An odd quantifier shift fallacy

I was flipping through the course packet for my Intro class this semester, and the professor included a chapter from some contemporary textbook. The chapter includes this paraphrase of Anselm's second ontological argument:

Premise 1: A being that cannot be thought of as not existing is greater than a being that can be thought of as not existing.

Therefore, if God can be thought of as not existing, then a greater being that cannot be thought of as not existing can be thought of.

Premise 2: God is the being than which nothing greater can be thought of.

Conclusion: God cannot be thought of as not existing.

Which is a little weird. But it's the ontological argument, so I guess weird shouldn't be a surprise.

Let Gxy abbreviate `x is greater than y' and Tx abbreviate `x can be thought of as not existing', and g name God.

(1) (x)(y)([-Tx & Ty] -> Gxy)
Therefore, Tg -> (Ex)(-Tx & Gxg)
(2) (x)(-Gxg)
Conclusion: -Tg

Even if we include both premisses in the inference to the `therefore', it's invalid. The hypothesis that God can be thought of as not existing does not imply that there is something which cannot be thought of as not existing. That is, a model in which only g exists, and g does T, is entirely consistent with (1).

One might try to read Anselm as instead arguing from

(1') (x)(Tx -> (Ey)(-Ty & Gyx))

Then the `therefore' follows by just instantiating the universal quantifier. Notice that (1') follows from the conjunction of (1) and

(1'') (x)(Tx -> (Ey)-Ty)

That is, `if something can be thought of as not existing, then something else cannot be thought of as not existing'. But what does the first clause have to do with the second? Maybe (just maybe) you can argue from the contingent-yet-actual existence of my chair to the existence of a necessary, first cause sort of being -- something had to cause my chair to be, and something had to cause that thing to be, and so on. But that won't work if the something is, say, my pet unicorn. Logically speaking, there's no reason to rule out the model with the empty domain -- in possible world terms, there's no reason given at this stage of the argument to rule out the possibility that nothing (not even God) exists.

Whosajiggawah?

From a DK diary, via Paul Krugman.

The UnFair Tax

I know I link to Ezra a lot, but well, he writes some good stuff. Anyway, he's got an article up about why Mike Huckabee's "Fair Tax" proposal is not very fair. Next week he's promising to have a post exploring some ways that you *could* do a fair consumption tax. I think it's a safe bet I'll be linking to those as well.

The Fountainhead is a piece of crap

I've studiously avoided Ayn Rand, but this semester I'm sitting in on a political philosophy seminar that's starting off with a nod to Rand's egoism. For the first meeting last night, we watched the 1949 film version of The Fountainhead. Rand personally adapted her novel to the screen -- indeed, at her insistence, the tedious and hyperbolic trial speech (running about 6 minutes, according to Wikipedia), was included in its entirety despite the director's desire to tighten things up. My review is below the fold.

First, the basic plot, for those of you lucky enough to have neither read nor seen this horrible novel and too lazy to read through the Wikipedia synopsis. Howard Roark is an uncompromising, individualist architect whose modernist designs are, besides being incredibly ugly, hated by the architectural establishment. Peter Keating is his parasitic conformist kind-of-friend and fellow architect, who is initially successful because of his mediocre talent and willingness to conform to the stylistic dictates of the establishment. Ellsworth Toohey is Roark's great nemesis -- the architectural columnist for The Banner, Toohey's desire is to control others by promoting a philosophy of conformity, mediocrity, and anti-individualism. Since Toohey cannot bend Roark to his will, he naturally wants to destroy Roark. Dominique Francon is Roark's love interest; more on her later. Gail Wynand is a newspaper magnate, editor-in-chief of The Banner. At the beginning of the narrative, Wynand has become wealthy and powerful by pandering to public opinion -- The Banner celebrates mediocrity and conformity, with Toohey as its public face. However, after encountering Roark, Wynand realises that uncompromising individualism is the only true virtue. While he endeavours to follow Roark's model, he is ultimately unsuccessful, and temporarily reverts to pandering to public opinion for the sake of his financial interests in the third act. For about half of the narrative, Wynand is married to Francon, despite her complete lack of affection for him.

In the first act, young Roark is spectacularly unsuccessful because of his unwillingness to compromise his unpopular designs, while Keating has rapidly risen to the top of the profession by embracing a mediocre and ugly design aesthetic. Roark is so unwilling to compromise his principles that he eventually takes a job in a quarry rather than produce ugly buildings. Meanwhile, Francon has withdrawn from a world of hideous mediocrity. Meeting Roark by chance, they are initially drawn to each other, but Francon is frightened of what a cruel, conformist world will do to an individual spirit, and withdraws. At the end of the first act, Roark receives a commission from an admirer of his work, a wealthy industrialist and `self-made man' who is otherwise unimportant to the plot.

The second act sees Roark's star rising. Toohey attempts to oppose Roark's success, inciting a public opposition campaign using his newspaper column -- a campaign which Wynand approves to increase the sales of his papers. This campaign is unsuccessful, and Roark receives commission after commission. Francon and Roark meet again, but again she is more worried about what society will do to an individualist spirit, and she runs off to Wynand. Several years later, with Roark a successful but controversial architect, Wynand commissions Roark to design his country home -- a `temple' to his wife. Wynand has complete forgotten the smear campaign against Roark, but Roark does not hold this against him. Wynand comes to admire Roark, and despite the romantic tension between Roark and Dominique, the three become close friends, a tightly-knit group of individualists. Peter Keating, meanwhile, has gradually lost his prominent position, and in a desperate bid to recover, agrees to attempt the design for a low-cost housing development. Due to his mediocrity, Keating is unsuccessful, and turns to Roark for assistance. Roark agrees, because solving the low-cost housing problem is something that happens to personally interest him (and not, in particular, out of any desire to help the destitute and homeless), but only if Keating does not allow the design to be compromised -- it must be built according to Roark's design, or not at all. Of course, this does not happen, and the establishment architects appropriate Roark's design `for the common good', modifying it. At the end of the second act, Roark destroys the nearly-completed development in an act of civil disobedience.

The third act focusses on Roark's trial. It is never clear exactly what the charges are supposed to be -- presumably, the destruction of the buildings owned by the developers -- but the two sides are Randian individualism versus the `collectivism' of the establishment. Toohey condemns Roark in the court of public opinion, Wynand betrays Roark by letting Toohey do it, but Roark triumphs in the end.

On to my analysis. In terms of a piece of literature and film, this thing is godsawful. The writing is stilted, hyperbolic, and repetitive, with all the subtlety of a brick in the face. Every single line is clearly intended to identify a character as either a noble individualist, a parasitic and contemptible conformist, or, in Wynand's case, torn between the two. To call the characters two-dimensional would be too generous. Every major character is either an annoying sycophant or an arrogant douchebag; none of them are in the least bit likable, but I suppose this is deliberate on Rand's part. Apparently we're supposed to admire the fact that Roark doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. From a film standpoint, the acting is horrible, the music is overwraught, and the cinematography is listless and uninteresting. The passion between Roark and Francon is as smouldering and compelling as a bucket of water.

In philosophical terms, Rand is sort of the crib notes version of Nietzsche, only on steroids. Wikipedia gives a reasonable summary of Rand's individualism:

Rather than using "selfish" in describing choosing one's interests over and against the welfare of others, she described an act as "selfish" if it remained true to one's ideals against the influence of history and society. "Selflessness" is the concept of losing one's self, not merely acting without regard for one's self or in the interest of others, but as being unable to determine and form one's desires and opinions.

At least, this is what Rand says. She's not consistent in applying this, however. I'll illustrate this by examining each of the five major characters in turn. So, at best, this characterisation is an oversimplification.

Keating is the easiest: he is clearly shown to be unable to determine and form his own opinions and desires. However, he's not a villain; he's just contemptible and pathetic.

Roark is also supposed to be easy to categorise: he doesn't give a shit about other people's opinions at any point in the film, and therefore is a selfish hero.

But contrast Roark with Toohey, the great villain of the narrative. Toohey achieves greatness and power -- at least temporarily -- by manipulating the opinions and desires of others. But he clearly has his own opinions and desires. He's entirely selfish, in both the standard and Rand's sense: he chooses his own interests over and against the welfare of others (even as he appropriates this rhetoric for his own gain) and never compromises his principled, Machiavellian pursuit of power.

Furthermore, Roark's groupies -- Francon and Wynand -- should properly be seen as just as contemptible as Keating. They're identified as praiseworthy not for being individualists but because, unlike Toohey, they think Roark is the shiznit. The times when Wynand is portrayed negatively are especially telling: Wynand twice chooses to demonise Roark for the sake of maintaining his wealth and power as a newspaper mogul. Clearly, in these cases, he's acting according to his own desires and opinions -- like Toohey, he's choosing to pursue his own power according to his own best sense of the way to do that. So, like Toohey, he can't be fairly demonising for not being an individualist, because he acts in a selfish way (in both senses) consistently throughout the film. Rather, he's demonised when he doesn't kiss Roark's ass and sing his praises.

Francon's in a similar position. Up through the middle of the second act, Francon is portrayed as disgusted and fearful of the world. Roark's presence in her life, starting in the second act, finally gives her courage and purpose. She is clearly inspired by Roark's professions of individualism. That is, like Keating, she derives her desires and opinions from others -- Roark rather than Toohey -- and, hence, is no more of a true individualist than Keating. At the end of the second act, she happily risks her life to help Roark destroy the housing development, with no expectation of anything in return from him. Does that sound consistent with Rand's opposition to altruism to you?

Now, from comments Rand made throughout her life, it's clear that she identifies heavily with Roark and the other positively-portrayed selfish assholes of her works of fiction. Consequently, the real villains in Rand's universe aren't `conformists' or `collectivists'. They're other individualists who are Rand's rivals. Similarly, the real heroes aren't `individualists'. They're people with whom Rand identifies, and their groupies.

Rand's philosophy isn't individualist at all. It's a cult of personality, built around the worship of Ayn Rand, sycophantically praising her for her complete and utter assholitry.

Another Quick Note

Just in case anyone out there cares, I'm officially on Facebook these days. I must say that I do prefer it to Myspace, if only because I haven't come across any horrifically ugly modified pages and the site also has tons of games.

My Random Thought Of The Day

Hey, when you're walking around with change in both pockets, does anyone else imagine that you're wearing spurs?

Let's just top that racism off with a nice big scoop of sexism, too

NYT:

Though women and men have roughly the same credit scores, the Consumer Federation of America found that women were 32 percent more likely to receive subprime loans than men. The disparity existed within every income and ethnic group. Blacks and Latinos are also more likely to get subprime loans than comparable white borrowers.

Unlike earlier analyses that revealed clear racism on the part of lenders -- Black and Latin@ applicants were actively encouraged by loan officers to apply for larger mortgages than White applicants of the same income and credit score, and hence got worse terms for their loans -- this article does not suggest explicit racism. Instead, blame is laid on the fact that women are generally poorer than men.

Which is rather dumb, since the analysis controls for income.

“The striking thing is that the disparity between men and women actually goes up as income rises,” said Allen J. Fishbein, director of credit and housing policy for the Consumer Federation of America. Among high earners — defined as people earning twice the median income — black women are as much as five times more likely to receive subprime mortgages than white men.

A better explanation? Not structural sexism, but good old fashioned misogyny.

Mr. Fishbein said that even at high-income levels, mortgage brokers may assume that women are less confident to negotiate or shop around, and so offer them higher rates. A survey in 2006 by Prudential Financial found that two-thirds of women graded themselves at C or lower in their knowledge of financial services or products.

The payments rates are astounding. One woman bought a $130k house four years ago. Her initial payment was $841 a month, which is about 0.65% of the principle. Assuming a 30 year mortgage, at that payment she would pay the bank just under 232% of the principle. But her payment more than doubled after 2 years, to $1769 a month. That's 1.36% of the principle. Over 30 years, she would pay the bank just under 472% of the principle, or about $613.6K.

Nearly two-thirds of a million dollars, for what sounds like a dinky little townhouse in a lower middle class neighbourhood. At an average $15 an hour, 40 hours a week, 51 weeks a year, it would take someone 20 years worth of work just to earn that much money. That's half of your life's wages, just to buy a house.

And lest you argue that `they shouldn't be buying a house if they can't afford it':

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which buy loans from mortgage lenders, have estimated that 15 percent to 50 percent of the subprime loans they bought in 2005 went to borrowers whose credit scores indicated they were qualified for prime loans.

Yes, they couldn't afford the usurious subprime loans. But their credit scores say a significant percentage could have afforded prime loans.

A Project!

It's been a good long time since I set any kind of blogging goal for myself, but I think I've found one. Ezra has an interesting review up at the Barnes & Noble web site of Larry Sabato's A More Perfect Constitution. Now, I haven't the book, though it certainly sounds interesting, but the central premise is that the Constitution is horribly out of date and should be replaced by an entirely new version composed at a constitutional convention. While I agree with Ezra that a constitutional convention in our modern world of politics is a potentially scary thought indeed, I am rather intrigued by what I might put into my own Constitution if I was given the reigns.

So here's the plan: I'm going to work my way through the Bill of Rights first because it's the most fun part and therefore the part most likely for me to actually do before my mind wanders. I don't think any of the Amendments are perfect, so I'll be changing all of them at least a bit. After the Bill of Rights I'll pick and choose which Amendments to discuss (I think it hardly needs mentioning that it's unnecessary to include or discuss prohibition and its repeal). If by some monumental stroke of luck I manage to make it this far I'll start my way through the Constitution proper. I have no idea what kind of timeline this is going to be on, but hopefully the posts will be at least weekly.

Oh, and I'm also going to want lots of feedback from you guys, particularly points of disagreement.

Back from vacation

and what a shitty vacation it was. Blogging to resume when I feel less mildly depressed about the state of the world and my place in it.

Preventable Deaths

Ezra's got a great post about the 101,000 people that have died from preventable illnesses between 1998 and 2002. And I heard nearly all the Republican candidates wax poetic about how we have the greatest healthcare system in the world. Link.

Request A Song

Hey Rock Banders, did you know that if you sign up for a profile on the Rock Band Community page you not only get information on your bands, but you can request songs for downloadable content. I really really really wanted to request a Dream Theater song, but ultimately decided it'd be just too damn hard to adapt to the game, particularly on the drums. Damn you Portnoy! Anyway, as a second choice I went with William Shatner's version of "Common People". Link.

Post your picks in the comments!

Here are my runners up:
Alice Cooper - Feed My Frankenstein
Anthrax - Catharsis
The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)
The Blasters - Dark Night
Boston - Peace of Mind
Bruce Dickenson - Chemical Wedding
The Cars - Just What I Needed (also, My Best Friend's Girl would rock)
Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey
Journey - too many to choose from, but let's go with Any Way You Want It
The Killers - Mr. Brightside
Led Zepplin - Immigrant Song
Metallica - Master of Puppets (I think we're actually going to get this whole album)
Prince - Kiss
Pink Floyd - Have A Cigar
Porcupine Tree - Trains
Queen - Flash Gordon Theme
Queensrÿche = Jet City Woman
Santa Esmeralda - Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Stevie Ray Vaughn - Mary Had A Little Lamb
Tito and Tarantula - Angry Cockroaches
The Trap - Big Girls
Trey Parker - America, Fuck Yeah

A Few Things

The Perry Bible Fellowship is the best web comic I've discovered in a long time. Link.

Gilbert Arenas cheats at Halo 3. Link.

Rez (a precursor to Guitar Hero and Rock Band) is coming to Xbox Live Arcade soon. Link.

One More Quesada

CBR has a five part interview with Joe Quesada, (1, 2, 3, 4) the last of which should be available some time later today. They discuss the recent and very controversial Spiderman story (at least among internet nerds) One More Day and it's followup, Brand New Day. There's all kinds of drama surrounding this thing, from Quesada's long stated hatred of Peter Parker being married to Joe Straczynski's online statement that his final two scripts were altered to the point that he asked for his name to be removed from the book. It's all been a pretty interesting look behind the scenes of a big comics event, but I have to say that though I haven't read the actual book, the more I read about this the more I tend to side with Quesada. I may not agree with him all the time, but he always seems quite reasonable to me.

Ron Paul

I've been annoyed during this presidential run by some of the support that Ron Paul has been getting from some young left leaning people who clearly don't understand that Paul's not just running against the war in Iraq. He's got the full suite of libertarian ideas and most of those would be pretty terrible in practice, but when he's on a stage next to most of the jokers in the Republican primary he seem pretty reasonable. Anyway, Ezra voices this frustration in a much more reasoned way. Link.

Ho Ho Ho!

Where's my cookie?!

Vacation

I'm currently finishing up grading and doing laundry before heading off to California on Monday. My internet access will be spotty until I'm back in the SB, so I'll see you all in about three weeks.

Drivers, Start Your Crashes

What's that? A political post? Well we can't have that at the top of the page! For those that have an Xbox 360 or PS3 and didn't know, the demo for Burnout Paradise is ready for you to download a month before the game comes out. I hear it's very good.

For those hoping to get a Wii for the holidays (yeah yeah, it's for someone else I'm sure), Nintendo and Gamestop are now offering rain checks which Nintendo says will be honored by January. Since right now getting a Wii is as much divine grace as seeing Mary in your Cheerios this might be a good deal for the Wii-less, though it's not quite as satisfying to unwrap. Link.

Is It Fair? Do You Like It?

Ezra's got a post up about the possibility of switching from an income tax to a consumption tax. He makes the point that a consumption tax has positives and can indeed be made progressive if that's what you wanted from it. This is, of course, spawning out of Mike Huckabee's support for such a tax. Link.

Ok, I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that you could make any tax more progressive and fair, but that's now why Gov. Huckabee is supporting the change. Like so many calls for altering the tax system, Steve Forbes' Flat Tax proposal came to my mind, the argument is always that the change should be made because it's simple. We're told that the current tax code is over complicated and taxing in a different manner will eliminate such confusion. This is simply wrong. There's no reason an income tax *must* be complicated, but there is a very good reason why *ours* is: time. Any system of taxes can be very simple if you refuse to add any exceptions or modifications of the original tax assessment. But what invariably happens is that over a few decades the tax system is used for a variety of noble and not-so-noble goals and the system gets cluttered. If you're really interested in simplifying the tax code a committee could review the Code looking for unneeded sections to be eliminated or multiple sections to be combined into more uniform and readable language.

But conservative calls for a change to the tax code are rarely about actual simplification; they're about shifting the tax burden. As Ezra says, a consumption tax could have higher tax rates for higher levels of consumption and as the comments say you could pair that up with exceptions/incentives to help people with specific issues. That'd be fine. What we should be wary of any attempts to reduce the proportion of income paid by the affluent in taxes.

Incidentally, I can't watch at work, but here's Warren Buffett supporting a consumption tax. Link.

First Day

Well, technically today is the second day of my new job, but yesterday was just orientation with no actual connection to my normal day to day activities. I've seen some oral arguments today and got to organize my office a bit, but I probably won't get to do anything of real substance for another month. Until then I'll just try to, you know, learn the law...and stuff. It is nice to come to work again and feel like I'm doing, or will be doing soon, important work. Oh, and I suppose it's nice to know I'm getting paid too. So hooray for finally pushing through the bureaucracy and becoming productive again!

Values on both sides

Say you have a certain statistical tool S. You give a population a certain test, you crunch the resulting data, and out comes a number, one for each person. In certain cases R, the numbers line up in a normal distribution -- a lot of individuals clustered near the mean, smoothly tapering off towards the extremes.

Then you go and apply S to another population, P. Now things are way off -- the population's clustered around a much lower mean, maybe the distribution looks weird, and so on.

Suppose further that P is a significant part of the total population you're interested in measuring using S. Say, around 12%. And suppose, furthermore, that the mean of P is in the lower third standard deviation of the distribution for R.

Then you have to make a choice between two basic hypotheses: Either individuals in P are significantly lower than individuals in R in terms of whatever it is S is supposed to measure. Or P is a crappy way of measuring this whatever it is -- it's gotten the distribution spectacularly wrong.

How to decide between these two? Well, if you already think that individuals in P are significantly lower than individuals in R in terms of whatever it is S is supposed to measure, then you embrace that hypothesis, and don't really consider whether or not S is working right, because it does indeed appear to be working right.

But then, of course, you can't point to S to argue for the claim that individuals in P are significantly lower than individuals in R in terms of whatever it is S is supposed to measure. That would be blatantly circular.

Back in October, James Watson -- misogynist and Nobel laureate co-discoverer of DNA with Crick and Franklin -- said something rather racist:

[Watson] is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really", and I know that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address.

Pretty indefensible, right? How can anyone think that Africans are less intelligent than `us'? (I'm not even going to get into the assumption that the intersection of `us' and Africans is the empty set.)

Well, thank the internets, someone has risen to Watson's defence.

Watson's claim in his recent interview with Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe that intelligence testing shows lower scores in Africa than Europe is likewise, entirely supported by the scientific literature.

Then there are citations to a bunch of studies that all say about the same thing: on standard IQ tests, the mean throughout Africa is between about 65 and 75. That's apparently right around the current definition of `mental retardation'.

The situation is an instance of the one I described above. Test in Western nations, and you get a mean around 100 (by construction). Test in Africa, and you get a mean in the third standard deviation. Africa's population is about 888 million, which is around 12% of the world's 6 billion. These results are incompatible with a worldwide standard distribution of IQ -- if the standard deviation for the African data sets is the same as the standard deviation for the Western data sets, about twice as many people are in the third standard deviation as should be.

So we have to choose between two hypotheses: either Africans are less intelligent than Westerners (that's highly simplified, but again, bracketing the spectacularly racist assumptions here) or IQ tests are not a good way of measuring intelligence.

There is a long attempt in that post to argue for the negation of the second hypothesis -- that is, that IQ tests are, in fact, a good way of measuring intelligence. The argument comes down to two points: First, IQ test scores correlate with other IQ test scores, and second, IQ test scores correlate with economic success. The first is useless -- the fact that all these tests measure the same thing doesn't imply that they don't all measure the same artificial statistical construction. And the second only implies that IQ tests are a good way of measuring intelligence if economic success is a good way of measuring intelligence. And that's only plausible if you think that rich people are more intelligent than poor people. The possibility that economic status has an effect on IQ scores is never considered.

It all comes down to racism, classism, and the intersection of the two. If you already believed that Africans and poor people are less intelligent than `us', then you won't see any problems here. IQ tests must measure intelligence, because they get the results we expected for intelligence. If you think that the idea that Africans and poor people are less intelligent than `us' is offensive on its face, then you're as liable as before to think that this IQ test business is a load of crap.

Which makes this an excellent example of the way ethico-political values show up as background assumptions when reasoning from evidence to theory. We have the same sets of evidence, but different background assumptions concerning race, class, and intelligence. Based on these assumptions, we reason to very different -- indeed, incompatible -- theories. Without these background assumptions -- if our reasoning process was truly `value-free' -- we would have no way of reaching any conclusions beyond statistical correlations between different metrics.

However, where I am willing to embrace the role my values play in my reasoning, the defender of Watson, it seems, does not.

Zalta's logical truths that are not metaphysically necessary

In this post, I want to summarise the argument of Zalta's paper `Logical and analytic truths that are not necessary' for non-logicians who still know a little bit about modal logic.

The basic idea is as follows: Zalta identifies certain sentences which, first, are logical truths, in that they are true under all interpretations; but, second, they are not metaphysically necessary, in that they are not true at all possible worlds under at least one interpretation.

Zalta's argument focusses on definite descriptions. I want to use a simpler language: a standard sentential language L with a single unary operator @. If p is a wff of L, then informally, @p means p is true at the actual world.

More specifically, give L countably many primitive sentential constants p1, p2, p3, ..., and build the wffs of L using the standard logical operators ^, v, -, -> and the unary operator @ on the pi. A world W is a total function {pi : i in N} -> {T,F}, ie, an assignment of truth values. An interpretation A is an ordered pair , where D is a set of worlds and W0 is in D. Informally, W0 is the actual world under A. `p is true at W under A' is defined in the usual recursive way for the standard logical operators. `@p is true at W under A' is true if p is true at W0 under A. For purposes of order of operations, @ is stipulated to be of the lowest order, ie, it is evaluated after all other operators when there is ambiguity. `p is true under A' is true if p is true at W0 under A. `p is necessary under A' is true if, for all W in D, p is true at W.

p is logically true if, for all interpretations A, p is true under A. p is necessarily true if, for all interpretations A, p is necessary under A. Zalta goes to great pains to show that his semantics are entirely standard for languages which involve rigid designators; the only difference here is that the language is much simpler than Zalta's primary example.

For some q, let Q be the sentence

@q -> q

Informally, Q says that, if q is actually true, then q is true.

1. Q is logically true.

Q is logically true iff for all interpretations A, Q is true under A. Choose an interpretation Q. Q is true under A iff Q is true at W0 under A. Q is true at W0 iff either @q is false at W0 or q is true at W0. @q is false at W0 iff q is false at W0. So Q is logically true iff q is false at W0 or q is true at W0. So Q is logically true iff either q is false or q is true at W0. Since W0 is total, either q is false or q is true at W0. Hence Q is logically true.

2. Q is not necessary.

Q is necessary iff for all interpretations A, Q is necessary under A. Q is necessary under A iff, for all W in D, Q is true at W. Q is true at W iff either @q is false at W or q is true at W. @q is false at W iff q is false at W0. Hence Q is necessary iff for all interpretations A and all worlds W in D either q is false at W0 or q is true at W.

Hence Q is not necessary iff there is some interpretation A with some W in D such that q is true at W0 and q is false at W.

Let A be an interpretation such that q is true at W0 and false at all other W in D and let W != W0. Then q is true at W0 and q is false at W. Hence Q is not necessary.

3. There are logical truths which are not necessary.

The `counterintuitive' gap arises because of a difference in scope between necessity and logical truth. Logical truths must be true at all actual worlds under all interpretations. It does not look at any worlds besides the actual world in each interpretation. Hence the actuality operator @ is inert with respect to logical truth: @p is logically true iff p is logically true.

It is with respect to necessity that @ is doing some work. Necessity does not just consider the actual world of each interpretation. It considers the full `multiverse' of each interpretation. Necessity is actually much broader than logical truth, in the sense that it takes more into consideration. Indeed, necessity implies logical truthhood, but as 3 shows, the converse is not true. In my experience, metaphysicians think exactly the opposite -- that logical truthhood implies necessity, but not vice-versa.

This version of Zalta's example show why metaphysicians should want necessity to be the broader notion in a very clear way. Q said that, if q is actually true, then q is true. If this were necessary and q were actually true, then q would itself be necessary. That is, if logical truth implies necessity, then rigid designation makes every true sentence necessary. Modality collapses, and every `multiverse' consists of a single possible world.

If modal metaphysicians wish to retain the equipment of rigid designation or actualism and any robust notion of possibility, then they must deny the inference from logical truth to necessity, at least with respect to statements that might involve rigid designation or reference to the actual world.

Yet, as Zalta points out, this creates a serious problem for metaphysical methodology. That a modal statement is self-contradictory -- is logically false -- does not imply that it is a necessary falsehood -- necessarily not the case. It implies only that it is not necessarily the case.

Zalta's paper is `Logical and analytic truths that are not necessary', J Phil (Feb. 1998: 85.2), pp 57-74. JSTOR link

Lipton's examples of projectivism

Peter Lipton was a Cambridge philosopher of science who recently died. In 2004, he gave the Medawar lecture before the Royal Society (published as `The truth about science' in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society' (2005: 360), pp. 1259-1269). In his lecture, Lipton distinguishes between three positions on scientific realism. His two examples to illustrate the third, `projectivism', are some of the best I've come across.

When I see the grass to be green, I am not hallucinating; nor can I see whatever colour I want to see. The colour I see depends in part on what is going on quite independently of me. Nevertheless, on the Lockean view, colour is defined in part in terms of human response: for an object to be green is for it to be disposed to produce a certain kind of experience. Thus although we see colours as being ‘out there’ in the objects, there is a sense in which that perception is in part a projection of the inner experience.

When a bridge is constructed, it cannot be built in any way one likes: the world constrains what materials and designs are possible. At the same time, a bridge is dependent on human activity: it is a human construct, if anything is. In that sense, a bridge is a joint produce of the human world and the world quite apart from human activity. Similarly, although that analogy will only go so far, on Kant’s version of projectivism, the properties that science attributes to the world are real, but are joint products of the things in themselves and the organizing, cognitive, descriptive activities of scientists.

This sounds familiar

From a comment on an article in the Chronicle of higher education:

MIT does not really tenure for excellence in research. Like other top-of-the-top universities, MIT tenures for reputation of excellence in research. (Forget about teaching or service; neither factors into the equation.)
This means two things: First, cutting-edge research, risky research, or what the corporate-types like to call “thinking outside of the box” is not viable when faced with a grueling tenure process, based so heavily upon peer review that—in order to garner outstanding reviews—one must cater to the preconceptions of one’s peers at other top institutions. Thus, much like that Other university up the road, MIT is forced poach its very best scholars who first proved their genius elsewhere, because the tenure process does not allow its own junior faculty the time or intellectual flexibility to excel at that level.

What does this have to do with gender (or race)? Well, peer review might claim to be an “objective” analysis of research, but any psychologist or sociologist worth their salt will tell you that evaluation of one’s peers is a social process. And look at the gender and racial breakdowns of these “peers.” White to a man. MIT’s unyielding adherence to reputation can and will only reproduce the social circle (white, male) of those called upon to evaluate the reputation. Meanwhile, there is a myopic and simple-minding insistence, pervasive throughout the institute, that this tenure process is somehow “objective” (tossing out a century of social science on the impossibility of such a thing), which leaves the Institute unable to address the problem.
Only after women and minorities (and white men with numbers of women or minorities in their social circle) have broken into other top and just-below the top institutions, and occupy positions of power in the profession, will they then advocate for those in their social networks in tenure cases at MIT. And only then will MIT’s tenuring process be physically able to recognize these one-time outsiders as worthy of tenure.

Most of the other comments are simply odious. For example, the way the next comment flatly denies that sex and gender play any role any the tenure process and raises the specter of -- oh noes! -- people getting things they don't deserve. The commenter is, evidently, completely ignoring decades of research that the same CV is consistently rated as less impressive when there's a woman's name at the top. S/he certainly misses the entire point of the previous comment.

Yes, these data show that the number and percentage of female faculty receiving tenure at MIT is increasing slowly. However, by themselves, these numbers do not prove that gender discrimination took place. In order to prove this, it would be necessary to provide evidence that female tenure candidates achieved the research record necessary to attain tenure, but were turned down because they were women (i.e., because of their genitalia or feminine attributes) .... It seems logical to believe that the vast majority of highly educated people would not turn down a candidate that has achieved the necessary record of accomplishments for tenure because of their genitalia or femininity. The flip side of this is whether a candidate without the necessary record of accomplishments should be granted tenure because of their genitalia or femininity so the percentages improve more quickly and become more equal? Those who use identity politics to try to leverage power and resources for individuals who may not merit them would say yes.

Now, I actually don't agree entirely with the first comment. S/he says that an objective evaluation is impossible. I think that an objective hiring process is possible. Or, to be more specific, an evaluation in which the consideration of candidates' races and genders and the fact of historical and ongoing discrimination against members of certain races and genders are considered specifically at certain points, would be more objective than the current system. When it comes to junior faculty, for example, measures could be taken to make sure the initial stages are completely anonymous (or as anonymous as possible), and gender, sex, and racial identity could be used to choose between candidates considered to be of the same quality by the initial stages.

Astounding

I know a bit about Photoshop and digital image manipulation, though certainly not that much. But I don't think that's the reason why this blew me away:


Via

Blog Readability Test

I'm not sure whether I trust the algorithm they're using, but it's certainly a fun tool. Link.

In case you're wondering, we here at the Ra were rated at a high school reading level. While I'm sure Noumena's posts would sky rocket the rating if judged on their own, I'm ok with the rating. I think it's a nice balance between smarty pantsocity and writing in a cogent manner. Anyone find some interesting results? Feel free to post them in the comments!

Oh The View...

Kathleen Pender: Victims of predatory lending are junkies

To be fair, she didn't say it. She just quoted some risk analyst favourably immediately after saying that `subprime borrowers ... made bad, greedy or uninformed decisions.'

Pender's piece is on a proposed rate-freeze to prevent thousands of families from being forced to default on their subprime mortgages. The freeze would prevent the rates on these loans from rising for five years. (I'm not sure whether that's up to five years, or five years whatever happens.)

Beyond unsavory comparisons and non-argument insinuations that this is some sort of inappropriate bailout, subsidy, or other government interference in the market, Pender has some arguments, presented in the form of rhetorical questions. We'll take a look at a selection below the fold.

How do you define a subprime borrower?

Pender argues that there's no perfect definition. I think the point is supposed to be that an arbitrary decision has to be made, to decide who to help and who to not help. But so what? We have all kinds of arbitrary decisions built into our laws and policies -- what side of the street people are to drive on, how old you have to be to consent to sex, to drink alcohol, to vote. It seems weird to think that, because the decision to drive on the right or the left is arbitrary, there's something wrong with laws requiring drivers to stay on the right side of the road.

Maybe the argument is, instead, that however the line is drawn, there will be lots of people close to it on the other side, and shouldn't we help them too? Then the comparison is to Medicaid and the status of the working poor. But this is no reductio of the rate freeze. It just suggests that something more sophisticated might be needed -- a system of rate freezes whose caps and lengths are determined by family income, for example.

Is this simply prolonging the pain? "Some people who would qualify for this supposed assistance are probably better off defaulting," Whalen says.

Now, fortunately, I have never had to default on a loan or declare bankruptcy. And I don't know these things in great detail. But I do know that defaulting on one's mortgage or declaring bankruptcy basically means your ability to get credit is destroyed for a long, long time. So a family that defaulted or declared bankruptcy would lose their house as well as their access to credit, leaving them with basically no resources to turn to in case things got even worse -- say, unemployment in an uncertain economy, or a severe injury or illness with no health insurance.

Remember that your credit rating isn't just used to determine your access to credit. Landlords will often insist on running a credit check on a potential rentor, especially in middle-class neighbourhoods of large cities.

Perhaps some borrowers with subprime mortgages would be better off defaulting. But it's hard for me to imagine who these people like me. At the very least, the statement needs to be parsed out in much more detail.

Will this make it harder to borrow in the future? "The American way is, a deal is a deal. Not a deal is a deal until it hurts and then we'll change it. If the government forces one side to break a contract, it could easily have unintended consequences. Lenders might not be there the next time," Shoven says.

I don't see how the government is forcing one side to break a contract here. Defaulting, I would think, amounts to breaking the contract: I agreed to pay you back X amount of money, and now I'm not going to. Capping loan rates for a period of time seems more like modifying the terms of the contract: I agreed to pay you back X amount of money, but now I'm only paying you back Y amount of money instead. And I suspect that, in most cases, the latter is preferable to the former for lenders, as it means they're still collecting interest on the principal rather than just getting a house whose market price has seriously dropped since the loan was made.

People choose ARMs [adjustable-rate mortgages] because they are gambling that interest rates won't go up or because they can qualify for a bigger mortgage with an ARM than a fixed-rate mortgage. That lets them buy a larger house or take more cash out of their existing house.

Or because of racism.

Were some misled? Undoubtedly. Suing or prosecuting brokers or lenders who made false statements seems like a better remedy than a blanket rate freeze that treats all lenders and borrowers the same.

Mutatis mutandis for racism, presumably. But how will suing and prosecuting brokers or lenders who made subprime loans on a racist basis help the families who took these loans?

The junky analogy is especially disturbing once race is factored in. The finance `industry' is one of the most powerful sectors of the American economy. Just how does that industry see Black and Latin@ people?

The Politics Of Game Reviews

You may or may not be aware that Gamespot's Jeff Gerstmann, the publication's most senior editor and well respected games journalist, was recently fired. It is widely believed that his termination was directly tied to Gamespot receiving pressure from video game publisher Eidos after Gerstmann negatively reviewed one of their big holiday games. In response, N'Gai Croal has written a piece on the parasitic relationship between game publishers and the enthusiast press that covers their products. It's a good read, as his stuff frequently is, for anyone interested in the workings of the industry. Link.

Someone That Doesn't Like Rock Band

Link. The guitarist for Sleater-Kinney (a band whose name I have heard but know nothing else about) was given the opportunity to play Rock Band as a precursor to a possible promotion of the product. She didn't end up getting the promotional gig, but didn't seem to like the game anyway and has written up her thoughts on it for Slate. Though she definitely has an interesting point of view, she exemplifies for me every person who just doesn't understand the game.

It's an argument that I've heard a million times since Guitar Hero became popular: "Why not just learn to play an instrument?" Though she only touches on that point obliquely, the very basis of the article in comparing the game to being in a real life band rests on the assumption that the two things are even worth comparing. Nobody thinks to compare Splinter Cell to the reality of being a spy, or Gran Turismo to what it's like to be a real race car driver. Games are not a stepping stone to real world achievement. Some people might be inspired to take up the guitar after playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero and others may learn a thing or two about rhythm from playing the games, but that is beside the point. People play these games because it's fun to play them, particularly to play them together.

There's a snobbery that I find a little annoying and a little pitiful when people critique these games for not being "real" or for their "fakery". It's as if video games are fine when it's all weird plumbers in fantasy kingdoms but if they trod on your backyard, bringing most of the fun and hardly any of the hard work to the masses, they've somehow offended you personally. Moreover, the fun these masses enjoy is somehow less legitimate. Not every game is fun for every person, and that's fine. Some people, like Ms. Brownstein, don't even like video games, which is fine too. But Rock Band doesn't fail because it fails to provide the details of real life. It's fun for precisely that reason.

Robert Jensen roundup

Robert Jensen's Getting off, a male feminist critique of pornography and masculinity, has been the subject of some discussion on the feminist blogosphere over the last few days. Here are some links to get you started:

My first post mentioning Jensen, which links to this review and excerpt.

If you can get the feministing server to work (it's been really shaky lately), you can read the review that started the latest round of discussion.

Hugo recently finished the book, and the first
two parts of a three- or four-part review are up, with the others likely to follow early next week.

Amanda has a review of her own, which partially responds to both of the above blogger reviews.

Women are not earing more philosophy Ph.Ds

This is disappointing: despite the fact that, in 2004, women earned one-third of philosophy Ph.Ds, in 2006 they earned only 28.6%. In 2000, the number was 28.4%. Furthermore, in 2006, women earned just over 50% of doctorates in the life sciences and humanities, nearly 60% of doctorates in the social sciences, and less than 30% and about 20%, respectively, in the physical sciences and engineering.

In short, with respect to gender diversity, philosophy is more like physics than history.

The historical data are even more depressing. In 1976, women earned more than 30% of all doctorates in the humanities, and roughly 26% of all doctorates in the social sciences. So philosophy is three full decades of diversification behind our sister disciplines.

This is simply appalling.

We had a very respectable job talk this afternoon from an ethicist just finishing her dissertation at Harvard. I think she's a strong candidate for one of our open lines, and not just because the dean is threatening to take away some of our lines if we don't hire more people who aren't white men. And yet it would be rather generous to call the attendance by the faculty for her talk `sparse'.

They might have skipped her talk because she's female, or because she's South Asian-American, or because she's an ethicist. Frankly, I don't think it matters what the reasons were, either implicit and explicit. How can they even pretend to fairly decide between today's speaker and our two other applicants if they don't go to the damn talks? Given the extreme underrepresentation of both women and South Asians in Anglophone philosophy, I think there was an especially strong obligation to attend her talk so as to give her all due consideration.

Two Links

I'm sure I'm late to the party on this one, but do you guys know about Google Fight? You enter two words or phrases and then see which is searched for more. For instance, I just proved Bill O'Reilly right as "Happy holidays" beat the living Hell out of "Merry Christmas". Also, in a fight between "porn" and "Wii", porn actually lost. The modern world is a very strange place indeed. Link.

Europe really is more laid back that the US. I mean, it's just a bunch of nuclear weapons, right? Link.

Simple, But Cool

Three distinctions for an epistemology of mathematics

In The fate of knowledge, Helen Longino makes a distinction between three senses of the knowledge -- that is, three different usages of the term `knowledge'. These three senses of knowledge can help us tease apart some notions that have been tangled together in Analytic epistemology of mathematics for the last 130 years or so.

Necessary and possible

Necessity and possibility are modal notions. Modal notions show up in many different domains of enquiry: we have logical modalities, physical modalities, mathematical modalities, epistemological modalities, metaphysical modalities, and so on. It seems like unqualified modalities should be either logical or metaphysical. Zalta has argued that some logical impossibilities are metaphysical possibilities, though I suspect many metaphysicians around here assume the negation of this.

When made in mathematics, this distinction seems to be related to the truth status of mathematical propositions and the theories built up out of those propositions: Under `what circumstances' are mathematical propositions true? `All of them', so mathematical truths are `necessary'. It's therefore tied to at least one view -- and more likely a family of views -- of the content of mathematical knowledge.

A priori and a posteriori

These notions distinguish two sorts of justification or warrant relations. When I know (a priori) that 2+2=4, I have warrant for this belief. This warrant is different from the (a posteriori) warrant I have for the belief that it's a little cold in my house right now or that I'm being appeared to redly. The distinction does not refer to the doxastic processes by which I came to have these beliefs. In a famous paper, `What numbers could not be', Benacerraf argues that realists about mathematics cannot give a suitable epistemology for mathematics because their views are not compatible with any `causal theory of knowledge'. But the causal story about how I came to have my belief that 2+2=4 is not the same as the warranting story about how I came to be warranted in my belief that 2+2=4. A causal theory of knowledge may be confusing doxastic and warranting relations.

More generally, when I have a priori warrant, a certain relation obtains between my belief that 2+2=4, the proposition (or sentence or whatever) that 2+2=4, and possibly some other things (perhaps the Platonic numbers 2, 4, and the addition relation; perhaps the abstract natural number structure; perhaps something else entirely). This relation is the warrant or justification relation. I am said to have knowledge (at least in part) by standing in this relation. A priori and a posteriori therefore refer to the second, relational, sense of mathematical knowledge.

Analytic and synthetic

Until the eighteenth century, analysis and synthesis were two different and complementary mathematical methods. Analysis was the method of `breaking down' ideas, while synthesis was the method of `building up' complex ideas from simpler ones. In Ancient geometry, for example, one first analysed the relations between the given geometrical objects, and then assembled the simple relations thereby discovered into a rigorous proof of the desired claim. By the late nineteenth century, the terms were adjectives -- analytic and synthetic -- and not nouns. They were identified with logical relations, which in turn were bundled together with a priori and a posteriori. This is seen most clearly in Carnap's most important books, Der logische Aufbau der Welt and Logische Syntax der Sprache. These were the basis for Ayer's Language, truth, and logic, which provided the framework within which most Anglophone philosophers have been working for the past sixty years. The transition between these two uses of the terms is identified most prominently with Kant, whose usage is, (in)famously, neither the same as a priori/a posteriori nor easy to understand. Until Kant scholars provide us with a better understand of the use of the distinction during the eighteenth century, it is probably better to stick with the pre-Enlightenment methodological understanding of analysis and synthesis.

With this sense of the distinction in place, each of these terms refers to either one of two different knowledge-producing processes or one of two complementary parts of a single knowledge-producing process. This corresponds to Longino's third sense of knowledge.

As an epistemologist, I am unusual in that I most interested in the third sense: what are the processes by which mathematical knowledge is produced? Most contemporary philosophers of mathematics are primarily interested in the first sense, the content of mathematical knowledge, and the closely related metaphysical problems. That is, they want to understand what mathematics is about. A few philosophers have approached epistemology from the second side, and attempted to give an account of how mathematical beliefs can be warranted. For realists, these generally involve either a Platonic-Goedelian direct intuition of mathematicals or a quasi-Aristotelean abstraction of mathematical knowledge from perception. Kantian apriorist, Millean empiricist, and Fregean logicist views also show up occasionally, but are nowhere near as prominent in the literature. Obviously these five are related to views about the processes by which mathematical knowledge is produced.

Generally speaking, no philosopher of mathematics is at all happy with the proposals offered by any other philosopher of mathematics, and often a given philosopher of mathematics is not all that happy with his (the subdiscipline is ridiculously male-dominated) own views either.

Animal Crossing

Here's a touching story about Animal Crossing. It's a good comic to boot. Link.

I miss the Daily Show

Fortunately, they've put together a four-minute YouTube video on the WGA strike that's a bit ... familiar.


Via A,aB

Darth Vader: Live

He rocks a mean harmonica. Link.

I'm The Many Bales of Straw That Broke The Camel's Back

O.K., that's it. I've been hearing from Brottman for several months now about his plans to start a weight loss competition and I nodded my approval while not joining in. But now Drew's trying to slim down and he's doing it publicly, so I feel like I should sidle up to the bar myself.

As of weigh in this evening I'm a ballerina-like 285lbs. I'm sure some of that is fat baby that I never lost. Anyway, I know I've been a smaller person and I can be one again. It's just a matter of committing to it, and maybe making the process public will help me stick to it. I've got to get tough. Go, Joe!

Somebody's Coming...Whoa ooooooooh!

There's a new Ghostbuster's video game coming out. It's written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis and the original cast is doing the voices. They've confirmed that there will be cooperative multiplayer. Here's a picture. Radical. Link.

In other news, here's some upcoming downloadable content for Rock Band.

Making a place for the other

Janet Kourany is one of my mentors here. She's married to Jim Sterba, another of my mentors. Today, both are tenured professors in the philosophy department -- Janet is an associate professor, and Jim is a full professor. Their daughter, Sonya, is also planning on pursuing a career in academia. Janet recently wrote a heart-breaking and infuriating open letter to Sonya that was published in the latest APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy. In it, she describes -- to put it bluntly -- the incredibly shitty way she has been treated by various departments of philosophy in attempting to solve the two-body problem, and she warns Sonya not to make the same mistakes she did.

People who have interviewed professional women of my generation—people like the journalist Vivian Gornick—have set out poignantly what so many of these women experienced: how they started out full of ambition and promise, how so many of them became trapped in dead-end positions such as research associate positions in the sciences, and how they ended up believing that that was all they could be. Rather than transform a negative environment to meet their needs and deserts, they allowed the negative environment to transform them. Something of that happened to me. Indeed, my third, and probably my worst, mistake was that I allowed my adjunct status at Dad’s university at least to some extent to define me. True, I fought for and eventually got an office with the regular faculty, paid trips to give papers at conferences, the possibility of teaching graduate courses and, in fact, any courses I pleased, and many of the research supports available to the regular faculty, and true, I kept professionally active, but the demoralization took its toll.

You can read all of Janet's letter here.

An epistemological argument against metaphysics

Infamously -- at least, as infamously as I can make it -- I am radically indifferent to the concerns, problems, and techniques of metaphysics. I am thoroughgoing here: whether it's Shapiro, Quine, Heidegger, van Inwagen, Aristotle, Leibniz, or Aquinas, I think metaphysics is less interesting and important than the number of hairs on my head. This post is an attempt to justify that radical and thoroughgoing indifference to any metaphysicians that might happen to read it.

If the job of the sciences is to describe the way the world is, then, or so I've been told, the job of metaphysics is to describe the way the world must be. That is (well, this isn't exactly the same thing, but probably what's intended), metaphysics is in the business of discovering (metaphysically) necessary truths, truths of the form []p. This discovery often involves considering (metaphysically) possible truths, truths of the form <>p. I have problems with the idea that we can know such truths, if any such truths there be. That is, I don't think that beliefs that []p or beliefs that <>p are ever justified.

Let's consider an arbitrary necessary truth []p. How could we be justified in believing that []p? I want to consider this by asking what sort of argument could be given for []p. What sort of argument? Unless the metaphysician is prepared to say that we can come to know that []p by generalising empirical truths, presumably the argument should be deductive. More specifically, it should be logically valid and sound.

But what logic? The presence of the modal operator [] suggests that a modal logic. S5 is the most widely accepted, or so I've been told. Perhaps the reader prefers another modal logic. Or perhaps the reader thinks she can do her metaphysics with classical first-order logic. In any case, she will have a set of inferences rules for her logic, which can be stated as axioms, and these axioms will have to be necessary truths themselves. If they are not necessary, then her inferences will not apply across all possible worlds -- her logic will not be metaphysically sound. Furthermore, in order for our belief in the conclusions of the arguments built using these inferences to be justified, our belief in the necessity of these axioms must be justified itself.

In short, in order for metaphysical beliefs to be justified, our beliefs that logical axioms are necessarily true must be justified.

There, I think, only three meta-doxastic attitudes one can take towards axioms. First, on the Aristotelean or Classical attitude, axioms are contentual and must be self-evident. Alternatively, on the Hilbertian or Mathematical attitude, axioms are formal and simply stipulative. (Note that Hilbert himself was not a Hilbertian in this sense about all branches of mathematics -- he was an Aristotelean about finite arithmetic.) On the first attitude, axioms are the most basic and fundamental truths -- and probably this `fundamental' carries both metaphysical and epistemological tones. On the second attitude, axioms are simply laid down arbitrarily, and need not be true of anything. The first attitude has been prominent in Western thought since Antiquity. The second was a late nineteenth-century development out of non-Euclidean geometry and abstract algebra. The third or Contingentist attitude is to take axioms to be assumptions we make contingently, either implicitly or explicitly. Perhaps the axioms express reliable-but-not-necessary and contingent features of our cognition (a certain sort of neo-Humean might think this), or perhaps they express the theory of logic that best exemplifies the features we want a theory of logic to have (Quine thought this, Michael Friedman's `contingent a priori' is somewhat related, and my own view lies in the vicinity of both of these).

Illustrate these three with an example: modus tollens.

(((p -> -q) ^ q) -> -p)

The Aristotelean says that this is self-evident and fundamental in both metaphysical and epistemological senses. Bivalence and non-contradiction are deep features of reality and our knowledge of it. The Hilbertian says that this is just a certain rule for manipulating arrays of strings of symbols -- when you have a subproof that terminates in -q and a separate proof of q, then you can write down the negation of the premiss of the subproof. And the Contingentist says, perhaps, that this is a pragmatically useful posit -- it lets us create proofs by contradiction, which are very powerful indeed, and is only objectionable if you have a very strict understanding of the nature of mathematical reasoning or think truth means justified assertion.

If we take one of these attitudes explicitly, what sort of attitudes towards the axioms is justified? Are we justified in believing that they are necessarily true? For the Contingentist, we are at most justified in believing that axioms are true (that is, true of the actual world). Similarly, as there is no need on the Hilbertian attitude for the axioms to be true, we are at most justified in believing that axioms are true. To infer that axioms are necessarily true is to make a ridiculously hasty generalisation. We are justified, on these two attitudes, at best in believing them to be contingent truths. (Note that even this may not be justified: on certain sorts of Contingentism, such as the neo-Humean, we are not even justified in believing that they are true!) Finally, for the Aristotelean, if self-evidence is indeed justification, then it seems that we are justified in believing that the axioms are true. But self-evidence doesn't imply necessity. Indeed, for classical epistemological foundationalists, sensory beliefs are self-evident, but are assumed not to be necessary at all. If self-evidence is not justification, then it doesn't seem that we are even justified in believing that the axioms are true.

The problem is just this: Any story we tell about being justified in believing that the axioms of logic are true is consistent with them not being necessarily true. Indeed, any story we tell is consistent with the axioms of logic only being true of the actual world, and false of every other possible world.

Something entirely parallel happens if we prefer an externalist account of knowledge, replacing justification with warrant. Every non-ad hoc story the externalist epistemologist-metaphysician tells us about how our belief that the axioms of logic are true is warranted is consistent with them not being necessarily true, and indeed with them only being true of the actual world. The only way out that I can see is to propose that belief that []p is warranted just in the case that []p is true, or something equivalent, which is clearly ad hoc.

To summarise: In order to be justified in our belief that []p, a paradigm example of an important claim of metaphysics, we must first be justified in believing that the axioms of logic are necessarily true. But on no reasonable account of the status of axioms are they necessarily true. Hence our belief that the axioms are necessarily true is not justified. Hence we are justified in believing that []p.

Xbox 360 Is Here To Stay

For those expecting a big comeback from the other consoles and a decline of the 360, for the three months preceding September 30, 2007 Electronic Arts sold $218 million in 360 software. For that same time period they sold $217 million on all other platforms combined. Wow...Link.

A Night Of Rock Band

Rock Band drops in a few weeks, but review units are trickling out here and there. Wondering what a night of Rock Band is like? Here's a live blog of the experience. Link.

What's the difference between an attack ad and legitimate criticism?

The Edwards campaign has a new ad out, presenting Clinton contradicting herself during a(?) recent Democratic debate:


I came across this ad on Tennessee Guerilla Women, where the blogger accuses Edwards of `cut[ing] and past[ing]' a `scathing' and `nasty' ad, and implying that he has thereby, and unlike Hillary, `gon[e] negative'. There's also a link to a discussion on another blog that, from the excerpt, appears to be accusing Edwards of hypocrisy. I want to bracket the issue of hypocrisy, since it could be that Edwards is making a legitimate criticism that applies just as well to both himself and Clinton. Note that I also assume some criticism is legitimate. While we're rather fond of accusing politicians of `going negative', part of the process of campaigning is pointing out the failings and flaws of one's opponents. Indeed, going negative has gained such prominence that accusations of it are popular and often unfair and illegitimate attacks -- it's a way to shame one's opponent for revealing one's own flaws and failings.

Attack ads and legitimate criticisms lie on opposite ends of a spectrum. In the murky middle are ads that might be illegitimate and unfair attacks and might be legitimate criticisms. Which one is this -- attack ad, legitimate criticism, or in the murky middle? It's clear that the blogger I quoted in the last paragraph thinks it is clearly an attack ad.

But it's not so clear to me. First, the ad doesn't contain vague and emotionally-loaded descriptions of her policies and past actions. It's showing clips of her speaking. Next, we might worry about context -- perhaps these remarks were made in contexts that change their meaning. But they mostly seem to be pretty clear, so that means that it's at least not clearly an unfair attack. Third, we might worry about the fact that Clinton is speaking extemporaneously rather than carefully and precisely stating her views. She's speaking on her feet at a debate to explain her views in a general way rather than formulating policy in a precise way for implementation. So, again, there might be subtlety and nuance to her views that are being unfairly neglected. The portion of the ad on immigration might be especially worrying in this respect.

Let's think about that immigration portion a little more carefully. The ad wants to suggest that Clinton is being inconsistent. It seems to me as though she might be trying to avoid answering an obviously stupid question -- giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses isn't an issue that can be settled with a `yes' or `no' answer in thirty seconds. But then I wonder why she didn't just say that it's a stupid question, and far too complex of an issue to be settled so simplistically. Hence, she might be saying inconsistent things, and she might be caught off-guard with a spectacularly stupid question. It's not clear either way.

So, with respect to the immigration portion, it's not clear whether the ad is an unfair attack or a legitimate criticism. With respect to the other two reasons I can think of for calling an ad an attack ad rather than a legitimate criticism, it's at least not clearly an unfair attack, and probably a legitimate criticism. I can't think of any other reasons for calling an ad an attack ad rather than a legitimate criticism. So, considering these three reasons together, I conclude that the ad is in the murky middle, but very, very close to being a legitimate criticism. It's at least not clearly an attack ad.

Addendum: There's a fourth respect in which an ad could be an attack ad, and that's if it's promoting or appealing to some odious ideology (racism, sexism, heterosexism, ablism, xenophobia, and so on). This ad is clearly not doing that by any ordinary standard. It's not, as one commentator on the source post suggests, going after Clinton `on the basis that she's female'.

What's wrong with Ron Paul?

David Neiwert and a diarist on Kos have very, very disturbing series of posts on Paul. The three major points of Neiwert's post:

Most of his positions today -- including his opposition to the Iraq war -- are built on this same shoddy foundation of far-right conspiracism and extremist belief systems, particularly long-debunked theories about the "New World Order," the Federal Reserve and our monetary system, the IRS, and the education system.

[...]

While I think the evidence that Paul is incredibly insensitive on racial issues -- ranging from a racially incendiary newsletter to his willingness to appear before neo-Confederate and white-supremacist groups -- is simply overwhelming, it isn't as simple to make the case that he is an outright racist, since he does not often indulge in hateful rhetoric -- and when he has, he tries to ameliorate it by placing it in the context of what he thinks are legitimate policy issues.

[...]

Note, if you will, that the interviewers' questions are all predicated on a belief in old far-right conspiracy theories about "banking elites" [read: Jews] are secretly out to control the world -- and Paul clearly accepts those premises as valid.

Phenry's diary is its own rundown. Here are some highlights that, I believe, will generally disturb my libertarian friends: Paul is anti-abortion (and not just anti-Roe v. Wade), is pro-shielding oil companies from contamination lawsuits, is so anti-immigrant that he wants to repeal birthright citizenship, voted against reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, voted for a bill that would require `proof of citizenship' -- producing a birth certificate, passport, or naturalisation certification -- at the polls, supports the Defense of Marriage Act (indeed, he cosponsored a bill that would bar federal courts from considering challenges to the federal DMA), does not believe in the separation of church and state (though he does believe in the `separation of school and state'), introduced a bill that would prohibit the federal court system from hearing any equal protection case involving religion or sexuality, refuses to acknowledge that there is genocide in Darfur, hates unions and voted to make it harder to file class-action lawsuits.

And that's a selection from one post in a series of four.

This does not sound like the set of beliefs of a man whose political philosophy is firmly grounded on a principle of respect for individual liberty.

The diversity of philosophy

Quoting a quotation of a summary (with quotations) of Anita Allen's keynote address at the recent first meeting of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers (my source; the punctuational oddities are, I believe, theirs):

“I have not been able to encourage other people like me to go into philosophy because I don’t think it has enough to offer them. The salaries aren’t that great, the prestige isn’t that great, the ability to interact with the world isn’t that great, the career options aren’t that great, the methodologies are narrow. Why would you do that,” she asks, “when you could be in an African American studies department, a law school, a history department, and have so many more people to interact with who are more like you, a place where so many more methods are acceptable, so many more topics are going to be written about? Why would you close yourself off in philosophy?”I feel that philosophy is hoisting itself by its own petard. Its unwillingness to be more inclusive in terms of issues, methods, demographics, means that it’s losing out on a lot of vibrancy, a lot of intellectual power.”Despite delight at the birth of the collegium, the existence finally of a “critical mass” of black female philosophers, she admits “philosophy still feels to me like an isolated profession. I don’t think I would encourage a black woman who has big ideas necessarily to go into philosophy,” Allen says. “Why? What’s the point? Go out and win the Pulitzer Prize! Don’t worry about academic philosophy. On the other hand, I would like to see that world open up to more women and women of color.”

I worry a lot about the lack of diversity in philosophy. (Setting aside for the moment the problems with treating diversity as a mass noun.) As a discipline, we're notorious for being just about the only branch of the humanities that's still as male- and caucasian-dominated as physics and mathematics. That's an ethical problem, and it's also an epistemological problem.

The first thing I want to ask is, How do we create more diversity in the community of philosophers? The obvious but unhelpful answer is, Eliminate or counteract the features of that community that drive off most of the potential philosophers that aren't caucasian men. This leads to the second question, What makes contemporary philosophy so unattractive to people who aren't caucasian men? And this question is ill-posed. Philosophy isn't unattractive in an absolute sense. It's unattractive as a major compared to other majors, as a career compared to other careers, as a discipline compared to other disciplines. The choice to go into philosophy is neither made at any one discrete moment nor made in a vacuum.

So, before answering the second question, we need to identify the comparable disciplines that do not have the problems with diversity that philosophy has. This, I think, is fairly easy: pretty much every other discipline in the humanities. The interdisciplinary disciplines that have formed over the last 35+ years -- African American studies, gender studies, and so on -- are especially important answers here. Someone interested in clinical psychology might take a courses or two in philosophy of mind and early psychology (Freud, James, et al. were still considered philosophers), but she's unlikely to end up a philosopher. Likewise with political science and history. African American studies, gender studies, and similar interdisciplinary disciplines in the humanities, by contrast, draw heavily on the work of a certain kind of philosopher, just as much as they draw on the work of historians, sociologists, political theorists, and so on.

This leads me to my hypothesis. As distinct majors, these interdisciplinary disciplines are drawing potential philosophy students away from philosophy. To expand on Allen's question, Why would you go into philosophy when African American studies is a much more inviting place to do the same sort of thing?

The passage from Allen has given me some things to think about under the aegis of my hypothesis. First, doing philosophy in gender studies (with which I'm more familiar than African American studies) isn't the same thing as doing philosophy in philosophy. The abstract worries over, say, whether compositional nihilism is compatible with ante rem realism about universals (and if so, what sort of ante rem realism) that are the central problems of contemporary Anglophone philosophy are non-starters in gender studies. This is one thing that Allen might mean when she talks about `so many more topics ... be[ing] written about' in other humanities departments. While the methods and techniques can be the same, the topics are very very different.

But this is a gross overgeneralisation. There are ethicists and political philosophers in philosophy departments; not all of us spend all of our time worrying about compositional nihilism. The topics contemporary ethicists and political philosophers consider are much more closely aligned to the topics considered in gender studies. And it's also grossly prejudicial to assume that an undergraduate trying to choose whether to major in philosophy or African American studies wouldn't be interested in worrying about compositional nihilism, as grossly prejudicial as assuming that women decide not to pursue careers in mathematics because set theory is just so boring.

Hence, second, the content and topics of `mainstream', `important' philosophy are not the only reasons why philosopher has a problem with diversity. As much as I'd like an excuse to cast metaphysics out (in the nicest possible way, of course), diversity is not going to be one. So we need to look at other potential causes. We need to look at discrimination, on both a personal and structural level. Third, we can't do this, as philosophers are so often wont to do, from our armchairs. We cannot divine, a priori, the reasons why our discipline is so much less attractive than our sister disciplines in the humanities. We cannot, by pure ratiocination, discover the objectively best way to structure the discipline. We need to be talking to students from underrepresented backgrounds, especially those who consider majoring in philosophy and decide to major in something else -- Why did you decide to major in gender studies/history/African American studies/Swanhili instead of philosophy?

Fourth, this means we need to meet these students. We need to offer classes within philosophy that deliberately align with and support the classes offered under the heading of African American studies, gender studies, and so on. We need Intro to Philosophy classes that aren't just a parade of dead wealthy European men worrying about whether the fact that the stick looks bent but feels straight means I'm being deceived by an evil demon. We need joint minors and, eventually, majors with these interdisciplinary disciplines -- not to mention more traditional disciplines like history, psychology, and political science.

A question for every Democratic presidential candidate

Over the past seven years, we've seen the Bush administration systematically and continually assault the Constitutional doctrine of the separation of governmental powers. This assault has resulted in one of the greatest expansions in Executive power in the history of the United States, and is widely regarded as the single most pernicious effect this administration will have on the American way of life. Simply put, the presidency of George W. Bush has threatened the rule of law in this country.

Bush's Democratic successor will have an opportunity to use this Executive overreach to undo much of the more immediate harms the current administration has inflicted on the United States. Between executive orders and signing statements, the next President will be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, roll back the Bush tax cuts, and rebuild our health care system without the co-operation of the Congress. But this successor may well be the last chance this country has for restoring the separation of powers. Should you win the nomination and then the election, you will therefore be presented with a historic moral dilemma: Will you sacrifice your policy goals for the sake of restoring the rule of law, or will use the nearly unchecked power of the Executive to achieve policy reform?

The metabolic fallacy

There is, or so one often hears (as I heard last weekend), one sure-fire, guaranteed, absolutely foolproof way for a fat person to lose weight: eat less. More specifically, first you figure out the average number of calories burned a day, then you eat less than that. You'll burn `excess fat' making up the difference. (Presumably, once you reach your target weight, you resume a normal intake.)

Only problem: this doesn't work. As anyone who either is, or knows someone who is, fat or thin and tried to lose or gain weight knows, `naturally thin' people can eat `all they want' and never gain and ounce, while `naturally fat' people can't keep their weight down longer than about five years.

Maybe you think the former cases -- the thin people -- just have a high metabolism, and the latter cases just are `psychologically weak'. Fat = psychologically weak is certainly a popular narrative in our culture. But that's an odd asymmetry: thin people are thin for physiological reasons, but fat people are fat for psychological reasons. And the `high metabolism' explanation doesn't work for thin people anyways -- just factor the metabolic rate or an estimate thereof into the calculation of the number of calories burned a day. Likewise with a `low metabolism' explanation for fat people. You'll see the same thing.

No, something is wrong in the line of thought above. And that something is the assumption that there's this number, called the average number of calories burned a day.

Now, in trying to calculate this number, of course you have to look over a period of time (previous week? previous one year? previous ten years?), and throw out exceptional days (that day you went on the 12 mile hike on Mt. Rainier, and that week you were too sick with the flu to do much more than shuffle to the bathroom and back). This requires making choices about what data to include and exclude, and these will be arbitrary but make a difference. If that's what I meant, then the easy reply would be to point out that this difference will, most likely, be negligible, or utterly irrelevant to the process by which you actually calculate your average number of calories burned a day (that is, by carrying around a little journal on a `normal day' and making note of what you do, how often you do it, and for how long).

So that's not what I mean. The average number business is confusing, so let's drop it. What we really assume when we assume there is such a thing as the average number of calories burned a day is that metabolic rate is roughly constant from day to day. Again, some daily variation is likely and expected, but typically things will stay within a fairly narrow range.

In particular, the line of thought from the first paragraph needs to assume that the metabolic rate is roughly the same for a given individual both when they are fat and when they are thin.

And this assumption was pretty thoroughly debunked. Nearly fifty years ago.

There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body's metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.

You might still think the counting-calories method would work -- we just need to be able to measure the change in metabolism. But the change in metabolism isn't the only effect of dramatic weight loss.

fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.

Before the diet began, the fat subjects' metabolism was normal - the number of calories burned per square meter of body surface was no different from that of people who had never been fat. But when they lost weight, they were burning as much as 24 percent fewer calories per square meter of their surface area than the calories consumed by those who were naturally thin.

The Rockefeller subjects also had a psychiatric syndrome, called semi-starvation neurosis, which had been noticed before in people of normal weight who had been starved. They dreamed of food, they fantasized about food or about breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some had thoughts of suicide. They secreted food in their rooms. And they binged.

The Rockefeller researchers explained their observations in one of their papers: "It is entirely possible that weight reduction, instead of resulting in a normal state for obese patients, results in an abnormal state resembling that of starved nonobese individuals."

This doesn't formally refute the line of thought from the beginning of the post: if you're fat you can lose weight by carefully monitoring caloric intake. And literally starving yourself. So the `fallacy' of the title is more polemical than logical. Still, this is a case of the `cure' being orders of magnitude worse than the `disease'.

Spore

Will Wright, Nerdiest of Nerds, says the much anticipated Spore will be released in 6 months. He says the game is done an is just being tweaked and balanced at this point, but healthy skepticism would not be remiss here. Still, it's nice to think that then end might be in sight. Link.

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse

You know how I've been talking about that HD-DVD player for the 360 lately? Well I bit the bullet and got one. It seems Best Buy has changed its initial position and is considering the player an actual HD-DVD player and not an Xbox 360 accessory. This means the machine is eligible for the 2 free movies of your choice they were giving away with all the other HD-DVD players. This means that when you purchase the player for $179 at Best Buy you get King Kong (packed in with the player), 2 free HD-DVD movies of your choice, Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD, and 5 free HD-DVD movies in the mail through the Toshiba promotion. HD-DVD movies run between $25 and $35 and Heroes Season 1 is $99, so that's about $300 worth of movies/tv shows for free. Granted, I don't really want King Kong and the selection from Toshiba only has two or three movies that I'd want to hold on to, but if I can get $50 in store credit from Gamestop trading the movies in that I don't want then I'll still consider this a steal. For those of you with an Xbox 360 or who are planning on getting one, this is a hell of a deal.

It's Alive!!!!

I received a brand new Xbox 360 from Microsoft today to replace the dead one. At under two weeks turnaround between shipping it out and getting the new one, I have to say that I'm impressed with the service and no longer worried about whether this new machine might die.