John Quiggin has a post up on utilitarianism. It’s part of his continuing series on providing definitions for commonly (mis)used words, and I’m sure he’d be interested in comments from anyone with opinions.

I don’t believe in metaphysical vagueness or, what I think would come to the same thing if it came to anything, metaphysical indeterminacy. I used to think I believed that the metaphysics of representation was vague, but that I think was a mistake. What I should have believed was that there is no metaphysics of representation. What scared me off I guess was the fact that the view most naturally associated with this slogan (there is no metaphysics of representation), Paul Horwich’s minimalism about truth, was thought to lead to epistemicism about vagueness. But Horwich was wrong about that, as John Hawthorne recently argued epistemicism goes best with hyper-steroid-inflated-maximalism about truth. We anti-realists, or at least reductionists, about representation are best off believing some wishy-washy degree-of-truth/supervaluational theory of vagueness. I might develop this more in a later post, but for now I just want to note, I don’t believe in metaphysical vagueness.

The problem is, I do believe, or at least until I realised the difficulty I used to believe, in some things that seemed somehow to imply metaphysical vagueness. Because I believe in fictional characters. I thought the van Inwagen argument for fictional characters was perfectly sound, I thought the Thomasson argument that fictional characters were no more ontologically problematic than other socially constructed abstracta was sound, and I didn’t like any of the alternative theories of fictional characters. Actually, now that I write that all down, I still think I believe all that.

The problem is that it seems any plausible theory of fictional characters will end up with them being somehow vague. It will be vague how many fictional characters there are, and it will be vague whether two fictional characters are identical.

On the first puzzle, I take it that the standard assumption is that when a name is used fictionally, it generates a fictional character. But it can be vague whether or not a certain term is a name. In Ulysses, one might wonder about each of the following terms whether it is genuinely used as a name: M’Intosh, The citizen, I (for the narrator in Cyclops), L. Boom, Blephen, Mhananann Mac Lir, Old Mr Verschoyle, Miss Spruce Conifer, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzebbad-Hodenthaler, and so on. If there is a one-one correlation between names in fiction and fictional characters, and it is vague which of these are names, then it is vague how many characters there are. So, you might think, we shouldn’t assume a one-one correlation between names and characters. But any other proposal for how to determine when a fictional character exists leads to even worse vagueness. I fear that for any such proposal we can find vague instances even without putting down Ulysses.

Matters are even worse when it comes to identity. The man in the macintosh really is a character in Ulysses I take it. But he might be identical with a more familiar (as such) character. Some lines suggest that he is Mr Sinoco from the story A Painful Case in Dubliners. It seems a live possibility that it really is indeterminate whether Mr Sinoco is the man in the macintosh. If they are (both) real fictional characters, this would be genuine de re indeterminacy of indentity. And I might have mentioned that I don’t believe in any such thing.

So I’m a bit at a loss here. One of the following three things had better happen soon:

1. I find a way to acknowledge fictional characters without having them have vague existence or identity conditions
2. I give up believing in fictional characters, and find a way to respond to the arguments in their favour; or
3. I learn to live with metaphysical vagueness.

The first of these is by far the most preferred, and, not coincidentally, the hardest to see how to make work.

The philosophy papers blog is up, with several new papers and articles on everything from Schopenhauer to semantics.

So here’s an embarrassing little revelation. Despite the fact that I knew Carolina Sartorio and Juan Comesana had websites up with papers on them, and that I was trying hard to track all philosophy websites that contain papers, and that I’d even linked to those pages in the past, I had somehow neglected to add them to the program that tracks philosophy webpages until Dave Chalmers added them to his directory today. Sometimes my stunning inability to perform simple mechanical tasks astounds even me. I may have mentioned this before, but Carolina and Juan have some excellent papers on their sites, and now when they add more papers the papers blog will note this.

Word on the street is that an exciting new Cambridge group philosophy blog is about to appear. (Rumour has it there’s a link to it hidden somewhere on this page.) If early indications are true TAR might be losing its (self-proclaimed) mantle as the go-to philosophy blog.

While on Cambridge philosophy, I’ve been meaning to recommend Carolina Sartorio’s paper Causes as Difference-Makers. In it Carolina argues for

CDM: If C caused E, then the absence of C wouldn’t have caused E.

If CDM is true it imposes, it turns out, quite a sharp constraint on theories of causation. In the paper it is noted how counterfactual dependence theories and regularity theories are inconsistent with it, for example.

I keep thinking I have counterexamples to CDM, but none of them seem entirely convincing under close reflection, so I thought I shouldn’t wait until I could refute the paper before I recommend it.

This isn’t the only thing that’s been stopping me writing up a counterexample to CDM (there’s the lack of said convincing counterexample too), but it hasn’t helped that I decided on a principle for presenting counterexamples to theories of causation. Every such counterexample must be presented in dialogue form, and the pattern set out in the counterexample must be exemplified somewhere in the dialogue. So, for example

ODYSSEUS: I think causation is counterfactual dependence.
SCYLLA: But wise Odysseus, causation is transitive and counterfactual dependence is intransitive.
CHARYBDIS: And I think powerful Odysseus is forgetting about overdetermination. If your sword fells a man who the Fates have decided must die, then you cause his death, even though had you not felled him, the Fates would have ensured he died some other way.
ODYSSEUS: You have convinced me, evil monsters of the deep. But must you be so verbose? You had me at transitivity.

I think this can be quite cheesy in some cases, but if one wanted to present four or five different counterexamples, and separated out the section where a particular counterexample was discussed from where it is exemplified, it might work well.

But I don’t think my proposed comic masterpiece will get written any time soon. So if you’re looking for first-class work on causation, I’d highly recommend reading Carolina’s paper rather than waiting for me to attempt to produce anything.

So I can have the morning free to grade, I did the papers blog tonight. There’s two very interesting papers up.

Michael Glanzburg, Truth, Disquotation, and Expression (On McGinn’s Theory of Truth)

Gideon Rosen and Nicholas Smith, Worldly Indeterminacy: A Rough Guide

The Rosen and Smith paper claims to show that worldly indeterminacy is not incoherent, so that looks like it will be worth reading. (And perhaps responding to…)

From Kent Bach, a quick follow up to the last post on philosophy of sport. In the May 24 1973 Journal of Philosophy, Joseph Ullian reviewed Paul Weiss’s Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry. (The link is to JSTOR, so if you don’t have access to that you won’t be able to follow the link.)

The review is a classic negative review – I don’t think I’ve ever seen something quite so harsh. The final paragraph is:

He who is fond of either sport or philosophy can save himself a thoroughly distasteful experience by avoiding Weiss’s book. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine anyone who might be pleased by it.

To put that in context, some of the examples quoted from the book provide pretty compelling evidence for the conclusion. And some of the awkward constructions in that conclusion are parodies of the kinds of phrases used ad nauseum in the book. The second most charming aspect of the book (as far as I can tell from Ullian’s review) is when Weiss says, “A woman is less abstract than a man because her mind is persistently oriented towards bodily problems,” and then spends five or six pages drawing out the sporting philosophical consequences of this. The most charming is when Weiss recommends that “Negros” be handicapped in sporting events to make it all somehow fair.

I trust philosophy of sport has improved a touch in the thirty intervening years. Thanks again to Kent Bach for bringing this to my attention.

No papers blog today because there was nothing to report. Maybe I should stop doing the papers blog on weekends.

I’ve added a new link to the links column on the right – Episteme Links – which is basically a philosophy portal. It seems to be incredibly popular, judging by its stats, and it apparently will soon include a section for philosophy blogs. So maybe we’ll be getting more visitors by sooner or later.

One of the things I found via EpistemeLinks was the British Society for the Philosophy of Sport. (The link appears to be down right now, but it was working yesterday, and presumably will be again shortly.) And via that I found that there is a conference on philosophy of sport to be held at Ohio State in a few weeks. Somewhat depressingly, the conference organisers don’t seem to have got the point about which features of Columbus, OH will be of most interest to philosophers of sport. Here’s what they say about Columbus’s attractions:

The weather will surely be warm and pleasant in early June, and Columbus is a wonderful city to explore and a great restaurant town to boot.

Here’s what they should have said.

It will be perfect football weather in mid-September and Columbus is home to the National Champion Ohio State Buckeyes.

Of course, that would have required (a) holding the conference on a football weekend, (b) arranging tickets to the Ohio State game for conference participants and (c) fitting the conference schedule around the game, but if they’d done all that they’d have an impressive attendance.

I think introducing some aspects of philosophy via sport potentially can be very effective pedagogically. It seems Cornell is already ahead of the game on this. They already have a course on the philosophy of sport. Maybe if my freshman seminar this year goes well next year I can do a freshman course on philosophy of sport. On second thoughts, that probably is not the best way to start addressing the male/female imbalance in undergrad philosophy classes. On third thought, doing a course with a large sci-fi component as I am this year – my freshman seminar is on time travel – probably isn’t much better in this regard. And the Cornell philosophy of sport class does have a discussion of Title IX, which is more than can be said for my time travel course.

More seriously, I guess, I also found through EpistemeLinks a hypertext version of the Tractatus. Use wisely.

No papers blog today because there was nothing to report. Maybe I should stop doing the papers blog on weekends.

I’ve added a new link to the links column on the right – Episteme Links – which is basically a philosophy portal. It seems to be incredibly popular, judging by its stats, and it apparently will soon include a section for philosophy blogs. So maybe we’ll be getting more visitors by sooner or later.

One of the things I found via EpistemeLinks was the British Society for the Philosophy of Sport. (The link appears to be down right now, but it was working yesterday, and presumably will be again shortly.) And via that I found that there is a conference on philosophy of sport to be held at Ohio State in a few weeks. Somewhat depressingly, the conference organisers don’t seem to have got the point about which features of Columbus, OH will be of most interest to philosophers of sport. Here’s what they say about Columbus’s attractions:

The weather will surely be warm and pleasant in early June, and Columbus is a wonderful city to explore and a great restaurant town to boot.

Here’s what they should have said.

It will be perfect football weather in mid-September and Columbus is home to the National Champion Ohio State Buckeyes.

Of course, that would have required (a) holding the conference on a football weekend, (b) arranging tickets to the Ohio State game for conference participants and (c) fitting the conference schedule around the game, but if they’d done all that they’d have an impressive attendance.

I think introducing some aspects of philosophy via sport potentially can be very effective pedagogically. It seems Cornell is already ahead of the game on this. They already have a course on the philosophy of sport. Maybe if my freshman seminar this year goes well next year I can do a freshman course on philosophy of sport. On second thoughts, that probably is not the best way to start addressing the male/female imbalance in undergrad philosophy classes. On third thought, doing a course with a large sci-fi component as I am this year – my freshman seminar is on time travel – probably isn’t much better in this regard. And the Cornell philosophy of sport class does have a discussion of Title IX, which is more than can be said for my time travel course.

More seriously, I guess, I also found through EpistemeLinks a hypertext version of the Tractatus. Use wisely.

Like a few other bloggers, I’ve been noticing a few hits coming from Google searches that look designed to be ‘research’ for term papers. This one could well be one of my favourites. You’ll have to click through to appreciate the full irony of it all.

Like a few other bloggers, I’ve been noticing a few hits coming from Google searches that look designed to be ‘research’ for term papers. This one could well be one of my favourites. You’ll have to click through to appreciate the full irony of it all.