I’ve been emailing with Adam Elga about his Dr Evil paper
(and my objections
to it) and on at least one point I’ve been totally trounced. I said that predicaments
were only situations that were in some way unpleasant, but Adam used the term
to cover all sorts of situations, even ones involving the twins from the Coors Light commercials. Adam
replied that Michael
Jordan uses ‘predicament’ the way he does.

“We’ve got 26 wins
and we still have 35 games left,” Jordan said. “We’ve got a good chance of
putting ourselves in a good predicament, which all along I felt like we could.
In some ways you want to think greedy, but nut-cutting time is starting to
come.”

You know I don’t think I’ve ever lost an
argument so convincingly since the last time I tried disagreeing with Tim
Williamson.

I’m constantly amazed at the speed things
move at in internet time. One would expect a priori that daily
readership would be a function of, inter alia, how often the site is
updated. If the site is updated rarely, then people might only check it once a
week or so, whereas if it’s updated hourly, it will be checked more often. And
to a fairly large extent this is true. When I was posting a lot in September
and early October, my daily hits were much higher than in November, when I was
posting much less.

One might have also thought a priori
that cause and effect here would take time to play out. Updating five times a
day can’t increase hit numbers until people actually check the site, which may
not be for a week if they think you’re updating weekly. But this seems to be
wrong. A few days of actually putting content back on the site, and yesterday
was the most hits I’d got in a single day. There’s a lesson or sorts I’m
sure.

From the one man’s modus ponens is another
man’s modus tollens department, here’s a passage on time travel from Ned
Markosian’s entry on time
in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

And for another
thing, as I mentioned at the beginning of this section, we often think about
time travel stories; but it is very plausible to think that a story cannot
depict things that are downright impossible. For example, it is natural to
think that there could not be a story in which two plus two are five, or in
which there is a sphere that both is and is not red all over. (This seems
especially true if the story is told pictorially, as in the case of a movie.)
Hence, if time travel is impossible, then we should not even be able to
consider any story in which time travel occurs. And yet we do so all the time!
One task facing the philosopher who claims that time travel is impossible,
then, is to explain the existence of a huge number of well-known stories that
appear to be specifically about time travel.

Hmm. I seem to remember drawing exactly the
opposite conclusion from this. It was sort of a crucial point in my imaginative
resistance paper that since we can represent impossible time travel
situations in fictions, fictional representability did not entail possibility.
(This argument was lifted in its entirety from some almost parenthetical
remarks in Tamar Gendler’s paper on imaginative resistance.) So who’s drawing
the right inferences here?

Well, I think I am. (No? Really?!) Ned’s
looking for an argument that time travel is possible. But this argument
overgeneralises, for if it worked it would be an argument that many kinds of
time travel are possible, including changing the past Back to the Future style
time travel that most everyone agrees is impossible. Since we can represent
that kind of time travel, the fact that we can also represent the more seamless
kinds of time travel where the past and future all ‘fit together’ hardly shows
that that kind of time travel is possible.

From the one man’s modus ponens is another
man’s modus tollens department, here’s a passage on time travel from Ned
Markosian’s entry on time
in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

And for another
thing, as I mentioned at the beginning of this section, we often think about
time travel stories; but it is very plausible to think that a story cannot
depict things that are downright impossible. For example, it is natural to
think that there could not be a story in which two plus two are five, or in
which there is a sphere that both is and is not red all over. (This seems
especially true if the story is told pictorially, as in the case of a movie.)
Hence, if time travel is impossible, then we should not even be able to
consider any story in which time travel occurs. And yet we do so all the time!
One task facing the philosopher who claims that time travel is impossible,
then, is to explain the existence of a huge number of well-known stories that
appear to be specifically about time travel.

Hmm. I seem to remember drawing exactly the
opposite conclusion from this. It was sort of a crucial point in my imaginative
resistance paper that since we can represent impossible time travel
situations in fictions, fictional representability did not entail possibility.
(This argument was lifted in its entirety from some almost parenthetical
remarks in Tamar Gendler’s paper on imaginative resistance.) So who’s drawing
the right inferences here?

Well, I think I am. (No? Really?!) Ned’s
looking for an argument that time travel is possible. But this argument
overgeneralises, for if it worked it would be an argument that many kinds of
time travel are possible, including changing the past Back to the Future style
time travel that most everyone agrees is impossible. Since we can represent
that kind of time travel, the fact that we can also represent the more seamless
kinds of time travel where the past and future all ‘fit together’ hardly shows
that that kind of time travel is possible.

I was talking to Juan Comesaña about practical
rationality yesterday, and a family of puzzle cases came up about which we
couldn’t figure out what to say. So I thought I’d share them with you and see
if I could let you all figure out what my intuitions are, because right now I’m
not sure I can.

(By the way, much of the talking was done in
a mock interview, in which Juan looked pretty impressive. Anyone out there who’s
looking to hire a talented young epistemologist/ethicist should have his agent
on their speed dial. (Alert: strained American football analogy forthcoming.) Being
an epistemologist and an ethicist should be a natural combination, like being a
wide receiver and a cornerback. But for some reason it’s not only rare, the two
fields are put into two different groups, so departments usually have to fill
two lines to cover both needs. When roster space is tight, multi-skilled philosophers
should be more highly valued than they actually are. I don’t really mean to
compare Juan to Deion Sanders, but that’s just a limitation of my talent at
drawing analogies.)

Anyway, the examples. To get the framework
in place, imagine that you’re more or less a Humean about practical value. In
particular, you think that being practically rational means, most of the time, acting
so as to satisfy your preferences. But, you think, actions that you only
believe will lead to preference satisfaction because you hold irrational
beliefs are not practically rational. So in GOOD BEER I am practically
rational, in BAD BEER I am not.

GOOD BEER
I’m watching football, and I realise that I want a beer. I believe there is
beer in the fridge because I put some there not long ago. So I stroll out onto
the porch and get myself a beer.

BAD BEER
I’m watching football, and I realise that I want a beer. I believe there is
beer in the fridge, but only because I hope there’s beer in the fridge, and I
always believe the world is the way that I hope it is. So I stroll out onto the
porch to get myself a beer.

If you don’t agree with us about
those cases then either you disagree so deeply about practical rationality that
you’re not going to care much about the following examples, or you’ve got a
different concept in mind to the one we have. But I hope you can at least
imagine agreeing with us about those cases. If you do agree with us, then you’ll
probably agree that there are potentially difficult cases when a decision is
partially based on an irrational belief and partially on perfectly rational
beliefs. For instance, the following families of cases are troubling. (The
cases will be underdescribed because I’m interested in how intuitions vary as
we vary some of the parameters in them.)

BEER AND
SANDWICHES
I’m watching football, and I realise that I want a beer and a sandwich. I
believe that both are in the fridge, because I remember putting sandwiches in
there, and that there is beer in the fridge, but that’s only because I hope
there’s beer in the fridge, and I always believe the world is the way that I
hope it is. So I stroll out onto the porch to get myself a beer and a sandwich.

BEER AND COKE
I’m watching football, and I realise that I want either a beer or a Coke. For
some reason right now these are pretty good substitutes for each other for me
now. (If you can’t imagine this then substitute other products.) I believe that
both are in the fridge because I put some of each in there yesterday. So I
stroll out onto the porch and when I get there I decide I’d prefer a Coke so I
get one. But when I get back to the couch I’m a little upset, because I realise
I had just got myself a beer five minutes ago, and it isn’t finished yet, so I
could have had beer without moving too far from the couch.

I have my suspicions about what
my intuitions are in each (instance of each) case, but I’m sort of interested
in hearing what other people think before I post them, so maybe that will be
left until later today.

I was talking to Juan Comesaña about practical
rationality yesterday, and a family of puzzle cases came up about which we
couldn’t figure out what to say. So I thought I’d share them with you and see
if I could let you all figure out what my intuitions are, because right now I’m
not sure I can.

(By the way, much of the talking was done in
a mock interview, in which Juan looked pretty impressive. Anyone out there who’s
looking to hire a talented young epistemologist/ethicist should have his agent
on their speed dial. (Alert: strained American football analogy forthcoming.) Being
an epistemologist and an ethicist should be a natural combination, like being a
wide receiver and a cornerback. But for some reason it’s not only rare, the two
fields are put into two different groups, so departments usually have to fill
two lines to cover both needs. When roster space is tight, multi-skilled philosophers
should be more highly valued than they actually are. I don’t really mean to
compare Juan to Deion Sanders, but that’s just a limitation of my talent at
drawing analogies.)

Anyway, the examples. To get the framework
in place, imagine that you’re more or less a Humean about practical value. In
particular, you think that being practically rational means, most of the time, acting
so as to satisfy your preferences. But, you think, actions that you only
believe will lead to preference satisfaction because you hold irrational
beliefs are not practically rational. So in GOOD BEER I am practically
rational, in BAD BEER I am not.

GOOD BEER
I’m watching football, and I realise that I want a beer. I believe there is
beer in the fridge because I put some there not long ago. So I stroll out onto
the porch and get myself a beer.

BAD BEER
I’m watching football, and I realise that I want a beer. I believe there is
beer in the fridge, but only because I hope there’s beer in the fridge, and I
always believe the world is the way that I hope it is. So I stroll out onto the
porch to get myself a beer.

If you don’t agree with us about
those cases then either you disagree so deeply about practical rationality that
you’re not going to care much about the following examples, or you’ve got a
different concept in mind to the one we have. But I hope you can at least
imagine agreeing with us about those cases. If you do agree with us, then you’ll
probably agree that there are potentially difficult cases when a decision is
partially based on an irrational belief and partially on perfectly rational
beliefs. For instance, the following families of cases are troubling. (The
cases will be underdescribed because I’m interested in how intuitions vary as
we vary some of the parameters in them.)

BEER AND
SANDWICHES
I’m watching football, and I realise that I want a beer and a sandwich. I
believe that both are in the fridge, because I remember putting sandwiches in
there, and that there is beer in the fridge, but that’s only because I hope
there’s beer in the fridge, and I always believe the world is the way that I
hope it is. So I stroll out onto the porch to get myself a beer and a sandwich.

BEER AND COKE
I’m watching football, and I realise that I want either a beer or a Coke. For
some reason right now these are pretty good substitutes for each other for me
now. (If you can’t imagine this then substitute other products.) I believe that
both are in the fridge because I put some of each in there yesterday. So I
stroll out onto the porch and when I get there I decide I’d prefer a Coke so I
get one. But when I get back to the couch I’m a little upset, because I realise
I had just got myself a beer five minutes ago, and it isn’t finished yet, so I
could have had beer without moving too far from the couch.

I have my suspicions about what
my intuitions are in each (instance of each) case, but I’m sort of interested
in hearing what other people think before I post them, so maybe that will be
left until later today.

Wo thinks I’m wrong in
saying the world is gruesome. He’s got a point, though I think that the
underlying argument I wanted to make still goes through. Wo wanted to argue
that (1) was a better candidate to be a complete theory of everything than (2),
or presumably its cognates like (3).

(1)      w
exists.
(2)      Everything is F.
(3)      There is a G.

In (3) I take G to be a predicate of
worlds that only this one satisfies. In (2) F is a predicate that any
thing satisfies in virtue of being a member of a world that is G. That
looks on the surface like a gruesome property, since it doesn’t make for
similarity among the things that satisfy it in any but a very artificial way. G
on the other hand has no such problem. Anything that satisfies G is just
like any (other) thing that satisfies G, probably because there’s only
one of them in the pluriverse. (Well, maybe there are more if there are
pluralities of duplicate worlds, a point that Lewis sometimes reveals
uncertainties about.)

So what I should have said is that (1) has
no virtues as a theory of the world over (3). I put this first by saying that
the world isn’t a particularly natural object. What I should have said is that
the world is exactly as natural as the property of being a G. Perhaps
the world is natural as objects go, though it looks to me like a fairly
scattered fusion of disparate elements. But if it is natural, then the property
of being just that way is also natural.

What also seems to be the case is that any
term that picks out w, or G, will have to be, in one sense or
other, magic. Because as natural as w might be, for any putative name
for w, say ‘@’, there will be several other eligible referents, all of
which will be just as natural as w, and all of which will satisfy our
uses of ‘@’ in all the respects that w does, perhaps save one. So for ‘@’
to refer to w rather than to w´ will take something that looks
like magic.

What about the one respect in which w
is not like w´, that we can make demonstrative reference to it. Well,
that’s an important difference, and it’s how we do manage to have names for
things like the actual world. But if you’re going to let demonstratives into
your theory of everything, then we could restate (3) as ‘Something is thus-ly’
demonstrating the way the world is. So I still don’t see a way in which
theories like (1) are better than theories like (3).

The vagueness
experiment is still running, though I guess most people reading this will
have taken it by now. The score right now is 26-3 in favour of sticking with
the first answer you give. I should stress that I don’t think this undermines
all the empirical claims made by contextualists about vagueness, or even any of
the claims made by all contextualists about vagueness. One different experiment
would have been to randomly start people at either end of a Sorites sequence
and walk them through it until they change their answer. Contextualists predict
that where people change their answer will be a function of which end they
start at, because there’s a bias to answer consecutive questions the same way.
That could be right, in fact I think it probably is, though it would be
interesting to test it.

UPDATE: It’s now 26-4. Is it fair to point
out that the last two votes in favour of changing one’s mind have come from
Cornell and St Andrews, two known locales of contextualists?

The vagueness
experiment is still running, though I guess most people reading this will
have taken it by now. The score right now is 26-3 in favour of sticking with
the first answer you give. I should stress that I don’t think this undermines
all the empirical claims made by contextualists about vagueness, or even any of
the claims made by all contextualists about vagueness. One different experiment
would have been to randomly start people at either end of a Sorites sequence
and walk them through it until they change their answer. Contextualists predict
that where people change their answer will be a function of which end they
start at, because there’s a bias to answer consecutive questions the same way.
That could be right, in fact I think it probably is, though it would be
interesting to test it.

UPDATE: It’s now 26-4. Is it fair to point
out that the last two votes in favour of changing one’s mind have come from
Cornell and St Andrews, two known locales of contextualists?

It’s not often I see an article in a major
web publication with my name at the
top of it. (It’s even rarer that I see this in a non-web publication
because I read so few of those.) Admittedly it didn’t have my name there as
such, but it sure looks like my name. In any case, the person Slate is
using my name as a nickname for doesn’t sound like the most pleasant
character ever. He did win a Rhodes scholarship, but from what I hear from
people around Oxford there’s little guarantee that that counts for much
character-wise.