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 jo