I’ve been interested for a while in vague terms that don’t generate Sorites arguments. I hadn’t had much success in coming up with precise terms that do generate Sorites arguments. I was convinced by discussions with Josh Parsons that such terms must exist, but I could never come up with one on my own. The next best thing to discovering one is finding a paper in which one appears. The following is from a paper by “Gerald Hull”:http://home.stny.rr.com/ghull/ on “Vagueness and ‘Vague’: A Reply to Varzi”:http://home.stny.rr.com/ghull/site/mind2005.pdf, soon to appear in _Mind_.

bq.. Let ‘approximately n’ be defined as ‘n plus or minus a tiny amount’. We can now construct the following sorites paradox:

Approximately 0 is less than 1000.
If approximately n is less than 1000, then approximately n+1 is less than 1000.
Therefore, approximately 10000 is less than 1000.

Clearly the first premise is true and the conclusion false. In between there are values, e.g. approximately 1000, that result in borderline cases.

p. You’ll have to read the whole thing to see the point Hull wants to make with this, but I think it’s a perfectly successful example of a Sorites argument where the major predicate is _not_ vague.

For some unknown reason my browser ended up pointed at “Right Reason”:http://rightreason.ektopos.com/ earlier, and I saw “a post by Dan Bonevac on Ann Coulter”:http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/001478.html. Well, I thought to myself, if there are going to be any sensible conservatives in blogtropolis, Bonevac, who is a pretty fine philosopher, should be among them. If someone is going to be able to show why conservatism is worth taking it seriously by distinguishing it from what Ann Coulter does, it should be him. Sadly, that wasn’t to be.
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As mentioned yesterday, my brother Scott is in a band called ‘Hennessey’ that is in an online bands competition back home. My attempt to drum up support (boom boom) yesterday was moderately successful. But for some reason the links you have to go to to vote changed, potentially thwarting my plans. Anyway, the “new link is here”:http://soundcheck.ninemsn.com.au/charts.jsp?fvChart=allbyartist&fvCurPage=10. His band has the first two songs on “that page”:http://soundcheck.ninemsn.com.au/charts.jsp?fvChart=allbyartist&fvCurPage=10, and any votes for them (especially repeat votes – you can vote once per day) would be much appreciated!

When I was doing the job search this year, I thought of a couple of points that would be worthwhile for job seekers going on the market to know. For various reasons I didn’t want to go into this in much detail while the search was ongoing, but it’s probably safe now. This advice might be a little late for people going on the job market this year, but current 3rd years might get some value out of it.

[UPDATE: As noted in the comments below, all I’m offering here are anecdotes about what matters at one place. There are plenty more anecdotes in the comments threads that should be given equal weight.]
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I’ve finally added a “new entry”:http://opp.weatherson.org/archives/004350.html to the papers blog. There are I’d guess around a hundred new papers linked there, so there should be plenty of reading for everyone who has finished their teaching and wants to get started on summer research.

My brother Scott is in a band called ‘Hennessey’. (Actually he’s in several bands, and one of them is called ‘Hennessey’.) And that band is currently in an “online band competition”:http://soundcheck.ninemsn.com.au/charts.jsp?fvChart=allbyartist&fvCurPage=9 with the chance of eventually getting a major recording deal. If you click “this link”:http://soundcheck.ninemsn.com.au/charts.jsp?fvChart=allbyartist&fvCurPage=10 you can be taken to the competition webpage where their song is the first one that comes up. If you click on the band’s (not spectacularly rock-star looking) photo a popup window will open that lets you listen to their song ‘Honourman’ and vote for it out of 5. Any votes (even low votes, but we’d much prefer high votes!) would be gratefully appreciated.

They also have another song “Walking to You” in the competition at the bottom of “this page”:http://soundcheck.ninemsn.com.au/charts.jsp?fvChart=allbyartist&fvCurPage=9 which you can also vote for. I get the impression the band likes that song more, and it certainly sounds better to me, but currently the wisdom of crowds suggests “Honourman” is the better song. You can judge for yourself how good each of the songs is, and vote for them separately. Vote early and often.

I was reading some papers by “Gil Harman”:http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/ while doing some research for a class on chapter 9 of _The Concept of Mind_, and I was struck by this passage in a “very insightful article on Knowledge and Lotteries”:http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Papers/Hawthorne.pdf. (The article is co-authored with Brett Sherman.)

bq. A further consequence of denying strong closure principles, according to Hawthorne, is that one must give up at least one of three more restricted closure principles that he thinks would be intuitive even to one who denies the more general closure principles. One of these restricted principles is the Equivalence Principle, according to which, if you know a priori that the propositions that P and that Q are equivalent and you know that P, then you are in a position to know that Q.

bq. However, once it is acknowledged that knowledge can rest on assumptions, the Equivalence Principle has no more intuitive force than more general closure principles. Alice knows this animal is a zebra, on the assumption that it is not a cleverly disguised mule. And the animal’s being a zebra is equivalent to its being a zebra and not a cleverly disguised mule. But, just as she cannot know on the basis of her assumption that her assumption is correct, she is not in a position to know on the basis of that assumption that the animal is a zebra and not a cleverly disguised mule.

Even granting the anti-closure position being adopted by Harman and Sherman, I don’t see how this is a counterexample to the Equivalence Principle that Hawthorne defends. The following two propositions may be _necessarily_ equivalent, but they aren’t _a priori_ equivalent I’d have thought.

(1) That is a zebra.
(2) That is a zebra and not a cleverly disguised mule.

I don’t think it is a priori that no zebras are mules. I could imagine some kind of argument for that conclusion, but there isn’t one in the paper. Of course (1) is a priori equivalent to (3).

(3) That is a zebra and not a cleverly disguised non-zebra.

But I don’t see how one could ever be in a position to know (1) and not in a position to know (3).

Back from Chicago, with only 53 emails that need replies – often substantial replies. And a couple of classes to teach. So little serious blogging. Instead here’s an easy post about blog stats.

Visitors – 20827
Visits – 63582
Hits – 127590

All of those numbers are down from March. Part of that is due to the improved spam protection (37161 blocked attempts to access the site) and in part due to decrease in content quality and/or fewer links from Brian Leiter.

Here are the big draws.

“Break Up Lines”:/archives/000979.html – 1775
“Richard Heck to Brown”:/archives/004304.html – 1632
“Movement at the Station(s)”:/archives/004286.html – 1482
“65536 (or so) Definitions of Physicalism”:/archives/004333.html – 821
“Brian is Very Confused”:/archives/004339.html – 774
“French Military Victories”:/archives/000256.html – 744
“Four Colours?”:/archives/004335.html – 706
“An Argument for Contextualism about Ethics”:/archives/004323.html – 680
“At Least”:/archives/004305.html – 672
“Pragmatics, Belief and Knowledge”:/archives/004282.html – 642
“Be Aware!”:/archives/004303.html – 618
“Lewisiana”:/archives/004273.html – 603

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what is and isn’t popular on the blog.