Monthly Archive

I imagine most readers have seen this already over at Leiter, but a student at Nottingham university is currently being deported, allegedly as a result of downloading Al-Qaeda material for legitimate research purposes.

Matters are more complex than this, but head over the website to get the full story and updates (a good full summary can be found here).

(I link to this story in part because I *very* vaguely know Hich. I once had an article published in the "Ceasefire" magazine of which he is the editor. I there argued against restrictions on free speech on the grounds that such restrictions are difficult to legislate or enforce without accidentally supressing some speech that ought to be free. Perhaps there's a parallel for academic enquiry there.)

I just noticed some comments over at Philosophy Etc on "Structural Incentives in Academic Work" which are interesting, but, I believe false.

Here's Pablo:
"I find Lewis's writings--all of them--shockingly brilliant. It gives me enormous pleasure to read what he writes. I am always impressed by his cleverness and his inventiveness. And I really, really want his views to be true, since I derive great cognitive comfort from believing in elegant theories. But do I think his views are more likely to be true than those of other philosophers? Well, let me answer with a little thought experiment. Suppose that somehow a superintelligence was created that could tell us the true answer to every philosophical question. And suppose that, before the answers were disclosed to the philosophical community, a “philosophy prediction market” was created—Philtrade—allowing traders to bet for different candidates. Would I buy Lewis stock? No. Nor do I think that there would be any discernible correlation between the “price” of a particular answer and the professional success of its proponent."

This is an interesting thought experiment, but misleading. From "Lewis's work is unlikely to be correct" (assuming that this is true), it doesn't follow that "Lewis's work is a waste of time" (which was the worry of the original post).

First, given that philosophy has been studied for some time now, and not too much has been finally solved, it's unlikely that we'll hit upon the answers on any day soon. So if you're studying philosophy with the aim of saying something that highly likely to be true, you're irrational.

"Ah, but some theories are more or less likely to be true than others!". Yes, that is true. But it still doesn't get us the conclusion that Lewis wasted his time. Sometimes, the most interesting papers are those that say something so very obviously false. I find myself most engaged in philosophy when I'm given a strong argument for a terrible conclusion. In some ways, that's what a paradox is, and those form the meat of much of philosophy.

So second, seeing where strong arguments go wrong can be illuminating. The Gambler's fallacy makes a nice example here. When you finally get to the age where you grasp exactly why this is a fallacy, you've gained a lot of insight into the nature of probability. Equally, seeing where Lewis's reasoning goes wrong, might give us great insight into philosophy. Studying falsehoods can get you much closer to truth.

A third point is that philosophers shouldn't be interested only in truth. We're not interesting only in what theories are true, but also the signifance of those truths and how they relate. Studying Lewis might give you insight even if not truth.

Even if it were true that Lewis is unlikely to have said anything true, his contribution to philosophy can still have been both productive and insightful.

The question is not whether what we say is false, but whether or not it is false in an interesting way. (Can anyone remind me where I'm paraphrasing from there?)

People sometimes argue from a tradition. They say things like: "Doctors should never terminate life because they never have."

Such arguments might appear to be transparently committing the naturalistic fallacy. But perhaps not: things that are traditional represent the wisdom built up over generations, and so should not be discarded lightly. People who see these arguments this way can say that their view is not that the descriptive facts about the tradition imply anything normative, but rather that these descriptive facts are evidence for some normative facts. "People wouldn't have held the view for so long unless it were true".

But arguments from tradition suffer from another problem. What the tradition is is often underdetermined by what has happened in the past.

Let's take the initial example. In the past, mental functioning and bodily functioning never came apart the way that they can with modern medicine. But that means that we have no evidence that the tradition is that doctors never take life! It might be that they never take mental life. This way of looking at things is consistent with the historical record, and also allows us to say that the tradition is one that permits euthanasia for those lacking brain function.

Another interesting example is that of marriage. Conservatives like to talk about the tradition of life-long marriage: till death do us part. But it's not inconceivable that such vows were written when death was expectable within 10 years. This means that the historical evidence is consistent with the tradition being that one should marry for no fewer than ten years. Again, that's consistent with the historical record, but implies that it's permissible to marry several times so long your life is sufficiently long.

In these cases, and others, I think we have a familiar Wittgenstinian point. If we look at how some series has played out up till now, this underdetermines description of which rule is being followed. Just as someone who counts in twos to a thousand might be following quus rather than plus, the history of marriage in humankind might be a tradition of lengthy marriages rather than of singular ones.

There are two striking features of utilitarianism. The first is the sheer number of arguments against it. There must be more putative counterexamples to utilitarianism than to any other theory in philosophy.

The second though, is that it's still somewhat popular. Given the number of objections, you might think it amazing that anyone should still believe such a theory.

There are two lessons we can draw from this combination of facts. The first is that many people are stupid, and will believe anything.

The second is a more interesting possibility. Perhaps, despite the numerous objections to utilitarianism, there's something very forceful to be said in its favour. No doubt if such an argument were conscious, it would have fallen into print by now. But perhaps there's some element of truth in utilitarianism that's never quite been spelled out - even by its supporters. Perhaps there is an issue lurking here that one needs to address is one wants to show utilitarianism to be false (or true, for that matter).

The trouble, of course, is working out what that grain of truth is.

James Ladyman, on AHRC funding cuts, here.

"The distinction between the ethical and the meta-ethical is no longer found so convincing or important. There are several reasons for this, but the most relevant here is that it is now obvious (once again obvious) that what one thinks about the subject matter of ethical thought, what one supposes it to be about, must itself affect what tests for acceptability or coherence are appropriate to it; and the use of those tests must affect any substantive ethical results. Conversely, the use of certain tests and patterns of argument can imply one rather than another view of what ethical thought is."
(Bernard Williams, Ethics and The Limits of Philosophy, p73)

I'm hellishly busy over the next two weeks, so posting may be light.

The Buck-passing account of value:
"For X to be valuable is for X to have other properties that give us reasons to respond to X positively."

This definition is a little imprecise, but I think sufficiently precise to ask my question.

"Positively", at the end, is needed to distinguish valuable from disvaluable objects. For example, object X might, in some cases, have properties that give me reason to respond to it, but these reasons might make X disvaluable. My headache gives me reason to take aspirin. The reasons the properties of headaches provide make headaches disvaluable, not valuable. So buck-passers need to distinguish correct "positive" responses, which make an object valuable, from correct "negative" responses, which make an object disvaluable.

But then what do we mean by "positively"? This term seems normative. Yet I do not see how it can be reduced to talk of reasons.

If that is true, then buck-passers can't get by only on reasons: they need reasons and positivity. At best then, it seems that their account is not so parsimonious as they might hope. But at worst: How much does positivity differ from value? If it does not differ, then is the buck-passing account of value a failure?

At Philosophy etc., this was brought up a while ago.

Having woken up at 6:30 this morning, I thought as I might as well be productive, and take an hour or two to see how easily drupal would be able to handle such a project.

The result is here. Feel free to comment either here or there.