The Space of Reasons Committing Philosophical Homicide, One Argument at a Time! Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 7 0 12 3906

Articles from The Space of Reasons

Boghossian-Style Incompatibilism (Part 2) 2007-05-03 09:36:00 In my previous post I outline a reductio against compatibilism. However, I believe the compatibilist has good reason reject (R4) of the reductio. Underlying (R4) is the implicit assumption that a subject can only have privileged access to the fact that she is thinking some thought ? if she is able to distinguish it, from some other thought ?*, without consulting her environment. However, the compatibilist has good (independent) grounds to reject this assumption, and with it, (R4). For example, Falvey and Owens [1994] distinguish between ‘introspective knowledge of content’ and ‘introspective knowledge of comparative content’: (*) An individual knows the contents of his occurrent thoughts and beliefs authoritatively and directly (that is, without relying on inferences from observation of his environment). Call this kind of knowledge introspective knowledge of content. (**) With respect to any two of his thoughts or beliefs, and individual can know authoritatively an ...

Boghossian-Style Incompatibilism (Part 1) 2007-04-26 04:18:00 Arguments against the compatibility of a priori self-knowledge and content externalism (henceforth, C-externalism) typically fall under one of two headings. First, there is the achievement problem, according to which C-externalism entails that a subject can only come to know the content of her thoughts by examining her environment, and the consequence problem, the charge that C-externalism (when combined with privileged self-knowledge) implies that a subject may have a priori knowledge of empirical facts about her environment.I will begin with an examination of the achievement problem. Roughly, the achievement problem may be put as follows: C-externalist thought experiments seem to demonstrate that given an appropriate difference in the external world, there will be a difference in thought content, without this difference being reflected in any inner detectable manner. This seems to imply that one cannot tell, without consulting the external world, which of two thoughts one is enter ...

The 46th International Philosopher's Carnival 2007-04-23 08:56:00 A NARROW CROSS-SECTION OF PHILOSOPHYFROM ACROSS THE WEB A Philosophy (Pseudo) ConferenceHosted by the Space of ReasonsMonday, April 23rd, 2007Welcome to the 46th instalment of the Philosopher's Carnival, which takes the form or a philosophy pseudo-conference, showcasing a narrow cross-section of philosophy on the web. A special thank you goes out to Professor Daniel Dennett for his submission, which raises important questions with regards to what constitutes a worthwhile philosophical research program. In the three "presentations" immediately following the "keynote address" (under the heading of METAPHILOSOPHY), two philosophy students and one non-philosopher share their views on the status and role of philosophical theories. We then turn to the heart and soul of the Carnival which features a number of “presentations” that fall under the heading of Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind (or LEMMINGS). Finally, we top it all off with a sprinkling of ETHICS and a brief ...

Causal vs. Rational Explanations (Part 3) 2007-04-12 09:52:00 In my post Causal vs Rational Explanations (Part1) I suggest that the 'Fanatical Tom' objection seems to pose a problem of causal theorists regarding justification. There are two strategies, available to the causal theorist, for responding to this objection : STRATEGY1: Accept that the Tom has a justified belief, and tweak the causal requirement to reflect this fact.STRATEGY2: Reject the assumption that Tom has a justified belief. I believe the considerations presented in my previous post on this topic, Causal vs. Rational Explanations (Part 2), represent a genuine difficulty for attempts to defend causal theories along the lines of strategy1. More specifically, I regard all attempts to argue that the spyware causally sustains Alvin’s believe via an appeal to the notion of a counterfactual cause are moribund.I now wish to propose an alternative reply, along the lines of STRATEGY2, for arguing that Tom’s belief is not justified. We begin with a few distinctions. First, w ...

Philosopher's Carnival: Call For Submissions 2007-04-01 19:00:00 The next edition of the Philosopher's Carnival (April 23rd), which will be hosted here at the Space of Reasons, will focus on epistemology (broadly understood), philosophy of mind, and the intersections between the two (e.g., philosophy of perception). However, blog posts in other areas of analytic philosophy are also welcome. Submissions should be roughly equivalent to one or two single spaced pages in length. Ideally, a post should engage a single issue or question and may be argumentative or descriptive. For an example of the overall tone we will be aiming for in the upcoming Carnival, click here. Submissions may be made here. ...

Causal vs. Rational Explanations (Part 2) 2007-03-28 01:38:00 In my previous post on this topic, I briefly touched on a common reply to Lehrer’s Gypsy-Lawyer type cases—namely, the suggestion that a belief need not have its ‘causal origin’ in a reliable process, so long as it is ‘causally sustained’ by such a process. On this more moderate view, Tom’s belief can be seen as ‘causally sustained’ by the discovery of the spyware in the sense that if Tom were to give up his fanatical religious views, he would still continue to believe that ‘the NSA is spying on US citizens’ (henceforth ‘SPY’). In this post I will examine one way of unpacking the concept of what it means for a belief to be causally sustained by some bit of evidence (whether propositionally or non-propositionally understood)—namely, Marshall Swain’s notion of a counterfactual cause. We may define a counterfactual in terms of possible world semantics. Following Lewis let us say that the truth of the statement A > B consists in the fact that, among possi ...

McDowell’s Direct Realist Reply to Scepticism 2007-03-20 04:26:00 McDowell’s claim that in veridical cases of perception objects are “immediately present to the mind” has earned him the title of direct realist. Direct realism is the thesis that what we perceive are not merely appearances (insert: sense data, veil or ideas or whatever else suits your fancy) but rather objects themselves.Direct realism can be used against an evidential argument of the following form:P1: Our EW beliefs are based on sense data beliefs P2: Sense data beliefs cannot justify EW beliefsEWS: Our EW beliefs are not justified The direct realist resists EWS (i.e., external world scepticism) by rejecting P1. There are two senses in which the direct realist can maintain that our EW beliefs are not based on sense data beliefs. First, they can deny that there are such things as sense data beliefs. This is certainly true in McDowell’s case since his rejection of the highest common factor view, a fortiori, includes the eschewal of any such mediating beliefs. Second, i ...

Gettierising Nozick 2007-03-08 16:35:00 Over at The Web of Belief, I lay out a Gettier case against local reliabilism (which is itself based on an earlier post of mine, Undescriminating Reliabilism). Let's call my proposed Gettier case against local reliabilism GLR. The version of local reliability I took as my target was admittedly quite simple, so here I will attempt to apply GLR to a much more sophisticated version of local reliability—namely, Nozick’s counterfactual account. Nozick [1981, p. 179] argues that the true belief that p is knowledge only if:(N1) If p were true, then S would believe that p(N2) If p were not true, then S would not believe that p1 Following David Lewis [1973] we may say that (N1) and (N2) are true, as counterfactual statements, iff in possible worlds near to the actual world, if p is true, S believes that p, and if p is false S does not believe that p. Nozick recommends that we assess (N1) and (N2) by reference to what is the case in all nearby possible worlds. Roughly, a world may be ...

Causal vs. Rational Explanations (Part 1) 2007-03-01 09:02:00 According to many J-externalists, a belief is only justified if it is caused in the right sort of way (for example, by a reliable process). Thus, we arrive at (J-Ext[C]):(J-Ext[C]) For any agent S, S’s belief that p is justified IFF it is caused in the appropriate way by the fact that p. In this post I will like to argue against this claim. I begin by distinguishing between two types of explanations of why someone might hold a certain belief—namely, causal and rational. Consider the following example:The ‘Crazy Jack’ Counterexample: Jack is convinced that alien creatures from a distant galaxy regularly abduct and perform bizarre experiments on him. We ask Jack’s psychiatrist why he has this belief, and the psychiatrist responds ‘because he has sush-and-such physical defect in his brain.’ There are two ways of interpreting the psychiatrist’s answer. First, we may view it as giving a causal explanation of Jack’s belief. On this interpretation, Jack need not be aware t ...

What (Else) is Going On... 2007-02-23 01:50:00 First, I should call everyone's attention to the most recent issue of the Philosopher's Carnival, here, which is being hosted by Trent Dougherty. I'm really liking the tone and quality of posts in the most recent Carnivals, especially the previous issue, here. Let's hope these high quality Carnivals continue.Update: In the comments of the Carnival there is a short exchange between Trent and Clayton Littlejohn about my post, in which Clayton comes to my defence. Surprise, surprise...I happen to agree with Clayton on this one (even if I am somewhat of an 'innie').Second, all you McDowell fans can find an interesting paper, here, by Adam who brings the theoretical apparatus of Virtue Epistemology to bear on McDowell's theory of knowledge.Third, I owe a word of gratitude to Brian Leiter for mentioning my blog on his Leiter Reports. During the week my blog was featured I had over 900 new visitors! Hopefully this increase in blog traffic will eventually translate into more feedback. ...

Moore On Sense Data 1969-12-31 17:59:59 One of the central questions in the philosophy of perception is: what are the objects of perception? One way to interpret the locution ?objects of perception? is in terms of what it is that we are immediately aware of in the act of perceiving. In the early 20th century the traditional answer to this question was ?sense data? (henceforth SD). Thus, Moore defines SD as that which we ?directly apprehend? in perception [p. 46 ff*]. A striking feature of Moore?s account of SD is that he appears to remain open to the possibility that SD are mind-independent [p. 31, 43-5]. For example, Moore opines that SD may continue to exist even when we do not perceive them [p. 31], in which case their existence would not be dependent on the mind of the perceiver. In this regard, Moore?s conception of SD differs slightly from that of most contemporary philosophers who view mind-dependence as a fundamental feature of SD (a fact which Moore [p. 40-3] himself acknowledges). Moore points out that when w ...

The Wright Objection 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Following J. M. Hinton [1973], Paul Snowdon [1990] has argued that indistinguishable veridical and hallucinatory perceptual experiences belong to fundamentally different genera. Thus, veridical perceptual experiences (henceforth e1) are of one sort while hallucinatory perceptual experiences (henceforth e2) are of another fundamentally different sort, the only thing common to both being that they are introspectively indistinguishable from each other. The difference between e1 and e2 is, for Snowdon, is rooted in the fact that perceptual experiences are essentially relational.John McDowell takes up Snowdon?s disjunctive conception and applies its insights to epistemological questions relating to our perceptual beliefs.1 According to McDowell, the epistemological upshot of the disjunction between e1 and e2 is that e1 places us in a better epistemic position than e2 does. On its own, this claim hardly seems controversial. For example, a reliabilist would agree that e1 places us in a ...

J-Reliabilism and the New Evil Genius 1969-12-31 17:59:59 In this post, I outline what has come to be known as the New Evil Genius objection to reliabilism. There are several versions of reliabilism currently available, but the one I have in mind has to do with justification and amounts the following claim: (J-Rel) For any agent S, S?s belief that p is justified IFF it was formed via a reliable process (i.e., a process that tends to produce true beliefs).The following claim seems to be in keeping with our common sense intuitions about justification: (NEG) The extent to which S is justified in believing that p at time t is the same as the extent to which S?s recently envatted duplicate is justified in believing that p at t.However, the combination of both (NEG) and (J-Rel) leads to the following implausible conclusion: (C) The beliefs of S?s recently envatted duplicate are produced by reliable processes.To see this, let us begin by simplifying (J-Rel) and (NEG) for the purpose of argumentation. First, we ma ...

"Internalising" McDowell 1969-12-31 17:59:59 In my previous post, I addressed the main methodological objection to my claim that McDowell is a J-internalist. In this post, I will attempt to address what I take to be the primary theoretical objection to this proposal.But first, what textual evidence do I have for holding that McDowell is a J-internalist? Two of the more suggestive passages are as follows:I agree?that we lose the point of invoking the space of reasons if we allow someone to possess a justification even if it is outside his reflective reach. [McDowell 1998b, p. 418]And:[O]ne?s epistemic standing on some question cannot intelligibly be constituted, even in part, by matters blankly external to how it is with one subjectively. For how could such matters be other than beyond one?s ken? And how could matters beyond one?s ken make any difference to one?s epistemic standing? ([McDowell 1998a] p. 390) I interpret the locution ?how it is with one subjectively?, as an umbrella term for the sorts of things that are typically t ...

McDowell, Knowledge and Credit (Carter) 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Note: The following post was written by J. Adam Carter, from over at Virtue Epistemology, who has given me permission to feature it here. Be sure to check out the exchange between Adrian Haddock and I that follows:I'm interested in getting clear about two features, specifically, of John McDowell's theory of knowledge. (1) How does his account answer any of the three value problems; (2) How does his account explain why knowers are credit-worthy?I haven't yet come across literature that can explain the first of these questions, but after thinking about 'Knowledge and the Internal' I am somewhat confused as to how a satisfactory answer to (2) would go.McDowell, in criticizing the 'hybrid' account, claims that what is epistemically significant between a knower and a non-knower (take the context of the New Evil Genius setting) should not fall outside the knower's standing in the space of reasons. And so, because the hybrid account posits that the 'favor from the world' is someth ...