphyical Claims
Consider Metaphysical Nihilism, the thesis that there are no composite objects (just simples). According to Nihilism, composition doesn't occur. Suppose you think that metaphysical facts about composition are necessarily true. Under that assumption if Nihilism is false, then (1) is a false counterfactual with an impossible antecedent. If Nihilism is true, then (2) is a false counterfactual with an impossible antecedent.

(1) If Nihilism were true, then composition would occur. (seems false)

(2) If Unrestricted Composition were true, then there would be no composition.

If you think that Metaphysical Facts about composition are not necessarily true, then you should think that (3) is a false counterfactual with an impossible antecedent.

(3) If Nihilism were necessarily true, then composition would occur. (seems false)

Any way you go on the answer to the Special Composition Question, and any way you go concerning the modal status of composition facts - we can generate a false counterfactual with an impossible antecedent.

Counterfactuals Involving Math and Geometry
Here's another fun one...

(4) If triangles had exactly four sides, then the sum of the angles of a triangle would equal 30 degrees.

(False, right?)

However...
I also have some sympathy toward the view that counterfactuals with impossible antecedents are vacuosly true. I can post about that later. I can also post about why I think this matters.

Editing and refereeing for journals is a thank-less job that you don't get paid for. Editors and referees do this out of the goodness of their heart. So it's weird to have a publishing company make money off of this labor. At one time they could justify the charge because they were the only way to get this research circulated.

However, the internet has changed all of that. Publishing companies are unnecessary. If editors and referees are going to work for free, then it makes much more sense to have the research posted online for free. Philosophers' Imprint already does this, and they have an excellent mission statement defending open access journals. This is a very high quality journal and it's free to the world. I like that. I hope that most philosophy journals go this route.

Harvard's faculty recently voted to post all of their research online so that it would be freely available to the public. This is a noble gesture, and it sort of fits with the mission of journals like Philosophers' Imprint.

For that reason, I admire what the professors at Harvard are trying to acheive, but the article suggests that research will get published (and counted as research) without peer review screening. Ironically, publishers are criticizing Harvard on the grounds that this risks lowering the quality of the research, but (of course) the publishers are wrong in assuming that you need publishers to have the kind of peer review that would ensure higher quality research. Again, see Philosophers' Imprint.

Of course Harvard probably can't shift the publication of their faculty's research to online in peer review online journals all at once. There probably aren't enough of those journals out there, but I can feel the revolution coming. I hope that Harvard's move here will help push peer reviewed research into free online journals like Philosophers' Imprint. All we need now are some qualified scholars to start more of these open access and peer-reviewed journals.

(hint, hint...Harvard.)

For the past few years, Leiter has put up a post so people can announce new tenure-track hires in the comments thread. It's kind of interesting to see who hires who.

Here's the permanent link.

I imagine that most people who read this also read Leiter, but just in case you haven't seen it yet - I think this is worth posting about.

This starts off as what purports to be a discussion of the misuse of the expression "begging the question"...

Half way through the article, it stops being serious and gets pretty funny.

But it's worth noting that before the article goes humorous, the author gives an example of a valid modus tollens as begging the question. Which begs the question (in the wrong sense of the word) - Why don't philosophers just stop using this phrase? We clearly think that to do philosophy (or any kind of reasoning) we must employ logically valid arguments, but all logically valid arguments, in some sense, assume what they are proving. After all, the thing being proved is contained in the conjunction of the premises.

And this is not some recent discovery. The literature is full of papers discussing the messy, unclear nature of this kind of criticism.

A lot of materialists will admit that there are some kinds of entities that are a little more difficult to make sense of within a materialist ontology. For example - propositions. Here's an argument for immaterialism that I encountered that seems to be aimed at materialists who would accept the existence of propositions.

I've encountered this argument before, but I recently came across it in a dialogue written by Keith Yandel. I think it's an interesting argument, so I decided to try and reconstruct it as carefully as I could. Here it is.

An Argument Against Materialism

1. Some propositions are necessarily true.
2. It is possible for there to be a world with no material entities.
3. If (1) and (2), then it is possible for a proposition to be true in a world without material entities.
4. Therefore, it is possible for a proposition to be true in a world without material entities.
5. If it is possible for a proposition to be true in a world without material entities, then propositions are not material entities.
6. Therefore, propositions are not material entities.
7. If propositions are not material entities, then materialism is false.
   -------------------------------------------------------------------
   
8. Therefore, materialism is false.
   

I've got some thoughts on this argument, but I'm going to mull it over for a bit. If anyone cares to comment - the thread is open.

Great! I had a perfectly good example involving amoral judgements that almost ALL of my students could relate to - downloading music without paying for it.

When we get to ethics in my intro classes, I like to briefly discuss the following version of non-cognitivism.

NG1 - All moral judgements are merely expressions of a preference or a taste.

Enter my downloading music example. I ask my students if they think that downloading music without paying for it is wrong. Most say that it is wrong. I then ask one of the students (who said it was wrong) if they care one way or the other whether people in the class download music. They almost always say "No." I ask them if it is one of their preferences that people download music, etc... They always say "No."

This is a case of amoral judgement (Amoral judgment = A judgement that some X is wrong, but not having a preference one way or the other whether X happens).

The possibility of amoral judgments is a serious puzzle for non-cognitivist theories, and the widespread practice of downloading music for free gives us an excellent actual amoral judgment that almost all of my students seem to make.

Tonight at midnight Qtrax is going to mess that all up.

(I'm actually pretty happy about this. I'm more than willing to come up with a new example of amoral judgments that students can relate to, if the price is free music downloads)


UPDATE: Perhaps I spoke too soon!

One possible skeptical scenario is Russell's 5 minute hypothesis. This is from The Analysis of Mind...

In investigating memory-beliefs, there are certain points which must be borne in mind. In the first place, everything constituting a memory-belief is happening now, not in that past time to which the belief is said to refer. It is not logically necessary to the existence of a memory-belief that the event remembered should have occurred, or even that the past should have existed at all. There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago. Hence the occurrences which are CALLED knowledge of the past are logically independent of the past; they are wholly analysable into present contents, which might, theoretically, be just what they are even if no past had existed.

I am not suggesting that the non-existence of the past should be entertained as a serious hypothesis. Like all sceptical hypotheses, it is logically tenable, but uninteresting. All that I am doing is to use its logical tenability as a help in the analysis of what occurs when we remember.

Today's New York Times has a story claiming that there are certain hypotheses that cosmologists take seriously that other cosmologists say predict that the Russell scenario is highly probable.

(They don't call it the Russell hypothesis, but that's what they're talking about).

UPDATE: I should be more careful. It's not that what some cosmologists say predict Russell's skeptical scenario...The scenario that Russell imagines is that the universe was created 5 minutes ago. The cosmologists in question endorse the multiple universe hypothesis - this is incompatible with Russell's scenario...so it can't confirm it.

What some cosmologists think it does confirm, however, is the hypothesis that it is highly probably that you are just a momentary flash of organized matter created just moments ago that is complex enough to have thoughts and apparent memories of having been around for a long time.

Every now and then there's a study that is alleged to confirm the hypothesis that we are irrational. This should be of interest to philosophers who work in decision theory or epistemology. Here's another one that as discussed in the LA Times.

However, I don't see how this shows that people are generally irrational. Here's a quote from the article.

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.

Surprisingly -- stunningly, in fact -- research shows that the majority of people select the first option; they would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?

The problem is that I don't see this as irrational. If we're asked to think in a purely self-interested way, my first thought was to take the first option. (Because I was thinking about the shift in prices).

Then I read the qualification - 'Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.'

OK - now that I have this qualification in mind the reporter from the LA Times assumes that the obvious rational choice is to take the second option. Why? Because I'd be able to buy more stuff.

But wait a minute. Even if I can buy more stuff isn't it in my interests for everyone else to not have 2.5 times the purchasing power that I do. There are a number of ways in which that could affect someone negatively - even if the prices stay fixed. Come on. In the second situation, that is a lot of power that everyone else has that I wouldn't have. Am I missing something here?

Seriously? Guantanamo detainees are not human beings or persons? What!?

This is pretty half-baked, but consider the following proposition:

(1) January 9, 2008 is present.

I think it is a vague matter whether or not this is true. Imagine the minutes are slowly ticking away on January 8. It's 11:59. As the time passes, January 9 will be determinately present, but exactly when that happens seems to be a vague matter.

This, however, will lend some support to A-Theory (and either presentism or some version of the moving spotlight view in the ontology of time). For imagine if B-Theory is true. If B-Theory is true, then 'present' functions like an indexical, and (1) really expresses something like the following proposition.

(1*) October 4, 2006 is October 4, 2006.

(1*) is not vague. At least many philosophers are inclined to accept that identity statements are not vague, and whatever motivates us to accept that should motivate us to accept that (1*) is not vague.

I've heard quite a few journal horror stories from professional philosophers over the past few years. Also, in a recent post, I noted that there have been quite a few discussion threads that highlight major issues concerning peer reviewed philosophy journals. I'm going to start tracking these discussion threads.

Whenever I find a new discussion (or horror story), I'll update this post and move it to the front of the blog. If anyone finds anything out there worthy of note, let me know.

The List
1. 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.

2. Certain Doubts has a discussion thread regarding the tension between blind review and posting draft versions of papers on the internet.

3. Leiter's blog has an old thread discussing which journals are responsible and which ones are not. The discussion thread, however, has recently picked up.

4. Clayton Littlejohn has a rejection woe story here.

5. Here's another good discussion post at PEA Soup. It's about ethics journals generally, but the discussion thread is mixed with some journal woe stories and advice for pre-tenure professors.

6. Jonathan Ichikawa has an interesting post here concerning the length of the journal review process.

7. Jon Cogburn has an interesting little post on the blind review process for philosophy journals here. He also gives us a promissory note to post more on this issue.

8. This is Jon Cogburn's promissory note. This is an interesting diagnosis of three basic types of blind referees.

9. And this is a third post from Cogburn in praise of one of the three basic types of blind referees - the Good Samaritan.

Bonus Track: Conditional Material has a great satire on the referee process here.

Check this out!

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too Cna yuo raed tihs?
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a
pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

This started circulating the internet in 2003. But it's worth posting for those of you who haven't seen it. Here is a link to the Cambridge University research.

I think this may have interesting philosophical applications epistemology and philosophy of language. I'm going to think about it more before I post anything.

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.

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...

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...

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?

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?