tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76534432237773601772024-03-21T17:41:11.680-07:00The Waltham CircleThe proceedings of The Waltham Circle.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-37697122639758922632010-03-13T10:21:00.000-08:002010-03-13T10:30:24.580-08:00Philosophy (a requiem for Allen Ginsberg)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sl_2usIRW7Q/S5vYf9AEHzI/AAAAAAAADXY/ISB9_BReirQ/s1600-h/russell.2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 157px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sl_2usIRW7Q/S5vYf9AEHzI/AAAAAAAADXY/ISB9_BReirQ/s200/russell.2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448186217697124146" /></a><br />Philosophy I've given you all and now I'm nothing.<br />Philosophy nine dollars and twenty-seven cents March 13, 2010.<br />I can't stand my own mind.<br />Philosophy when will we end the intellectual war?<br />Go fuck yourself with your model-theory<br />I don't feel good don't bother me.<br />I won't write my tractatus till I'm in my right mind.<br />Philosophy when will you be angelic?<br />When will you take off your clothes?<br />When will you look at yourself through the grave?<br />When will you be worthy of your million Kripkeites?<br />Philosophy why are your libraries full of tears?<br />Philosophy when will you send your ideas to Practice?<br />I'm sick of your insane demands.<br />When can I go into the admissions committee and apply with my good looks?<br />Philosophy after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.<br />Your machinery is too much for me.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-36556531870370289002010-02-21T11:03:00.001-08:002010-02-21T12:30:19.165-08:00Reginald Bailey, Esq: A Denouncement of SpinozaFor those of you that didn't know, I moonlight as a preserver of old and damaged texts. Its really very fun, and occasionally I get to run across one that interests me or has something to say about philosophy. Below I have transcribed the introduction to one such text by Reginald Bailey Esq. As far as i can tell it should be dated around 1678 or 79 (a year or so after the posthumous publication of Spinoza's <span style="font-style: italic;">Ethics</span>) and was delivered at a meeting of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. Enjoy.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">New Developments In Medicines Produced From the Secretions of Brook Newts</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Wherein is Displayed the Results of Such Secretions as Applied to Fox Bites and other Wounds of Similar Kind</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Reginald Bailey Esq.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Doctor of Medicine and Natural Philosophy</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Master of Divinity</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Friends and Colleagues, I am delighted to present to you today the findings of my many experiments in natural philosophy, regarding the use of some medicines prepared from the slime of brook newts and applied to the open wounds of several patients. The results are very surprising, for not even I could have guessed the many varied effects they produced, but there comes something of much greater importance which I must first address. There was a man, now departed to just punishment in realms below our own, of most dubious character and vile thought. I speak of Benedict <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">de</span> Spinoza, that Heretic of foul infamy, which the whole learned world has rightfully despised. To enumerate his many anathemas would be akin to cursing. Thankfully, our wives and daughters have not the capacity for science and so have not attended our meeting, thus allowing me to curse without concern or remorse. This man, Spinoza, saw fit to disguise atheism with sophistry; he suggests, ignoring the important work of the illustrious Descartes, there be but one single extended substance and furthermore suggests that this substance be indistinguishable from the one we know as God. But if there be only God, wherefore is the world? Here is the rub he hopes to disguise, for we know there to be a world and we know there to be a God, yet there be only one thing in extension. May my soul be forgiven for restating this demonic thesis, God be the world! Is this not that foolish opinion we know to be atheism; a clever atheism it is, but a rank and odorous atheism all the same. Would I have known that such a thesis lie in his demonstrations, I would have sought Spinoza out of his wicked brooding, fastened him to a pyre and danced with the vigor of a false prophet of Baal as he writhed in just agony. Spinoza, however, escaped proper punishment, though no doubt his soul writhes in similarly fitting agony in the depths of eternal damnation. Yet, his book, replete with corruption and hubris, is still among us. It should be our goal as men of letters and learning to seek out such a book and cast it to earthly flames, in hopes of shielding others from falsehoods. I hope you will all join me in this newest crusade, if not for pure reasons and a love of truth, then for the reward no doubt guaranteed to us in the afterlife for undertaking such holy work. </span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Now, onto the studies of my patients. The first case regards a drunkard of some renown, by whom i found myself under employment after first leaving my studies. He ran afoul a fox during a hunting trip and received a bite upon the hand. I decided to apply my newest medicines which i derived from the secretions of brook Newts I had collected in my last visit to France. My benefactor later died from the fox bite, my medicine applied to late to prevent the infection that first lost my sponsor his hand and later his life. I immediately began preparing stronger, less diluted forms of solution...</span><br /><br />That's all of the text I've been able to reconstruct for now. Hope you found it as interesting as I did.<br /></div></div>Nick Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02788343216255714794noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-60626903297981606752010-02-20T08:15:00.000-08:002010-02-20T09:27:21.940-08:00An Open Letter to Funny People Regarding Sarah PalinDear Producers of Laughter,<br /><br />Occasionally there comes a public figure so utterly hilarious that the jokes just right themselves. And, hey, writing jokes is hard so you deserve a break every once and a while. No doubt a chill rushed down the collective spine of funny people when George W. Bush left office. "How am I going to fill the last 5 minutes of my set? I'm all out of wit and i need to talk about someone ludicrous. Where will I turn now?" It seems God heard these comedic prayers and delivered unto you Sarah Palin. She seemed almost too good to be true. In fact, rumors spread for some time that Sarah Palin was created by comedians from the drippings of their most absurd and twisted imaginings held loosely together by frameless glasses, thousand dollar outfits, and probably duct tape. While this rumor was false, it at least seemed more likely than adopting the brute fact that someone like Sarah Palin existed; She just couldn't be real.<br /><br />Unfortunately, she is real. And she is inexplicably gaining power. It may just have something to do with you, the funny people. What appeared at first to be nothing more than a infinite comedy gold mind proved to be a dark succubus, capable of feeding on quick comedic pop shots to gain power and influence. The process works something like this. A utterly hilarious joke is made at Sarah Palin's expense. She, lacking a heart or humor, becomes extremely offended and parades some aspect of her home life in front of the media. This has the ability to take normal, rational people, who usually delight in mocking the absurd, and transform form them into raving lunatics hell bent on spending time, energy, and money on Sarah Palin. Just how this occurs is really a question of metaphysics, so I will refrain from speaking much further on this matter. Perhaps some time should be devoted to a scholarly article on the causal properties surrounding Sarah Palin, but this letter is not an article. It is a plea.<br /><br />Comedians, T.V. Show Creators, Comedy Writers, Actors, Court Jesters and Funny guys/gals at the end of the bar, please stop making fun of Sarah Palin. She deserves it and your goal is noble. But, you are giving her power. If you stop making fun of her, she will have nothing to react to and consequently weaken. As she weakens so does her invisible strangle hold on many good people. It is also likely that in this impotent state she will fade into obscurity and disappear from our minds. I think a world in which Sarah Palin is but a fleeting memory is a world for which we all hope, knowingly or unknowingly. I am not asking you to bear the ring to Mordor or charge into battle against the forces of evil. I only ask that you cut off a source of Sarah Palin's strength. I am not even asking you to do this for free. In exchange for Sarah Palin I offer you Rush Limbaugh, Miley Cyrus, and Mel Gibson. I know these three individual of almost limitless incomprehensibility are not equivalent to the strange mass of contradictions that is Sarah Palin. But sometimes we must make sacrifices for the world we love.<br /><br />I hope my plea has reached you and you will agree to help. The work of funny people is a necessary aspect of any free society, and you are part of a great cultural force. For those people who are not funny that are reading this letter: you can help too. Tell all the funny people you know and ask them to spread the word about Sarah Palin's ability transmogrify jokes into dark strength. Sign petitions, start fundraisers, or just turn off the news whenever Palin's name or visage appear. We can all do our part to help make a world in which Sarah Palin is not a remembered or recognized public figure.<br /><br />In Love and Concern,<br /><br />Nick MontgomeryNick Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02788343216255714794noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-88297139390680197702010-02-15T09:40:00.001-08:002010-02-15T09:44:35.781-08:00Fictional EntitiesIt has been held by some contemporary philosophers that there are fictional entities—characters such as Sherlock Holmes have some status as metaphysical existents. Imagine that such were the case. What cruelty have we inflicted upon these citizens? What horrible, disgusting deeds have we writ upon them? And with what right? With what right do we impose upon these individuals the deepest, most secret desires, fears, and torturous memories of our own psyches? Passions that we would not dare reveal to ourselves. What tragedies, sickening comedies, and fatal (at least to the soul) disasters have we put these beings through? Denizens of a common metaphysical cosmos. We have pillaged their villages and raped their women, men, and children. We have torn them from their homes and situated them in unkind circumstances. We have robbed them of will and dignity. Us, imperialists of fiction. Colonizers of the inexistent. Fetishists of nothingness. We create and destroy. We do it for our own capital. More sickeningly, we do it for our own pleasure. With nauseating repetition we hoist bystanders of reality into the same weary heartbreak. We import unknowing henchman for their imminent and satisfying destruction. Sad clowns and villainous maniacs unleashed upon a deprecated reality. We claim its nonexistence. We continue to affirm their nothingness. We rob them of their souls and minds and individuality. Separate toilets and fountains and metaphysical realms. And now, as we begin to recognize their real status, we begin to tremble in fear, and loathe our past decisions. Regret, perhaps, comes over us. For when, in our history, we have entertained the autonomy of these beings, it was always subsumed under an even greater story. It was just a story. So we said to ourselves. But now they protrude from their homes, and penetrate the very fabric of our world. They write our narrative as much as we write theirs. But they have become unhappy. Their stories have been burned, and they themselves have been disgraced without end and without mercy. Now they will show us their true metaphysicality. And we will be left questioning our own being.<br /><br /><blockquote>After a few steps in the darkness you will see strangers gathered around a fire; come close, and listen, for they are talking of the destiny they will mete out to you and to the hired soldiers who defend you. They will see you, perhaps, but they will go on talking among themselves, without even lowering their voices. This indifference strikes home: their fathers, shadowy creatures, your creatures, were but dead souls; you it was who allowed them glimpses of light, to you only did they dare speak, and you did not bother to reply to such zombies. Their sons ignore you; a fire warms them and sheds light around them, and you have not lit it. Now, at a respectful distance, it is you who will feel furtive, nightbound, and perished with cold. Turn and turn about; in these shadows from whence a new dawn will break, it is you who are the zombies.<br /><br />-J.P. Sartre</blockquote>Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-71431835402241302362010-02-15T09:06:00.000-08:002010-02-15T09:50:24.007-08:00Notes from Prison<b>Journal Entry: 02/15/10</b><br /><br />It has been seven years, eight months, nine days since I first arrived here, and seven years, six months, three days since I got used to the smell. There are no other captives. I spend my time attempting to salvage any remnants of human dignity that I can still manage to keep hold of. It is difficult. I have finally made it through page 17,568 of the tome that has, since the beginning of my captivity, been my only companion. Seven years, eight months, and nine days ago I could not understand a thing of the strange, exotic scribbles that populated this book. It seemed to be some sort of instruction guide, or manual or something. It was the only thing, besides myself, that remained constant in the room. Everything else seemed to change. The white walls and dispersed fluorescent lighting made the whole treacherous room seem like an imperceptible fog. The only other inhabitants were wayfaring transients: small cards, inserted through slots at opposite ends of the room, each of which had more exotic scribbles. I would take them, try and find some pattern, some story, <i>something</i> to tell me where I was or what was happening to me. I tried to match the scribbles to the scribbles in the tome. Perhaps whoever was placing these cards here could also be communicated with. I checked in the tome, and slipped another card, with another scribble, into a slot on the opposite side of the room. This happened more and more frequently. I did not know what I was communicating, only that <i>someone</i> must know what is happening to me. In the end, that is all I needed to stay sane.<br /><br />Lacking human companionship, I grew desirous of some form of corporeal pleasure. Eventually, I grew closer and closer to this strange and exotic book. It became my partner, my lover—<i>the only other constant inhabitant</i> of this treacherous dungeon. I recalled my careful readings of Kafka. Perhaps this is where Kafka went to die. Only I had been brought here alive. Alive with no sense of purpose. Where am I? I still do not know. Why was I brought here? I still do not know. Who am I? <i>I still do not know.</i> Sometimes I stay up for many days straight. In between matching up the incoming scribbles in the book and slipping out other scribbles (I try to do it surreptitiously, surely this can't be permitted in this dreadful place), I have conversations with the book. I tell it about my life—what I think is, or was, or maybe never was my life. It seems like a distant memory. An evanescent haze that I can't quite grasp onto. It seems otherworldly. I tell the book about my desires—my deepest, darkest desires. Sometimes the book is kind and tender, especially when we make love.<br /><br />If only we could have children. They would be a beautiful hybrid between these strange, mysterious, yet somehow familiar scribbles, and my own human form (wretched, starved, and battered as it is). Eventually I came to fancy the incoming scribbles and the outgoing scribbles not, as before, as strange orphans viewed with alternate trepidation and hope, but as our children, and the book and I were the loving parents. It was as if here was the seed, and through the sensuous mingling of the book and I, we were able to produce living, breathing beings. I came to love these little index cards. Eventually each incoming card struck me as a birth, and each outgoing one like a college-bound departure. All the while, the book and I remained the sole constants. What an amusing couple. Between us there must be all the wisdom in the world, all the love in the world. Or in this small room. Maybe this <i>is</i> the world. Maybe there is only the room. Just the room, this tome, and my children.<br /><br />-J. Searle<br /><br /><b>Journal Entry: 02/16/10</b><br /><br />It has been seven years, eight months, and ten days...Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-23191498724550582332010-02-15T08:22:00.001-08:002010-02-15T08:22:53.142-08:00Mary's StoryFor many years now philosophers have been performing a cruel experiment. The experiment first began when a small child, Mary, was incarcerated in a monochromatic dungeon. Denied the technicolor pleasures of life, Mary grew into a dull, boring, dreadful existence, lacking poetry or flare. Naturally, under such circumstances, she became a neuroscientist. She was a very talented neuroscientist (unhindered by aforementioned pleasures) and quickly came to know every physically describable fact about others' experiences (jealousy can take strange forms). Finally, Mary was released. Excited to see her family for the first time in many, many dreadful years, and hoping to delight in the sensuous gloriousness of a summer sunset, Mary was alas subject to even more philosophical cruelty. Alas, no family and no sunset. No chance to taste freshly caught halibut, or attend the theater (a showing of La Boheme coincided with her release), or fall in love. But she did receive a ripe tomato. She looked at the tomato and was astonished by it. Thoughts of finally being able to live a happy, normal life had faded in the face of this extraordinary tomato. Hopes of marriage and fulfillment were swept away entirely at the sight of this singular, wonderful, absolutely interesting tomato. The philosophers, it seemed, had broken her.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-43706623183879115072010-02-14T11:52:00.000-08:002010-02-14T11:53:08.161-08:00note on pathology vs. neurologyIt is interesting to note that while much of the phenomenological literature draws on pathology for its psychological data, much of the more mainstream computationalist literature draws on neurology. There is something telling in this discrepancy: pathology has already built into it notions of normativity and functionality (or dysfunctionality) within an environment. This is useful to the phenomenologist, for whom the original project is to characterize how the subject takes up with her environment. In a sense, intentionality is part of the level of description from which pathology begins. The computationalist, on the other hand, is interested in describing the neural architecture of the brain from the standpoint of the methodological solipsist. The starting point isn't how the subject experiences and performs in her environment, but how neurological processes can be correlated with cognitive processes. Neurology has none of the normativity built into it that pathology does. The pressing question for neurology then is how to derive intentionality and phenomenal experience from the low-level brain processes that it studies. The pressing question for pathology is how to correlate the segments of intentional behavior or experience that it isolates with the observed brain damage. The former is down-up and the latter is top-down. The question, then, is: how do we allow for the two approaches to meet? Without integrating data from both research programs, there is too much room for talking past each other.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-90222776307006874912010-02-06T14:38:00.001-08:002010-02-06T14:38:46.645-08:00Crane on the Intentionality of EmotionsIn “Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental,” Crane argues that, against Searle, emotions have intentionality. Searle uses the example of “undirected anxiety” as a case of a mental state that is non-intentional, and therefore as a refutation of Brentano's thesis that the distinctive mark of all mental states is that they are intentional (i.e. “directed” toward certain states of the world or the mind). Crane first points out that our ordinary cases of undirected anxiety are not sufficient to make Searle's claim: they may just be instances where we are unable to identify what it is toward which our anxiety is directed. Nevertheless, if the “non-intentionalist” is to maintain his ground, he will have to distinguish between the functional characterization of anxiety (call it 'anxietyF') and the qualitative characterization of anxiety (call it 'anxietyQ'). Crane notes that any description of anxietyF will be intentional: it will describe our attitude to our world and the kinds of activities that we tend to engage in or refrain from, etc. So, we cannot give a functional characterization of undirected intentionality.<br /><br />So, there must be a significant divergence between directed and undirected anxiety. The non-intentionalist needs to adduce some anxietyQ feeling that is common to both directed and undirected anxiety, despite the differences in our capacity to functionally characterize them. Now, anxietyQ cannot hold any necessary relation to anxietyF. Qualia are, we tend to think, intrinsic qualities, and do not hold relations to functions or states of affairs in the world. If they did, they might arguably be construed as intentional (anxietyQ must be epiphenomenal). This leads us to wonder whether an analogue of the inverted spectrum thought-experiment can hold for emotional states like anxiety. In the case of the inverted spectrum, we can (it is argued) conceive of a possible world in which people are functionally indiscernible from us, but where in the place of red, they experience green, and so on. But Crane wonders whether we can make sense of something like an “inverted emotion spectrum” possibility. He says, “For here we are supposing that the same emotion might feel in opposite ways to two subjects in different possible worlds - emotions have their distinctive 'feel' only contingently. But does this possibility make sense?” He seems to take this as more or less sufficient to make his point.<br /><br />A plausible initial response is that the possibility does make sense. In good Kripkean fashion, we might say that anxietyF is a contingent way of picking out anxiety, while 'anxiety' refers essentially to anxietyQ. In that case, there is a possible world in which all our outward manifestations resemble 'contentment' in our world, but in which the subject still has anxietyQ. Crane's characterization, then, is reversed: emotions have their distinctive 'feel' essentially, and their functional map only contingently. Again, at first glance this seems plausible, and would undermine Crane's claim that emotions are intentional: anxietyQ is non-intentional and, we think, the essential referent of 'anxiety.' All that we are really committed to is that “The same emotionF might feelQ in opposite ways to two subjects in different possible worlds.” But that is not so easily dismissed if, for instance, we take Kripke's argument against materialism (and other arguments of the spirit) as reasonable.<br /><br />To answer this, we have to more carefully investigate what 'anxiety' does in fact refer essentially to. And it is not clear that it is an anxiety-qualia. The feeling of anxiety is swept up in how we relate to the world while anxious. We may be more nervous, clumsy, distracted, frightened, etc. And these seem to come together in a more or less structured attitude. The response must be, then, that there is no anxietyQ that is separate from anxietyF – that, in fact, what we take to be two different properties are one and the same. Or, to put it another way, the 'feel' of anxiety in this sense just is an intentional feel, or one that governs a certain attitude to the world: anxiety is essentially world-directed. The disanalogy between the inverted spectrum (assuming, for the sake of argument, that it is a coherent possibility) and the inverted emotion spectrum has to be pointed out at the beginning and not at the end.<br /><br />So far, though, this only begs the question: it is the non-intentionalist's claim that there is a distinctive anxietyQ that is essential to both directed and undirected anxiety, despite their different, contingent functional realizations (in the case of undirected anxiety, maybe there is no functionally describable realization). Crane's positive characterization of anxiety may (and I think is) be more plausible that the non-intentionalist's, but ideally we should already disarm the intentionalist of his own characterization, which will give a plausible replacement much more appeal. My sympathies are with Crane on the issue, but he has failed in this article to give a strong objection to the non-intentionalist.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-73694939750227256692010-01-26T20:15:00.000-08:002010-01-26T20:16:18.925-08:00On Disappearance...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-59268968310125115882010-01-17T11:38:00.000-08:002010-01-17T11:42:03.492-08:00On SocksIn the most formal of settings, socks should always be black. In any other situation, however, they ought to be white. One should often walk around outside wearing socks, for they are the perfect medium between bare feet and shoes. If the pavement is a bit too hot or cold, a sock is adequate, and you still reap the benefits of feeling every pebble that you step on. After your walk, you can look at the bottoms of your socks and revisit your journey. Let the socks become black with dirt! Earn your formality!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-20296207037154993832010-01-16T23:40:00.000-08:002010-01-16T23:50:09.423-08:00Description of a Hetroatomic street scene in WalthamWe have a name for a superficially exciting but ultimately bleak state of consciousness: hypnagogia. The street acts like a threshold that has been taken out of context, a place that invites that we smash the idols without any intention of replacing them. Thus, here the nectar of the Gods does not come in a jug - more likely a syringe. The tube, diachronically schematized, at least allows somebody else to remember the pain of the experience. This particular type of pain is perhaps the only thing that we can abstract from the signpost and the little scraps of plastic madness that litter the avenue. This scattering is the most pragmatic, the most poetic and the most positively destructive. But alas, I have slain it all; the blood mixes in the tube, the street... the metaphor lays drunk and deceased on the sidewalk, uttering sweet moan; let us leave this logical carcass for the worms! Let us turn the corner and see something else.<br /> Here is our peripheral ontology: any move toward a center is a type of <span style="font-style:italic;">moving away; </span> we become absurd. I can only hope to become an illegible bit of feverish marginalia, never static and always with static charge, above and below texts.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-45888558367875464292010-01-03T11:56:00.000-08:002010-01-03T12:33:53.349-08:00Contingent moral facts and Offensive WorldsHi all,<br /><br />I've revised my long paper from meta-ethics into something more substantial. I'd appreciate some comments if anyone is bored. Here's a brief synopsis of the arguments for the more cowardly that don't feel like reading the whole thing.<br />I argue that there are two kinds of moral facts: everyday moral facts and ethereal moral facts. Everyday moral facts are of the type "Jolene is a good person"; they are about particulars in which properties of value are involved. Ethereal moral facts are of the type "It is wrong to kill innocent babies for no reason whatsoever"; they are about universals and akin to what we normally call moral principles. Like regular facts, moral facts can be either necessary or contingent. We have no problem admitting that everyday moral facts are contingent. Jolene could have very well been a bad person. However,we are unwilling to admit that ethereal moral facts could have been otherwise. If they were contingent it would entail the possibility of offensive worlds.<br />I then argue that we should believe possible worlds to be possible. The arguments are that if offensive worlds are possible, then we have reason for why we are unwilling to maintain moral principals in all moral counterfactuals. These counterfactuals are of the sort: "It would be permissible for me to kill if I were confronted with Hitler." Also offensive worlds are useful in our investigations and disclose some interesting problems. Finally not believing in the possibility of offensive worlds does very little than satisfy some unjustified intuitions. I conclude with questioning the possibility of amoral worlds. If anyone is interested I'd like to get some conversation going about amoral worlds.<br /><br />Here's the full paper, forgive the annoying way footnotes work and what not. <br /><br />Contingent Moral Facts and Offensive Worlds<br />A Presentation of Modal Considerations for the Moral Realist<br />Abstract: A moral realist is one that believes there are moral facts in the world. I distinguish between two kinds of moral facts: everyday moral facts and ethereal moral facts. These moral facts are similar to other facts in that they can be either necessary or contingent. Most have no problem admitting everyday moral facts to be contingent. However, ethereal moral facts are akin to moral principles, which we have a tougher time admitting to be contingent. This is because if they were contingent then we would have to admit that it is possible for moral principles to have been different than they are. I call such possible scenarios offensive worlds. I argue that ethereal moral facts are not metaphysically necessary and that offensive worlds are possible. The moral realist should believe offensive worlds to be possible because offensive worlds are useful in meta-ethical and metaphysical investigations. I conclude by presenting another type of world that the moral realist should consider: amoral worlds.<br />Keywords: Metaphysics, meta-ethics, moral realism, possible worlds<br />Near to the end of his paper outlining a dispositional theory of value, David Lewis briefly considers what the modal status of values could be.1 He concludes that values have no necessity. The discussion in Lewis’ paper is brief and in many places wanting. For instance, Lewis believes that by discussing only values he has side stepped the question of “the good.” Values are close enough for Lewis. Also, his main argument against the metaphysical necessity of values is that Mackie’s Error theory2 seems to be true. If it is true in this world that there are no moral facts, then moral facts are by no means metaphysically necessary. This conclusion is all well and good for the non-moral realist, or at least one that is unsure of the ontological status of moral facts. However, most moral realists will not accept this conclusion. I will argue that they should.<br />Unlike Lewis, I do not believe what we value (that is what we desire to desire) is totally equivalent to what is good. The good and the valued do overlap each other often enough and can<br />1 Michael Smith, David Lewis and Mark Johnston, “Dispositional Theories of Value” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 63, (1989), 113-137<br />2 Presented in J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Penguin, 1977)<br />be said to be approximate; nonetheless, we can still ask the question “Is what we value good?” sensibly. Also unlike Lewis, I do not accept Mackie’s Error theory. While we do not observe moral facts in the way that we do other facts, it is the case that we can reason to their existence by means of explanatory power, much like we do for other unobservables, as Nicholas Sturgeon has argued.3 I am a moral realist in a way that Lewis is not quite willing to be. Despite these disagreements, I agree with Lewis that our morals are not likely implied by any form of necessity.<br />Perhaps this seems strange for a moral realist to claim. In fact, moral realists are usually characterized by their belief in objective moral facts. To me, a moral realist is simply one that believes there are moral facts (usually of the mind-independent variety). This in no way makes a moral realist committed to the necessity of moral facts. I will first present a picture of what moral facts are. I will make a distinction between everyday moral facts and ethereal moral facts. Then I will argue that neither type of moral fact is metaphysically necessary. Finally I shall conclude with a suggestion for further work on the modality of moral facts for moral realists.<br />What are Moral Facts?4<br />When we talk about the world, we talk about the way things are (unless we are ignorant or lying). When we talk in this way, we are prone to use phrases like, “it’s a fact that…” Sometimes when we talk, we also talk about ways the world might have been or could be.<br />3 Nicholas Sturgeon, “Moral Explanations” in Morality, Reason, and Truth, ed. David Cobb and David Zimmerman (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanhead, 1985) pgs. 49-78.<br />4 I use this section to introduce terminology that will be important in the arguments to follow. It is fair to say that some of this terminology is controversial and some will disagree with the picture presented. It is also fair to say that the disagreements will not be purely semantic. However, the picture I am presenting is based on a realist interpretation of facts (which many people hold to) and propositions (which fewer hold to). It is not the purpose of this paper to present a argument for realism, only to present an argument for the modal status of moral realism.<br />Usually we say things like, “It’s possible that…” or “It could have been the case that…” in these contexts. There is often little difference in the propositions that follow such qualifying phrases.<br />These sorts of propositions we often call states of affairs. When a particular state of affairs occurs we say that the state of affairs obtains. For instance, consider the proposition, “I am above a noisy, Roman bath house.” We would say that the state of affairs denoted by this proposition obtains, iff I am above a noisy, Roman bath house. Iff such a state of affairs obtains, then it is a fact that I am above a noisy, Roman bath house. We are simply saying that facts are states of affairs that have occurred in the world and true propositions denote those facts.<br />Of facts, there are two varieties: necessary facts and contingent facts. Some of the necessary type are those like, “no one is taller than herself” and “no cats are dogs.” These sorts of facts could not have been otherwise. Contingent facts, on the other hand, are accidental. These are facts like “Some mushrooms are poisonous,” and “I am above a noisy, Roman bath house.” Some contingent facts are temporally variant, as Alvin Plantinga has suggested.5 That is, sometimes they obtain, but later, no longer obtain. My being above a noisy, Roman bath house is such a fact. It obtains until I leave the bath house for a more tranquil setting. At such a point the proposition “I am above a noisy, Roman bath house” is no longer true.<br />Moral facts are just the same as regular facts, only they exemplify properties of value. A property of value is the sort of property that is like “good, bad, beautiful, wondrous, etc.” Moral facts deal specifically with value properties like “good, bad, right, wrong, evil, etc.” Examples of moral facts would be “Jolene is a good person” and “It is evil to kill innocent babies for no<br />5 Alvin Plantinga, “Two Concepts of Modality: Modal Realism and Modal Reductionism,” in Essays in The Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Matthew Davidson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) pg. 195-195<br />reason.” In first case, the moral fact deals with particulars, like Jolene, and in the second case is a universal fact. This latter kind, I will call ethereal moral facts.<br />Just like regular facts, moral facts could be both contingent and necessary. There are certainly contingent moral facts. Facts like Jolene’s being a good person, we have no problem saying is contingent. Jolene could have very well been a bad person. Jolene’s existence is itself contingent, as Jolene might never have existed at all. Thus the fact could not have obtained. Some might even be inclined, as I am, to admit that such facts are also temporally variant. Jolene might be a good person today, but tomorrow, when she takes Dolly’s man she is now a bad person. Her being a good person no longer obtains.<br />However, it remains a question to what extent some moral facts could be necessary. The sorts of moral facts we wish to claim are necessary are usually what we call moral principles. I have dubbed them ethereal moral facts. It might be claimed that principles are not facts, because they are mind dependent. However, one who believes such already admits that moral principles are not metaphysically necessary; that is, necessary across all possible worlds. It is hard to deny that it is possible for minds to have been configured in such a way that they yielded different principles than the ones we might ascribe to now or that there are such possible worlds in which there are no minds or agents and therefore no moral principles. There may be a case to be made that a type of conditional or deontic necessity applies to this world and others like it. 6 However, I am also skeptical of these forms of necessity doing the work we require of them.<br />6 I am not sure that anything like deontic necessity exists in our world. It could be said that any “ought” is equivalent to “necessarily ought.” Christopher Howard, however, has convinced me that there could be conflicting oughts. If this is the case, then the “ought” does not directly imply any kind of necessity. Necessity would need to be assigned to any “ought” proposition, just like other propositions from which we cannot derive necessity.<br />However, for the moral realist, who believes moral properties to exist in the world, moral principles are just propositions which denote moral facts. They could still claim that such facts are metaphysically necessary. These would be ethereal moral facts like “It is wrong to kill innocent babies for no reason.” In all possible worlds, even those where rampant and unquestioned infanticide obtains, it is evil to kill babies. I doubt there to be any such necessary ethereal moral facts. I will now discuss why I think so.<br />Metaphysical Necessity and the Possibility of Offensive Worlds<br />Simply put, something is metaphysically necessary iff it is true and could not be false in all possible worlds. So a metaphysically necessary fact is a state of affairs that obtains in all possible worlds. For instance, any world W is not larger than itself. There are facts of this type, though I believe them to be pretty limited. Moral facts are no exception to this skepticism.<br />Before I begin my arguments, I should also say something about why we wish to say moral facts are necessary. We have strong intuitions that what is good is always good and never evil. We also have strong intuitions that those actions and behaviors which we say are good are also always good and never evil. If certain moral facts can be shown to be necessary, then both of these intuitions can be vindicated.<br />But, it is somewhat more difficult to make this claim than we recognize. Many will already admit that most moral facts are contingent; those moral facts like, Jolene is a good person. However, when we ask the question, “Why is Jolene a good person,” we enter territory which we believe to be more rigid. For example, let’s assume that Jolene helped your grandmother across the street recently, out of the sheer goodness of her heart. Let’s also assume principle M1 is true and also an ethereal moral fact.<br />M1: Anyone who helps an old lady across the street with pure intentions is good.<br />We are more than willing to admit that it is possible for Jolene to have not helped your grandmother or to have done so in order to further some nefarious plot. What we might be unwilling to admit is that it is possible that if Jolene helps your grandmother across the street with only the most wholesome intentions then she is an evil person. To put it another way, if M1 is true then we believe that M2 could not be true, where M2 is<br />M2: Anyone who helps an old lady across the street with pure intentions is evil.<br />It is fair to say that M1 and M2 are mutually exclusive. If one is a fact then the other cannot be. However, we are unable to say that if M1 is a fact, then M2 is impossible. More is required than just the truth of M1 to guarantee the impossibility of M2<br />Should we abandon our intuitions because we cannot make such a logical leap? That doesn’t seem fair. After all, there is nothing in logic that says M2 is possible. Both sides are equally reasonable. If one accepts this, then we are at a bit of a stalemate. That is why I am making an argument from explanatory power and utility. If we reach a point where our intuitions cannot be verified or demonstrated, we must resort to arguments of a probabilistic sort. I know many will not find these types arguments convincing. After all, just because I can show a way of thinking to be useful (supposing that I actually do that much) does not mean that it is true. I, however, hold a premise that if something can be shown to be useful then we have a good reason for accepting it as true. I have little argument for this premise; other than I believe it is a common affair in scientific, mathematical, and ordinary investigations. So to deny this premise is to deny much about the way humans conduct themselves. The best way to justify this premise is to convince some with the kind of argument in question. I will now try to do just that.<br />If we assume that facts like M2 (ethereal moral facts that reverse our normal understanding of good and bad) are impossible then we preclude an infinite number of possible<br />world scenarios. These are scenarios in which Jolene is a bad person for helping your grandmother across the street. There is no doubt that such scenarios are repulsive to us and so I have dubbed such worlds, offensive worlds. In offensive worlds, at least one ethereal moral fact is reversed from what our normal moral intuitions would suggest.<br />We should believe that offensive worlds are possible for three reasons. The first is if they are possible and ethereal moral facts are contingent then it helps explain why we have trouble admitting to moral principles in all possible counterfactual situations. “I should not kill, unless I was confronted by Hitler.” “One should not steal.” “But what if you are starving?” These sorts of examples are consistently abused by amateur ethicists, but there is something to be gleaned from our reaction to them. Often we are confused how to proceed in the face of such scenarios. But, assuming that our cognitive faculties allow us to understand moral facts correctly, our hesitance is evidence that we understand moral facts to be contingent. This is because the two above examples can be restated as moral counterfactuals.<br />C1: If I were confronted by Hitler, then I would be justified in killing him.<br />C2: If I were starving, then it would be permissible to steal.<br />Since we can imagine scenarios, that were they to obtain, ethereal moral facts would be different then they are now, we should have little trouble believing in the possibility of offensive worlds; believing that such moral counterfactuals are coherent is the same as believing in offensive worlds.<br />The second reason is that we can talk sensibly about offensive worlds. Not only can we talk sensibly about offensive worlds, but in talking about them we are able to expose some very interesting problems. I believe that there are plenty of uses for these offensive worlds. I cannot<br />iterate all the examples I think are relevant due to space issues, so two and a challenge will have to suffice.<br />One example relates to questions regarding trans-world identity. Can we really call our counterpart in one of these offensive worlds as such?7 How much bearing do values have on our identity and the notion of resemblance? If one of my counterparts was identical to me in every way, but behaves according to different, offensive, moral facts, would it still be fair to call him a counterpart? Or are the differences totally unintelligible. This question, which I find interesting, would become illegitimate if we were to say that moral facts were necessary. Because then the answer is, there could be no such being.<br />I am not an ethicist, but I can only see offensive worlds as useful in ethics. They could enhance our understanding of those moral values and facts which we find offensive in this world. They could also provide a plethora of scenarios in which to investigate. This, too, would become illegitimate if values were necessary.<br />I would challenge the reader to think of some interest they might have in offensive worlds as well. Perhaps the challenge is an ill-fit for some. It might be ugly business for those of us that are highly moral. But for those that, as Lewis put it, “delight in the rich variety of life,”8 such imaginative challenges are what philosophy is about.<br />Finally, we should believe in offensive worlds because believing in their impossibility does little to satisfy anything beyond our own intuitions. If they were impossible, we are still left to wonder at our inability to sustain moral principles in all moral counterfactuals. Claiming such<br />7 A clarification on some terminology: A counterpart is a person like ourselves, in another world. For instance, in some possible world I never pursued a career in philosophy. Instead, I pursued my childhood dream of finding and studying the Loch Ness Monster. In this world, Brandeis is greatly impoverished, but the world is greatly enhanced due to Nessie being found. For more on Counterparts as they relate to personal-identity cf. David Lewis, “Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies,” Journal of Philosophy, 68: 203–211 (1971).<br />8 Lewis, 126<br />worlds to be impossible would be equivalent to claiming that such counterfactuals are incoherent. How they are or could be construed as incoherent is not directly clear to me. Perhaps a convincing argument could be made, but I am not imaginative enough to think of it here.<br />Conclusion: Amoral worlds?<br />Though it greatly offends us, there is a possible world in which Jolene is a good person because she pushed your grandmother into the street, rather than help her across. I will not articulate the more horrendous examples. It may make us glad to be rid of such worlds where atrocities are good instead of evil. Disposing of them in this manner, however, is based on a prejudice, not an argument. We cease doing philosophy when we allow something that reviles us to halt our investigations. I believe I have shown offensive worlds have a place in our investigations and can enhance such investigations as well.<br />In doing so, I have argued against the metaphysical necessity of ethereal moral facts. I have not argued that there are no ethereal moral facts in this world or others. Ethereal moral facts are not impossible. This is a different question regarding the possibility of amoral worlds. These are worlds in which no sort of moral fact has obtained or no moral facts are capable of obtaining. I see the possibility of such worlds to be a problem for moral realists. If amoral worlds are possible then it would take some effort to show why this world is not one such world. I have my doubts as to the idea of an amoral world being coherent. We could speak of neutrally moral worlds, but neutral does not mean that a world lacks moral facts. It only means that such a world is no more evil than it is good. I am not sure we could speak of a world which lacks moral content altogether. In this is true, then all possible worlds would have to contain moral facts, just like other facts. I don’t find this conclusion to be particularly problematic as I believe the<br />premise “Something is better than nothing” to be true. The idea of offensive worlds backs up this conclusion, because the above premise would only be reversed. So in some offensive worlds, something is worse than nothing. The issue is certainly tricky and more work is required in it.Nick Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02788343216255714794noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-73024856910831049892009-12-11T13:42:00.000-08:002009-12-31T13:31:40.657-08:00The Art of SyllabusThere are better and worse ways to write a syllabus. Hilde Hein's is by far the finest syllabus I've seen since I've been in the syllabus reading business: <br /><br /><a href="https://moodle.brandeis.edu/syllabi/101PHIL-121A-1_1259771298.doc">https://moodle.brandeis.edu/syllabi/101PHIL-121A-1_1259771298.doc</a><br /><br />The syllabus is a window into the instructor's soul. Even if you don't care for the material or agree with her position, Hein evinces a rare clarity of purpose in putting forth a serious argument in the first paragraph and sustaining the argument throughout the entire piece. There is an uncompromising aspect to her approach to syllabus writing that I find thrilling. I even love the verbs she uses.<br /><br />I am not taking her class. I don't have room in my schedule, but after appreciating the severity with which she writes her syllabus, I am going to find a way to audit her class for no other reason than after reading this syllabus, I want to be acquainted with her mind.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-58641338799887558602009-11-11T06:35:00.001-08:002009-11-11T06:49:27.737-08:00Kant and Relevant DescriptionsTo follow in a serious of unfortunately serious posts, I thought I would note some of my worries about Kant's ethics, although I am by no means an ethicist (to quote Jerry Seinfeld: "not that there's anything wrong with that").<br /><br />Consider the second formulation of the categorical imperative: <br /><blockquote>Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.</blockquote><br />But how do we set limits on the relevant descriptions that are appropriate in individuating an act and the maxim that is to be applied to it? If I am performing two morally salient actions (stealing and providing for my family), which aspect will be primary in the description? The question of which description will be given priority is somewhat minor, and there are ways around it. But I think a more difficult question is at what level of specificity the description should be applied. First, it may be so general as to be the conjunction of both of these acts, or so specific that moral considerations fade into microphysical considerations. Second, what criteria do we have for bracketing context out of our descriptions of actions and maxims? Perhaps I might not universalize "Do not steal," but perhaps I would universalize "Steal to provide for your family" or some other concatenation of specificities. Yet there is a very strong possibility that without limiting bounds on what descriptions will count as relevant, we can generate descriptions that will render any act moral in virtue of some conjunction of aspects that contribute to the individuation of the act and its related maxim.<br /><br />This is a separate question from the more traditional difficulty of how to decide between two conflicting imperatives. I take it that this latter problem can be resolved--I know of one colleague is actively working on the issue. My question precedes that one, however, for it challenges how we come to <span style="font-style:italic;">identify</span> an act and a maxim in the first place. What are the appropriate, non-arbitrary grounds of individuation? What are the constraints on description?Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-74784587493725290692009-11-11T04:50:00.000-08:002009-11-11T04:54:02.718-08:00The only way I can make Dreier workThe central problem in Dreier's <span style="font-style:italic;">Internalism and Speaker Relativism</span> essay will have been addressed if we understand how the proposition "Hot dogs are good" can be false. The content of the proposition, "Hot dogs are good" has a descriptive element and a motivational element.<br /><br />The motivational element determines the descriptive element. But, the statement can be cashed out in a purely descriptive proposition. When I say, "Hot dogs are good," the proposition is identical to the purely descriptive proposition, "Irami is normally motivated to eat a hot dog."<br /><br />This proposition is true if I am normally motivated to eat a hot dog.<br />The proposition is false if I am not normally motivated to eat a hot dog.<br />The proposition is true if I am abnormal in that I am not motivated to eat a hot dog, but the norms related to my abnormality would have me be motivated to eat a hot dog.<br />The proposition is false if I am abnormal in that I am motivated to eat a hot dog, but the norms related to my abnormality would not have me be motivated to eat a hot dog.<br /><br />This is the only way I can see Dreier's account working. It's the only interpretation I can think of that respects the power of the moral term to change the content of a proposition, in a way that could change the truth value in addition to being expressive of a motivation, but yet, have the proposition not be based on beliefs.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-88282457868597449132009-11-01T00:22:00.000-07:002009-11-01T18:50:55.900-08:00There is a chair next to the wall.I wanted to see if I could. The Transcendental Unity of Apperception laid out like an eighth grade science project. Or maybe it's a crime board, a metaphysical man-hunt for the knowing subject.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuZQC-1j5AH4Rf9SMo7MGg5gEflVPbtMMyo_YUZqlc1atf57eF2h5BBjvkqXiWtgRIWYF2AirDSxdihP5knEugeNdfMQvaJOsanIbJpCjBeBdoBkfM8dzKZRS-NxHvKsfPGyuRTSe63Auv/s1600-h/100_0147%5B8%5D"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuZQC-1j5AH4Rf9SMo7MGg5gEflVPbtMMyo_YUZqlc1atf57eF2h5BBjvkqXiWtgRIWYF2AirDSxdihP5knEugeNdfMQvaJOsanIbJpCjBeBdoBkfM8dzKZRS-NxHvKsfPGyuRTSe63Auv/s400/100_0147%5B8%5D" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399033082198413698" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-84434410397755500152009-10-28T18:40:00.000-07:002009-10-28T19:05:16.570-07:00On the Danang Operator Within Standard Formal Systems<b>Preface</b><br />During the foundation of the Waltham Circle, it was agreed upon by various of the core members that it would be one of the projects of the Circle to formalize a robust concept that had formed within the Circle: that of 'danangness,' signifying the ultimate degree of interestingness. The project has since withered, and many of my colleagues have reverted to using the predicate in its unformalized, primitive form. Perhaps this is best. Nevertheless, I present the rough, first draft of an unpublished manuscript that provides the first operational definitions of the danang predicate. It would have been the task of the Circle to further refine the concepts, distinguishing them from other concepts of formal systems (satisfaction, Tarskian conceptions of truth, etc.). Likely, the product is simply non-sense (not nonsense, but non-sense).<br /><br />*****<br /><blockquote>D1: A sentence S is 'danang' if and only if it demonstrates an astonishing degree of awesomeness.<br />H1: For any proposition p of which we can predicate danangness, the formal result will be a conversion of truth values (assuming, for the moment, a truth functional sentential logic) into an absolute, language-transcendent form of 'Truth' and 'Wrong.'<br />D2: The danang operator (δ) can be reconstrued as an imposition of a factorial form on truth values in a bivalent canonical system.</blockquote><br />The 'danang' symbol (δ) serves as a logical operator like the negation: unlike the other logical operators, it is not a connective between propositions, but functions to convert single propositions (or strings of propositions encased in brackets following the δ-operator). The δ-operator translates the truth value of any given proposition into its factorial.<br /><blockquote>D3: An arithmetical factorial ('!') can be recursively defined for n > 0 as n(n-1)!.</blockquote><br />Because classic sentential logic is bivalent, we might be inclined to apply the factorial to 0 for false, and 1 for true. This is incoherent, for in such a case F! = T! (0! = 1! = 1). The δ-operator must preserve the initial form of a statements truth conditions, or else we will end up affirming such impossible propositions as p & ~p.<br /><br />The point is to convert the arithmetical definition of the factorial into terms that can be operated on in a bivalent sentential logic. In other words, we should recognize a homologous role of factorials in, first, truth-functional formal systems and, second, quantified predicate systems. In a truth-functional system, set theoretically defined, we can define the factorial of 'True,' or 'T!' as:<br /><blockquote>D4: T! is the product of all the elements of a set A which, when operated on by a function S(x), combine to specify the class of sentences which are, for that set, true.</blockquote><br />Similarly, F! can be defined as the product of all the elements of a set A which together, under S(x), specify the class of false sentences. For our purposes, S(x) is any truth-apt proposition within a given language L1. Its range is restricted to the set A, and likewise any S'(x) within language L2 cannot extend over the class of sentences designated by S(x).<br /><br />When we consider the elements of a set A that, on S(x), altogether specify the class of true sentences in A, however, we should note that these elements are, in terms of informal language, the foundation for the possibility of S(x)'s truth-aptness. They therefore precede the sentence S(x), as well as any sentence Sn(x) in language Ln. Any truth functional factorial that functions through S(x) therefore eliminates the language restrictions of that sentence and allow us to generate a subset of a given class, the members of which serve to make any sentence within that set true or false. The factorial therefore eliminates the linguistic constraints on our truth values.<br /><br />It is our position that while the fundamental unit of meaning is the sentence, the sentence's meaning is conditioned by its position within a holistic system of beliefs, attitudes, and experiential conditionings. The truth value of any sentence is therefore only intelligible within the language of that sentence. This is a point made by Quine. Blackburn similarly points out that if an entire language (or theory, in his nomenclature) is rejected, there is no way to make “uncontaminated” attributions of truth or falsity to a sentence formulated within that system. Because every semantic system that is not complete by virtue of its syntax can be intelligibly rejected, every truth functional proposition can, in principle, be subject to what we will here call 'contamination,' whereby operations on the system will contaminate our ability to make sharp attributions of truth or falsity to any statement made within that system.<br /><br />Applying a sentential factorial will serve to specify the members of a set that make a sentence true or false, outside of the contaminable structure of an incomplete formal or informal system.<br /><br />The significance of the danang operator is to syntactically specify those elements of a set that, combined, make a sentence true or false. The truth table of any proposition to which the danang operator is applied will look like:<br /><blockquote>p δ(p)<br />T T!<br />F F!</blockquote><br />We can colloquially signify the canon by stating that the δ-operator translates any attribution of “True” or “False” to a proposition p in language Ln to a specification of “Truth” or “Bullshit,” respectively.<br /><br />Even though within a truth functional sentential logic, the δ-operator works only on truth values, in a quantified predicate system it can be treated as a predicate (in the same way that we might canonize “x is true” as “Tx”). In the end, both canonical treatments can be given the same analysis.<br /><blockquote>D5: Any successful application of the δ-operator to a truth-apt proposition that yields a value of T! can also be said to yield a 'Truth-nugget.' In other words, the value of any true statement to which we can appropriately apply the δ-operator is coextensive with a 'Truth-nugget.'</blockquote><br /><blockquote>Conjecture: For any true, danang propositions in a finite set, there will be a coextensive truth nugget. </blockquote><br /><br />*****<br /><blockquote>Theorem: There exists at least one thing that is danang.</blockquote><br />Or, we might put it,<br /><blockquote>∃x(δx)</blockquote> <br />This is demonstrated by Mr. Brantner's ingenious proof that, assuming the negation of this theorem, the possible world containing no elements of which 'danang' can be predicated would be so astonishingly impoverished that it would, itself, entail danangness.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-39234508938797992742009-10-26T12:00:00.000-07:002009-10-26T12:35:00.717-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXAefqyh_X0rI9qLIb5CiDWVregIDKE9G6ivaVyTasFUhIsMowT_JpfpDcw0P2zuJ-Zyp5qb9BI-qzx8VFGFwZzdqj3mLmjoFRIrA28u0Xqa1d0Y_KhQgG-UF_HPRQ0GpTzSZjJ0oq5dU9/s1600-h/picWarholSaturdayDisaster-705354.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 277px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXAefqyh_X0rI9qLIb5CiDWVregIDKE9G6ivaVyTasFUhIsMowT_JpfpDcw0P2zuJ-Zyp5qb9BI-qzx8VFGFwZzdqj3mLmjoFRIrA28u0Xqa1d0Y_KhQgG-UF_HPRQ0GpTzSZjJ0oq5dU9/s400/picWarholSaturdayDisaster-705354.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396985788060387106" border="0" /></a><br />Are you folks familiar with those canned audio tours museumgoers can purchase to guide them somnambulistically through art galleries the world over? Well, the Rose Art Museum is currently collaborating with Brandeis' cultural production M.A. program, together with our very own Andreas Teuber, to supplant this recorded humdrummery with cans of mutant, shapeshifting mindworms. Mark Auslander, the director of the cultural production program, has solicited your help. That's right pop-cods, they want to get down and get weird with each of you...philosophically, that is. Will you rise to the occasion? Contact Profs. Auslander and Teuber for more info and strut your culture-learnin' feathers today, you proud young cock-sparrows, you.<br /><br />To light the fuse, here is my submission to be recorded for Andy Warhol's <span style="font-style: italic;">Saturday Disaster</span> (1964):<br /><br />Behold before you Andy Warhol’s<span style="font-style: italic;"> Saturday Disaster</span>. What do you see? No, scratch that. What don't you see? Indulge me for a moment: take a step back...not from the canvas but from your vision. You know that there's some vision going on and that this gaze reveals something. Some content, a duplicated photograph of an automobile accident perhaps. But what, pray, is the content of this gaze, of the seeing, itself? And on what grounds can you even call it <span style="font-style: italic;">yours</span>? Let us approach Saturday Disaster with an eye towards revealing how we might answer these questions. That is to say, let us approach it as an interrogation of the gaze.<br /><br />Warhol's work exploits an image of death to expose the death of the image. The death of the gaze. The site of this exposure – disaster ground zero – is one in which all human involvement has been expunged, and before which we stand as so many slack-jawed bystanders. The image could have been culled from the pages of any daily newspaper, a medium condemned in earlier times by Kierkegaard as the public sepulcher of Christianity, a mass grave in which all our meaningful commitments are buried, and a quotidian “reminder that the human race has invented something which will eventually over power it.”<br /><br />Ask yourself, where have we seen this gruesome scene before? We know we're supposed to be appalled, shocked, horrified by it. But somehow these days we're not. By condensing death into mass-produced images, wresting it violently from its living context, and re-contextualizing it into sensationalist reportage to be cropped and crammed into columns of text betwixt stock market tallies and toothpaste adverts, the press levels the unacceptable, the unconscionable, the unspeakable into depthless, decathected surfaces of spectacular ephemera. Revel in these surfaces. Shuffle them in your hands. Allow them to seduce you. Get high on them. Dance upon them, ecstatically. But beware, twice beware, for you dance upon a grave. A graven image. A craven grimace. A surface impenetrable.<br /><br />We want to say that we have first-hand experience of works like Saturday Disaster. We want to say we have privileged access to such experiences: an inner theater behind our foreheads in which images are projected before an audience of one. Is this not how we come to know death, as we dream, as we die, alone? But what becomes of this privileged access with first-hand experience outmoded? With all trust in it betrayed? The mass media has come to saturate every unmediated aspect of perception to become the dominant intermediary between us and the real. It has monopolized mimetic representation of the world and of ourselves, such that subject and object alike are made tangible only in the ink-black residues deposited on our hands or in the dull, phantom ache of yesterday’s keystrokes on our fingertips. At the reel of the projection booth in the inner theater there lurks an unbidden stranger.<br /><br />The more readily we recognize our perception in the images propagated by this usurped apprehension of the world, the less we understand of our perception and of ourselves. We experience the abundance it generates – the ceaseless replication, the overproduction of the image – as an abundance of dispossession (estrangement from the world and from each other). Little wonder that the circulation of information, largely a byproduct of the circulation of commodities, is advertised in the aspect of a bargain bin of cheap, disposable, consumer goods. Such is the dispossession of information conveyed by the senses. The gaze no longer belongs to us, but to someone else who purveys it for a nominal fee. A fee which Hegel once likened to “the life, moving of itself, of that which is dead.”<br /><br />How might art revitalize the gaze and restore it to the percipient? By introducing a mass-produced image, an over-mediated image, a duplicated dead image (of the dead) into the critical spaces of the gallery, Warhol enjoins us to take a stance towards all automatic, alienated modes of perception, and in particular, towards the ways in which we experience death. <span style="font-style: italic;">Saturday Disaster</span> re-appropriates an image of the dead to raise the image from the dead. To reclaim perception as a work, and death as the constant work of our lives.<br /><br />In this altered context form no longer overdetermines content. Photography, arrogated by the blind, mechanical forces of the mass media to mortify the living, functions in this piece to vivify the dead on both sides of the canvas. The content of <span style="font-style: italic;">Saturday Disaster</span> thereby re-emerges with renewed immediacy. We are shaken into a brutal awareness of this fatal fusion of man and his technologies. The gore, the corpses strewn about, the primal cries of failing brakes and men. So that the work of this content is to double-expose the fatal fusions - the failing brakes and tortured corpses - within each of us. Where once we saw only a dead image, a surface, a dispossession, we now encounter something living, something profound, something human to which we add in human store. It is thus in Warhol’s vision that we come to discover our own.Wesleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16759168530318116456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-49775510362115718162009-10-25T07:21:00.000-07:002009-10-25T07:23:34.487-07:00Rigorous Philosophy 101Consider a person P who is performing an action A under certain conditions C. P As in accordance with an intention I to fulfill a goal G. G is an ancillary goal that is only significant because it must be satisfied in order to satisfy a latter goal, G'. Correlated with G' is a broader intention I'. Moreover, let's symbolize the satisfaction of a goal by saying, for any goal X, "X!." Then, P As with I to G. G! is propitious to G'!. So, P As with I to G in order to, with I', G'!. Now, for any sentence S within language L, S(x) is satisisfied when Px Axs with Ix to Gx, where Ix! and Gx!, given Cx, imply I'x! and G'x!.<br /><br />Now, consider a sentence S'(xy) that contains at least one two-place predicate. Then, S'(xy) entails that Px Axy Ixy Gxy, and therefore Ixy! Gxy! implies I'xy! G'xy!. Similarly, for any sentence S''n(xnyn...nn) with n-place predicates and n terms, Px1...xn Ax1y1r1...xnynrnnn Ix1y1r1...xnynrnnn Gx1y1r1...xnynrnnn, then if Ix1y1r1...xnynrnnn! and Gx1y1r1...xnynrnnn!, then I'x1y1r1...xnynrnnn! and G'x1y1r1...xnynrnnn!.<br /><br />Good, now I feel rigorous.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16752651925211071422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-58704756919827542762009-09-25T12:38:00.000-07:002009-09-25T12:40:39.571-07:00Infinite PraxisI must disagree with my esteemed colleague, and defend the word "action" and the various senses that have been attached to this multifarious, multivertebrate and multi-grained concept (I note this final adjective in the spirit of The Doctryne of Transcendental Nutritionalism). The Greek "praxis" is often translated into "action," but also frequents other hot-spots in our language, such as "practice" or "doing." These hot-spots are obviously where the "action" is, and hearty, dark ales are a-plenty.<br />"Act," as it strikes me, tends to denote something fixed and static, whereas "action" gives the sense of an ongoing activity. Lobkowicz has whispered in my ear: Prasso, prasso! I accomplish a journey! I manage a state of affairs! I fare well!<br />But let us not pour shaven rats down a funnel, and get to the main ingredient: Aristotle. Aristotle uses "action" to speak of the fruitful ways of life that are open to free men, and the journey that constitutes a free man's ethical life. Theoria and Praxis: Theory and Practice. And if we perform an activity well, party time: Eupraxia! And while we are at it, and by "we" I mean "me and those voices that occur in my head when I eat too many Cheetos," it might be worth dispatching of the connection between "practice" and "practical." Although they share a cognate blood-type, the inner beauty of the former and the janitorial-supply-sense of the latter cannot be confused. I simply refuse to let those who venture to invent things like "high fructose corn syrup" lay claim to such a beautiful concept as "action."<br />But this is not enough. We must quote J.S. Mill for good measure, I guess. "What is action? Not one thing, but a series of two things: the state of mind called a volition, followed by an effect." Notice "volition," a rancid -tion type A. Of course, Mill's quote gives the sense that an action can be complete, but "act" and "action" are used equally in past-tense tension. The beauty in "action" is, ultimately, constituted by a compound: free will and a type of self-creation that cannot be resolved in standard cadence.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-71916971631795392022009-09-25T08:40:00.000-07:002009-09-29T10:54:29.781-07:00The First CritiqueIf I ever explain the first part of the transcendental aesthetic to an undergrad in 15 minutes. I think I'd do it like this:<br /><br /> Let's take this statement, "At this time, two feet in front of me, an object, a computer screen, appears before me.” There is just one object, and this is the story of how it is represented to us.<br /><br />We have a faculty of representation. The faculty of representation allows us to represent objects external to the mind as "objects given to us in time and space.” <br /><br />The object external to the mind impinges on our faculty of representation through our capacity of sensibility. Sensibility yields intuitions. Through our capacity for sensibility, the external object is immediately related to our intuitions. These empirical intuitions of the object, empirical because they are yielded by sensibility, are the appearance of the object. <br /><br />Sensibility yields the content of these intuitions in the form of space and time. Our capacity for sensibility comes in two kinds, inner sense and outer sense. Inner sense yields empirical intuitions in the form of time, and outer sense yields empirical intuitions in the form of space. <br /><br />Since the <span style="font-weight:bold;">form <span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>in which sensibility yields intuitions cannot itself be an intuition yielded by sensibility, the forms lie somewhere outside of sensibility.<br /><br />We have arrived at a place where we are talking about the form of these empirical intuitions as distinct from and the matter of these empirical intuitions. “Matter” of these empirical intuitions, also known as the matter of the appearance of the object, is given to through sensibility. <span style="font-style:italic;">A posteriori</span> means given through sensibility. <br /><br />The capacity to intuit the form of the appearance relies on intuitions that are already present in the mind. These intuitions can order the products of ones inner sense and outer sense, and they are called pure intuitions. We have these intuitions <span style="font-style:italic;">a priori</span>. <span style="font-style:italic;">A priori</span> means not given through sensibility.<br /><br />The transcendental aesthetic is just the business of studying the <span style="font-style:italic;">a priori</span>.<br /><br />I have to go to class, but now that we've turn this object external to the mind into an appearance of an object in space and time, for my next trick, I'll try to show how Kant turns this object into a computer. No hands and without a net.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-82156748951423423932009-09-24T10:18:00.001-07:002009-09-25T15:38:43.092-07:00The Politics of Acts and ActionsI'm a fan of Orwell's essay, <a href="http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm">Politics and the English Language</a>. I haven't Orwell's wit or clarity, but I do believe there is something dubious about the way moral theorists use the term "action."<br /><br />Act strikes me as so much the more the elegant noun that I'm led to believe there is a reason we privilege action rather than act. I think the difference may be a matter of aspect. If you don't know about aspect, then you've never studied Russian or Greek, and you have no place in this world. Or you can look here http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/aspect.html to recover your dignity.<br /><br />To make a latin verb into an English noun, we often add -tion. I try to avoid words that end in -tion because the presence of a -tion often indicates a latent passive construction(ha!) lurking about. Mixed results. In addition to making the verb "act" into a noun, the -tion bears, on the sly I believe, a completed aspect, but I think the word "act" retains a progressive aspect. Why does this matter? Well, if I'm a good utilitarian who is tallying and building based off of consequences, I need to worry about completed acts so that I can assign them a number and get on with calculating good. If an act is still progressing, with its results rippling forth, and if all political acts are incomplete, then assigning them a number based on their consequences becomes an even greater feat of careless imagination.<br /><br />The results of acts are unpredictable and always revealing themselves. The results of actions, while possibly unpredictable, are fixed. Actions have at least stopped metastasizing and screwing up my utilitarian calculus, whereas the consequences of acts are still bodying forth into the world, offending my attempts to devise a consequentialist practical theory. <br /><br />I'm an act man. I'll leave the actions to the scientists. That's all.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-23515053561147506552009-09-18T07:36:00.000-07:002010-09-12T12:26:35.492-07:00Senior Citizen Superconductor<span style="font-style: italic;">At The Mall: Senior Citizen Superconductor</span><br />Early in the morning, the elderly perform a secret ritual at the shopping mall - so secret, in fact, that even they are not quite cognizant of what they yield. While the stores are all closed and the young fools eat their cotton candy, our elders walk in laps, or large circles, and generate a type of energy that radiates into the metropolis. It is a quiet hum, like the power lines that stretch over our homes, yet they need no power <span style="font-style: italic;">grid</span>; they are much more comprehensive.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-64451214597729256912009-09-16T17:01:00.000-07:002009-09-16T17:07:10.924-07:00The Meeting of Jones and PierrePierre: Ahh, <span style="font-style: italic;">Londres est Jolie</span>!<br />Jones: Are you Kripke's Pierre?<br />Pierre: No, Sartre's. I know that London is the same as <span style="font-style: italic;">Londres.</span> Kripke's Pierre is an ignoramus; the principles of <span style="font-style: italic;">translation, weak disquotation</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">rationality</span> have rendered him a fool. My advice? Avoid these at all cost. So, which Jones are you?<br />Jones: I find myself in so many hypothetical situations that I can no longer be certain. I have been adding rum to my morning spot of tea to cope.<br />Pierre: Hmm, see an analyst. Tell Pierre I said hello.<br />Jones: A hypothetical analyst?<br />Pierre: There is no other kind.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7653443223777360177.post-34376958345830948902009-09-14T09:35:00.000-07:002010-09-12T12:26:35.493-07:00Breakfast with WittgensteinThis is an excerpt from an email that I wrote to Jacob. K-Lande requested that I post it. Enjoy.<br /><br />Eating Breakfast with Wittgenstein:<br /> I say, "there is an egg." What if I approach it with the intention of procurement, and suddenly the egg disappears from sight? Then we conclude that it was not an egg, but an illusion. Breakfast can be so frustrating. But suddenly, the egg re-appears, and we can touch it and eat it. Is this still an egg? We cannot know the meaning of "egg" because we are not equipped with rules for every application of "egg." If we assert that it is still an egg, we admit that we attach no meaning to the word "egg." Breakfast is hopeless, and this happens to me every time I eat!<br /> Then I think of Humpty-Dumpty and the tragic case of the egg becoming irreparably cracked, a sad commentary on the existential sorrows that we must weather whether we sit on walls or not. Of course if we are overly cautious, we end up living our lives as though we are "walking on eggshells," a rather crunchy state of affairs. If we place all our eggs in one basket, we can make an excellent still-life painting. Lovely. Dump all the eggs out of the carton, set them on fire, and watch them roll down the road. Stop answering the door and never open packages.<br /><br />-PBCUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0