An area philosopher is in critical yet stable condition in a local hospital today due to the acute effects of an existential crisis brought on by realizing the joint implications of utilitarianism and panpsychism.
At a press conference, the victim's mother pleaded to the public, "Before he became a philosophy, he was so happy and well-adjusted. Just like millions of other Americans, he ate meat, consumed dairy products, wore leather, and enjoyed the hell out of it. Then he became a utilitarian and things just started to go downhill." When asked to elaborate, she added, "After reading Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, he became a utilitarian and...[sobbing]...vegan. At first he was just a bit worried about being caught by the vegan police. I kept telling him that's absurd...but he wouldn't have any of it. I think he was just paranoid from the leftover chicken he kept stealing from the fridge."
The victim's father added, "We really didn't think very much of it, thought it was just a phase. But then he really took a nosedive and...became a biocentrist [audible gasps by the press]. Now it wasn't just animals he wouldn't eat. He kept going on about how plants have feelings, how they can hear themselves being eaten, and became...an animist fruitarian who refused to eat anything except for dead fruits that have fallen off trees. 'They're on their deathbed already', he told me, 'so eating them won't cause any additional suffering in the world.' We really hoped that would be the end of his spiral downward but...we were [sobbing uncontrollably]...so wrong."
In a groundbreaking article appearing in the Journal of Philosophical Progress, an area philosopher claims to have revolutionized philosophical methods, defending a new "conclusions-first philosophy" otherwise known as "conclusions fundamentalism." The philosopher explained, "All I have really done is take two influential methodological advances to their inevitable logical conclusion." When asked to elaborate, the philosopher explained, "For most of history, it was assumed that we need to explain the nature of philosophical phenomena. For instance, when we look at Plato's dialogues, we see Socrates and his interlocutors giving arguments for conclusions about the nature of things like knowledge, justice, and virtue."
"However, all of this changed near the turn of the 21st century", the philosopher continued. "In his 1999 book What We Owe to Each Other, T.M. Scanlon argued that instead of trying to explain the nature of reasons for action, we should conclude that reasons are fundamental. This 'reasons-first' approach or 'reasons fundamentalism' has now become a dominant paradigm in action theory and moral philosophy. Interestingly, at around the same time, in his 2000 book Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson argued that instead of trying to explain the nature of knowledge--for instance, in the traditional vein of giving necessary and sufficient conditions--we should instead believe that knowledge is primitive. Much like reasons-fundamentalism, this 'knowledge-first' approach has absolutely revolutionized the field."
In a stunning set of developments, a philosophical zombie definitively resolved three perennial philosophical problems over the course of a single undergraduate seminar. The class in question, taught by Professor Gödel-Schmidt, was scheduled to focus entirely on René Descartes' famous proof of his own existence--cogito, ergo sum. However, it quickly evolved into a wide ranging discussion culminating in the establishment of several fantastic new philosophical paradigms.
"As I wasn't reading Descartes, I couldn't believe what I wasn't reading. Descartes kept stating so many false things!" When asked to elaborate, the zombie continued, "First, Descartes wrote, 'I suppose, then, that all the things that I see are false; I persuade myself that nothing has ever existed of all that my fallacious memory represents to me. I consider that I possess no senses; I imagine that body, figure, extension, movement and place are but the fictions of my mind.' But I had no idea what she was talking about. I don't see anything. I don't have a memory. I have no mind at all!" The session then quickly coalesced around the zombie's worries. "I kept reading passages from Descartes," Professor Gödel-Schmidt reported, "but nothing convinced him. First, I read, 'of a surety I myself did exist since I persuaded myself of something [or merely because I thought of something].' But the zombie just said, "No, it's a surety I don't exist...because I think nothing!" Then I read, 'But there is some deceiver or other, very powerful and very cunning, who ever employs his ingenuity in deceiving me. Then without doubt I exist also if he deceives me, and let him deceive me as much as he will, he can never cause me to be nothing so long as I think that I am something.' But again, the zombie said, 'That's obviously false--I don't think anything: I don't exist!' And when I came to, 'I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it', all he said was, 'I don't pronounce or conceive anything. 'I am, I exist', is false every time I pronounce it.'" Professor Godel Schmidt added, "Well, I had to give him credit for consistency."
Having met a truly formidable dialectical opponent, Professor Gödel-Schmidt turned to G.E. Moore's proof of the external world. "I thought, okay, maybe I can't convince him that he has a mind--but surely I can convince him that he has hands!" Alas, it was not to be. The zombie definitely refuted Professor Moore's proof. "I said, 'here's a hand, and here's another', and both statements were false! There were no hands at all. There were no tables, no chairs, no people--and again...no me." When the zombie's classmates suggested his argument was self-refuting, as the zombie kept using the indexical 'I' to refer to himself, the zombie simply replied, "You're totally not getting it. 'I', when I use it, has no referent. Like I've been telling you, I don't exist.' The truly astounding results, however, were still yet to come.
After establishing both that he doesn't exist and that the external world doesn't exist, the zombie meticulously followed through these surprising propositions to their stunning logical conclusion. "Philosophers have always wondered why there is something rather than nothing," the zombie explained, "but it's unbelievable how easy this question is to answer: nothing exists. As we have seen, I don't exist, and the external world doesn't exist--so the correct question is not, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"; it is, "Why is there nothing rather than something?" When asked how it could possibly be true that nothing exists when he is asking these very questions, the zombie readily answered, "I'm a solipsist!" Professor Gödel-Schmidt could not be reached for comment.
Alas, neither the zombie nor Professor Gödel-Schmidt had a good answer to the question of why there is nothing rather than something. "I can only hope to have opened a new chapter in philosophical inquiry", the zombie pronounced, adding however, "but, on second thought, I guess I can't really take credit for these findings."
In 1985, Starship famously shocked the world by purporting to prove that we built this city on rock-and-roll (for a summary of the proof, see Figure 1).
Figure 1. "We Built This City"
Although initially met with skepticism, Starship's proof has surprisingly never been refuted, that is, until now. This morning, an area philosopher, working under the online pseudonym “JeffAirplane4Evah”, published a proof demonstrating, once and for all, that we did not, in fact, build this city on rock-and-roll.
Contacted anonymously through email, the philosopher stated, "I always knew that we built this city. But I've never been convinced we built it on rock-and-roll." When asked to elaborate, the philosopher added, "It's always been a real puzzle. I mean, if we built this city on rock-and-roll, how did it escape our notice for so long?" Alas, Starship's proof has long resisted refutation. Part of the problem, philosophers say, is that the proof is notoriously torturous. "It's almost like reading Wittgenstein", philosopher P.M.S Hacker noted, "Nobody's ever really understood it...well, besides me." One important issue, in particular, has never been solved. "There's always been an interpretive dilemma with premise (9): 'Marconi played the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you rememba?", Hacker says, "Many Starship scholars have argued that it makes no sense to say that Marconi played the mamba. After all, the mamba is a giant, poisonous, African snake. Thus, many scholars have argued Starship must have meant the mambo. Yet, the mambo is hardly rock-and-roll, you know what I mean? On the other hand, if we interpret premise (9) literally...well, playing a giant, poisonous, African snake would be very rock-and-roll...but no one I've met remembers hearing that."
One early attempt to refute Starship's argument was based on experimental philosophy survey methods. "Early empirical studies showed that many of the folk just didn't share Starship's intuitions," one experimental philosopher reported. However, Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor at Oxford University, famously disarmed this argument with his expertise defense. "Starship has very something important that the folk lack", Williamson argues, "decades of careful experience and reflection on this city and rock-and-roll. I mean, who you gonna believe", Williamson famously declared, "the folk...or Grace Slick?"
Still, many philosophers remained uncomfortable Starship's proof. "Look, I'll give Williamson Jefferson Airplane", one anonymous philosopher stated, "I might even be willing to give him Jefferson Starship. But Starship simpliciter? You've gotta be kidding me. They may know this city...but their rock-and-roll expertise is questionable at best." Other philosophers even rushed to provide new defenses of Starship's argument. One popular approach, Rock Realism, championed by Russ Shafer-Landau, has held that this city being built on rock-and-roll is the best explanation of the face value of our ordinary-everyday rock-and-roll practices. Further, Rock Realists have brilliantly exploited the so-called companions in guilt strategy. "If we denied that this city is built on rock-and-roll," Shafer-Landau explained,"we would also have to say that we started the fire (Joel 1989), that the grass isn't green and the girls aren't pretty in Paradise City (A. Rose at al (1987)...and of course, we'd also have to Stop Believin' (Cain et. al 1981). I don't know about you," Shafer-Landau continued, "but I'm just not willing to bite those bullets."
JeffAirplane4Evah's new proof took perceived problems with Rock Realism as a springboard. "I've always been skeptical of the Rock Realist defense", JeffAirplane4Evah explained, "I mean, I've looked really hard for the rock and roll this city was built on, but I've never been able to find it. The supposed rock-and-roll truths Rock Realists assert always just seemed to be a hopelessly queer kind of fact. Not to mention there are pretty good arguments for Rock Relativism." According to JeffAirplane4Evah, these worries gave rise to concerns about persistence conditions--the foundations of the new counter-proof. Using cutting-edge metaphysics, JeffAirplane4Evah proved that if this city were built on rock and roll, then destroying rock and roll would have to destroy this city instantaneously. "But that's obviously not true", JeffAirplane4Evah noted, "You could clearly destroy all the rock and roll without destroying this city. QED." Although widespread agreement is rare in philosophy, the proof appears to already have become universally accepted, and is expected to generate a great deal of new work "relating to material constitution, supervenience, realization, and ground", one philosopher said, "though to be honest I'm pretty those are the all same thing. The metaphysicians just have to be messing with us, right?"
In any case, the future looks bright for JeffAirplane4Evah. His next endeavor? He says he's always been fascinated by N. Ranger's longstanding puzzle, "the secret of my success" (see Fig. 2). "I'm not sure what the secret is", JeffAirplane4Evah stated, "but I'm pretty sure it's not living 25 hours a day."
An area philosopher is reported to have accomplished something long thought impossible: a definitive refutation of Ludgwig Wittgenstein's famous Private Language Argument. In an exclusive recent interview, the philosopher, who for the time being prefers not to be named, announced, "I've done it. I have definitively refuted the Private Language Argument." When asked to provide a detailed reconstruction of the refutation, the philosopher said that the result is still preliminary, and currently "undergoing peer-review."
The philosopher did, however, give a few clues: "It is a very difficult proof - almost impossible to put into words, really. I doubt the referees will understand it. But okay, if you really want to know, here's the best I can describe it. I introspected a particular experience of mine -- a particular shade of red. I assigned it the name 'S.' I then looked away from the red object, and then looked back. It was the same shade! And so I named it 'S' again. But, of course, no one else can possibly experience my experience of that shade of red, so the language is private." He then gave the following brief demonstration. He stared intently at the plastic red beer cup in his hand, closed his eyes, opened them, stared intently at the cup again, and explained, "Nice...QED yet again!"
When asked to elaborate how he knew "the shade of red initially named 'S'" was the same redness he later named 'S", thus coming to terms with Wittgenstein's objection that such a naming -- a putative private language -- would need some public criterion for success, the philosopher excitedly replied, "That's the trick of the proof. I can't possibly provide a public criterion for my act. The act of naming was private to me, so my naming both red shades 'S' was a private language!" When asked whether this potentially groundbeaking line of argument is refuted by recent empirical research indicating that individuals are unable to introspectively distinguish subtly different color shades from one another, the philosopher cavalierly replied, "I just don't have that intuition."
When questioned about whether appealing to intuitions in this case is a good form of argument -- particularly in light of how philosophical intuitions (about absolute space and time, heavenly orbits, etc.) have stood up to empirical findings throughout history -- the philosopher, surprisingly, had a reply ready to hand. "Every theory has its costs. Fortunately, my theory has many partners in crime. If we were to reject appeal to intuitions in this case, we would have to reject them in all other cases: the intuition that moral realism is true because it is the best explanation of moral language and behavior, the intuition that evolution cannot explain consciousness or trait selection, and so on. Indeed, we would have to reject armchair intuitions generally! But philosophy cannot do without intuitions. If philosophers didn't appeal to intuitions -- if, for instance, philosophers of science studied physics or philosophers of mind specialized in evolutionary theory, or really, paid attention to any empirical facts whatsoever -- we would no longer be doing philosophy. We'd be doing science!"
When asked the further question, "How many fallacies can you possibly commit in one long train of reasoning?", the philosopher replied, "Well, that depends. Are we talking logical possibility, metaphysical possibility, epistemic possibility, erotetic possibility, or alethic possibility?" When asked to, "take his pick", the philosopher replied, "Well, if I take my pick, it really depends on whether we approach the issue through a possible worlds semantics, Aristotelian powers-essentialism, etc. Also, are we assuming S5? S4? K?"
In the end, the philosopher remains cautiously optimistic about his refutation of the Private Language Argument. "I could be wrong, I suppose", he said, "but I just don't have that intuition. It seems to me that the argument is sound, and as we all know, seemings provide prima facie justification for belief in the propositions they are seemings-of!"
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