What is it to have visited a state? Do I count as having visited Maryland if I went to a football game there while in DC? Do I count as having visited New Hampshire if I drove across it en route to Ottawa? Would it make a difference if I stopped at some shops along the way? Obviously these are not the most pressing questions in the world, but if you want some practice exercises in conceptual analysis, they may be worthwhile.

That suggests a semi-serious thought. Would it be worthwhile pedagogically to go over a case like conceptual analyses of expressions like “visited a state” in an intro class before getting to things like knowledge or justice or virtue or causation? I’m not sure. In the meantme, here’s a map of the states I’ve visited under a very tight conception of ‘visit’.

You can build your own such map here.

Thanks to Allan Hazlett for, perhaps inadvertently, raising the conceptual issues here, and Kelly in Kansas for the map.

Two quick points arising out of Wednesday’s discussion.

Ben Russell (a PhD student in linguistics at Brown) noticed that the following sentence seems odd.

(1) ??I know that Granger might be in Prague.

At least, on Wednesday we all thought it sounded odd, though a few philosophy students I’ve spoken to since then disagree. If it is odd, it is hard to explain why except on a view that takes epistemic modals to be speech act modifiers. It’s certainly very hard to see on our view (or on the contextualist views we attack) this should turn out at all problematic. I can easily say that I know that for all I know Granger is in Prague, and it’s not clear why (1) is more problematic.

One case we worry about a lot in our epistemic modals paper is Maze

Tom is stuck in a maze. Sally knows the way out is to the right, and knows she knows this, but doesn’t want to tell Tom. Tom asks whether the exit is to the left. Sally says, “It might be. It might not be.” Sally might be being unhelpful here, but it isn’t clear that she is lying.

This is a problem for most theories of epistemic modals, if the modality in each sentence (in particular the first) is really epistemic. Polly Jacobson suggested it might not be. Here’s an argument for that conclusion. If it’s an epistemic modal, it must somehow mean that for all Tom knows, the exit is to the left. It must be related to Tom’s knowledge, because if it was Sally’s knowledge then the sentence would be false, and there’s no one in the story but Tom and Sally.

Change the case so that Tom really does know the way out, but Sally doesn’t know this. It still seems, I think, that Sally is being unhelpful rather than untruthful. But if her sentence is an epistemic modal relating to Tom’s knowledge, she would be being untruthful here. So I suspect Polly is correct, the modal in “It might be” is not epistemic.

If blogging’s light this weekend, it will largely be because I’m trying to choose between a few job offers (and proto-offers). If blogging is heavy, it will be because I’m looking for things to do other than actually make a choice. For better or worse I can’t keep putting off a decision forever. By next weekend, or at the very latest a day or two later, I need to decide something. Having choices is much much better than the alternative, so I’m not complaining, but I do wish I was more decisive sometimes.
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Further to the post yesterday, Brock Sides (via Tyler Cowen points to this list of famous philosophy grads. I never knew Bill Clinton was a philosophy major. That explains a lot I think – we know we don’t know what the meaning of ‘is’ is either.

In Australia, it’s common to move holidays around so that the day off you get falls on a nearby Monday. When I was permanently living there this was even done with Australia Day, though I think now that’s always celebrated on January 26 rather than the last Monday in January. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this.

In 1968, legislation (HR 15951) was enacted that affected several federal holidays. One of these was Washington’s Birthday, the observation of which was shifted to the third Monday in February each year whether or not it fell on the 22nd.

It’s all well and good to celebrate Washington’s birthday on a day when he wasn’t born. And I’m as much for Monday holidays as anyone. But shouldn’t the algorithm used to compute the holiday make it at least possible for the holiday to actually fall on the 22nd?

In the comments below Kai von Fintel pointed me to this very interesting paper by Sabine Iatridou, On the Contribution of Conditional Then. It’s a very nice paper, and I recommend you read it. Roughly, her conclusion is that then is only acceptable in p -> q if ~(~p -> q) is true. There’s a fair bit to be said about this, but let me make three quick points.

This theory predicts, as far as I can tell, that then is bad in sideboard conditionals. As noted in the comments on the earlier thread, opinion about this is mixed.

Iatridou notices something I kicked myself (hard) for not having seen before. Lots of phrases that we usually interpret as meaning something very close to conditionals do not allow then. Here’s one consequence of that. William Lycan has argued that If P, Q means In the event that P, Q, and it seems clear that Lycan means this to apply to if P then Q as well. (At least I couldn’t find anything from a quick skim through his book to indicate otherwise. On page 39 he suggests the ‘then’ carries temporal connotations, but the analysis in terms of events is still meant to hold, just with different restrictions on the tacit quantifiers.) Lycan doesn’t think this is just a paraphrase. His ‘event theory’ is meant to be syntactically plausible. But note the differences between (1) and (2).

(1) If Jack doesn’t show up to the party, (then) Jill will be furious.
(2) In the event that Jack doesn’t show up to the party, (*then) Jill will be furious.

Having said that, a point I think I learned from Lycan tells against one of Iatridou’s other arguments. She says that her theory explains why (3b) is bad.

(3) a. Even if John is drunk, Bill will vote for him
     b. *Even if John is drunk, then Bill will vote for him.

The idea is that (3b) implicates that Bill will vote for John no matter what, and in particular that he will vote for John if John is not drunk. In general Even if p, q entails q and that entails If not p, q which rules out the use of then. Well, that’s the story. But it’s not in general true. You can’t ever, as far as I can tell, have Even if p, then q, even when the If not p, q is not entailed in the circumstances. Consider the following warning given to new employees at a well known hotel chain.

(4) The one thing you cannot do here is flirt with the boss’s family. If you flirt with his sister, then you’ll be fired. If you fllrt with his daughter, then you’ll be fired. If you flirt with his wife, then you’ll really be fired. Even if you flirt with his second cousin twice removed, (*then) you’ll be fired.

The last sentence doesn’t entail that you’ll be fired, or that if you don’t flirt with the boss’s second cousin twice removed, you’ll be fired. But then is still bad. This isn’t I think a problem for Iatridou, because there could still be a syntactic explanation for this. But it means even if conditionals are not evidence for her theory.

In the comments below Kai von Fintel pointed me to this very interesting paper by Sabine Iatridou, On the Contribution of Conditional Then. It’s a very nice paper, and I recommend you read it. Roughly, her conclusion is that then is only acceptable in p -> q if ~(~p -> q) is true. There’s a fair bit to be said about this, but let me make three quick points.

This theory predicts, as far as I can tell, that then is bad in sideboard conditionals. As noted in the comments on the earlier thread, opinion about this is mixed.

Iatridou notices something I kicked myself (hard) for not having seen before. Lots of phrases that we usually interpret as meaning something very close to conditionals do not allow then. Here’s one consequence of that. William Lycan has argued that If P, Q means In the event that P, Q, and it seems clear that Lycan means this to apply to if P then Q as well. (At least I couldn’t find anything from a quick skim through his book to indicate otherwise. On page 39 he suggests the ‘then’ carries temporal connotations, but the analysis in terms of events is still meant to hold, just with different restrictions on the tacit quantifiers.) Lycan doesn’t think this is just a paraphrase. His ‘event theory’ is meant to be syntactically plausible. But note the differences between (1) and (2).

(1) If Jack doesn’t show up to the party, (then) Jill will be furious.
(2) In the event that Jack doesn’t show up to the party, (*then) Jill will be furious.

Having said that, a point I think I learned from Lycan tells against one of Iatridou’s other arguments. She says that her theory explains why (3b) is bad.

(3) a. Even if John is drunk, Bill will vote for him
     b. *Even if John is drunk, then Bill will vote for him.

The idea is that (3b) implicates that Bill will vote for John no matter what, and in particular that he will vote for John if John is not drunk. In general Even if p, q entails q and that entails If not p, q which rules out the use of then. Well, that’s the story. But it’s not in general true. You can’t ever, as far as I can tell, have Even if p, then q, even when the If not p, q is not entailed in the circumstances. Consider the following warning given to new employees at a well known hotel chain.

(4) The one thing you cannot do here is flirt with the boss’s family. If you flirt with his sister, then you’ll be fired. If you fllrt with his daughter, then you’ll be fired. If you flirt with his wife, then you’ll really be fired. Even if you flirt with his second cousin twice removed, (*then) you’ll be fired.

The last sentence doesn’t entail that you’ll be fired, or that if you don’t flirt with the boss’s second cousin twice removed, you’ll be fired. But then is still bad. This isn’t I think a problem for Iatridou, because there could still be a syntactic explanation for this. But it means even if conditionals are not evidence for her theory.

The APA (American Philosophical Association) is looking for stories about how valuable philosophical training has been to people other than professional, full-time philosophers.
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Badgerous, a new philosophy etc blog reports that this thread, on contextualist vs subject-sensitive accounts of knowledge, was actually used in an epistemology class. (Blushes.) The reports suggest that the comments were taken a little more seriously than my rants, but I’m still very chuffed about this. The mission to make TAR considered a major journal takes another step towards fruition.

Here’s a quick summary of my day yesterday.

• Presented lunchtime talk to semantics reading group based on Epistemic Modals in Context, the paper on ‘might’ that Andy Egan, John Hawthorne and I wrote. Preparation time: quite a bit – as you can see from the paper it’s not exactly in ready-to-present form. Number of people present: 4.
• Second class in my philosophy of economics seminar, going over the experimental evidence that people are not utility maximisers. Preparation time: quite a lot – especially catching up on the literature from the last few years because I haven’t looked at that material since I was in grad school. Number of people present: 3.
• Fourth class in intermediate logic course. Preparation time: long enough to print out last year’s notes and read them. Number of people present: about 40 or 50.

What’s interesting is that this seemed like a perfectly rational allocation of preparation resources. It turned out less than perfect, because five minutes into the logic class I decided I didn’t like the direction it was going so changed tack and ad libbed the rest. Fortunately improv logic is a little easier than improv comedy, especially if you’ve taught the course several times before.

And just in case you’re wondering, 40 degrees might look like it’s really warm compared to what we’ve been having lately, but don’t think that makes it rational to wear a sports jacket rather than a winter coat. Brrr.

And now for something completely different, The Guardian on what six to eight year olds think of classic rock. Here are some sample responses, but the whole thing is very amusing.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

It’s making me think about doing bad things like putting snowballs down my sister’s back.

Anarchy in the U.K.

He sounds like the baddie in Scooby Doo at the end.

Thanks to Europa Malynicz for the link.