The following two principles, both of which might be attempts to formalise a Principle of Sufficient Reason, seem distinct to me.

(1) Every truth has an explanation.
(2) Every truth is explicable.

To see how they may come apart, consider (3), (4) and, especially, (5)

(3) It’s raining in Seattle.
(4) I’m wearing green socks.
(5) It’s raining in Seattle and I’m wearing green socks.

Assume, as shouldn’t be too hard, that the world really does make (3) and (4) true. (I can see that (4) is true, and my computer tells me (3) is true, at least as I write this sentence. Perhaps by the time I finish the post it will have cleared up!) I assume each of these facts has some explanation or other. The explanation for (3) will be in terms of meteorological facts about the Pacific Northwest, and the explanation for (4) will be in terms of the state of my sock drawer and my sock preferences. Call these explanations E3 and E4 respectively.

Will (5) have an explanation? I don’t see any reason to think that it will. The concatenation of E3 and E4 is not, I think, an explanation. It looks, to me at least, like two explanations. Since the best we’re likely to do by way of explaining (5) is to offer E3 and E4, and offering those two explanations does not, I say, amount to offering an explanation, I suspect that (5) does not have an explanation.

That’s not to say that (5) is inexplicable. Indeed it is perfectly explicable. Once we’ve offered E3 and E4, we’ve explained it. If we thought that anything explicable had an explanation, we would conclude that (5) must have an explanation. But that seems too quick. Offering several explanations, the conclusions of which collectively entail (5), renders (5) perfectly explicable, even if there’s no one explanation which has those explanations as parts. More generally, any logical consequence of some explicable facts is, in virtue of being that way, explicable. But not all such consequences have single explanations; (5) doesn’t.

The argument here makes heavy use of the idea that E3 and E4 don’t combine to form an explanation. That seems intuitively correct to me, but you might want a more substantive argument here. So note that this conclusion falls out naturally from the best theory of explanations on the market right now, namely Michael Strevens’ “causal inference account”:http://www.strevens.org/research/expln/expln101.shtml.

Roughly speaking, Strevens’ idea is that an explanation is an entailment from general principles (as Hempel said). As is well known, Hempel’s account overgenerates by allowing effects to ‘explain’ their causes. Strevens’ innovation was a clever idea about how to resist that conclusion. He says that only entailments where there is a proof of the conclusion from the premises such that each inferential step corresponds (in some intuitive sense) a causal connection between the steps. So an inference from the flagpole’s height to the length of its shadow is causal, in the relevant sense, while an inference from the length of its shadow to its height is not.

The notion of corresponding to a causal process is rough, to say the least. But it does seem to track something important in the notion of explanation. And note that it rules out any simple way of putting E3 and E4 together. If E3 and E4 are arguments, with (3) and (4) respectively as their conclusions, then there will be a valid argument that has the premises of E3 and E4 as premises, and (5) as a conclusion. But the last step of that argument will be a step of and-introduction, to get from (3) and (4) to (5). And that doesn’t seem to correspond to any causal process at all. So on Strevens’ account, there isn’t any way, or at least isn’t any simple way, to put E3 and E4 together into a simple explanation. That seems like useful supporting evidence to the intuitive claim that there is no way to put E3 and E4 together into a simple explanation.

The distinction between (1) and (2) is important because it matters for the prospects of any cosmological argument for the existence of God from a plausible Principle of Sufficient Reasons. The best version of such an argument is in Alexander Pruss’ “The Principle of Sufficient Reason”:http://books.google.com/books?id=8qAxk1rXIjQC&pg=PA322&dq=alexander+pruss&ei=jtkpSMT_MJzkyATRwaiNBw&sig=jM8bQ2LKf16BJOiMCwm5HH3bmLA, and he makes quite heavy use of (1). Consider, for instance, the following possibility. We have some propositions, p₁, p₂, …, such that p_n is explained by p_n+1 for each n. Pruss claims this won’t do, because the conjunction of all the p_n, call it P, would be self-explanatory, and it is the wrong kind of proposition to be self-explanatory.

I deny the inference here. P wouldn’t be self-explanatory, because P would be neither the right kind of thing to be an explanation, nor to have an explanation. P is explicable. It is explained in virtue of the explanation of each of its conjuncts. If P had an explanation, that explanation would be P itself. (Or perhaps it would be P minus p₁.) And that’s absurd. But since there’s no reason to assume that P has an explanation, there’s no reason to assume that it must be self-explanatory.

I won’t go into the details, but a similar (if more sophisticated) argument is at the core of Pruss’ contention that the only explanation of the conjunction of all (contingent) truths, is a necessarily existing God. Perhaps such a God is the only possible explanation of the conjunction of all truths. It doesn’t matter for any epistemological purposes, because we have no reason to believe this conjunction has a (single) explanation. Whatever intuitive plausibility a rough Principle of Sufficient Reason has only extends as far as (2), but to derive the existence of a necessitarian God, we need (1). This is important, because the primary argument Pruss has for the Principle of Sufficient Reason is that it is intuitive, and that there are no clear counterexamples to it. I think if we interpret the Principle as (1), both claims are false – (5) is a counterexample and shows it isn’t intuitive. What is intuitively plausible is (2), but that doesn’t ground any result of philosophical or theological significance.

In two “recent”:http://books.google.com/books?id=DlVtfUxPD14C “books”:http://books.google.com/books?id=FPU9tzW-2HAC, Graham Oppy has objected to cosmological arguments on the grounds that they are based on an excessively strong Principle of Sufficient Reason. I think his main philosophical conclusions are correct, but they’re stated in a needlessly counterintuitive way. Oppy argues as follows, where T is the conjunction of all contingent truths about the world. (I’m bracketing here an “interesting argument”:http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=91273 from Kevin Davey and Rob Clifton that there is no such conjunction. If that’s true, the cosmological argument fails for independent reasons.)

(6) If T is explained by a contingent fact, then it is explained by something it entails
(7) If T is explained by a necessary fact, then some necessary fact explains a contingent fact
(8) Nothing is explained by what it entails
(9) No necessary fact explains a contingent fact
(10) So, T does not have an explanation

That argument looks sound to me, assuming T exists. But I think Oppy is a little misleading when he then describes T as being a “brute fact”. If we want that phrase to mean, by stipulation, that the truth in question has no single explanation, then I suppose it is true that T is brute. But there’s a much more natural interpretation for the claim that something is a brute fact, namely that it is inexplicable. And there’s nothing in this argument that implies T is inexplicable. Indeed, it may well be that all the different conjuncts in T explain all the conjuncts in T collectively, without anything explaining itself. As long as T is infinite, that will be a possibility. So we don’t have yet a reason to regard T as a brute fact, in the most natural sense of that expression. None of this undermines the conclusions Oppy draws about infinite regresses, or the cosmological argument, but it is I think worth getting clear on what denying (1) does and doesn’t imply.

The way I’m suggesting we regiment our terminology allows for a nice distinction. Assume that a, b, c and d are all F; that a, b, c and d are all the Gs; that there are perfectly good explanations of each fact Fa, Fb, Fc and Fd; but that there is no way to simply combine these explantions into a single explanation. Assume in fact that there is no single explanation of either the fact that Fa & Fb & Fc & Fd, or of the fact that All Fs are Gs. Then I want to say that this is a _coincidence_, but not a _brute fact_. Coincidences are generalisations (perhaps over somewhat gruesome classes) that don’t have an explanation, even if they are explicable. If one of the coincidents were inexplicable, then the coincidence would (perhaps) be a brute fact. But most coincidences are explicable, it’s the lack of a single explanation that makes them coincidences. It’s part of folk wisdom that there are coincidences, which is to say that it’s part of folk wisdom that whether or not (2) is true, (1) is false.

Here are some recent articles we’ve published in “Philosophy Compass”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/.

• “Form, Principle, Pattern, or Coherence? Li in Chinese Philosophy”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?article_id=phco_articles_bpl135, by Brook Ziporyn
• “The Philosophy of Harmony in Classical Confucianism”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Confucianism&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DConfucianism%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl141, by Chenyang Li
• “A Priori Knowledge: Debates and Developments”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Jenkins&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DJenkins%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl136, by C. S. Jenkins
• “Knowing-How and Knowing-That”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Fantl&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DFantl%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl137, by Jeremy Fantl
• “Malebranche and Occasional Causes”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Cunning&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DCunning%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl132, by David Cunning
• “Russell and the Unity of the Proposition”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Stevens&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DStevens%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl142, by Graham Stevens
• “Experimental Philosophy of Science”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Stotz&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DStotz%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl133, by Paul E. Griffiths and Karola Stotz
• “Racial Cognition and the Ethics of Implicit Bias”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Roedder&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DRoedder%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl138, by Daniel Kelly and Erica Roedder
• “The Recent Revival of Cosmological Arguments”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Cosmological&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DCosmological%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl134, by David Alexander
• “Some Issues in Chinese Philosophy of Religion”:http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?highlight_query=Xiaomei&type=std&slop=0&fuzzy=0.5&last_results=query%3DXiaomei%26topics%3D%26content_types%3DALL%26submit%3DSearch&parent=void&sortby=relevance&offset=0&article_id=phco_articles_bpl139, by Xiaomei Yang

As always, clicking on those links will take you to the abstract. The articles are subscriber only, but your library can arrange a free trial fairly easily by contacting Blackwell.

The phrase “Gettier Case” is used with (at least) three different meanings that I’ve noticed.

First, it is sometimes used to refer to cases where S derives a true conclusion p from a false premise q. This is obviously true of the original cases in Gettier’s paper. Since the meanings are strictly weaker as we continue through the list, this isn’t a unique property of this interpretation.

Second, it is sometimes used to refer to cases where S forms a true, and justified, belief, but where the reasons it is true, and the reasons it is justified, are entirely different. Williamson’s binocular vision case is like this. S has one reliable eye, and one unreliable eye. S forms the belief that p on the basis of the input from his unreliable eye, although at the same time his reliable eye also forms the representation that p. Arguably this is justified (at least S has evidence for p), but it isn’t knowledge.

Third, it is sometimes used to refer to any justified true belief that isn’t knowledge.

Since this is basically a technical term, it would be good to have some standardisation of the meaning. And it would be good to standardise on the most epistemological significant of the categories. (In my opinion, that’s the second one, but that could be wrong.) Does anyone have a suggestion for this?

From Nathan Salmon’s “Analyticity and A priority” (J-store access required for the link):

A number of definitions or explications of analyticity have been proposed. My favourite is a proposal by Hilary Putnam. In an exposition of W. V. Quine’s famous (if little understood) attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction, Putnam suggests that a sentence may be termed ‘analytic’ if it is deducible from the sentences in a finite list at the top of which someone who bears the ancestral of the graduate-student relation to Carnap has printed the words ‘Meaning Postulate’. This definition not only acknowledges the central importance of Carnap’s contribution to the role of the analytic-synthetic distinction in analytic philosophy, but it has the additional virtue that it accords to those few among us who bear this special relationship to Carnap and authority that strikes me as only fitting.

Who’d have thought that an additional virtue of Josh Dever’s Philosophical Family Tree is that it can help one to determine the extension of the word ‘analytic’?

I’ve just finished drafting a critical notice of Ralph Wedgwood‘s book The Nature of Normativity, which I’m writing at the invitation of Analysis Reviews (the future continuer of Philosophical Books).  I’m posting the current draft; comments are welcome.  The critical notice focuses mainly on Wedgwood’s normative epistemology, though it also takes a brief look at his argument against expressivism.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news recently you might have noticed that the university where I work – Washington University in St Louis – has decided to give an honourary doctorate to Phyllis Schalfly. I, like many people here, hadn’t heard of Ms Schlafly, but having read some of her columns and having learned of her work against the Equal Rights Amendment, I’ve signed the letter from the Association of Women Faculty protesting the decision. It’s hard to see how our university can support someone whose life work has been to undermine the legal and social status of so many of its students and colleagues.

But enough about Schlafly. Those more familiar with her will provide a better rapsheet. D’s description of the up-coming ceremony as the worst graduation ever made me try to remember who had been honoured at my own undergraduate graduation ceremony. And the person who sticks out most in my mind is the actress Helen Mirren, who was then famous for playing Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison in the TV-series Prime Suspect. And I remember, not just because my dad was rather awed to see Mirren in real life, but because of the speech one of the St Andrews officials gave to introduce her. He talked about how, when he had been growing up, and a girl his own age had been asked what she wanted to be when she grew up she had usually replied with one of the few professions that were thought of as suitable to women at the time: nurse, air-hostess, etc. But last week when he asked his own young daughter what she wanted to be, she’d replied, to his surprise: “Detective Chief Inspector”.

I wonder what my students will remember about their graduation ceremonies this year.

Tim Williamson thinks it is. But I’m not convinced. This is a little paper where I explain (some of the reasons) why I’m not convinced.

Williamson relies heavily on (what he thinks of as) logical equivalences between modal propositions and certain counterfactuals. But such logical equivalences (even assuming that’s what they are) could not support the claim that modal epistemology is just counterfactual epistemology. Or so I claim.

Compare: disjunctive propositions (A v B) are logically equivalent to negated conjunctive propositions ¬(¬A & ¬B). But that doesn’t mean the epistemology of disjunctions reduces to the epistemology of negated conjunctions.

The challenge to Williamson is to say why the equivalences he’s interested in are of more epistemological significance than this. It is a challenge which, this paper argues, he has not met in his various discussions of this topic.

My first ever book has just come out, and is now available world-wide. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s called Truth in Virtue of Meaning and it’s basically a new account of the analytic-synthetic distinction (one which is designed to fit better with phenomena like contextualism and semantic externalism than pre-Quine conceptions of the distinction did), and a defence of that distinction against about 7-zillion arguments (ok, maybe more like 15 arguments) against analyticity.

I’m going to post a bit more about the content of the book later in the week, but what I thought I’d do right now is tell you a bit about the photograph on the cover. The photo is by a Maldivian photographer called Shazeen Samad. He has a beautiful website and some of my favourite images of his are here, here, here and here. If you are looking to procrastinate while you should be grading/writing that final paper, and you won’t be depressed by images of incredibly beautiful people hanging out in what appears to be the most beautiful place on earth, then the site comes highly recommended.

The photo that Shazeen very kindly let me use is called “Maldavian Reflection” and it is an image of the ocean at sunset, when the water is so still that the entire sky (which has lots of cool clouds) is reflected in it. A couple of people have remarked that the picture is beautiful, but doesn’t have much to do with the topic of the book. But to those people I say two things: first, off, what did you want? pictures of bachelors? of one concept containing another? and second: not so! when you first look at the photograph it can seem pretty chaotic and hard to work out what it is a picture of. But then you look harder, and you realise that it is in two halves, with the horizon down the middle and that everything below the horizon is water, and everything above it is sky. What could be more appropriate?

Ernie Lepore and Gilbert Harman are organising a “conference on Quine”:http://www.wvquine.org/wvq-fest.html to celebrate Quine’s 100th birthday. It will be on June 25th at Princeton. More details are “here”:http://www.wvquine.org/wvq-fest.html.

And just after writing the post below, I discovered that a US immigration application (one of several applications needed to get a green card) got approved after 14 months. Hooray for immigration services on tax day!

UPDATE: I just wanted to add a note of thanks to the immigration staff at Cornell, who have been unbelievably helpful through all of these applications, even as I’m somewhat less closely tied to Cornell than I was when I filed the relevant applications. To make this a little topical, if there are any grad students out there today trying to decide which grad school to go to, and are worried about the prospects of dealing with U.S. immigration, Cornell students at least are in good hands.