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Ratiocination

Degree Exams


Tufts’ MA philosophy program and Oxford have both made available the essay prompts/questions for their exams (the Oxford exams are for the equivalent of a US MA); both schools place some emphasis on these examinations in their degree requirements. Needless to say, these prompts are interesting reading to one looking forward to studying philosophy at the graduate level. =)

GRE Results


No more GRE for me.

The scores: 710 verbal, 690 quantitative. I am satisfied. This cumulative score should be sufficient for any of the programs I am applying too, as long as the rest of my application packet remains strong. I note that this is an unexpected score on several counts. First, I've consistently scored much higher in many practice tests. Second, never once had I scored higher in verbal than quantitative (and this is consistent with the statistical data--very few GRE test-takers get a higher verbal score than their quantitative score, unlike, say, most SAT test-takers). If only I was applying to graduate programs in English! =)

It all came down to a time management issue in the quantitative section, I think. I had three questions left with only 45 seconds of time remaining, so I guessed. That move alone probably cost me 20 points.

The most interesting aspect of the test was the essay prompt. Of all the topics in the world I could have recieved, there are few I have studied more than free will and determinism. For example, I've written over fifty pages on the topic this semester alone, and read dozens of papers and a handful of books by professional philosophers. As fate would have it, this was the very topic I recieved for the first analytic essay. This was encouraging, to say the least. So far as I know, I aced that essay. The argument analysis essay, too, was solid.

So one chapter is closed, and another is open. Time to fill out all those grad school applications. =)

GRE Season...


... is upon me. PS:

Help Andre

Why Philosophical Blogging?


"Look at what's happening in the disciplines of law and philosophy. According to a recent count by Daniel J. Solove of George Washington University, 130 law professors have active blogs. David Chalmers of Australian National University lists 85 philosophy professors or Ph.D. students with blogs, mostly oriented to the discussion of philosophical issues. In both of those disciplines, those who don't either blog or read and comment on others' blogs are cutting themselves out of an increasingly important set of discussions. Casual empiricism would suggest that blogs play a less important role in the social sciences, the humanities, and the hard sciences -- for the moment. But in those disciplines, too, blogs are becoming more prominent and more widely accepted"

-Chronicle of Higher Education

Bibliography: Epistemology and Metaphysics of Modality


With an emphasis on the former. Not exhaustive, but only an attempt to bring together resources I found interesting or useful in a recent study of the topic. The Andrew Bailey I cite, by the way, is not me, but rather a Canadian Counterparts.

Bailey, Andrew. 2005. “The Unsoundness of Arguments from Conceivability.” Unpublished manuscript. URL:

Casullo, Albert. 1996. “Knowledge and Modality,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy (supplement), ed. D.M. Borchert. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

________. 2000. “Modal Epistemology: Fortune or Virtue?” Southern Journal of Philosophy (supplement) 38: 17-25.

DePaul, M.R. and W. Ramset (ed.). 1998. Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Fodor, Jerry. 2004. “Water’s Water Everywhere” (review of Christopher Hughes’ Kripke: Names, Necessity and Identity). London Review of Books. Vol. 26. No. 20 (October).

Geirsson, Heimir. 2005. “Conceivability and Defeasible Modal Justification.” Philosophical Studies. 279-304.

Gendler, Tamar and John Hawthorne. 2002. eds. Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kung, Peter. 2002. “Imagination and Modal Epistemology,” Unpublished dissertation. New York University.

Loux, Michael. 1979. The Possible and the Actual: Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality. Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press.

Plantinga, Alvin. 2003. Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Matthew Davidson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stalnaker, Robert (ed.). 2003. Ways a World Might Be: Metaphysical and Anti-Metaphysical Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tidman, Paul. 1994. “Conceivability as a Test for Possibility.” American Philosophical Quarterly 31: 297-309.

________. 1994. “Logic and Modal Intuitions,” The Monist 77:389-98.

Van Inwagen, Peter. 1998. “Modal Epistemology.” Philosophical Studies 92: 67-84.

Yablo, Stephen. 1993. “Is Conceivability a Good Guide to Possibility?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53: 1-42.

A Clever Program


This link made the rounds a few weeks ago, but I figure I can pass it on too. A really neat program that renders an image of a plant as a function of a given website's internal structure. Clever idea, and well executed. To the left is a rendering of this blog's link structure.



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Contemporary Modest Foundationalism


A summary of Bob Audi's excellent paper (available in Pojman's The Theory of Knowledge anthology), "Contemporary Modest Foundationalism:"

Some known beliefs are grounded inferentially in other beliefs. But perhaps there is 'direct' knowledge—known beliefs that are not inferentially grounded in other beliefs. Foundationalism affirms this thesis, or at least the conditional thesis that if there is knowledge, there is direct knowledge. A paradigmatic instance of direct knowledge is perceptual belief, grounded in perceptual experience, not on inference from some other belief.

One motivation for foundationalism is this epistemic regress argument:

1. If there is knowledge, it occurs in epistemic chain(s).
2. If there is some epistemic chain in which knowledge occurs, then either:
a. Some such chain is infinite
b. Some such chain is circular
c. Some such chain terminates with a belief that is not known
d. Some such chain terminates with an item of direct knowledge
3. But knowledge cannot occur in a, b, or c.
4. So if there is knowledge, it occurs in some epistemic chain terminating with an item of direct knowledge

(An epistemic chain is a chain of beliefs, each belief linked to and based on the prior one, and there may be chains with just one member). The argument can be formulated in terms of justification with a similar result—that if there are justified beliefs, there are directly justified beliefs. Since knowledge is a species of belief, 1 is true. The disjuncts of 2 are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive, so it seems true too. Audi finds 2a dubious: no human could have an infinite set of mathematical beliefs, for example, since some of the beliefs would involve ungraspable propositions. 2b, he sets aside without argument. 2c seems precluded, for it involves knowledge or justification emerging from nothing, an absurd prospect. So 3 follows—leading to the conclusion that 4.

So if there is knowledge, there is direct knowledge. Audi posits four sources of belief, the outputs of which are possibly items of direct knowledge—perception, memory, introspection, and reason.

If the argument is sound and there is knowledge, the epistemic chains knowledge occurs in may differ. They may have differing beliefs as members, differing inferential and causal relations between the beliefs, or differing direct knowledge at the bottom of the chain. These points of variation highlight what the foundationalist is and is not committed to. She need not posit that the direct knowledge at the bottom of every chain is indubitable or infallibly justified—it need only not be inferred from some other belief. Similarly, the inferential relations between the beliefs need not be one of valid deduction—it could be induction. Additionally, foundationalism posits no second-order requirement that, for any item of direct knowledge, the knower knows (or can come to know) that it is known.

Audi endorses a weak version of foundationalism, including only the minimal commitments sketched above, and not the stronger commitments (associated with Descartes). In this way, his foundationalism is modest. It is fallibilistic, too, in three ways: foundational beliefs may end up as unjustified or false, inferred beliefs may be justified or known inductively, and the possibility remains that a subject may discover some error or void of justification.

Audi ends by sketching five considerations in support of his modest foundationalism. First, the epistemic regress argument provides a puzzle—and foundationalism solves this puzzle simply and plausibly. Its solution, furthermore, does not entail skepticism (or a rejection of it). Second, foundationalism falls into line with pretheoretical common sense; the very beliefs that we are inclined to think are justified without inference are the ones that foundationalism can endorse as such. Third, foundationalism coheres with the deliverances of empirical psychology. Given what we know about human minds, they do not have infinite sets of beliefs or circular belief chains—and foundationalism eliminates the need for positing these. Fourth, foundationalism integrates well with the psychology and biology of perceptual belief. What justifies perceptual belief on foundationalism is what (causally) gives rise to it. Finally, the modest fallibilistic foundationalism Audi suggests is not dogmatic. It makes allowance for a wide range of justified or known beliefs, given that the experiential grounds for direct knowledge vary widely across subjects (eg, different subjects have perceived many different things). The foundationalist can explain and accommodate this fact well.

From the Childhood Archives


Many of my readers know that I spent the first eight years of my life in an abusive charismatic cult in Pullman, WA. I was young enough to leave that chapter behind me with few scars; that my parents left when they did was wise, and I owe them for the move. Needless to say, many ridiculous (insane) things went on in those days. Some of the controlling and manipulation was merely hurtful. Other tactics proved psychologically disastrous for the victims. But the more distant these events seem to me, the more I'm inclined to merely sit back and laugh at them and just how silly the cult leadership came out looking.

A few months back, this anonymous blog began--and countless former members of the cult have stepped forward and contributed to it (many anonymously--though it's obvious who many of the posters are). This thread is by far my favorite thus far, a chronicle of some of the downright clownish experiences we kids had in the K-12 school run by the cult. The leadership and staff in general exhibited a variety of bizarre and controlling behaviours, many that still just don't make sense to me. But it's fun to reminisce about the craziness.

What a crazy, crazy world we live in.

The Bailey Boys


When visiting Seattle two weekends ago, I finally got a chance to see my nephew (Beothan Walter Bailey) for the first time, along with some of the extended family. This was perhaps the highlight of my trip. It's not often that the family is all together in one place these days, after all. I present (from left to right): my brother Tim, his new son Beothan, my father Larry, my brother Matt, and yours truly:

Life in Four Points


1. Life (philosophical and otherwise) has been busy. Grad school application season is upon me. This means I have spent recent days pouring over department websites, composing my personal statements, fine-tuning the CVs and such I will send out, and coordinating my letters of recomendation. And then there's the GRE. Life has been busy.

2. The conferences at Seattle University and Northridge were stimulating, educational, and for the most part collegial. A wonderful experience.

3. The final iteration of my Plato article in Minerva will soon be available. After extensive comments from an anonymous referee and John Mark Reynolds, I shipped off the final draft and gave the thumbs-up on the proofs. The paper in its final form raises a number of questions--perhaps too many--but right now I'm just glad to get it off my desk and out of my hair.

4. I've also been able to make real progress on a variety of substantive philosophical fronts. My energies have largely been directed at the metaphysics of free will, the consequence argument, and Frankfurt-style cases. Of secondary interest these days is a reading project in modal epistemology. Over the next few days, I will post bibliographies I've developed in each of these topic areas.

Journal Ethics


An interesting discussion is unfolding at PEA Soup on the ethical dilemmas facing journal editors and referees. What gives rise to the dilemmas is the high value some place on blind review. It's clear to me that blind review, or rather, the values that blind review upholds (eg, impartiality), are worth maintaining. But as threads like this evince, they are often difficult to maintain.