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Ratiocination

Manliness: A Scathing Review


Martha Nussbaum has written some scathing reviews in her time. See, for example, this hilarious survey of Judith Butler's thought. Nussbaum has never been hesitant to bring out the knives when faced with (what she believes to be) an intellectual charlatan. And she's done it again, this time in a review of Harvey Mansfield's Manliness.

Manliness is the sort of text that one hears a lot about in academic circles (though few seem to have actually cracked open the book). I haven't read it, and thus can't speak to Nussbaum's critique, but I can say this much: the review's a fabulous read.

Theological Determinism (Part I)


For all I know, the following argument is sound. That is, each premise seems to me to be compossible with everything I know. Let P0 rigidly denote a proposition that expresses the state of the world at t0 (some time in the distant past). The argument:

P1. It is (metaphysically) necessary that for every proposition p, if God wills that p, then p.
P2. For every true proposition p, God wills that p at t0.
C. It is therefore necessary that for every true proposition p, P0 implies p (P1, P2, and definition of P0).

P1 is one statement of the doctrine of essential omniscience. P2 offers one formulation of the doctrine of exhaustive foreordination, something many Calvinists are committed to. See, for example, the WCF's phrasing "God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass" (though perhaps this interpretation abuses "from all eternity"). The argument requires some Chisholming, no doubt, but notice that God’s willing that p is a conjunct of P0. This, really, is all I need.

Call this The Foreordination Argument (FA). And Suppose FA is sound; determinism is then true. For given a state of the world at some time, all states of the world at any future time are determined. In those worlds W where P0 is true, there is exactly one future. That is to say, P0 is true in exactly one world W, and no worlds where P0 is true at t0 "diverge" from W at any time t+n.

Furthermore, on the assumption that no law of nature contradicts or implies a contradiction P2, it is also necessary that the conjunction of P0 and the laws of nature imply every true proposition p. Adding the laws of nature to the bag, of course, is superfluous. P0 and P1 do all the work necessary to make determinism true. But notice that this move allows W to qualify as a world at which causal determinism is true too. (Causal determinism is typically defined as the thesis that "the course of the future is entirely determined by the conjunction of the past and the laws of nature.”)

There's odd about this consequence. But in the next post, I'll consider some more pressing issues having to do with the standard toolbox of incompatibilist arguments and the theological determinism implied by FA.

Classes


They've begun, and I couldn't be happier with my schedule. For credit, I'm taking Logic with Paddy Blanchette, a seminar in Philosophy of Mind with Al Plantinga and Fritz Warfield, and Ethics with David Solomon.

Given the time, I'll also be sitting in on Peter van Inwagen's Metaphysics every once in a while.

Incidentally, when checking the referal logs, I discovered a visitor who found this site by Googling for "cheat questions and GRE biology subject test." =)

Irony


In this music video, Montgomery Gentry sings, "you do your thing, I'll do mine." The overall message of the lyrics is libertarian in spirit: to live and let live. But while reciting these lyrics, the protagonist of the video then proceeds to interrupt a drug deal with a baseball bat.

This is, by the way, the same guy who bought a bear for $4600, put it in a pen, and killed it with a bow and arrow.

Misunderstanding


I’ve gotten a lot of strange responses to the fact that I study philosophy. My favorite is probably this one (from a CarMax salesman): “so you must be really into like, Bible Theory, right?”

I have no idea how to answer that question.

But more often than not, folks confuse philosophy with physics or psychology. And this seems to lend me a veneer of respectability, so I'm inclined not to protest. =)

Metaphysics of Determinism


I have a feeling that no one really knows what they're talking about when they discuss determinism. To confirm or falsify these suspicions, I'd like to get my head into some literature on the topic. Any ideas or resources for one interested in the metaphysics of determinism? Email or comment with suggestions, please.

Why Compatibilism?


On more than one occasion in recent days, I've had to give a succinct account of why I find compatibilism (of one sort or other) plausible. It's a healthy exercise, forcing me to take stock and reflect on what, precisely, it is that I believe, and why. I here give a summary of that process. I'll first describe my views, and then give two reasons in their favor.

I am (currently) a semi-compatibilist. First, I think determinism is incompatible with free will. Holding fixed the past and the laws at a deterministic world (as seems fitting), no one is or ever has been able to do otherwise. Second, moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. And that is enough. For in my view, moral responsibility (and related concepts like dignity, accountability, personhood, etc) are what we really care about. Being persons with moral status and eligibility for ascriptions of praise and blame matters; some abstract categorical ability to do otherwise does not. Luckily, the things that matter the most to us are immune from the threat of determinism.

I am a semi-compatibilist for two broad reasons. First, I think there are sound arguments for incompatibilism with respect to free will and determinism. These arguments are provably valid and have premises which seem as true as any. Not so for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism, however. Second, there are distinct philosophical advantages to compatibilism with respect to moral responsibility and determinism. As such a compatibilist, I can live as I do whether the world I live in turns out to be deterministic or not. I will not have to radically revise my view of myself as a person and a subject should determinism turn out to obtain. Now, this consideration may not count as evidence, but it is motivation for the view. And given the other evidence on the table, the scales for me tip toward belief in semi-compatibilism.

The Logic of Moral Responsibility (Part III)


In this series, I’ve so far discussed one inference rule in the logic of moral responsibility; I found the rule to be invalid. There are lessons to be learned from this, I think.

The first, and the one I can recite with the most confidence, is that the logic of moral (non)responsibility is a lot more complicated than is suggested by the standard incompatibilist toolbox of arguments and transfer principles. Let me explain. On initial reflection, it seems extremely plausible (almost irresistible) that one is at least partly morally responsible for the truth of a material conditional of one is at least partly morally responsible for the truth of the consequent. Surely some of us are responsible for the truths of some conditionals, we might think. And what other way is there to be so responsible—except by being responsible for the facts on which the conditional supervenes (its truth conditions)?

The above picture is attractive, and sometimes irresistible, even. But I think it mistaken. After seeing that this is so, a bit of epistemic humility may be in order. Many incompatibilist arguments begin with an intuitively plausible (obvious, even) principle. But when we’ve been so mistaken before about which principles in the logic of moral responsibility are valid in the past, we are given reason to pause in similar situations. In short, when confronted with these sorts of principles, I want to say, “not so fast. Why exactly is this a valid rule of inference?” I’m not a skeptic with respect to our abilities to intuit these matters, but I do have some reservations. And in light of the above, this reaction seems well justified.

All this implies that the luminous intuitive evidence on which many incompatibilist arguments rest may not be so weighty after all.

Second, it seems to me that the conditionals we generally ascribe moral responsibility for are subjunctive conditionals, or (counterfactuals). Looking to material conditionals to do much work for us in these debates is misguided, then. The natural use of conditionals is a complicated matter, and it’s not clear to me that material conditionals have much to do with this talk in natural language. Given all this, perhaps a more worthwhile project would focus on moral responsibility in general, or at least the concept of being morally responsible for the truth of a subjunctive conditional (counterfactual).

The Logic of Moral Responsibility (Part II)


When defending several of my views about free will and moral responsibility, I've come across several related inferences. It hasn't always been clear to me what to say or think about them. But through interacting with folks during in this year's SCP meeting and Online Philosophy Conference, I've found a line that I, at least, find satisfactory.

Some (Terrance Tomkow and Tim Pawl, among others) have thought that to be not even partly morally responsibly for the truth of a material conditional, one must also not be even partly morally responsible for the truth of the conditional's consequent. The idea here is that material conditionals are quite easy to make true. On the standard truth tables, a material conditional is true when its consequent is. So if S is at least partly morally responsible for the truth of the consequent, S is ergo at least partly morally responsible for the truth of the conditional.

I reject the inference as invalid. For background on the notation and case I refer to in the sequel, see this paper: My argument toward this end follows one independently offered by Stump and Fischer (2000). Recall the Green case (see above paper link), and let r be the conjunction of ‘the actual laws of nature obtain’ and ‘the child is saved.’ Given that q (‘the child is saved’) is a conjunct of r, there is an entailment relation between them:

s. NECC(r ⊃ q)

Now if anything is an uncontroversial rule in the logic of the N operator, it is the following inference rule. Many specialists in the field, both incompatibilists and otherwise, have endorsed it without reservation. This, as well as initial intuitive plausibility strike me as good prima facie evidence for truth:

Rule A: NECC(p) ⊃ Np

By Rule A, we may infer from s that:

t. N(r ⊃ q)

But given TCNP, we must deny t, because Green is at least partly morally responsible for q. If we affirm Rule A (and it seems to me that the incompatibilist must), we must conclude that either s is false (as absurd a conclusion as any), or that TCNP is invalid. I choose the latter.

In response to this line, Tomkow suggested that Rule A must go. This is, actually, a strategy I'm open to, though I've never known anyone in the free will literature to endorse it (compatibilist or not).

At the very least, the costs of rejecting Rule A are high for the incompatibilist. Remember that without Rule A, van Inwagen's MR version of the Consequence Argument is invalid. And Rule A seems to encapsulate about as central an incompatibilist intuition as any; if Rule A (and the intuition behind it) goes, it's hard to see how the incompatibilist project is ever going to get off the ground.

The Logic of Moral Responsibility (Part I)


There is a logic to moral (non)responsibility. Given a set of ascriptions of moral (non)responsibility), there are certain inferences we are entitled to make, and others that we are not.

To motivate the idea that there is a logic behind moral responsibility, it's helpful to think of ascriptions of moral responsibility as being a family of modal logic(s). Just as there is a logic to the use of logical/metaphysical modalities like, "it is necessary that..." or to epistemic modalities using locutions like, "S believes that..." so also, there is a logic to statements like, "S is morally responsible for the fact that..." Concieved of in this way, it's not hard to see why there might be a system here to unpack and understand.

The project has philosophical merit, too.

The immediate payoff of investigating which inferences in this logic are valid (and which aren't) is obvious; inference principles governing moral responsibility take a central role in many compatibility debates. Additionally, I find the project to have some intrinsic value. Getting clear on the logic of moral responsibility sheds light on concept itself, its conditions of application, and nearby concepts such as dignity and personhood.

Thus, in the next two posts, I plan on evaluating some inference rules in the logic of moral (non)responsibility. My sense is that by getting clear on these ground level issues, there is some hope for getting clear on more complicated and involved puzzles, viz., the compatibility of determinism and moral responsibility.

Practical Philosophy


Little of the philosophical work I do has much impact on my day-to-day living. It's hard to see how being a semi-compatibilist, for example, has any bearing on what shirt to buy, which friends to have, or whether to go to Chicago for the day.

There is an exception, however, and this is the thought of Aristotle. His notion of eudaimonea as the end of human life has profoundly changed the way I live and think about living. Reading the Ethics gave me a unified vision of how to arrange my life, and it's stuck. Flourishing, being happy, and finding my calling or specific function: I've internalized these goals, and they inform my decisions and thought-life. Aristotle inspired me to center my activity around these concepts; in some ways he gave me permission too, awaking me from the dogmatic slumbers of unreflective (or worse, pointlessly guilt-driven) living.

In Defense of Frankfurt


So-called Frankfurt-style-cases (FSCs) are an important tool in the defense of the sort of compatibilism I favor. In this new paper, I come to their defense against perhaps the most powerful objection ('the Kane/Widerker objection') in the literature. My argument is that paying close enough attention to the metaphysical details of the FSCs in question resolves certain dialectical issues. The relevant metaphysical detail is this: what sort of determinism is at play in the FSC? Carefully answering this question allows the FSC defender to undermine the force of one horn of the dilemma Kane and Widerker push.

Some qualifications. First, the above paper is a work in progress. Comments are more than welcome. Second, I draw from some of my past work in free will and moral responsibility, but most of the paper is new material. Third, I'm aware of the need for more work on the last few pages where I compare my approach with existing cases in the literature.

Despite the hundreds of papers on the topic, many aspects of the FSC literature are underdeveloped in one sense; they do not take advantage of some important tools of contemporary analytic metaphysics. Only by making use of these tools can a clear picture be had of what's going on, I think. Unsurprisingly, I think this clearer picture substantially vindicates an important strategy on the part of compatibilists with respect to determinism and moral responsibility.

Yay for the compossibility of determinism and moral responsibility!

Changes


I shall soon begin more regular philosophical blogging once again. Accordingly, I've fixed a host of issues with the blogger comments on this site; all should now be well.

It seems that I haven't engaged in any deep or substantial (philosophical) work for many months, since January, at least. Sure, I wrote a senior thesis in the spring and took a few philosophy classes, but most of that output was routine labor or coasting on past achievement.

But in the last few days, I've gotten the time to engage my mind in a few philosophical issues (mind/body physicalism and closure principles for knowledge, to be specific), and the creative juices are starting to flow again. I'm starting to care about this stuff once again. It's nice. And well-timed, too, since I'll be starting classes in just a bit.

Russell on History


I've seen this quotation cited (usually with approval) by many analytic philosophers. Even if Russell is wrong, the meme seems to me to be worth passing on:

If you ask an old-fashioned professor, he will tell you to read Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel; also, as lesser luminaries, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz; also, as awful warnings, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. If you follow his advice, you will be able to pass examinations in what universities call "philosophy." You will have acquired, with considerable trouble, a lot of knowledge as to what these great men thought on various subjects. But unless you let your intelligence go to sleep while you are reading the "great" philosophers, you will not think that you have discovered what you yourself are to think on philosophical questions. It will be plain to you that a great deal of what these great men said is rubbish, and belonged to a pre-scientific mental atmosphere. Part of what they say is fallacious, part is clever guess-work. Clearly, if you want your problems solved, you must do the work yourself.


(Bertrand Russell, The Art of Philosophizing and Other Essays, 1968)