The Philosophers' Cocoon

Three new papers in JESP, Hypatia, and Social Theory & Practice

These three papers have been on PhilPapers for a while, but have recently been published in print, if anyone's interested. Hope some of you find them of interest!

Allies Against Oppression: Intersectional Feminism, Critical Race Theory, and Rawlsian Liberalism. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 26 (2): 221-266. 2023.

Abstract: Liberalism is often claimed to be at odds with feminism and critical race theory (CRT). This article argues, to the contrary, that Rawlsian liberalism supports the central commitments of both. Section 1 argues that Rawlsian liberalism supports intersectional feminism. Section 2 argues that the same is true of CRT. Section 3 then uses Young’s ‘Five Faces of Oppression’—a classic work widely utilized in feminism and CRT to understand and contest many varieties of oppression—to illustrate how Rawlsian liberalism supports diverse feminist and CRT projects, and why it may be critical to achieve solidarity between feminism, CRT, and Rawlsian liberalism. Finally, Section 4 responds to five objections.

Educational Justice and School Boosting. Social Theory and Practice 50 (1): 1-31. 2024. (preprint available here)

Abstract: School boosters are tax-exempt organizations that engage in fundraising efforts to provide public schools with supplementary resources. This paper argues that prevailing forms of school boosting are defeasibly unjust. Section 1 shows that inequalities in public education funding in the United States violate John Rawls’s two principles of domestic justice. Section 2 argues that prevailing forms of school boosting exacerbate and plausibly perpetuate these injustices. Section 3 then contends that boosting thereby defeasibly violates Rawlsian principles of nonideal theory for rectifying injustice. Thus, boosting should be presumptively either made illegal or substantially reformed. Finally, Section 4 responds to potential objections.

This final paper refutes Alex Byrne's and Kathleen Stock's transexclusionary definition of "woman":

Trans Women, Cis Women, Alien Women, and Robot Women Are Women: They Are All (Simply) Adults Gendered Female. Hypatia 38 (2): 373-389. 2023. (preprint here).

Abstract: Alex Byrne contends that women are (simply) adult human females, claiming that this thesis has considerably greater initial appeal than the justified true belief (JTB) theory of knowledge. This paper refutes Byrne’s thesis in the same way the JTB theory of knowledge is widely thought to have been refuted: through simple counterexamples. Lessons are drawn. One lesson is that women need not be human. A second lesson is that biology and physical phenotypes are both irrelevant to whether someone is a woman, and indeed, female in a gendered sense. A third lesson is that trans women, cis women, alien women, and robot women are all women because to be a woman is to be an adult gendered female. This paper does not purport to settle complex normative questions of ethics or justice, including whether the ordinary meaning of “woman” ought to be retained or changed—though I do note plausible implications for these debates. This paper does purport to settle what the ordinary meaning of “woman” is, and in that regard contribute to important conceptual ground-clearing regarding what constitutes an ameliorative or revisionary definition of “woman.”

New article in Journal of Moral Philosophy: "(When) Are Authors Culpable for Causing Harm?"

This is just a quick note that I have a new paper out in the Journal of Moral Philosophy entitled, "(When) Are Authors Culpable for Causing Harm?". The abstract:

To what extent are authors morally culpable for harms caused by their published work? Can authors be culpable even if their ideas are misused, perhaps because they failed to take precautions to prevent harmful misinterpretations? Might authors be culpable even if they do take precautions—if, for example, they publish ideas that others can be reasonably expected to put to harmful uses, precautions notwithstanding? Although complete answers to these questions depend upon controversial views about the right to free speech, this paper argues that five notions from philosophy of law and legal practice—liability, burden of proof, legal causation, mens rea, and reasoning by precedent—can be adapted to provide an attractive moral framework for determining whether an author’s work causes harm, whether and how culpable the author is for causing such harm, steps authors may take to immunize themselves from culpability, and how to responsibly develop new rules for publishing ethics.

New paper on moral realism in Inquiry

This is just a quick note that I have a new paper, 'From rational self-interest to liberalism: a hole in Cofnas's debunking argument of moral progress', published online in Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

Here's the abstract, for anyone who might be interested:

Michael Huemer argues that cross-cultural convergence toward liberal moral values is evidence of objective moral progress, and by extension, evidence for moral realism. Nathan Cofnas claims to debunk Huemer’s argument by contending that convergence toward liberal moral values can be better explained by ‘two related non-truth-tracking processes’: self-interest and its long-term tendency to result in social conditions conducive to greater empathy. This article argues that although Cofnas successfully debunks Huemer’s convergence argument for one influential form of moral realism – Robust Moral Realism, which holds that moral facts are non-natural, stance-independent normative facts – Cofnas’s debunking argument broadly supports a second type of moral realism: Enlightened Self-Interest Realism, the view that moral facts are reducible to stance-dependent requirements of instrumental (‘means-end’) rationality. Finally, this article argues that insofar as different Enlightened Self-Interest Realist theories make specific predictions about the intra- and inter-personal mechanisms behind moral convergence toward liberalism, empirical observations of cross-cultural convergence can provide independent support for Enlightened Self-Interest Realism. I conclude that this is an important mark in favor of Enlightened Self-Interest Realism over Robust Moral Realism.

New paper in BJPS: 'Jury Theorems for Peer Review'

This is just a quick note that Liam Kofi Bright (LSE), Remco Heesen (Western Australia), and I have a new paper, "Jury Theorems for Peer Review", forthcoming in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. The paper is open access, and defends an online, crowd-sourced model of peer-review similar to what Rottentomatoes.com does for movies, arguing that this would be a more reliable mechanism of quality control than traditional peer-review. Hope you all find it interesting!

Excellent works by early-career people?

I came across an excellent and important paper this past weekend by an early-career philosopher, and thought it could be great to begin the week a discussion thread amplifying other examples of excellent work by early-career people. The paper I came across this weekend is by Nicolas Delon (New College of Florida). The paper is, 'Strangers to ourselves: a Nietzschean challenge to the badness of suffering' (forthcoming in Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy). Here's the abstract:

Is suffering really bad? The late Derek Parfit argued that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and that suffering is in itself bad both for the one who suffers and impersonally. Nietzsche denied that suffering was intrinsically bad and that its value could even be impersonal. This paper has two aims. It argues against what I call ‘Realism about the Value of Suffering’ by drawing from a broadly Nietzschean debunking of our evaluative attitudes, showing that a recently influential response to the debunking challenge (the appeal to phenomenal introspection) fails. It also argues that a Nietzschean approach is well suited to support the challenge and is bolstered by the empirical literature. As strangers to ourselves, we cannot know whether suffering is really intrinsically bad for us.

I think it's just a wonderful paper. It challenges some very influential arguments on the nature of normative reasons and value, including the general methodology behind those arguments--and the paper's central argument not only seems to me to be highly plausible; it's also (for obvious reasons) highly provocative. Anyway, I wanted to amplify it here, as I know that papers, particularly those by early career people, can sometimes fall through the cracks, not getting the attention they deserve. Anyway, I encourage readers to check Delon's paper out!

Do any of you have in mind any excellent works by early-career people that you would like to recommend? If so, please do share away in the discussion thread below.

Jorge Portilla's Fenomenología del relajo

Nick Riggle (University of San Diego) recently drew my attention to Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla's work, Fenomenología del relajo, which has been translated into English with philosophical commentary by Carlos Alberto Sánchez (San José State University) in his 2012 book, The Suspension of Seriousness: On the Phenomenology of Jorge Portilla.

Although I have not had the opportunity to read Portilla's or Sánchez work yet (though I've now ordered the book), Riggle also drew my attention to a wonderful short commentary that I did have the chance to read: Francisco Gallegos' article, 'Seriousness, Irony, and Cultural Politics: A Defense of Jorge Portilla' (American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy). 

I have to say that I found it an absolutely fascinating read that makes the case for how deep, original, and fruitful Portilla's thought is, and promised Nick that I would spread the word about it. So please do check it out!

Myisha Cherry on Solidarity Care

Myisha Cherry (UC Riverside) kindly offered to have the Cocoon share a few passages from her new paper, "Solidarity Care: How to Take Care of Each Other in Times of Struggle", in our series on anti-racism in philosophy:

In present-day social discourse, valuing how people speak to each other has been termed, pejoratively, as political correctness. And a person who values such things are labeled snowflakes or cupcakes. On the other hand, the ability to say particularly destructive speech is, by some people, hailed as the American right of free speech. It’s the right that tough people exercise.

However, if being woke has the mental effects that I claim it does...(regardless of one’s sensitivity level), then affirmation and encouragement are not luxuries or coddling. Solidarity care is a necessity. The work of psychologists show us that what we believe about ourselves on the subconscious level can have an impact on outcomes. Their work also shows that affirmation and encouragement provide a buffer to stress, particularly the racial and sexual traumatic stress that many experience. It can be stressful to be awake in a world that reminds you and others that you are in solidarity with––through rhetoric, policy, entertainment, and laws––that your life does not matter; that you are cursed, a mistake, a freak, or inferior. However, being presented with counter evidence of this through affirmation, confirmation, and encouragement is both a form of care and resistance against such destructive claims. A person can fight for freedom and still not be free because she can eventually––if not believe these messages––be in such a vulnerable position that the words can beat, defeat, and burden her. Destructive words have harmful mental and physical effects that threatens one’s overall health. However, affirming through counter-speech can help block these effects.

This way of extending care is what made Malcolm X so appealing. Many may disagree with the rhetoric and arguments of the early Malcolm X, but one of the many things that the black community adored about him was his use of language. His words allowed them to feel like they were still human. His words affirmed the black man who was getting beat by the cops on the streets of Harlem. His words sowed a seed of love to the black woman who felt disrespected by life. His defense of blackness made the unemployed young person feel that there was still hope. This is because affirmation has this power. If a person cares for others, she will not only speak words to power but she will also speak words that will empower others.

Consider the affirmation James Baldwin offers to his namesake in a letter to his nephew:

Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear … [later on he says] this is your home … do not be driven from it… it will be hard … but you come from sturdy peasants … men who picked cotton and damned rivers … and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved … a monumental dignity.(25) 

Consider the affirmation and encouragement Martin Luther King, Jr. gives to members of SCLC in one of his most radical speeches, “Where Do We Go From Here?”:

And with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must body throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, “I am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history, however painful or exploited … yes, yes we must stand up and say “I am black but I'm black and beautiful. This self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him.(26) 

Consider the encouragement of black Congresswoman Maxine Waters spoken in a MSNBC interview after white TV personality Bill O’Reilly demeaned her for her black hair:

And I’d like to say to women out there everywhere: Don’t allow these right-wing talking heads, these dishonorable people, to intimidate you or scare you. Be who you are! Do what you do!(27) 

This is why social media hashtags such as #RefugeesWelcome, #TransIsBeautiful, #BlackExcellence, and #BlackGirlMagic are so needed and powerful. They are viral expressions of care. Their users express them in order to affirm and encourage those who may be hearing opposing messages.

New paper on programming ethical A.I.

This is just a quick note that my new paper, 'Mental Time-Travel, Semantic Flexibility, and A.I. Ethics' is now out. Here is the abstract:

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. 

You can download a preprint at the above link, and can view (but not download) the final published version here. Hope you all find it interesting!

'Bridging Ideal and Non-ideal Theory'

After many years of debate, this new article by Alexandru Volacu finally gets the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory (and how to do both properly) exactly right. If you do social and political philosophy, do check it out! 

On Graber's, "Creating Truth By Winning Arguments..."

I read a really interesting paper today by Abraham Graber entitled, "Creating Truths By Winning Arguments: The Problem of Methodological Artifacts in Philosophy" (forthcoming in Synthese). The paper sort of crystalizes a worry that I've had about philosophical practice dating back at least to graduate school, and which I explored previously here and here: namely, that a whole lot of philosophy--just about anything having to do with conceptual analysis (including analytic metaphysics and meta-ethics)--is little more than philosophers (1) taking themselves to discovering objective philosophical facts (i.e. what material objects are, what morality is, etc.), where what they're really doing is (2) making more-or-less arbitrary semantic decisions to settle the semantics of fundamentally vague concepts that (3) objectively have no determinate satisfaction-conditions before those arbitrary semantic decisions are made.

There's another, simpler way to put this worry: namely, that philosophers engaged in conceptual analysis, far from discovering philosophical facts, are making them up arbitrarily out of whole cloth--in which case a lot of what appears to be "philosophical progress" or "good arguments" at any given point in time are more-or-less-arbitrary semantic decisions that have "won out" rhetorically in the literature and seminar room. This is more or less the worry Graber is pushing as well. So let me briefly explain why I've had the worry for so long, and then briefly comment on Graber's paper.

When I was in graduate school, I found that I often didn't share the intuitions I was "supposed" to. When doing philosophy of language, metaphysics, and mind, I found I didn't share Kripke's Godel/Schmidt intuitions, I didn't share Putnam's Water/XYZ intuitions, I didn't share Davidon's Swampman intuitions, and indeed, I didn't share any externalist intuitions about pretty much anything. But there I was, encountering a veritable tsunami of externalists trumpeting the arguments! But of course not everyone was an externalist. There were still some internalists like me. We just seemed to be getting crowded out by those with externalist intuitions.

And so I worried:was what was going on a kind of band-wagon, Hawthorne effect where once some influential people (Kripke, Putnam, Davidson, etc.) affirm an intuition, other people simply tend to follow suit--in which case it's not actual arguments that are winning the day so much as a sociological phenomenon of certain intuitions becoming popular (in turn rather arbitrarily redefining what counts as a "good argument" in that literature--namely, those that begin with the popular intuition!).;

I ended up taking my "messed up" intuitions home, as it were, leaving philosophy of language for other areas of philosophy where my intuitions weren't considered so "off": namely moral and political philosophy (my AOS now). And yet...the worry has crept up yet again! Indeed, Graber focuses on another case that has troubled me even more lately: the case of moral realism.

Anyone who does meta-ethics knows that there has been a moral realism tsunami, with realist after realist contending that, "only a realist account of moral semantics can account for the face value of moral language [see, for e.g., Shafer-Landau (2003) and Brink (1989)]." (Graber, p. 5) Except here's the problem: many people--people like me, any expressivist on the planet; my students, if my class discussions are any indication, etc.--just don't think the face value of moral language is anything like moral realists claim it to be. Most of my students, for instance, explicitly say that they think moral statements (e.g. "Murder is wrong") merely state matters of emotion, opinion, or otherwise mind-dependent phenomena (such as desires)--all of which flies in the face of moral realists' claims.

And so I have worried: how has moral realism achieved such a preeminent place in philosophical discussion? Is it the arguments that have done it, or is it more of a sociological phenomenon where the philosophers with realist intuitions have the upper-hand not in terms of arguments but rather mere number and prominence of people with their intuitions? 

Now, of course, as I have expressed them, these are just worries--nothing more! However, in his paper, Graber argues that on any plausible theory of meaning (internalist, externalist, whatever), philosophical inquiry changes the meaning of words and concepts, altering their satisfaction-conditions so that (A) at one point in time, and for one set of speaker, one answer to philosophical questions (e.g. moral realism) is correct, whereas (B) at another point in time, and for other speaking, a different answer is correct (e.g. moral antirealism).

Graber's final point then is that if he is right, then philosophical projects that depend on "meaning analysis" (i.e. analytic metaphysics, meta-ethics, etc.) all have to lapse into incoherence. Why? Because, very roughly, if we take ourselves to be (1) discovering answers to philosophical questions, but (2) our inquiries change semantic meaning of contested terms, it follows that (3) we're not discovering answers to philosophical questions. We're making up "answers" on the fly...which is to say, we're not discovering answers at all--we're playing rhetorical philosophical games.

Anyway, I don't know if the worries are good ones, or if Graber is right. These are just some issues that have bounced around in the back of my head for a while--and, while I've never thought about them very carefully, Graber seems to have: and his analysis of them seems to me worth taking seriously. But what do I know? I'll be curious to hear what you all think.

The Problem of Contingency for Religious Belief

It’s a pleasure to have some of my work featured here in the Cocoon (again!). Thank you to my hosts, the regular Cocoon bloggers, and especially to Marcus Arvan, Pupa-in-Chief.

The paper I’d like to submit to your scrutiny—“The Problem of Contingency for Religious Belief”—was recently published in Faith and Philosophy and can be found here.

For this first of three posts, I’ll introduce you to this problem for religious belief and set up how I mean to solve it. In the next two posts, we’ll see if my solution works.

I’m interested in a very old and very common objection to religious belief: a problem of contingency, of irrelevant causal factors, of historical variability. We notice how contingent our religious beliefs are, how much they depend on an accident of birth. If we had been born and raised elsewhere, elsewhen, we easily might have had different religious beliefs. These beliefs have been shaped to a disturbing degree by factors which don’t bear on their truth, factors like who our parents were, what culture we were raised in, which peer-group we happened to admire most, which book we picked up while wandering in the library after school, which conversations we stumbled into in college (and which we didn’t). We so easily might have ended up with different religious beliefs—why trust the ones we chanced into? We may as well consult a Magic 8-Ball on life’s most important questions, you might think.

This skeptical thought is old. One finds it with wit in Xenophanes’s attacks on Greek popular religion, less clearly in Sextus Empiricus, and more clearly in Descartes’ Discourse. It springs up again in J.S. Mill’s On Liberty, and later in Antony Flew’s The Presumption of Atheism. Here’s a nice recent statement of it from John Hick:

[R]eligious allegiance depends in the great majority of cases on the accident of birth: someone born into a devout Muslim family in Pakistan is very likely to be a Muslim, someone born into a devout Hindu family in India to be a Hindu, someone born into a devout Christian family in Spain or Mexico to be a Catholic Christian; and so on. The conclusion I have drawn is that a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ is appropriate in relation to beliefs that have been instilled into one by the surrounding religious culture.

And another from Philip Kitcher:

Most Christians have adopted their doctrines much as polytheists and the ancestor-worshipers have acquired theirs: through early teaching and socialization. Had the Christians been born among the aboriginal Australians, they would believe, in just the same ways, on just the same bases, and with just the same convictions, doctrines about Dreamtime instead of about the Resurrection. The symmetry is complete… Given that they are all on a par, we should trust none of them.

The skeptical thought seems to be this: the connection between many of our religious beliefs and the truth isn’t good enough for knowledge, even if those beliefs are true. And so, when we are made aware of this frail connection, we acquire an undermining defeater for our religious beliefs, we can no longer sensibly claim to know that these religious beliefs are true.

So, I propose that we understand the problem of contingency for religious belief as a problem for religious knowledge, as an argument for the conclusion that, because of the shady way in which they were formed, religious beliefs do not rise to the level of knowledge even if they’re true.

But exactly how is the undermining meant to happen? What’s lacking in the literature—what Xenophanes, Sextus, Descartes, Mill, Flew, Hick, and Kitcher all failed to pony up—is a clear statement of just which epistemic principle our religious beliefs allegedly violate. According to the skeptic, some virtue is missing from our religious beliefs, and this missing virtue precludes knowledge. But which virtue is it? The skeptic stammers where it matters most.

So I thought it would be a service to figure it out. Next time, we’ll explore some candidate virtues that are often taken to be necessary for knowledge and which our religious beliefs may plausibly lack, virtues like sensitivity, safety, and non-accidentality. We’ll also examine the troubling sort of symmetry that Kitcher gestures at: the apparent lack of dispute-independent reasons to ignore all those epistemic peers (and superiors!) who disagree with us on religious questions.

The skeptic’s way forward won’t be easy. Perhaps (as I'll argue) the contingency of our religious beliefs doesn’t really preclude sensitivity, safety, or non-accidentality. Perhaps (as I'll argue) these virtues aren’t even required for knowledge after all. And the skeptic must step lightly to avoid self-defeat: her own “negative” beliefs on religious topics seem at least as contingent as those of the typical religious believer. 

Can the skeptic avoid these pitfalls and fashion a sharp challenge to religious belief? Or will the skeptical project dissolve—slowly, harmlessly—like a coastal fog in the afternoon sun? Tune in next time to find out!

(Probably Friday. Maybe Monday.)

"A Unified Explanation of Quantum Phenomena?"

I am happy to announce that my article, "A Unified Explanation of Quantum Phenomena? The Case for the Peer-to-Peer Simulation Hypothesis as an Interdisciplinary Research Program", is now forthcoming in The Philosophical Forum. Here is the paper's abstract:

In my 2013 article, “A New Theory of Free Will”, I argued that several serious hypotheses in philosophy and modern physics jointly entail that our reality is structurally identical to a peer-to-peer (P2P) networked computer simulation. The present paper outlines how quantum phenomena emerge naturally from the computational structure of a P2P simulation. §1 explains the P2P Hypothesis. §2 then sketches how the structure of any P2P simulation realizes quantum superposition and wave-function collapse (§2.1.), quantum indeterminacy (§2.2.), wave-particle duality (§2.3.), and quantum entanglement (§2.4.). Finally, §3 argues that although this is by no means a philosophical proof that our reality is a P2P simulation, it provides ample reasons to investigate the hypothesis further using the methods of computer science, physics, philosophy, and mathematics.

Vallier on Property-Owning Democracy

For those of you who might not be Rawls scholars, Rawls argued that his principles of domestic justice might be satisfied by two types of regimes: (1) liberal socialism, and (2) property-owning democracy. While the former regime-type has been long discussed, the latter regime-type has been the recipient of increased interest lately, thanks to the work of Samuel Freeman and others.

Anyway, Kevin Vallier has just posted a great new article to philpapers, "A moral and economic critique of the new property-owning democrats: on behalf of a Rawlsian welfare state" (forthcoming in Phil Studies). I think Vallier's argument is pretty devastating. It is also one that invokes a point that I invoked in the comments-section of this post: namely, that moral and political philosophy need to make and be evaluated partly on the basis of empirical predictions related to human psychology and behavior. Vallier is up to precisely this, arguing that the Rawlsian case for property-owning democracy is based on (1) pure, unadulterated speculation about human psychology and behavior, that (2) neither Rawls nor his followers have provided any evidence for, and which (3) contradicts a lot of what we do know about human psychology and behavior. As Vallier writes,

I have a number of general concerns about...[difference principle] arguments [for property-owning democracy]. First, they are... based on psychological claims about the bases of self-respect that seem highly speculative...Perhaps in some cases employees, say, would respect themselves more and receive more respect from others if they were partial owners of their workplace. But then again, maybe not. Plenty of people have a healthy sense of self-respect apart from their jobs, say based on the other social roles they play and the relationships they have throughout the course of their lives...Maximizing the participation rights and social bases of self-respect available to the least advantaged is a messy empirical matter, so it’s not at all clear what the different principle requires in this case. Given that these arguments amount to little more than hand-waiving, it is hard to justify giving the state the authority to monitor capital stocks to a degree sufficient to realize and protect individual and collective capital rights...The general worry I have about difference principle arguments for POD is that their success depends on empirical claims that Rawlsians have to my knowledge never defended. (pp. 17-18)

Vallier, I believe, is plainly right. Political philosophers have no business speculating on which principles of justice should govern society--or what a just, well-functioning society's institutions should be like--in the absence of deep and broadly well-informed understanding of human psychology and behavior (note: such speculation is not innocuous. Rousseauian speculation about human nature arguably contributed to the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror" and Marx's speculations led to communism, mass famine, mass murder, etc.). Doing empirically informed political philosophy takes a ton of work, and indeed, education in psychology, sociology, and politics. It requires far more than abstract philosophical reflection on normative notions of freedom and equality or Rawlsian original positions. It requires situating those normative philosophical arguments within background knowledge from those other areas. A mature political philosophy must, in other words, be deeply interdisciplinary--far more than than political philosophy has often been (though, I should add, significant parts of political philosophy have been long informed by empirical stuff!). Anyway, I congratulate Kevin (a former grad school colleague) on writing such a great article. Although I disagree profoundly with just about everything he has to say on public reason and religion, I think his empirically-informed approach to political philosophy is important and, hopefully, the wave of the future!

 

Unger's "Free Will and Scientificalism"

Thomas Nadelhoffer over at Flickers of Freedom (where I will be guest-blogging in August!) drew my attention to Peter Unger's 2002 paper in PPR, "Free Will and Scientificalism." Whatever you might think of Unger's recent interview, this is a cool paper, one that I think sits very well--at a very broad level--with the new theory of reality I defend in, "A New Theory of Free Will."

In essence, Unger suggests that physicalism ("Scientifical Metaphysics") may be incomplete--that the physical world of quantities/relations may well be built out of qualities (something I think is absolutely correct)--and that true, libertarian free will may well be the result of us fundamentally being infinitely nested qualities (i.e. conscious, self-determined freedom "all the way down"), something that I think fits very well with my Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Simulation Hypothesis: the hypothesis that quantum mechanics, the mind-body problem, problem of free will, etc., are all the result of the world fundamentally being a massive, infinitely nested functional equivent of a peer-to-peer simulation where consciousness itself is a basic "hardware" component.

Anyway, whatever you might think of Unger and his interview, it's an interesting paper!

Unger on "Empty Ideas"...and M.B. Willard's awesomeness

While we're on the subject, there's an interview with Peter Unger on his forthcoming book, Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy over at 3 quarks daily. I'm not as pessimistic about philosophy as Unger is. I think we can do valuable metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy...as long as we take care not to fall into fruitless conceptual debates over fundamentally indeterminate concepts (something that, alas, I think happens too often). However, I also agree with Unger that in order to avoid doing this, philosophy needs to be more empirically informed--indeed, as much as possible. For again, in my view, it is largely empirical inquiry that gives our concepts determinacy, latching onto real (or what Unger calls "concrete") features of the world. Anyway, Unger's interview is a hoot.

In related news, if you haven't read any of her work, M.B. Willard's following two articles in Phil Studies are a hoot, too:

(2013). "Game Called on Account of Fog: Metametaphysics and Epistemic Dismissivism."

(2014). "Against Simplicity".

They're an absolute blast to read, and Williard has--how shall I put it--a real gift for turning a phrase. 

Speaking of papers worth reading...

Speaking of papers worth reading, I’d like to recommend to you, fellow Cocooners, Marcus’ paper “A New Theory of Free Will.” It is quite long. (You obviously didn’t like my “Keep It Short” rule, Marcus!) But it is well worth reading. There is so much in it: from physics to metaphysics, and everything in between, including morality and, of course, free will.

What I like the most about Marcus’ paper is that it makes no appeals to intuitions and other such nonsense. Instead, it offers a systematic and scientifically informed argument for a theory of free will (namely, Libertarian Compatibilism). For this reason, I think that Marcus makes a more convincing case for (a version of) the simulation hypothesis--which is an integral part of Marcus’ argument--than either Bostrom or Chalmers do. Check it out!

Related articles

"A New Theory of Free Will" and the Peer-to-Peer Simulation Hypothesis

Physicists say there may be a way to prove that we live in a computer simulation [Physics]

Is this life real?

Two papers worth reading

I was about to write a couple of papers on why we have no good evidence for determinism/physical-causal-closure and why the compatibilism debate is metaphysically irrelevant...until I discovered the papers were already written by Mark Balaguer!

(2009). The Metaphysical Irrelevance of the Compatibilism Debate (and, More Generally, of Conceptual Analysis), Southern Journal of Philosophy.

(2009). Why there are no good arguments for any interesting version of determinism, Synthese.

Although I was planning to argue for the same conclusions a bit differently -- I wanted to argue that we have no evidence for causal closure by way of various Simulation Hypotheses (existing online simulations, for instance, are almost entirely causally closed...except for the actions of the characters we make choices for) -- I'm very sympathetic with Balaguer's arguments, and encourage everyone to check them out, as well as his recent book through MIT Press, Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem.

Baz (and Mizrahi!) on the Method of Cases

A propos to my previous post on whether there has been any progress in philosophy (and the worries about intuition-based philosophy Moti and I have been harping upon recently), I came across this awesome new paper by Avner Baz in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, "Recent Attempts to Defend the Philosophical Method of Cases and the Linguistic (Re)turn."

Basically, Baz takes all of mainstream analytic philosophy -- and Herman Cappellan and Timothy Williamson specifically -- to task, arguing (as I've long maintained to anyone who will listen) that a lot of philosophy does not really tell us much of interest about the phenomena we claim to be interested in (causation, constitution, etc.) so much as it gives us really confused theories about our concepts of causation, constituion, etc. (which is not what we are after). A few choice paragraphs from the introduction:

Herman Cappelen’s new book, Philosophy Without Intuitions (2012; hereafter referred to as ‘PWI’), presents itself as a radical text, and there is little doubt that it will be taken as such by many. One reviewer has already described it as a ‘bombshell’;1 and it is of the nature of things that many will rush either to dispute or to agree with its main thesis that, persistent rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, analytic philosophers have not relied in their theorizing on intuitions, in any significant sense of that word.

In another, deeper sense, however, the book is very conservative, reactionary even. In the face of growing skepticism about much of the work that has been produced within mainstream analytic philosophy in the last half a century or so, Cappelen argues, in effect, that the skepticism has been wholly misplaced: there is nothing fundamentally wrong with how analytic philosophers have tended to proceed; there is only something wrong with how they (or some of them) have tended to describe their own practice: for reasons that Cappelen regards as not very deep, they have come to describe themselves, falsely, as centrally relying on intuitions in their philosophical theorizing; and this talk of intuitions, Cappelen contends, is what has led to the skepticism. Fix the description, and the skepticism will be shown to be out of place. This, according to Cappelen, is bad news for experimental philosophers who have sought to make a career out of checking on the philosophical ‘intuitions’ of those without formal training in philosophy, and bad news too for anyone else who has hoped to question the work produced by analytic philosophers in the last fifty years or so at a foundational level.3 On the other hand, it is intended to be very good news for all those who have found that work fruitful and exciting, and would be happy to see it continuing along more or less the same lines, without a cloud of skepticism cast over it...

[Part 2 of this paper shows that] the method of cases may be examined, by noting that both Cappelen’s denial of ‘centrality’ and whatever actual defense of the method that may be found in PWI and [Williamson] presuppose a particular conception of language. That conception of language is philosophically and empirically challengeable, but is taken for granted by Williamson and Cappelen, and by virtually all of the other participants in the recent debates concerning the method of cases, without much by way of philosophical support, and without any empirical support; and this despite repeated pronouncements on their part to the effect that philosophers should take seriously and engage with empirical studies related to their philosophical theorizing.

Anyway, I think it's an interesting paper, and well-worth the read, especially given recent discussions on this blog. On the flip-side, I'm a bit dismayed by the paper's citation practices. Our own Moti Mizrahi has published several recent papers on intuition mongering and the method of cases, and I think it is unconscionable that Baz's paper doesn't cite any of Moti's papers (Baz almost entirely cites only big names like Soames, Stanley, Sosa, Weatherson, etc, but won't recent articles on the very same topic by lesser names).

As I've noted before, I think this kind of stuff needs to change. Citations are not "professional kudos", and one should not just cite papers by big names in big name journals. Citations exist to refer to the fact that recent work on the topic exists, and one has an obligation to cite recent work directly relevant to the topic you're writing on, even if that work appeared in a less prestigious journal by a less well-known author.

A great paper: Ray's "Meaning and Truth"

I've remarked several times on how safe (and a little boring) some of the recent philosophical literature seems to me to have been, how we should encourage more philosophical risk-taking, and on how we should be wary of assuming that a paper is great just because it appeared in Mind or Phil Review (or not great because it didn't). 

All that being said, there still are awesome pieces of work being done, and I think I came across one today: Greg Ray's "Meaning and Truth" (forthcoming in Mind). It's a brilliantly clear, original, and well-written piece, and was a joy and enlightening experience to read.

Here's the abstract:

This paper concerns a key point of decision in Donald Davidson's early work in philosophy of language — a fateful decision that set him and the discourse in the area on the path of truth-theoretic semantics. The decision of moment is the one Davidson makes when, in the face of a certain barrier, he gives up on the idea of constructing an explicit meaning theory that would parallel Tarski's recursive way with truth theory. For Davidson there was little choice: he tells us he does not see how to deal with the difficulty except in the radical way he proposes. But there is a way to give such a meaning theory — a meaning theory proper which, using classical logic only, meets a meaning-theoretic analogue of Convention T, satisfies Davidson’s three key desiderata for a theory of meaning, reflects linguistic competence, and avoids quantifying over meanings. The meaning theory sketched here uses Tarskian strategies, as Davidson proposed, but differs from Davidson's approach in not going by way of a truth theory for the target language.

Enjoy!

John Danaher Reviews Moti Mizrahi's "The Problem of Natural Inequality"

Moti recently announced his forthcoming paper, titled "The Problem of Natural Inequality: A New Problem of Evil". I thought I would point readers to a worthwhile discussion of his paper that John Danaher is working through at his blog. Here is part one, and part two. 

The Problem of Natural Inequality: A New Problem of Evil

 

I have a paper forthcoming in Philosophia, which has benefited greatly from discussion here on the Cocoon. So I would like to thank those who have participated in the discussion: Daniel Greco, David Morrow, Elisa Freschi, Marcus Arvan, and Walter Riker. Thanks a lot!

 

Get your copy of The Reasoner...

... right here; the most awesome reasoning publication, period.

My piece in this issue of The Reasoner has benefited a lot from discussion on the Cocoon with Alex and Dan Dennis. Thanks!

Recommended Papers?

Now that I've finally caught up on my journal reading, I thought it might be worth sharing some recent articles I've found interesting, and encourage readers to share papers they've found interesting. Here are just a few that I recommend:

• "Qualia Compression" by Lieven Decock and Igor Douven (PPR, 2013)
• "Experimental Attacks on Intuitions and Answers" by John Bengson (PPR, 2013).
• "PSR", by Michael Della Rocca (Philosophers' Imprint, 2010)
• "Non-Reductive Physicalism and the Mind Problem", by Susan Schneider (Nous, 2013)
• "Is Property Dualism Better Off Than Substance Dualism?", by William Lycan (Phil Studies, 2013).
• "A Powers Theory of Modality -- or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Reject Possible Worlds", by Jonathan Jacobs (Phil Studies, 2010).
• "The Normative Significance of Desires", by Dalia Drai (Journal of Value Inquiry, 2013)

Anyone have recommendations of their own?

A Good Paper

I read what I believe to be a very good and potentially important paper today by Jeppe von Platz in Politics, Philosophy and Economics entitle "Are Economic Liberties Basic Rights?" The paper addresses an issue raised by John Tomasi in his recent book, Free Market Fairness. Basically, Tomasi argues that we should recognize hard-core capitalist property rights as "basic rights" -- that is, as no less basic (in a just society) than rights to free speech, a democratic vote, etc. Further, and perhaps most interestingly, Tomasi attempts to do this on Rawlsian grounds. In other words, Tomasi argues that if Rawls were morally and theoretically consistent, he should have been a kind of classical liberal.

Von Platz's argument in the paper is that although Tomasi's argument (1) misinterprets Rawls and (2) fails on its own merits, Rawls and his followers (Samuel Freeman in particular) fail to show that economic liberties are not basic rights -- in which case the debate between Rawlsians and classical liberals/libertarians on this issue is, properly understood, an even draw. 

There are several things I think are potentially very important about the paper.

First, I think it really demolishes Tomasi's argument. It shows clearly and very carefully (at least to my eyes) how Tomasi misinterprets Rawls, and how T's argument fails on its own merits.  Second, I think the paper shows pretty persuasively that Rawls and his followers haven't faced up to the issue very well, either.  Finally, and most importantly of all (again, by my eyes), the paper really pins down at the end precisely what is at issue, and what must be settled to resolve the debate in one direction or the other. As von Platz writes, his paper shows that:

[W]hether the economic liberties are basic rights will depend on whether the activities of economic agency are mediately or immediately necessary for the adequate development or exercise of the capacity for a conception of the good. How to answer that question is a topic for another essay. (p. 18)

I very much hope that von Platz follows through on the promise here of "another essay." In the meantime, I encourage you all to check out the paper and to discuss it below (particularly if any of you think I'm too sanguine about it).

Modality without Possible Worlds

Although I don't specialize in metaphysics, I'm perennially interested in it and like to keep on it as much as I can. Anyway, I've read several articles on modality recently that really piqued my interest, and which  and figured it couldn't hurt to share them. The first article I came across is Jonathan Jacobs', "A Powers Theory of Modality: or, How I Learned to Stop Worring and Reject Possible Worlds." Then I read Barbara Vetter's recent paper in Analysis, "Recent Work: Modality without Possible Worlds."

I think (naively, perhaps) that what Vetter calls the "new actualist" approach to modality -- understanding modality in terms of essences or dispositions rather than possible worlds -- may be a real agenda-setting development. So much philosophical argument over the past several decades seems to have been predicated upon what Vetter and Jacobs call a Humean/Lewisean metaphysical picture: a picture where objects and properties bear no necessary connections. What if, as the new actualists suggest, this Humean/Lewisean picture is false? Anyway, I think the stuff is interesting and well worth reading, if only as a stimulating counterpoint to a now orthodox way of thinking.

Tempted to appeal to authority?

Don't!

February issue of The Reasoner is out

The February issue of The Reasoner is available here.

Apropos recent discussion on the Cocoon, there is a piece on ethical relativism by Majid Amini.

On "On What Matters"

I'd like to draw our readers' attention to Kate Manne's draft review of Derek Parfit's On What Matters. Kate is a regular reader and commenter and, as some of you may recall, I'm very sympathetic with some of her work on normative reasons. I'm also very sympathetic with her review and would like to encourage you all to check it out. As an aside, Kate has asked me to mention that it is an early draft, so if any of you have constructive feedback for her, I'm sure she would be very appreciative.

More Intuition Mongering

in the January issue of The Reasoner.

"There is no argument that the mind extends"

Sam Coleman (University of Hertfordshire) has this interesting paper, "There is no argument that the mind extends", forthcoming in the Journal of Philosophy.

Two Interesting Papers

I came across the following two papers the other day through this post over at the Brains blog:

• "The Cartesian Argument Against Physicalism" by Philip Goff
• "Non-Reductive Physicalism and the Mind-Body Problem" by Susan Schneider (forthcoming in Nous)

I'd like to encourage everyone to check them out: (1) Goff essentially argues in his paper that Descartes' arguments for dualism -- which we typically use as target-practice in introductory classes -- actually give us resources for a sound argument against physicalism; and (2) Schneider argues that non-reductive physicalism (a dominant position these days) is incoherent and collapses into substance dualism.  Anyway, just thought I'd give their papers a shout-out!

Stereotype Threat and Intellectual Virtue (cross-posted at Philosophy and Other Thoughts)

I recently composed a paper on stereotype threat and intellectual virtue, which I've posted over on my personal blog.  It seemed apropos of recent discussion (or whatever you want to call what happened) on this blog, but is a more thorough engagement with the issues than can be had in the comments.

A Decision Procedure for Evaluating Natural Language Arguments

My fellow pupae,

I think that those of you who are teaching logic and critical thinking might find this a useful addition to your arsenal of teaching resources.

There's more interesting stuff in this issue of the APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy.

Teaser: A New Theory of Free Will

I am excited to report that my paper, "A New Theory of Free Will", has been accepted for publication in The Philosophical Forum. Here is the abstract:

This paper shows that the conjunction of several live philosophical and scientific hypotheses – including the holographic principle and multiverse theory in quantum physics, and eternalism and mind-body dualism in philosophy – jointly imply an audacious new theory of free will.  This new theory, "Libertarian Compatibilism", holds that the physical world is an eternally existing array of two-dimensional information – a vast number of possible pasts, presents, and futures – and the mind a nonphysical entity or set of properties that "read" that physical information off to subjective conscious awareness (in much the same way that a song written on an ordinary compact-disc is only played when read by an outside medium, i.e. a CD-player).  According to this theory, every possible physical “timeline” in the multiverse may be fully physically deterministic or physically-causally closed but each person’s consciousness still entirely free to choose, ex nihilo, outside of the physical order, which physically-closed timeline is experienced by conscious observers. 

Although Libertarian Compatibilism is admittedly fantastic, I show that it not only follows from several live scientific and philosophical hypotheses, I also show that it (A) is a far more explanatorily powerful model of quantum mechanics than more traditional interpretations (e.g. the Copenhagen, Everett, and Bohmian interpretations), (B) makes determinate, testable empirical predictions in quantum theory, and finally, (C) predicts and explains the very existence of a number of philosophical debates and positions in the philosophy of mind, time, personal identity, and free will.  First, I show that whereas traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics are all philosophically problematic and roughly as ontologically “extravagant” as Libertarian Compatibilism – in that they all posit “unseen” processes – Libertarian Compatibilism is nearly identical in structure to the only working simulation that human beings have ever constructed capable of reproducing (and so explaining) every general feature of quantum mechanics we perceive: namely, massive-multiplayer-online-roleplaying videogames (or MMORPGs).  Although I am not the first to suggest that our world is akin to a computer simulation, I show that existing MMORPGs (online simulations we have already created) actually reproduce every general feature of quantum mechanics within their simulated-world reference-frames.  Second, I show that existing MMORPGs also replicate (and so explain) many philosophical problems we face in the philosophy of mind, time, personal identity, and free will – all while conforming to  the Libertarian Compatibilist model of reality.

I conclude, as such, that as fantastic and metaphysically extravagant as Libertarian Compatibilism may initially seem, it may well be true.  It explains a number of features of our reality that no other physical or metaphysical theory does.

I'll post a penultimate version of the paper in due course (I'm a bit reluctant to do so at the moment, as I'm not sure how publishers feel about this practice -- but I wanted to report the news, especially in light of this report that a handful of physicists at the University of Bonn have developed a method for possibly testing the universe-as-simulation theory. Might physics demonstrate the truth of Libertarian Compatibilism? Only time will tell.;)

Situationism and the Value of Art

Here's a link to a paper that Jacob Berger (CUNY Graduate Center) and I have been working on for the last few months.  It explores the potential implications for aesthetics -- especially the value of art -- from social psychology.  Any comments, criticisms, and questions would of course be most appreciated.

Can we all say goodbye to phenomenal concepts now?

Given that I'm an ex-physicalist who is now an avowed dualist (I have also just finished a paper showing that [almost] every existing interpretation of quantum-mechanics is fundamentally dualist, which should lead even the most naturalistically-inclined among us to take greater pause -- and I am far from alone in suggesting this: many great QM physicists, Shrodinger, Heisenberg, and many others, thought quantum reality is fundamentally dualist), I thought I would clue you all into Tomas Bogardus' forthcoming paper in Phil Studies, "Undefeated Dualism."  

Borgardus argues -- correctly in my view -- that no existing physicalist strategy to explain away dualist intuitions is remotely close to successful (including, thank goodness, the "phenomenal concept strategy", which I have long thought to be an enormous red herring). Anyway, I hope you all check his paper out. I need to give it a closer reading, but I think it's worth paying attention to.

Have Reasons Had Their Day?

Philosophers have spilt a lot of ink over the past three decades or so writing about reasons.  Reasons-talk has become even more pronounced -- indeed, dominant -- in the past decade or so, with reasons internalists and externalists arguing back-and-forth over whether reasons come from "within" or "without", and towering figures like T.M. Scanlon and Derek Parfit taking (normative) reasons to be normatively fundamental entities.

Some of us have long suspected the supposed fundamentality of reasons to be a collosal blind-alley, and that (normative) reasons must be explained in terms of something else more normatively fundamental: the concept of "ought", perhaps, or (if Judith Thompson is correct) the concepts of evaluatives and directives, or (if J. David Velleman is correct) "an evaluative perspective."  Why?  The short answer is that reasons-claims seem to call out for analysis.  We ask, "Why should I think I have such-and-such a reason?"  This very question -- the request for an explanation of what constitutes one's reasons -- suggests that (normative) reasons cannot be normatively fundamental.  

Anyway, I think (and hope) that the "reasons are fundamental"-era is beginning to come to an end. I'd like to draw everyone's attention to this awesome paper by Kate Manne, "The New Euthyphro Problem: What Grounds What for Reasons?"  According to Manne, reasons-talk faces an insoluble dilemma akin to the traditional Euthyphro dilemma: there are two diametrically opposed perspectives on where reasons come from (internalism and externalism), and neither position can be defended successfully against the other.  For (roughly) this reason (pun fully intended!), Manne holds that the "reasons-are-fundamental"-perspective is hopeless.  

Is Manne right?  Have reasons had their day?  I'm curious to see what you all think!

Minimal Truthmakers

I've been working on a paper on minimal truthmakers with an ex-colleague of mine from Durham, Donnchadh O'Conaill (we've previously written a paper together on monism). The paper is now at the stage where we could use some feedback. Rather than posting a link to the draft here, I'll post this general call for volunteers -- drop me a message if you think you might like to read it and could perhaps provide some feedback, or even just a general impression. We make some use of the work of Armstrong, Fine, Correia, Sider, and Schaffer, among others. The goal is to defend the usefulness of the notion of minimal truthmakers and to provide a definition of them, as well as give some reasons to think that there indeed are some minimal truthmakers. Our two primary arguments concern the explanatory value of minimal truthmakers, and the idea that at least 'joint-carving' (or fundamental) propositions are likely to have minimal truthmakers. The draft is about 8,000 words. The abstract is below.

A minimal truthmaker for a given proposition is the smallest portion of reality which can make this proposition true. Minimal truthmakers are frequently mentioned in the literature, and have been referred to as “of quite special importance for metaphysics” (Armstrong 2004, 19). However, there has been no systematic account of what minimal truthmakers are or of their importance. In this paper we shall clarify the notion of a minimal truthmaker for a given proposition, and argue that there is reason to think that at least some propositions have minimal truthmakers. We shall then argue that the notion of a minimal truthmaker can play a useful role in truthmaker theory, by helping to explain the truth of certain propositions as precisely as possible.

Is Moral Relativism Worth Taking Seriously?

Maybe so.  If the past several decades of articles, ethics textbooks, and my own graduate education in moral philosophy are any indication, almost no one takes moral relativism seriously.  J. David Velleman has another take -- and I think he's probably onto something very important.  Just thought I'd share his very intriguing article, "Foundations for Moral Relativism", with y'all.  I'm also curious to hear what you all think of it!

Publication Announcement: Reconceptualizing Human Rights

I am excited to announce the publication of my article, "Reconceptualizing Human Rights", in the Journal of Global Ethics.  

This paper argues that the concept of a "human right" is defective, in that the concept refers indiscriminately to two very different types of moral claims, not a single sort of thing that can be sensibly classified under a single heading.  I then show that insofar as this is the case, there can be no single theory of human rights (of the sort that is so common today).  We must instead seek two (mostly independent) theories of human rights: a theory of domestic human rights (or universal civil rights), and a theory of international human rights. Finally, I show that the most common approach to justifying human rights -- the "Basic View" that human rights are more basic than justice and can be derived from some moral value(s), such as autonomy, personhood, or a minimally decent human life -- is fundamentally misguided.  Domestic and international human rights are rights of domestic and international justice, and should be seen as emerging from philosophical justifications of domestic and international coercion.  I conclude, as such, that there is no place for a "theory of human rights" in moral or political philosophy.  There is only enough "room" for theories of domestic and international justice, as such theories just are theories of domestic and international human rights.