This is Not the Name of This Blog

Not all intuitions are created equal or ""What is the thesis of this paper?"

2007-09-09T16:51:00.001-04:00

Fortwith, an abstract from the "Experimental Epistemology Laboratory" at Indiana.

A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio-economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and what, other thought experiments are considered first. Our results show that: 1) willingness to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case increases after being presented with a clear case of non-knowledge, and 2) willingness to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case decreases after being presented with a clear case of knowledge. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions. After considering several objections and replies, we conclude that our results strengthen the empirical case against intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs. (LINK)

Hmmm, did they say "clear cases". As in cases where even the subjects' intuitions are clear. Mmmhmmm.

I'll take non-sequiturs for $700 Alex:
"Some intuitions vary, thus intuitions aren't good evidence."

And as usual my enemy's enemy is *not* my friend because I do think that empirical research into the solidity of intuitions is a good idea (though I suppose an ideal agent could know a priori that this was an unclear intuition, the rest of us aren't so lucky).

In particular, I'd love to have some empirical research aimed at the "intuitions" typically claimed to be associated with the famed Bank Case and other cases pragmatic encroachers use to sully our pure epistemology. 0:-I

Six Theses about Language and Philosophy

2007-08-31T20:46:00.000-04:00

There is a fact of the matter
as to the “rules” governing the application of terms. This is “logical”
fact. It uses the same basic ramseyfication maneuver Lewis and other Humeans
use for natural laws.

Based on this fact I make an
inference to the best explanation, that the generally consistent pattern is
not the result of chance, but language users (not necessarily) conscious grasp
of those “rules” not unlike a realist about laws.

That people break from the
pattern when they are asked to think about the rules I take to be evidence
that they are not good at consciously representing those rules. Since the
rules are simply generalizations over instances—pretty much exactly like a
humean supervenience view of natural laws—to diverge from them *just is*
to mistake what it was that was guiding them.

What is guiding them, in my
view, is the possession of concepts that words express. It is not the case
that we can consciously think well about concepts we possess. We acquire the
concepts by linguistic socialization. We are taught how to use words by our
community. We are almost never told rules of application. We are just
observers of applications, initially paradigm instances and then later fringe
cases.

Since language skill is a
kind of know-how, there is no expectation of ability to articulate the rules.
This is a general feature of know-how. I couldn’t begin to tell you how I
throw a Frisbee so damn well. In fact, when I try to pay attention to what it
is the ability vanishes. Every time I formulate a theory about the rules of
Frisbee throwing and test them I find I’ve failed. I’m not much more sanguine
about terms (for non-scientists). There are of course exceptions, I’m an
expert bike rider and though much of it is ineffable, some things I think I’ve
figured out and have justified beliefs about what the rules are.

I think ordinary language
terms are often ultimately incoherent. I think this is the lesson of many
logical, semantic, and metaphysical paradoxes. I think this is not surprising
because of how I think language is acquired, by application to paradigm
instances and then further and further extensions therefrom. As a result, my
philosophical methodology is closest to Carnap’s “explication.” See Maher’s
“Defense of Explication” and his lecture notes on line for a good defense of
explication.

Back-to-school Post! Knowledge and Evidence

2007-08-28T15:27:00.000-04:00

Set aside, for now, E = K. Focus on E → K.

I’m fond of saying that we don’t need to know p in order for p to be in our evidence.

However, consider this argument which I’ve adapted from Williamson (he uses it for a related but different argument, an argument of the form p is evidence for h only if p entails ~h).

[Set aside, for now, my assertion that you know you’ve lost the lottery when you have the true belief that you have based on the odds.]

So for some suitably large n, you’ve observed (on video, all the draws have already occurred, including the last draw) n balls taken out of a bag and all have been red.

From this you reason that the n+1 ball which was drawn was red.

Surely that the n + 1 ball was red is not part of your evidence.

Yet it may be as probable as you please.

Now bring back in E = K.

That entails that you don’t know that the n + 1 ball was red.

This contradicts my assertion that we do know the results of good, solid inductions.

Suppose I’m right.

Then either E = K is false or that the n + 1 ball was red is part of my evidence after all.

I think I can make plausible the latter claim. Here’s a try.

You ask me if Earl’s going to be at the party. I think he’s more likely to be there if Rich is going to be there, and I’m pretty sure Rich is going to be there, so I answer that I think Earl will probably be there.

I’ve clearly conditioned on the proposition that Rich is going to be there even though I don’t know he is, it’s only quite probable for me.

I think this *establishes* that it’s OK to use the unknown as evidence.

I think the reason we are less likely to say this in the case of the case of enumerative induction is that the mathematical framework invokes a way of thinking which makes us want to “wait and see.”

After all, that next draw is coming up, why not just wait and see? We are hesitant to use something as evidence if we think it’s status might change soon or if it’s status can be fixed quite easily.

This is a very natural and rational way to *use* evidence, but it shouldn’t affect our *analysis* of evidence.

So if I’ve succeeded thus far, either we do *know* that the next draw was red (assuming it was) and furthermore we know that we’ve lost the lottery (assuming we have) or E = K is false.

Either way, Williamson is mad and I’m happy. :-)~

SCP at the ACPA: Virtue and Value

2007-08-03T19:36:00.000-04:00

John Greco (now at SLU don't forget) is currently putting together a session for the Society of Christian Philosophers at the American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting. Jason Baehr will give a paper on open mindedness as an intellectual virtue and Stephen Grimm will give a paper on epistemic value. Daniel Breyer (Forham) will comment on Jason's paper and I'll be commenting on Stephen's paper.

Call for Papers

Goodness and Existence

2007-04-06T10:23:00.000-04:00

So, I was trying to think of a way to show that the following claim is true.

(*) Necessarily, if something, x, is maximally good, then x exists necessarily.

Here's one (not unproblematic) way that I was considering.

First, consider the property of being morally good. That, I take it, is a better making property. That is, something that is morally good is better than something that is not morally good. And, something that is morally good to degree, n, is better than something that is morally good to degree n-1. So, the best thing (the thing that satisfies the antecedent of (*)(if there is such)) will be maximally morally good. That is, it will be good to degree, n, where there is no degree of goodness, m, which is such that m>n.

Say that something is durably morally good if and only if it is morally good to some degree, n, and, at the nearest possible worlds, it is morally good to at least degree n.

Durable moral goodness comes in degrees as well. My moral goodness might, for instance, be more durable than yours. This would be so if the space of possible worlds free of a world, w, such that my goodness is diminished at it is larger than the space of worlds free of a world, w', such that your goodness is diminished at it.

So, suppose that possible worlds are ordered in possibility space by a similarity relation. The closer a world, w, is to a world, w', the more similar w is to w'. Consider a series of concentric circles centered on the actual world in possibility space. If there is some world, w, such that your degree of goodness in w is less than your degree of goodness in the actual world, and the circular region of possibility space with the smallest diameter in which w is located has a smaller diameter than the circular region of possibility space in which a world where my degree of goodness is less than it is in the actual world can be found, then I am more durably morally good than you.

Say that something is maximally durably morally good (MDMG) if and only if it is durably morally good to degree, n, and there is no degree of durable moral goodness, m, such that m>n.

So, here's a quick argument for the claim that maximal goodness entails necessary existence.

1. Necessarily, if something, x, is maximally good, then x is MDMG.
2. Necessarily, if something, x, is MDMG, then x exists necessarily.
3. So, necessarily, if something, x, is maximally good, then x exists necessarily.

Why think one is true?
Here's an argument for one.

1'. Suppose, for reductio, that at some world, w, something, x, is maximally good at w, and not MDMG at w.
2'. If x is not MDMG at w, then x would be better by being more durably good.
3'. If x would be better by being more durably good, then x is not maximally good at w.
4'. So, for all worlds, w, it is not the case that something, x, is both maximally good at w and not MDMG at w.

Why think two is true?
Here's an argument for two.

1''. Suppose, for reductio, that at some world, w, something, x, exists contingently and is MDMG.
2''. If x exists contingently, then there is some world, w', such that x does not exist in w'.
3''. If there is some world, w', such that x does not exist in w', then x is less good in w' than x is in w.
4''. If x is less good in w' than x is in w, then x is not MDMG in w.
5''. So, for all worlds, w, it is not the case that something, x, exists contingently and is MDMG in w.

So, initially I thought this argument is good. I think it's probably not now.
What do you guys think?

Preach it Brother Kaplan!

2007-03-30T23:21:00.000-04:00

A be-EU-tiful quote from Mark Kaplan's 1985 piece "It's not what you know that counts". Sadly, with two "revise and resubmits" two MS reviews, comps, and my writing seminar (and squeezing in last-minute skiing (how can you resist skiing in shorts and a T-shirt?)) I can't post much more than this, though I'd be happy to defend it.

"Since we are saddled with a psychology that (rightly) does not admit special states of knowing that are, from the agent's point of view, discernibly different from states of justified belief, a contemporary call to attend to what you know-as opposed to what you merely believe with justification-would simply be confused. Given our conception of knowledge, all we can do by way of seeking knowledge is seek justified belief and hope that this justified belief will satisfy whatever other conditions a justified belief must satisfy in order to qualify as knowledge. This being so, it is not hard to see why the enterprise of specifying what those conditions are looks so purposeless. For if all we can do by way of seeking knowledge is seek justified belief, then, to secure agreement on how rational inquiry is to be conducted, we need only secure agreement on the canons of justification- it does not matter whether we agree or not on what knowledge is. It is thus a feature peculiar to our conception of knowledge that knowledge is indistinguishable from the agent's point of view from merely justified belief-which dooms the analysis of knowledge to irrevelance in helping us to understand and advance the proper conduct of inquiry" (361).

Necessitarian Gambit

2007-03-04T00:29:00.000-05:00

(*) If epistemic principle P is justified for S (by necessary rule of inference I and S’s experiences E) then any proposition which P states is rational based on S’s experience is justified for S.

The idea is that Chisholm’s EP’s actually only state contingent connections, but the rationally-supports relation should be necessary. I’m just going to assume these two things. In that case what I’m trying to do is to argue that direct acquaintance (some kind of awareness between e-type and n-type, thus a similar goal as your work) with facts which are such that a necessary rules of inference—whether inductive or deductive—yield that a propositional is rational for one.

Here’s an example of the kind of think I have in mind.

I’ve seen lots of people get koplik spots and later get measles. I’ve never consciously put 2 and 2 together but the next time I see someone get koplik spots I form the belief that they are coming down with measles. The explanation of why I form this belief is that I’ve seen the correlation a bunch of times (though, like I said, I’ve never gone through the inference consciously) and my acquaintance with the correlation is causing me to form the belief about measles on the (causal but not doxastic) basis of the spots.

I’m inclined at this point to see this as a justified belief. I want to explain its justification by reference to (*).

Depending on how chicken sexing works, this would make some chicken sexing beliefs justified. I’m OK with that as long as there is the relevant kind of awareness or acquaintance.

Waddaya think?

Meaty Justification and Goodness of Arguments

2007-02-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

So the other day I thought of this analogy and was wondering what others may think.

Evidentialist justification (that a proposition is justified in accordance with one's evidence for it at at time) is analogous to the concept of validity for arugments. Both are structural in nature, and in a sense both can come cheap. Being a valid argument doesn't go very far in attracting others to believe its conclusion, and being epistemically justified can be unsatisfactory in a similar way since one can always shield oneself off from new evidence or indoctrinate oneself. Just as there can be a valid argument to any conclusion, there may be ways to make any conclusion epistemically justified for someone (if nothing else, through brainwashing or something).

This made me think of what could be added to epistemic justification to bolster it like the truth of the premises can be added to a valid argument. Here is where I thought that responsibilist theories of epistemic justification might come into play. Though I don't think they have any bearing on knowledge, they could in conjunction with evidentialist justification form a more robust concept of justification: say meaty justification. For a proposition to be meaty justified for an individual at a time, it must be the case that that proposition is supported by her evidence (she is evidentially justified) and she has be responsible in her inquiry (she is responsibilist justified). Though the addition of responsibilist justification does not add to evidentialist justificaiton as truth of the premises does to validity, there does seem to be something valuable gained in that the input evidence is now justified in some way that evidentialist justification ignores.

For those, like me, who don't think knowledge is all that important, meaty justification looks to me to be a good replacement.

Proper Functionalism as Internalist Evidentialism

2007-01-29T15:06:00.000-05:00

I'm cross-posting this from my personal blog because it follows up on this post where I don't think I expressed the idea as clearly as I do here.

The thesis of this post is as follows:

(T) The "internalism/externalism" distinction is not as substantive as most think.

The argument for (T) will involve three premises, one of which I'll defend and the other two I'll assume, though I might make brief comments on their behalf.

Premise 1: If Conee-Feldman mentalist evidentialism is internalist and Plantinga can subscribe to the theory, then (T).
Premise 2: Conee-Feldman mentalist evidentialism is internalist.
Premise 3: Plantinga can subscribe to the theory.

Now Bergmann argues against P2, but I'll save a full defense of that for another day. It is clearly not externalist in a core sense intended by core externalists like Goldman and Plantinga, and it is "internalist" in a sufficiently close way to a sufficiently clear conception founded in discussions of mental and semantic content. At any rate the denial of P2 could probably easily support (T) anyway.

What I want to defend here is P3. First a working definition of evidentialism in the Chisholm-Conee-Feldman tradition.

(EJ) Doxastic attitude D toward proposition p is epistemically justified for S at t if and only if having D toward p fits the evidence S has at t.

Aside: Conee and Feldman like to think of evidentialism as a supervenience thesis, which has the advantage of avoiding the vagueness in evidence "fitting" but I'm going to stick with the core notion here both because I find the notion of supevenience unilluminating in general and uninformative in the present context. Supervenience theses are not so informative unless I know what it is in virtue of which the supervenience relation holds and, in the case of evidentialism, it has to do with evidence "fitting". I accept the difficulties with the notion of evidential fit: that's a research project, but the notion is sufficiently clear to proceed.

Now to mentalist internalism:

S The justificatory status of a person’s doxastic attitudes strongly supervenes on the person’s occurrent and dispositional mental states, events, and conditions.

I'm OK with supervenience here because given a phenomenal theory of evidence together with (EJ) we have an explanation of why the supervenience relation holds.

Now let's return to evidential fit. Note that even for a paradigm access internalist like Chisholm, there's more that goes into the justification than mental states. For Chisholm, the other part of the equation is epistemic principles. You take phenomenal input, run it through some algorithmic type thingy and it tells you the epistemic status of certain beliefs for you. That epistemic principles play a role in calculating justificational status in no way makes Chisholm's access internalism externalist. That would just be an abuse of established language. But then it shouldn't disqualify mentalism either.

Now there's the thing to note at this point: a Chisholm-Conee-Feldman internalist evidentialism can vary with respect to what you hold fixed to pair up doxastic states and epistemic status. For supervenience to hold the role would have to be played by some kind of necessary truth, but as I said I think the core version of evidentialism isn't the supervenience thesis but rather the "fit thesis" expressed in EJ. But then it's not essential to internalist evidentialism that the status-makers be necessary truths. They could be, for example, design plans. Enter Plantinga. If we take out the epistemic-principle-based epistemic status module and replace it with a design-plan-based module, we still have a theory which satisfies (EJ), it's just that status is now fixed by presumably contingent design plans rather than necessary epistemic principles.

This completes the argument for Premise 3 and thus for (T). The upshot, to repeat, is that I have interpreted Plantinga's proper functionalism into a theory of evidential fit, playing the same role in an EJ theory as epistemic principles do in Chisholm's. Thus, a plantingian proper functionalism can be inserted right into an internalist evidentialist theory of justification. And if that's true, then the way we've been thinking about internalism and externalism is not so helpful.

On Behalf of Moderate Foundationalism

2006-12-17T18:14:00.000-05:00

Jason and I were discussing a project I'm working on right now on probability and basic perceptual beliefs. He reminded me of some things Tim McGrew says in his "A Defense of Strong Foundationalism." Here is part of the relevant passage.

"probability arises from a relation between the probable proposition and a body of evidence. This simple fact about probability creates a fatal dilemma for moderate foundationalism. If there are basic beliefs that are merely probable, then they are not basic at all; they are inferred, probable in relation to some other beliefs that support them."

Clearly this is a non-sequitur so just a slip-up. From

(1) Probability is a relation between a proposition and a body of evidence.

it does not follow that

(2) All merely probable beliefs are inferred.

This is because the species of epistemic support relation which is relevant is a quasi-logical relation and so it holds regardless of what we do about it. We know that there are justified uninferred beliefs because we have them all the time. Most (to put it mildly) of our perceptual beliefs are basic, justified, and sub-certain (if we are rational). They are made epistemically probable (or reasonable) by the experiences which cause them. They are epistemically appropriate responses to our experiences (where "response" does not imply (or exclude) volition).

All Tim means to affirm, as far as I can tell, is that there is always some belief in the neighborhood we *could* have of which we *would* be certain (if rational), namely, the belief that it seems to us as if such-and-such is the case. I'm fine with that as long as we're talking about "This is thus" beliefs or something pretty close. My worry is one Plantinga makes use of. Suppose I have an experience as of a dolphin swimming by. I might not be certain that I'm applying "dolphin" correctly. The conceptual bit make cases a bit trickier, but the main point is the one about the non-necessity of inferring merely probable propositions.

On the Reliabity Condition for Justification

2006-11-15T17:45:00.000-05:00

Alrighty, I've been trying to think of how to formulate an argument for the point I was trying make earlier today at lunch. I'm stuck, but not in a way that is entirely detrimental to my position. Let me explain.

Consider two scenarios. In scenario UNICORN, S sees a horse with a misshapen ear and mistakenly thinks that it is a horse with a horn. He coins the name "unicorn" for its kind, and says, "That's a unicorn." He later comes across several other horses with misshapen ears and each time he thinks that it is a horse with a horn and thus says, "That's a unicorn, too." Now, after this, S discovers that everything he called a unicorn was just a horse with a misshapen ear. In my view, the right thing for him to say here is, "Well, I guess those weren't unicorns after all because unicorns actually have horns." Here, though the property of having a horn was not had by any of the objects S called a "unicorn," still the property of having a horn is essential to being a unicorn. And both the fact that he thought the horses he saw had horns and that he called them "unicorns" on the basis of that perception suggests to me that having a horn is essential to something's being a unicorn, despite the fact that nothing S ever saw actually had this property.

Now consider scenario WHINNY. Here, for the first time S hears the sound of a whinnying horse. He's never seen a horse before this, let's say. Now, let's say that every time he hears the whinnying sound, he finds out that a horse is making the sound. Now, let me just stipulate here that for this illustration, at no point does S come to think that what is essential to being a horse is to make that sound. However, he picks out horses on the basis of figuring out what satisfies the description "makes a whinnying sound." And it works perfectly because there happen to be no other animals that make that sound, let's say. Here, the property of being that which makes a whinnying sound is the basis for identifying instances of horses, but it is not essential to what a horse is (even in S's own mind).

Given the coherence of both types of scenarios (indeed, I think both kinds happen all the time), I'm not sure it's possible to construct an argument from the premise "S recognizes instances of X on the basis of property P" to the conclusion "Therefore, P is an essential property of X." It just seems to me, though, that it's right to say in UNICORN the property of having a horn was a basis for identifying instances of unicorns (or what he thought were unicorns) and that there is a way in which that property was fit to serve that role because it is an essential property of unicorns. However, in WHINNY, it's not right to say that the property of making a whinnying sound, though the basis for identifying instances of horses, is an essential property of a horse.

Now, when it comes to knowledge, my claim is just that when I've claimed to have a justified belief (and I'm using "justification" for the third condition for knowledge, hence it is an essential condition for knowledge by definition), I did so in virtue of thinking that beliefs based on certain mental states/experiences are based on states/experiences which reliably connect to the truth. I identified instances of justified beliefs on the basis of their being formed on the basis of experiences that I implicitly but vitally assumed were reliable. Were a belief formed on the basis of an experience I did not think was reliable, I wouldn't have identified that belief as an instance of a justified belief. (Note, this consideration implies not just that an indicator that a belief was a justified one was only that I thought it was based on reliable evidence, but that it is in fact based on reliable evidence. Whether I was actually in position to know that a belief is based on reliable evidence is beside the point. The point is that I took it for granted that my mental evidence was reliable, and that was a crucial factor in determining which beliefs to call "justified," viz., those that were based on that kind of evidence. To be justified was to be based on states/experiences that were not simply thought to be reliable, but in fact were. And my calling beliefs "justified" reflects that I just took it for granted that I could tell, wrongly or rightly, what kind of beliefs were based on such evidence.)

OK, so it's clear (to me) that the apparent exemplification of the property "based on evidence that reliably connects to the truth" was what I partly based my judgments on as to which beliefs were justified and which weren't. Now, where does this leave us? Well, you could make this analaogous to UNICORN or to WHINNY. You could claim that my identifying certain beliefs as justified beliefs on the basis of their appearing to be based on evidence that was reliable is like S's identifying instances of what he thought were unicorns on the basis of the essential property "being a horse with a horn," or you could say that it's more like S's picking out horses on the basis of the exemplification of the unessential property "makes a whinnying sound." I don't have an argument for why it has to be the case that it is more analagous to UNICORN than to WHINNY. I'm inclined to think there is one that could be constructed, but for the time being it is all I can claim that at least in *my* case, it is clear to me that the right analogue is to UNICORN. And that was demonstrated when I heard Feldman's twin scenario (You and your BIV twin) and found my first reaction to be, "Hmmm... they both are internally rational/reasonable/responsible,etc, but it's not at all clear that they are both knowledge-level justified."

One final point. Maybe I could at least say this in favor of an analogue to UNICORN. In WHINNY, if I told S that I found a horse that doesn't whinny, there'd be no incoherence in saying that to him, since whinnying is not an essential property of horses, even to him. But in UNICORN, if I told S I found a unicorn that has no horn, he'd say, "That's impossible." Similarly, my first instinct when you tell me that a person could have a justified belief based on mental states/experiences that doesn't reliably connect to the truth is to say, "Huh? That's incoherent. Internally rational, yes. But third-condition-of-knowledge-justified? That can't be." Hence, what I was calling "justified belief" had as an essential quality that the basis for the belief was a reliable basis. (But of course, I could be the weird one in all this, though I honestly don't think I am relative to the masses.)

A Dilemma for Deniers of a priori Intuition

2006-11-02T11:32:00.001-05:00

In our Self-evidence reading group, Earl has several times expressed skepticism about there being a phenomenology associated with a priori intuition (what we'll call the mode of grasping a self-evident proposition). A couple of times he's seemed to indicate that, parallel to Hume's statement about the self, he just doesn't see anything when he looks inside for such things.

It could be that in the back of his mind is something like the following assumption.

(FA1) Necessarily, for every experience E, E's phenomenal character is constituted by at least one of the sensuous characters associated with the five sensory modalities and my nothing else.

I think (FA1) pretty clearly false though, so I'm not sure what Earl is thinking. I here offer a dilemma on behalf of such qualia.

Definitions
D1 Necessarily, for any experience E, E has phenomenal character just in case there's something it's like to have that experience.
D2. Necessarily, for any experience E, E's phenomenal character is what it feels like to host E.
D3. A phenomenal concept =df a concept one can have only by being in a certain experience.

Argument A
1. Either there's something it's like to grasp the validity of modus ponens.
2. If there is not something it's like to grasp the validity of modus ponens, then no one has ever known they've grasped modus ponens.
3. But some have known they've grasped modus ponens.
4. Thus, there's something it's like to grasp modus ponens.

In a forthcoming paper Rich and Earl say that one's evidence that one is frustrated can include "a palpable sense of your own frustration". Now "palpable" is ambiguous in just the way "felt" is. It can mean felt with the five senses or felt in some broader sense. I see no reason to think that one could not have evidence that one is frustrated apart from how one looks, smells, sounds, feels, or tastes to oneself (though one can have such evidence).

It could be that the ambiguity is there on purpose to put off discussion of phenomenology, but I think such cases depend on introspective phenomenology and so we've got a more general dilemma stemming from all the things we think we know that we wouldn't if introspective phenomenology didn't provide evidence.

Self-evident but False

2006-11-02T11:32:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about our discussion of Audi's "Self-Evidence" a bit more (but just a bit) and I can now see no compelling reason to think that there can't be self-evident but false propositions. Furhtermore, I don't see that anything of any especial value is lost as a result.

2006-10-23T13:53:00.000-04:00

Posting recently on Larry Horn's lecture on pragmatics reminded me about some thoughts I had about intuitions.

The following notion of intuitions will be pretty simple and have the result, I think, that we ought to be pretty conservative of intuitions (but not slaves to them).

The most accurate way I can think of to think of intuitions is as follows:

(TDI1) Intuitions are judgements that competent L-language users make about the truth-value of sentences in L.

Competence comes in degrees so the "weight" of an intuition as well as it's "strength" will vary. By "strength" I intend to indicate the confidence the target speaker has in the target judgement. By "weight" I intend to indicate the force such testimony would/should have for a 3rd party. Since the 3rd party in most cases will also be an L-speaker, she must weigh the judgements together (gives rise to interesting problems in the epistemology of disagreement, but that's another post).

I now take fluency in a language to be a species of expertise. It is not at all clear to me that professional lexicographers have more expertise in the meaning of terms than the ordinary fluent English speaker, since I afford quite a strong role of use in meaning (but that's another post).

So my second thesis is a strengthening of the first:

(TDI2) Intuitions are the expert opinions of fluent language users.

From this thesis I draw the following conclusion:

(TDI3) Intuitions have the warrant which accrues to expert opinions.

I think that's enough to piss off quite a few people so I'll stop there for now.

The Swamping Argument

2006-10-23T13:34:00.000-04:00

Since my commentary was rather syncopated I thought I'd paste part of my recent post on the University Sterling's Value Project Blog here.

First, a little background:

The Swamping Argument is specifically meant to falsify the following naïve attempt to designate a method for explaining the value of knowledge over true belief.

(*) Find some property P which distinguishes knowledge from true belief and has value. Then surely EV(TB+P) > EV(TB).

But this is doomed to failure for P such that the *only* value P has is as a means to TB (thus my “pure-means”). The idea is that the property having been reliably formed is such a property.
My bottom line diagnosis is that Kristoffer was confusing the value of a *process* with the value of a *belief* which is the target of the Swamping Argument. In it's barest bones, the Swamping Argument can be put forward as an explanatory argument:

Datum: Necessarily, for any two true beliefs B1 and B2, if B1 is known and B2 is not, then EV(B1) > EV(B2.) [Technically it could be run as an existential claim, but then it's not a very interesting thesis.]
Reliabilism can't explain this datum for all that R-ism has to add to B1 is that it is R-formed. But that's only valuable as a means to truth, so given that we've got truth already ex hypothesi, so it doesn't actually add new value.

Now the comments where I take fairly seriously one suggestion.

-----------------

This weekend at the 4th Biennial Rochester Graduate Epistemology Conference, I commented on a paper "An Argument Against Swamping" by Kristoffer Ahlstrom from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

He said there are very few epistemologists in Sweden, so I'm glad that a significant percentage of them (him!) are working on value-driven epistemology.

Having said that, there seems to be a misconception that advocates of the swamping argument against reliabilist theories of knowledge can't hold that reliable belief forming processes are valuable. I've run into this a surprising number of times, even among people able to formulate a reasonable version of the swamping argument.

I want my belief to have the property of having been formed by reliable belief-forming processes. So I value such processes. What's more, I value them precisely in virtue of my desire to have true beliefs, for it might reasonably be thought that forming beliefs according to such methods is likely to result in my having some more true beliefs (it might even be true by definition).

Still, for any *given* belief, if I know that it's true, what do I care how it was formed? Well, I might care, but not *merely* from the standpoint of my desire to have true beliefs. This seems to me to be the point of Jon's Two Lists Argument (VK, 45-48).

Having said *that* there is an interesting idea suggested by Ahlstrom which few will like, but to which I'm actually somewhat receptive to in other contexts. Ahlstom seemed to want to argue that there was some independent value in the property having been formed by a reliable belief forming process which accrues to a belief B having that property in virtue of that property's having the following property: being such that most instantiations of it are true. Let's call this higher-order property P*.

On the face of it, it doesn't seem like the value of that property can "seep down into" the object-level instantiation. The target belief just is true and an instantiation of P* which has has nothing clear to do with other instantiations of P* which may or may not be true. But consider this example of a common phenomenon: I take especial pleasure in the fact that I'm going to the same grad school as Marshal Swain, Peter van Inwagen, et al (and where Richard Taylor and Keith Lehrer taught). This will no doubt strike most as just pure irrationality, but it's not *abundantly* clear to me that there isn't something to such thinking.

One might think that schools which have good M&E faculty/students will continue to do so (it's certainly been true in this case!). But w.r.t token faculty/students this can at best underwrite the expectation that they are likely to be good at M&E (no comments!). And one might think that processes or agents that have been reliable in the past are likely to continue to be reliable in the future. Still, this can at best underwrite the expectation that the next belief token will be true. So it seems to me at this point that the phenomenon sociologists call "basking in the reflective glory" are, at best, grounds for expectation of some target property which the Swamping Argument shows don't help solve the Meno Problem.

More on Framing the Internalism/Externalism Debate

2006-10-14T19:44:00.000-04:00

In my post I forgot to link to the post on my blog which discusses theories of evidence. Here it is.

One clarification in my point about PF and EP’s. In the discussion on evidentialism I focused on EJ rather than ES because I don’t particularly find supervenience a helpful notion. I don’t think I made clear that there’s probably no way to get strong supervenience out of PF, since, unlike EP’s DP’s (design plans) will vary not only from world to world, but from species to species within worlds.

It’s not clear to me that at some level of generality you won’t get supervenience of justification on broad mental types, but at that level of generality it might get unenlightening: any two individuals in any world who are alike in that their beliefs are supported by the experiences their design plans say ought to support those beliefs are alike in respects of justification.

However, it’s *also* not clear to me that this level of generality isn’t *more* informative in some respects. It’s a tough issue. So that’s what I’m not saying and what I’m not confident of. Here’s what I am saying and what I’m pretty confident of.

SUBSTANCE: There is no “relevant”/“substantive” violation of evidentialism in PF theory since anything that’s “external” about PF is, I think, true mutatis mutandis about EP’s.

True, DP’s will, on one theory of EP’s, vary more than DP’s.

FUNCTION FIXITY: Holding DP’s fixed the evidence is the only thing that determines justificatory status.

Compare:

PRINCIPLE FIXITY: Holding EP’s fixed the evidence is the only thing that determines justificatory status.

P-FIXITY might seem odd since you can’t help but hold the necessary fixed. But this is *precisely* where I think I can support SUBSTANCE. Here’s a *really* internalist view: Bayesiansim. On personalist bayesianism (*not* a redundancy contrary to many) the EP’s are a persons conditional personal probabilities (how much *they think* one thing makes another probable). So here not only do EP’s vary from world to world and species to species but from *person to person*!

So how do the subjectivist internalist and the objectivist internalist differ? Just in respect of how fixed EP’s are. Now when evaluated along one dimention—the mental—both count as mentalist internalists because subjectivist EP’s are mental states, so supervenience holds BUT FOR A TOTALLY DIFFERENT REASON. This should tell us that supervenience isn’t doing much relevant explanatory work. what really matters in a theory is WHAT EXPLAINS FIXATION.

A really natural definition of internalism would have been (and John Turri seems to think it was):

MENTALISM*: Theory T is an internalist theory of epistemic justification iff THE TOTAL STORY ABOUT JUSTIFICATION makes reference only to mental states.

Notice that Rich and Earl’s view is not a species of MENTALISM* due to the requirement of necessary epistemic principles. Now *surely* the “real” debate is not about whether mentalism or MENTALISM* is the best. It seems to me the debate is about what determines fixity. After that—as is platitudinous—it’s all a matter of evidence.

Let’s call the fixors the “evidential superstructure” of a theory of justification (the theory of evidence would be the “meat” of the view (I’m not trying to connote anything but a form vs. matter contrast). Personalist Bayesians think mental states themselves determine the evidential superstructure, Chisholmians think necessary truths form the evidential superstructure, proper functionalists think design plans form the evidential superstructure.

This, it seems to me, is the most helpful way to frame the debate.

"Justification?"

2006-10-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

[This post is closely related to Trent's prior post, "Evidentialism for Everyone."]

So John (Kwak) and I tried to hash a little bit of this out yesterday in the grad office, and I think we arrived at conclusions something near to the following. (This is all very rough, and painting in some fairly broad strokes; I'm writing it in a hurry while out of town for the weekend. John, correct me if I’m mistaken or have missed something.)

First, one helpful way of framing the whole internalism/externalism debate – or at least of getting situated when it comes to remembering what we’re talking about – is to think back to Gettier’s article. Prior to that, I think it’s a fairly safe assumption that most people were thinking of knowledge as something like justified true belief, even if they weren’t entirely explicit about it. Gettier of course showed that something more is needed, and that’s more or less where it all began. One of the quests became that of discovering an analysis of knowledge that was not subject to Gettierization.

All of that should be fairly uncontroversial, but it seems like controversy lurks somewhere very nearby. It begins like this: some people ended up taking it that “justified true belief” is pretty clearly some central element of knowledge, but that it needs to be supplemented by some de-Gettierization condition (no false grounds, no defeaters, whatever). Others ended up taking it that “justified true belief” just is knowledge, but that the “justified” part of the analysis needs to be redefined in some way. (Hence we have Goldman’s “What is Justified Belief?” article saying more or less that reliability is central to justification.) Finally, another group apparently ended up keeping the “true belief” part of the analysis but replacing the “justified” part by something that was supposed to be entirely different – warrant, or perhaps “positive epistemic status” (whatever that involves), say.

At the same time, despite these differences, some fundamental similarities ended up being present in all of the above views. Aside from holding the “true belief” part fixed, each of the above views seems to hold that there is some crucial evaluative “thing” in the analysis of knowledge, and that satisfying that evaluative condition (along with true belief) either gets you pretty close to knowledge – you just need to add some “fillip” to prevent Gettierization – or in fact gets you knowledge (in that this evaluative element – once it has been redefined in some way different from the traditional analysis that Gettier criticized – is itself enough to prevent Gettierization). So, more or less, the crucial thing in the debate about knowledge and justification became figuring out what exactly this evaluative “thing” is.

But part of the problem should now be evident. Once the focus was shifted to this evaluative “thing,” it seems like the fact that one group took this evaluative “thing” to be all that you need in addition to true belief to get knowledge – usually, if not always, these are externalists – and that the other group took this evaluative “thing” to be not sufficient (in addition to true belief) for knowledge, was lost. And the worst part about it was that, even though they were apparently talking about different sorts of evaluative notions – because one was intended to be all that you needed in addition to true belief, but the other was never intended to be such – they all (at least initially, particularly with Goldman’s article) wanted to call these evaluative notions justification. Or, if these notions weren’t explicitly called “justification,” they were at least all taken to be that “thing” that fits into the analysis of knowledge where “justified” used to be (although, again, some took it that whatever this “thing” is is sufficient, along with true belief, for knowledge, and others took it to be something that needed to be supplemented by a fourth condition). It seems like that is precisely where all of the confusion really begins.

How so? Well, look at what’s going on here with (EJ). It’s probably should be platitudinous. Why would someone deny it? Well, perhaps it's because of the phrase “epistemically justified” contained therein. Some people read it and presumably think, ‘Oh, here we’re talking about that third, not sufficient condition (in addition to true belief), that needs to be supplemented by a fourth condition in the analysis of knowledge. Sure, fine; obviously that thing is characterized by (EJ).’ But then the others read it and think, ‘This is supposed to characterize that “thing” that gets us knowledge in addition to true belief? No way! Clearly we need something more than “fitting the evidence,” or we’re subject to immediate Gettierization!’ (I think that maybe this latter way of thinking could be exemplified by Plantinga, at least in certain places; hence Trent complains that he treats evidentialism as a theory of warrant when it was never intended to be such. He apparently takes it to be providing a characterization of this third and sufficient (plus true belief) condition, whereas the evidentialist (usually?) doesn’t mean that -- he (the evidentialist) wants for it to be a characterization of that third but supplemented condition in the analysis of knowledge.)

So here we see the rationale that may -- perhaps wrongly -- be underlying rejections of (EJ). And, further, it seems like the only way to sort these things out is to be almost drastically explicit about what we’re talking about when we say things like “justification,” and “epistemically justified.” Once we are drastically clear about that, I think we end up seeing that there’s a lot less disagreement than there initially appears to be. For, as I’ve now noted to Trent in e-mail correspondence, if we’re entirely clear that the “justification” characterized by (EJ) and (M) is something other than this “thing” that, in addition to true belief, is by itself supposed to get us un-Gettierized knowledge, then it seems entirely possible that a proper functionalist externalist could also be a mentalist (as characterized by (M)) about justification. He could be a proper functionalist about warrant, and perhaps even hold that justification is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge, but still agree that justification – now explicitly not intended to be that thing which gets us knowledge in addition to true belief – is correctly characterized by mentalism (in fact, for some comments suggestive of something near to this, see Plantinga's comments about Chisholm on justification at p. 45 of his Warrant: The Current Debate). But, of course, it seems that most people would think that “proper functionalist mentalist” – even as here characterized – is an oxymoron (I say this based only on informal polls of a few philosophy graduate students :) ). That tells me that many, many people – probably including myself until recently – have been using notions like “justification,” "warrant," and so on, much too quickly, without being clear about what’s being said.

This, I think, is why I’ve said that philosophy needs to hit the "reset" button, and why John continues to urge the creation of some Philosophical Standards Institute that establishes how such terms shall be used from now on. :)

So, briefly: As long as we’re clear that “justification” means “that in-some-way evaluative ‘thing’ that is not intended to be sufficient (in addition to true belief) for Gettier-proof knowledge” (maybe something like “evidence-sensitive rationality,” if that's not question-begging) then (EJ) does seem platitudinous, and it seems like even (M) is not nearly as controversial as it may otherwise appear. Externalists may accept both. On the other hand, if by “justification” we mean “that in-some-way evaluative ‘thing’ that is sufficient for Gettier-proof knowledge (in addition to true belief),” then “controversial” is the name of the game. Even (EJ) will likely be vehemently denied by some.

In any case, I think (in my current hurriedness) that that’s close to where things stand… Maybe. :) I'd love to hear further thoughts on this.

Evidentialism for Everyone

2006-10-12T00:24:00.000-04:00

Universality Thesis (UT): Nothing in externalism entails the negation of evidentialism.

Nota Bene: This is not a *demographic* thesis about what intersections of logical space are more populated than others. Rather, it is a thesis about the *topology* of logical space, regardless of who may or may not live there.

There is a misleading statement on the back of Earl and Rich's _Evidentialism_ book. It states: "Evidentiaism is a version of epistemic internalism." This is a natural statement in the context since it is on the back of a book authored by evidentialists who are internalists. However, it is not correct tout court.

That is, UT is true. An equivalent statement of it is:

UT: Possibly, there is an externalist evidentialist.

The quick way to prove this possibility is to ostend its actuality: Timothy Williamson.

On p. 146 of _Knowledge and Its Limits_ he notes that "Rational thinkers respect their evidence." A natural reading of this is the original definition of evidentialism:

EJ Doxastic attitude D toward proposition p is epistemically justified for S at t if and only if having D toward p fits the evidence S has at t.

Yet Williamson has an externalist theory of knowledge. He asserts the formula "E=K", i.e. one's evidence is identical to one's knowledge. Since knowledge is not restricted to the contents of one's own mind, and knowledge is evidence, evidence is external to the mind. This is a denial of the internalist supervenience thesis:

M If any two possible individuals are exactly alike mentally, then they are alike justificationally, e.g., the same beliefs are justified for them to the same extent.

Williamson glibly remarks of classical internalists:

they interiorize evidence: it becomes one's present experience, one's present degrees of belif, or the like. Those attempts are quaint relics of Cartesian epistemology....If one's evidence were restricted to the contents of one's own mind, it could not play the role that it actually does in science.

So we have the best kind of argument of the possibility of externalist evidentialism: an actual example.

This shouldn't be in the least surprising: evidentialism was originally meant to be a platitude: that anyone ever denies it is merely the result of misunderstanding.

But wait...there's more!

We also have perfectly general reasons to see that externalism and evidentialism are compatible. If we wanted to try and substantiate the misleading claim on the back of the Evidentialism book that ""Evidentiaism is a version of epistemic internalism." we'd have to show that.

EJ Doxastic attitude D toward proposition p is epistemically justified for S at t if and only if having D toward p fits the evidence S has at t.

conceptually entails

M If any two possible individuals are exactly alike mentally, then they are alike justificationally, e.g., the same beliefs are justified for them to the same extent.

On the face of it, it looks bleak. The connecting premise would have to be an internalist theory of evidence itself, that is:

(EI) Necessarily, evidence consists in mental states.

Whereas I think that's the best way to think of evidence, the denial of (EI) is not incoherent. One could hold, for example, a theory of evidence that endorses the common sense legal view that evidence consists in things like finger prints and broken glass. You could also hold a plausible mixed view that evidence consists in mental states that were readily accessible as well as information that is "at one's fingerprints" in the sense that it would be about as easy for the subject to look up the information, in a nearby book, say, as to remember it (I actually think this mixed view is *quite* plausible).

The coherence of externalist theories of evidence ensures the possibility of an externalist evidentialism and so UT is vindicated.

Feldman's "essential dependence" theory of Gettierization

2006-09-27T18:53:00.000-04:00

This is just a quick thought dashed off after class, but what's the problem with this precisification of Rich's view.

Let LL "for Lucky Lemma" be the general name for the falsehood essentially depended upon.

S's inference from premises P to conclusion C essentially depends on LL iff (i) S infers C from P, and (ii) it is not possibly the case that (a) S infers C from P and (b) C is justified for S and (c)d justifiedly believes LL is not true.

This seems to capture the intuition of the no-defeaters theory without the doomed subjunctive conditional.

That's awefully rough and I probably shouldn't post in a hurry, but I had the idea that something like this might work for what he says in the mid-to-upper 30's of the Epistemology Intro.

Putting some things together on epistemic value.

2006-09-11T17:00:00.000-04:00

So in two posts below I've asserted

(VI) Cognitive acts which are *guided by* ideals are more valuable than cognitive acts which merely go *according to* rules.

and tried to say something about what I mean.

The original context was to underwrite the following value judgement in epistemology:

(TD1) Consciously inferred beliefs are more intrinsically epistemically valuable than basic beliefs.

The premise which gets us from (VI) to (TD1) is something like

(L) Conscious inference is guided by ideals and basic beliefs are not.

The conclusion I'd like to draw is parallel to that others--especially Jon Kvanvig--have drawn about knowledge and other states: roughly, let's focus on what's really valuable. I'm saying that just as epistemic virtues are arguably more valuable than knowledge and so deserve a greater share of the attention of epistemologists, likewise inferentially justified beliefs are more valuable than basic justified beliefs and so deserve a greater share of the attention of epistemologists.

Foundationalists have spent waaaaaaaaay too much time in my opinion on trying to come up with theories of justification for perceptual beliefs. The dilemma is always the same: either you intellectualize justified belief by saying that it takes second-order thought to have justified perceptual beliefs and thus rule out lots of simple kinds of justified belief which is mostly "autonomic" or you let in any old autonomic belief and suddenly it looks like clairvoyants have justified beliefs. The literature is as thick as the Gettier literature from the 70's.

When an inference is justified is in fact enough trouble in its own right, as illustrated by "Carroll's Paradox" illustrated by Carroll's story--published in Mind--"What the Tortoise said to Achilles." This is a subject to which I hope to return with something useful to say.

Giving Some Account of "Value" for Value-driven Epistemology

2006-09-11T16:34:00.000-04:00

I just proposed the following principle:

(VI) Cognitive acts which are *guided by* ideals are more valuable than cognitive acts which merely go *according to* rules.

So I need to say what it means.

Let's keep cognitive acts fairly broad and natural. Though I think the notion is broader, it's probably wise to restrict scope to the token I'm most interested in: conscious inferences.

Rules I don't have much to say about yet, but we can probably passably define ideals as rules one consciously endorses.

"According to" I don't have much to say about yet, but perhaps it can be defined in terms of "guided by".

The first step would be to give us a toy theory to Chisholm on. Say that

(G1) S is guided by rule R (hopefully no vicious circularity here) just in case (i) S consciously considers R, and (ii) intends to follow R.

The first thing that we should probably relativize the notion to the intended subject of discourse.

(G2) S is guided by rule R in making inference I just in case (i) S consciously considers R, (ii) S makes I, (iii) S intends to follow R in making I.

I'm taking consciously considering as a basic notion. Likewise for making an inference (not because it's trivial, but because its natural), and I suppose I'll have to take intending to do M for the sake of E as basic as well. I'm OK with all this at this point.

The big question is what kind of value we're talking about here. I see no way to avoid--indeed I want to endorse--that there are various kinds of irreducible intrinsic value. You'll want to know "value for what" or "for whom" or "according to what scale" and I've got not much to say there. The best I can do--and you may not think it much--is to advert to a traditional Aristotelian notion of orders of function like the "Porphyrian Tree".

Plants are of more value than rocks because they have all the value of composite material objects plus the value added by organic unity constituting a life. Animals have all this value plus the value added by the ability to represent the world in some kind of internal mental system. Humans have all this plus the added value of being able to reflect consciously upon it and represent even representations (all the way up).

Whatever kind of value this is--and I'm endorsing that there is this kind of value--it is the kind of value I have in mind. If great-chain-of-being-value weren't so cumbersome I'd be fine with that. Calling it "metaphysical value" makes it sound too "Continental". I'd like to call it "organic value" I think. I don't have much (more?) illuminating to say about it.

I don't know if most other value-driven epistemologists think the relative value of epistemic states are a special kind of purely *epistemic* value or not. At any rate, I do not. Perhaps a values epistemologist could take something like reflection to be a basic epistemic value and then remain agnostic about where such values come from or how they fit into a greater system of value. Perhaps some just think there's nothing more than conventional instrumental value at stake. For my own part I think of the relative value of epistemic states as arising out of what kind of organic value they happen to instantiate.

For the sake of ease of discussion let me call the kind of value exemplified when epistemic states exemplify organic value "intrinsic epistemic value". The reason I favor this term is that I think it aptly distinguishes the subject from means-end value in getting to the truth which would be well-represented by reliability. The main problem is that Chisholm has a notion of the value of epistemic states which could reasonably go by this name. However, I'm going to stick with my terminology in part because I have an eye on explicating just what Chisholm had in mind.

Conscious Knowledge vs. Unconscious Knowledge

2006-09-11T14:45:00.000-04:00

During the discussion of knowledge-how and knowledge-that, we focused on an example like that of my daughter below. Because of the difficulties in stating what propositional knowledge she acquired and when she acquired it, Rich said today that the main subject of epistemology--at least this course--was knowledge at the conscious level.

Perhaps I'm reading this wrongly, but it seems that the question which drives the engine of architectural epistemology--foundationalsm v. coherentism; internalism v. externalism, etc.--and the discussion in Rich's book--is the status of empirical beliefs. But empirical beliefs are almost always unconscious.

Having said this, most of my epistemological inquiries focus on the conscious level and you might even say that what I'm interested in is the justification of *inferences* (Fumerton talks this way a lot). I'm not even sure the rationality of basic beliefs or empirical beliefs is rightly treated in anything very similar to the the rationality of inferences.

To look at it from another angle, it's not clear to me that basic beliefs can have as much value as non-basic beliefs, at least *conscious* non-basic beliefs (unconscious inference is something I'd like to know more about, but I'd make the same kind of value judgement). The reason, very roughly, is that in making conscious inferences we are guided by an ideal.

Basic beliefs and unconscious inferences might go *according to* a rule, but they are not *guided by* rules in the way that conscious inferences are. I've been assuming the following thesis which might be even more controversial than I guess:

(VI) Cognitive acts which are *guided by* ideals are more valuable than cognitive acts which merely go *according to* rules.

This begins to change the subject a bit, so I'll try to make (VI) more clear in a separate post.

Is knowing-how reducible to knowing-that?

2006-09-11T13:57:00.000-04:00

This question came up in Rich's Epistemology survey which I'm auditing this semester. One suggestion, the one I'm *inclined* to endorse--for various reasons that may be revealed--is that all knowledge-how *can* be reduced to knowing-that.

Since we shouldn't postulate kinds of knowledge without necessity, we shouldn't endorse irreducible knowledge-how unless there are cases of putative knowing-how which we can't reduce to knowing-that.

A common objection to the reduction is something about ineffability. Knowing-how often seems incommunicable.

I think this objection can largely be handled by the use of demonstratives. For example, by daughter, who just went off training-wheels this past weekend, knows that [When I move like this, the bike goes like that.] The referents of the demonstratives will be very hard to articulate, but this doesn't stop the knowledge from being propositional knowledge.

Furthermore, it should be remembered that many of our beliefs are automatic and yet still "propositional beliefs".

I don't have a clear conception of what information is, but I think it's surely intimately related to propositional content. Minimally, I think any item of information will entail some proposition (it would be nice if information just were propositions, but I haven't thought about it hard enough to make that assertion).

There's little doubt that there is--to steal a phrase from Dretske--a "flow of information" going on in her cognitive system while she's riding her bike. Some of these will be hosted affirmatively or negatively, so I think we've got propositional knowledge here and I see no reason yet to think anything else is necessary.

New Semester, New Blog (again)

2006-09-03T17:48:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Jason's work we have a new look and location for the blog (without having to use a standard Blogger template). Happily this means we can say goodbye to the inhospitable "hosting" of the Computer Interest Floor. As soon as I can get the old site repaired, we'll have a link to it for archives.

I'm looking forward to some good interaction concerning classes among grad students. Classes begin this week, so blogging should commence forthwith.

Welcome...

2006-09-01T17:16:00.000-04:00

To the home of the Grad Student Blog for the University of Rochester, New York.