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Ratiocination

Association of Student Philosophers


The Association of Student Philosophers (Biola's undergraduate philosophy club) will begin regular weekly meetings on Monday, Sept. 12 at 8:30pm in the SUB.

The theme for this fall semester can be characterized as “A New Renaissance of Christian Philosophy.”

Christian philosophy has bloomed in the last several decades, with believers more prominently positioned in the ranks of professional philosophers than in nearly any other academic disciplines and serious attention being given to philosophical topics believers may find uniquely interesting or pressing. Professor Tom Crisp will give a short talk for our first meeting on the key contours and players in this development.

The last several decades have also been marked by a renewed interest in serious philosophy of religion, especially arguments for and against the existence of God. A window into these arguments that ASP will be using is Jordan Howard Sobel’s recent book, Logic and Theism. It’s an important work that is quickly ascending to the throne as The Go-To Place for a systematic atheistic perspective. One might say that JH Sobel is the new JL Mackie.

The plan is roughly this: we will wade through Sobel’s detailed analysis page by page (as slowly as it takes to understand what he’s up to). Short weekly readings in PDF format will be posted in the ASP folder on bubbs. It’s important to note that while these readings may sometimes appear intimidating, this should not discourage participating in the ASP meetings! Our hope is that with enough of us gathered together and dedicated to studying the work, we can learn something from Sobel. No previous experience in analytic philosophy of religion or logic is required.

Analysis (the journal)


Analysis is quickly becoming my favorite "go-to" place for a quick philosophical read. I'm getting to know the language and style of the publication, and it's increasing in appeal with every visit. The journal is marked by a clear analytic ("what else?" as its editor quips) tone, and short, to-the-point discussion notes. There are no research or survey articles, and no discussions of the great dead philosophers, just analytic metaphysics and epistemology through-and-through.

The structure of the journal is slightly idiosynchratic. It is funded by an endowment and run by a single editor (with support by a distinguished editorial board). Despite the fact that Michael Clark (the editor) is a punctual email respondent, current journal policy requires hard-copy submissions to be mailed to him in the UK. This is becoming more and more unusual, as the trend seems to be for journals transition to online submission mechanisms. I suspect this hard-copy-only policy is maintained to minimize frivolous submissions.

Interestingly, the editor of Analysis has more power than others in similar positions (at other professional philosophy journals), as he may accept or reject a paper without sending it out to referees. This centralized power accounts for Analysis' amazing response rate, I think: after submitting a paper, authors typically hear back from the journal within the week. Rare cases take as long as two or three weeks. My own experience well confirms this bit of common knowledge; I recieved notice of rejection within six days of submission, in one instance. That this experience is the norm for Analysis is impressive.



See also my posts, Philosophy Publication Part I and Philosophy Publication (Part II).

Philosophy Publication (Part II)


In Part I of this series, I gave a description of the overall process for getting published in philosophy journals. Most of what I know has been learned piecemeal from scattered conversations and blog posts; comprehensive and systematic web resources for those (especially students) interested in publishing philosophy are as of yet still lacking. Here are a few sites I've found valuable, though:

1. Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy
Though this is a somewhat outdated piece (originally published as a book in 1986 and updated ten years later, I believe), it is worthwhile to review. Most notably, it lists basic information for many leading publication venues, like what kind of article certain journal editors appear to favor, etc.

2. Advice to philosophy graduate students about publishing
A well-worth-reading discussion at Brian Leiter's blog on the value of publication for graduate students. There are a lot of comments on this post, but I recommend reading all of them.

3.  Some soft science on the hard task of getting published
A breakdown of journals and papers they appear to favor by topic. The statistical analysis is basic, but still highly useful for figuring out where to send a piece.

4. Getting Published
Another useful overview of the process by Peter Smith.

5. Philosophy Publications and Hiring Practices
Another discussion at Brian Leiter's blog on journals and the perhaps unfair weight given to publication record in the hiring process. Again, read all the comments on this one.

6. Time out of joint (concurrent submissions)
A post by John Holbo inquiring as to the utility of the "no concurrent submissions" rule followed by most professional philosophy journals.

7. The Ethical Obligations of Journals Vis-a-Vis Authors
A proposed "bill of rights", laying out the ethical obligations journals owe to their prospective authors.

8. Philosophy Journals: Which Ones are Responsible, Which Ones Not?
A final Brian Leiter-hosted discussion of which philosophy journals are kindest to their authors (especially in terms of providing referee feedback and reasonable response times). Need I say it again? Browse all the comments on this one; it's a good read and there's a lot to learn here.

9. Journals Survey
Brian Weatherson's statistical analysis of the reputation/quality of a bunch of journals. A quick glance gives insight as to what the "pretegious" journals are. More discussion here.

10. Scholarly Publishing
More from Brian Weatherson, this time on the weight given to publication record in employment decisions.

11. Journals and the Web
Brian Weatherson's reflections on the ethics of posting papers to the web as it relates to journal publishing.

12. Analysis and its Alternatives
Brian Weatherson opines on the prospects of online journals as a suplement or alternative to Analysis' fast-paced discussion notes.

These are the extent of web resources I have discovered that might interest students of philosophy who wish to learn the publication ropes. Links to any other sites I should be aware of are of course welcome.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will review a handful of top journals and discuss a few strategies I've found for increasing chances of admission. I'll also try to say something about an area I have no experience with (but some knowledge of): publishing philosophy books.

Philosophy Publication (Part I)


There are many facets to the world of professional academic philosophy: teaching, promotion/tenure, conferences, networking, and the like. Perhaps more important than any of these, however, is the area of publication. As in other academic disciplines, publishing plays a dominant role in the life of a philosophical scholar. Except at schools which heavily emphasize teaching, those who publish survive, and those who don't, perish.

Publication is the gateway to employment, job security (tenure), professional advancement, and a host of other valuable things. Editors and referees for professional journals and book presses hold the keys to this gateway, so it's important to understand how they work and the general process. Most broadly, the process of paper publication looks something like this:

1. A paper, prepared for blind review (without identifying information), is sent to an editor with an abstract, contact information, and a cover letter or note indicating that the paper in question is under submission for journal such-and-such. Increasingly, this stage happens electronically; Philosophical Studies uses an elaborate online submission-and-review web application to manage their incoming papers, for example. Papers at this stage rarely conform in detail to the style guidelines (for footnotes and such) of the journal, though it's a good idea to get as close as possible, provided that it doesn't take that much more work.

2. Within days, the author recieves notification of paper reciept. At this point, the editor (or sometimes an assistant editor) makes an initial judgement call on the quality of the paper. If it is full of obvious errors, does not meet the clear-cut content guidelines of the journal, or is unambiguously unsuitable for publication, the paper is rejected and the author is quickly notified. Grammatical and spelling errors and "writing like a student" are good ways to fail this stage of the process. In my experience, confident, error-free (the obvious kind of errors, at least) writing that looks sufficiently rigorous, technical, or competent in the literature is sufficient to gain passage to the next stage.

Some journals remove all identifying information at the pre-review stage: an administrative worker processes all papers and assigns them a number or identifier and passes these completely anonymous manuscripts on to the editor. Other journals are blind only at the referee stage. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some editors may choose to google the author's name and learn a bit more about him/her before even making the initial decision.

3. More suitable papers are sent on to reviewers, typically a member of the journal's editorial committee who specializes in whatever field the paper is in. When submitting a paper, one can get a good idea of who might be a referee by at least two methods: first, check the inside cover of the journal and note the names of philosophers listed in the editorial board who specialize in the field the paper is in. Second, google for philosophers who list refereeing for the journal in question in the "professional service" portion of their curriculum vitae. Either method may yield productive results which may inform the stylistic direction the paper might take to maximize success. Reviewers are almost always volunteer workers and "blind"--they recieve no compensation and do not know the name or affiliation of the author. This is designed to be a strictly meritocratic system, based on quality of work, not mere reputation. For people like me (an unknown and unsung undergraduate student), this is a god-send. After accepting a paper for publication and discovering my institutional affiliation and student status, one editor recently wrote to me, "Then allow me to offer additional congratulations -- yours is the first paper submitted by an undergraduate to be accepted for publication... If you don't mind me saying so, that's quite an accomplishment, as our reviewing process is very rigorous and strictly meritocratic, and our refusal rate accordingly is quite high." I get the feeling that if he knew I was an undergraduate before reading the positive referee report, he might not have been so receptive of the paper (understandably). I thus conclude that blind review works!

Some journals will send papers on to more than one reviewer, others only one.

Blind review is a little less than completely blind, of course. Through the power of google, some referees may discover the author of a paper in their hands by searching for key phrases or new technical vocabulary. Not posting your CV or paper drafts to the web is one way to keep this from happening, but the price paid by this course of action is potentially high (missing potential exposure to interested audiences and the accompanying professional advancement). The referee may gain this knowledge much more innocently, too, if s/he has seen the paper presented at a conference and so-forth.

4. Review takes place. The referee reads the paper and provides comments on it, with a recommendation to the editor as to the publication-suitability of the piece. I note that referees are moved by a number of factors to be particularly uncharitable at this stage. First, they are anonymous, as far as prospective authors are concerned, so harsh comments are almost entirely without professional consequences. Second, there may be pressure from the editor(s) to refuse a high rate of papers. The most prestigeous journals accept very few papers for publication, and, if anecdotal evidence has any weight, "quotas" are not unheard of such that reviewers are encouraged to refuse a certain percentage of papers they look at. In this way, the dice are stacked against even high quality papers. That is to say, if you get a really biting referee report, think about the critique carefully, but don't let it get you down; it's apparently fairly common. I note that my experience has been almost entirely positive; with only one exception, reviewer comments have been constructive, helpful, and courteous. (See this post of mine from last year for further analysis.)

5. Editorial review of the referee report takes place. The recommendation of the referee is usually followed, but the editor is under no obligation. If the editor likes the paper, it may survive a negative referee report all the way to publication. If the editor does not like the paper, no matter what the referees say, it will most likely not be published. Knowing an editor's preferences is important, then; they really do hold the keys to the kingdom (or some of them, at least).

6. An editorial decision is made and delivered to the author. Papers may be accepted as-is, provisionally accepted (given that certain changes are made), rejected with an encouragement to resubmit (given that certain changes are made) or rejected flat-out. Comments from referees will sometimes be sent to prospective authors, although editors are under no obligation to do this. The level of detail provided in these comments varies widely.

The time between steps two and six can be anywhere from three weeks to six months, and, in some circumstances, even beyond the one-year mark.

7. If accepted for publication, a paper will eventually appear in the pages of a journal. Eventually. Before that happens, it's merely "forthcoming." Authors are at this juncture required to provide a final draft which exactly conforms to the stylistic guidelines of the journal--all the way down to technical notation, footnotes, spelling, and punctuation. They are sent an author agreement and copyright release form to sign. Just before going to press, type-set proofs are sent to authors who must review them and reply to the editorial office (usually within 72 hours or so) with any corrections. Realistically, actually showing up in a print edition of the journal takes months, and sometimes years, to happen after the initial acceptance letter, since most journals have a backlog of papers awaiting publication. Authors usually recieve a few free copies of the issue their article appears in, a PDF file, and a few dozen hard copy off-prints of the final typeset article. This is the sole compensation authors recieve; only in very rare circumstances will professional philosophy journals pay their authors in any other form.

In conclusion: there are a number of hoops to jump through, but in the end it's worth it. If one plays by the rules of the game, one can author a paper published in an obscure academic journal (given a few years of waiting, of course) that approximately thirteen people will read. You might even hit the big time and get your work read by upwards of two-dozen specialists! Welcome to the world of academic philosophy.

In Part II, I review some valuable web resources for prospective philosophy authors.

Template change


Finally got around to installing a template I pulled and heavily modified from (an apparently now defunct) CSS help site a while back. Comments are now fully integrated into the layout, as are other portions of my personal website.

Moving to a domain name soon.

Phone Message


Check out this voicemail message left by a guy as he witnessed a car accident.

Supporters of ID


Supporters of intelligent design only look bad when tomfoolery like this takes place.

Potential Personhood and Abortion


I preface this post by adding that I have little at stake in the abortion debate. I' am (from time to time) partial to substance dualism, friendly to the idea that all human fetuses are human persons and in general suspicious of abortion-on-demand. I'm no friend of anti-abortion legislation though, especially on the federal level. The level at which I hold to the moral personhood of all fetuses is tentative enough as to cause me to hold back any strong affirmation of coersive policy-making.

But there's on recurring argument in contemporary abortion debates which drives me nuts.

The dialectic goes like this:

Anti: Fetuses are human.
Pro: True, but fetuses aren't persons.
Anti: Fetuses are persons because they if left unmolested will bear all the hallmarks of personhood.
Pro: Fetuses as fetuses have none of the features which we associate with persons, like speech, rationality, purpose, high levels of cognitive ability, etc.
Anti: Fetuses have these things in potential, though!
Pro: But potential persons ought not to weigh too heavily in moral debates, especially when the interests of actual persons are under consideration.


Here's what I take issue with. In the end of such debates, Pro and his ilk characterize Anti's position as this: fetuses are potential persons, and as such have all the rights that persons in general have. But this is to ignore about 2,400 years of philosophical work on personhood-the very vein of thought Anti and her kind want to tap into. The position is better characterized as this: the hallmarks of personhood are indeed rationality, speech, purpose, and the like. But one need not have these features in actuality to be a person. To have these features potentially is a sufficient condition for personhood. Objects with these features in potent are not "potential persons"-they are persons full stop. Having the hallmarks of personhood potentially or actually just is a sufficient condition for recognizing them as such.

This view has something going for it, I think. Consider Clifford, a perfectly healthy 26-year-old man in the prime of his life who tragically fell from his chair while engaging in a series of increasingly dangerous blogging games. As a result of the fall, Clifford is in a coma. Coma Clifford will wake up in two days and resume life as a healthy adult male. Is Coma Clifford not a person while he remains unconcious? He actually exhibits none of the hallmark features of personhood. And yet, most of us are tempted to say that so long as Clifford does not remain in the coma forever, he is still a person. The potential to exhibit these personal features alone is sufficient to give Clifford a personal moral status.

This sort of intuition pump is used by the more sophisticated cousins of Anti, and I think it has some force. It allows us to see why Clifford might be a person full stop even should he only potentially have personhood-granting features.

All too many anti-abortion polemics fail to recognize the more subtle details of the Coma Clifford cases, though, and fall into the language of "potential persons." This is unfortunate. In submitting to this linguistic shift, they let Pro get away with far too much. The locution, "potential person" suggests that Clifford and his Coma-ridden brothers have a different (lesser) moral status than other, normal persons. This is not the case, if the argument is successful.

While I'm at it, I may as well enumerate another supremely annoying facet of contemporary abortion debates. It's often the case that anti-abortion hacks give a series of arguments for the humanity of the fetus and leave the matter there. It's as if these debaters (dare I say it-buffoons?) think that humanity alone grants an object some high moral status. But even just a little further reflection reveals that being human (genetically, for example) does no such thing for an object. A human hand cut off from its body is genetically human. It is not just a hand, or a bear or monkey's paw. It is a human hand; it is human. And yet, a human hand all by its lonesome self is not a full-fledged member of the moral community. Put another way, it is not a human.

There may be moral and immoral ways to treat a human hand all by itself, but it's hard to maintain that human hands have rights in the fully-orbed sense required to sustain a robust anti-abortion argument. Human hands just aren't persons. Simply arguing that all fetuses are human, then, gains anti-abortion thinkers little, save perhaps a few sneers from those more familiar with the literature.

So to all the anti-abortion buffoons out there still using such tactics: please stop.

Possible Worlds and Modal Logic (Part II)


Two Models of the Metaphysics of Modality. In Part I, I described why philosophers began using the language of possible worlds. In this post, I will say something about what they take these things to be and how we know about them.

When it comes to the question “what are possible worlds?” there are two divergent camps of thought. All agree, however, with the simple answer given by David Lewis: a possible world is “a way things could have been.” Possible worlds are arrangements of things that obtain (actually come to be) or could have obtained (might have come to be). The one possible world which comes to be is the actual world (often referred to with the greek letter Alpha).

Lewis himself made the bold claim that possible worlds are huge concrete objects just like the cosmos we live in—parallel universes, if you will. His camp of thought is unsurprisingly small. Interested readers can consult his On the Plurality of Worlds for explication and defense of the Lewisian model.

Possible Worlds as Abstract Objects. Nearly all other modal logicians and philosophers working in the metaphysics of modality hold something like the Plantingan model, however, laid out in his (first) masterpiece, The Nature of Necessity. I will here say something about what this model looks like and the ontological commitments it has. That is, I’ll try and indicate just what sort of thing you have to believe about reality to use the language of possible worlds (which we’ve already seen to be quite useful and productive).

A possible world is a certain kind of state of affairs. “Snow’s being white” is a state of affairs, as is “me being such that I am not at all tired.” But these states of affairs aren’t possible worlds; to be more precise, we must say that a possible world is a maximal state of affairs. It is a state of affairs which has something to say about everything. Plantinga puts the point something like this: a state of affairs W is a possible world if and only if it either includes or excludes every other state of affairs.

What are states of affairs? Abstract objects. Think about it this way. There are way things are, and there are things that are that way. States of affairs belong in the first category. They, like properties, can (but need not be) instanced. States of affairs full stop do not enter into causal relations like toys and cars and pieces of paper do. When a state of affairs comes to be, however, the concrete objects in it do have such relations. Lest I further open this can of worms, let me end the point in this way: states of affairs are like properties, propositions, sets, numbers, and all sorts of other intangible things--but things we take to exist nonetheless. Abstract things. Possible worlds, too, are like these things.

We do not live, then, in a possible world. We do not even live in Alpha, the actual world. The cosmos corresponds to the actual world, though. Alpha is the way things are and the world of concrete objects around us is the things that are that way.

Here’s a related way of putting it. Think of all propositions as being laid out, with a 1 or a 0 next to each marking their truth or falsity. A maximal arrangement of these ones or zeros (such that no proposition doesn’t have either a one or a zero next to it) is a possible world. It is a state of affairs in which every proposition is either true (has a 1 next to it) or false (has a zero next to it).

To say that it is possible that proposition P is true, then, is to say that there is some (at least one) arrangement of ones, zeroes, and propositions, in which there is a 1 next to P. For example, let P stand for “Homer’s middle name is Jay” and Q for “Homer’s middle name is not Jay.” As per the law of non-contradiction, we’re inclined to say that P and Q are co-impossible (they couldn’t both be true at the same time). What what is impossibility? On this model, this impossibility amounts to the claim that there is no world (arrangement of ones, zeroes, and propositions) in which there is a 1 next to both P and Q.

So why do thinkers buy into this sort of picture?

First, it does not commit its holder to the truth of bizarre parallel universe theories, as Lewis’ does. It thus has all the explanatory power of possible worlds (see Part I) with regard to modal claims and arguments with none of the baggage.

Second, it tames modality in a really substantial way. Many philosophers (believe they) have a grip on what propositions, sets, states of affairs, and the like are—abstract objects. Naming possible worlds as yet another member of a genus within the Platonic menagerie of abstract objects serves to domesticate them in a way. No longer do possible worlds roam wild, free, and unknown—they are now firmly within the grip of our theoretical models of how the world is.

Modal Epistemology. I’ve presented a summary of one theory about what modal claims mean and the reality behind them; so far, so good. But by what means can any of this be known? Enter the last and sexiest member of the gang—modal epistemology.

I say “sexiest” because this topic is the one which is at the forefront of contemporary debates in modality. It is, in other words, the area of modality about which philosophers know the least. While elaborate theories of perception, introspection, memory, cognition in general (and even interaction with the divine) have been presented, many thinkers aren’t quite sure how we know about the status of a modal claim. Cognitive scientists and psychologists have not been helpful in this quest, furthermore; it seems to be a question answerable only by the tools of philosophy.

While post-Kripke, there are clear examples of both a priori and a posteriori modal knowledge, most modal claims (if known at all) seem to be gained via some form of a priori intuition. Does this mean that we just “think about it really hard” and then viola, know whether some modal claim is true or not?

Kinda—Peter van Inwagen has suggested as much, and this is one reason motivating his skepticism about the possibility of modal knowledge. A Canadian philosopher who shares my name (Andrew Bailey) would agree. Not so with Stephen Yablo and David Chalmers. But enough with the name-dropping. The point is this: there are no clear-cut winner in this final category. If consensus (or the lack of it) is any evidence, existing theories are not sufficiently well-tested to justify dogmatic adherence. This final question of modality, is, then, quite open.

We just don't know (yet). And there's nothing really wrong with this, I think. Like the physical sciences, philosophy will always have frontier subdisciplines in which debates can be found which generate more heat than light (for decades, even). Implausible theories abound in these frontier regions, with no clear winners.

But then the next Einstein or Kripke or Kepler or Newton or Plantinga will come along and rock the boat with some grand discovery. A consensus will emerge, knowledge will be found, and new research programs discovered. Such has always been the way of philosophy. And the physical sciences. And every other truth-seeking discipline.

I close with two thoughts. First, the possible worlds model has an important function in modal epistemology. By seeing modal claims as just being about possible worlds (that is, states of affairs), we can say this much: however it is. that we know about regular old abstract objects, something like that is how we know about possible worlds, and hence modality in general! If we can know other things a priori, perhaps this mechanism explains modal knowledge too. Second (and this is rather tentative and immature in its current form), theism has unique and substantive resources to offer the modal epistemologist. If propositions, states of affairs, properties, and sets are part of the structure of the divine mind, and we have direct access to the divine mind, a possible explanatory path exists for the existence of (seeming) modal knowledge. Modality is part of the nature of God, and we have contact with God; this explains what modal claims we do know.

Possible Worlds and Modal Logic (Part I)


Introduction. Though language of possible worlds originates in Leibniz' writing, it experienced a renaissance in the hands of analytic philosphers living in the later half of the twentieth century. Such thinkers include Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, and Peter van Inwagen. I here give a brief explanation and defense of this way of speaking, of using “possible worlds” to explain certain philosophical concepts.

It was fashionable for a time to scoff at the language of possible worlds as speculative or meaningless; this is no longer the case among academic philosophers. For very good reason, I think, possible world semantics are widely used and perceived as vindicated.

Four Key Questions. Nonetheless, one's first confrontation with the language of possible worlds is likely to be confusing. Does such language assume the existence of parallel universes? Is such a position scientifically verifiable or viable? Just what are possible worlds supposed to be? What is their relation to other things? Do possible worlds exist, or only possibly exist? Let me these sorts of questions down into four categories: Linguistic function, semantics, ontology, and epistemology. Corresponding to each of these four categories we find four broad questions: Why do we speak of possible worlds, what do we mean when we speak of possible worlds, what are possible worlds, and how or can we know about them?

I consider in this post the first and second questions.

Function and Meaning. Possible worlds are a way of explicating modality. What is modality? - Ways of a thing’s having truth, such as possibility, actuality, necessity, impossibility, and contingency. Consider the intuitive distinction between the way it is true that (i) “I am in my cubicle” and (ii) “I am human.” What is this distinction? While both (i) and (ii) are true, it seems that (i) is less fixed than (ii) is. While (i) could have been otherwise, (ii) seems less flexible. We might say that (i) is contingent while (ii) is necessary. Modality is not an obscure or impractical topic; modal concepts make their way into the everyday language of many people. Locutions such as "it is possible that I run out of gas," "Clinton might have lost the election," "it’s impossible for 2 to not be a number," and "it's necessary that water is h2o" all make use of modal concepts. Modal logic studies the relations between these concepts and what rules of inference govern them. A subdiscipline, the metaphysics of modality, studies what the reality behind these modal claims might consist of.

The language of possible worlds was birthed by Leibniz and took hold in the later half of the twentieth century. It attempts to make sense of modal claims by parsing them in terms of (what else?) possible worlds. I will now provide a fairly standard translation of modal language into possible world language, and then show the usefulness of such a move.

There are at lest five modes of truth (where truth is a property had by propositions which correspond with reality): possibility, impossibility, actuality, contingency, and necessity (each of these concepts can, of course, be defined in terms of each other, but for simplicity, I list them all).

Without possible worlds, we might parse modal claims as follows:

A proposition is possible if and only if it could have been true.
A proposition is impossible if and only if it is not and could not have been true.
A proposition is actual if and only if it is true.
A proposition is contingent if and only if it could have been true or false.
A proposition is necessary if and only if it could not have been false.

But none of this is all that helpful. To define “possibility” in terms of “could have been” doesn’t tell us what possibility amounts to. It doesn’t give us any idea of what it means for a thing to be possible, much less what it is. for a thing to be possible.

Enter possible worlds, as follows:

A proposition is possible if and only if it is true in some possible world.
A proposition is impossible if and only there are no possible worlds in which it is true.
A proposition is actual if and only if it is true in the actual world.
A proposition is contingent if and only if there are some worlds in which it is true and some in which it is false.
A proposition is necessary if and only if there are no possible worlds in which it is true.

Do you see how that works? The language of “could have been…” has been successfully eliminated and translated into what philosophers call the language of quantification—picking out objects and saying something about how many (if any) there are. Modal claims are, on this model, existential—they assert that there is a world, for example, in which a proposition is true (notice the “there is…” locution—a sign of ontological commitment or quantification with existential import). On this model, to make a modal claim just is to say what worlds (if any) exist in which a proposition is true.

The usefulness of this maneuver is multi-faceted. First, it allows for a robust modal logic. It isn’t easy to describe a logical system governing modality as long as language is kept at the vague “could have been…” level. Introducing quantification allows a number of already-developed-and-known-to-be-valid rules of inference to be applied to arguments. This gives philosophers a device to examine arguments making use of modal concepts, testing them for validity. Second, it offers a research program, opening up windows into the metaphysics of modality. It’s far easier to investigate the ontology of a thing when a sophisticated semantic apparatus is developed to speak of it with. After all, as Wittgenstein famously claimed, of that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent. Third (and this point may be most controversial), it paves the way for a reductive move. Some philosophers have wanted to break all modal claims down into non-modal claims, getting rid of the “could have been…” locution. Possible world semantics makes this maneuver theoretically viable, replacing what might be called “pure modality” with quantification. Those who think we have a better hold on quantification than modality will like this sort of move (reducing the later to nothing but the former).

In short, possible worlds are the only viable theory of modality currently on the table. They offer a productive research topic for philosophers and are useful in explaining what goes on in arguments which make use of modal concepts. Better theories may be offered in the future, but until then, the language of possible worlds has quite a bit going for it.

A fellow student once told me that he "didn't believe in possible worlds." To this, I respond that such a position is increasingly difficult to maintain for one interested in being a responsible epistemic agent. Possible worlds have a lot going for them. If their baggage is minimal (see my next post for an explication of why this might be), and they indeed do have much to offer, then use of possible world language is at least rational.

In the next related post I will say something about the ontology and epistemology of possible world language. After all, if we're going to explain modality in terms of possible worlds, we ought to have an idea of what they are and what it is for a proposition to be true "in" one.

UPDATE: Part II: Ontology and Epistemology of Modality

A Shelter from Pigs on the Wing


I've always liked the sound of the interlude in Pink Floyd's "Sheep." There's something strangely alluring (and just a little bit frightening) about the mixture of the voxbox "robot" voice with a reverb-laden chorus of men. The sacreligious spoken part for the first half:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me down to lie.
Tthrough pastures green, He leadeth me, the silent waters by.
With bright knives, He releaseth my soul.
He maketh me to hang hooks in high places, he converth me to lamb cutlets.
For lo, he hath great power, and great hunger...

A Sort of Neutrality


Ed Feser (author of On Nozick) argues against the claims to neutrality staked out by organizations such as Amnesty International:

Amnesty International claims on its website to be "independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion" and to be "concerned solely with the impartial protection of human rights." Yet the organization's well-known obsession with the death penalty, which Amnesty claims "violates the right to life," gives the lie to its purported neutrality. To assert dogmatically that capital punishment is intrinsically unjust, a violation of rights, is hardly to be "impartial" or "independent of any political ideology." It is, quite obviously, to evince a commitment to a very specific, and very controversial, view about the nature of human rights. That view may or may not be correct, but it is far from neutral between different political and religious points of view.

Feser is right in one sense, and the point can be extended. To couch any criticism of a law or public policy in the language of rights is to assume a set of moral theses. For example, that human rights of a certain sort exist, that they consist of, ground, or entail certain duties, and that these duties bind state actors. These are controversial theses in that it is not hard to find political theorists who disagree with them.

Of course, rights-talk does not a political ideology make, where “political ideology” refers to a moral and political theory attempting to explain most or the whole of what we do or ought to do when we engage in political relations. Rights-talk can be grounded in a utilitarian meta-ethic, a neo-Kantian/Rawlsian approach, or a libertarian commitment to self-ownership. These three frameworks could be political ideologies; rights-talk is not. It can (in general) be grounded in any number of meta-ethical or political frameworks and is neutral with regard to the truth of any one of them (only one need be true for the rights-talk to be vindicated).

The rest of Feser’s post is dedicated to taking down a related sort of neutrality claim, and I think he’s successful in his aim. Political (or religious) pluralism requires a denial of many classically held "exclusivity" doctrines—and to deny these doctrines is to cease to be a political or religious pluralist.

There is another important sense, though, in which the language of rights is morally neutral, and I will briefly defend that claim here. To see how this is the case, I need to say something about the model of rights I favor. In short, I take rights-claims (eg, "I have the right to smoke weed in my own back yard") to be more about what is ok for others to do than for what is ok for me to do. In making the above rights-claim, I'm asserting that others may not morally interfere with my pot-smoking; I am not claiming that the pot-smoking is morally upright (or otherwise).

Put with a little more precision, to say that some agent S has the right to action A is to say that some or all other agents have a duty to refrain from forcibly preventing S from A-ing. A rights-claim encapsulates a bundle of moral duties, then, for agents other than the right-holder. Note that on this analysis, rights-talk has no entailments for whether S’s A-ing is morally impermissible, permissible, obligatory, or supererogatory. The rights-claim is morally neutral with regard to S’s A-ing.

An example: suppose that I have a right to listen to music with my headphones turned up as loud as I please. It is thus morally impermissible for anyone to force me to turn down my volume. It is consistent with the above rights-claim to also hold that it is vicious and incontinent (that is, unvirtuous) of me to listen to my music at a high volume, that doing so lessens net utility, and that I have a duty as a steward of my ears to not destroy them thusly. Conversely, I may have a duty to listen to my music at high volumes; this may, in fact, prove to be quite healthy and the virtuous thing to do. It’s important to note that the rights-claim in question is indifferent with regard to these issues.

Rights-claims are, in this sense, like Switzerland--always neutral.

Theories of State (Part I)


A central point of divergence between political philosophers is (surprise!) the nature of the state. In this discussion, "state" refers to more than just government--it is an entire social organism or group, a polis, if you will. There are at least two broad options available to theorists.

The first might be called liberal individualism, or, just individualism. Its most central thesis is that a state is nothing above and beyond the individuals that comprise it. On this model, states are contingent social artifacts, created by humans for some end. Prominent individualist theorists are John Locke, most of the American founders, Frederic Bastiat, Murray Rothbard, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick. It's safe to say that one form or other of individualism is the prevailing orthodoxy in contemporary political thought.

The second might be called the organic theory of state. Theories, really, since this is a cluster of ideas. The central thread organic theories share is an analogy drawn between a person or body and a state. A state is like a body in that it is an organism, a living whole over and above its parts. Prominent organic theorists include many classical minds such as Aquinas, Plato (probably), and Aristotle. Into which camp Thomas Hobbes falls is a matter of controversy; I suspect he is best seen as an organic theorist.

One criticism of organic theories of state is that they are ripe for totalitarianism. This has been advanced most forcefully by thinkers like Karl Popper. The critique comes in two flavors. The stronger criticism claims that organic theories of state entail totalitarianism; that to be an organic theorist is to support an objectionable form of extensive state control. The weaker flavor of criticism merely posits that organic theories of state have no recourse to prevent totalitarian implications, that the slide between the two is all too easy. In short, the critique's structure is a grand modus tollens, that (1) Organic theories of state imply some form of authoritarianism, (2) This form of authoritarianism is false or objectionable, and hence (3), Organic theories of state are themselves false or objectionable.

In a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Value Inquiry, Phil Goggans (Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University) argues that organic theorists have conceptual resources at their disposal sufficient to rebut the charge of authoritarianism, a denial of (1). Goggans claims, in fact, that classical organic theories of state preclude totalitarian social arrangements. I shall present and assess Goggans' arguments in my next related post.

A Good Day (and why)


I had the opportunity to give a leisurely read to some of the best passages in one of my favorite books, Robert Nozick's The Examined Life. While this opportunity arose largely because of car problems occasioning time off work, I relished it, and for good reason. Reading Nozick reminded me of what drew me (and so many others) to philosophy in the first place; or two things, rather. First, a sense of wonder at all that is and second, a conviction that a life dedicated to reflection is better than that without.

Nozick's writing is well fit to arouse these two callings in any reader. It is without a doubt some of the most engaging I have ever encountered. The subject matter in The Examined Life is a smorgasbord of meditative topics--death, children, love, sexuality, the problem of evil and the holocaust, happiness, opinion, and wisdom. He jumps across genres and disciplinary divides with ease, all the while asking more questions than he has time (or intellectual fire-power) to answer. His pattern, if he has one, is to consider a subject, offer an explanation, suggest reasons why the explanation is incomplete, and finally invite his reader to wonder with him at the mystery that remains.

The second half of The Examined Life is, I think, a bit uneven. The extensive diagrams are less than helpful, and the author seemed to loose steam in his writing. It's as if he was done being playful, when this was one of his chief virtues.

Reason magazine's original review of the book got it right, though: "Imagine... an extraordinarily intelligent friend, curious and witty, appallingly well-read, who drops by after dinner... [to] talk deep into the night about things you care about. THat's what reading The Examined Life is like."

Today was a good day.

Inspiration


The Beatles' classic tune "All You Need is Love" includes the line "there's nothing you can do that can't be done." When speaking of the same sort of ability or "can" in both instances of that word, the lyric is trivially true. Similarly, it is possible that p only if it is possible that p.

When different kinds of ability are under the microscope, though, it turns out to be false. I can do some things in one sense that I can't do in others. For example, I can presumably hit the bulls-eye of a dartboard, in the sense that it does not violate any laws of logic or nature. And yet, I lack the skill (and thus ability) to do this reliably, or perhaps even at all. So there is something I can do that can't be done, or perhaps more accurately, something I can't do that can be done.

The point is this: if and when I ever write a paper about the logic of ability, I hereby commit to somehow using this song as an example.