Archive for December, 2005

Is There a Future for Inductive Logic?

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

At the APA yesterday Jim Joyce gave an interesting talk on the future for inductive logic. Joyce argued that there is no future for it since there is no correct objective measure of confirmation. The goal of inductive logic is to characterize the inductive strength of arguments from some given evidence to a conclusion. This can be represented as a conditional probability, the probability of a hypothesis on a body of evidence—P(H/E1 & E2 & … & En). Joyce argues that even the clearest cases of inductive probability turn out to rely on a mistaken assumption. Here’s the case:

A ball will be drawn at random from an urn containing 100 balls.
Seventy-five balls are white and twenty-five are black.

A white ball will be drawn.

What is the degree of confirmation the premises provide for the conclusion? The intuitive answer is .75. Joyce argues, however, that this is mistaken because it relies on the principle of insufficient reason–treating equipossible outcomes as having an equal probability of occurring. (more…)

Is the future any more open than the past?

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

If it is true now that something will happen in the future (I will do A), and for all p (whose subject matter includes free acts in the future), p has a truth value, then the future is set and determined (though it doesn’t follow that the future is necessary. It could be different; I only mean that the propositions about the future are true, not necessarily true). And thus there is nothing I can do about it now. And when that future time comes, I will do A. That’s that. There’s nothing in my power that can change that now. When that time finally comes, it will be true that I can do otherwise, and that’s fine, and that’s the indication that it’s a free act. This seems right to me. (So I’m assuming that future contingent propositions do have a truth value.)

But if this is true, I don’t see how the future is any more open than the past. When it was the time that I did B in the past, it was also true that I could do otherwise. And when it becomes the time that I will do A in the future, will also be true that I can do otherwise. It seems symmetrical to me. I just can’t see the difference!

Is justified true belief knowledge?

Tuesday, December 27th, 2005

I make this post for two reasons. First, since some readers of this blog might be new to epistemology, I thought it would be good to present on Gettier, something really important if you’re interested in epistemology (or perhaps even philosophy in general!). Secondly, it’ll be a good chance to discuss whether justified true belief is sufficient for knowledge. Some think this is uncontroversially false, but there is at least one doubter in this very department.

The (supposed) tradition was that (more…)

On a modal/counterfactual logic problem.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

For those of you who are better than me at modal logic, logic, or the use of counterfactuals, can you help me prove that this:
(1) (p)(Wp → (Tp→~Ap))
entails (or is logically equivalent to) this:
(2) ~(â—Š(∃p)(Wp&~Tp) → â—Š(∃p)(Wp&Ap))?

(If you’re interested, (1) is Daniel and Francis Howard-Snyder and Neil Feit’s proposal for a necessary condition for warrant that blocks all Gettier counterexamples and (2) is what I deny in Zagzebski’s argument for warrant infallibilism (see my earlier posts on warrant infallibilism) . A = is accidentally true, T = is true, W = is warranted. p is some belief. Given the background philosophy behind this, I know that there is some entailment relationship; I just need to figure out how it works.)

Table of Contents of Philosophy Journals

Friday, December 16th, 2005

You can freely receive (by email) table of contents from a few philosophy journals by registering at www.blackwell-synergy.com. This might be helpful as it provides an easy way to know what got published in those journals.

Oppression as government policy?

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005

Yesterday some religious activists tried to get arrested for opposing a “House-passed budget-cutting measure that would save $50 billion over five years by trimming food stamp rolls, imposing new fees on Medicaid recipients, squeezing student lenders, cutting child-support enforcement funds and paring agriculture programs.” The plan was to chant, as they were led off, a passage from Isaiah: “Woe to you legislators of infamous laws . . . who refuse justice to the unfortunate, who cheat the poor among my people of their rights, who make widows their prey and rob the orphan.”

So my question is this: on what plausible theory of government (if any) would these budget-cutting measures constitute refusing justice, cheating the poor, preying on the widow and robbing the orphan? (more…)

Moral Sense Test

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005

Pea Soup has a link to this very cool test out of Harvard on moral intuitions. You can find it here. It takes about 15 minutes. Note that you can register for updates at the end.

Against Folk Ontology (pt. 2)

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005

Many like to pull a G.E. Moore shift when certain ontologists argue against the existence of cars and trees and rocks. The G.E. Moore shift is just to say, “But of COURSE there are cars and trees! Therefore, your argument has to be wrong.” This is similar to how, when pressed by skeptics about the possibility of being in a demon-world, Moore pointed to his hands and said, “But of COURSE my hands exist, and so the external world exists! So something must be wrong with your argument.” Merricks has a response as to why his argument is immune to Moorean type arguments. (more…)

What do Emotivists Need to Explain?

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005

The a posteriori identification ‘water = H20′ is plausible to the extent that it figures in our best explanations for the behavior of water (i.e., that it boils when it does, dissolves in some substances but not others, is a good conductor of electricity, and so on). Emotivists claim, roughly, that moral opinions just are desires. More specifically, they claim that to think that a certain type of action is wrong just is to desire that actions of that type not be performed, and to think that a certain type of action is right just is to desire that actions of that type be performed. These identifications can be viewed as empirical claims along the lines of the a posteriori identification of water with H20. The idea is that the emotivist’s idenitifications should be accepted on the grounds that they best explain the central “behaviors” of moral opinions. But what “behaviors” of moral opinions are emotivists and its rivals attempting to explain? (more…)

Proper Functionalism and God

Monday, December 5th, 2005

The following has been bothering me the past few nights. I’m not at all happy with proper functionalist accounts of knowledge in part because it seems like the PFer just punts to a designer to get all his epistemic work done. Why think that a true belief formed by a proper functioning system constitutes belief? Well, the system was designed to aim at truth and ex hypothesi, the system is functioning properly. Voila! We have knowledge. My question is about the knowledge of the designer himself (more…)