Calvin and Hobbes and Kant

One of the best comic strips ever:

Philosophy, et cetera on Effective Giving

Philosophy, et cetera: Effective Giving:

I encourage  everyone who wants to make the world a better place to join Giving What We Can and pledge to give 10% of their pre-tax income to effective charities.  You can expect to save several lives each year (averaging over your lifetime earnings, if you're currently a student), which is pretty amazing when you think about it, and it's surprisingly easy too.  (A 10% change in income generally doesn't impose any drastic lifestyle changes!)  Some people give even more, and that's even cooler.  Some start with less, and every bit helps. ...

Some Strong Conditionals for Sentential Logics (Circulation Draft)

Here is my latest draft of a paper attempting to give an account of a stronger-than-material conditional which can be adapted to various sentential logics. An abstract is provided below. To see the draft, go here:

Some Strong Conditionals for Sentential Logics (Circulation Draft)

Please keep in mind that the paper is a work in progress, and is still in a fairly rough state. That being said, I appreciate any comments and / or criticism that those who are interested in the subject have to offer.

Abstract:

In this article I define a strong conditional for classical sentential logic, and then extend it to three non-classical sentential logics. It is stronger than the material conditional and is not subject to the standard paradoxes of material implication, nor is it subject to some of the standard paradoxes of C. I. Lewis’s strict implication. My conditional has some counterintuitive consequences of its own, but I think its pros outweigh its cons. In any case, one can always augment one’s language with more than one conditional, and it may be that no single conditional will satisfy all of our intuitions about how a conditional should behave. Finally, I will make no claim that the strong conditional is a good model for any particular use of the indicative conditional in English or other natural languages, though it would certainly be a nice bonus if some modified version of it could serve as one.

The basic idea is this: In general, one starts out with with the logic that one  wants to define the conditional for, and describes a meta-language for it. The metalanguage contains ┌(q|p)┐, a “conditional designator” which designates the truth value that q takes given that p is true, i.e., given that p has the value 1. It is to be read as ┌ the value of q given p┐ or ┌the value of q conditional on p┐. The stroke, |, is not a connective; it merely serves to separate the letter q from the letter p. The designator works like this: If p never takes the value 1, then ┌(q|p)┐ designates nothing—for q cannot take a value given that p is true if p can never be true—and is said to be empty. It is also empty if the value of q varies when the value of p is 1, for in that case q doesn’t take a unique value given that p is true. If q always takes the value 1 when p takes the value 1, then ┌(q|p)┐ designates 1, and in our meta-language we can say that ┌(q|p)┐ = 1, which is another way of saying that ┌(q|p)┐ designates 1. Similarly, if q always takes the value 0 when p takes the value 1, then ┌(q|p)┐ designates 0, and in our meta-language we can say that ┌(q|p)┐ = 0. 

With our meta-linguistic conditional designator ready to hand, one can now define what I call the strong conditional, or strong implication, for which I will use the symbol ‘→’. Its definition is (where ‘v( )’ is the valuation function, which gives the semantic value of an expression):

If ┌(q|p)┐= 1, then v(p → q) = 1

If ┌(q|p)┐= 0, then v(p → q) = 0

If ┌(q|p)┐ is empty, then v(p → q) = 0

I shall begin by exploring some of the disadvantages of the material conditional, the strict conditional, and some relevant conditionals. I proceed to define a strong conditional for classical sentential logic. I go on to adapt this account to Graham Priest’s Logic of Paradox, to S. C. Kleene’s logic K3, and then to J. Łukasiewicz’s logic Ł, a standard version of fuzzy logic.

The Format of Scholardarity's Submissions Page Has Been Updated

Scholardarity.com has updated the format of its submissions page. Now you can sign in using your Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, or HeyPublisher account. Also, you no longer have to send in submissions via email; you can upload them directly through the submissions form.

You can submit your contributions here.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Philosophers' Carnival # 145

Welcome one and all to the 145th edition of the Philosophers' Carnival! You may notice that this edition is a bit shorter than most previous ones. This is because, in deference to the new carnival policies, I've decided to include only what I believe to be the best of the best submissions.

And so, without further ado, I present to you the Philosophers' Carnival's main attractions:

　
Chad McIntosh of Appeared-To-Blogly examines the link between theism and the multiverse hypothesis, and concludes that the multiverse hypothesis is 'metaphysically laden'.

　
Richard Brown of Philosophy Sucks! shares some notes and thoughts on Giulio Tononi's inaugural lecture at NYU's Center for Mind and Brain.

　
Over at M-Phi, Catarina reviews Stephen Read's exposition of Thomas Bradwardine's solution to the Liar Paradox.

In his blog post "A Response to an Anti-Naturalist" at Larval Subjects, Levi Bryant replies to a critique of his defense of naturalism and materialism.

At Philosophy, et cetera, Richard Chappell critiques M. Oreste Fiocco's paper "Consequentialism and the World in Time", in which Fiocco gives arguments against consequentialism based on the philosophy of time.

Do you have infinitely many beliefs about the number of planets? Apparently not. Eric Schwitzgebel argues that if that's true it shows that "...it seems problematic to think of belief either in terms of discretely stored language-like style representations (perhaps plus swift derivability allowing implicit beliefs), or in terms of map-like representations."

　
In a post at the hanged man Matthew J. Brown argues, in opposition to some recent papers by Heather Douglas, that "...value judgments do have legitimate direct roles to play in the internal processes of scientific inquiry"--three roles, to be precise.

Finally, Mark Lance presents an interesting problem for the semantics and epistemology of mathematics in the first part of his post on domains of quantification over at New APPS. To be specific,

"...one knows what one is saying with such a sentence only if one knows what domain one is quantifying over. If we are discussing anything as complex as the reals - equivalently second order arithmetic - and mean to quantify over the "intended model" - that is, do not specify some constructable model as our domain - then we do not know what we are quantifying over. Thus, we do not know what we are saying when we make claims with second order arithmetic quantifiers."


That's all for this edition. The next Carnival will open at Talking Philosophy on December 10th.

Notes on Timothy Williamson’s Lecture “Logics as Scientific Theories”

Over at Scholardarity I've posted my notes on Timothy Williamson’s lecture “Logics as Scientific Theories” which was given at U.C. Berkeley on November 1st.

A Summary of Mackie’s “The Subjectivity of Values”

I've posted a summary of J.L. Mackie's article "The Subjectivity of Values" in Philosophy Notes at Scholardarity.

Here's an excerpt:

In his essay “The Subjectivity of Values”, J.L. Mackie aims to show that values are not built into the structure of the universe. He begins by clarifying his position, addressing possible reactions and trying to prevent misunderstandings. Some would reject Mackie’s thesis as being morally subversive, others would accept it as a platitude, and still others would say that the question of whether there are objective values is itself illegitimate. Mackie’s thesis applies to all purportedly objective values, not just moral ones. Also, his thesis is a second-order rather than a first-order claim: It states that our values have nothing objective corresponding to them, but one who accepts this claim is not thereby committed to adopt any particular attitude towards private conduct or public policy. One can think that values are ultimately subjective while still valuing things, practices, or states of affairs—or perhaps not valuing much of anything at all—because valuing something does not presuppose that valuing it has an ontological ground.

Aristotle’s Theory of the Origin of the State

I've  posted a new article at Scholardarity in Philosophy Notes from my Grandfather, which is a brief explanation of Aristotle’s Theory of the Origin of the State.

"Gold is a yellow metal?" It ain't analytically so!

Proof at last that "Gold is a yellow metal" is not analytic, pace Kant. Viva la Kripke!

Southampton scientists change the colour of gold (From the BBC)

__________

[...]

For this very reason all analytic judgments are a priori even when the concepts are empirical, as, for example, "Gold is a yellow metal," for to know this I require no experience beyond my concept of gold as a yellow metal. It is, in fact, the very concept, and I need only analyze it, without looking beyond it elsewhere.

 --Immanuel Kant,  Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics; Preamble, Section 2b, p. 267 http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20306/kant_materials/prolegomena3.htm

See also Kripke's  Naming and Necessity, p. 118-9

A Primer on Logic: Part 4.1

I've published a new article on Scholardarity, A Primer on Logic: Part 4.1, the latest installment of my introduction to formal logic. In it I address some preliminaries to Predicate Logic.

Also, in case you missed Parts 1, 2, 3, and the Interlude, which respectively cover logical preliminaries, propositional logic, Aristotelian logic, and the inadequacies of Aristotelian logic, you can check them out here:

Part 1

Part 2
 
Part 3

Interlude

If you have any comments / criticism, by all means share it!

Announcement of Scholardarity’s First Essay Contest

Announcement of Scholardarity’s First Essay Contest

 

 

Peter Krey and Jason Zarri, co-founders of Scholardarity, are pleased to announce that Scholardarity is now accepting submissions for its first essay contest. The cost of entering the contest is $10.00. There will be prizes for the first, second, and third place winners. The contestant who wins first place will receive at least $200.00, the contestant who wins second place will receive at least $100.00, and the contestant who wins third place will receive at least $50.00; we say “at least” because the money received from the entrance fees will form a “pot”, which will be divided amongst the three winners: 50% of the pot for first place, 25% of the pot for second place, and 10% of the pot for third place.

There are two topics to choose from:

(1) What role should the government play in a society and what is the proper relation of the government and economy in order to best serve the common good? Would new approaches to the discipline of economics—for example, the evolutionary or complexity economics of Eric Beinhocker or other approaches, e.g., the social economics of Anghel Rugina, contribute to the well-being of society?
 

(2) What is the proper relationship between government and religion in a democracy? What are the effects, positive and/or negative, of government on religion, of religion on government, or of both on society as a whole? Essays may include the pros and cons of the separation of church and state, governmental restrictions on certain religious practices, as well as restrictions placed on a religion, such as wanting to impose its will on the whole society.

 

There will be two rounds: In Round 1, contestants will submit a proposal of about 500 words in which they give an outline for a paper on their selected topic. From these proposals, twenty will be selected as finalists to enter Round 2. The finalists will write a paper based on their proposal, of about 2,000 words in length. All twenty of the finalists’ essays will be published on Scholardarity.
The deadline for submissions for Round 1 is November 15th, and the deadline for submissions for Round 2 is January 15th

To enter the contest, go to Scholardarity's Contest Page to enter, then send your proposal to  jlzarri@scholardarity.com, along with your name, address, and any other relevant contact information.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Philosophy Notes from my Grandfather

I’ve started a new section of Scholardarity in Open Source Study Notes, Philosophy Notes from my Grandfather. It’s a page dedicated to the memory of my late grandfather, who graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from USF. I’ve also added its first entry, An Overview of the History of Philosophy: Part 1.

On the Relativity of “Reallys” -- Now at Scholardarity

I've just posted my article "On the Relativity of “Reallys”: A Critique of Strawson" at Scholardarity in the Philosophy of Mind section, in which I criticize P. F. Strawson's attempt to reconcile the standpoints of science and common sense, insofar as they concern perception .

Testing the limits of your imagination: Part 2

In this post I invite my readers to test the limits of their imagination. As I said in Part 1,

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes distinguished between imagination and conception, or between mental images and concepts. Thus he supposed that one can conceive of a chiliagon, a polygon of a thousand sides, although one cannot form a mental image that represents it—none, at any rate, that wouldn’t represent a circle equally well. This shows that imagination has its limits, and that one can conceive of things that one cannot (adequately) imagine.

In Part 1 I tried to determine the maximum number of sides that you can visualize a polygon as having. This time, I want you to test something different: imagined motion.

Experiment 1:
Visualize a disc (or a square; whichever proves to be easier). To help you to keep track of the motion, imagine it as half white and half black, or as having black and white stripes or dots. Now imagine the figure rotating about its center, at a relatively slow pace--say about half a rotation per second. After a few seconds, imagine it rotating once per second. Now repeat his process, gradually increasing the number of rotations  per second. I predict that at some point you will no longer be able to "keep track" of the motion. What I would like to know is how many rotations per second you can  visualize before you lose track of the motion.

Experiment 2:
Now, I want you to imagine a system consisting of two discs, one about two to three times as big as the other, with the larger one at the center.  Now visualize the smaller disc orbiting the larger one, much like planet orbiting a star (as the system would be viewed from "above", i.e., not "edge on"). Start by imagining the smaller disc orbiting at one half a revolution per second. As in Experiment 1, gradually increase the number of revolutions per second step by step: How many orbits per second you can  visualize before you lose track of the motion?

Thanks for your cooperation!

A past philosopher toasts a potential president

I had a most interesting dream last night (well, not really, but let's pretend). I was at a university I'd never seen before, but somehow I knew where I was going. Walking through the Humanities building, I noticed that some people looked vaguely familiar, though hard to place. Passing one of the doors, which was ajar, I heard the voice of Mitt Romney. It turned out that a professor was playing a clip of Romney's acceptance speech from last night. The professor, apparently trying to explain his views on  one's knowledge of one's own mental states to his students, paused the video and resumed his lecture: "Now imagine yourself saying, 'But I know how bored I am!', and banging your head against your desk to prove it..." Immediately I began to suspect something. I made my way to the lounge, where a party was to be held. The faces of those who were there were mostly glum. The results from last night were clearly not what they had expected; or, at any rate, not what they had  hoped for. I overheard one professor say to another that it looked like he lost his bet with professor Voltaire that this was the best of all possible worlds. I'm still not sure if he was joking or not, but my suspicion was correct: Many of the faculty were great philosophers from the past! At that point I saw someone dressed in a monk's robes stand up and clear his throat. The room became silent, and everyone turned to face him. I don't know how I knew it--again, this was a dream--but it must have been St. Anselm. "I propose a toast to our president elect!", he said. I remember his words vividly:

Obama had his problems, as it is plain to see,

but they pale beside those that face our new president, Romney.

It would not be a slander, if it can be believed, 

to define poor Mitt as he than which none blander can be conceived.

He hasn't got a lot of charm, or personality,

nor has he very much respect for folks like you and me.

He worries little about the poor, who have a "safety net",

and worries less about those whose votes he thought he could not get.

"If only I were Latino", he joked, "I'd be assured to win"

--tragically, Mitt failed to see, he should be liked for being him. 

So let us all drink to his health, and wish him lots of luck;

he'll need it most four years from now, when his only term is up!

At that point everyone in the room laughed and cheered. It turned out to be a good dream after all.

A Brief Sketch of Kant’s Critical Philosophy

Over at Scholardarity I've posted A Brief Sketch of Kant’s Critical Philosophy in Scholardarity Student’s subsection Open Source Study Notes. Here's an excerpt:

Metaphysical knowledge can be either dogmatic or critical. Dogmatic metaphysics seeks to know things as they are in themselves. Critical metaphysics, which Kant calls “Critique”, only gives us knowledge of things as they must appear to us, and hence of the necessary features of all possible experience. Dogmatic metaphysics would have to meet two requirements which are inconsistent in Kant’s system. First, it would have to be synthetic a priori. It could not be analytic a priori, for then it could not give us new knowledge. Neither could it be synthetic a posteriori, for then it could tell us no more than natural science does. Second, it would have to go beyond the bounds of all possible experience; otherwise, it would not be distinct from mathematics and geometry, which, while also synthetic a priori, are limited to possible experience. This limitation is what makes them possible, for as we said above, they are “built into” space and time as forms of our sensibility. Anything which can appear to us must be subject to our forms of sensibility, and so mathematics and geometry must hold of all appearances. But since dogmatic metaphysics is supposed to apply to things which cannot appear to us, we cannot know a priori what they are like, for they are not subject to the only conditions under which experience, and hence synthetic a priori knowledge, is possible. In consequence, metaphysical knowledge of a dogmatic sort is impossible. Now we can see the source of Kant’s distaste for dogmatic metaphysics: It poses questions which it cannot answer.

Philosophy of Language Notes Part 1: Wittgenstein

Over at Scholardarity I've posted Part 1 of my notes on the Philosophy of language, the first contribution to Scholardarity Student’s subsection Open Source Study Notes. This  part deals with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Here's an excerpt:

~ Prelude ~

Why philosophers study language–

1) Philosophers have been accused of “making mistakes” based on language. Consider the sentences:

i) “Santa Claus does not exist.”

ii) “Santa Claus wears a red suit.”

a) “How can one talk about something”, philosophers sometimes ask, “and say something true or false about it, if it isn’t real or doesn’t ‘have being’ in some sense? In order for statements like (i) or (ii) to be true, they have to be about something—Santa Claus, in this case. Granted, in light of the fact that (i) is true, Santa Claus doesn’t exist, but nevertheless he is some kind of being and has properties—including the properties of being non-existent and wearing a red suit.” However, at least since Bertrand Russell published his famous article “On Denoting” in 1905, most philosophers think that arguments like this are based on linguistic confusions. It can be true that Santa Claus does not exist without Santa Clause being real in any sense.

b) From time to time philosophers also ask: Is there such a thing as “goodness”, or something like Plato’s “Form of the Good”? Able philosophers have thought so, but others–emotivists, in particular, such as A. J. Ayer, C. L. Stevenson, Richard Hare—have held that to call something good or bad, or to say that an action is right or wrong, is not to say that it objectively has some moral feature—“goodness”, “wrongness”, etc.—but to express how the speaker feels about the thing or action in question.  For example, on this view a sentence like “Lying is wrong” is neither true nor false; nor, when properly understood, is it purported to be. It merely evinces that the speaker who uttered the sentence disapproves of lying. It does not even say that the speaker disapproves of lying—that would be a sentence that is apt to be true or false; true if the speaker disapproves of lying and false if they do not. On the emotivists’ view, to say that lying is wrong is more like saying “Boo lying!”, “Screw lying!”, “Down with lying!”, or something of the sort.

(Personal note: Words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, may have an expressive function, but it doesn’t follow that they only have an expressive function. Sentences involving ‘good’ and ‘bad’ might sometimes attribute objective goodness or badness to some entity, and it may be that it is in virtue of one’s belief that the entity in question is objectively good that one can use the term ‘good’ or ‘goodness’ to express how one feels about it. For it may be that if one had no belief concerning the entity’s moral value, one might not have any feelings about it, whether positive or negative.)

2) What are the limits of human knowledge? What can we conceive? The “early” Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, thought there was a connection between the limits of conception and the limits of what can be expressed in language:

The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather—not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought).

The limit can, therefore, only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense.—Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, p. 3

3) Language is inherently interesting.

4th annual 3 Quarks Daily philosophy prize -- submissions end Sept. 3rd

The following is from a post at 3 Quarks Daily:

Dear Readers, Writers, Bloggers,

We are very honored and pleased to announce that Justin E. H. Smith has agreed to be the final judge for our 4th annual prize for the best blog and online writing in the category of philosophy. (Details of the previous three philosophy prizes can be seen by clicking on the names of their respective judges here: Daniel Dennett, Akeel Bilgrami, and Patricia Churchland).

 [...]

As usual, this is the way it will work: the nominating period is now open, and will end at 11:59 pm EST on September 3, 2012. There will then be a round of voting by our readers which will narrow down the entries to the top twenty semi-finalists. After this, we will take these top twenty voted-for nominees, and the four main editors of 3 Quarks Daily (Abbas Raza, Robin Varghese, Morgan Meis, and Azra Raza) will select six finalists from these, plus they may also add up to three wildcard entries of their own choosing. The three winners will be chosen from these by Justin Smith.

The first place award, called the "Top Quark," will include a cash prize of one thousand dollars; the second place prize, the "Strange Quark," will include a cash prize of three hundred dollars; and the third place winner will get the honor of winning the "Charm Quark," along with a two hundred dollar prize.

Objectivism and The Corruption of Rationality–Formatting Fixed

The formatting of Scott Ryan’s book Objectivism and The Corruption of Rationality, available in the Epistemology section of Scholardarity, has been fixed and now coincides with the print version.

Chalmerwocky

Scott Ryan, a friend and philosophical mentor, was kind enough to write the following poem for me based on my post "Conceivability, Consciousness and the Content of Belief" and Lewis Carroll's Poem "Jabberwocky".  In his words:

"Written for Jason Zarri, who's taking on an argument of David Chalmers in a paper he's writing for a graduate philosophy course at San Francisco State University."

Thanks Scott! 

And now, without further ado, I present:

Chalmerwocky

'Twas swillig, and the lively lads
Did gyre and gimble round the bar;
All tipsy were the Student-Grads,
As the pee-zombies are.

"Beware the Chalmer! Don't evade
The Problem Hard of Consciousness;
The arguments so far you've made
Are dubious. Acquiesce!"

He took his Vorpal Ale in hand;
Long time he toted round his beer
To seek his foe, and finally manned
A table in the rear.

And, as his uffish beer he drank,
The Chalmer, with its mind aflame,
Came whiffling through the tavern dank,
And argued as it came!

(1), (2)! (1), (2)! "Not true, not true!"
Both premises he thus denied.
He scotched the myth, departing with
The Chalmer's zombie hide.

"And hast thou slain its argument?
Come to my arms; embrace thou me!
O thesis fine! O thought divine!"
He'd earned his Ph.D.

'Twas swillig, and the lively lads
Did gyre and gimble round the bar;
All tipsy were the Student-Grads,
As the pee-zombies are.