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July 30, 2004

Syracuse Workshop on the A Priori

Well, the SWAP will occur on August 20-22, and there's a webpage on the conference available here (thanks to Brendan Murday for organizing the conference and for putting up the page). There's already a couple of the read-ahead papers posted on the webpage. Although Brian Weatherson's paper is not a read-ahead one, interested conference-goers or the jealous excluded can check out a draft version of his "From Anti-Scepticism to the Contingent A Priori". Old hands who were here when Brian was will certainly welcome him back with beer and objections.

Posted by MarkSteen at 12:14 PM | Comments (1)

July 28, 2004

John Edwards the Epistemicist

John Edwards is on right now talking about the two Americas and pointing to differences of degree along a wide spectrum while talking as if they're sharp lines (i.e. differences of kind). Does this mean he's an epistemicist about vagueness?

Posted by Jeremy at 10:37 PM | Comments (1)

July 24, 2004

Seminar on Plurality

Tom McKay approved of my idea of posting his announcement about his seminar on plural quantification, along with related topics (such as non-distributive predication). Tom has a new book on this subject which you can check out by clicking on the departmental webpage on the links list, then clicking on faculty, then McKay [sorry, for some reason my linking feature isn't working now]. I think some local-ish non-Syracusan (e.g., Cornell, Rochester) folk might be interested in attending. Here's the announcement [note that Tom will not have computer access until the end of the month and so you should wait a bit to email him or post questions here for him until August] : Seminar, Fall 2004, on "Plurality" (McKay) There are lots of topics, and I want students' own interests to determine some of what we do. My fundamental project (in a book I have just finished) has been to explore the issue of expanding first-order predicate logic to allow non-distributive predication. A predicate F is distributive iff whenever some things are F, each of them is F. Consider: (1) They are students. They are young. (2) They are classmates. They are surrounding the building. The predications in (1) are distributive, but the predications in (2) are non-distributive. Non-distributive plural predication is irreducibly plural. In ordinary first-order logic, only distributive predicates are employed. The incorporation of irreducibly plural predicates is related to a wide range of issues in metaphysics, philosophy of language, foundations of mathematics, logic, and natural language semantics. Some of the issues that we might consider:

What is the nature of plurality? How should we think of the relations among sets, mereological sums, pluralities and individuals? What (if anything) are these different ontological kinds, and how are they related? Can one thing be many? (Is one deck identical to the 52 cards? Or is this not an identity relation?) Singular and plural predication; singular and plural quantification; singular and plural reference. How do those fit together? When we consider the full range of determiners in English and try to incorporate quantifiers to represent that, there are many interesting semantic issues to resolve. How does the semantics of plurality relate to the semantics of mass terms? In the foundations of mathematics, how far can plurals take us without set theory? What is the relationship of second-order logic to plurals and to the foundations of mathematics? What is the nature of ontological commitment? What does semantics commit the semanticist to? What does it say speakers are committed to? (For example, if I say that the analysis of adverbs requires an event semantics, does that mean that an ordinary user of adverbs is committed to the existence of events? This kind of issue becomes interesting when we look at the semantics of plurals.) Can we talk about everything without paradox? Are plurals a special resource to enable us to do so? A large number of issues about the relationship of semantics and pragmatics come together when we consider definite descriptions. Usually discussions focus on singular definite descriptions, but we can see what difference (if any) it makes when we insist that the account be general enough for plural and mass definite descriptions. This then also relates to the consideration of pronominal cross-reference and demonstrative reference. Some have argued that an event semantics is important for getting plurals right. It will be interesting to look at event semantics and how that relates to plurals. I will meet with each enrolled student early on in the semester to identify some areas of interest and get started on developing the student's presentation and paper on a topic of the student's choice. If people are interested in looking into this before the semester begins, my book is available on the department's website: http://philosophy.syr.edu/ (Click on my name in the list of faculty.) Also, Oystein Linnebo has posted a draft of his forthcoming Stanford Encyclopedia article, and it is a good introduction: http://folk.uio.no/oysteinl/. Scroll down to "Plural Quantification." We will not presume any greater familiarity with logic than you would acquire by being alive and awake through most of PHI 651. Please get in touch with me if you have questions. tjmckay@syr.edu

Posted by MarkSteen at 4:13 PM | Comments (4)

July 17, 2004

Knowing That and Knowing How

I've begun delving into the literature recently on the difference between knowing that and knowing how (re-delving, actually, but that's neither here nor there). I've been quite surprised to find that it almost all jumps off from Ryle's discussion of the topic in The Concept of Mind which I believe was published @ 1950. I see hardly any mention of this topic other than in response to Ryle, and not much on the topic pre-Ryle. This strikes me as odd for such an important epistemological distinction (I realize that the distinction was recognized, pre-Ryle -- I'm wondering if it was philosophically analyzed). Am I missing a mountain of books/journals/articles out there (perhaps in the non-analytic tradition)? Or did Ryle really essentially begin this discussion?

Posted by dbzdak at 3:59 AM | Comments (11)

July 13, 2004

Help Me Choose a Murder Victim

OK, here's my contribution. I am curious what people think about something. (This is the topic of my paper for Andre's working papers group next friday.) Suppose I'm deciding whom to kill, and I want to inflict the most harmful death possible. How old should my victim be? It might help to focus on the following two cases:

Baby. A three-week-old baby, Baby, dies. Had Baby not died then, he would have enjoyed a happy childhood and adolescence, gone to college, entered a PhD program in philosophy, become a professional philosopher, and lived an enjoyable life until dying at age 80.

Student. A 23-year-old philosophy graduate student, Student, dies after a happy childhood and adolescence. Had Student not died then, he would have become a professional philosopher and lived an enjoyable life until dying at age 80.

Whose death would be worse for him? Maybe I'll post some of my thoughts later, but I don't want to poison people's initial reactions. This will help me figure out whether to cast my paper as defending common sense or objecting to it.

Posted by bbradley at 4:40 PM | Comments (40)

July 9, 2004

Early Modern Texts

This is Jonathan Bennett's Early Modern Website.

Update (by Jeremy): It's probably worth pointing out that this isn't a site about early modern philosophy. It's a collection of early modern texts prepared by Jonathan Bennett. The difference with these is that they're modernized. The ones not written in English are contemporary translations, and I think they're much better than anything you can buy. The ones originally written in English are modernized to be more easily understood by undergraduates. Some people really oppose this sort of thing, but I've found that the archaic language is the biggest obstacle to undergraduates' understanding of early modern philosophy texts, and it significantly decreases their motivation to read the texts. When I've used Bennett's translations, those problems have been greatly mitigated.

Posted by kkukla at 8:54 AM | Comments (1)

July 8, 2004

Mr. Ashcroft

I came across this story several weeks ago in the NYT and waited to hear more, but haven't. I thought it interesting enough to post.

Posted by kkukla at 5:39 PM | Comments (2)

July 2, 2004

2nd-Order Vagueness and Definiteness

Andre Gallois has twice presented the following view to me, and I'm now beginning to think the conclusion is right, as strange as it sounds, but when I was talking to him, we were unsure if his argument really shows it. I think I've figured out a way to make the reasoning explicit. The radical conclusion is that higher-order vagueness doesn't raise any problems, because there's only a second order. Once you reach that level, there aren't any other orders. The reason is that second-order vagueness is consistent with definiteness, and therefore there's no penumbral area between second-order vagueness and definiteness.

Let's move along a sorites series to see how it goes. Find something that's definitely red. Then move along for a bit. At some point you've reached definitely not red, but in is there a sharp line between the things that are red and the things that are not red? No. Some things are such that you'll want to say that they're neither red nor not red. This is first-order vagueness. So we adopt a third truth value, indeterminate, for the cases in this penumbral area. So far so good. But wait! What about the boundary between the penumbral area and the definitely red cases (or the boundary between the penumbral area and those that are definitely not red). That seems to be a matter of vagueness also. It doesn't seem as if you go from definitely red to being indeterminate whether it's red over some determinate line. So we need second-order vagueness. Then there's another vague region, in which it's indeterminate whether it's indetermate. Andre wants to argue that we need go no further. We don't need third-order vagueness to talk about the region between red and indeterminate whether it's indeterminate whether it's red. Why not? Well, if something can be both red and indeterminate whether it's indeterminate whether it's red, then there is no third-order vagueness. So if having second-order indeterminacy is consistent with being determinate, then there's no need for third-order determinacy, and infinite regress arguments fail. The only reason I can think of for resisting this view goes as follows. Suppose something is determinately red. That means it's not indeterminate whether it's red. It's definitely not indeterminate whether it's red, because it's definitely red. Well, if it's definitely not indeterminate whether it's red, then it can't be indeterminate whether it's indeterminate whether it's red. Therefore, something can't be both red and indeterminate whether it's indeterminate whether it's red. It has to be definitely not indeterminate whether it's red. This is a bad argument, because it assumes classical two-valued logic. We need a third truth value, indeterminate, if we're going to talk about cases in the penumbral area. That means denying the law of excluded middle. If excluded middle is false, we lose the double negation elimination rule. Not-not-p doesn't mean p, because not-not-p is still consistent with its being indeterminate whether it's p. Even stronger, consider not-indeterminate whether p, which is equivalent to not-not-determinate whether p. By the argument of the last paragraph, we can't conclude p, but it's consistent with p. What about indeterminate whether it's indeterminate whether it's p? It seems that also means we can't conclude p, but it should be consistent with p, right? Why not?

Posted by Jeremy at 11:17 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack