“Ishani”:http://philosophy.syr.edu/maitra.html pointed out something the other day about Moore’s paradox that I’d come close to noticing, but never quite noticed. Well, two things actually, one of which had almost occured to me and the other of which never did. These might be well-known to Moore’s paradox afficianados, but I suspect they are new. Consider the sentence (1)

(1) I can’t bench press 1000 pounds, but I don’t know that I can’t bench press 1000 pounds.

The typical philosopher’s reaction is to say that the sentence is somehow pragmatically defective, and then tell (or rehash) their favourite story about why it is defective. Ishani’s first point is that it isn’t obvious that _every_ token of (1) is defective. In particular, with the right kind of stress on _know_ in (1), it might almost be properly assertible.

It’s a little remarked upon fact in epistemology that to make seriously sceptical claims you have to use a non-standard focal pattern. Listen to what an ordinary sincere utterance of (2) sounds like. (This isn’t an audioblog, so you’ll have to pronounce it yourself. But think about how you’d say it, if you meant to be saying it truly.)

(2) I don’t know that I can’t bench press 1000 pounds.

I think you need strong, perhaps super-strong, stress on _know_ to get that to work. It’s the kind of stress you’d indicate in writing by italicising the word. (Here’s “Josh Marshall”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/001930.php, who for current purposes will do as a man on the street, using just that convention.) Conversely, it’s possible, well maybe _possible_, that if you do stress _know_ this way, (2) is true. This is a respect in which _know_ does resemble a gradable adjective, although I’m still impressed by “Jason’s list”:http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jasoncs/LingContext.pdf of the ways in which it does not. In any case, there’s a certain kind of setting where (2) is acceptable with the right kind of inflection, whether or not it is actually true.

For another demonstration of this, consider the following example. I’m sitting at home watching a Red Sox game, and the Sox are down big in the late innings. Someone tells me I should give up on the game and head to the bar, because the Sox are going to lose. Compare the stress patterns, especially the stress on _know_, in these two possible answers.

(3) You don’t know they’re going to lose – teams have been known to climb out of deeper holes.
(4) I know they’ll lose – but if they come back I want to be able to say I saw it.

Both are acceptable answers (well, relatively acceptable answers) but only with _know_ stressed in (3) and destressed in (4).

Here’s Ishani’s first point then, the one that I’d almost noticed. With this kind of heavy stress, the kind that makes _know_ pragmatically equivalent to _is absolutely certain_ , (1) could be acceptable. Or at the very least, with that stress (5) could be acceptable.

(5) I don’t _know_ I can’t bench press 1000 pounds, but I can’t bench press 1000 pounds.

That’s interesting, and should be a constraint on a theory of how Moore’s paradox works. Here’s the more interesting point, the one that I was completely surprised by. (1) isn’t the only kind of Moore paradoxical sentence. There’s also (6).

(6) I can’t bench press 1000 pounds, but I don’t believe that I can’t bench press 1000 pounds.

And here’s the new point. No amount of focal stress on _believe_ changes the fact that (6) is defective. (6) is just plain defective. That looks like an important disanalogy between the belief case and the knowledge case. And it suggests, strongly suggests to me, that the two cases reflect subtly different phenomena.

One caveat on the point about (6), one that doesn’t affect the overall point. If you put the right kind of stress on _believe_, so that the negation in (6) becomes metalinguistic negation, (6) might almost be acceptable.

(7) I can’t bench press 1000 pounds, but I don’t _believe_ that I can’t bench press 1000 pounds.

But that isn’t quite right either. The problem is the ‘but’. (8) is relatively OK, but means something quite different.

(8) I can’t bench press 1000 pounds. I don’t _believe_ that I can’t bench press 1000 pounds(, I _know_ I can’t bench press 1000 pounds).

Stress makes _believe_ turn into _merely believe_ and _know_ turn into _is absolutely certain_. So the effect of stress on the “Moore paradoxical sentences” (1) and (6) is very very different. Again, this suggests that we aren’t necessarily looking at a unified phenomena.

“Dennis Des Chene”:http://tlonuqbar.typepad.com/phfn/2004/11/modal_glitch.html criticises a comment Timothy Williamson makes in “Must Do Better”:http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/faculty/members/docs/Must%20Do%20Better.pdf.

bq. The principle that every truth is possibly necessary can now be shown to entail that every truth is necessary by a chain of elementary inferences in a perspicuous notation unavailable to Hegel.

Des Chene says this isn’t right, because it’s not a theorem in most modal logics that MLp entails Lp. (Des Chene uses boxes and diamonds, not Hughes + Cresswell notation, but I can’t do that in HTML. M is diamond and L is box.) He also notes that it is a theorem in S5, and wonders whether Williamson is using that logic. In fact Williamson’s argument, which is just a variant on “Fitch’s paradox”:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fitch-paradox/ needs only KT, as I’ll show.

Rather than appeal directly to K, I’ll use three consequences of K. (In what follows -> is material implication and > is entailment.)

K1. If A > B then LA > LB
K2. If A > B then MA > MB
K3. It is a theorem that ~M(A & ~A)

Here’s the proof. (Rule R is the rule that whatever is true is possibly necessary.)

Since p is arbitrary it follows that whatever is true is necessarily true, as required.

The proof is obviously not original, but I think it’s so clever that it’s worth posting here, just for fun.

I don’t know whether you can significantly weaken the assumptions below KT and still get the proof to work. There’s an “expert on Fitch’s paradox”:http://www.arts.cornell.edu/phil/faculty/fara.html in the adjacent office who’d probably know, but he’s gone home for the evening. Anyone with suggestions can leave them in the comments.

Having said all that, Professor Des Chane “goes on to say”:http://tlonuqbar.typepad.com/phfn/2004/11/modal_glitch.html#add01 some interesting things about the conception of philosophy Williamson is advocating. He also, I’m pleased to note, includes a shout-out to “Matt Jones’s”:http://www.columbia.edu/cu/history/htm/h_faculty_profile_jones.htm very interesting work on the connection between mathematics and philosophy in the early modern period. There’s some interesting stuff there that you should pop over and read.

I was looking at “Peter King’s website”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0337/mystuff.html, especially his book “One Hundred Philosophers”:http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=160490 and I thought this passage on “David Lewis”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0337/authors/david.lewis.html was delightful.

bq. Lewis’ philosophical interests were broad, as evidenced by the contents of the five volumes of his collected papers published so far: ethics, politics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical logic, language – he wrote on a vast range of subjects, from holes to worlds, from Anselm to Mill, from the mind to time travel. In everything he wrote he was rigorous, committed, and clear, but perhaps the most distinctive thing about him was his attitude to other philosophers, and especially to criticism: _one can scarcely find a book or paper attacking Lewis’ views that doesn’t contain an acknowledgement to him for his help_. What mattered to him – what he loved – were the ideas, the arguments, the philosophy, not winning or being right. He was the ideal, the model philosopher; he’s also (and this is a very different matter) widely regarded as being the best philosopher of his generation – perhaps of the twentieth century. (Emphasis added.)

The model philosopher indeed.

“Matt Carter”:http://braininavat.net/ has made the pictures I was hoping for with the last “Lemmings post”:http://tar.weatherson.org/archives/004008.html. WooHoo! They are mostly below the fold, but who could resist this lemming pic?

p=. !-http://brian.weatherson.org/stanley_lemming.jpg 200×200!
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It might be behind paywalls for many of you, but the latest “Philosophical Perspectives”:http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/servlet/useragent?func=synergy&synergyAction=showTOC&journalCode=phpe&volume=18&issue=1&year=2004&part=null is out. The number of papers by friends (and writers) of TAR is impressively large. I worry a bit that the paper Andy and I wrote for it looks a little slight in such august company. We’re the “Page 2”:http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/index to their “ESPN.com”:http://espn.go.com, perhaps. (Of course in the off season I only read page 2, so take the analogy how you like.) But it’s impressive company to be in. And I think the paper we wrote is basically correct, even if it isn’t quite as deep as some of the other contributors.

There’s been a lot of hubbub, both here and elsewhere in the blogworld, about the Becker-Posner blog. But if it’s intellectual firepower in a group blog you’re after, you should be reading “Left2Right”:http://left2right.typepad.com/. Here’s its “mission statement”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/11/why_left2right.html, which should be good for setting off a round of debates.

bq. In the aftermath of the 2004 Presidential election, many of us have come to believe that the Left must learn how to speak more effectively to ears attuned to the Right. How can we better express our values? Can we learn from conservative critiques of those values? Are there conservative values that we should be more forthright about sharing? “Left2Right” will be a discussion of these and related questions.

bq. Although we have chosen the subtitle “How can the Left get through to the Right?”, our view is that the way to get through to people is to listen to them and be willing to learn from them. Many of us identify ourselves with the Left, but others are moderates or independents. What we share is an interest in exploring how American political discourse can get beyond the usual talking points.

The contributors so far include “Elizabeth Anderson”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/11/what_hume_can_t.html, “Kwame Appiah”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/11/less_contempt.html, “Josh Cohen”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/11/the_moral_value.html, “Stephen Darwall”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/11/school_resegreg.html, “Gerald Dworkin”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/11/less_contempt_m.html, “David Estlund”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/12/the_first_data_.html, “Don Herzog”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/12/public_private_.html, “Jeff McMahan”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/12/supporting_our_.html, “Seana Shiffrin”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/11/being_forthrigh.html, and “David Velleman”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2004/12/debunking_a_dea.html. Wowsa. And many other names you may have heard of, from Peter Railton to Richard Rorty, are listed as being part of the team. This should be worth following.

Kent Bach just reminded me of one of the most interesting philosophy conferences that has happened for a while – the “Philosophy and Wine”:http://www.sas.ac.uk/Philosophy/Wine.htm conference in London next weekend. If you’re in the area, it looks like a lot of fun.

On a more traditional (and local) note, the “Syracuse Grad Conference”:http://web.syr.edu/~degould/philgradconf2005.html has just put out a call for papers.

The latest paper to go up on “Philosophers’ Imprint”:http://www.philosophersimprint.org/ is my “Morality, Fiction and Possibility”:http://www.philosophersimprint.org/004003/.

It’s very exciting to be part of Philosophers’ Imprint, which is the most exciting new journal to appear in many a year. For those left panicking after the comments about journals in “Brian Leiter’s thread”:http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2004/11/philosophy_jour_1.html#comments I can highly recommend Philosophers’ Imprint, whose editors were not only a pleasure to work with, and very helpful with the essay, but were incredibly patient with the time I took to get them the final corrected version.

Dean Zimmerman sent along the following announcement, which should be of interest to many readers. I’d submit a paper if I had, er, a good metaphysical idea to promote.

*Essay Competition: The _Oxford Studies in Metaphysics_ Younger Scholar Prize*

_Oxford Studies in Metaphysics_ is pleased to announce the continuation of its annual essay competition, the Younger Scholar Prize. The contest is administered by the editorial board of _Oxford Studies in Metaphysics_, and supported by the generosity of the A.M.Monius Institute. The competition is open to both current graduate students and scholars who have received their doctoral degree within the past ten years. Essays may be on any topic in metaphysics. Although the essay should not be primarily historical in nature, it may pay careful attention to the metaphysics of important philosophers from any era. The winner receives $2,500, and the winning essay is published in _Oxford Studies in Metaphysics_.

Submissions must be postmarked by January 15, 2005, to be eligible for this year’s prize. (This is a change from the originally announced deadline of November 30, 2004.)
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