Philosophers' Carnival LXXVI

Welcome, readers, to the 76th fortnightly Philosophers’ Carnival!

Enigman asks what philosophical reasons mathematicians have for assuming the axiom of infinity in his post Philosophy of Mathematics. It’s not clear what sorts of reasons he’s looking for; fundamental questions about mathematical truth and the role of axioms seem to be lurking just below the surface here. The comments thread hasn’t grown prohibitively long yet, so hop on over and pitch in your $.02.

Alexander Pruss criticizes several ways of construing the supernaturalness of magic in Magic, science, and the supernatural. I’m not convinced by a lot of what he says, but the discussion is very clear and open-minded. Peruse the other entries while you’re there, if you haven’t visited before – it’s a nice blog.

Avery Archer works on a theory of rational agency in Why Questions and Rational Agents (more about the latter than the former). I like this post, even though I don’t like a lot (of the little) I have read elsewhere on rationality. It’s not clear to me that the appearances of the good (allegedly) involved in desire are reflections of a perspective held by some subsystem of an agent which is involved in producing the agent’s desires, just because I’m not sure that subsystems of agents are the sorts of things that can have perspectives. This might be a quibble. When a person’s reasoned course of action conflicts with her desires, there obviously does seem to be some sub-agential system bearing some interesting relationship to the course of action desired but not taken, or a mental representation of that course of action. It might be useful to spell out what is not quite “perspectival” about that relationship, though. I have more to say about this, but you don’t need to read it.

Over at Possibly Philosophy, Andrew Bacon weighs in on Counterexamples to Modus Ponens. I’m not sure I understand why he thinks that a syntactic characterization of modus ponens won’t work, and I don’t understand accessibility (between possible worlds) well enough to follow the rest of the argument. The McGee counterexample is super-interesting, though, and deserves attention from those of you out there with more logical competence than your humble host.

Thom Brooks of The Brooks Blog lets us in on his Five Secrets to Publishing Success, published on InsideHigherEd.com. Helpful to those looking for, well, publishing success.

Richard Chappell offers a brief but convincing discussion of Fair Shares and Others’ Responsibilities. He argues that, in the interest of fairness, we should pick up the slack for others’ moral failings. I think I agree, although I do not live up to the conclusion in my own life. Also, it’s not clear to me how well this sits with Richard’s views on the “demandingness objection” and the permissibility of living a basically decent life expressed here.

Bryan Norwood presents some objections to epistemological internalism, with an alternative, in Internalist Justification vs. Virtuoso Expertise. There is a lot I don’t understand here – the distinction between subjective and objective blame, the relationships between foundationalism and this distinction, and the relation between internalism and K = JTB. Still, I think there are some good ideas about epistemic blameworthiness brewing here.

Chris Hallq discusses Gettier and the purpose of analyzing “knowledge” in The case against Gettier. Some of the literature on what knowledge is for – the relation between knowledge and assertion, or knowledge and the attribution of other factive mental states – could help here. Still, the basic point, that philosophers interested in a concept need to keep the distinctive intended uses of the concept, is worth reiterating.

Lastly, Gualtiero Piccinini disambiguates “connectionism” for us, and spells out some of the morals of the disambiguation in The Ambiguity of "Connectionism". I was taught that connectionism is the view that the brain does most everything using Parallel Distributed Processing, but these other senses of “connectionism” are useful to distinguish as well.

That wraps up this edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival. If you’re still jonesing for more philosophy after all that, I invite you to check out some of the posts here on Think It Over. And, as always, keep your eye out for the next edition upcoming at Kenny Pearce’s blog.

Rockwell's Anti-Zombie Argument

Over at The Splintered Mind, Teed Rockwell has put up a brief defense of an argument that zombies are impossible. The argument is this:

(1) Zombies are possible if and only if subjective experiences are epiphenomenal.
(2) Subjective experiences are epiphenomenal if and only if we have direct awareness of them.
(3) There is no such thing as direct awareness.

Therefore, etc.

My comments:

Ad (1). This is not true. The closest truth in this vicinity is:

(1`) If it is possible that subjective experiences are epiphenomenal, then zombies are possible.

I can't see why subjective experiences would have to be epiphenomenal in the actual world in order for zombies to be exist in some other world. Why couldn't it be the case that qualia have some functional role in our cognitive architecture in the actual world, but the non-qualitative aspects of cognition subserve that functional role in another world? Perhaps the idea is that properties are individuated by the causal powers they grant when instantiated, so that P = Q only if, necessarily, Px causes p iff Qx causes p. Then a property is actually epiphenomenal iff necessarily epiphenomenal. This is implausible to me, though. Surely some property bestows some causal powers in the actual world that it does not in other worlds. But if that is the case, then qualia could be properties of this sort. They could bestow functional cognitive properties on conscious thinkers in the actual world that they do not in other worlds. Anyway, all this is OK for Rockwell's argument so far, since we only need something of the strength of (1`) for the argument to go through, if (2) and (3) are true.

The real problem is with (2). I suppose what would make (2) plausible is an argument to the effect of:

(4) We are either directly aware of a property's being instantiated, or we infer it.
(5) We infer some fact p on the basis of q only if p causes q.
(6) The instantiations of epiphenomenal properties do not cause anything else.
Therefore, (2).

Then, from (3), we get Rockwell's desired conclusion. As things stand, I lean towards saying that epiphenomenalism is actually false, but might have been true. By (1`), this immediately gets us that zombies are possible. But let's assume that epiphenomenalism is true, and even that (1) is true. In this sort of position, my beef has always been with (5). I always thought that, if epiphenomenalism is true, then we brought qualia into our ontology to explain the justification we have for believing self-ascriptions of certain mental states. The qualitative character of the state of, say, seeing an apple from ten feet away in decent, neutral light is supposed to be what explains how I generally know, or am justified in believing, that I see an apple when I do. This is not to say that the instantiation of a certain quale causes me to believe that I see the apple. Rather, the instantiation of the quale (perhaps given some other conditions about my proper mental functioning) is what provides that belief with its positive epistemic status. But it would be strange to say that the conferral of that epistemic status is a causal matter. I want to say that the instantiation of the quale does not causally affect my belief's epistemic status because the epistemic status of a belief is not the sort of thing that can be caused to be one way or another. I do infer the existence of qualia, in general, but not from their causal roles. I infer them to explain the epistemic status that I confer on mental state self-ascriptions. So qualia are a counterexample to (5) because they are an instance in which inference to the best explanation is not inference from cause to effect.

Davidson, Belief

I think there might be something like an inconsistency in Davidson’s theories of meaning and belief. Consider the following set of claims, all of which, I think, Davidson has to accept:

1. Intentional indeterminism: the apparatus of folk-psychology always underdetermines the total set of beliefs and desires that we attribute to an intentional system. The non-psychological facts and the commitments of psychology as such (i.e. the common commitments of any psychological theory in virtue of which the theory is psychological) underdetermine – inductively, deductively, and abductively – what beliefs and desires an intentional system has.
2. General agreement: in general, folk that are equally well-informed about an intentional system in non-psychological terms agree, in the individual cases, both on what beliefs and desires the system has, and how to determine further what beliefs and desires the system has.
3. We must explain (2) in terms of the commonly-held beliefs of the folk.
4. These beliefs are not among the basic commitments of psychology as such. (From (1) and (2).)
5. Facts about commonly-held beliefs that determine the evidential procedures governing the proper application of a word (like “believes) are among the facts that constitute, in part, the meaning of that word. (I take this to be one of the reasons that Davidson says that meaning and belief are so closely related. I also take it to be a consequence of most varieties of semantic holism.)
6. Facts about the meaning of “believes” are among the basic commitments of psychology as such.

But then, from (3), (5), and (6), it seems we can derive the conclusion that the facts that explain (2) are facts about the meaning of “believes,” and so among the basic commitments of psychology as such. This is immediately contrary to (4).

I think Davidson might get out of this by denying (3), but it still seems that the sort of meta-semantics underlying (5) is going to make it difficult to say that the commonality that explains (2) is not, in part, constitutive of the meaning of “believes.”

Hypothetical Substitution and Representational States

At least as important as developing a philosophical theory of what to count as a mental representation is a theory of what to count as a representational state – a state expressed in English by a relation between an individual and a proposition, that is best explained in terms of (or just is) a relation between an individual and something like a mental representation of (the meaning of) the proposition. Lillard (1993) notes that, simply in virtue of using a pen to stir my coffee, I do not necessarily represent my pen as a spoon, so using a pen to stir my coffee is not a representational state. Following Josef Perner, she calls using a pen as if it were a spoon an instance of hypothetical (as opposed to symbolic) substitution. The difference between the clearer cases of hypothetical (as opposed to symbolic) substitution are reflected in facts such as that “I am using a pen as if it were a spoon” is not, surface-grammatically, a relation between an individual and a proposition – an independent clause does not follow “as if.” But English could have been different here. We could have said “I am using a pen that it is a spoon;” perhaps that is roughly how locutions of this sort work in other languages. And maybe English does have a relation between an individual and a proposition in the deep structure of sentences reporting hypothetical substitutions.

I guess we could just say that hypothetical substitutions aren’t relations to mental representations because they are extensional, and relations to mental representations aren’t. For example, my intuition is that, if I am not pretending, then I am acting as if I am Clark Kent iff I am acting as if I am Superman iff I am acting as if I am the fictional male lead portrayed as having grown up in Smallville in such television shows as Lois and Clark. But that intuition is kind of weak, and I suspect that I would give it up in the face of a good argument. Do other people share this intuition?

A New Version of the Identity Theory?

I'm reading Schiffer's Remnants of Meaning and its gotten me thinking about most (all?) physicalists' demand that mentalistic talk, and especially mentalistic ontology, needs to be reduced to physical talk and ontology somehow or other. My intuition is that most* mentalistic talk and ontology is itself physical in nature, and not because type-type or token-token or any such identity theory is true. I think my intuition is to accept the two premises of the following argument. I've never seen this before, but it's reminiscent of some of the discussion in Stoljar's "Two Conceptions of the Physical."

(1) For all x, if x is introduced to explain the overt physical behavior of paradigmatically physical objects, then x is a physical object.

(2) The special ontological commitments of cognitive science (mental representations, information processing mechanisms, etc.) are introduced to explain the overt physical behavior** of animals' bodies.

Therefore, (3) The special ontological commitments of cognitive science are physical objects.

I think the argument is also sound if we replace both occurrences of "special ontological commitments" with "novel linguistic forms (e.g. relations to mental representations)" and "physical objects" with something like "physicalistic linguistic form."

I want to call this an identity theory (maybe a bit cheekily) because (3) is, as far as I can tell, just what all identity theories have in common. It would be a new version because it is an identity theory no matter whether or how the posits and theorems of cognitive science are identical to various paradigmatic objects and theorems in and about the body.

Perhaps some won't like (3) because the posits of cognitive science lack spatial location, and aren't physical for that reason. I myself am willing to give up the intuition that something has to have a spatial location in order to be a physical object. If I weren't so willing, I would note that, as far as I can tell, nothing is lost by stipulating that these posits are located diffusely throughout the body.

Seriously, is this totally undefensible for reasons I can't see?
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* - I tend to think phenomenal consciousness is fundamentally different. Let's restrict "mentalistic talk" and "mentalistic ontology" to the theory and ontology of cognitive science, narrowly construed.
** - Where "overt physical behavior" is taken to include some number of physiological states.