Lewis Conference, Day 1 (Salerno)

[cross posted from Knowability]

Today began the 1st Synthese Annual Conference, Between Intuition and Logic: David Lewis and the Future of Formal Philosophy, which was hosted at the Honorary Niels Bohr Mansion in Copenhagen and organized by Johan van Benthem, Vincent Hendricks and John Symons.

John Collins started things off with his paper "Formal and Informal Models of Belief", in which he embraced a Lewisian theory of knowledge:

if S knows that X, then there is no uneliminated possibility that is very close to actuality and in which X is false.

He argued, among other things, that the threat of skepticism is not as ubiquitous as Vogel and Hawthorne suggest. The statistical information that n number of otherwise healthy people die of a heart attack is not enough to make the world in which i die of a heart attack very close to the actual world. That's because people don't just die of heart attacks if absolutely nothing is medically wrong with them. Since the actual world is not one where unbenownst to me there is something wrong with me, there is no very close world where I am one of the unlucky few to die in this way. So, my original ordinary knowledge claim about where I'll be tomorrow still stands. Of course, if it turns out that unbenownst to me and my doctors there is something medical wrong with my heart, then my ordinary knowledge claim falters.

Allesandro Torza gave the most formal of the talks thus far, titled "How to Lewis a Kripke-Hintikka". He argued that BL (i.e., [quantifier] independence friendly modal logic) is more expressive than QML (quantified modal logic); there are modal notions (e.g., the notion of rigidity for general terms) that can be expressed by BL but not by QML. However, this portion of BL cannot be translated into counterpart theory, and so, there is reason to doubt that counterpart theory is adequate to model our modal intuitions.


Brit and I gave a version of our paper "Remarks on Counterpossibles", in which we motivate and defend a modified version of Daniel Nolan's impossible worlds account of counterpossible conditionals.


Laurie Paul argued that the trumping examples, which have forced Lewis to give up his old theory of causation (see Schaffer's famous paper) do not obviously show what they were intended to show. The thrust of the objection was that until we clarify what it is to "interrupt a causal process", it is unclear how to interpret the trumping examples. The military handbook tells us that a Major's orders trump the Sgt.'s orders, but how do we get from there to a case of *causal* trumping? Merlin's (and not Morgana's) spell is stipulated to be the consequential of the two spells. But how do we get from there to Merlin's, but not Morgana's, spell caused the outcome?

Off to the Northern Hemisphere

I am off to the Lewis conference in Copenhagen and then to the Rutgers Semantics Workshop. I will be back in 11 days. See you then.

The Reasoner 1 (6)

The Reasoner vol. 1, issue 6 is now available.

TOC:
1. Editorial - Jon Williamson
2. Interview with Colin Howson - Jon Williamson
3. Why we shouldn't fault Lucas and Penrose for continuing to believe in the Godelian argument against computationalism I - Bhupinder Singh Anand
4. There is no question about it! - Barry Hartley Slater
5. 'Can', the Principle of Relevant Alternatives, and Moral Responsibility - John K. Alexander
6. Referential Usage and Godelian Completions - Francesco Pupa
7. Report on the Programme: Bayesian Nonparametric Regression, Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, 30 July – 24 August 2007 - Stephen Walker
8. Progic 2007: the Third Workshop on Combining Probability and Logic, University of Kent, Canterbury, 5–7 September 2007 - Jan-Willem Romeijn

Relevant Consequence

Since my talk here at ANU last Thursday I have been thinking a lot about how to define 'relevant consequence'. There are various reasons why one might want a notion of relevant consequence (in addition to the standand notion of necessary consequence). For example, various attitudes are closed under some consequence relation. But they are not closed under necessary consequence. For example, 'I believe that snow is white' does not entail 'I believe that Goldbach's conjecture is true'. There is a lot of literature on how to define 'relevance'. One notion which I believe is due to (or at least inspired by) Graham Priest goes like this. q is a relevant consequence p iff q is a consequence of p, and q does not introduce any new non-logical constants (of course, it may be that new non-logical constants are introduced in the derivation of q from p, e.g. if existential elimination is applied). I like this way of defining 'relevant consequence'. But it is too strict for my purposes. I want 'I own a car' to be a relevant consequence of 'I own a Porsche', but 'car' is a new non-logical constant. So, I was thinking the following might do as a definition of 'relevant consequence'. q is a relevant consequence of p iff q is a consequence of p, and if q introduces a new non-logical constant P2, then P2 is a minimal predicate, and for some minimal predicate P1 in P, necessarily, all P1 are P2. Given this notion, 'I own a car' is a relevant consequence of 'I own a Porsche', because it is true that necessarily, all Porsches are cars. I can't think of any obvious counterexamples to this way of defining 'relevant consequence', though I am sure there are some.

Synthese Annual Conference

Synthese hosts its first annual conference at the Carlsberg Academy in Copenhagen, October 3- 5 , 2007. The conference is sponsored by PHIS - The Danish Research School in Philosophy, History of Ideas and History of Science and Springer.

Between Logic and Intuition: David Lewis and the Future of Formal Methods in Philosophy

David Lewis is one of the most important figures in contemporary philosophy. His approach balances elegantly between the use of rigorous formal methods and sound philosophical intuitions. The benefit of such an approach is reflected in the substantial impact his philosophical insights have had not only in many core areas of philosophy, but also in neighboring disciplines ranging from computer science to game theory and linguistics. The interplay between logic and intuition to obtain results of both philosophical and interdisciplinary importance makes Lewis’ work a prime example of formal philosophy. Lewis’ work exemplifies the fruitful interplay between logic and intuition that is central to contemporary philosophy. This conference serves as a tribute to Lewis and as a venue for adressing questions concerning the relationship between logic and philosophical intuition.

This first Synthese Annual Conference is the venue for discussing the future of formal methods in philosophy.

Registration
Please write conference manager Pelle Guldborg Hansen to register:

Department of Philosophy and Science Studies
Roskilde University, P6
P.O. Box 260
DK4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Phone: (+45) 4674 2540
Cell: (+45) 2334 2175
Fax: (+45) 4674 3012
Email: pgh@ruc.dk

A conference fee is to be paid cash upon final registration (Wednesday, October 3, 2007). The conference fee is 150,00 Danish kroner a day, thus participation for the entire duration of the conference (Thursday, October 3 – Saturday 5, 2004) is 450,00 Danish kroner. The conference fee covers the lunches with free beverages, conference booklet, tea and co¤ee during the breaks. NOTICE: Please remember exact amount. Deadline for registration Monday, October 1, 2007. If email is used include ‘SAC 2007’ in the subject entry. All questions pertaining to registration and accommodations should be directed to Pelle Guldborg Hansen.

For more information click here.

Pics and Pubs

Some pics from Declan Smithies' party last Friday

And some forthcoming pubs by ANU grads:

Ben Blumson: "Images, Intentionality and Inexistence", forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Jacek Brzozowski: "On Locating Composite Objects", forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.

Yuri Cath: "The Ability Hypothesis and the New Knowledge-how", forthcoming in Noûs.

Ole Koksvik: "Conservation of Energy is Relevant to Physicalism", forthcoming in Dialectica.

Dan Marshall: "Can 'Intrinsic' Be Defined Using Only Broadly Logical Notions?", forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

On Refereeing Practices

There is an interesting discussion of one of the issues addressed in Sally Haslanger's piece Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Reason (Alone) over at Feminist Philosophers. The issue is that of why so few female philsophers publish in mainstream journals. Following Haslanger, Jender suggests that part of the reason may be that there is an implicit bias against women, and that blind refereeing and editing, therefore, are mandatory. Blind refereeing and editing do seem preferable to non-blind refereeing and editing. But it's not going to overcome all biases. Very many philosophers put their work online. And it's hard to see what would become of the field if no one did that. But I bet very few referees can resist googling the title or first line of a manuscript before making their final recommendation to the editors (or maybe even before reading the manuscript). Even so, blind refeering is a good thing. At least it is then up to the author to decide how blind he or she wants the refereeing to be. As for blind editing, I think there is much to be said for that too. However, I also think editors are likely to be less biased than referees. My feeling is that editors give a lot of weight to the referees' reports. Editors can, of course, give a lot of weight to the referees' reports and still affect the final decision dramatically. Some referees are notoriously hard to satisfy, others exceedingly easy. An editor could decide to send manuscripts by unknown authors or on "exotic" topics such as feminism to referees which are hard to satisfy. If anything like that ever happens, then blind editing of course won't be the miracle cure for biases against women. It could perhaps help the young and unknowns, but it wouldn't help those writing on less mainstream topics.

Philosophers' Carnival # 53

... is here.

Some Links

Some links -- old and new

Going on the job market? Check out Jon Cogburn's post devoted to this issue. You can read more here and here (via Aidan and John).

Kate Lindeman has created a new website on women philosophers. Check it out.

This wiki journal site is not new but there now seems to be a bunch of interesting data available. Add your info if you didn't do so already.

Via Brains I just learned about this blog which is devoted to announcing philosophy conferences and calls for papers.

PHIBOOK - The Yearbook for Philosophical Logic

The web-site for PHIBOOK is now up and running.

PHIBOOK is an annual volume devoted to philosophical logic and its relation to philosophy and science with particular emphasis on multi- agent and modal systems, active agency and social software. The yearbook is intended to inform the community of current and future directions of research and activity in philosophical logic, major events, books and important papers of the past year but also leaves extensive room for discussion in terms of columns, opinion pieces, and critical reports.

Editors:
Alexandru Baltag (Oxford)
Johan van Benthem (Amsterdam / Stanford)
Branden Fitelson (Berkeley)
Vincent F. Hendricks (Roskilde)
Hannes Leitgeb (Bristol)
Fenrong Liu (Beijing / Amsterdam)
Eric Pacuit (Stanford)
Bryan Renne (CUNY)
John Symons (El Paso)

PHIBOOK/2007 will be available in May 2008

SUBMISSIONS/DEADLINES

PHIBOOK invites authors to submit extensive survey (expositional) papers (30-50 pages) on philosophical logic (including inductive logic, modal, alethic logic, temporal logic, epistemic logic, deontic logic, conditional logic ... with special focus on multi-modal logics and active agency) and its relations to notably epistemology, methodology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and its applications and philosophical significance in computer science, information theory, cognitive science, mathematics, linguistics, economics and game theory ...

For more information click here.

Thousands of New Cases of Zombification

Check this out:

In Haiti, up to a thousand new cases of zombification are reported
every year. However, exactly how sorcerers zombify their victims
remains open to debate. So, fascinating as it is, zombification is an
ultimately confusing phenomenon....

The article discusses the use of tetrodotoxin, found in pufferfish, to
make zombies.

(Via Colleen Keating)

Powers, Dispositions, and Singular Causation

Graduate Conference in Metaphysics

University at Buffalo, State University Of New York
Philosophy Department

April 5, 2008

Keynote Address
Stephen Mumford (University of Nottingham UK): "Passing Powers Around"

Email submissions should be sent by January 10, 2008 to:

buffalo.philosophy07@gmail.com

For further information and paper guidelines click here.

Alex

Here's an article on the death of the most linguistically advanced parrot there ever was. Alex learned more than 100 English words, several phrases, and was able to recognize shapes and colors. His last words to Dr. Pepperberg, who worked with Alex, were: "You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you."

Tal en Tanke in Atheneum Bookstore

Atheneum Bookstore will host a meeting with Vincent F. Hendricks and Frederik Stjernfelt on Wednesday September 19 at 4:30 P.M. Hendricks and Stjernfelt will talk about themes from their new book Tal en Tanke -- the bestseller about clarity and nonsense in thought and speech. Everyone is invited.

Iowa Philosophical Society Final Call for Papers

Final Call for Papers!

The Iowa Philosophical Society Meeting

When: Saturday, Oct.20, 2007
Where: Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA

Keynote Address by Paul Boghossian of NYU

Papers should be prepared for approximately a
20 minute presentation. Submission deadline Sept. 15, 2007.

Send abstracts of approximately 300 words to:

John Lemos at jlemos@coe.edu or you may send them in the regular post to:

John Lemos
Dept. of Philosophy
Coe College
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

PPR Returns

As Robbie notes, PPR appears to be back up and running.

New Zombies

Good to see that more or more Northerns are giving in to the facebook craze (aka the zombie war).

Sydney

At least I wasn't driving. Joe, Bill and Dave seemed more comfortable on the left. I probably should have stood up for the world's female drivers but that didn't happen. Oh, well. Sydney was fun. My first time there (except for the airport, but that doesn't count). Went to one and a quarter conferences. First the expressivism conference, then the moral cognition conference. Many excellent papers and fun times. Some of them:


Rae Langton and Simon Blackburn. Simon: "Excellent point, Rae!"


Lunch (David Chalmers, Rae, Simon and Peter Lewis (far right))


Allan Gibbard: "Here is how to express expressivism".


Alexis Burgess: "It is not the case that Santa and Rudolph do not exist"


Uriah Kriegel and Luca Moretti. Uriah: "I am looking for something that does not exist, dammit"


Jamie Dreier: "You see, creeping minimalism likes to hit and then it tries to hide"


Dave: "I think I know how to teletransport this glass of wine into Facebook ... Where is my Palm Pilot?"


Becky and I. Me: "Oh man, this article is hard". Becky: "Yeah, I read it during naptime"


Amie Thomasson: "Worlds: who needs 'em?"


Indian food and philosophy: a happy mix


Rachael Briggs and Dave. Rachael: "Help, the curry bowl keeps toppling over".


Adina Roskies and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Walter: "I didn't do it"


Joe Salerno: "Curry bowls are fun!"


Amie and Rachael in the wee hours

For more conference photos click here (Joe Salerno) or here (Dave Chalmers).

The Reasoner 1 (5)

The latest issue of The Reasoner is now available.

In this month's issue:

Editorial - Eric Pacuit
Interview with Rohit Parikh - Eric Pacuit
Kripke, Pierre and Constantinescu - Laurence Goldstein
The Mechanist’s Challenge - Bhupinder Singh Anand
Does conceivability entail possibility? - Clayton Littlejohn
A note on conceivability - Roger Harris
On the Paradox of Rationality’s Rationality - Nader N. Chokr
Abstraction vs. Idealization - Steffen Ducheyne
Is the Answer to this Question No? - Martin Mose Bentzen
The Divine Liar Resurfaces - Daniel J. Hill
New Centre for Reasoning at Kent - Jon Williamson

Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism (Salerno)

Busy conference season in Australia. Today ends the Evolution and Cooperation Conference at ANU, organized by Richard Joyce & Kim Sterelny.

Speakers:
Steve Downes (University of Utah); Christian List (LSE); Ben Kerr (University of Washington); Timothy Ketelaar (University of New Mexico); Matteo Mameli (Cambridge); Fiery Cushman (Harvard); Peter Godfrey-Smith (Harvard); Kai Spikerman (LSE); Brett Calcott (ANU)

Day 1 included Christian List, who had neat empirical data on the Condorcet jury theorem as applied to deliberative democracy. Another great talk was Fiery Cushman's, which included loads of data about our judgments regarding moral consequences and intentions. And there were others.

Ah, I took my first spin around the block on the left side of the road. It was at night, and some street signs were apparently missing, but overall the episode went down without a hitch. Driving on the left is easier than I thought. Just take everything you do with your left hemisphere and replace it with everything you do with your right hemisphere, and vice versa. The drive was in part preparation for my trip to Sydney for the Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism conference, hosted by the Centre for Time. I didn't drive to Sydney (Chalmers and Fish took care of business), but I did get stuck with the honor of driving around to find a parking spot in Potts Point. No problemo, but I think i'll stay on my bicycle for a while.

Arrived during Simon Blackburns talk. He waxed broadly about the ins and outs of expressivism. Also caught Jamie Dreier's talk on the difference between irrealism and realism, and the pitfalls of trying to articulate said difference. This was also our 3 and a half year old daughter's first time attending philosophy talks. She had a blast. She wanted to know what order-of-explanation has to do with the reality of the subject matter. Will check out more talks tomorrow. Still don't know how long we are staying in the fabulous city, but won't be upset if we leave later rather than sooner.

S & P Advisory Board

The editors of the new journal-to-be Semantics and Pragmatics have just announced their Advisory Board:

Greg Carlson (former editor of Linguistics & Philosophy)
Gennaro Chierchia
Bart Geurts (editor of Journal of Semantics)
Irene Heim (editor of Natural Language Semantics)
Polly Jacobson (editor of Linguistics & Philosophy)
Hans Kamp
Angelika Kratzer (editor of Natural Language Semantics)
Manfred Krifka (editor of Theoretical Linguistics, former editor of Linguistics & Philosophy)
Barbara Partee
Robert Stalnaker

Impressive line-up!

Philosophers' Carnival # 52

... is here.

APA Book Prize

This year's APA Book Prize went to Jason Stanley for his Knowledge and Practical Interests (via Leiter)

John Broome Conference

Just got out from an ANU conference on the work of John Broome, which was organized by Nic Southwood (RSSS) and Daniel Star (CAPPE). The speaker line-up was great: Jamie Dreier (Brown), Nic Southwood (RSSS), Andrew Reisner (McGill), Geoffrey Brennan (RSSS), Garrett Cullity (Adelaide), Daniel Star (CAPPE), Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund), and John Broome (Oxford). Joe has a discussion of some of the talks.

Hansen and Hendricks on the Copenhagen Fashion Fair

Pelle Guldborg Hansen and Vincent Hendricks just published a paper in the Danish newspaper (Dagbladet Information) about fashion (the Copenhagen fashion fair just ended), consumption, pluralistic ignorance, knowledge, information cascades, norms and preferences. People are going crazy over this. The link is here in case you missed it.

The Fruit of Long Deliberations

Cartoon of Vincent Hendricks and Frederik Stjernfelt (authors of Tal en Tanke) from the Danish broadsheet paper Weekendavisen.

Translation:

Frederik: "My dear Hendricks, it dawns on me that the apple ("ævlet" which in
Danish is either slang for an apple or means "rubbish") does not fall far from
the language tree".

Vincent: "As spoken right out of my thoughts"

The caption says: "The fruit of long deliberations about talk by Hendricks and
Stjernfelt".

Greetings from the Southern Hemisphere

We arrived safely in Canberra and are almost done unpacking. This place is amazingly active, talks every day, zombie wars and tea chats. I like it lots.

Gotta Catch a Flight

We are getting ready to leave St. Louis to join these guys.

Knowledge and Action

There is an interesting discussion of John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley's "Knowledge and Action", forthcoming in Journal of Philosophy, over at Certain Doubts. I would have liked to join it but I am too busy packing. Maybe later.

UPDATE: Clayton Littlejohn has written a reply to Hawthorne and Stanley. I haven't read it yet but it looks very interesting.

Peer-Review in Decline

"The well-known people are going to cut back on their publishing in top journals because they don’t need the peer review anymore. They can get attention to their work without it"

Via Adventures in Ethics and Science and Semantics, etc. I just learned about this article from Inside Higher Ed, which discusses the recent decline in publications in peer-reviewed journals by authors from top economics departments. Elizabeth Redden, the article's author, suggests that the reason for the decline is that better publication venues are available to top economists: home-pages, on-line data-bases, blogs, to mention just a few. Bypassing peer-review is a quicker way to recognition than waiting for slow referees and journal backlogs. According to Redden it sometimes takes 3 years for an article to make it into print in a peer-reviewed journal.

I am not sure whether there is a similar decline in publications in peer-reviewed philosophy journals by top philosophers. It certainly seems that high-powered philosophers often choose to publish their work in non-peer-reviewed places. In philosophy, however, publication on home-pages, blogs and on-line data-bases does not seem to have had any effect on how many peer-reviewed articles are published. Non-peer-reviewed volumes, guest-edited journal issues, and conference proceedings are the main competition.

Well-known philosophers are more frequently invited to contribute to non-peer-reviewed volumes than less well-known people, and if one no longer needs to prove oneself in the field, it is probably tempting to bypass refereeing and journal backlogs entirely. As Ellison, the author of "Is Peer-Review in Decline?", says to Redding, "The well-known people are going to cut back on their publishing in top journals because they don’t need the peer review anymore. They can get attention to their work without it". While Ellison is primarily interested in the status-quo in economics, his point extends to philosophy.

One might, however, fear that an absence of top philosophers in refereed journals will set the tone in the profession. If top-people do not publish in peer-reviewed journals, peer-reviewed articles might be perceived as second-rate. On the anecdotal side, a friend of mine who wanted to shift horses mid-career once asked a top philosopher in his new field which journals were most prestigious. Surprisingly the answer he received was "None. Don't publish in journals. If you are good enough, you will be invited to publish your work elsewhere". This, certainly, is an unfortunate attitude. Peer-reviewing is, after all, the most objective way of determining what should appear in print.

Moreover, as Adventures in Ethics and Science points out, building one's reputation is not the only reason for publishing. Hopefully the communication of knowledge is still an honorable aim. And journal publication is one of the very best ways of communicating knowledge. While very few journal articles are read by more than a few people, they are visible and easily accessible. Articles in book volumes and conference proceedings are much harder to find, unless you simply buy the book or the proceedings. When the book goes out of print after a few years it can be almost impossible to find. Webpage publication, of course, can to some extent make up for the public inaccessibility of one's work. Still, lots and lots of non-refereed publications simply are not publicly available. You cannot go to JStor or some other publicly available datebase to download a book contribution.

So if one aims at communicating knowledge and having one's work read in 10+ years, it seems worthwhile to send at least some of it to journals. Of course, the ideal situation would be one where all work was available online on open access but peer-reviewed sites. This way we could avoid journal backlogs, difficulties tracking down non-peer-reviewed articles and the high cost of subscriptions. The only time that would pass between submission and publication would be the time it would take the referees to finish their job and the editors to make a final decision. For now, however, peer-reviewed journal publication still seems a worthwhile enterprise.

Strawsonian Definite Descriptions

Though I am definitely still a Russellian with respect to definite descriptions, I thought that Peter Lasersohn's "The Temperature Paradox as Evidence for a Presuppositional Analysis of Definite Descriptions", which I just read, made a quite convincing case for a Strawsonian treatment. I won't go into his reasons for preferring a Strawsonian treatment to the Russellian alternative but I do want to make a couple of remarks about Lasersohn's take on the Strawsonian approach.

The Strawsonian view is considered implausible by Millians because Millians naturally assume that if definite descriptions refer, then they contribute an individual to truth-conditions. So, 'the president' would contribute Bush to truth-conditions, which is quite implausible. Lasersohn's approach, however, allows for a more natural referential treatment of definite descriptions. The rough idea is that 'the' takes the intension of its argument and returns an extension at the world in question. So for the case of unembedded occurrences of 'the president', 'the' takes the intension of 'president' and returns Bush at the actual world. This version of the Strawsonian approach is considerably more plausible than the Millian version of the view. Add to this Lasersohn's very convincing arguments for adopting the Strawsonian approach and we have a very strong competitor to the Russellian stance.

I have often wondered the same thing

The Google Search function is a great resource for philosophers of language. Just realized that, contrary to what many thinkers have argued, 'wonder' does indeed select determiner phrases with a question meaning in natural language. Here are some search results:

(1) I’ve often wondered the same thing.
(2) Ever wondered the answer to any of these questions?
(3) Ever wondered the "right" way to describe swordfights?
(4) Stratford wondered the time line.
(5) If you've ever wondered the value of partner programs from software/hardware companies, let me give you my perspective from the front lines.
(6) Geisenberger wondered the price range.
(7) Hopkinson wondered the height of the tallest building in this neighborhood.

This datum, of course, has intrinsic interest. But what's the broader impact? Well, some thinkers have argued that determiner phrase complement clauses cannot be interpreted as concealed questions, because if they were, we should expect 'wonder' to select determiner phrases as complements. As 'wonder' does select determiner phrases as complements, determiner phrase complement clauses can (just maybe) be interpreted as concealed questions. Needless to say I was thrilled to discover this.

The Reasoner 1 (4)

The Reasoner Volume 1, Number 4 - August 2007

Table of Contents
1. Editorial - David Corfield
2. Interview with Brendan Larvor - David Corfield
3. Conceivability, Possibility, and Counterexamples - Anand Jayprakash Vaidya
4. A Counterfactual Account of Essence - Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno
5. Knowledge, Truth and Justification in Legal Fact Finding - Déirdre M. Dwyer
6. The Principle of Agreement - John L. Pollock
7. A Note on Kripke's Puzzle about Belief - Cristian Constantinescu

Feminist Philosophy and Separatism

In the comment section of this post an anonymous commenter raised the problem of separatism in feminist philosophy.

[Lemmings:] Another peculiarity: there were only 3 men in the audience, and one of them probably wouldn't have gone if I hadn't twisted his arm. One wonders whether male philosophers think female philosophers should solve this problem on their own.

[Commenter:] Alternative explanation: people mistakenly thought that only women were invited. Believe it or not, and if I didn’t misunderstand, this is the way it was for the session of the Society for Women in Philosophy in the recent Joint Session in Bristol. Apparently some women in philosophy do think that only women in philosophy are to care about women in philosophy!

I replied that one does not need an invitation to APA sessions, and that most APA members ought to know this. But the separatist attitude characteristic of many feminists is bound to spill over into feminist philosophy. Feminist philosophers has an interesting discussion of this problem. Jender admits that when someone pointed out to her that the editorial board of Hypatia consists almost exclusively of women, she was tempted to respond that this was as it should be given that the majority of feminist philosophers are women. But she quickly realized the problem with this sort of reply (just substitute 'Nous' for 'Hypotia', 'analytic' for 'feminist' and 'men' for 'women'). Furthermore, separatism may backfire when it comes to mainstreaming feminist philosophy. As Jender puts it:

People are more likely to know and respect journals they read. They are more likely to read journals in areas they work in. If men feel unwelcome in feminist philosophy, they’ll be unlikely to read feminist journals. With philosophy’s male/female ratios, how can we possibly hope to mainstream feminism and get widespread respect for feminist work if most of the profession feels sealed out of feminism

'Sealing out' men also perpetuates old stereotypes. In a couple of the departments I have been in, it is simply taken for granted that the women in the department will attend to all gender-related business. So while it is considered obvious that a significant number of men will partipate in the selection of job candidates, it is simply assumed without argument that meetings with the equal opportunity office etc. later in the process will be attended to by the women in the department. It is also very rare to see any men participate actively in institutes for women and gender studies. This is rather surprising given that the issues discussed at those places ought to be close to everyone's heart. Part of the problem, of course, is that the stereotyical feminist is a woman. Needless to say, this stereotype is very unfortunate. As a feminist just is someone who advocates the rights of women to have equal opportunities to those of men, everyone who thinks women have a right to be treated as equals ought to call themselves 'feminists' and ought to partake in activities related to feminism.

Live Footage of Bertrand Russell

Thanks to Eric Wiland for sending the link.

Philosophers' Carnival # 50

... is here.

Feminism According to the Man on the Street

"Feminists are just militant angry women trying to get their way in the world."
Charming.

Feminist Philosophy at Mainstream Journals

One commenter at the SWIP listserve noted that as an editor of a mainstream journal she didn't receive any submissions on feminism. Surprising? Well, as Feminist Philosophers point out, many feminist philosophers who have no trouble getting non-feminist work published in mainstream journals find it exceedingly hard to get their feminist work published in the same journals. Eventually they give up and send their work elsewhere.

Of course, there is something of a vicious circle here, which needs to be broken. One commenter notes that she thinks feminist philosophers should keep trying. Why? Because it will help to mainstream feminist philosophy:

those of us with secure jobs have something of an obligation to keep trying the mainstream journals (as long as this remains compatible with our sanity!). Getting papers in them will help to mainstream feminist philosophy, which really needs doing.

There is definitely the issue of mainstreaming feminist philosophy. There is also a different issue which wasn't mentioned in the post. Mainstream journals tend to send submitted articles to former journal contributors for refereeing. If few feminist philosophers publish in mainstream journal, one might suspect that even if submitted work on feminism is sent to very experienced and perhaps even sympathetic referees, such work may not always be refereed by the most qualified people working in the area.

Paperback Editions

A couple of books of interest to epistemologists, now in paper:

Vincent Hendricks, Mainstream and Formal Epistemology, Cambridge University Press, 2006, winner of Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title 2006.

Jon Kvanvig, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

According to the book catalogue, both will appear in paperback in fall 2007.

Happy Birthday, Lemmings!

Yup, it's his first birthday (and a store where you can buy "tasty" beverages and foods to go). Instead of a gift he's got a new outfit. I decided he shouldn't look like an old newspaper anymore. So I've added some stars and stripes (o.k. just kidding -- but I've added some colors which may change depending on my mood). Fortunately, the new outfit can be undone. So if I get too many boo! emails, we can always go back. Thanks to contributors and everyone who's sent me links, comments and suggestions this past year.

Interpreting Phrases in Philosophy Papers

Ever wondered what philosophers really mean when they speak in obscure phrases? Use this list to achieve better understanding.

"Although there are no definite answers to these questions ..."
My original hypothesis was wrong, but I still want to get published.

"Additional work is required to establish principle P."
I was unable to conjure up any genuine counterexamples to principle P.

"Of great theoretical and practical importance"
It is interesting to me or else I want it to be interesting to somebody with money who can fund some release time from teaching.

"It has long been known that ..."
I don't know the original reference.

"It is believed that ..."
I believe this (and either no one agrees with me or else I didn't consult anyone).

"It is generally believed that ..."
I believe this and at least one other person agrees with me.

"This example was originally due to NN"
NN came up with it in a bar at 3 a.m. in the morning at the last APA meeting. And if it doesn't work, I don't want to be blamed.

"I do not think the proposal succeeds"
And I have no reason to think it doesn't succeed.

"Nothing of substance hinges on this simplification"
I don't know how to deal with more complex cases.

"I know of no decisive evidence against theory T"
I know of plenty of evidence against it but in philosophy no evidence is decisive.

"I have no knock-down objections to principle P but I do have a couple of worries about it"
I have no evidence against principle P, just a couple of nitpickings that are not going to lead anywhere.

"I hope nevertheless that a more unified account will emerge from these considerations."
I have no new results to report but I need to get tenure so I will offer a better way to word some well-established principles.

"This view is not as counterintuitive as it first appears."
This view is counterintuitive, alright, but I am going to try to convince you that it is not.

"The aim of this paper is to show that NN's original theory is flawed"
NN has since revised his theory. But my counterexamples undermine only the original proposal.

"NN is therefore vulnerable to the criticism that P."
NN presented a knock-down objection to my theory at the last APA meeting; now, I'm going to show him who's the boss.

"Virtually everything that has just been said carries over to the case at hand."
You work it out. I am not sure how to.

"NN's brilliant insight that ..."
NN is a friend of mine who is considering me for a position in his department, and he proposed that ...

(HT: Dr. Free-Ride, who offers an interpretation of scientific phrases)

Save the Internet

Matt Bell brought this site to my attention. The site is devoted to the protection of network neutrality. What is network neutrality? Save the Internet explains:

Network Neutrality — or "Net Neutrality" for short — is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet.

Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.

Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.

If you want to help protect network neutrality, sign Save the Internet's petition, or simply check out the site.

New Semantics Journal

Kai von Fintel and David Beaver recently announced that they are going to start a new semantics journal called Semantics and Pragmatics. S & P will be open access, which means that there will be free online access to published articles. von Fintel and Beaver have also started a new blog devoted to the project. Speaking of which, Beaver just reported that S & F has been officially accepted as an "affiliated journal of the Linguistic Society of America as part of their eLanguage initiative". So, if you're working in semantics, there are now two respectable open access journals where you can send your work, the other being Philosophers' Imprint.

Call for Papers: Context, Perspective and Relativity

Context-Dependence, Perspective and Relativity in Language and Thought

Paris, Ecole Normale Supérieure, November 9-11, 2007

Keynote Speakers:

James Higginbotham (USC)
John MacFarlane (Berkeley)
John Perry (Stanford)
François Recanati (CNRS)
Jason Stanley (Rutgers)
Robert Stalnaker (MIT)

Submissions are invited for 30 min. talks. Only half a dozen slots are available for submitted contributions. Submissions should be sent in the form of an extended abstract (800-1000 words) to: relativism2007@gmail.com. Submission deadline: September 5, 2007.

Notification of acceptance: September 25, 2007. Authors of accepted contributions are responsible for their own travel and accommodation arrangements. (A list of hotels will be provided.) There are no registration fees.

The conference is sponsored by Institut Jean-Nicod and by Ecole Normale Supérieure (Department of Philosophy and Department of Cognitive Studies).

Organizers:

François Recanati (CNRS/Institut Jean Nicod)
Isidora Stojanovic (CNRS/Institut Jean Nicod)
Neftali Villanueva (Institut Jean Nicod)

Second Call for Papers: The Iowa Philosophical Society Meeting

Call for Papers: The Iowa Philosophical Society Meeting

When: Saturday, Oct.20, 2007
Where: Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA

Keynote Address by Paul Boghossian (NYU)

Papers should be prepared for approximately a
20 minute presentation. Submission deadline: Sept. 15, 2007.

Send abstracts of approximately 300 words to:

John Lemos at jlemos@coe.edu, or you may send them by regular mail to:

John Lemos
Dept. of Philosophy
Coe College
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

Announcement: Hintikka Conference

The Epistemology and Methodology of Jaakko Hintikka - a symposium in Hintikka's honor

November 16-17, 2007.
Roskilde University, Denmark

Sponsored by PHIS – The Danish Research School in Philosophy, History of Ideas and History of Science

Jaakko Hintikka's philosophical writings are some of the most lucid, enlightening and influential of the 20th century philosophy. They range from his pioneering work in epistemic logic over his interpretations of important historical figures like Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and Peirce, to his work on the philosophy of science and logic. A common denominator for his writings across the board is his special take on inquiry in both epistemological and methodological terms. In November 2007, Hintikka's collected papers on epistemology, entitled Socratic Epistemology, will be released with Cambridge University Press and what better occasion than this to reflect upon the epistemology and methodology of Jaakko Hintikka.

Invited Speakers

Adam Didrichsen
Vincent F. Hendricks
Jaakko Hintikka
Stig Andur Pedersen
Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen
Robert Stalnaker
Frederik Stjernfelt
Tim Williamson

The symposium is organized in such a way that there will be ample time for questions and answers, and thus the meeting furnishes a unique opportunity for PhD-students to get a thorough introduction to an important branch of contemporary philosophy.

Program
Saturday, November 17
09:30 – 10:00
Registration / Coffee
10:00 – 11:30
Jaakko Hintikka
11:45 – 13:15
Vincent F. Hendricks
13:15 – 14:00
Lunch
14:00 – 15:30
Robert Stalnaker
15:30 – 16:00
Coffee
16:00 – 17:30
Adam Didrichsen

Sunday, November 18
09:30 – 10:00
Coffee
10:00 – 11:30
Stig Andur Pedersen
11:45 – 13:15
Frederik Stjernfelt
13:15 – 14:00
Lunch
14:00 – 15:30
Tim Williamson
15:30 – 16:00
Coffee
16:00 – 17:30
Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen

Program and Organizing Committee
Vincent F. Hendricks
Frederik Stjernfelt
Stig Andur Pedersen

UPDATE: Note that the dates for the symposium are November 16-17, 2007, NOT November 17-18, as originally announced.

Some Links

Thom Brooks reports that the ESF, who recently published a new ranking of philosophy journals, has no plans to produce "journal rankings in other areas, such as the social sciences". As Thom notes, this is odd, if the aim is to give weight to such rankings in decisions about funding for grant proposals.

Brian Frances has an interesting post on second-order logic and Godel's first incompleteness theorem.

Michael Cholbi is curious to know from readers how the American Philosophical Association's Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy can "help its members as teachers".

Ivana Simic has opened a discussion of The Cautious Man Problem over at The Florida Student Philosophy Blog.

Joe Salerno has a new human rights and atrocities page.

Women in Philosophy Wiki

Noelle McAfee has created a women in philosophy wiki. If you consider yourself a woman in philosophy, you can add yourself to the list. Students and job seekers are welcome.

(Via Feminist Philosophers)

Parallel Earth Simulator

Possible world semantics put to good use, or The US military's new "war game"? From Slashdot:

The US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality. Putting supercomputers to an innovative use, the military is simulating our planet in an effort to predict the outcome of different scenarios. They might run tests to see how long 'you' can go without food or water, or how 'you' will respond to televised propaganda. Billions of nodes are created in the system, intended to reflect every man, woman, and child. 'Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project. Simulex is the company developing these systems, and they list pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among their private sector clients. The U.S. military is their biggest customer, apparently now running the most complex version of the system. JFCOM-9 is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence.

(Thanks to Ben Ricker for the link)

The Reasoner 1(3)

The Reasoner - issue 1(3) is now available. Joe and I wrote a short note for this month's issue, which discusses Timothy Williamson's line against non-trivial counterpossibles and replies to Alan Baker.

Hendricks and Stjernfelt on DR2

Vincent Hendricks and Frederik Stjernfelt will appear tonight on DR2's Deadline at 10:30 p.m., where they will discuss their new book Tal en Tanke.

UPDATE: Here is the link to the show.

Philosophers' Carnival # 49

... is here.

The Best Philosophy Journals

Via The Brooks Blog:

Best philosophy journals according to the European Science Foundation (incomplete list):

A
American Philosophical Quarterly
Analysis
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Biology and Philosophy
British Journal for the History of Philosophy
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Economics and Philosophy
Ethics
Journal of Philosophy
Kantian Review
Kant-Studien
Law and Philosophy
Linguistics and Philosophy
Midwest Studies in Philosophy
Mind
Mind and Language
Monist
Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic
Nous
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly
Philosophical Perspectives (Nous Supplement)
Philosophical Quarterly
Philosophical Review
Philosophical Studies
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Philosophy and Public Affairs
Philosophy of Science
Phronesis
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
Social Philosophy and Policy
Synthese

B
Ancient Philosophy
Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie
Argumentation
Asian Philosophy
Canadian Journal of Philosophy
Croatian Journal of Philosophy
Environmental Ethics
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
European Journal of Philosophy
Faith and Philosophy
Grazer Philosophische Studien
Inquiry
International Journal of Philosophical Studies
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
Journal of Applied Philosophy
Journal of Consciousness Studies
Journal of Ethics
Journal of Medical Ethics
Journal of Moral Philosophy
Journal of Political Philosophy
Journal of Value Inquiry
Legal Theory
Logique et Analyse
Metaphilosophy
Metaphysica
Minds and Machines
Modern Schoolman
Nietzsche Studien
Philosophia
Philosophical Issues (Nous Supplement)
Philosophical Papers
Philosophical Topics
Political Theory
Ratio
Res Publica
Review of Metaphysics
Social Theory and Practice
Southern Journal of Philosophy
Utilitas

C
Analyse und Kritik
Critique
Danish Yearbook of Philosophy
Das Argument
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie
Environmental Values
Ethical Perspectives
Fisosofisk Tidskrift
Filozoficky casopis
Hegel-Jahrbuch
LOGOS
Philosophica
Philosphical Investigations
Philosophie
Philosophy
Prima Philosophia
Reports on Philosophy
Sats
Studia Philosophica
Studies in East European Thought
Teorema
Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society

In my opinion, the list is fairly accurate as far as the mainstream journals go, though I think it would have been better to divide the A and B groups into more categories. Thom Brooks has some reasonable complaints (mostly) about the ranking of specialty journals.

UPDATE: There is an interesting discussion of the ESF's ranking of philosophy journals over at Leiter Reports.

FURTHER UPDATE: Noelle McAfee has expressed some worries about this ranking, which are well worth checking out. Also, there is an interesting discussion of ESF's ranking over at Knowledge and Experience.

Digby Wins Progressive Blogger Award

Joe Wilson, Digby, Rick Perlstein

No one knew the progressive blogger Digby's real identity -- until today, where she received the Progressive Blogger Award at the Take Back America conference. You can listen to her speech here.

New Paper

I have uploaded this paper on two-dimensionalism to my website. The paper is scheduled to appear in American Philosophical Quarterly, October 2007.

Around the Blogosphere

Joe has published a summary of our Williamson-on-counterpossibles note.

As Robbie points out, a number of 1-year positions are available at Leeds. If you are a recent Ph.D. and didn't land a permanent job yet, this seems like a nice opportunity.

Carrie Jenkins will appear on Philosophy Talk on August 12th.

Over at Feministe, Roy argues that children constitute an oppressed group.

Norman Finkelstein: Tenure Denied

The much-discussed Norman Finkelstein case ends dramatically with denial of tenure.

Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors and a Princeton graduate, was denied tenure at DePaul for exposing the exploitation of Jewish suffering. Finkelstein has published several book-length critiques of issues relating to the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finkelstein discusses, among other things, how prominent spokesmen for the Holocaust have turned the Holocaust into a money-making Industry. Elie Wiesel, a spokesperson for the Holocoast, charges a standard fee of $25,000 for revealing the secrets of the Holocoast, while real survivors such as Finkelstein's mother (a survivor of Majdanek camp and slave labor camps) received only $3,500 in compensation.

Finkelstein posted a letter from Depaul's president Dennis Holtschneider on his website two days ago. The letter alleges that tenure was denied because Finkelstein's scholarship is "deliberately hurtful" and clashes with the work of other scholars.

(Thanks to Matt Bell for the links)

UPDATE: Leiter has published a report covering the case. The petition mentioned by Leiter can be found here. There is also a student petition in support of Finkelstein.

Richard Rorty, 1931-2007

Reports are coming out that Richard Rorty died yesterday, June 8, 2007. Rorty was a leading figure in American Philosophy and Pragmatism (via Leiter).

UPDATE: Other memorial notices and obituaries can be found at TMP Cafe, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, WVEC, New York Times, and Progressive.

Pics from St. Andrews

Elizabeth Barnes has put some great photos from the St. Andrews adjectives conference and the metaphysics conference preceding it online. However, I think I remember people's "reactions to relativism" slightly differently. Re-interpretation:











Ross Cameron and Robbie Williams' reactions to the lack of metaphysics at the adjectives conference.











... and Jason Stanley's rejoinder. Ross wonders whether he went too far. Chris Kennedy and John Hawthorne execute their rights to remain silent.











Peter Ludlow, giving Jason the stare-down stink eye. Robbie, trying to keep his cool.











Jonathan Schaffer: "Robbie, don't you know how big contrastivism is going to be in a few years?!" [Robbie, smiling knowingly. Ross, showing signs of skepticism].











John Hawthorne at 2AM: "Arrrggg, I am on the program at 9 AM in the morning, and I still haven't worked out what to say."











Jonathan and I, illustrating the size of the claws of Australian Magpies.











Breakfast: Ross' reaction to White Pudding.

Philosophers' Carnival # 48

... is here.

The Reasoner 1 (2)

Alan Baker has published a reply to our note on counterpossibles in the latest issue of the Reasoner. Naturally, we are now working on a reply to his reply.

Epistemology in Copenhagen

The spring conference season is coming to an end. Just got back (to my usual location in Copenhagen) from a very stimulating epistemology conference organized by Klemens Kappel, who (as usual) did a fantastic job. Speakers included: Duncan Pritchard ("A Two-Tiered Relevant Alternatives Theory"), Erik Olsson ("Reliabilism, Stability, and the Value of Knowledge"), Nikolaj Nottelman ("Two Problems of Justification Transmission in Light of the Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification"), Erik Carlsson [impersonated by Erik Olsson] ("Williamson on the Causal Efficacy of Knowing"), Kristoffer Ahlstrom ("On Empirical Investigation in Epistemology"), Berit Brogaard ("What Mary Did Yesterday: Reflections on Knowledge-wh") and Esben Nedenskov ("What does it take to make sense of skepticism?"). Discussants included (among many others): Lars Bo Gundersen, Eline Busck Gundersen, Jesper Kallestrup, Klemens Kappel, and Anders Schoubye. I talked about knowledge-wh and got great feed-back from the audience, especially from Jesper and Anders. A little anecdote. After Friday's sessions we met at the local corner bar, close to the old KUA. The restaurant Sult, where the conference dinner was supposed to take place, is located just a few kilometers from the conference location (the new KUA), and the weather was super-nice; so Lars Bo Gundersen and I decided to walk. Klemens had explained how to get to the restaurant but Lars and I apparently didn't listen. I guess we thought others would know. As we started walking we realized we had no idea where we were going. I remembered Klemens mention Gothersgade (a street) and Lars remembered him mention Kongens Have (a large park). As we approached those locations we started asking people for directions. But as "Sult" means "Hunger" in Danish, people didn't take us very seriously (the restaurant is actually named after Henning Carlsen's film version of a famous Knut Hamsun novel). When asked, people looked for hidden cameras. Happy ending: we finally found the restaurant but mistakenly entered through the staff door in the back and came out through the kitchen. Anyway, it was a very fun dinner and night, and the next day we were all a bit tired but managed to carry on at a normal activity level with the help of a moderate amount of more or less well-tasting coffee.

Links

Carrie Jenkins is scheduled to appear on Philosophy Talk in August.

New feminist blog (HT: Sally Haslanger)

Philosophers' Carnival # 47 is here.

UPDATE: Links to discussions of the status of women in philosophy can be found here and here (HT: Feminist Philosophers).

FURTHER UPDATE: Feminist Philosophers reports that women are less likely to thrive in environments with less than 30% women in top positions.

St. Andrews

Just returned to Copenhagen after a few intense days in St. Andrews at the adjectives conference. Sharon Coull, Herman Cappelen and Jason Stanley did a great job organizing the conference. In fact, Sharon's contribution was so excellent that she ended up with several job offers from conference participants. "Jason-Billy-Whizz" chaired all sessions, except his own, which was chaired by Ludlow. That added to the fun. Some highlights: Chris Kennedy defended a version of his famous degree account of gradable adjectives, Delia Fara showed how allowing relativity to comparison classes and respects can be used to solve Kit Fine's puzzle of coincidence, Gabriel Segal and Daniel Rothschild argued that gradables are indexicals, Peter Ludlow defended a variation on this view, according to which gradables are associated with hidden domain variables, John Hawthorne offered objections to Stanley's nominal restriction strategy, Paul Pietroski offered a new theory of gradables as monadic predicates, Jonathan Schaffer offered reasons against a relativistic account of predicates of personal taste and defended a contextual variant, and Stanley defended an anti-Chomskian line with respect to the adjective "average" (as it occurs in 'the average American has 2.3 children'). Stanley's theory predicts that the following examples (due to Gabriel Segal) are infelicitous:

The average American has 2.3 children, and he sends all of them to college
The average American has 2 children, he used to have 3, and now he is worried about his fertility
The average American has 2 children, he used to have 3 and wonders where the last one went (perhaps he went to college).

The award-winning Central Pub close to the Arche Research Center (picture) formed a natural meeting place for drinks after the talks. More reports from DK epistemology workshops will follow.

Report from Great Britain

Just a quick update from Great Britain. We have now arrived in St. Andrews and are looking forward to the amazing talks starting today. Our tour of Great Britain began about a week ago with a fantastic Epistemology and Linguistics conference, organized by Martijn Blaauw. Kent Bach opened with Bach-y solutions to a number of problems in epistemology, including the apparent shiftiness of the truth-value of knowledge-attributions. Joe then talked about the most general factive mental state operator (and guess what? It ain't 'knows that'). I was next with my new cleft approach to knowledge-wh. Meanwhile there were other fun parallel sessions going on. As for the other keynote addresses, my friend Peter Ludlow concluded on the first day with a talk on knowledge reports and indexicality. Ram Neta replied. The next day my soon-to-be-colleague Jonathan Schaffer came on stage and showed that if the knowledge account of assertion is correct, then we ought to be contrastivists. After some super-interesting parallel sessions we reached the grand finale: Jason Stanley's talk on knowledge and action. Actually, it was, strictly speaking, Stanley and John Hawthorne's joint talk. But Stanley covered it brilliantly alone, with a very interesting reply from Duncan Pritchard.

So much for the serious part of the conference. After all the talks and dinners we waisted valuable time drinking ale, scotch and the like at Scottish clubs. And don't ask Stanley or Ludlow whether they went to Babylon, because they will most certainly deny it. Anyway, pictures will follow, as soon as Ludlow will allow it.

After Aberdeen we went to a nice mini-conference in Edinburgh. The conference was organized by Jesper Kallestrup and Matthew Chrisman, and the speakers included Ram Neta, Duncan Pritchard, Jonathan Schaffer, Joe and I. A fantastic day and a fantastic night out in Edinburgh. We then went down to Manchester and York and have just arrived back in Scotland. That is, we arrived yesterday, and we finally got to meet the famous philosopher of language Gabriel Segal whose work I have replied to on earlier occasions. The adjectives conference (which is organized by Herman Cappelen and Jason Stanley) begins today. So expect more updates. Next week I will report from various workshops in Copenhagen.

Trip to Europe

I am off to Europe. My paper for Aberdeen is available here. After Aberdeen Joe and I are presenting something on subjunctives, impossible worlds and two-dimensionalism in Edinburgh (we will also give our new account of essences). After Edingburgh I am off to England. Then back to Scotland to St. Andrews. I will be taking a sidetrip to Copenhagen as well. See you in a month.

Trolling and the Public Woman

Kathy Sierra, a female technology blogger, was recently so severely threatened online that she had to cancel all her public speaking engagements and stay inside her house for fear that the online stalker would track her down. The Kathy Sierra incident is a severe case of what is called 'trolling'. According to Blogging Feminism, trolling is 'a particular use of commenting on blogs: commenting intended to stop the ongoing conversation or to turn it into a fight'. Trolling can take various forms, from comments with unrelated content or content questioning the importance of the topics discussed to insults, threats, and harassments intended to question the authority, integrity, intelligence or fundamental human rights of bloggers – typically female bloggers. Blogging Feminism lists some examples of moderately severe trolling. In one of them the troll expresses a wish to torture and rape women. Not all trolling is that severe. It can also take the form of regular spam posted in the comments section of a blog.

The sort of trolling feminist bloggers experience is typically the most severe. As Jill from Blogging Feminism points out, the fact that women bloggers are subject to this sort of discrimination has a lot to do with the old-fashioned picture of respectable women as domestic creatures. She writes:

The original "public woman" was the prostitute. Men have traditionally occupied the public space (including the political), while women were relegated to the domestic -- or at least, certain kinds of women were relegated to the domestic. Cloistering women away or at least keeping them tied to domestic duties has long been a sign of socioeconomic class, from ancient Greece through Victorian England through the 1950s and The Feminine Mystique. "Other" women -- poor women, women of color -- worked outside the home. The lowest class of women were the publicly available ones. And public availability was tied to sexual availability.

I would like to think that this picture of the public woman has changed. But the recent incidents in the blogosphere indicate that it has not. In this regard it is noticeable that, while educated women with a bachelor's degree or higher are in the majority in America, working women in America are still in the minority, and their earnings are considerably lower than those of men. Here are some stats:

Percent of women 25 to 29 who had attained a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2005: 32%
Percent of men 25 to 29 who had attained a bachelor's degree or higher in 2005: 25%.

Percent of women 16 or older who participated in the labor force in 2005: 59%.
Percent of men 16 or older who participated in the labor force in 2005: 73%.

The median annual earnings of women 16 or older who worked year-round, full time, in 2005: $32,168
Women earned 77 cents for every $1 earned by men.

The difference is quite noticeable. Only 59% of adult women participate in the labor force. The fact that some of these women do not participate owing to the fact that they attend colleges and universities does not explain this difference. And needless to say, the fact that men earn more than women in spite of the fact that women, on average, are better educated is atrocious. The stats confirm that the old-fashioned gender-roles haven't yet been wiped out.

(Thanks to Sally Haslanger for the S&F Online link)

Materials Concerning Women and Minorities in Philosophy

Sally Haslanger has posted the available data concerning the status of women and other minorities in philosophy at the SGRP site. Her paper on the status of women in philosophy, which she presented at the Central Meeting of the APA, 2007, is available here (HT: Brian Weatherson).

Reflections on Donkey Sentences

Philosophers and linguists tend to agree that donkey sentences such as:

(1) If a farmer buys a donkey, he vaccinates it

are deeply problematic. What they tend to disagree about is how best to deal with them. My students sometimes wonder why (1) is thought to be problematic at all. It just says that for all farmers x and all donkeys y, if x buys y, then x vaccinates y, doesn't it? The problem with this reply is that it treats 'a farmer' and 'a donkey' (constructions that look like existentially quantified constructions) as universally quantified constructions.

There are numerous alternative proposals in the literature. And old and famous one is David Lewis'. (1) is to be understood as containing an implicit adverb (e.g. 'always', or 'generally'). The adverb is thought to bind both variables. It is a so-called unselective quantifier quantifying over pairs, triples, or whatever (in this case, pairs of farmers and donkeys standing in certain relations).

Lewis' view runs into trouble. Consider:

(2) If a farmer buys a donkey, he usually vaccinates it.

Given Lewis' view, (2) is true iff for most farmer-donkey-bought-by-farmer pairs, the farmer in the pair vaccinates the donkey. But consider now a scenario with 31 farmers and 130 donkeys. 1 rich farmer buys exactly 100 donkeys and vaccinates all of them. 30 poor farmers buy exactly one donkey each but do not vaccinate it. There are then 100 farmer/donkey pairs (of the right sort) where the farmer and the donkey stand in the vaccination relation. And there are 30 farmer/donkey pairs (of the right sort) where the farmer and the donkey do not stand in the vaccination relation. Since most farmer-donkey-bought-by-farmer pairs are such that the farmer in the pair vaccinates the donkey, Lewis' view predicts that (2) is true. but intuitively, it is false. This is the so-called 'proportion problem'.

There is also the so-called D-type account (defended by numerous people, including Stephen Neale). On this view, donkey pronouns go proxy for numberless descriptions. For example, in (1) the 'it' goes proxy for 'the donkey(s)'. The D-type approach predicts that (1) is equivalent to 'every farmer who buys a donkey vaccinates every donkey he buys'.

In my talk at the Central Meeting, I argued that a problem arises for this account (Neale acknowledges that this is a problem in a footnote in an article from 1990, and if I remember correctly, he also refers to a personal correspondence he had with Heim).

Consider a different scenario in which 10 farmers (the only ones) buy 10 donkeys each and vaccinate 9 of them. The majority of informants report that (1) is true in these circumstances. But the D-type approach predicts that it should be false. A similar problem arises in the following case:

(3) If a farmer buys a donkey, he sometimes vaccinates it.

The majority of informants report that (3) is true if the only 10 farmers buy 10 donkeys each and vaccinate 3 of them.

I argued that we need to treat donkey pronouns as plural definite descriptions (using plural variables, in line with Boolos), and I then appealed to an earlier paper of mine in which I argued that plural definite descriptions function as partitive constructions at a subsequent level of analysis [my paper is forthcoming in Mind and Language, and also contains a precis of the donkey proposal].

I then said that the force of the partitive construction will depend on the monotonicity properties of the adverb (or initial quantifier in the case of relative clause doneky sentences). As a rule, the partitive that goes proxy for the pronoun inherits the force of the adverb of quantification (or initial quantifier in the case of relative clause donkey sentences) when the quantifier is upward-entailing in the VP. When the quantifier is downward entailing in the VP, the partitive has existential force. I also said that this cannot be the whole story, because of so-called weak and strong readings. I won't go over that again.

Before continuing let me just summarize how to test for monotonicity.

Right-upward monotonic (upward-entailing in VP, or just upward-entailing, e.g., 'some', 'most', 'almost all', 'every', 'all')
DFs are Gs
All Gs are Hs
DFs are Hs

Left-upward monotonic (upward-entailing in NP, e.g. 'not every', 'some')
DFs are Gs
All Fs are Hs
DHs are Gs

Right-downward monotonic (downward-entailing in VP, or just downward-entailing, e.g. 'no', 'not every', 'at most 3')
DFs are Gs
All Hs are Gs
DFs are Hs

Left-downward monotonic (downward-entailing in NP, e.g. 'every')
DFs are Gs
All Hs are Fs
DHs are Gs.

Non-monotone: e.g., 'exactly 3'

What I want to focus on here is Jessica Rett's most interesting example:

(4) Not every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.

Rett took me to be saying that when a quantifier is upward-entailing in the NP the partitive inherits its force from the quantifier and when it is downward-entailing in the NP the partitive is existential. But that can't be right, as 'every' is not upward-entailing in its NP.

Anyway, if we follow me in taking the partitive to have existential force when the quantifier is downward-entailing in its VP, and if we follow Rett in taking 'not every' to be a quantifier construction, then we should expect (4) to be equivalent to:

(5) Not every farmer who owns a donkey beats at least one of the donkey(s) he owns.

This may or may not be a good reading of (4). I will get back to this later.

An alternative is to say that 'not every' is not a quantifier construction at all. We might treat 'not' as a sentential operator. 'Every' is then the quantifier, and the relevant quantifier in (4) is then upward-entailing in its VP. So, we'd get:

(6) Not every farmer who owns a donkey beats all the donkeys he owns.

So which one (if any) is the best reading of (4)?

I have now pilot-tested this on students. The majority actually got (5) as the most natural reading. Here is how I tested it (thanks to Barbara Abbott for helping me think through this -- most of what follows is from a correspondence with her, and for the most part I am using her formulations -- all mistakes are mine).

If 'not' is a sentence negation, then

(4) Not every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.

should be true if (6) is false:

(6) Every farmer who owns a donkey beats all the donkeys he owns.

E.g. if one farmer beat all but one of his donkeys (and all the other farmers beat all of them), then (4) would be true.

On the other hand if 'not every' is a quantifier, then (4) would be true if (5) is true (since 'not every' as a quantifier is downward entailing in the VP):

(5) Not every farmer who owns a donkey beats at least one of the donkeys he owns.

(5) would not be true in the circumstance given above (where all the farmers beat all their donkeys except for one, who spares just one). Instead, we'd need to have at least one farmer sparing all of his donkeys, and not just one.

In testing this I presented students with sentence (4):

(4) Not every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.

and asked: If one farmer beat all but one of his donkeys (and all the other farmers beat all of them), is (4) true? The majority answered 'no'.

So, interestingly, if my proposal is right, then it is indeed the monotonicity properties of 'not every' that matter in this case and not the monotonicity properties of 'every'. That is, (4) comes out as 'not every farmer who owns a donkey beats at least one of the the donkeys he owns'.

Thanks to Barbara Abbott, Jessica Rett, and the audience.

Impossible Objects

In this eery short story from 1997 written by Graham Priest the main character finds a mysterious box in Richard Sylvan's home. The story reminded me of the importance of being intellectually unassuming. Even if classical logic is true, it is far from clear that we know that it is. As a minimum, Priest's line should bring about some doubt and maybe some intellectual modesty.

Sleepless Nights for Graduate Students and Department Heads

Jonathan Wolff has started writing a monthly column for the Guardian. The post on sleepless nights can be found here (HT: The Boundaries of Language and Leiter)

The Reasoner vol. 1 no. 1

From Certain Doubts:

The first issue of The Reasoner, volume 1, no 1, is now online. Feature articles by Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno, Laurence Goldstein, Amit Pundik, and Gregory Wheeler. The deadline for vol. 1, no. 2 is May 15.

Joe Salerno has a post summarizing one of the arguments from our short contribution to the counterpossibles debate.