This post pertains to Broome’s paper on “Ought”, which is to be presented at the upcoming Kline Conference; the particular subject on which I’d like to get opinion is (see Sec. 2.2, pp. 9-10) with regard to Broome’s unwillingness to allow for cases that “borderline” between normative and non-normative uses of ‘ought’:
Here are two quotes of Broome’s that I think best characterize his position (more…)
The Meno problem is the problem of accounting for how knowledge is more valuable than any subset of its parts. How can an internalist about knowledge respond to this challenge?
Berit Brogaard gives an interesting answer in a forthcoming issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. The short version is that when we base a belief on a reason, we form the dispositional belief that the reason is a good one. Furthermore, a reason R is a good reason to believe P only if it could not have easily been the case that R and ~P. Finally, a justified, true belief is knowledge just in case the reason really is a good one. So what makes knowledge more valuable than mere JTB? In a case of knowledge, our meta-belief about the nature of our evidence is true while in mere JTB it is false. Cool, huh?
I just want to find out what people think about the correlation between acting morally and acting rationally. I was recently having a conversation with a friend about a real-life moral dilemma (details not important) and we agreed that, between the two options available, moral considerations aside, one option was clearly the more rational of the two. That got me thinking about whether a desirable feature of an ethical theory be that what it tells us is ethical, also turn out to be what’s rational.
So, phrasing the intuition check in the form of a poll, what say you? If an ethical theory offered 100% agreement between what’s ethical and what’s rational, would that make you a. more likely, b. less likely or c. just as likely to believe that the theory is correct or plausible? Moreover, what sort of ethical theory would commit you to this sort of correlation between what’s ethical and what’s rational? I must admit I haven’t read any of the lit on this at all (I’m sure there’s probably plenty out there), but it just came up recently in a casual conversation and now I’m curious about what people’s intuitions are on the question. Thanks!
Some of us think that Intelligent Design Theory is just creationism tricked out in a cheap powder blue tuxedo. Others of us like cheap powder blue tuxedos. Now that some of the nationwide hoopla over IDT has abated, I want to comment on one particular criticism of IDT, namely, that it isn’t falsifiable and hence isn’t science. Philosophers, scientists, and opinion writers frequently repeated this criticism, and indeed IDT’S putative unfalsifiability is one of the key reasons that IDT loses its legal battles.
The problem is this: IDT is patently falsifiable. (more…)
I’m busy trying to sort my thoughts on the value of knowledge for a paper I’m working on for Kvanvig. I need an intuition check. Everyone agrees that true belief is valuable. I think that this is best accounted for by some appeal to an extrinsic notion of value (specifically an instrumental value). I have no idea if this is just obvious or if people think that true belief is intrinsically valuable or what. Thoughts? Suggestions of places to look in the literature?
I have another question concerning the Dennett/Swinburne argument. I hope you’re not all getting bored of the topic.
In their letters, it seems to me that both Swinburne and Dennett agree that it is a good thing that there are humans (as beings with bodies, consciousness and the possibility to act morally). However, they do not argue for this.
Here are some of the relevant quotes:
… if there is a God of the traditional kind—omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free and perfectly good—we have every reason to expect that he will bring about the existence of good things; and one especially good thing is the existence of embodied creatures such as ourselves who have a choice between good and evil and can influence the world and each other in various ways.
(Swinburne)
I do agree that ‘the production of human beings’ is a wonderful thing, …
(Dennett)
(He goes on to say that there could be better beings than us, however.)
I am wondering about two things:
1. What do they mean by saying that it is ‘especially good’ or ‘wonderful’ that humans are around (more…)
I was reading a paper for our own Troy Nunley responding to Eliot Sober on design arguments. I hate likelihoodism and I casually remarked that you couldn’t know whether Pr(E/H1) > Pr(E/H2) without knowing the individual values or at least knowing one of them and knowing some function connecting them. After some wrangling we came up with this counterexample.
I know that at t the ratio of black to white balls is the same in Urn 1 and Urn 2. Then I discover that at t’ an undisclosed number of white balls have been added to Urn 1. It seems that the drawing of a white ball favors the hypothesis that it was drawn from Urn 1. For this we did not have to have any information allowing H1 or H2 to generate predictions.
Troy thinks this model allows us to see how observational data favor guided evolution over unguided evolution. Here’s the argument as I understand it. Let H1 be that evolution occurred unguided. Let H2 be that evolution was guided by some sufficiently powerful agent whose goals would be furthered by evolution occurring. I think the idea is that H2 is just H1 + H3 where H3 is the part about there being such an agent. Since H3 adds some probability of E to H2 (whose likelihood w.r.t E = that of H1), E favors H2 over H1.
I find this a pretty interesting argument and as far as I know it’s novel, though I don’t know the literature very well.
There’s a great exchange between Daniel Dennett and Richard Swinburne in Prospect Magazine here. The occasion is Dennett’s new book on a scientific approach to religion. The conversation is an excellent introduction to the debate over whether there’s a God. The debate soon turns to matters epistemological, especially concerning the nature of explanation. A significant difference between Dennett’s and Swinburne’s views on explanation is the role of simplicity and the role of prediction. Swinburne relies heavily on simplicity and doesn’t think prediction is all that significant in the justification of scientific theories. Dennett disagrees. The issues here are quite fascinating, independently of their consequence for this present debate.