The Space of Reasons

Philip Kitcher on Ethics

2011-12-23T22:14:00.001Z

Blog Talk Radio Episode 38: Dr. Philip Kitcher by Think Atheist (December 11th, 2011)

Dissertation Summary

2011-08-05T01:25:00.003Z

The following is my most recent attempt to summarise my dissertation in a couple pages. I am only just approaching the half-way mark, so expect several revised versions of this summary in the near future.

My dissertation attempts to make sense of the idea that desires may be correct or incorrect by articulating and defending a version of the claim that desires aim at the good.

There is a widely held intuition that some desires are infelicitous, bad, or perverse. For example: there is something infelicitous about the desire to drink a can of oil in order to quench one’s thirst; there is something bad about the desire to take the life a known innocent; and there is something perverse about the desire to stick a sharpened pencil in one’s eye even though one believes no good could come from doing so and one recognizes that it would be extremely unpleasant. The first desire seems infelicitous on instrumental grounds; drinking oil is a poor way to quench one’s thirst. The second desire seems bad on ethical grounds; taking the life of a known innocent is morally wrong. The third desire seems perverse on hedonistic grounds; all things being equal, we would expect an agent to avoid unpleasant experiences. One way to capture the idea that a desire may be infelicitous, bad, or perverse—a theoretical proposal that is tied to a longstanding philosophical tradition—is to say that desires aim at the good, and that a desire is inappropriate, bad, or perverse just in case it fails to realise its aim. On this view, the good is the most abstract characterisation of aim of desire. Let us call this proposal the guise of the good theory of desires (henceforth, GG theory).

I wish to articulate and defend a plausible version of GG theory. There are three influential strategies for making sense of GG theory currently found in the literature: the Desire-as-Belief Thesis, the claim that the desire to φ is equivalent to the belief that φ is good; the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis; the claim that the desire to φ is always accompanied by the belief that φ is good; and the Desire-as-Perception Thesis, the claim that the desire to φ is equivalent to perceiving that φ is good. I argue that all three proposals are unacceptable as ways of making sense of GG theory. Instead, I argue that a desire plays the same role in our deliberation as being the recipient of a (self-issued) command, order or request. Let us refer to this proposal as the Desire-as-Imperative Thesis.

Significantly, the notion of an imperative implicated in the Desire-as-Imperative Thesis should not be confused with the Kantian notion of an imperative (i.e., a dictate of pure reason). Rather, the word ‘imperative’ is meant to pick out the category of non-assertoric speech-acts that is typically expressed using the imperative mood of English grammar; a category that includes orders, requests, commands, and entreaties. I hold that desires are like the class of speech-acts that are typically expressed by the imperative mood in at least three respects. First, like speech-acts in the imperative mood, desires are not truth-evaluable. For example, both the desire to close the front door and the request to close the front door is neither true nor false. Second, like speech-acts in the imperative mood, an agent assents to a desire, not by forming a belief, but by forming an intention. For example, one assents to the desire to close the front door or the request to close the front door by forming the intention to close the front door. Third, like speech-acts in the imperative mood, desires are governed by norms that determine if it would be correct or incorrect to assent to them. For example, both the desire to close the front door and request to close the front door are correct just in case it is good to close the front door. On this view, when we say desire aims at the good, we mean that the desire to φ is correct just in case it would be good to φ.

Velleman on the Aim of Desire

2011-05-09T19:45:00.004+01:00

In his paper, “The Guise of the Good”, David Velleman argues that desires aim, not at the good, but at the attainable. Velleman begins by drawing two important distinctions. Firstly, he distinguishes between cognative attitudes (i.e., attitudes in which a proposition is grasped as patterned after the world), and conative attitudes (i.e, attitudes in which a proposition is grasped as a pattern for the world to follow). Examples of cognative attitudes include beliefs, assumptions, and imaginings. Examples of conative attitudes include desires, hopes, and wishes. Secondly, he distinguishes between the direction of fit of an attitude (i.e., that in virtue of which it is a cognative or conative attitude) and the constitutive aim of an attitude (i.e., that in virtue of which it is correct or incorrect).

With the preceding pair of distinctions in place, Velleman then advances the following three-stage argument: First, he argues that the constitutive aim of belief is what distinguishes it from all other states with a cognitive direction of fit; namely, the fact that beliefs are correct just in case they are true. Second, he argues that what distinguishes desire from all other states with a conative direction of fit is not the fact that it aims after the good, since this is something it shares with all other conative states. Third, he argues that what distinguishes desire from all other conative states is the fact that desire aims at the attainable. He therefore concludes that desires aim at the attainable.

Stage 1: Velleman on Constitutive Aims

Velleman takes as his starting point the stipulation that the constitutive aim of a psychological state-type is whatever sets it apart from all other psychological state-types; to wit, what makes a psychological state-type the state-type that it is. Hence, to say that belief aims at the true, according to Velleman, is to say that the truth-aim is what distinguishes belief from all other states with a cognitive direction of fit. Velleman motivates this claim by exploiting a comparison of believing that p, on the one hand, and fantasising that p and assuming that p, on the other. Velleman notes that all three psychological states have a cognitive direction of fit; all three, according to Velleman, involve a proposition being grasped as patterned after the world. However, while believing that p is deemed correct if and only if p is true, fantasising that p and assuming that p are not deemed correct if and only if p is true. Thus, by Velleman's lights, it is the fact that a psychological state-type has the correctness conditions that it does that makes it the psychological state-type that it is.

Stage 2: Velleman's Negative Thesis

Next, Velleman argues that the good cannot be the constitutive aim of desire since desires are not the only psychological states that aim at the good. Velleman takes as his point of departure the assumption, widely held by proponents of GG theory, that desires aim at the good in virtue of their direction fit. On this view, to say that desires aim at the good just is to say that desires have a conative direction of fit. However, Velleman points out that having a conative direction of fit is something that desires have in common with all other conative attitudes, including wishes and hopes. The upshot is that all conative attitudes may be said to aim at the good. Given that the constitutitive aim of desire is what makes it the psychological state-type that it is, it follows that the good cannot be the constitutive aim of desire. We may call this Velleman’s negative thesis.

Stage 3: Velleman's Positive Thesis

Finally, Velleman argues that the constitutive aim of desire is the attainable. By this, Velleman does not mean that one can desire that p only if p is attainable. Rather, he means that one can desire that p only if one believes that p is attainable. Thus, Velleman allows that I may desire something that is in fact unattainable, if I mistakenly believe it to be attainable. For example, I can desire that I arrive in the airport at 3pm, even though it is not physically possible for me to arrive in the airport at 3pm, so long as I believe (albeit mistakenly) that it is physically possible for me to do so. Velleman observes that one can wish for something that one believes to be unattainable. For example, I can wish I were never born even though I believe that undoing my own birth is not something that is attainable. However, according to Velleman, one cannot desire something that one believes to be unattainable. Hence, I could not desire that I were never born if I believed that undoing my own birth was not attainable. According to Velleman, this distinction between desires and wishes generalises to all other conative states; only desires aim at the attainable. Thus, Velleman concludes that desires stand to the attainable as belief stands to the true. We may call this Velleman's positive thesis.

The Normative Aim of Intention/Desire

2011-04-15T16:50:00.008+01:00

The main contemporary motivation for the Guise of the Good Theory of Desires--namely, the claim that desires aim at the good (henceforth, GG theory)--comes from Anscombe, who claims that wanting aims at the good in the same sense that judgement aims at truth. Anscombe's claim has lead many GG theorists to draw an analogy between desire and belief. However, I believe that this is mistake. When Anscombe says that wanting aims at the good, she actually has something quite different from our ordinary conception of desires in mind:

'Wanting' may of course be applied to the prick of desire at the thought or sight of an object, even though a man then does nothing towards getting the object. . . . The wanting that interests us, however, is neither wishing nor hoping nor feeling nor desire, and cannot be said to exist in a man who does nothing towards getting what he wants. (Anscombe [2000], Intention. p. 67-68.)

The above passage suggests that Anscombe's notion of wanting is more like an intention than a desire; it entails taking steps towards getting the object wanted. If this is right, then the Anscombean thesis is most aptly interpreted as the claim that intentions aim at the good in the same way that beliefs aim at truth. On this reading, the appropriate analogy is not one between belief and desire, but between belief and intention.

The claim that intentions aim at the good in the same sense that belief aims at the true gives rise to the following question. In what sense does belief aim at the true? We may distinguish between psychological, metaphysical and normative readings of the claim that belief aims at the true. According to psychological reading, beliefs may be said to aim at the true because agents are motivated to form beliefs by a desire for truth. The psychological reading was famously denied by Charles Pierce, who insisted that our motivation for forming beliefs is a desire to alleviate the discomfort caused by doubt. Even if one does not buy into Pierce's positive claim, it seems undeniable that we are often motivated to form beliefs by considerations other than truth. Pride, fear, comfort, and consistency are just a few of the many possible motivations an agent may have for adopting a particular belief. Consequently, the claim that truth is the psychological aim of belief seems implausible.

According to the metaphysical reading, truth is what makes belief the kind of psychological state it is. On this view, if the proposition that constitutes the intentional object of a putative belief turns out to be false, then the attitude in question is not a belief. It should be immediately clear that when we say belief aims at the true, we do not mean that truth is the metaphysical aim of belief; to wit, that a belief only counts as such if the proposition believed is true. Such a view would have the implausible consequence that there are no false beliefs. Moreover, it threatens to collapse the distinction between belief and knowledge, since the latter does seem to have truth as its metaphysical aim; to wit, knowing that p counts as such only if p is true. Consequently, the claim that truth is metaphysical aim of belief also seems implausible.

I believe that the claim that belief aims after truth is best understood in normative terms. According to the normative reading, the belief that p is in some sense incorrect if p is false. Unlike the metaphysical reading, the normative reading does not entail that a belief only counts as such if the believed proposition is true. Thus, the normative reading makes room for the possibility of false beliefs. Moreover, unlike the psychological reading, the normative reading does not entail that we are always motivated to form beliefs by a desire for truth. Consequently, the claim that truth is normative aim of belief is more plausible, and does a better job of capturing what we mean when we say that belief aims after truth, than the psychological and metaphysical readings. Given the normative reading of the claim that belief aims at the true, the claim that intentions aim at the good in the same sense that belief aims at the true entails that the intention to φ is incorrect if φ is not good.

Having said what it means to say that intentions aim at the good, we may now ask why intentions may be said to aim at the good in aforementioned sense. One proposal is to say that the good is the normative aim of intention because an intention to φ is justified if and only if φ is good. However, this is not plausible. First, the intention of φ may be justified if the agent has a justified, but false, belief that φ is good. For example, suppose Mary has the justified belief that it would be good to give to a charity X, when in fact the charity X is a scam and it would in fact not be good to give to X. Quite plausibly, it may still be justified for Mary to adopt the intention to give to charity X, given her justified belief that it would be good to do so. Second, the intention to φ is not justified if the agent has the justified, but false, belief that φ is not good. For example, suppose Bob has the justified belief that allowing his company to dump industrial waste in a river would harm the environment, when in fact the waste in question may actually be beneficial to the environment. Quite plausibly, it may be unjustified for Bob to adopt the intention to allow his company to dump the industrial waste, given his justified belief that doing so would be harmful.

An alternative proposal, the one I wish to endorse, is to say that intentions have the normative aim of the good because intending to φ entails being committed to the goodness of φ. On this view, the claim that a psychological state or speech-act has a particular normative aim is not a claim about when an agent is justified in adopting that psychological state or engaging in that speech-act. Rather, it is a claim about the types of normative commitments an agent takes upon herself by adopting a particular attitude, and the type of rational criticism said commitment entails. Thus, if an agent adopts an intention to φ, and subsequently learns that φ is not good, then that agent is normatively committed to giving up the intention to φ and is rationally criticisable if she fails to do so. In this regard, the normative aim of intention is perfectly analogous to normative aim of belief. Truth is the normative aim of belief because believing that p entails being committed to truth of p. If an agent adopts the belief that p, and subsequently learns that p is not true, then that agent is normatively committed to giving up her belief that p and is rationally criticisable if she fails to do so.

The preceding discussion offers us an analysis of what it means for intentions to aim at the good. But what can we say about the relationship between desires and the good? In answering this question, I exploit an analogy between desire and perceptual experience. To this end, we may say that desires aim at the good in the same sense that perceptual experience aims at the true. However, it is not plausible that perceptual experiences aim at the true in the same way that belief aims at the true. Recall, we unpacked the claim that belief aims at the true in terms of the claim that believing that p entails that one is committed to the truth of p. However, perceiving that p does not entail that one is committed to the truth of p. Moreover, if one perceives that p, one is not in a position to alter one’s perceptual experience if it turns out that p is false. Thus, it would not do to say that perceptual experiences aim at the true in the same sense that belief does.

Instead, I propose that we see perceptual experiences as aiming at the true in a derivative sense. To wit, we may say that a perceptual experience is correct just in case it would yield a correct belief if it were assented to. Given that the belief that p is correct only if p is true, it follows that a perceptual experience that p is correct (in a derivative sense) only if p is true. Analogously, desires may be said to aim at the good in a derivative sense. To wit, we may say that a desire is correct (in a derivative sense) just in case it would yield a correct intention if it were assented to. Since the intention to φ is correct just in case φ is good, it follows that the desire to φ is correct (in a derivative sense) just in case φ is good.

11th Annual NYU-Columbia Graduate Student Philosophy Conference

2011-04-08T05:29:00.002+01:00

Schedule:

9:30 AM Breakfast and Coffee

10:15 AM Shifts of Attention and the Content of Perception
Adrienne Prettyman (University of Toronto)

11:30 AM Against Epistemic Akrasia
Sophie Horowitz (MIT)

12:45 PM Lunch

2:00 PM A Two-Pronged Strategy for Solving the Platonistʼs Access Problem
Sharon Elizabeth Berry (Harvard)

3:15 PM Itʼs All too Hard! (The Demandingness of Rationality & Morality)
Aness Webster (University of Southern
California)

4:30 PM Coffee Break

5:00 PM Knowing about Things
Stephen Yablo (MIT)

9:30 PM Party (at 510 E 20th St, Apt 1H)
Saturday, April 9th 2011

5 Washington Place, New York

Important: to access the building, non-NYU students should register ahead of time by sending an email to gradconf@philcolumbia.com.

For further information, visit our website at www.philcolumbia.com/gradconf or email us at

gradconf@philcolumbia.com.

A (Selective) Outline of Velleman's "The Guise of the Good"

2011-03-30T20:41:00.009Z

Disclaimer: The following is a (selective) outline of what I take to be the central argument of David Velleman's paper, “The Guise of the Good”. A number of Velleman's specific arguments have been omitted, not because I believe they are unimportant or uninteresting, but for the sake of brevity.

SYNOPSIS OF PAPER: Velleman argues that the Guise of the Good theory (henceforth, “GG theory”) errs by either making an evaluative term (henceforth, “the good”) part of the propositional content of the attitude motivating an intentional action (henceforth, “a desire”) or by equating the good with the direction of fit of a desire. The first strategy fails because it entails that an agent can have a desire only if she possesses the concept of the good, and the second strategy fails because it conflates the constitutive aim of an attitude with its direction of fit. Velleman concludes by advancing the positive proposal that desire aims at the attainable.

BRIEF OUTLINE OF PAPER:

I Motivating cognitivism: The Primacy of Rational Guidance (pp. 3-7)

II Sophisticated Cognitivism: The Direction-of-Fit Approach (pp. 7-9)

III The Aim of Desire: Objections to Sophisticated Cognitivism (pp. 10-19)

DETAILED OUTLINE OF PAPER:
I Motivating cognitivism: The Primacy of Rational Guidance
Summary: Velleman defines GG theory as the claim that intentional action aims at the good. GG Theory is motivated by an attempt to reconcile two seemingly incompatible stories of the origin of human action; namely, the story of motivation and the story of rational guidance. Non-cognitivism emphasizes the story of motivation at the expense of the story of rational guidance, and cognitivism emphasizes the story of rational guidance at the expense of the story of motivation. The main motivation for rejecting non-cognitivism and adopting cognitivism, according to Velleman, is a desire to preserve the commonsense story of the origin of human action.

Discussion:

(i) Story of motivation = an agent acts intentionally when her action is caused by a desire for some outcome and a belief that the action will promote it. (p. 3)

(ii) Story of rational guidance = an agent acts intentionally when the action justifying character of a proposition prompts her action via her grasp of that proposition. (p. 4)

Noncognitivism = emphasises story of motivation at the expense of the story of rational guidance.

Weakness of non-cognitivism = it is at odds with the commonsense story. “In the commonsense story, the agent is moved toward action because his reasons justify it; whereas in the noncognitivist story, his reasons justify his action in virtue of moving him toward it.” (p. 5)

Cognitivism = emphasises story of rational guidance at the expense of the story or motivation.

Weakness of cognitivism = entails that an agent can have a desire only if she has evaluative concept. “If the cognitivist seriously means to characterise desire as an attitude toward an evaluative proposition, then he implies that the capacity to desire requires the possession of evaluative concepts. Yet a young child can want things long before it has acquired the concept of their being worth wanting or desirable.” (p. 7)

Upshot: Noncognitivism is unattractive because it fails to preserve the commonsense story of motivation and cognitivism is implausible because it entails that an agent can act intentionally only if it possesses certain evaluative concepts.

II Sophisticated Cognitivism: The Direction-of-Fit Approach
Summary: Sophisticated cognitivism unpacks the claim that the attitude motivating an intentional action (henceforth, I will simply speak of a desire) aims at the good in terms of the attitude's direction-of-fit. On this view, a cognitive attitude (like belief) may be said to aim after truth because its propositional object is regarded as a factum (something that is the case); while a conative attitude (like desire) may be said to aim after the good because its propositional object is regarded as a faciendum (something that is to be made the case). The upshot is that a propositional attitude is characterised, not only by the proposition that embodies its content, but also by the attitude's direction of fit (i.e., whether it represents its propositional object as a factum or faciendum).

Discussion:

cognitive attitude = a proposition is grasped as patterned after the world (or factum).

conative attitude = a proposition is grasped as a pattern for the world to follow (or faciendum).

(i) Simple cognitivism = involves action-justifying propositions.

According to simple cognitivism, desires aim at the good in virtue of their propositional content, which include the predicate “good”. (p. 6)

(ii) Sophisticated cognitivism = involves action-justifying attitudes.

According to sophisticated cognitivism, desires aim at the good in virtue of type of attitude it is—namely, that it is a conative attitude—rather than in terms of its propositional content. (pp. 8ff)

Upshot: According to sophisticated cognitivism, desires justify or provide reasons for action, not because of their propositional content, but because of the way the propositional content of a desire is grasped; namely, as something to be brought about. (p. 9)

III The Aim of Desire: Objections to Sophisticated Cognitivism
Summary: According to Velleman, desire aims, not at the good, but at the attainable. This follows from the following three theses. First, the constitutive aim of belief is whatever distinguishes it from all other states with a cognitive direction of fit; namely, the fact that beliefs are only correct when they are true. Second, what distinguishes desire from all other states with a conative direction of fit is not the fact that it aims after the good, since this is something it shares with all other conative states. Third, what distinguishes desire from all other conative states is the fact that desire aims at the attainable. The upshot is that the central thesis of sophisticated cognitivism—namely, that desire aims at the good—is mistaken.

Discussion:

Velleman exploits an analogy from belief to argue that desires do not aim at the good. He draws a distinction between the direction of fit of belief and the aim of belief (p. 12 ff):

(i) direction of fit of belief = that in virtue of which it is a cognitive state.

(ii) aim of belief = that in virtue of which it is correct just in case it is true

The following is a rough reconstruction of Velleman's argument. (Note: "given" indicates a theoretically motivated claim, and "observed" indicates an empirically motivated claim.)

(1) Belief is a cognitive state in virtue of its direction of fit. (given)

(2) Belief does not share the same aim as other cognitive states. (observed)

(3) Aim of belief = what sets belief apart from other cognitive states. (loosely from (1) and (2))

(4) Aim of desire = what sets desire apart from other conative states. (by analogy from (3))

(5) Sophisticated cognitivism entails that desire aims at the good in virtue of its direction of fit. (given)

(6) Sophisticated cognitivism entails that all conative states have the same direction of fit. (given)

(7) Sophisticated cognitivism entails that all conative states aim at the good. (loosely from (5) and (6))

(8) Sophisticated cognitivism entails that the good is not the aim of desire. (loosely from (4) and (7))

(8) What sets desire apart from all other conative states = being directed at the attainable. (observed)

(9) Aim of desire = being directed at the attainable. (loosely from (4) and (8))

Upshot: Velleman's negative thesis is that, contra sophisticated cognitivism, the constitutive aim of desire is not the good. Velleman's positive thesis is that the constitutive aim of desire is the attainable (p. 17). Given that the constitutive aim of belief is the truth, it follows from Velleman's positive thesis that desire stands to the attainable as belief stands to the truth.

2011 Intermountain West Graduate Philosophy Conference

2011-03-22T01:58:00.004Z

Thursday, April 7 – Saturday, April 9
University of Utah

Conference Schedule

Thurs, April 7: All Sessions in the Philosophy Department (CTIHB)

2:00-6:00 Registration (CTIHB-Philosophy Department)

2:00-2:50 “Representationalism and the Phenomenology of Attention” (LNCO 2100)
Speaker: Brian Cutter (University of Texas, Austin)
Commentator: Manuel Cabrera (UCLA)

3:00-3:50 “Naturalism without Physicalism” (LNCO 2100)
Speaker: Manuel Cabrera (UCLA)
Commentator: Matt Mosdell (U. of Utah)

4:00-4:50 “Unpacking the Guise of the Good Theory” (LNCO 2100)
Speaker: Avery Archer (Columbia University)
Commentator: Matt Berk (U. of Utah)

5:15-7:00 Plenary Address: “Divine Hiddenness and Theistic Responses” (Tanner Philosophy Library)
Justin McBrayer (Fort Lewis College)

Friday, April 8: All Sessions in the Philosophy Department (CTIHB)

9:30-10:20

A. “A Dilemma for Quine’s Epistemology” (459)
Speaker: Matthew Baddorf (Rochester)
Commentator: Blake Vernon (U. of Utah)

B. “Morality without Demands: A Critique of Scalar Consequentialism” (406)
Speaker: Spencer Case (University of Colorado)
Commentator: Steve Tensmeyer (BYU)

10:30-11:20

A. “Interpreting Probability in Statistical Mechanics” (459)
Speaker: Joshua Hershey (Princeton University)
Commentator: Christopher Lean (U. of Utah)

B. “Defending Universalism from Relativistic Outlaws” (406)
Speaker: Matthew Gorski (University of Notre Dame)
Commentator: TBD

11:30-12:20

A. “On the Value of Uncertainty” (459)
Speaker: Lucas Matthews (University of Utah)
Commentator: Stephanie Shiver (U. of Utah)

B. “The Prototype Structure of Moral Concepts” (406)
Speaker: John J. Park (Duke University)
Commentator: Spencer Case (University of Colorado)

12:30-1:30 Lunch (on your own)

1.30-2.20

A. “Introducing Substantive Metaphysics Epistemically” (MBH 112)
Speaker: Lucas Halpin (UC-Davis)
Commentator: TBD

B. “Moral Skepticism: An Innocent Companion” (MBH 302)
Speaker: Matthew Lutz (University of Southern California)
Commentator: Matthew Lee (University of Notre Dame)

2:30-3:00: reception with tea and hors d’oeuvres (philosophy dept. lounge)

3:00-5:00: Keynote address – “You and I” (CTIHB 406 - Tanner Philosophy Library)
Michael Thompson (University of Pittsburgh)

6:00-8:00: Faculty-hosted dinner (Leslie Francis): catered by Sugar House BBQ

Saturday, April 9: All Sessions in the Philosophy Department

9:30-10:20

A. “Charitable Neo-Logicism” (459)
Speaker: Sebastian Petzolt (Oxford University)
Commentator: Matthew Barney (U. of Utah)

B. “Wrongs without Rights” (406)
Speaker: Nicolas Cornell (Harvard University)
Commentator: Matt Berk (U. of Utah)

10:30-11:20

A. “Against Old Facts Under New Modes” (459)
Speaker: Gabriel Rabin (UCLA)
Commentator: Landon McBrayer (U. of Utah)

B. “On Answerability in the Realm of Criminal Responsibility” (406)
Speaker: Nicholas Sars (Bowling Green University)
Commentator: Steve Capone (U. of Utah)

11:30-12:20 “Saving ‘Stability for the Right Reasons’ from Rawls: Why We Should Drop the Idea of Overlapping Consensus” (406)
Speaker: Gregg Strauss (University of Illinois-Urbana)
Commentator: Kai Kaululaau (Cal. State, LA)

12:30 Lunch, closing.

2011 Waterloo PGSA Conference

2011-03-15T10:59:00.004Z

The University of Waterloo Philosophy Graduate Student Conference - 2011

Conference Schedule:

Friday, April 1

Session 1
Hagey Hall 373

10:00 AM Ivan Kasa Stockholm/MIT
“Neo-Fregean Abstractionism and Mathematical Truth”

This paper aims to restore a more balanced view on how Bob Hale and Crispin Wright’s Neo-Fregean theory of abstractionism relates to questions raised in Benacerraf’s classic Mathematical Truth. I claim that, contrary to received opinion, the prevalent strands of thought in Mathematical Truth cannot be taken to support abstractionism as a response to epistemological worries surrounding a homogenous Tarskian semantics.

11:00 AM Yuna Won Yonsei University, South Korea
“Modified Acceptability Condition of Indicative Conditionals”

This paper will deal with conditionals having a true antecedent and consequent – I will call them idle conditionals. Most of theories of conditionals have regarded them as true but uninteresting conditionals. However, most idle conditionals are rarely used in our daily lives and even seem to be unacceptable. Most theories of conditionals have ignored this issue and thought that philosophical theories do not need to reflect all mundane intuitions. It means those theories cannot explain why we are not willing to assert and accept idle conditionals. I will suggest Modified Acceptability Condition (MAC) to explain the phenomenon and show that MAC can be generally accepted by existing theories. Furthermore, MAC will solve some puzzling cases neglected in most of theories of conditionals. Finally, I will show that it will bring some benefits to the existing theories.

12:00 PM Avery Archer Columbia University
“Unpacking the Guise of the Good Theory of Desires”

According to the Guise of the Good Theory of Desires, desires are associated with the good in a sense roughly analogous to how beliefs are associated with the true. In this paper, I consider the three most common strategies for unpacking Guise of the Good Theory of Desires — namely, The Desire-as-Belief Thesis, The Desire-plus-Belief Thesis, and The Desire-as-Perception Thesis. I argue that all three approaches are unacceptable. I conclude by laying the foundation for a fourth way of unpacking the Guise of the Good Theory; namely, The Desire-as-Imperative Thesis. According to the Desire-as-Imperative Thesis, desiring to φ is equivalent to being the recipient of an imperative to φ. I argue that the Desire-as-Imperative Thesis offers us a way to unpack the Guise of the Good Theory of Desires that avoids the difficulties confronting the other three approaches.

Friday, April 1

Session 2
Hagey Hall 373

2:30 PM Matt LaVine University at Buffalo
“Truth and Fictional Discourse”

One of the most intuitive positions with respect to giving an account of truth-in- fiction is that determining what is true in a particular story begins and ends with determining what the storyteller says. Unfortunately, when this is understood as identifying truths in fiction with those things directly stated or implied (in a strictly logical sense) by the storyteller, problems seem to arise. Lewis famously demonstrated some of these. He then replaced the intuitive picture with one in which the storyteller’s claims are supplemented by collective belief worlds of the intended audience as truth-in-fiction truth-makers. Interestingly enough, in doing so, Lewis focused on coming up with truth-conditions for sentences of the form, ‘in fiction, p’, much more so than answering the question, ‘in virtue of what do these truth-conditions hold?’ In this paper we investigate problems that arise from Lewis neglecting this latter question and try to give our own tentative answer. This answer will come from a tweaking of Searle’s horizontal conventions posited in his paper, “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse.” Finally, this answer, which brings us back rather closely to the intuitive position, will be used to meet the difficulties that Lewis’s picture ran into.

3:30 PM Rhys McKinnon University of Waterloo
“Responding to Prompts and Challenges”

In this paper I propose a principle of interpretation for the content of challenges and prompts to assertions based on the criterion of what constitutes wholly adequate responses. I suggest that this is a unifying principle for the linguistic data, inasmuch as wholly adequate responses generally consist in giving one’s reasons for an assertion. I argue that the linguistic data is best explained by a reason-based norm such as Jennifer Lackey’s Reasonable to Believe Norm of Assertion (RTBNA). Consequently, I argue against John Turri’s claim that the data is best explained by the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA).

4:30 PM Andrew Parker Wilfrid Laurier University

“Hacker’s Davidson: On Incommensurability”

In my paper I examine P.M.S Hacker’s arguments for relativism, conceptual schemes and un-translatability between languages. Hacker’s strategy to save “incommensurable conceptual schemes” is to argue- contra Davidson- that there can be “untranslatable languages”. I will argue that Hacker’s road to “different conceptual schemes” is paved with “different languages” not “different concepts”. Although Hacker rejects Davidson’s “salient point”- that nothing can force us to decide if a disagreement between interlocutors lies in their beliefs rather than their concepts- I argue Hacker begs the question by postulating a non-empirical “conceptual scheme” in his account of “incommensurability”. I argue- contra Hacker- that rather than postulating “incommensurable conceptual schemes” we are left with the fact that humans have many different ways of talking about one and the same world.

Saturday, April 2

Session 1
Hagey Hall 373

10:00 AM Steven James University of Texas at Austin
“De Re Hallucination: A Distinctive Kind of Object Dependence”

Veridical perceptions and their subsequent perceptual beliefs give rise to object-dependent mental states. Hallucinatory phenomena force us to account for merely putatively object-dependent mental states and one familiar attempt to do so appeals to subjects’ related object-independent mental states. This fails to properly account for a particular class of hallucination; namely, de re hallucination. I identify what is needed in light of this result and make a suggestion for how theoretical progress can be made.

11:00 AM Yang Liu Columbia University
“The Sorites Paradox and Fuzzy Logic”

This paper studies degree theoretic approach to vagueness. The aim is to provide an explanation for the Sorites paradox from degree theorists' perspective. The paper includes a discussion of degrees and tolerance, both of which are taken to be fundamental features of language governing the use of vague predicates. A de- fense of degree theory is inserted in its due place. The analysis will then lead to the introduction of a basic propositional fuzzy logic which will serve as a conceptual framework within which the Sorites are treated. The paper shows that there is way of treating tolerance within degree theory by introducing a fuzzy notion of validity.

12:00 PM Justin Donhauser University at Buffalo
“Whales Are(n’t) Fish”

Contra the possibility of complete reduction of all domain-specific taxonomies to that of a unitary “final science,” several philosophers defend the view John Dupré dubs “promiscuous realism” and others variously call “pluralistic realism,” “semirealism,” and “perspectival realism.”1 In Dupré’s words ‘promiscuous realism’ [henceforth, PR] is the view that, “there are countless legitimate, objectively grounded ways of classifying objects in the world. And these may often cross-classify one another in indefinitely complex ways” (1993, 18). This essay is a critical discussion and defense of PR, which clarifies what the view should and should not entail. It is shown that PR is not a species of realism if it is compatible with a remark Dupré (1999; 2002) makes implying that a subset of the members of a biological kind can cease to be members of that kind without a change in the properties of those members. Toward that end, I provide an explicatory gloss of PR [§1], endorse Dupré’s original defense of the claim that whales are fish [§2], and show that PR is incompatible with Dupré’s follow-up claim that they are not and identify his error [§3]. Subsequently, inspired by some remarks of Diana Raffman and adopting positions advanced by Anjan Chakravartty, I offer a theory of how terminological vagueness and processes of abstraction in theory construction generate the legitimately crosscutting taxonomies espoused by PR [§4]. In closing, I briefly recapitulate the beneficial features of PR that bar errors like Dupré’s and evaluate the benefits of having equally unprivileged crosscutting taxonomies [§5].

3:30 PM Keynote Address
Dr. Diana Raffman University of Toronto
“Psychological Hysteresis and the Dynamic Sorites Paradox”
Abstract TBA

7:00 PM Conference Dinner

Ennio’s Restaurant
384 King Street n., Waterloo

Philosophy of Science (David Albert)

2011-03-03T22:47:00.000Z

The Desire-plus-Belief Thesis

2011-02-11T21:55:00.008Z

In my post, Impugning the Desire-as-Belief Thesis, I argued that the Desire-as-Belief Thesis--namely, the claim that desires are a type of belief--is unacceptable as a way of unpacking the Broadly Anscombean View--namely, the claim that desires aim at the good. But even if one rejects the claim that desires are beliefs, one may still think that desiring to φ is always accompanied by the belief that φ is good. Let us refer to this proposal as the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis; the claim that the desire to φ is always paired with the belief that φ is good. The Desire-plus-Belief Thesis is offered as an alternative way of unpacking the Broadly Anscombean View, and should be distinguished from the weaker claim that an agent could only desire to φ if she has certain beliefs about φ. For example, one may think that one could only desire to φ if one also believed that it was possible for one to φ. However, such a proposal would not be a candidate for unpacking the claim that the good is the object of desire, for believing that one could φ may have little or no bearing on whether or not one believes that φ is good. Hence, the thesis that the desire to φ is always accompanied by some belief about φ is not the same as the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis; the latter is specifically concerned with the belief that φ is good.

An unqualified version of the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis seems highly implausible. For example, one may desire to have a cigarette even though one does not believe that it is good to do so. However, even if we find the preceding unqualified version of the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis implausible, we may still be tempted to buy into a qualified version of the thesis, according to which the desire to φ is always accompanied by the belief that φ is good from a certain perspective. For example, even though one does not believe that sleeping with someone who is not one's spouse is good simpliciter, one may still believe that it is good from the perspective of having one's sexual needs satisfied. Hence, according to the qualified version of the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis, an agent can only desire to φ if she believes that it would be good to φ from a certain perspective (even if she does not believe that φing would be good, simpliciter).

One objection to the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis (in both its qualified and unqualified forms) is that there seems to be putative cases of an agent desiring to φ, where the desire does not seem to be accompanied by the belief that φ is good from any perspective at all. Davidson's description of a man who has a “yen to drink a can of paint” even though he does not believe that it would be “worth doing so”, seems to be one such example. One very natural way of unpacking Davidson's claim that the paint drinker sees no “worth” in drinking the paint would be to say that the paint drinker does not believe that drinking the paint is good from any perspective whatsoever.

However, the preceding objection is certainly not the final word on the matter. There are some theorists, such as Warren Quinn and Thomas Scanlon, who would deny that the yen to drink a can of paint qualifies as a desire, in the relevant sense. To this end, Scanlon [1998] distinguishes between a desire and a mere urge. According to Scanlon, the desire to φ is always accompanied by a tendency to see φing as good or desirable. Absent such a tendency, we have, not a desire, but an urge. Moreover, Quinn [1993] notes that in cases like the paint-drinker example, the motivating state fails to rationalise the action or make it intelligible. That is to say, the yen of the paint drinker provides no justification for his actions, nor does it bring us any closer to understanding why the paint drinker did what he did. The upshot, according to Quinn, is that the yen of the paint drinker should not be considered a desire.

Although it is true that the yen of Davidson's paint drinker fails to rationalise or justify his actions, it is not clear (pace Quinn) that playing this rationalising or justificatory role is a necessary condition for a psychological state to be considered a desire.4 There is an alternative conception of desires, according to which, the presence of a desire serves the theoretical function of marking the difference between actions that are intentional—i.e., ones for which an agent is rationally or morally responsible—and actions that are not. Moreover, there is reason to think that the actions of Davidson's paint drinker are intentional by the lights of this alternative conception. For one thing, we may wish to hold that the paint drinker is rationally or morally responsible for his actions. For example, let us suppose that drinking the paint would result in his death, and that the paint drinker is aware of this fact. Let us suppose further that it is morally wrong to knowingly take one's life. Given that the paint drinker is aware that drinking the paint is fatal, we may very well wish to hold that he is morally responsible for taking his own life; to wit, there is nothing about Davidson's description of the painter drinker that would lead us to think that he should be excluded from such responsibility. Assuming that one is morally responsible for φing only if one φs intentionally, and given the view that desiring to φ is what distinguishes between cases in which one φs intentionally, and cases in which one does not φ intentionally, then it follows from the claim that the the paint drinker is morally responsible for drinking the can of paint that his yen to drink the can of paint is a desire. Consequently, if we see desire as playing the theoretical role of distinguishing between those actions that are intentional (understood as action for which an agent is rationally or morally responsible) and those actions that are not, then we may wish to hold that the yen of Davidson's paint drinker may be a desire.

I do not wish to settle the question of which of the two competing accounts just adumbrated is preferrable. The preceding discussion is simply meant to highlight that whether or not one regards the yen of Davidson's paint-drinker as a desire will depend on what one takes the theoretical role of desire to be. Since I do not wish to rule out the alternative account, according to which the yen of Davidson's paint-drinker may count as a desire, I believe we should leave room in our theorising for the possibility of such desires; namely, ones in which the desiring agent does not believe that the desired action is good from any perspective whatsoever. In short, the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis introduces a prejudice against certain accounts of the theoretical role of desire; a prejudice that I believe we do well to avoid at the present stage in our inquiry.

A more serious difficulty with the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis (in both its qualified and unqualified forms) is that it seems too weak to serve as a viable candidate for unpacking the Broadly Anscombean View; namely, the claim that the good is the object of desire. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that desiring to φ is always accompanied by the belief that φ is good. Given this view, it seems more accurate to say that the good is the object of the accompanying belief than that it is the object of the desire itself. However, we have identified the Broadly Anscombean View with the claim that the good is the object of desire, not the claim that the good is the object of a particular kind of belief—namely, one that typically accompanies a desire. The problem is that (unlike the Desire-as-Belief Thesis) the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis preserves the desire's identity as a separate psychological state from that of the belief that accompanies it. Moreover, as far as the Broadly Anscombean View is concerned, it makes the good the object of the wrong psychological state; namely, the belief rather than the desire. Presumably, the defender of the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis would say that being accompanied by a belief that aims at the good is just what we mean when we say that a desire aims at the good. However, it seems odd to say that the desire to φ has the goodness of φ as its object simply because the belief that φ is good has the goodness of φ as its object. Why should the fact that the latter has the good as its object have any bearing on the former, given that they are distinct psychological states? In short, it remains unclear that the Desire-plus-Belief Thesis represents a genuine unpacking of the claim that the good is the object of desire.

International Summer School in German Philosophy

2011-02-02T02:45:00.002Z

SECOND ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

Where: Bonn University, Germany,

When: July 4 - 15, 2011.

Topic: “The Philosophical Relevance of Hegel’s Subjective Logic.”

The course will be led by Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) with keynote addresses by Michael Forster (University of Chicago), Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humboldt University, Berlin), and Axel Hutter (LMU, Munich). Course readings and discussions will be in English.

There are no registration or course fees for the summer school. A limited number of travel stipends are available for students coming from outside of Germany.

Application is open to graduate students and recent PhD recipients with backgrounds in philosophy. For a full course description, application instructions, and further information about the summer school, please visit our website:

http://www.idealism.uni-bonn.de/

The application deadline is MARCH 15, 2011. Application materials (CV and short letter of intent, plus a separate letter explaining financial needs if applying for a stipend) should be sent via email to idealism2011@gmail.com.

The 120th Philosopher's Carnival

2011-01-31T13:54:00.000Z

is here.

Impugning the Desire-as-Belief Thesis

2011-01-24T02:27:00.002Z

I believe that the Desire-as-Belief Thesis is unacceptable as a way of unpacking the Broadly Anscombean View - namely, the claim that the good is the aim of desire in a sense analogous to how truth is the aim of belief - because of the following pair of asymmetries between desires and beliefs.

Truth-Value Asymmetry

Beliefs are truth-assessable while desires are not. This asymmetry between desires and beliefs is reflected in our ordinary linguistic practice. For example, if I believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States, we ordinarily think of my belief as the sort of thing that could be true or false. By contrast, we do not ordinarily conceive of desires as truth-assessable. For example, if I desire to purchase a flat screen television, we do not ordinarily think of my desire as the sort of thing that could be true or false. Moreover, I believe the following theoretical account may be offered in defence of Truth-Value Asymmetry. First, I hold that a psychological state may be conceived of as truth-assessable just in case it represents the state of affairs that constitutes its intentional object to be the case or it represents a particular proposition to be true. Second, I take the preceding necessary and sufficient conditions to be met by the psychological state of belief. For example, if I believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States, I hold that the state of affairs of George Washington being the first president of the United States is the intentional object of my belief. Moreover, I hold that my belief represents this state of affairs as being the case. (Or, if one prefers, we may say that the belief that George Washington is the first president of the United States represents the proposition, “George Washington is the first president of the United States” to be true.) Third, I take the preceding necessary and sufficient conditions not to be met by the psychological state of desire. For example, if I desire to purchase a flat screen television, I take the state of affairs of purchasing a flat screen television to be the intentional object of my desire. Moreover, I hold that my desire does not represent my purchasing a flat screen television to be the case. The upshot of the three preceding theoretical commitments is that the psychological state of belief is truth-assessable, while the psychological state of desire is not.

Rational-Commitment Asymmetry

One is guilty of irrationality if one knowingly has inconsistent beliefs, but one is not guilty of irrationality if one knowingly has inconsistent desires. This asymmetry is also reflected in how we ordinarily talk and think about desires. According to the present objection, one may have conflicting desires—for example, the desire to have a cigarette, and the desire to stick to one's New Year's resolution to quit smoking (where one recognises that these represent mutually exclusive desires)—without being guilty of irrationality. However, the same is not true of belief. If one believes that it is good to stick to one's New Year's resolution to quit smoking, and one also believes that is good to have a cigarette (where one recognises that these represent mutually exclusive beliefs), then one is guilty of irrationality. Moreover, I believe the following theoretical motivation may be offered in support of Rational-Commitment Asymmetry. First, I hold that beliefs are commitment-involving psychological states. For example, to believe that smoking is good is to be committed to holding that smoking is good. Second, I hold that desires are not commitment-involving psychological states. For example, to desire to have a cigarette is not to be committed to having a cigarette, since one may have such a desire and yet decide not to act on it. Moreover, one may desire to have a cigarette without being committed to the goodness of having a cigarette. Third, I hold that one is only rationally assessable for having a psychological state if it is commitment-involving. The upshot is that one is rationally assessable for having beliefs one recognises to be inconsistent, but one is not rationally assessable for having desires that one recognises to be inconsistent.

In summary, I reject the Desire-as-Belief Thesis because it overlooks two important asymmetries between desire and belief; Truth-Value Asymmetry and Rational-Commitment Asymmetry.

Columbia/NYU Philosophy Graduate Conference

2010-12-20T21:38:00.002Z

Call for Papers: 2011 COLUMBIA/NYU Graduate Conference in Philosophy to be held Saturday APRIL 9th, 2011 at NYU

Keynote Speaker: Stephen Yablo (MIT)

The graduate students and faculty of the Philosophy Departments of Columbia and New York Universities invite papers by all graduate students in any area of philosophy.

Deadline: January 20th, 2011

Papers must meet the following requirements:

1. All papers must be between 3,000 and 5,000 words in length and suitable for a presentation of 30-40 minutes.

2. Papers must be submitted with an abstract no longer than 300 words.

3. Papers must be submitted electronically in blind-review format to:

www.philcolumbia.com/gradconf

PLEASE note that NO submissions by mail or email will be accepted. For more information please visit our website at www.philcolumbia.com/gradconf or email us at: gradconf@philcolumbia.com

Professor John Searle's 50 Years at UC Berkeley - A Celebration

2010-12-02T02:31:00.003Z

Anti-Humeanism, Anti-Emotivism, and the Desire-as-Belief Thesis

2010-11-23T02:35:00.004Z

Let us refer to the claim that the good is the object of desire in a sense analogous to how the true is the object of belief as the Broadly Anscombean View. One way of unpacking the Broadly Anscombean view is in terms of the Desire-as-Belief Thesis. In his paper, “Belief, Desire, and Revision”, John Collins defines the Desire-as-Belief Thesis as “the thesis that desire is a particular kind of belief—that to desire A is simply to believe that A would be good."

We may distinguish between weak and strong versions of the Desire-as-Belief Thesis; the claim that some desires are beliefs and the claim that all desires are beliefs, respectively. But this distinction, while significant in its own right, will have little bearing on the present discussion. This is because we are only concerned with the Desire-as-Belief Thesis as a means of unpacking the Broadly Anscombean View; namely, the claim that the good is the object of desire. When we unpack the Broadly Anscombean View in terms of the Desire-as-Belief Thesis, we arrive at the claim that desiring to φ is identical to the belief that φ is good. Now, according to the weak version of the Desire-as-Belief Thesis, only some desires to φ are identical to the belief that φ is good. However, on those occasions in which the desire to φ is not identical to the belief that φ is good, the desire in question does not have the good as its object. Therefore, the Broadly Anscombean View does not apply to such desires. Hence, insofar as we are interested in the Desire-as-Belief Thesis as a means of unpacking the Broadly Anscombean View, we are only concerned with those cases in which a desire may be said to be identical to a belief. Consequently, the distinction between the weak and strong versions of the Desire-as-Belief Thesis is superflous for our present purposes.

In his paper, “Defending Desire-as-Belief”, Huw Price highlights two motivations for the desire-as-belief thesis; a rejection of the Humean theory of desire and a defence of anti-emotivism in moral discourse. He writes:

In modern terminology the Humean view is thus that action is a joint product of an agent's beliefs and desires; and that these are distinct kinds of mental states, desires being distinguished from beliefs in virtue of their motivational role .... In recent years, however, several philosophers have questioned the Humean orthodoxy. They suggest that certain beliefs might be intrisically motivational—in effect, in other words, that some or all desires might themselves be beliefs .... An attractive feature of the suggestion that (some) desires might be beliefs has been its evident potential to undermine emotivist accounts of moral discourse (and so to enable ethical statements to be brought within the scope of a truth-conditional general semantics).

According to Price, the Humean view amounts to the thesis that desires are intrinsically motivational while beliefs are not. Moreover, Price construes emotivist accounts of moral discourse as entailing the denial of the claim that ethical statements display a truth-conditional semantics. I will refer to the rejection of the Humean view as Anti-Humeanism, and the rejection of the emotivism as Anti-Emotivism.

Although, in the passage just cited, Price associates the Desire-as-Belief Thesis with Anti-Humeanism and Anti-Emotivism, it is worth emphasising that the denial of the Desire-as-Belief Thesis is consistent with both. It is common ground between the Humean and the Anti-Humean that desires are intrinsically motivating. However, the Humean denies, and the Anti-Humean affirms, that some beliefs are also intrinsically motivating. But one may consitently subscribe to the claim that some beliefs are intrinsically motivating and yet deny that desires are beliefs. For example, suppose one held that being intrinsically motivational is a necessary but insufficient condition for a psychological state to be a desire. Then one may also consistently hold that desires are distinct psychological states from beliefs (thereby denying the Desire-as-Belief Thesis) and that some beliefs are intrinsically motivational (thereby affirming non-Humeanism).

Moreover, if we identify the content of moral discourse with the content of an intrinsically motivating belief (rather than with the content of a desire), then we may consistently hold that moral discourse displays a truth-conditional semantics and that the content of desire does not. One only needs to add the further assumption that the content of an intrinsically motivating belief displays a truth-conditional semantics. Hence, if we reject the Desire-as-Belief Thesis, it does not follow from this rejection that either Anti-Humeanism or Anti-Emotivism is false.

The preceding observations draw attention to an important feature of Price's account. Price associates the claim that “certain beliefs might be intrinsically motivational” with the claim that “some or all desires might themesleves be beliefs”; either equating the two claims or taking the second to be entailed by the first. However, the equivalence or entailment only holds if we assume that being motivational is a sufficient condition for a psychological state to be a desire. In brief, Price assumes that only desires are intrinsically motivational. However, it seems like both the Humean and the Anti-Humean alike is well within her rights in rejecting this assumption. For example, both the Humean and the Anti-Humean may hold that certain emotions, like love and hatred, are intrinsically motivational. However, it is not immediately clear, nor is it a fundamental assumption of either Humeanism or Anti-Humeanism, that love and hate are desires. In fact, both the Humean and Anti-Humean is free to deny that emotions, like love or hate, are (typically) propositional attitudes.

While I do not wish to either endorse or impugn such a position, I do wish to stress that it is not inconsistent with either Humeanism or Anti-Humeanism. The upshot is that both the Humean and Anti-Humean may reject the claim that only desires are intrinsically motivating. If this suggestion is right, then it is best to see Humeanism as being committed, not to the thesis that desires are the only psychological states that are intrinsically motivating, but rather to the claim that beliefs are not among those psychological states that are. The Anti-Humean, by contrast, wants to insist that at least some beliefs (perhaps, beliefs about the good or about what one should do) are included among the set of psychological states that are intrinsically motivationg. But once it is acknowledge that the set of intrinsically motivating psychological states is not limited to desires, then (as far as Anti-Humeanism is concerned) there is no need to insist that desires are beliefs.

Timothy Williamson Interview: The Armchair

2010-11-01T12:39:00.002Z

Timothy Williamson on "The Armchair" from Pablo Carnino on Vimeo.

Propositional Content vs. Representational Content

2010-10-23T13:58:00.009Z

In my last two posts, "Introducing Felicity Conditions" and "Anscombe and Felicity Conditions", I have tried to unpack a particular conception of the correctness conditions of the attitudinal component of the propositional attitude (in contradistinction to the correctness conditions of propositional content of a propositional attitude). Moreover, I hold that the correctness conditions of the attitudinal component of a propositional attitude (or what I refer to as "felicity-conditions" is determined by the attitude's representational component. When this claim is conjoined with the claim that the felicity-conditions of a propositional attitude may differ from the correctness conditions of its propositional content, the upshot is that the representational content of a propositional attitude may also differ from its propositional content. In this post, I want to say why I think this claim should be accepted.

According to the account of desires presently on offer—one that takes its inspiration from Anscombe—desiring that I will leave work at 2pm is felicitous just in case my leaving work at 2pm is an instance of the good. Hence, the felicity-conditions of desiring that I will leave work at 2pm coincide with the felicity-conditions of believing that my leaving work at 2pm is good. Recall, the belief that my leaving work at 2pm is good is felicitous just in case it is true that my leaving work at 2pm is good. This follows from the fact that the felicity conditions of a belief correspond with the truth-conditions of its propositional content. Similarly, my desire that I will leave work at 2pm is felicitous just in case it is true that my leaving work at 2pm is good. This observation makes it tempting to revise the propositional content of the desire to leave work at 2pm so that it coincides with the propositional content of believing that my leaving work at 2pm is good. Hence, we may be tempted to say that the propositional content of desiring that I will leave work at 2pm is not the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm” but rather, the proposition, “my leaving work at 2pm is good”.

Unfortunately, it is untenable that the propositional content of desiring that I will leave work at 2pm is the proposition “my leaving work at 2pm is good”. Revising the propositional content of the desire in this way simply changes the object of the desire in question. To see that this is so, we merely have to register that desiring that I will leave work at 2pm is different from desiring that my leaving work at 2pm is good. Hence, we need to leave room in our theorising for desires with either propositional content. There are at least three reasons why this is so.

First, the satisfaction-conditions of desiring that I will leave work at 2pm is identical to the truth-conditions of the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm”, while the satisfaction-conditions of desiring that my leaving work at 2pm is good is identical to the truth-conditions of the proposition, “my leaving work at 2pm is good”. The fact that the desires in question have different satisfaction-conditions suggests that they are in fact distinct desires.

Second, the first desire is the type that typically yields an intention while the second is not. For example, desiring that I will leave work at 2pm may yield the intention to leave work at 2pm. However, it is not typically the case that I can intend that my leaving work at 2pm be a realisation of the good. Moreover, even if I could intend that my leaving work at 2pm be a realisation of the good, it is entirely conceivable that I may successfully carry out that intention without actually bringing it about that I leave work at 2pm. For example, I may intend that my leaving work at 2pm be a realisation of the good by completing some work related project three hours early. But I may complete my project early, and thereby make my leaving work at 2pm a realisation of the good, without actually leaving work at 2pm. Thus, if I did form the intention that my leaving work at 2pm be good, it would still be a different intention to the one I would form if I intended to leave work at 2pm.

Third, desiring that my leaving work at 2pm is good requires that I possess and deploy the concept “good”, while desiring that I will leave work at 2pm does not. Hence, it is important that we preserve the distinction between a desire with the propositional content, “I will leave work at 2pm”, and a desire with the propositional content, “my leaving work at 2pm is good”.

The preceding considerations impugn the claim that desiring that I will leave work at 2pm has the same propositional content as believing that my leaving work at 2pm is good. However, there may still be a way to salvage the idea that the desire that I will leave work at 2pm and the belief that my leaving work at 2pm is good share something in common, content-wise. Towards this end, we may distinguish between the propositional content and representational content of a propositional attitude. Desiring that I will leave work at 2pm has the same propositional content as believing that I will leave work at 2pm; namely, the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm”. However, while believing that I will leave work at 2pm represents the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm”, to be true, desiring that I will leave work at 2pm does not represent the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm” to be true. Rather, desiring that I will leave work at 2pm represents the truth of the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm”, to be a realisation of the good. Given this difference, it seems natural to say that believing that I will leave work at 2pm has a different representational content to desiring that I will leave work at 2pm. After all, how could two propositional attitudes have the same representational content if one represents something to be true and the other represents something to be good. The upshot is that two propositional attitudes that share the same propositional content may nevertheless exhibit different representational contents.

Language and Thought

2010-10-18T12:14:00.000Z

Anscombe and Felicity Conditions

2010-10-11T13:35:00.007Z

In my previous post, I introduced the notion of felicity-conditions; defined as the correctness-conditions of the attitudinal component of a propositional attitude (in contradistinction to the correctness-conditions of the propositional content of a propositional attitude). In the present post, I want say a little about how the notion of a felicity-condition relates to Anscombe's claim that the good is the object of wanting.

Let us refer to the claim that desires do not have felicity-conditions that are identical to the truth-conditions of their propositional content as the negative thesis. The negative thesis is neutral on the question of whether or not desires have felicity-conditions at all; to wit, it takes no stand on whether or not the attitude of desire has correctness-conditions beyond the correctness-conditions of its propositional content (i.e., the truth-conditions of the propositional attitude). The primary motivation for the negative thesis comes from our ordinary linguistic practice; namely, the fact that we do not ordinarily conceive of desires as true or false. We may unpack this intuition by registering that while beliefs represent a certain proposition as true, desires do not. For example, the belief that I will have a slice of cheesecake represents the proposition “I will have a slice of cheesecake” to be true. However, the desire that I will have a slice of cheesecake does not represent the proposition “I will have a slice of cheesecake” to be true. If it did, then it would make sense to say that the desire that I will have a slice of cheesecake is true when the proposition “I will have a slice of cheesecake” is true, and false when the proposition is false. However, as we already noted, we do not ordinarily speak or think this way.

In addition to the negative thesis, I wish to argue that, like the attitude of belief, the attitude of desire has felicity-conditions. However, while the felicity-conditions of a belief are identical with its truth-conditions, I hold that the same is not true of the felicity-conditions of desire. Let us refer to this claim as the positive thesis. Something along the lines of the positive thesis must be accepted if we wish to buy into Anscombe's theory of desires. Recall, according to Anscombe, desire (or wanting) stands in a roughly analogous relation to the good as belief (or judgement) does to the true. However, the negative thesis—namely, the claim that the attitude of desire lacks a truth-value—offers little support for this claim. To wit, the mere fact that the attitude of desire lacks a truth-value does not show that it stands in a certain relation to the good. Moreover, preserving Anscombe's thesis requires that we see the attitude of desire as having something along the lines of what I have been calling 'felicity-conditions'. On this score, the following passage from Anscombe is instructive:

The conceptual connexion between 'wanting'. . . and 'good' can be compared to the conceptual connexion between 'judgment' and 'truth'. Truth is the object of judgement, and good the object of wanting; it does not follow from this either that everything judged must be true, or that everything wanted must be good.

If the fact that the good is the object of desire does not entail that everything desired must be good, then it follows that it is at least possible that a particular desire may get things wrong. Moreover, it seems safe to assume that Anscombe is also committed to saying that it is possible for desire to sometimes get things right. Hence, by Anscombe's lights, desires may be described as two-valued, such that there are cases in which a desire may be said to get things wrong and cases in which a desire may be said to get things right. This suggests that desires have some kind of correctness-conditions, which determine when a desire can be said to get things right. But since the cases in which a desire gets things wrong or right do not correspond with those cases in which the propositional content of a desire is true or false, the correctness-conditions of the attitude of desire (whatever they happen to be) cannot be identical to the truth-conditions of its propositional content.

One very natural way of understanding the claim that the good is the object of desire is to say that a desire is felicitous just in case its object is an instance of the good. Rephrased in the language of propositional attitudes, we may say that a desire is felicitous just in case the truth of its propositional content is a realisation of the good. For example, desiring that I will leave work at 2pm is felicitous just in case the truth of the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm”, is a realisation of the good. However, some caution is required here. The present claim is not that desiring that I will leave work at 2pm is felicitous only if I do leave work at 2pm; to wit, it is not necessary that the propositional content of the desire be true in order for the desire to be felicitous. Rather, it is only necessary that, were the propositional content true, it would be a realisation of the good. This comports with Anscombe's observation that “goodness is ascribed to wanting in virtue of the goodness (not the actualisation) of what is wanted.”

In other words, the felicity-conditions of a desire should not be confused with its satisfaction-conditions. The satisfaction-conditions of desiring that I will leave work at 2pm just are the conditions under which the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm” is true. However, if my leaving work at 2pm is not an instance of the good—because, let us suppose, it would involve my leaving an important project uncompleted—then desiring that I will leave work at 2pm is not felicitous even if I do leave work at 2pm. Thus, desiring that I leave work at 2pm may be infelicitous even if the satisfaction-conditions of the desire have been met. Moreover, desiring that I will leave work at 2pm may be felicitous even if the satisfaction-conditions of the desire have not been met; to wit, even if the proposition “I will leave work at 2pm” is false. For example, if my leaving work at 2pm is a realisation of the good—because, let us suppose, it would allow me to spend some quality time with my family—then desiring that I leave work at 2pm is felicitous even if I do not leave work at 2pm. The upshot is that the felicity-conditions of desiring that I will leave work at 2pm, when construed along Anscombean lines, are different from the satisfaction-conditions of desiring that I will leave work at 2pm.

Let us take stock of what we have seen thus far. First, we noted that although the propositional content of desire has truth-conditions, just like the propositional content of belief, the attitude of desire is ordinarily assumed to lack a truth-value. Using the label 'felicity-conditions' to refer to the correctness-conditions of an attitude (in contradistinction from the correctness-conditions of the propositional content of an attitude), we may say that the felicity-conditions of a desire, assuming that it has felicity-conditions, do not correspond with the truth-conditions of its propositional content. Moreover, I have argued that preserving the Anscombean thesis that the good is the object of desire entails that desires have some kind of correctness-conditions.

Introducing: Felicity Conditions

2010-10-04T03:00:00.005Z

Beliefs, and desires are widely regarded as examples of propositional attitudes; relational mental states connecting a person to a proposition. Examples of propositions include: “It is raining outside”, and “I will leave work at 2pm”. Examples of propositional attitudes include: believing that it is raining outside, and desiring that I will leave work at 2pm. As their name suggests, propositional attitudes are typically conceived of as being made up of two components: a proposition, which may either be true or false, and an attitude or mode of entertaining that proposition. I have reservations about the claim that beliefs and desires always involve relations between persons and propositions. I hold that on at least some occasions, they may involve relations between persons and actual objects or states of affairs. However, I will not argue for that conclusion here. Instead, I will simply adopt the standard philosophical practice of describing beliefs and desires as propositional attitudes.

Let us say that the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm” is true just in case I do leave work at 2pm, and false otherwise. According to the standard view, I may both believe that I will leave work at 2pm and desire that I will leave work at 2pm. Thus, both beliefs and desires are attitudes that may be taken towards a proposition—i.e., a truth-value bearing item. However, while the belief that I will leave work at 2pm is ordinarily deemed true when the proposition, “I will leave work at 2pm”, is true, and ordinarily deemed false when the aforementioned proposition is false; the desire that I will leave work at 2pm is not ordinarily deemed true when the proposition “I will leave work at 2pm” is true, nor is it ordinarily deemed false when the aforementioned proposition is false. In fact, the categories of truth and falsity are not ordinarily taken to have application to desires.

If the preceding observation regarding desires is right, then it does not follow from the fact that the content of a propositional attitude (which we are, for the purposes of the present blog post, assuming to be a proposition) has a truth-value that the attitude itself has a truth-value. We may accommodate this claim by distinguishing between the correctness-conditions of the propositional content of a propositional attitude and the correctness-conditions of the attitude itself. Hence, we may say that while the propositional content of a desire has truth-conditions, the desire itself does not. In this regard, desires differ from beliefs, since both the propositional content of a belief and the belief itself may be true or false.

In order to avoid confusion, it would be helpful to have different terms to refer to the correctness-conditions of the content of a propositional attitude and the correctness-conditions of the attitude itself. Since we are assuming that the content of all propositional attitudes are propositions, and since all propositions have truth-conditions, let us refer to the correctness-conditions of the propositional content of a propositional attitude as the truth-conditions of the propositional attitude. Moreover, let us refer to the correctness-conditions of the attitude itself as the felicity-conditions of the propositional attitude. The distinction between truth-conditions and felicity-conditions will provide us with the theoretical machinery we need to characterise the aforementioned contrast between beliefs and desires; namely, that although both beliefs and desires have truth-value bearing propositional content, only the former is ordinarily conceived of as being either true or false. We may say that in the case of beliefs, the felicity-conditions of the attitude are identical to the truth-conditions of the attitude's propositional content. Thus, not only is the propositional content of the belief true or false, but so is the belief itself.

It is not part of our ordinary linguistic practice to talk about the propositional content of a propositional attitude. The notion of propositional content is a theoretical one. Hence, it seems plausible that when we ordinarily talk about beliefs being true or false, we have their felicity-conditions (i.e., the correctness-conditions of the attitude) in mind. This assumption would also go some way towards explaining why we do not ordinarily conceive of desires as being true or false. While the propositional content of a desire has a truth-value, the desire itself does not. Thus, the felicity-conditions of a desire—if it has felicity-conditions at all—are not identical to the truth-conditions of its propositional content. Since our ordinary intuitions about which propositional attitudes have a truth-value track the propositional attitude's felicity-conditions (rather than the truth-conditions of its propositional content), the fact that the felicity-conditions of desire are not identical to the truth-conditions of its propositional content would explain why we do not ordinarily conceive of desires as true or false.

To recap, we have distinguished between the truth-conditions of a propositional attitude and the felicity-conditions of a propositional attitude. The former, we have identified with the correctness-conditions of the propositional content of a propositional attitude and the latter we have identified with the correctness-conditions of the attitude itself. Moreover, we noted that our ordinary intuitions about which propositional attitudes are true or false seem to correspond with the felicity-conditions of a propositional attitude, rather than with the truth-conditions of its propositional content.

Empirical Psychology on Free Will

2010-06-29T01:42:00.002+01:00

Theoretical and Practical Transitions

2010-06-22T12:46:00.004+01:00

Let us refer to all belief-yielding psychological transitions (e.g., the transition from a perceptual experience to a belief) as theoretical transitions, and all intention-yielding psychological transitions (e.g., the transition from a desire to an intention) as practical transitions. A transition qualifies as psychological, on the present view, only if it has representational content. The distinction between theoretical and practical transitions hinges on the recognition of two distinct kinds of representational content. The first is associated with psychological states that represent a certain state of affairs as being the case and are legitimately deemed faulty if the state of affairs in question is not the case. The second is associated with psychological states that do not represent a certain state of affairs as being the case and which are therefore not deemed faulty if the state of affairs in question is not the case.

I maintain that a psychological state is good just in case it is not legitimately deemed faulty, and bad otherwise. The conditions under which a specific psychological state is legitimately deemed good or bad constitutes that state’s correctness conditions. Thus, I hold that goodness and badness (i.e., goodness conditions) are the primary and most basic form of correctness conditions for a psychological state. Moreover, I hold that truth is simply one instance of the good, relative to psychological states that represent a certain state of affairs as being the case (i.e., those that fall under the umbrella of theoretical transitions). A psychological state represents truly just in case it represents a particular state of affairs as being the case and the state of affairs in question really is the case.

Because of the important role played by the notion of truth in our ordinary discourse, we often find it necessary to speak about truth in ways that set it apart from other forms of goodness. Truth is primus inter pares. In this regard, the concept of truth is analogous to the concept of the human; for while human beings are considered a type of animal, the important role played by the notion of the human in our ordinary discourse often requires that we speak about humans in ways that set them apart from all other animals. Hence, just as we may juxtapose humans and animals, although strictly speaking, humans are a type of animal), so too we may juxtapose the true and the good (although, strictly speaking, truth is a type of goodness).

The juxtaposition of humans and animals is legitimated by the fact that humans have a special characteristic (i.e., the ability to respond to reasons as such) that all other animals lack, and this characteristic plays a special role in our ordinary discourse. Similarly, the juxtaposition of truth and goodness is legitimated by the fact that truth has a special characteristic (i.e., its identification with states of affairs that are the case) that all other forms of goodness lack, and this characteristic plays an important role in our ordinary discourse. Hence, we may refer to the correctness conditions of a psychological state that represents a particular state of affairs as being the case as truth conditions, and I will describe all other psychological states as having goodness conditions.

It is often observed that the specification of the content of a perceptual experience or perceptual belief is worded in terms of a that-clause. One may, for instance, see that there is an apple on the table, or believe that there is an apple on the table. By contrast, the specification of the content of a desire or intention typically takes the form of a to-clause. One may desire to eat an apple or intend to eat an apple. However, while such grammatical details are suggestive, they are far from conclusive. For example, Myles Brand observes that the content of an intention may often be specified in terms of a that-clause; a claim he illustrates with the example: “Richard intends that he vote in the next election.”(Italics mine)

I believe that a more philosophically interesting way of unpacking the difference between theoretical and practical transitions is to note that an ideal rational agent that holds a belief (i.e., a psychological state resulting from a theoretical transition) to the effect that S obtains, when confronted with conclusive evidence that S does not obtain, will revise her belief, whereas an ideal rational agent with an intention (i.e., a psychological state resulting from a practical transition) to bring S about, may retain this intention even in the face of conclusive evidence that S does not obtain.

One upshot of the claim that theoretical and practical transitions have different kinds of content is that the content of a theoretical transition could not feature in a practical transition, and vice versa. Dennis Stampe commits himself to such a view when he notes that it is impossible to transition from the propositional content of a belief to the content of an intention. He writes:

Starting from It would be good if p, and perhaps Only my doing A will make it the case that p, by what logic do we pass to I will do A? All that seems to follow is that It would be good to do A—and this neither denotes an action nor the content of an intention; further premises would yield I ought to do A, but to believe that is not to do A. We confront a logical gap. And it cannot, it seems, be bridged by the addition of further beliefs.

Here, Stampe observes that practical and theoretical transitions are distinct types of transitions with their own respective types of content. Any attempt to reduce the content of an intention (or desire) to that of a belief or judgement is therefore moribund. In the discussion that follows I take Stampe’s observation, along with the definition of practical transitions as intention-yielding, seriously. A transition that is belief-yielding, but which happens to have practical content (i.e., happens to be about some action the agent is performing) does not qualify as a practical transition on this view.

On Types of Explanation: Ben’s Reply to Me

2010-06-14T13:40:00.002+01:00

The following is Ben's reply to my post, On Types of Explanation: My Reply to Ben.

Thanks for the reply. Let me clarify what I meant to say in my own post about two points germane to the issue between us.

First, I did not mean to suggest that there cannot be different kinds of explanation, where a difference in kind marks, say, a difference in the sorts of considerations that fill in explanatory gaps (e.g., law-governed particles vs. psychological states). Nor did I mean to rule out differences in kinds of explanation where this marks the fact that there are different standards involved (e.g., due to differences in the background understanding of the recipient of the explanation). This last point is relevant to the issue of whether justification is a kind of explanation, which I will return to below. What I did want to stress is that these differences need not mark different concepts of explanation (e.g., folk-psychological vs. scientific). I did not mean to say, on the one hand, that there is only one type of explanation, and then, on the other, speak of different kinds of explanation. What I wanted to say is that there is one concept and different ways of falling under it.

I think this is all compatible with saying that our scientific practices and folk-psychological practices of explaining phenomena in the world appeal to different ‘storehouses’ of explanans. What I want to insist on is that the activity of explaining is in all cases formally similar (the explanation is offered by one who aims to thereby plug a gap in someone’s understanding). The appeal to different sorts of information does not make different kinds of explanations different in this regard. And neither does a difference in what it takes to plug the gap in understanding. One reason why I think this picture is helpful is that it allows us to explain differences in types of agent (e.g., non-rational vs. rational; reasons-responsive vs. responsive to reasons as such) according to differences in parameters on adequate explanation.

The second point I would like to clarify has to do with justification. By a 'justified agent' you take me to refer to the agent the explanation is about--as you put it, the explanandum. But--and this is crucial here--in some cases this agent may also be the recipient of the explanation. So we may speak of a 'justified agent' in the following two senses, call them third personal and first personal.

From the third personal point of view, we speak of an agent as justified when we can articulate an explanation of her behavior that appeals to her take on the situation and that plugs a gap in our normatively-loaded background understanding—i.e., a background understanding that includes things like norms governing formations of beliefs and intentions. When we speak of a 'justified agent' from the third personal point of view, this does not entail (i) that the agent can recognize reasons as such nor (ii) that the agent has a justifying reason for her behavior. Presumably, the agent has at least a motivating reason (a consideration that that motivates her behavior) and our explanation is in terms of this (e.g., what plugs the gap is the agent’s supposed representation of an approaching poacher). Moreover, as we are the sorts of agents who can receive explanations that fill gaps in a normatively-loaded background understanding--i.e., justifications--the agent's motivating reason may justify her behavior to us. But the agent herself need not have a justifying reason because she need not be the sort of agent who can have a normatively-loaded background understanding.

In the first personal case, a 'justified agent' is both the object and recipient of the explanation of her behavior. So the distinction between the one performing the behavior and the one normatively situating the explanation of this performance collapses. An explanation of one's own behavior that satisfies a gap in a normatively-loaded understanding of the situation entails that the agent (i) can recognize reasons as such and (ii) has a justifying reason for the behavior.

So in the first personal case the object and recipient both are relevant to the standards in terms of which a proper justifying explanation is given. In the third personal case this is not so. And this difference between the two cases explains why the capacity for reflection is necessary for having justifying reasons. The 'justified agent' who first personally explains her behavior to herself by plugging a gap in her normatively-loaded background understanding--i.e., articulates a justifying reason for her behavior--manifests her capacity for reflection. We can say that she has a justifying reason. The 'justified agent' whose behavior is third personally explained does not necessarily manifest a capacity for reflection. And this is why this second agent might not have a justifying reason. Nevertheless, we can speak of the agent as justified because we can articulate a consideration that plugs a gap in our normatively-loaded background understanding when we look at things from the agent’s point of view. And we can assume that agents other than ourselves have justifying reasons because we can speak of them as justified in this third personal way and assume that they, like us, can receive justifying explanations. So my view does not commit me to a suspect solipsism.

Again, as we have discussed in earlier posts, this does not mean that we illicitly import desires or beliefs about the situation when considering the situation from the agent’s point of view. Rather, we take up what we assume to be the agent’s own psychological representations of the situation (though we can be wrong about what psychological states we suppose the agent to have). But given that we are the sorts of creatures who understand the world in terms of norms, we can situate the supposed representations of the agent in a normative context. Perhaps we can also abstract away from the normatively-loaded understanding through which we usually view the world. We might then articulate a mere explanatory reason, or mere motivating reason. I think this is plausible. But the point I want to insist on is that there seems to me to be a clear way in which we can articulate justifying reasons for other agents and not thereby commit ourselves to the claim that those agents have justifying reasons at all. The reason we can do these two things is that we can take up their perspective in the context of our own normatively-loaded understanding. Since the adopted perspective is theirs (including their supposed representation of the situation) it is apt to talk of the reasons being their reasons. But since the normative background is ours, it is at the same time apt to talk of them not having these reasons.

I hope this clarifies some of what I meant. Thinking about your remarks has helped me to get clearer on things in my own mind.

On Types of Explanation: My Reply to Ben

2010-06-05T14:09:00.007+01:00

The following is my reply to Ben's post, On Justification and Explanation: Ben's Reply to Me:

In your post, you express some reservations about my distinction between two types of explanation. I suspect that there is no canonical answer to the question: is there a single type of explanation? Usually, whether or not we decide to distinguish between two or more subclasses that fall under a general heading will depend on our goals and the level of specificity necessary for achieving them. You prefer to keep things general; restricting yourself to a single conception of explanation; one that applies unequivocally to all replies to why-questions.

However, I believe the question presently at hand demands a greater level of specificity than that offered by your broad account of explanation. Presumably, even you would concede that there are important differences between the two examples of explanation you mention; namely, an explanation of why water boils and an explanation of why a monkey climbs a tree. The explanation of why water boils only appeals to considerations that display the regularity characteristic of the type of laws described by the physical sciences. However, the explanation of why a monkey climbs a tree includes considerations that do not display the same kind of regularity – namely, psychological processes or events. Our folk psychology may be seen (inter alia) as a storehouse of criteria for the attribution of psychological states; it encodes norms governing psychological processes and events. No such storehouse is necessary for the explanation of water boiling; the special function served by our folk psychology has no bearing on such explanations. This, no doubt, constitutes an important difference between the two explanations; one that I believe is salient to the question of agency and our reason-giving practises.

Now, it seems to me that when you say that justification is a “special sort of explanation”, you thereby concede that there is more than one type of explanation. Consequently, there seems to be some tension between your claim that there is only one type of explanation and your claim that justification is a special kind of explanation. You take as your point of departure the claim that explanation is a matter of filling in gaps in the understanding. But this raises the question: gaps in whose understanding? Initially, your answer is gaps in the understanding of the person to whom the explanation is being given (as opposed to the person the explanation is about - i.e., the explanandum). This suggests one possible diagnosis of why it was tempting for you to conclude that the explanations of a monkey’s behaviour and the behaviour of water molecules are, in all salient respects, the same. After all, in both cases, there is a gap being filled in the understanding of the person to whom the explanation is given. Consequently, if the understanding of the person to whom the explanation is being given is the only salient factor vis-a-vis the kind of explanation given, then it would follow (from the fact that the person to whom an explanation is given is always an agent of a single broad type – namely, a rational agent) that there is only one type of explanation.

However, later in your post you seem to reject (albeit implicitly) the assumption that the person to whom an explanation is given is the only relevant factor vis-a-vis the type of explanation given. For example, you claim that in order to be justified, an agent must have the capacity to recognise reasons as such. Moreover, you take justification to be a type of explanation. But notice, if explanation is simply about filling in gaps in the understanding of the person to whom the explanation is being given, then there would be no need for a justified agent (i.e., the person that a particular explanation is about) to recognise reasons as such. Thus, your claim that justification requires that the justified agent (i.e., the explanandum) be able to recognise reasons as such entails that the person to whom a particular explanation is given is not the only salient factor vis-a-vis the type of explanation given. The upshot is that it does not follow from the fact that the explanation of a monkey’s behaviour and the explanation of the behaviour of boiling water both fill in gaps in someone’s understanding (namely, the person to whom the explanation is given), that the respective explanations are of the same kind.

Once we dispense with the offending assumption – namely, the assumption that the person to whom an explanation is given is the only determinant of the nature of an explanation – we are now in a position to recognise that the object of an explanation may also determine the nature of the explanation given. This brings us back to the point with which I began this post; namely, that since the object of explanation in the boiling water example lacks psychological states and the object of explanation in the monkey example possesses psychological states, the types of explanations at play in the two cases are different. I unpack this claim by noting that the first kind of explanation only appeals to considerations that display the regularity indicative of the laws described by the physical sciences, while the second kind of explanation - i.e., folk psychological explanations - appeals to considerations that fail to display the same kind of regularity - namely, psychological processes and events.

On Justification and Explanation: Ben's Reply to Me

2010-05-17T23:51:00.000+01:00

The following is Ben's response to my previous post, On Justification and Explanation: My Reply to Ben.

Thanks for the reply. It clears things up for me a bit. Let me offer the following remarks in response.

I intend to be using the terms 'justification' and 'explanation' with respect to reasons for action in a sense that is nicely captured by Raz in 'Reasons: Explanatory and Normative'. I'll quote from that paper:

[Reasons] are both normative and explanatory. They are normative in as much as they guide decision and action, and form a basis for their evaluation. They are explanatory in that when an action for a purpose occurs the purpose for which it is performed, the reason for the action as the agent sees things, explains its performance.

Raz goes on to argue that 'reasons' has two meanings. I agree, but I put the distinction in terms of explanation and justification instead of explanatory and normative.

By the way, I do not claim that these different meanings pick out different considerations. The same fact may both justify and explain--that is, one consideration can be both the purpose that explains an agent's action from that agent's perspective and it can guide performance of the action and serve as a basis for evaluation of that action (and the agent who guided her behavior on its basis). So the distinction between justifying reasons and explanatory reasons is not a distinction between different sorts of considerations.

I don't quite know what you mean to signal by a distinction between the folk psychological concept of explanation and the concept of explanation used by the sciences. But I do not want to make any sort of distinction like this. On my favorite view (cf., e.g., van Fraassen; Wright; Scriven) explanation is a matter of filling gaps in understanding. So a consideration explains when it answers a why-question. I am taken by the fact that explanations are given. And this presupposes that there is someone to give the explanation to. So what counts as a good explanation can depend on the needs of the one it is given to.

Why did the monkey jump into the tree? Because he saw the poacher coming through the bushes. Or: In order to grab the bananas that were in the tree. Why does water turn to steam when it reaches 100 degrees Celsius? Because the movement of the particles … The form of explanation is the same in both cases. I think this is the correct, general account of explanation.

As for justification, perhaps I am thinking of it as a special sort of explanation. It plugs a special sort of gap in the understanding. And in order to have this sort of gap in one’s understanding, one must have certain capacities—e.g., to recognize reasons as such. So where we have someone with these reflective capacities asking why an agent did something we can not only offer a consideration that explains why the agent did what he did but also why the cited consideration shows the behavior to be appropriately responsive to reasons. The why-question that signals a request for justification is situated in a normative context.

Why did the monkey jump into the tree? Because he saw the poacher coming through the bushes. This can both explain and justify. Given background assumptions about the monkey’s motivation to stay alive, the poacher’s goal of killing monkey, etc., it is intelligible in a special sense why the monkey jumped into the tree. This behavior is appropriate given the facts. What I have been insisting on is that the fact that he saw the poacher coming can explain the monkey’s behavior, both to us and to the monkey. But this fact cannot justify the monkey’s behavior to the monkey because the monkey cannot have the relevant sort of gap in the understanding. His perspective is not relevantly normative in that he does not guide his behavior on the basis of reasons as such. No fact can provide a basis for evaluation of behavior for him of the sort that justification involves. But it can for us because we do guide our behavior on the basis of reasons as such.

This brings me to perspective. When I say that we adopt the monkey’s perspective in judging that the fact that the poacher was approaching justified his jumping into the tree, I do not mean either (i) to deny that the monkey has a perspective of his own (this is what we adopt if we do things right) nor (ii) that we import our desires into the monkey’s perspective (again, insofar as we do things right). I mean that we adopt the monkey’s perspective, as we take it to be, which we can be wrong about, and this involves assuming his motivations, which, again, we can be wrong about. Think of this as the relevant background understanding, the gap in which is filled by the fact that is purported to be a reason. The answer to the question why the monkey jumped into the tree is only explanatory (and so also only justificatory) insofar as it fills a gap in understanding. The fact that the poacher was approaching can do this, on the assumption that the monkey represented this fact to himself and also that the monkey had the relevant motivations (e.g., not to be killed by the poacher, which we are assuming he recognized as a threat). If we are assuming that the monkey sees bananas but no poacher, then the fact that the poacher was approaching cannot explain (and so also cannot justify) his jumping into the tree. So my view allows that we can get it wrong and has something to say about what is wrong when things do go wrong.

Notice that my view can agree with you that a transition (e.g., from the representation of the poacher to an intention to jump into the tree) can be rationally assessable even if the agent making the transition cannot assess it. We seem to disagree about whether the transition is reason-providing for the agent. You say it is in that it provides the monkey with an entitlement. I say it depends on what sort of reason you have in mind. It provides the agent with an explanatory reason. But since the monkey cannot receive justifications, it cannot provide him with a justifying reason. Some of the disagreement may be only apparent, depending on how your view of entitlements vs. justifications lines up with my view of explanation vs. justification.

One last point about to-be-doneness and justification. I think it is correct that if there were no reflective creatures than there would be no justifications. There would be no one to receive the justifications if there were no one with the relevant gaps in the understanding. But this does not mean that the same considerations that do justify given the presence of reflective creatures fall out of the picture entirely. They could still explain, supposing that there were creatures that could be given the relevant sorts of explanation. Barring that, they could still motivate behavior in the sense necessary even for them to explain it. The lion can still recognize that eating his paw is not to be done, even if there is no one capable of posing the question why he did not eat his paw. If this amounts to the consideration making the behavior intelligible, in some sense of ‘intelligible’, then I am good with that. But on the assumption that there are no creatures intelligent enough to be given explanations (and so also justifications) then this consideration does not explain (or justify) anything because there is no gap in understanding to be filled by it.

On Justification and Explanation: My Reply to Ben

2010-05-10T14:22:00.011+01:00

What follows is my response to the questions posed by Ben in the comments following his post.

I’m not sure how you’re using the words ‘justification’ or ‘explanation’ here; these are terms of art and philosophers tend to define them in different ways. Moreover, on the way I’m inclined to use the word ‘explanation’, your question as to whether entitlement falls on the justification or explanation side of the divide does not lend itself to a straightforward answer. In fact, given my way of carving things up, the question would be somewhat ill-formed; the distinction between justification and explanation is simply not salient. Instead of talking about explaining a belief or action, I prefer to speak about making a belief or action intelligible. (The 'making intelligible' locution is meant to highlight the difference between the types of explanation implicated in our folk psychology, and that offered by the natural/physical sciences). The difference is not simply terminological. The philosophically interesting respects in which my preferred way of carving things up differs from your own may be seen in the following summary of the view I find most attractive.

When we ask why an agent believes such and such (at least in the sense of ‘why’ I presently have in mind), the question presupposes that the transitions that give rise to the belief are subject to certain norms relating to truth. Analogously, when we ask why an agent performs some action, the question presupposes that the transitions that give rise to the agent’s intentions are subject to certain norms relating to what ought to be done (what I refer to as ‘goodness-conditions’). I refer to both the norms relating to truth and goodness as ‘rational norms’. This way of putting things involves broadening the applicability of reason-talk to include more than the norms relating to truth. Moreover, I hold that a transition may be subject to a rational norm even if the agent engaged in the transition lacks the conceptual resources necessary to understand that norm. The upshot is that even the psychological transitions of animals may be subject to rational norms.

On the present view, a transition’s being subject to a rational norm does not entail or require that the agent performing the transition be able to assess whether or not that transition is rational. (Assessment is, of course, reserved for agents with the required conceptual capacities; namely, rational agents.) Thus, I distinguish between the conditions necessary for performing a transition that is rationally evaluable and the conditions necessary for evaluating a transition’s rationality. The first set of conditions are met by all agents with beliefs and intentions, while the second is met only by those agents that can reflect on (i.e., rationally evaluate) their beliefs or intentions. Moreover, it is only agents capable of evaluating their own beliefs and intentions that may be correctly described as ‘rationally responsible’. To say that an agent is rationally responsible is to say, not only that the agent’s beliefs or intentions, but also the agent herself is rationally evaluable. Thus, I also distinguish between the necessary conditions for an agent’s beliefs and intentions being rationally evaluable and the necessary conditions for an agent being rationally evaluable in the light of her beliefs and intentions. The latter are only met by rational agents.

To say that a transition is rational is, on the present view, to say that it is reason-providing. This reason provides the agent with an entitlement to beliefs or intentions based on that transition. When a suitably equipped agent comes to recognise her reasons as such, her entitlement (eo ipso) becomes a justification. Thus, a justification is what an entitlement becomes when an agent comes to recognise her reasons as reasons. In sum, I hold that the reasons that provide an agent with an entitlement to a certain belief or intention also constitute an agent’s justification just in case the agent recognises those reasons as reasons. The upshot is that the very reasons that constitute an agent’s entitlement may also constitute her justification; this leaves no room for a distinction between the kind of reasons that justify and kind that explain.

The preceding upshot – namely, that the account on offer leaves no room for the distinction between explanatory and justificatory reasons – may seem like a glaring omission. However, I believe that the intuitions that motivate the standard distinction between explanatory and justificatory reasons may be accommodated (without violence) by the distinction between theoretical and practical transitions. Time won’t allow me to fully unpack the view here. But the gist of it is that the content of theoretical transitions roughly corresponds with the kind of reasons that fall on the justificatory side of the traditional divide, and the content of practical transitions roughly corresponds with the kind of reasons that fall on the explanatory side of the traditional divide. Another way the point may be put (though it does not get things quite right) is to say that while theoretical transitions justify, practical transitions explain. This does not get things quite right since, as I noted above, I prefer to say that theoretical and practical transitions are salient to our respective attempts to render an agent’s beliefs and intentions intelligible. Both represent modes of folk-psychological explanation (which, again, must be contrasted with the types of explanations in the natural/physical sciences). In sum, I hold that the concepts of entitlement and justification (whether theoretical or practical in form) are explanatory concepts; they represent a fundamental part of our folk psychological attempts to render beliefs and intentions intelligible.

With regards to your second question, I believe that the notion of entitlement, like all normative notions, can only be applied by an agent equipped with the necessary concepts. But the question that presently concerns us is not who may apply a normative concept, but rather what a normative concept may have application to. I believe a certain state of affairs can be described as being good for a cat (in the most literal sense imaginable), even if the cat lacks the conceptual resources necessary to understand this fact or apply the concept of goodness in its own case or anyone else’s. Moreover, when we say that a certain state of affairs is good for a cat, we do not mean that it would be good for us if we were in the cat’s place. We mean it is good for the cat. For example, if I were in the corner of the room chewing on a freshly killed mouse, this state of affairs would not be good for me. But given the desires and needs of the cat, it may certainly be good for it. In short, when I say that “chewing on a freshly killed mouse” is good for the cat, I mean from the cat’s perspective (given the cat’s needs, beliefs and desires), not my own.

The need to distinguish between our perspective and that of an animal, whose beliefs and intentions we happen to be evaluating, becomes important when one considers that the evaluations in each case may actually be at odds. For example, a die-hard vegan may believe that it would be bad for her (or any other human being) to ingest the flesh of another animal and yet hold that it is good for a lion to do so. When the vegan says it is good for the lion to do so, she is not putting herself (with all her human capacities and desires) in the lion’s place, for if she were to do so, then whatever moral qualms she has about humans consuming animal flesh would continue to apply. Thus, her assessment of the lion cannot simply be a result of her projecting human capacities to the lion. Rather, she reflects on the lion’s needs, beliefs and desires (not her own) and concludes that the act of ingesting animal flesh is good (from the lion’s perspective. Moreover, reflecting on the lion’s perspective presupposes that it has one, and that this perspective belongs to the lion; not to the human being evaluating the lion’s actions.

The problem I have with your claim that talk of a lion’s reasons is simply metaphorical is that it threatens to obscure the above observations; it gives the impression that the lion really does not have a perspective, independent of the perspective of the human being evaluating the lion's beliefs or actions. This is why I emphasised that the human evaluator could get things wrong when she attempted to attribute certain beliefs and desires to an animal. The possibility that the human evaluator may be mistaken entails that there is something (independent of the human evaluator) that she could be mistaken about. Moreover, I maintain that the lion would continue to have a perspective even if there were no humans around to make evaluations based on it. But your view seems to entail that if all human beings died tomorrow, lions would no longer have a perspective from which certain states of affairs could be evaluated as good or bad. Of course, there would be no one around to carry out the evaluations, but that would not mean that ingesting wood chips and animal flesh would suddenly be seen as on a par by lions. Lions would continue to see ingesting wood chips as something not to be done (which, on my account, constitutes a certain state of affairs being represented as bad) and ingesting animal flesh as something to be done (which, on my account, constitutes a certain state of affairs being represented as good). In brief, when I say that a lion has a reason to stalk and kill a gazelle (for example, in order to feed its cubs), I am saying something about the lion, not about myself.

On Reasons and Animals: Ben's Reply to Me

2010-05-03T15:40:00.005+01:00

What follows is Ben's response to my previous post:

Thank you for paying such close attention to my comments and for such a thorough and thoughtful reply. Let me mention that I really do not want to deny that animals are agents (that would be absurd) or that we can give explanations of animal behavior using ‘reason’ in (one of) its ordinary meanings. That is, animals are properly and non-metaphorically spoken of as agents and as behaving intelligibly (i.e., in ways that make sense given certain considerations).

That said, I still have a complaint about your conclusion that the monkey’s transition of thought in Hurley’s case (from A is dominant over B and B is dominant over C to A is dominant over C) gives the monkey a reason to believe that A is dominant over C—or, as you take them to be equivalent, justifies the monkey’s belief that A is dominant over C.

You’ve brought out two nice distinctions in your last two posts: first, the distinction between responding to reasons and responding to reasons as such; second, the distinction between reasons-for-which and reasons-with-which. I assume that these are not identical distinctions, but they share something important in common. In both cases, it takes an extra capacity to be the sort of creature to which the latter terminology is applicable. Human beings but not all agents act for reasons as such, and the same is true with respect to reasons-with-which. And this is the case because human beings have the capacity for reflection. I think this is all important and true.

But I also think that it does not show that a transition of thought like the one in the monkey case is reason-giving for the monkey. This is the claim at issue. You say that the transition of thought is reason-giving, but you deny that the monkey acts on the recognition of a reason as such (and so also, I assume, you deny that the monkey acts with a reason). I agree that the monkey does not act on the recognition of a reason as such (or with a reason). But I deny that the transition of thought gives the monkey a reason. The reason that I deny this is that I do not think that the rationality of the transition (i.e., its intelligibility in response to the relevant considerations) gives the monkey anything. From the monkey’s perspective, nothing is more or less justified before or after the transition of thought. Equivalently: nothing is justified for the monkey.

I think there is a similarity between the inanimate object and the monkey. Neither the monkey nor the knife, say, can gain a reason on the basis of a transition of thought. The explanation of why this is so in each case reveals a difference between the monkey and knife. The knife cannot gain a reason based on a transition of thought because the knife cannot have thoughts. The monkey cannot gain a reason based on a transition of thought, I claim, because the monkey cannot have reasons in the relevant sense. The relevant sense is, by your own lights, that the monkey’s belief is justified.

Now I can see two ways of making sense of the claim that the monkey’s belief is justified. First, the belief may be justified for the monkey. But this, I claim, requires that the monkey be able to countenance a reason as such. And we both deny that. Second, the belief may be justified for us when we consider things from the monkey’s perspective. This is the view I tried to advocate for in my comment to your previous post. You quote a sentence from those comments to the effect that we project our deliberative perspective on the monkey when thinking about the intelligibility of the monkey’s behavior. I stand by this claim. And I don’t think that it ignores the distinction between the monkey and the knife. We might project on both, even if the one can have thoughts and the other cannot.

To press you further, I think that there is an important distinction missing from this discussion. We might cite a reason for the monkey’s behavior in the sense of a consideration that explains why the monkey did such-and-such. But this is not yet to say that the consideration justifies anything. A justifying explanation requires that the one to whom the explanation is given has the capacity to take up and evaluate the explanatory considerations. And the monkey cannot do this, I think. We can, I think, because we have the capacity to reflect on possible determining grounds of our behavior and choose between them—we have the capacity for reflection.

My view allows us to still account for the ordinary practice of saying things like the reason for which the monkey leapt into the tree was that there was a predator approaching, where ‘reason’ has justificatory force here. This explains the monkey’s behavior in terms that engage our rational, reflective capacities. When we think about the circumstances from the monkey’s point of view, we take the approaching predator to be a reason to jump into the tree, in the sense of a consideration that justifies doing this. We talk as though the monkey took this as a justifying consideration as well. But this talk is metaphorical. (The same goes for the transition of thought regarding dominance.)

What might not be metaphorical is talk that attributes an explanatory role to the consideration that the predator is coming. I think that is the case. But then this consideration does not give the monkey a reason in the sense you are after. You claim that reason-givingness involves justification. And explanation of the sort we have here does not justify anything to the monkey. The monkey is not a proper recipient of justifying explanations because the monkey cannot take them up and assess them in the right way. The monkey does not have the relevant capacity for reflection. We do have this capacity, and we also have the capacity to take up the monkey’s perspective from within our own deliberative point of view. And when we do this, the same considerations that explain things about the monkey’s behavior also justify this behavior to us. But the move from explanation to justification requires the capacity for reflection. And I want to insist that if the monkey does not have this capacity, then the monkey cannot be given a reason, where this involves justification. I also want to insist that this does not undermine the propriety of our talking about the monkey having a justification so long as we recognize that our language is in this case metaphorical.

The upshot is this: we can talk of the monkey having a reason for doing something in both a metaphorical and non-metaphorical sense. In the first case, it is metaphorical because we take reasons to be justifying and the monkey cannot receive justifications. In the second case it is not metaphorical because we take reasons to be explanatory and the monkey’s behavior is explained by certain considerations engaging the monkey’s motivational states and issuing in the relevant behavior. (In case you are worried that the two collapse because, say, a good explanation justifies, I should note that I don’t think the monkey is given an explanation of his behavior here, and for similar reasons—the monkey does not have the requisite capacities to receive this sort of explanation. So I suppose I would still take issue with the (perhaps weaker) claim that the monkey receives a reason, where this involves the monkey receiving an explanation. The sense in which I think the monkey receives a reason is that he is made aware of a consideration that engages his motivational states and issues in the relevant behavior. This reason both explains and justifies his behavior, but the explanation and justification are given to us, not to the monkey.)

One last point. You are right that we may be incorrect about why the monkey leapt into the tree. Perhaps it missed the predator but saw some food in the tree. So we might mistakenly attribute mental states to the monkey, and our ordinary linguistic practices are sensitive to this. But I don’t see how this bears on the issue of whether or not our talking as if the monkey gains a justification is metaphorical or not. If we misattribute a mental state to the monkey, this impugns both the claim that the relevant consideration is justifying and the claim that it is explanatory. If there is no representation of a predator to justify the leap into the tree, then there is equally no representation of a predator to engage the motivational states of the monkey. I don’t see a special problem for my view here.

On Reasons and Animals: My Reply to Ben

2010-04-26T14:17:00.006Z

Special thanks to Ben for his thoughtful feedback on my previous post (see comments). I concede that our ordinary linguistic practice often includes the metaphorical attribution of agency. But of course, that does not mean that such attributions are always metaphorical. For example, no one worth taking seriously (at least for the purposes of the present discussion) would say it is metaphorical in the case of fully competent human beings. So the question is, on which side of the divide does our agency-attributions to animals fall? Is it like our agency-attribution to inanimate objects, or is it more like our attributions to human beings?

Now there are clearly numerous respects in which animals are more like human beings than they are like inanimate objects. Hurley’s monkey, for example, has a heart, brain and haemoglobin bearing blood cells; as do we. But these points of similarity are not salient to the question at hand. Thus, in this post, my task will not be merely to show that animals are more like humans than they are like inanimate objects. That’s a given. Rather, it will be to show that they are similar to humans in ways that are salient to the question of agency. Consequently, when assessing my claims, one cannot simply ask if they are true; one must ask if they’re relevantly true. This is the question I wish to take up.

One striking difference between animals and inanimate objects is that the former are ordinarily assumed to possess motivational states while the latter are not. Moreover, the claim that animals possess motivational states is meant to be taken literally. This is a point made quite emphatically by Mary Midgley:

There is nothing anthropomorphic in speaking of the motivation of animals. It is anthropomorphic to call the lion the King of Beasts, but not to talk of him as moved, now by fear, now by curiosity, now by territorial anger. These are not the names of hypothetical inner states, but of major patterns in anyone’s life, the signs of which are regular and visible. Anyone who has to deal with lions learns to read such signs, and survives by doing so. Both with animals and with men, we respond to the feelings and intentions we read in an action, not to the action itself. (Midgley (1978), Beast and Man., pp. 105-6.)

I believe that the difference between animals and inanimate objects highlighted by Midgley is salient to the question of agency. In the knife case, the focus is on the event (the cutting of the hand). But in the animal case, the focus is on the animal’s inner (read: psychological) states. If one sees a lion walking towards you, it is important to be able to distinguish between whether it is being motivated by a desire to eat you or a desire to reunite with its pride that is gathered under a tree fifty feet behind you. Our folk psychology is what provides us with the tools we need to interpret the lion’s actions. But notice, we are not simply paying attention to the bodily movements of the lion, but also to the inner psychological states (e.g., the lion’s intentions), which we hope to opine by observing the bodily movements. Our concern is primarily with the lion’s psychological states since they will determine what the lion will do next. Moreover, while we may attempt to put ourselves in the lion’s shoes in order to help us opine what its intentions are, we nevertheless assume that these psychological states are real and that they belong to the lion.

The preceding claims are supported by a key assumption of any folk-psychological attempt to make sense of animal behaviour—namely, that when we attribute motives and intentions to animals, we may get things wrong. For example, we assume that it is possible for us to mistakenly conclude that the lion intends to reunite with its pride when it actually has its sights set on us; and this assumption entails that the lion’s inner states exist quite independently of our beliefs about them; that they are not simply hypothetical states we attribute to the lion. This does not seem to be true of inanimate objects, which occupy a very different place in our folk psychology. We do not, for example, think we can be mistaken about the motivations of an inanimate object. There is simply nothing to be mistaken about. I believe this difference suggests that while the motivations we attribute to inanimate objects are metaphorical, the same is not true in the case of animals. When we attribute a motive to an animal we typically take ourselves to be attributing something objectively real, something we may possibly be mistaken about.

I believe the above observations may reveal a difficulty with Ben’s alternative proposal. He writes:

We attribute rational agency to non-rational animals (and even inanimate objects) because we think about the relevant behavior/events (in these, but not necessarily all cases) by adopting the animal's (or object's) perspective from within our own first-personal point of view.

The problem with this proposal is that it overlooks what we ordinarily take to be an important difference between animals and inanimate objects. In the case of inanimate objects, like a knife, there is simply no perspective to adopt. The knife does not enjoy any representational states; it does not see, taste our experience the world in any way. It does not have desires, wants, or appetites. This is why talk of adopting a knife’s perspective can only be metaphorical. But animals, like Hurley’s monkey, are ordinarily assumed to have a perspective in the most literal sense imaginable. They enjoy representations of the world, and are plausibly assumed to be motivated by desires and appetites, and so on.

I hold that having motivational psychological states and being moved to act by them is sufficient for agency. Since the term agent, at least as it features in philosophical discussions, is a term of art, this definition may be seen as stipulative. Given the account of agency I favour (and one is of course free to suggest a better philosophical account), it follows from the conclusion of the preceding paragraph that animals may be agents (in a non-metaphorical sense). But terminological issues aside, the claim I actually set out to defend in my previous post has little to do with whether or not animals are agents and more to do with the concept of a reason and with what it means to be responsive to reasons. My contention is that there is an ordinary usage of the word ‘reasons’ that is consistent with the claim that animals may be responsive to reasons, and it is this usage of the word that I wish to subject to philosophical analysis.

In attempting to identify the ordinary usage of the word ‘reason’ that I have in mind, it may be helpful to distinguish between reasons-for-which an agent acts and the reasons-with-which an agent acts. The latter refers to considerations that an agent takes to be a justification for her carrying out a certain action. By contrast, let us say that the former refers to whatever motivates an agent to act. (Note: I may not be drawing this distinction in the same way others have.) When we specify the reasons-for-which an agent acts, there are typically two forms that our explanations take: We may say that a lion is walking towards me in order to devour me (an mode of explanation that emphasises the lion’s goals; think pull rather than push), or we may say the lion is walking towards me because it wants to devour me (a mode of explanation that cites specific desires that the lion possesses; think push rather than pull).

I believe that there is an ordinary and intuitive use of the word ‘reason’ according to which the following is true: to say that the lion approached the man because it desired to devour him is to give the lion’s reason for approaching the man. Likewise, to say that the lion approached the man in order to devour him is, again, to give the reason the lion approached the man. It is this usage of the word ‘reason’ that I am interested in preserving: reasons as reasons-for-which. I do not claim that it is the only usage of the word; I do not even claim that it is the only usage of the word that has a legitimate claim to being part of our ordinary linguistic practice. There may be multiple ordinary usages (i.e., meanings) of a single word. I only claim that it is a legitimate part of our ordinary linguistic practice (rather than my personal concoction), and it also happens to be a part of our ordinary linguistic practice that I wish my account of reasons and agency to preserve.

McDowell on Rational Animals

2010-04-22T11:08:00.002Z

In my previous post on this topic, I described Burge's alternative to M-rationalism. Following Burge, I hold that justification is not the only type of warrant. Moreover, consistent with Burge, I hold that a psychological transition need not be motivated by a higher order attitude that takes the transition as its object in order for that transition to provide that agent with a justification for beliefs based on that transition. However, I part ways with Burge by advocating a broader and more inclusive conception of reasons; one that has application not only to justification but also to entitlement. In a slogan: only reasons warrant. I wish to say that the transitive inference performed by Hurley’s monkey provides it with a reason that warrants the monkey’s inference-based belief. On this view, a transition may count as reason-conferring even if the agent lacks the conceptual resources necessary to recognise that it accords with a rational principle. This less restrictive conception of reasons has application to all potentially belief-yielding psychological transitions, not only the psychological transitions of rational animals (in the sense reserved for mature humans). In short, one does not have to be a rational animal to have a reason.

The broader and more inclusive conception of reasons presently on offer is consistent with that of John McDowell, who draws a distinction between “responsiveness to reasons” and “responsiveness to reasons as such”:

The notion of rationality I mean to invoke here is the notion exploited in a traditional line of thought to make a special place in the animal kingdom for rational animals. It is a notion of responsiveness to reasons as such. That wording leaves room for responsiveness to reasons, though not to reasons as such, on the other side of the division drawn by this notion of rationality between rational animals and animals that are not rational. Animals of many kinds are capable of, for instance, fleeing. And fleeing is a response to something that is in an obvious sense a reason for it; danger, or at least what is taken to be danger. If we describe a bit of behaviour as fleeing, we represent the behaviour as intelligible in the light of a reason for it. But fleeing is not in general responding to a reason as such. (Italics his)

Following McDowell, I reserve the title “rational animal” for those agents that have the capacity to conceive of reasons as such. What makes one a rational animal (in the sense reserved for mature human beings) is not the ability to possess reasons—for this is an ability shared by some non-rational animals—but the ability to recognise one’s reasons as reasons. However, as McDowell’s “fleeing” example illustrates, an agent does not have to be a rational animal in order to possess or be responsive to reasons simpliciter. Hence, a distinction is drawn between the necessary conditions for possessing reasons; conditions that do not require the possession of the relevant concepts; conditions that some non-rational animals can meet; and the conditions for having beliefs about one’s reasons; conditions that do require the possession of the relevant concepts; conditions that only rational animals can meet. One does not have to be a rational animal to have reasons; but one must be a rational animal to reflect on them.

This manner of speaking strikes me as more natural, from a terminological point of view, than that of Wallace and Burge. To say that a psychological transition is rational is, intuitively, to say something about that psychological transition. To say that an agent is a rational animal is, intuitively, to say something about that agent. But on the Wallace-Burge way of putting things, to say that a psychological transition is rational is actually to say something about the agent enjoying the transition. This is because both Wallace and Burge make the status of a psychological transition dependent on whether or not the agent enjoying the transition possesses certain conceptual capacities, a fact that I take to be independent of the nature of the transition itself. By contrast, the conception presently on offer makes a transition’s status as rational contingent on the transition’s non-arbitrary truth-conduciveness, and an agent’s status as rational contingent on the agent’s conceptual capacities. This preserves a clear distinction between the rational status of a transition and the rational status of an agent; providing us with at least the option of talking about the two independently, should we need to do so.

The need to speak of the rational status of a transition independently of the status of the agent performing it arises in the case of Hurley’s monkey. We can imagine circumstances in which inferences performed by Hurley’s monkey comply or fail to comply with the norms of rationality. It would therefore be useful to be able to talk about the rational status of such an inference even if we recognise that Hurley’s monkey is not a rational animal. Moreover, there may be instances in which there is simply insufficient empirical evidence available to determine whether or not a particular agent has the conceptual resources necessary to recognise reasons as such. It would therefore be useful to be able to talk about the rational status of a transition performed by an agent without having to take a stand on whether or not the agent is rational. As it happens, our ordinary linguistic practice already provides us with tools needed for such a task, for it is part of said practice to talk about the reasons that some nonhuman animal has to behave in such and such a manner or hold such and such a belief, while leaving fixed the question of whether or not that animal can respond to reasons as such. This brings us to the most straightforward motivation for adopting a conception of reason that has application to agents that cannot recognise their reasons as such, agents that may be entitled but not justified; to wit, such a conception comports with our ordinary linguistic practice.

10th Annual NYU-Columbia Grad Conference

2010-04-07T14:07:00.004Z

Saturday, April 10th
Held Auditorium, Room 304, Barnard Hall (3rd Floor),
Columbia University

9.30 AM Breakfast, served on-site

10.15 AM Aristotle's Identity Theory of Truth
Sam Baker (Princeton)
Commentator: Jon Simon (NYU)

11.30 AM Might Intentions be Reasons?
Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin (UC Riverside)
Commentator: Avery Archer (Columbia)

12.45 PM Lunch, served on-site

2.00 PM Twin Causes
Jeff Engelhardt (Georgetown)
Commentator: Marco Nathan (Columbia)

3.15 PM Saving Ordinary Counterfactuals
Daniel Berntson (Princeton)
Commentator: Martin Glazier (NYU)

4.30 PM Coffee break

5.00 PM Defeasibility and Skepticism
Roger White (MIT)

For further information, including directions, please see our website at: www.philcolumbia.com/gradconf

All questions can be directed to gradconf@philcolumbia.edu

Burge's Alternative to M-rationalism

2010-04-03T13:21:00.004Z

In my previous post, I presented a number of objections to the M-rationalist account suggested by R. J. Wallace. An alternative to Wallace's account is provided by Tyler Burge, who maintains that “a norm need not be understood or intentionally adhered to by the individual that it applies to or governs.” By Burge’s lights, the inference performed by Hurley’s monkey may be described as governed by the principle of transitivity even though the monkey performing the inference lacks the concept of transitivity and is not guided in its cognitive activity by its recognition of the concept. Hence, Burge’s slogan: “norms need not guide.” If we assumed that being governed by a rational norm is sufficient for a psychological transition to be rational (i.e., reason-conferring), then Burge’s account of what it means for a psychological process to be governed by a rational principle would entail that the transitive inference of Hurley’s monkey is a rational transition. However, as we shall soon see, things are not so simple on the Burgean account.

Burge distinguishes between two types of epistemic warrant; entitlement and justification. Regarding the former, he writes:

Individuals can be epistemically entitled to a belief without having reasons warranting the belief, without having the conceptual repertoire necessary to have relevant reasons for the belief, and without having the concepts needed to understand or even think the entitlement.

By contrast, Burge defines justification as “warrant by reason that is conceptually accessible on reflection to the warranted individual.” By his lights, Hurley’s monkey may be entitled to its inference-based belief. But insofar as Hurley’s monkey lacks the conceptual resources necessary to recognise that the inference is generalisable, it does not have a justified inference-based belief. And herein lays the rub. Burge only applies the label “reasons” to warrants that are conceptually accessible to the warranted agent—i.e., justifications. The upshot is that while Hurley’s monkey is entitled to its inference-based belief, it does not have reasons for this belief.

In this respect, Burge appears to be on the same page (albeit not the identical paragraph) as the Wallace. When Wallace conceives of a rational norm “governing” a psychological transition, he specifically has something akin to Burge’s notion of justification in mind. By contrast, when Burge conceives of a rational norm “governing” a psychological transition, he has not only justification but also entitlement in mind (the latter failing to even enter Wallace’s consideration). Thus, we have two different conceptions of what it means to be “governed” by a rational principle, the first (due to the Wallace) confined to transitions that take place within the space of justifications and the second (due to Burge) that includes transitions that take place within the space of entitlements.

Apart from Burge’s introduction of the notion of entitlements, the differences highlighted thus far between the two thinkers strike me as primarily terminological. Insofar as Hurley’s monkey lacks the appropriate concepts, both thinkers are committed to saying that it lacks reasons for its inference-based belief and both thinkers are ultimately committed to denying that the monkey’s inference-based belief is justified. However, Burge goes beyond Wallace in identifying a category of epistemic warrant that the latter simply fails to consider; namely, entitlement. Consequently, Burge has the resources to say that the inference-based belief of Hurley’s monkey is warranted, while Wallace does not.

There is also a substantive difference in the conception of justification adhered to by both thinkers. According to Wallace, a psychological transition is reason-conferring only if the agent engages in the transition because she recognises that it accords with a rational norm. By contrast, Burge only requires that the agent possess the conceptual resources necessary to recognise that the psychological transition is generalisable; it is not necessary that the agent engage in the transition because she recognises that the transition is generalisable or accords with a rational norm. Thus, Burge's account lacks the motivational implications of Wallace's account.

Criticisms of M-rationalism

2010-03-13T17:05:00.005Z

In my previous post, I adumbrated the Motivational Rationalist (henceforth, M-rationalist) objection to my claim that one may instantiate a rational transition even if one lacked the concept of a rational transition. In the present post, I will limn a few criticisms of M-rationalism. Specifically, I will argue that M-rationalism can preserve our quotidian intuitions—e.g., entail that most of the transitions we would ordinarily take to be rational are rational—only if it is able to accommodate the possibility that many (if not most) of the inferences we would putatively regard as rational are not motivated by a belief to that end. But this does not seem to be a condition that M-rationalism can fulfil. To see why this is so, consider the following example:

The Unreflective Inference Example:
Mark is talking on the phone and is informed by his girlfriend, Jessica, that she will be arriving at 7:30pm that evening, and that his best friend, Rick, will be arriving a few hours after her. After hanging up the phone, Mark’s roommate asks him if Rick will be getting in before 7:00pm that evening. Without much hesitation Mark says no. I maintain that in the typical case, Mark does not form the belief that the inference he performs accords with the principle of transitivity and, a fortiori, no such belief motivates him to make the inference. In fact, Mark may not have formed any belief that takes as its object the particular (token) inference he performs. When his roommate poses the question the answer may simply come to Mark, without any accompanying beliefs about the inference itself. Presumably, Mark is aware of the content that forms the premises of the inference: the fact that his girlfriend will be arriving after 7:30pm, the fact that his best friend will be arriving after his girlfriend, and the fact that 7:00pm is earlier than 7:30pm. However, I wish to allow that he may have no beliefs about the inferential pattern in which this content features; for example, that the inferential pattern accords with the principle of transitivity or some unspecified rational norm. On this score, I hold that an inference-based belief may be very much like a perception-based belief; neither the inference nor the perceptual experience need feature as the object of some higher-order belief in order for the agent to have a belief based on that inference or perceptual experience.

Whether motivated by the relevant belief or not, I wish to say that Mark’s inference constitutes a rational transition; it provides Mark with a reason for his inference-based belief that Rick will be arriving after 7:00pm. But according to the Token M-rationalist, Mark’s inference is a rational transition only if it is motivated by his belief that it is generalisable. However, it is not immediately clear that Mark has the belief that the particular inferential token accords with a rational principle or, a fortiori, that such a belief motivates Mark to perform the inference. In fact, if one were to ask Mark if his inference was motivated by the belief that it is generalisable, he may very well respond by saying that he had not given the matter any thought. If we were to take such a reply from Mark at face value, we would have to conclude that Mark had not formed the relevant belief and that it was therefore unavailable to motivate his inference. Consequently, the Token M-rationalist would be forced to say that Mark’s inference fails to constitute a rational transition. But this strikes me as highly counterintuitive.

It should be clear that the preceding argument has some force against Token M-rationalism. However, it seems to have less force against Type M-rationalism. If we assume that having the concept of a particular inferential transition entails having the belief that transitions of that type are generalisable, then the fact that Mark has the concept of a transitive inference entails that he has the relevant belief.

However, Type M-rationalism is still saddled with the following two difficulties. First, it significantly narrows the scope of application of Wallace’s distinction between inferences that are motivated by a rational principle and inferences that merely correspond with a rational principle. Presumably, Wallace intended that the distinction be applied on a case by case basis, so that a single agent, Mark, could perform a transitive inference that was rationally motivated on one occasion and then perform a transitive inference that was not rationally motivated on another (future) occasion. However, Type M-rationalism runs into difficulties when it tries to accomodate this aspect of Wallace’s distinction. If we assume that the motivating belief is a standing belief, then it should be available to motivate all of the inferences that Mark performs once he has acquired the concept of a transitive inference.

Moreover, Type M-rationalism simply fails to provide us with the theoretical resources we would need to draw any possible distinction between those cases in which a particular inference is motivated by a standing belief and those occasions when it is not. The upshot is that an agent either has all transitions of a certain type motivated by a standing belief (assuming that the relevant standing belief is present) or she has no transitions of that type motivated by a standing belief (assuming that the relevant standing belief is absent). While this allows for the intelligibility of Wallace’s distinction when it is construed in terms of a contrast between a rational agent (equipped with the relevant concepts) and a non-rational agent, it does not allow for such a distinction with respect to a single rational agent at different times. However, this implication seems to fly in the face of Wallace’s aims in introducing the distinction.

Second, there remains a lacuna in the Type M-rationalist argument. Recall, the Type M-rationalist maintains that any agent may be ascribed a standing belief that a particular transition is generalisable simply in virtue of having the concept of that transition. I am largely sympathetic to this claim. However, the Type M-rationalist wants to make the further claim that the standing belief is what motivates the agent to complete the relevant inference. However, it is not immediately clear that this is so. The Type M-rationalist may have shown that there is a standing belief available, but she has not shown that it motivates the agent to complete the inference. Moreover, it seems that the question of whether or not it is the standing belief that does the motivating is an empirical rather than conceptual question. Once we recognise that it is possible (not only conceptually but also empirically) for a particular inferential pattern to be instantited without the belief that the inferential pattern in generalisable, it becomes an empirical question whether or not that inferential pattern is motivated by such a belief on a given occasion. This represents a significant challenge to Type M-rationalism since it makes the plausibility of the thesis hostage to future scientific investigation. Should future investigation reveal that it is generally the case that our unreflective inferences are not motivated by a standing belief, then Type M-rationalism would entail that such inferences fail to constitute rational transitions.

To recap, I have argued that M-rationalism (in both of its forms) faces a challenge when it comes preserving our ordinary intuitions about which transitions are rational. In the case of Token M-rationalism, the objection is much more straightforward. Although we would ordinarily regard unreflective inferences, like that performed by Mark, to be reason-conferring, Token M-rationalism seems to entail that such inferences are not rational transitions. In the case of Type M-rationalism, whether or not it is able to accommodate cases like that of Mark will depend on future scientific investigation. Should we discover that the inferences of mature humans are motivated by a standing belief that they are generalisable, all is well. But if we were to discover that this is not so, then Type M-rationalism would have the highly counterintuitive consequence that such inferences are not rational transitions.

I believe that it is a weakness for a philosophical theory to have its plausibility be contingent in this way. At best, we are forced to wait until all the facts are in before we can endorse the theory, and at worse, one begins to suspect that this contingency is merely a symptom of a deeper ailment—namely, that the theory fails to capture what is most fundamental about the concepts it sets out to explain.

The M-Rationalist Objection

2010-03-08T12:09:00.005Z

In my previous post I argued that one may instantiate a transitive inference even if one lacks the concept of a transitive inference. In this respect, I hold that transitive inferences are not like Davidson's conception of belief; for according to Davidson one can only have a belief if one also has the concept of a belief. However, as Ben points out in his comments, the claim that an agent can instantiate a transitive inference without the concept of a transitive inference falls short of the claim I wish to defend—namely, that an agent may instantiate a rational transition even though that agent lacks the concept of a rational transition. One may resist this further step by denying that the transitive inference performed by Hurley’s monkey is a rational transition. This strategy may seem attractive if one buys into the conception of a rational transition suggested by the following passage, due to R. Jay Wallace:

To fix terms, let us say that a process of thought is an instance of reasoning or ratiocination just in case it is governed by the principles or norms of rationality. To say that a principle or norm governs a process of thought is in turn to make an explanatory claim: it is to say, not just that the process of thought is in accordance with the rational principle or norm, but that the process of thought occurs because the person believes it to be in accordance with the principle or norm. [Italics his]

By Wallace’s lights, a psychological transition can only be said to be governed by the principle of transitivity if the agent engages in that transition because she believes it accords with that principle. But an agent can believe that a psychological process accords with the principle of transitivity only if that agent possesses the relevant conceptual resources. Consequently, if an agent lacks the conceptual resources to believe that a particular psychological transition accords with the principle of transitivity, then that agent could not perform an inference that is governed by that principle. If we assume that a psychological transition is rational only if it is governed by a rational principle, then Wallace’s account of what it means for a thought process to be governed by a rational principle entails that a transition is rational only if the agent performing the transition believes it to be such, and is motivated to engage in the transition by that belief. I will refer to his view as Motivational Rationalism (henceforth, M-rationalism). Roughly, M-rationalism amounts to the following claim:

M-rationalism
A psychological transition is rational only if the agent is motivated to complete the transition by her belief that it accords with a rational principle.

Significantly, I have unpacked Wallace’s use of the word ‘because’ in motivational terms. My motivation for doing so has to do with the overall aim of Wallace’s paper; namely, to impugn the Humean thesis that reasons cannot motivate. This aim suggests that Wallace is primarily concerned with motivation and that the ‘because’ he has in mind is motivational. This conclusion is further corroborated by the paragraph immediately following the passage quoted above, in which Wallace writes:

In these terms, the dispute between the Humean and the rationalist is a dispute about the capacity of rational principles or norms to contribute to explanations of motivation. The rationalist holds that such rational principles have a primary role to play in the explanation of motivation, that psychological processes which originally give rise to motivation can be processes which are governed—in the sense I have specified—by the principles or norms of reason.

There are at least two ways of interpreting the necessary condition implicated in the above definition of M-rationalism. The most natural reading is to see M-rationalism as requiring that the agent be motivated to complete some transition, T, by her belief that T accords with a rational principle. On this reading, T itself must feature as the object of the motivating belief. We may refer to this view as Token M-rationalism:

Token M-rationalsim
A psychological transition, T, is rational only if the agent is motivated to complete T by the belief that T accords with a rational principle.

However, we may see M-rationalism as imposing the weaker requirement that the agent have the belief that transitions of a certain type accord with a rational principle, while leaving open whether or not the agent has a belief about the particular transition in question. We may refer to this second weaker reading as Type M-rationalism:

Type M-rationalsim
A psychological transition, T, is rational only if the agent is motivated to complete T by the belief that transitions of type Y accord with a rational principle and T is a transition of type Y.

The distinction between Token and Type M-rationalism is not one that Wallace draws. But textual evidence suggests that he is committed to something along the lines of Token M-rationalism.

According to M-rationalism (in both its Token and Type variations), the transitive inference performed by Hurley’s monkey fails to constitute a rational transition. In future posts I will highlight some of the difficulties with M-rationalism.

Rational Transitions and Hurley’s Monkey

2010-02-18T15:55:00.004Z

I believe that an agent may instantiate a rational transition even though that agent lacks the concept of a rational transition. In support of this claim, I will be exploiting the example due to Susan Hurley (see below).

In general, the distinction between possessing the concept of a certain state of affairs and instantiating that state of affairs is relatively straightforward. Consider, for example, the concept of a mammal. One could not plausibly be in possession of the concept without knowing that mammals are furry, warm-blooded animals that nurse their young. However, one may instantiate mammal-hood—i.e., by being a furry, warm-blooded animal that nurses its young—even if one does not know that mammals are furry, warm-blooded animals that nurse their young. Analogously, I maintain that it is possible to instantiate a rational transition even if one does not possess the concept of a rational transition. In the account that follows, I will attempt to sketch and motivate a conception of rational transitions that can accommodate the above intuitions.

To say that a psychological transition is rational is, by my lights, to say that it is reason-conferring; it is to say that the agent has a reason for beliefs based on that transition. I hold that a plausible account of a rational transition must be able to accommodate the distinction between possessing the concept of a rational transition, on the one hand, and instantiating a rational transition, on the other. We may motivate this claim by considering what I take to be an example of a rational transition—namely, a transitive inference. In order to have the concept of a transitive inference one must believe that such inferences may be employed in different, but logically similar, contexts. In other words, one must believe that it is generalisable. However, an agent may instantiate a transitive inference even though that agent lacks such a belief. This is illustrated by an example due to Susan Hurley, who describes the following empirical possibility:

An intentional agent’s reasons for action can be bound to specific contexts and not generalise; there can be islands of practical rationality. For example, a primate could have reasons in social contexts that she cannot generalise to nonsocial but logically similar contexts. Suppose a monkey observes that conspecifics A is dominant over B and that B is dominant over C and, never having observed A and C together, registers that A is dominant over C, and is able to use this information in instrumentally appropriate ways in relation to various goals. Nevertheless, she might be unable to generalise the ability to make transitive inferences to foraging contexts, such as: tree A has more fruit that tree B, which has more than tree C, so tree A has more fruit that tree C. Evolution might have conferred the ability to make transitive inferences in social contexts, if it was most valuable there, without conferring the conceptual abilities needed to transfer it readily to other contexts (Hurley [2003], "Animal action in the Space of Reasons", pp. 238-239).

The lesson of Hurley’s monkey is that an agent’s belief that a particular inferential pattern is generalisable does not necessarily account for that agent’s reliance on that inferential pattern. There are a number of ways that this claim may be unpacked. Since I am sympathetic to the dispositional account of belief defended by Ruth Barcan Marcus (See her paper: "Some Revisionary Proposals about Belief"), I will rely on an argument that exploits that conception. Let us say that an agent believes that a particular inferential pattern is generalisable only if that agent is disposed to employ that inferential pattern in a number of different contexts. Ex hypothesi, Hurley’s monkey is not disposed to employ transitive inferences in a number of different contexts. It follows that Hurley’s monkey lacks the belief that transitive inferences are generalisable. Moreover, if we assume that an agent possesses the concept of a transitive inference only if that agent believes that transitive inferences are generalisable, then Hurley’s monkey fails to fulfil a necessary condition for possessing the concept of a transitive inference. Consequently, insofar as Hurley’s monkey represents an empirical possibility, it follows that an agent may instantiate a transitive inference even though that agent lacks the concept of a transitive inference.

The Woes of Philosophy Grad School Applications

2010-02-16T14:40:00.002Z

The 101st Philosopher's Carnival

2009-12-28T14:46:00.000Z

is here.

Towards a Teleological Logic (Part 4)

2009-12-07T12:20:00.003Z

In this post, I wish to consider a pair of objections to the account of a T-world defended thus far. One putative difficulty with characterising T-worlds as possible worlds in which every telos is realised is that it seems to preclude compensatory and/or conflicting purposes. The notion of a compensatory purpose applies to teleological objects that have the telos of “filling in” for when some other teleological object fails to realise its telos. For example, we can imagine a system equipped with an emergency self-destruct sequence that only initiates if there is a failure in all other safety protocols. If we conceive of T-worlds as worlds in which every telos is realised, then such a self-destruct mechanism will never have the opportunity to realise its telos since there will never be the required failure elsewhere in the system. This suggests that in a given T-world, compensatory purposes are never realised. However, if compensatory purposes remain unrealised, then a T-world cannot really be a world in which every telos is realised. Thus, the possibility of compensatory purposes appears to threaten the concept of a T-world with incoherence.

One possible reply to the above objection, which will ultimately prove inadequate, is to distinguish between cases in which some X does not have the opportunity to fulfil the function for which it is designed and cases in which X is presented with such an opportunity, but fails to do so. Moreover, we may say that a teleological object only fails to realise its telos in the latter case. This suggestion appears to have some intuitive traction since few would regard a safety mechanism as somehow defective simply because it never had the opportunity to perform its function. On this view, some world Γ counts as a non-T-world just in case some X in Γ is presented with an opportunity to realise its telos and yet fails to do so. Thus, far from implying the failure of compensatory purposes, T-worlds virtually guarantee that such purposes are realised by removing the antecedent conditions for their failure. Consequently, the concept of a T-world remains coherent, even if there are teleological objects with compensatory purposes.

The above reply seems right, as far as it goes. But there are at least two reasons for thinking that it does not go very far. First, while it appears to avoid the problem posed by compensatory purposes in the case of artefacts, it is not clear that the reply generalises to biological systems. We can certainly imagine a biological system or process that has the function of “filling in” for some other biological system or process, should the latter fail to realise its telos. Moreover, we can imagine such a system evolving in the actual world since individuals within a biological population with such a system acting as “back-up” would display greater reproductive success than their conspecifics that lacked such “safety nets”. However, it is not clear that such a “back-up” system could ever evolve in a T-world. Since the original system will always realise its telos, the presence of a “back-up” system will never offer any evolutionary advantage to its possessor, and will therefore never become subject to selective pressures. The upshot is that there could never be a biological system with a compensatory purpose in a T-world.

Second, the definition of T-worlds as possible worlds in which every telos is realised seems to be at odds with the fact that there may be conflicting purposes. The notion of a conflicting purpose applies to teleological objects whose telos involves preventing some other teleological object from realising its telos. For example, we can imagine a type of antibiotic whose purpose it is to prevent the DNA found in a particular bacteria from performing its replicatory function. Insofar as we define a T-world as one in which every telos is realised, then both the bacterial DNA and the antibiotic cannot coexist in the same T-world. But since we have assumed a constant domain semantics, and since there are possible worlds in which both the bacterial DNA and the antibiotic exist (e.g., the actual world), this appears to throw the notion of a T-world into jeopardy.

I believe we may overcome the challenge posed by both compensatory and conflicting purposes via a multimodal teleological logic, in which the accessibility relation Ri is indexed to a particular biological system or human artefact, i. Instead of a single “common” accessibility relation R, there is a series Ri, Rj, Rk . . . , indexed to sets of teleological objects (e.g., the set of human eyes, the set of human ears, the set of hammers). The Kripke frame for the corresponding language, L, in which {□i|i ∈ I} represents the set of necessity operators of L, consists of a non-empty set of possible worlds G, and the binary relation Ri, for each i ∈ I. The satisfaction relation for □i is defined as follows:

(5.1) w ⊩ □i φ if and only if ∀u(Ri(w,u) → u ⊩ φ).

According to (5.1), φ is true in all T-worlds relative to some biological system or artefact i just in case φ holds in any world that stands in the relation R to some other world. Instead of speaking of T-worlds in which every telos is realised, we now speak of T-worlds indexed to some biological system or artefact, i, such that i always realises the telos for which it was selected or designed in the actual world.

On this view, the possible worlds in which the antibiotic performs its function constitutes the set of T-worlds indexed to that antibiotic, while the possible worlds in which the DNA of a particular bacterium realises its telos represents the set of T-worlds indexed to that bacterial DNA. Since each teleological object is now indexed to its own set of T-worlds, there can be no conflicting purposes within T-worlds. Thus, the coherence of the concept of a T-world is preserved. The multimodal account also avoids the problem posed by biological systems with compensatory purposes. Since the set of T-worlds indexed to some biological system i includes worlds in which some other biological system j fails to realise its telos, this allows i to increase the reproductive fitness of its host when i serves as a “back-up” system in the eventuality of j failing to realise its telos. The upshot is that on the multimodal account, there is no difficulty posed by cases of compensatory or conflicting purposes.

The 100th Philosopher's Carnival

2009-12-03T08:38:00.001Z

is here!

Towards a Teleological Logic (Part 3)

2009-11-28T22:28:00.004Z

Thus far, I have tried to provide an intuitive feel for a basic teleological logic (henceforth, BTL). We may now introduce some additional regimentation by specifying the syntax of BTL. Let us assume that we have a simple propositional language, L. The alphabet of L consists of:

(i) a denumerable set Π of propositional variables p, q, r, p1 ,p2, . . .

(ii) the primitive logical connectives ⊤ (verum), ⊥ (falsum), ~ (negation), □ (teleological necessity), ◊ (teleological possibility), ∧ (conjunction), ∨ (disjunction), → (material implication), and ↔ (material equivalence).

(iii) the parentheses ( ).

The well formed formulas (wffs) of L consists of the smallest set Σ such that:

(a) every propositional variable in Π is in Σ,
(b) ⊤ and ⊥ are in Σ,
(c) If p is in Σ then so are ~p, □p and ◊p
(d) If p, q are in Σ, then so are (p ∧ q), (p ∨ q), (p → q) and (p ↔ q).

The sentences under (a) and (b) are the atomic sentences of L. ⊤ and ⊥ are 0-place connectives; ~, □ , ◊ are 1-place connectives; and all remaining connectives are 2-place. I propose the following axiom schemata for BTL:

BTL:
A1. All tautologous wffs of L
A2. □(p → q) → (□p → □q)
A3. □p → ~ □~p
R1. If ⊢ p and ⊢ p → q, then ⊢ q
R2. If ⊢ p then ⊢ ⊤ p

It should be clear to the observant reader that BTL is simply modal system D, with the relevant notation amended to express a teleological interpretation. A1 is standard in all normal modal systems. According to A2, if a material conditional holds in all T-worlds, and its antecedent holds in all T-worlds, then the consequent of the material conditional also holds in all T-worlds. This is the K axiom present in all normal modal logics, also known as the distribution axiom.

A3 follows from conditions imposed on the binary relation R, which restricts access to worlds that are teleologically ideal (i.e., possible worlds in which every telos is realised). A3 tells us that for any world Γ that is a member of some frame G, there is some world Δ in G such that R(Γ,Δ). A3 guarantees that there is always a possible world fitting the conditions of the accessibility relation; thus ensuring that there is always a T-world we may refer to when we need to formerly represent a teleological claim. In addition to A1-A3, BTL includes Modus Ponens, which is represented by R1. When A1 and R1 are combined, they yield the full inferential power of the propositional calculus. R2 tells us that if p is a theorem, then the claim that p obtains in all T-worlds is also a theorem.

Taking BTL as our starting point, and using our quotidian intuitions about purposiveness as a guide, I believe we may assess which axioms should and should not be included in a plausible teleological logic. For example, we know that if Δ stands in relation R to Γ, such that R(Γ,Δ), and some world Ω stands in relation R to Δ, such that R(Δ,Ω), then Ω must itself be a T-world. Since (by definition) all T-worlds stand in relation R to Γ, it follows that Ω stands in the relation R to Γ, such that R(Γ,Ω). This means that, under a teleological interpretation, the relation R is transitive. This is equivalent to the following axiom:

A4. □p → □□p (□ -4)

Earlier, it was noted that the actual world is not a member of the set of T-worlds. Given a teleological interpretation of the accessibility relation, it follows that the actual world is not accessible from itself. This entails the denial of Reflexivity; the frame condition on R, according to which R(Γ,Γ) for every Γ that is a member of G. Thus, under a teleological reading of R, the following axiom turns out to be false:

(*) □p → p (□ -M)

Moreover, since some non-T-world Γ (i.e., the actual world) may fail to stand in the relation R with respect to some given T-world Δ, such that R(Δ ,Γ) is false, even though Δ stands in the relation R with respect to Γ, such that R(Γ,Δ) is true, the following axiom also turns out to be false:

(**) p → □◊p (□ -B)

The upshot is that under a teleological interpretation, R is not Symmetric. The denial of (**) follows from the fact that the actual world is not a world in which all the purposes found in a given T-world are realised. Consequently, while all T-world stand in the relation R to the actual world, the actual world does not stand in the relation R to any T-world. In fact, only another T-world Ω can stand in the relation R to some other T-world Δ since (intuitively) it is only in some other T-world Ω that every telos found in Δ is realised. However, this still falls short of the claim that R is Euclidean; the frame condition that if R(Γ,Δ) and R(Γ,Ω), then R(Δ,Ω). All that has been asserted so far is that if Ω stands in the relation R to some world Δ, then Ω must be a T-world. This is consistent with the possibility that Ω fails to stand in relation R to Δ. Nevertheless, there seems to be some intuitive traction to the idea that every telos found in some T-world is realised in all other T-worlds. This suggests that all T-worlds stand in the relation R to each other. When this observation is combined with the fact that all T-worlds stand in relation R to the actual world, this yields the following axiom:

A5. ◊p →□◊p (□-5)

A5 tells us that R is Euclidean. Moreover, if all T-worlds stand in the relation R to all T-worlds, then all T-worlds stand in the relation R to themselves. Consider: if T-worlds are possible worlds in which every telos is realised, then every telos found in a given T-world must be realised in that T-world. It follows that for any given T-world, it stands in the relation R to itself. However, as was noted earlier, the actual world is not a T-world, so that the actual world fails to stand in the relation R to itself. This, we noted, entails the denial of Reflexivity. However, any world which occupies the second position in the two-place relation R(Γ,Δ) must (by definition) be a T-world, which means that it must stand in the R relation with itself. It follows that R is Shift Reflexive, such that if R(Γ,Δ) then R(Δ,Δ). This yields the following axiom:

A6. □(□ p → p) (□-□ M)

Moreover, we noted that since the actual world does not stand in the relation R to any T-world (even though all T-worlds stand in the relation R to the actual world), R is not Symmetric. Even so, if R(Γ,Δ) holds for some world Δ, and Ω is accessible from Δ, such that R(Δ,Ω), then Ω must be a T-world. But if Ω is a T-world, and given that all T-worlds are accessible from each other, then Δ must stand in relation R to Ω, such that R(Ω,Δ). This means that R is Shift Symmetric, such that if R(Γ,Δ) holds for some world Δ, then R(Δ,Ω) only if R(Ω,Δ). Thus, we arrive at the following axiom:

A7. □ (◊□p → p) (□ - □ B)

Euclidean modal systems are usually assumed to be Transitive, Reflexive and Symmetric, as with system S5. However, while R is Transitive (given a teleological interpretation), it is not Reflexive and Symmetric. Instead, R is Shift Reflexive and Shift Symmetric. When Transitivity, the Euclidean axiom, Shift Reflexivity and Shift Symmetry are added to BTL, we arrive at what may be referred to as Sophisticated Teleological Logic (henceforth STL):

STL:
A1. All tautologous wffs of L
A2. □(p → q) → (□p → □q)
A3. □p → ~ □~p
A4. □ p → □□p
A5. ◊p → □◊p
A6. □ (□p → p)
A7. □ (◊□ p → p)
R1. If ⊢ p and ⊢ p → q, then ⊢ q
R2. If ⊢ p then ⊢ ⊤ p

In my next post on this topic, I will consider a few objections to STL (especially the concept of a T-world limned thus far) which will motivate a multimodal teleological logic; one in which T-worlds are indexed to sets of teleological objects.

CFP: British Society for Ethical Theory conference 2010

2009-11-23T21:36:00.000Z

British Society for Ethical Theory (BSET) welcomes submissions in any area of normative ethics, meta-ethics, or moral psychology to be considered for its July 2010 conference.

Word limit: 6500. Selected papers will also be considered for publication in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.

Deadline: Friday 11 December 2009.
Submissions must be made by email.

For full details, visit the BSET website.

CFP-Columbia/NYU Graduate Conference

2009-11-18T20:27:00.005Z

Call for Papers

COLUMBIA/NYU
10th Annual Graduate
Conference in Philosophy

to be held
APRIL 10th, 2009
at COLUMBIA

Keynote Speaker:
ROGER WHITE
[MIT]

The graduate students and faculty of the Philosophy Departments of Columbia and New York Universities invite papers by all graduate students in any area of philosophy. Papers will be accepted until December 31st 2009. Papers must meet the following requirements:

1. All papers must be between 3,000 and 5,000 words in length and suitable for a presentation of 30-40 minutes.

2. Papers must be submitted with an abstract no longer than 300 words.

3. Papers must be submitted electronically in blind-review format to: www.philcolumbia.com/gradconf . No submissions by mail or email will be accepted.

For more information please visit our website or email us at: gradconf@philcolumbia.com

Rorty Discussion with Donald Davidson

2009-11-10T04:02:00.006Z

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

UW Graduate Student Conference

2009-10-30T15:30:00.003Z

THE 5TH BIENNIAL UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE IN PHILOSOPHY
November 13 & 14, 2009
Theme: Moral Psychology

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:

Friday

3:30 PM KEYNOTE ADDRESS

“Responsibility and Mental Agency”
Pamela Heironymi (UCLA)
Savery Hall, Room 264

5:30 PM RECEPTION (Savery Hall Third Floor Philosophy Department Table)

Saturday (all sessions in Savery Hall Room 264)

9:00 – 9:30 LIGHT BREAKFAST PROVIDED (Savery Hall Room 264)

9:30 – 10:20 SESSION 1: “Responsibility and Affective Skills in the Psychopath”
Garrett Pendergraft (University of California, Riverside)
COMMENTS: Janice Moskalik (University of Washington)

10:30 – 11:20 SESSION 2: “Irresistible Motivation”
Todd Beattie (Princeton University)
COMMENTS: Jason Benchimol (University of Washington)

11:30 – 12:20 SESSION 3: “Hard Feelings and Forgiveness”
Grant Rozeboom (Stanford University)
COMMENTS: Patrick Smith (University of Washington)

12:20 – 1:30 LUNCH

1:30 – 2:20 SESSION 4: “Evaluation without Hyper-intellectualisation”
Avery Archer (Columbia University)
COMMENTS: Rachel Fredericks (University of Washington)

2:30 – 3:20 SESSION 5: “Liberal Universalism and How We Understand the Past”
George Tsai (University of California, Berkeley)
COMMENTS: Amy Reed (University of Washington)

3:30 – 4:20 SESSION 6: “Is Self-Binding Morally Wrong?”
Jeff Sebo (New York University)
COMMENTS: Fareed Awan (University of Washington)

4:30 – 5:20 SESSION 7: “Why So Serious? An Inquiry On Racist Jokes”
Luvell Anderson (Rutgers University)
COMMENTS: Elizabeth Scarbrough (University of Washington) &
Jonathan Rosenberg (University of Washington)

5:30 – 7:00 BANQUET (Savery Hall Third Floor Philosophy Department Table)

8:00 – ? PARTY (at the “Philosophy House”)

Towards a Teleological Logic (Part 2)

2009-10-26T12:49:00.008Z

How are we to formerly represent the claim that the purpose of the human eye is to perceive visual stimuli? One suggestion, which will ultimately prove insufficient, may be put as follows: Let E refer to the set of human eyes, and let P refer to the set of things that perceive visual stimuli. The claim that the purpose of the human eye is to perceive visual stimuli may be formerly represented as follows:

(1.1) (∀x)(E(x) → P(x))

According to (1.1), for something to be a member of the set of human eyes is sufficient for that thing to be a member of the set of things that perceive visual stimuli. However, (1.1) clearly fails to capture what we mean when say that the purpose of the human eye is to perceive visual stimuli. Cases of blindness represent a counterexample to (1.1), but they do not represent a counterexample to the claim that the purpose of the eyes is to perceive visual stimuli. Thus, the former is not equivalent to the latter. The take home message seems to be that the claim that something has a telos allows for exceptional cases, and therefore cannot be represented by the universal quantifier. Another suggestion, which will also prove to be insufficient, is to replace the universal with an existential quantifier. This yields:

(1.2) (∃x)(E(x) & P(x))

(1.2) offers a clear advantage over (1.1) since it does not require that all members of the set of eyes also be members of the set of things that perceive visual stimuli. However, (1.2) also fails to capture what we mean when we say that the purpose of the human eye is to perceive visual stimuli since we can imagine a situation in which the former is false and the latter is true. For example, suppose that a global pandemic, a virulent eye-infection let us say, rendered everyone on earth blind. In such a case (1.2) would be false, and yet we would still wish to say that the telos of the human eye is to perceive visual stimuli.

I believe that (1.1) and (1.2) both fail because they attempt to represent the claim that the human eye has a certain telos by focusing solely on how things are in the actual world. However, I believe that our concept of what it means for something to have a purpose is an essentially modal notion; one that appeals to how things are in worlds other than the actual world.

In attempting to formerly represent our notion of purposiveness I will be taking as my starting point the accessibility relation introduced by Saul Kripke. Within the Libnizian framework, to say that φ is necessarily true means that φ obtains in all metaphysically possible worlds. By contrast, Kripke-style possible world semantics relativises the notion of necessary truth to a subset of the metaphysically possible worlds; namely, the set of accessible worlds. The upshot is that modal statements (it is necessary that φ, it is possible that φ) need not take the same truth value in all possible worlds.

For example, suppose that Δ is the only world accessible from Γ and that Γ and Δ are both accessible from Δ. Moreover, let us suppose that Δ ⊩ φ and that Γ⊮ φ. On the present model, it is necessarily true that φ relative to Γ since φ obtains in all worlds accessible from Γ. However, it is not necessarily true that φ relative to Δ since φ does not obtain in all worlds accessible from Δ. Significantly, Kripke-style semantics allows for the possibility that a given world may fail to be accessible from itself (as is the case with Γ but not the case with Δ in our preceding example). As we shall soon see, this feature of Kripke-style semantics will be crucially important when we attempt to formerly represent the concept of purposiveness. As has become standard, I will be defining the relation of accessibility as an (uninterpreted) binary relation R(Γ,Δ) that holds between possible worlds Γ and Δ just in case Δ is accessible from Γ. If we let Γ denote the actual world, then we have the following two fundamental translational schema for possible world sematics:

(2.1) □φ =def φ is true at every world Δ such that R(Γ,Δ)

(2.2) ◊φ =def φ is true at some world Δ such that R(Γ,Δ)

There are numerous applications of Kripke-style semantics. For example, in physics the accessibility relation is construed in terms of nomological accessibility. φ is nomologically necessary just in case φ is true at all possible worlds that are nomologically accessible from the actual world. In short, φ is true at all possible worlds that obey the physical laws of the actual world. In deontic logic, the accessibility relation is construed in terms of morally perfect worlds. φ is obligatory just in case φ obtains in all morally perfect worlds and permissible just in case it obtains in some morally perfect world.

An important difference between nomological necessity and obligatoriness (or deontic necessity) is that the class of nomologically accessible worlds includes the actual world (since the actual world is a member of the class of worlds that obeys the physical laws of the actual world), but the class of morally perfect worlds does not include the actual world (since the actual world is not a member of the class of morally perfect worlds). Thus, if we were to restrict the universe to the class of morally perfect worlds, the actual world would be omitted. The accessibility relation enables us to avoid this unwelcome result by allowing for imperfect moral worlds in our universe (a class that includes the actual world), while restricting deontic access to those worlds that are morally perfect.

The notion of purposiveness seems to fall somewhere between nomological necessity and obligatoriness. When applied to purposiveness, the accessibility relation may be seen as restricting access to the set of teleologically ideal worlds, defined as the set of worlds in which all aims are achieved, all functions are fulfilled and all purposes are realised. (Henceforth, I will refer to teleologically ideal worlds as T-worlds.) This yields the following fundamental translational schema for purposiveness:

(2.4) □φ =def φ is true at all T-worlds

(2.5) ◊φ =def φ is true at some T-world

Like nomological necessity, and unlike obligatoriness, purposiveness is a descriptive concept, it tells us something about the way the world actually is, and not merely about how the world ought to be. We may identify the descriptive dimension of purposiveness with the fact that an object’s purpose is determined by facts about the actual world. For example, in the case of a biological system, its purpose is determined by what that system was selected for in the actual world. In the case of a human artefact, its purpose is determined by the intentions of the human designer in the actual world. Thus, just as we can only tell which worlds are nomologically accessible by inquiring about which physical laws obtain the actual world, we can only tell which possible worlds are teleologically accessible by inquiring into what a biological system was selected for, or what an artefact was designed for in the actual world.

However, since purposes often go unfulfilled in the actual world, the actual world is not a member of the class of T-worlds. Consequently, there is also a prescriptive dimension to the concept of purposiveness. In this respect, purposiveness is like obligatoriness; both concepts construe the accessibility relation in terms of a set of worlds that excludes the actual world.

Percontations: The Nature of Probability

2009-10-20T09:30:00.002Z

Towards a Teleological Logic (Part 1)

2009-10-12T14:38:00.007Z

Teleology, broadly construed, is the study of design or purpose. Let us say that some object is teleological just in case it has an aim, function or purpose (what I will henceforth refer to as an object’s “telos”). For example, we may say that the telos of a hammer is to drive nails, and that the telos of the eyes is to perceive visual stimuli. Thus, both hammers and eyes may be described as teleological objects. Alternatively, we may say that an object is teleological just in case it displays design. In the case of artefacts, like hammers, the design is due to human ingenuity. In the case of biological systems, like the visual system, the design is due to evolution by natural selection. In sum, the telos of an object is the aim or purpose for which it is designed.

But how are we to formally represent the idea that some object has a telos? I wish to propose a Kripke-style modal semantics that has specific application to teleological objects. For example, let A be “X has eyes” and B be “X perceives visual stimuli”. To say that B is the telos of A means that, if all goes well (e.g., if the visual system is functioning as it ought), B follows from A. Of course, as in the case of blindness, having eyes is not always sufficient for perceiving visual stimuli; B does not always follow from A. In order to preserve the idea that B is the telos of A even in cases in which A is not sufficient for B, we must relativize the sufficiency claim. In keeping with our emphasis on design, we may say that A is prototypically sufficient for B, where the word “prototypical” is treated as a monadic modal operator. I will use □ to represent this operator. The claim that B is the telos of A may be formally represented as follows:

□(A → B) (literally: “prototypically, A is sufficient for B”)

The semantic elements here are in large part analogous to that of standard deontic logic. Roughly, let Γ be a world in which A: “X has eyes” gets ⊤, and let Δ be a world in which B: “X perceives visual stimuli” gets ⊤. We may represent the fact that B is the telos of A in terms of the two-place relation ΓAΔ (literally: “Γ aims at Δ”). I will refer to any world that is aimed at by another world as a “target world”. Target worlds are ones in which the relevant aim, function or goal is fulfilled. The □ and ◊ of standard modal logic becomes:

□P = in all target worlds, it is true that P

◊P = in some target world, it is true that P

Significantly, the □ and ◊ of teleological logic satisfies Aristotle’s modal square of opposition; which is widely taken to be a minimal requirement for a modal logic.

(1A) □P = It is prototypical that P
(1B) ~◊~P = It is not true, in some target world, that not P

(2A) □~P = It is prototypical that not P
(2B) ~◊P = It is not true, in some target world, that P

(3A) ~□~P = It is not prototypical that not P
(3B) ◊P = It is true, in some target world, that P

(4A) ~□P = It is not prototypical that P
(4B) ◊~P = It is true, in some target world, that not P

Each of the above A-B pairs are equivalent. (1) and (2) represent contraries (cannot both be true), and (3) and (4) are subcontraries (cannot both be false). (1) and (3), and (2)and (4), respectively, are subalternatives (the former implies the latter). (1) and (4), and (2) and (3), respectively, are contradictories (cannot have the same truth value). This represents a rough outline of what may be referred to as a teleological (modal) logic. I will have more to say about the axioms, motivations and applications of a teleological logic in future posts.

Philosophy Workshop Series - New School

2009-10-07T22:01:00.002Z

Beginning this semester, the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research will be hosting an ongoing series of workshops on a range of themes inspired or influenced by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The workshop, in continuation of the workshops organized by Alice Crary last Spring, aims to foster intellectual community and conversation in an informal setting among those working not only on Wittgenstein but also more generally on themes in analytic and European philosophy, including ethics, aesthetics, action, normativity, mind, and meaning.

This semester we have scheduled three events. Each will feature a presentation, followed by a careful and brief consideration by a commenter and then a general discussion.

Thursday October 29th, 11-1pm, Rm. 802 at 80 Fifth Avenue
Speaker: James Dow, CUNY, "Shoegenstein on Self-Ascription and Immunity to Error"Commentator: Adam Gies, NSSR

Thursday November 19th, 11-1pm, Rm. 802 at 80 Fifth Avenue
Speaker: Will Small, University of Chicago, "Intention, Belief, and the Future"Commentator: Felix Koch, Columbia University

Thursday December 17th, 11-1pm, Rm. 802 at 80 Fifth Avenue
Speaker: Alex Madva, Columbia University, "Wittgenstein, the Psychology of Unconscious Bias, and the Publicity of Moral Experience"Commentator: TBA

As the dates approach we will send out a reminder email and an a bstractof the presentation. If you come, please come with your coffee and bagels and in a frame of mind conducive to collegial conversation! All are welcome.

We aim to make available the paper a week before each meeting. If you wish to receive the paper beforehand or have any question about theevents please send an email to Mark Theunissen (theunm57@newschool.edu)

USC/UCLA Graduate Student Conference

2009-10-05T17:22:00.001Z

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

At the University of Southern California, Los Angeles

The graduate students of the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles, invite graduate students to submit papers in all areas of contemporary philosophy to be considered for presentation at the fifth annual USC/UCLA graduate student conference.

Submission Guidelines:

The deadline for submitting papers is November 1, 2009. Papers should be suitable for a 25-30 minute presentation (less than 4,500 words). Submissions should be suitable for blind review and include a cover letter and one-paragraph abstract. Please email papers as .doc or .pdf attachments to: uclausc.conference@gmail.com

For more information, please contact Alida Liberman at aliberma@usc.edu.

Notice of acceptance will be sent by December 20, 2009.

If electronic submission is impossible,please mail submissions to:

USC Mudd Hall of Philosophy
c/o A. Liberman
3709 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089

Intelligent Emotions

2009-10-01T13:32:00.004Z

It has been suggested, most notably by Robert Solomon, that emotions are ways of engaging the world. This is an idea I find very appealing. Solomon has also insisted that emotions are a form of intelligence. The second claim—that emotions are a form or intelligence—is based on the thesis that emotions involve concepts. For example, Solomon claims that fear involves the concept of danger and that being angry involves the concept of offensiveness. There are at least two ways of interpreting what it means for emotions to involve concepts. On one reading, having an emotion requires that the agent be able to deploy certain concepts. So, being afraid actually requires that the agent possess and deploy the concept of danger. At times, Solomon seems committed to this view. However, he also attributes something like emotions (let’s call them proto-emotions) to animals that clearly lack conceptual capacities. (For example, he describes roaches that scatter when the light is turned on as exhibiting “something like” fear.)

I am reluctant to attribute anything like fear to roaches and other invertebrates that only exhibit (what ethologists refer to as) “fixed action patterns”; preferring to reserve the attribution of contentful mental states only to creatures that are capable of “instrumental learning”. Still, there seems to be a danger of hyper-intellectualisation in the claim that having an emotion requires the possession and deployment of certain concepts. It seems to me very implausible that, for example, a human infant can only be said to experience fear if it has the concept (in any robust sense of the word) of danger. I should, however, hasten to add that whether one finds the aforementioned proposal tenable depends on how one defines a concept. I tend to think of a concept as (at the very least) an inferentially promiscuous item; the upshot being that an infant who cannot employ the concept of danger in an inferentially promiscuous manner does not count as possessing the concept of danger. Still, there seems to be many different conceptions of concepts, and so there appears to be some wriggly room on this particular point.

Even so, I wish to point out that there is a weaker (and what I believe to be more plausible) reading of the claim that emotions involve concepts. On the weaker reading, emotions involve concepts in the sense that we must deploy certain concepts if we are to fully characterise or describe certain emotions. For example, when we describe what it means to be afraid, we must deploy the concept of danger. Otherwise, our description of the emotion will be incomplete. (In other words, merely referring to a set of physiological processes won’t be enough.) However, being afraid does not require that the agent experiencing the fear actually have and deploy the concept of danger. In short, we need to distinguish between needing concepts to describe a phenomenon or state of affairs and needing concepts to instantiate a phenomenon or state of affairs. For example, one needs the concept of mammary glands to describe what it is to be a mammal, but one does not need the concept of mammary glands to instantiate being a mammal. I believe an analogous point holds with respect to the emotions.

Ayer on Logical Positivism

2009-09-28T12:54:00.003Z

Section 1:

Section 2:

Section 3:

Section 4:

Philosophical & Psychological Issues Conference

2009-09-21T14:57:00.006Z

This weekend James Dow (of Selbsttatigkeit) and I will be taking part in the 2nd annual Interdisciplinary Approach to Philosophical & Psychological Issues Conference at the University of South Alabama. Below is a copy of the conference schedule with links to the abstracts of the various papers.

Friday	*Speaker*	*Topic and Abstract*
8:30-9:10	Michael S. Gordon	On the Division of the Senses
9:15-9:55	Jack Shelley-Tremblay	Event-related Potentials Index Aspects of Attention: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective
10:00-10:45	David Bunch, Jonathan D. Walker & Alen Hajnal	Lateralization of sequence learning and transfer in a tactuo-spatial task
10:40-11:20	Kenneth Aizawa	Noe‘s Strong and Weak Enactivism
11:25-12:25	John Bickle	From Psychological Generalizations to Neuromolecular Mechanisms: Explanations ‘in a Single Bound'
Lunch at facility
1:30-2:10	James Beebe	Surprising Connections Between Knowledge and Intentional Action: The Robustness of the Epistemic Side-Effect Effect
2:15-3:05	Daniel A. Weiskopf	The Architecture of the Embodied Mind
3:10-4:00	Andrea Scarantino	Unconscious Emotions: Respectable, Useful, and Probably Necessary

Saturday
9:30 - 10:10	Avery Archer	Desires as Sub-agential Evaluations of the Good
10:15 - 10:55	Elise Labbé-Coldsmith	Mindfulness: Defining and Measuring from a Biopsychosocial Perspective
11:00-11:40	Richard Hine	Attention as Phenomenal Consciousness: For Richer, For Poorer
11:45-12:25	James Dow	Against Cognitive Descriptivism: Self-Ascription, Identification, and the Subject Principle

For more information, see the conference website here.

Fordham Graduate Philosophy Conference 2010

2009-09-17T01:31:00.001Z

Despite our considerable cultural, scientific and historical distance from Aristotle his thought remains a fertile source of philosophical insight. The rise of virtue ethics in the 20th century furnishes a paradigmatic example of how Aristotle can still be brought into productive conversation with contemporary philosophical debates. Perhaps, however, Aristotle’s insights were not limited to ethics alone. Therefore, the goal of Fordham’s next biennial graduate student conference Aristotle in the 21st Century is to explore whether and how Aristotle’s work might advance contemporary debates in action theory, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, political theory and other areas as well as ethics. We will welcome as plenary speakers Prof. Michael Thompson of the University of Pittsburg and Fordham’s own Prof. John Drummond.

The conference will be held the 5-6th of March, 2010 at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx.

Graduate students wishing to submit a paper for consideration are asked kindly to email their submissions by 1 Jan 2010 to:

fordham.graduate.conference@gmail.com

Check out the conference website here.

3 Quarks Blog Competition

2009-09-03T15:16:00.009Z

Voting is now open for the 3 Quarks 2009 Philosophy Blogging Competition. I originally nominated the post “Dilworth’s Functional Consonance”. However, there were two nominations for my recent post, “A Counterexample to Setiya”. Since I give priority to the opinions of my readers, I’m now rooting for the Setiya post (number 58 on the list). So I invite all my blog readers to check it out and if you think it deserving of the honour, please cast your vote here.

There are a number of quality posts on the list, so whether you decide to vote for mine or not I think you should definitely vote.

UPDATE:

Polling for the 3 Quarks competition is now closed and the list of semifinalists is now available here.

Special thanks to all those who voted for this blog!

Williamson Interview

2009-08-24T08:19:00.005Z

I came across this interview of Timothy Williamson by 3:AM Magazine (via Nothing of Consequence). Here are two questions from the interview, both of a meta-philosophical nature, that I found particularly interesting:

3:AM: In your last book you again insinuate yourself into contemporary philosophical thought and say that not only has it made errors but it has actually taken a disastrous wrong turn. You call this the ‘linguistic turn’, which develops into ‘the conceptual turn’. This is radicalism without a hat. Could you briefly outline the main argument that philosophy that thinks that its sole job is to analyse language/concepts is wrong and why this is such an important point?

TW: The linguistic turn and the conceptual turn took many different forms. All of them were, in one way or another, responses to a methodological challenge to philosophy that the development of modern experimental science has made more and more urgent: how can philosophers expect to learn about the world without getting up out of their armchairs to see what it’s actually like? The idea was that whatever philosophers have to do, they can do on the basis of their understanding of their native language, or perhaps of some ideal formal language, or their grasp of the corresponding concepts, both of which they already have in the armchair. In some sense philosophical questions are linguistic or conceptual questions, either because they are about our own language or thought, or because they are the kind of questions that can be answered from principles that we implicitly accept simply in understanding the words or grasping the concepts. In reply, I argue that the attempts to rephrase philosophical questions as questions about words or concepts are unfaithful to what contemporary philosophers are actually interested in. For example, philosophers of time are interested in the underlying nature of time, not just the word ‘time’ or our concept of time. As for the principles that we implicitly accept simply in understanding words or grasping concepts, I argue that there aren’t any. A language is a forum for disagreement; contrary to what many philosophers have thought, it doesn’t impose an ideology. People who take wildly unorthodox views, even about logic, are not ‘breaking the rules of English’. Although the linguistic turn and the conceptual turn involve radical misconceptions of philosophy, in my view, I don’t regard them as avoidable accidents. Probably they were stages that philosophy had to go through; we can only determine their limitations if lots of able people are doing their utmost to defend them. But by now we can see their limitations. As an alternative, I show how we can answer the methodological challenge to armchair philosophy without taking the linguistic or conceptual turn. For example, thought experiments, which play a central role in contemporary philosophy, involve offline applications in the imagination of cognitive skills originally developed through online applications in perception. Those skills go well beyond the minimum required for understanding the words or grasping the concepts. Our ability to perform thought experiments is really just a by-product of our ability to answer non-philosophical questions of the form “What would happen if …?” Philosophy is much more like other forms of inquiry than philosophers have often pretended.

And the second question, which I'm sure will get a few people worked up:

3:AM: Many of my friends are Wittgensteinians, others phenomenologists. Should they stop?

TW: It would be unhealthy as well as boring for philosophy if everyone did it in the same way. We need a wide gene pool of ideas and methods. Nevertheless, some ideas and methods are better than others. When it comes to writing the history of twentieth century philosophy, the works of Wittgenstein, Husserl and Heidegger will presumably remain major texts, given their originality and vast influence. But from a historical point of view, it also seems clear that in recent decades the Wittgensteinian and phenomenological traditions have not adequately renewed themselves. Although books continue to be published in both traditions, they are recycling old ideas rather than engaging with new ones. Part of the attraction of such a tradition for its adherents is that it constitutes an intellectual comfort zone in which they are given pseudo-justifications for not bothering to learn new ways of thinking. At their best, the Wittgensteinian and phenomenological traditions share the virtue of patient, accurate description of examples. In that respect the analytic tradition has learned from them, I hope permanently. But once the examples started giving results that didn’t suit them, Wittgensteinians retreated into their dogmatic theoretical preconceptions while pretending to do the opposite. As for phenomenology, if a phenomenological description of experience is one that mentions only facts the subject knows at the time, fine. But it shouldn’t be confused with a description of facts about appearances, since one often knows facts that go beyond them. You can know that you are seeing a computer screen, not just that you seem to be seeing a computer screen. I argue in Knowledge and its Limits that the privileging of appearances results from the fallacy of assuming that we must have a cognitive home.

A Counterexample to Setiya

2009-08-13T00:04:00.010+01:00

In his book, Reasons Without Rationalism, Keiran Setiya posits the following necessary truth about intentional action:

Belief: When someone is acting intentionally, there must be something he is doing intentionally, not merely trying to do, in the belief that he is doing it.

Setiya’s requirement builds on Anscombe’s insight that “intentional actions are ones to which a certain sense of the question ‘why?’ has application.”(Anscombe [2000], Intentions. p. 11, §6.) In specifying precisely what that sense is, Anscombe notes that “this question is refused application by the answer: ‘I was not aware I was doing that’.” (Ibid.) Setiya takes this to suggest a conception of intentional action according to which an agent must know that she is performing a certain action in order to count as performing that action intentionally. Thus, we arrive at what may be called the Strong Knowledge Requirement for intentional action:

Strong Knowledge Requirement: For all agents, φ, if an agent is φ-ing intentionally then that agent knows she is φ-ing.

However, after considering Davidson’s example of the teacher who is intentionally making ten carbon copies as he writes even though he is unsure that he is pressing hard enough to successfully do so, Setiya concludes that the Strong Knowledge Requirement is unsound. Since there are times we do not know that we are successfully performing an action we are intentionally performing, such knowledge cannot be a necessary condition for intentional action.

The first revision Setiya makes to Anscombe is to switch from a knowledge to a belief requirement. This yields what may be called the Strong Belief Requirement for intentional action:

Strong Belief Requirement: For all agents, φ, if an agent is φ-ing intentionally then that agent believes she is φ-ing.

However, as Setiya acknowledges, the Strong Belief Requirement does little better than the Strong Knowledge Requirement vis-a-vis the carbon copy case. Insofar as the carbon-copier is unsure about whether or not he is making ten copies, he does not believe that he is making ten copies. Setiya therefore proposes a second modification to the Strong Knowledge Requirement. He claims that to count as φ-ing intentionally, one need not believe that one is φ-ing. One only needs to believe that one is performing some action ψ, where ψ is either identical with φ or an intentional action one is performing with the end of φ-ing. Moreover, he holds that one’s belief that one is ψ-ing must be true; to wit, ψ must be an action one is actually performing rather than merely attempting to perform. Thus, we arrive at what I take to be Setiya’s considered position with respect to intentional actions:

Moderate Belief Requirement: For all agents, φ, if an agent is φ-ing intentionally then that agent believes truly that she is ψ-ing, where ψ-ing is either identical to φ-ing or an intentional action performed with the end of φ-ing.

It should be clear that the Moderate Belie Requirement is nothing but a restatement Belief. This revision of Anscombe's (alleged) Strong Knowledge Requirement allows Setiya to successful address the carbon copy case since there is an intentional action (i.e., pressing hard while writing) that the carbon-copier believes truly that he is performing, and which is performed with the end of producing ten copies.

I wish to argue that Belief fails to capture a necessary truth about intentional action. To this end, I will be attempting to construct a counterexample to Belief; a case in which we would plausibly regard an agent as acting intentionally even though the agent fails to meet the necessary condition it specifies.

The Prosthetic Limb Example*:
Consider the case of an arm-amputee, Jesse, who has a thought-controlled prosthetic arm grafted to his shoulders. Let us suppose that Jesse has to demonstrate the functionality of his thought-controlled arm to a Research and Development panel. However, just before the demonstration, Jesse gets an anonymous letter saying that the researchers, out of fear that their funding will be cut, have conspired to trick him into thinking that his prosthetic arm is functioning properly even though it is not. According to the anonymous letter, the researchers will ask Jesse to perform a number of tasks and observe him closely for an indication that he is about to perform the requested action. Then they will remotely cause the arm to perform the various tasks using a wireless signal from a computer. Thus, according to the anonymous letter, while it would appear to him that he is controlling his prosthetic arm with his thoughts, it will actually be the researcher’s computers that will be determining the arm’s movements.

However, let us suppose that (unknown to Jesse) the anonymous letter is completely unreliable, and that the researchers have concocted no such plot. All the movements his prosthetic arm makes are in fact being caused by his thoughts rather than by the scientist. As he is standing before the panel, a ball is thrown towards Jesse and he catches it with his prosthetic arm. He is then asked to throw the ball, and he complies. Moreover, let us assume that the thought process preceding the movement of the thought-controlled arm are of the same kind as that which would precede the movements of Jesse’s normal (i.e., non-prosthetic) arm. However, since he is unsure about the reliability of the anonymous letter, Jesse remains unsure that it is his thoughts that are causing the arm to catch the ball. Even as he is performing the action he can’t help but wonder if it is actually the researchers who are controlling the arm’s movements with a remote device. In short, there is no action (i.e., moving his arm, catching the ball, throwing the ball) that Jesse believes he is performing. Still, it seems perfectly natural to say that Jesse caught and threw the ball and that he did so intentionally. The upshot is that, contra Belief, Jesse intentionally catches and throws the ball even though there is no action that he believes he is performing.

There are two strategies for resisting the unpropitious consequences of the Prosthetic Limb Example that appear worth considering:

(Strategy 1): Argue that Jesse has not performed an intentional action when he catches or throws the ball.

(Strategy 2): Grant that Jesse has performed an intentional action, but argue that there is an intentional action that he believes he is performing with the end of catching and throwing the ball.

I believe that (Strategy 1) is moribund. Firstly, we may say that Jesse either intended to catch and throw the ball, or he did not so intend. These exhaust all the relevant possibilities. Now, it seems highly implausible to say that Jesse did not intend to catch the ball. Clearly, his catching and throwing the ball was no accident. Nor was it the side-effect of some other action Jesse was performing. Moreover, we may safely assume that Jesse went before the panel with the intention of performing the various tasks asked of him (even if he was unsure he would be the one performing them). Additionally, when the ball was thrown towards him, it is clear that Jesse meant to catch it; this was the goal he had in mind when he moved his prosthetic arm to intercept it. Once it has been acknowledged that Jesse intended to catch and throw the ball, it is natural to regard his intention as the cause (in the broadest sense of the term) of his arm’s movements. In fact, since (ex hypothesi) the arm’s movements are not being controlled by the researchers, it is unclear what other explanation there could be of his catching and throwing the ball besides Jesse’s intention to catch and throw it.

Secondly, suppose it is later revealed to Jesse that the anonymous letter was unreliable and that he was actually controlling the movements of the prosthetic arm. In such a case, I believe we can imagine Jesse thinking to himself, “so I did catch the ball after all!” In other words, it is plausible that Jesse would take ownership of the action in the way one would take ownership of something one intentionally performed. Moreover, it would be implausible to suggest that Jesse’s belief that he performed the action retroactively made his action intentional. Jesse’s belief does not change the (metaphysical) status of his action from unintentional to intentional; at most, it changes his knowledge of the action’s status. Thus, we must conclude that Jesse’s actions were intentional all along, if we are to hold that it is intentional at all. It follows that Jesse’s actions were intentional even when he did not believe he was performing them.

According to (Strategy 2), there is in fact some intentional action that Jesse believes he is performing—namely, whatever thoughts caused the movement of his thought-controlled prosthetic arm. Unfortunately, (Strategy 2) also seems moribund. Ex hypothesi, Jesse’s prosthetic arm is controlled by the same kind of thought processes that are at play when he moves his normal arm. There is some debate over whether thoughts—particularly of the kind that features in the aetiology of bodily movements—may be considered intentional actions. But let us grant, if only for the sake of argument, that the relevant thoughts are themselves a kind of intentional action. Even so, the present proposal only seems remotely plausible if we identify the thought in question with ‘trying’ to catch or throw the ball, in the sense of ‘trying’ that accompanies all cases of intentional action. This is the sense of ‘trying’ that Davidson attributes to the carbon-copier, and which Davidson takes to be sufficient for the carbon-copier’s actions to be intentional. Thus, if we buy into Davidson’s framework, we can easily accommodate the intuition that Jesse’s actions are intentional.

However, this is not an option available to Setiya, who explicitly denies that ‘trying’ (in the above sense) fulfils the criterion imposed by Belief. He writes:

Despite what Davidson suggests, it is not enough that the carbon-copier is intentionally trying to make ten copies, in the paradigm sense of “intentional action” that involves belief. He is and must be doing specific things—for instance, pressing hard on the paper—in that paradigm sense.

In brief, Jesse’s act of trying to catch the ball (even if it is regarded as an intentional action) fails to meet Setiya’s specifications. Consequently, Belief entails that Jesse does not catch the ball intentionally. It follows that, by Setiya’s own lights, (Strategy 2) gets things wrong. Assuming that (Strategy 1) and (Strategy 2) exhausts all remotely plausible strategies for responding to the Prosthetic Limb Example, it remains a counterexample to Belief.

Admittedly, the Prosthetic Limb Example is an unusual case. Moreover, it is clear that in the vast majority of cases of intentional action, the agent is not in the position that Jesse finds himself in. Consequently, I do not see the Prosthetic Limb Example as posing a challenge to the claim that when we act intentionally we prototypically know that we are acting. Moreover, since I take Anscombe to be offering a prototypical generalisation, I do not believe the Prosthetic Limb Example represents a refutation of Anscombe’s account of intentional action. However, what Setiya purports to provide is not a prototypical generalisation, but a necessary truth. Unlike prototypical generalisations, necessary truths allow for no exceptions. Thus, as unusual as the Prosthetic Limb Example may be, it is sufficient to undermine Setiya’s claim that Belief is a necessary truth.

*This example is loosely based on the real life case of Jesse Sullivan. Here is a short video of Jesse's arm in action:

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Might Intentions be Reasons? (Ben Mitchell-Yellin)

2009-07-25T00:42:00.005+01:00

In this post, I want to gesture at a sense in which intentions might be reasons that is consistent with the view defended by John Brunero (“Are Intentions Reasons?” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88: 424-44), that intentions do not provide reasons for actions or for adopting other intentions. I will begin by briefly presenting Brunero’s view. Then I will make a distinction between different “directions” in which a reason may “push” and suggest that intentions might be reasons that push in one direction even if not the others.

Brunero rejects both the intentions-provide-reasons view and the tie-breaker view, according to which intentions are reasons only in tie-break situations. He puts forward the following positive view:

[I]n cases where we are dealing with some already reasonable end, there is a reason to do what would facilitate that end (a reason that exists not because you intend the end, but because the end is reasonable), but your intending the end may be relevant to whether this reason transfers to the specific actions which are necessary, but not sufficient, for the realization of the end.

Brunero’s idea of a reason transferring from an adopted end to a necessary (but not sufficient) means relies on the notions of the “facilitative principle” and “facilitating plans,” borrowed from Raz. A facilitating plan is a set of actions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for achieving some end. According to the facilitative principle, given reasonable end E, agent A has a reason to perform each individually necessary (but not sufficient) means M1, M2, …, Mn, as part of his facilitating plan P. But this does not mean that A has a reason to perform M1 by itself. That “would seem a pointless and unreasonable waste of time.” This is where intentions affect our reasons. A’s intention to E “provides us with some assurance that he will undertake the other parts of the plan that, along with [M1], will jointly suffice to bring it about that he can” E. So A’s adoption of the intention to E transfers the reason for P as a whole to each of its individual parts M1, M2, …, Mn.

Notably, on Brunero’s view, the intention to E does not give A any new reasons. Instead, it affects the structure of the reasons he has. Both E and E’ may be reasonable ends. So A has reason to undertake both facilitating plans P and P’. But supposing A adopts E, and not E’, we do not want to say that he has a reason to M and M’, where these are individual parts of P and P’, respectively. Brunero’s view allows us to say that A’s adopting E, and not E’, makes it the case that A has a reason to M (as a part of P) but not M’, and this is so because A’s adopting E makes it reasonable to suppose that A will complete all the necessary and jointly sufficient means to E, of which M is one. I think this view is reasonable. I also think it allows that intentions might be reasons, albeit in a different sense than concerns Brunero.

Brunero follows the literature in concerning himself with the question whether intentions might be considerations that favor performing actions (that are necessary (but not sufficient) means to executing the intention) or adopting other intentions. We might say that in the first case the question is whether intentions are reasons that “push down” and in the second case whether intentions are reasons that “push across.” Such talk makes sense if we think of levels of rational agency (perhaps along the lines of Bratman’s theory of planning agency). We might delineate the various levels as follows. At bottom, we have facts. Then we have actions, facilitating plans, intentions, non-facilitating plans and policies, in ascending order of hierarchy. One natural question, given this hierarchy, is whether the adoption of an intention exerts rational pressure that “pushes down” to the level of facilitating plans. Does A’s adopting the intention to E give her a reason to M, where M is a necessary (but not sufficient) means to E? This is the sort of question that concerns Brunero. He gives a negative answer. A’s adopting E does not give her a reason in this sense. She already has a reason to M, but only as a part of facilitating plan P. A’s adopting E transfers the reason for P to each of the jointly sufficient actions that constitute it. One may even think this claim can be generalized, such that no reasons “push down.”

But, it seems to me, even if the general claim is correct in answer to the above question, we might also ask a different question. We might wonder whether the adoption of an intention to E exerts rational pressure that “pushes up” to the level of non-facilitating plans. Does A’s adopting the intention to E give her a reason to adopt non-facilitating plan X, where E is a necessary (but not sufficient) means to X? Perhaps we can give a positive answer. So intentions can be reasons in a sense. They can be considerations that favor adopting non-facilitating plans. The claim that reasons “push up” is not at all foreign. Facts are commonly thought to favor actions, for example. So a negative answer to the general question whether reasons ever “push up” is not likely forthcoming. This adds interest to the question about intentions in particular.

Let us take as basic the notion of a reason as a consideration that favors something (following Scanlon). If A’s adopting an intention favors something (in a way that thing was not favored before the adoption of the intention), then we can say that A’s adopting the intention gives A a reason. This is consistent with Brunero’s view because he accepts the claim that reasons are basic and denies that A’s adopting an intention favors anything (in a way that thing was not favored before the adoption of the intention). I want to suggest (but not argue for the claim) that once we notice the above hierarchy, we might see that the adoption of an intention might favor something (in a way that thing was not favored before), namely, a non-facilitating plan. We are familiar with the notion that a fact can favor an action. So we are familiar with the notion of reasons that “push up” from facts to actions. Indeed, it is because some fact F already favors M that we need not take A’s adopting E to favor M in order to say that A has a reason to M. And we can say that E is reasonable because it is favored by certain facts. This is another familiar way that reasons “push up.” So what stands in the way of our saying that another way reasons “push up” is by intentions favoring non-facilitating plans?

Here is one possible objection. We might think that only facts can stand in the favoring-relation to things (e.g., actions, intentions, etc.). The two familiar ways that reasons “push up” both appeal to facts favoring something. We might say that facts, not intentions, favor non-facilitating plans in just the same way that facts favor actions and intentions. Call this a “buck-passing” account of rational agency. At each level, the relevant thing is reasonable only if favored, but it is always facts that do the favoring. So intentions do not favor non-facilitating plans, facts do. Thus, intentions do not give reasons.

This is an interesting objection. Let me conclude by suggesting one reason why we might not want a buck-passing account of rational agency. I think we want our adopted goals to factor into the reasonableness of our higher-order agential attitudes. We want our intentions to affect the reasonableness of our non-facilitating plans and our non-facilitating plans to affect the reasonableness of our policies. This is not to deny that the facts affect the reasonableness of our non-facilitating plans and policies. But the facts may not (do not?) determine uniquely reasonable non-facilitating plans and policies. And this is where we might find that intentions are reasons. That A adopts an intention to E might favor her adopting certain reasonable (according to the facts) non-facilitating plans over others.

Why Care About "God"?

2009-07-13T00:13:00.000+01:00

The 93rd Philosopher's Carnival

2009-07-09T17:40:00.000+01:00

is here.