Top 5 Most Downloaded Articles from Nous

According to a newsletter I get from Blackwell, the following are the five most downloaded articles from Nous.
Glad to see some deviant epistemology on there and glad to see the U or R's own David Braun on there (he's one of my comp examiners).

*The Pathologies of Standard Analytic Epistemology
Michael Bishop, J. D. Trout

*Can Empirical Theories of Semantic Competence Really Help Limn the Structure of Reality?
Steven Gross

*Empty Names, Fictional Names, Mythical Names
David Braun

*The Indeterminacy Paradox: Character Evaluations and Human Psychology
Peter B. M. Vranas

*A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will
Mark Balaguer

In Search of a Unified Epistemology

Guy Axtell over at JanusBlog has posted on my draft "Realizing Virtue: A Unified Virtue Epistemology" (available here) and I won't be able to participate in the discussion till after classes today. But he begins by talking about other unificatory strategies extent in the literature and he quotes Goldman who evinces a unification which “make[s] a case for the unity of epistemic virtues in which the cardinal value, or underlying motif, is something like true, accurate, belief…The principle relation that epistemic virtues bear to the core epistemic value will be a teleological or consequentialist one. A process, trait, or action is an epistemic virtue to the extent that it tends to produce, generate, or promote (roughly) true belief.” (2002, 52)

But this seems utterly hopeless to me. Its *precisely* the fact that mere accuracy doesn't capture the kind of praiseworthy belief involved in high falootin (sp?) cognitive endeavors like scientific and philosophical theorizing that makes internalists so dissatisfied with reliabilism. Yet some internalists--I think Bonjour is sometimes guilty of this or at least seems to be on the brink of it--sometimes over-intellectualize justified belief in a way that robs the folk of much of their epistemic merit. In the paper I try to make room at the table for everyone. I really look forward to benefiting from Guy's comments. But for now, its off to class.

Set Theory by Google

Kind of. It's more fun with Google Labs http://labs.google.com/sets.

For examplel I thought of a set--an easy one to be nice: classroom items--and gave it the following items:

• book
• chair
• desk
• pencil
• notebook

and it gave me back

• paper
• calculator
• pen
• assignments
• ruler
• blackboard

Not too bad, but that was an easy one.

Naturally, when I entered "1" "2" and "3" it gave me the number line (just checking).

Then I entered three items from my basement: "tent" "bike" and "skis".

It dutifully gave me back six items, four of which were right there next to those items, "Things you might find in a basement for $400, Alex?"

I entereed "epistemology" and "metaphysics" and it started out OK with "logic" and "ethics" but soon went askew with "Existentialism" and "hermeneutics". Oh, well, it's just in beta.

Re-Search Trends in Philosophy

Google has an interesting service which allows you to see the search stats on high-volume search strings. Here are some results I found interesting.

"philosophy"
1. Cambridge, MA, USA
2. Pittsburgh, PA, USA
3. New York, NY, USA
4. Philadelphia, PA, USA
5. Baltimore, MD, USA
6. St Louis, MO, USA
7. Austin, TX, USA
8. Boston, MA, USA
9. Rochester, NY, USA

"epistemology"
1. Honolulu, HI, USA
2. Pittsburgh, PA, USA
3. Austin, TX, USA
4. Cambridge, MA, USA
5. Rochester, NY, USA

"metaphysics"
1. Cambridge, MA, USA
2. Denver, CO, USA
3. Raleigh, NC, USA
4. Philadelphia, PA, USA
5. Baltimore, MD, USA
6. Salt Lake City, UT, USA
7. Austin, TX, USA 8. St Louis, MO, USA

"logic"
1. San Jose, CA, USA
2. Santa Clara, CA, USA
3. Austin, TX, USA
4. San Francisco, CA, USA
5. Pleasanton, CA, USA
6. Denver, CO, USA
7. Pittsburgh, PA, USA

I was hardly able find any philosopher who had a high enough search volume. Unsurprisingly, there was one exception.

"Peter Singer"
1. Princeton, NJ, USA
2. Cambridge, MA, USA
3. Minneapolis, MN, USA
4. Denver, CO, USA
5. Pittsburgh, PA, USA

I'm not sure what to make of Pittsburgh appearing on every list.

Is Global Irrationality Possible?

Not quite sure what to make of this, but the thought just popped into my head when I took a bit of a cookie.

It seems impossible to be successful at aiming to be globally (means-end) irrational.

Suppose you attempt to satisfy your desire for means-end irrationality by adopting ineffective means to your local ends. Well, this is a pretty good strategy for being irrational, so it seems the rational thing to do and you've failed at being globally irrational.

But if you adopt rational means to your local ends in order to avoid the above result, then you're clearly not going to succeed in being globally irrational.

Something doesn't seem quite right about this reasoning though.

The 152nd meeting of the Creighton Club

The 152nd meeting of the Creighton Club yesterday was quite a smorgasbord: there were presentations on metaphysics, epistemology, ethical theory, and applied ethics by grad students, junior faculty presentations, senior faculty, men and women (well, woman).

My colleague Joshua Spencer spoke on properties of "parts" of extended simples, Neil Feit of SUNY Fredonia spoke on the property theory of the attitudes, the charming Ishani Maitra spoke on an interesting new proposal (developed with Daniel Nolan) on testimony, David Hershenov of SUNY Buffalo spoke on harm to the deceased, and keynote speaker Jeff McMahan spoke on the moral equality of combatants.

One interesting "theme", and I don't know what if anything to make of this, was that of death and non-being. Neil Feit's talk on the property theory of the attitudes focused on selfless desires, in particular, the desire that one not exist or the preference for a world in which one does not exist but others are better off. This can be a very rational desire: if one of my kids needed an organ I couldn't live without I would long to die to give it to them. But there is a puzzle about the content of such a desire and whether it is possibly satisfied.

Neil seemed to think that the desire was such as to be possibly satisfied, but that certain theories prevented this because the subject doesn't exist in world in which the satisfaction conditions obtain. It doesn't seem to me that it is a desire which can possibly be satisfied and the possibility of the conditions obtaining is just a separate matter. The subject expresses just expresses a higher assignment of intrinsic value to one set of worlds rather than another. Desires aim at some good and the selfless preference expresses an axiology of classes of worlds.

Similarly, David Hershenov replied on behalf of the old Epicurean line that we shouldn't fear death because "where I am, death is not, and where death is, I am not." He and Ben Bradley sparred (in a very friendly way) over whether we could assign well-being to non-existent individuals. David thought that even assigning zero well-being was "incoherent" since the subject doesn't exist. This seems wrong to me because zero is a very special number. The statement that there the number of unicorns is 0 does not entail the existence of any unicorns.

Suppose I design a which counts as follows: if S is a state of A's well-being, add 1. When its done counting it returns a value of 0. None of this assumes the existence of A. There's no untoward ontological commitment here, any more than a return of 0 on a count of unicorns.

Jeff surveyed a series of arguments for the legitimacy of lethal force against non-combatants. I recurring puzzle was how often it is accepted that normal principles of morality just vanish in the context of war. In non-war contexts, if I go to exercise prior restraint against a threatening individual my actions do not grant that person the *right* to still try to kill me, but in war there is often an assumption that by going to war I sort submit to being a target. This is but one of many cases where normal principles of morality--especially regarding "collateral damage"--seem to be suspended in war, even by those treating the morality of war.