New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

On G.E. Moore, or The Origin of Analytical Philosophy in Classical Philology...

"[G.E. Moore] was in those days beautiful and slim, with a look almost of inspiration, and with an intellect as deeply passionate as Spinoza's. He had a kind of exquisite purity."--Ernest Nagel quoting Russell on Moore.

"But Professor Moore, why do you spend so much time refuting that doctrine; surely [this emphatic use of "surely" he had learned from Moore] no one holds it. To which Moore replied, in a rising crescendo of rhetorical questions: "No one holds it? No one holds it? No one holds it? But Montague holds it-don't you Montague?" Professor Montague rolled his eyes and shook his head affirmatively."--Morton White recalling a seminar with Moore.

By treating Boole's contributions as merely mathematical and requiring a conventional step (the coding of predicates/sentences), Michael Dummett (and here) convinced himself and others that analytical philosophy has its original roots in Frege's more powerful logic and, thus, what we may call the philosophy of mathematics (for an alternative view). By contrast, at the 1959 memorial symposium on G.E. Moore at Columbia University (published in 1960 in JPhil), Ernest Nagel, who I claim (and here; recall Jeff's point) created our shared picture of analytical philosophy, has no doubt that "Moore did help to bring about a revolution, if not in philosophy, at any rate in the philosophical climate, and at the same time a marked heightening in standards of philosophical workmanship." (812; recall Catarina on Moore) Moore and his revolution stand for the "passionate devotion to the pursuit of intellectual clarity." (811)  His clarity was reflected in his writing, of course, and also bequeathed to the discipline through his charismatic teaching style.

Before I turn to Nagel's understanding of the sources and costs associated with Moore's legacy, I should emphasize that Nagel is careful to disassociate Moore from the (then) "current revolts against the traditional conception of philosophy as an inquiry into the most general features of the entire scheme of things." (811) In fact, by quoting from Some Main Problems of Philosophy, Nagel reminds his audience of Moore's vision that one of the tasks of philosophy is to present "a general description of the whole of the Universe. " Even so, Moore's conception of philosophical truth meant, in practice, that he was extremely wary of systematical elaboration. (812) Rather than seeing in Moore an anti-metaphysician (cf. Ayer), he is, thus, better  thought of as re-opening the door to a very deflationary Realism. (See also Alice Ambrose's very interesting contribution to the Memorial Session.) Fair enough.

The Emirate of El Paso and the Austin Free State

Our New Neighbor to the South!

A petition at whitehouse.gov urging that Texas should secede from the United States has gathered over 100,000 signatures. Following the iron logic of secession, El Paso and Austin have filed petitions to secede from Texas should it secede from the US, and no doubt certain neighborhoods of those cities will file petitions to secede from the secession from the secession.

Texans should really think twice about this. The United States has a tendency to turn the governments of small- to medium-sized oil-rich countries into unstable dictatorships, and then, when it tires of its new playthings, it bombs them. Texas, or rather Texans, would, of course, save a significant amount of money if they no longer paid Federal income tax. But even $389 million doesn’t go very far when one stealth bomber costs a billion.

Le Blog de Jean-Paul Sartre

Plenty of daily dread, here. [HT Dan Dennett.]

Brazilian music on Fridays: Joyce Moreno

One of BMoF’s biggest supporters is Guy Longworth, who regularly retweets links to the posts to his wide followship on Twitter. Guy is a big fan of Brazilian music, and Joyce Moreno is one of his favorites; so to thank him for his continuous support, here is a post on Joyce!

Joyce’s career started in the late 1960s, but it is fair to say that it was actually with her 1980 album Feminina that she became widely known in Brazil. Since then, she continued to record albums and collaborate with a wide range of musicians; she is very popular in Japan in particular, and well known in jazzy-world music circles. While being an accomplished composer herself, classics from the Bossa Nova repertoire are one of her specialties, such as this version of 'Corcovado' (hence the popularity in Japan; the Japanese love Bossa Nova).

Weekly Philo of Economics: Accountants and Greatness of Soul in Ruskin and Adam Smith (with a PS about Coetzee/Swift)

"[T]he sentiment or affection of the heart, from which any action proceeds, and upon which its whole virtue or vice depends, may be considered under two different aspects, or in two different relations: first, in relation to the cause or object which excites it; and, secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or to the effect which it tends to produce: that upon the suitableness or unsuitableness, upon the proportion or disproportion, which the affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, depends the propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the consequent action; n.."--Adam Smith, (The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter TMS) 2.1.Intro.2, 67.)

"Magnanimity: greatness of soul...capacity of heart, the great measuring virtue, which weighs in heavenly balances all that may be given, and all that may be gained"--John Ruskin, (The Political Economy of Art, 81-2).

"[F]itness or propriety of affection can be ascertained or judged of. That precise and distinct measure can be found nowhere but in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well informed spectator."--Adam Smith, (TMS 7.2.1.49, 294)

One of the least discussed but singularly important aspects of Adam Smith's moral philosophy is that judgments of propriety -- the core Smithian moral judgments --, which from the point of view of a spectator, consists of mentally inspecting, as it were, the proportionality of the two (complex) relata that enter into a cause-effect relation. (Recall here.) One of the relata (the temporally prior cause) is itself a relation between an exciting cause (say, a desire of the person judged), which produces a sentiment of heart (that is, a motive in the person judged), while the other relata (the effect), is (also itself a relation between) the action of the person judged and its contextually or situationally foreseeable effects (that is, consequent to the motive). (See also TMS 1.1.3.6, 18.) According to Smith we paradigmatically judge others and ourselves in particular situations. As Sam Fleischacker first pointed out to me, this brings Smith remarkably close to Samuel Clarke's position (as Smith recognizes--TMS 7.2.1.49, 294 is offered as a correction to Clarke.) Throughout TMS Smith repeatedly insists that judgments of propriety can be "exact."

Why Husserl? Ask Gödel

In a rather unflattering review of Marvin Farber’s 1941 edited collection Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl (Husserl died in 1938), Ernest Nagel takes a few swipes at Husserl, or perhaps more precisely at Husserl’s commentators. Farber himself, as discussed in an earlier post, had studied with Husserl in Germany while a graduate student at Harvard. In 1940 he was the founding editor of the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (which he edited until 1980). With the exception of Dorion Cairns, Farber was probably the person best suited to compile a volume in honor of Husserl.

Despite Farber’s credentials, Nagel finds little that is compelling in the collection and his criticisms often mirror what will often be heard in later decades regarding continental thought. For example, Nagel expresses doubt about whether any of the papers “will be either intelligible or persuasive to any one not previously instructed in Husserl’s ideas or convinced of their importance” (301); and, more damningly, he argues that with few exceptions Husserl’s views are not “expressed in recognizable English,” with “such barbarisms as ‘presuppositionless,’ ‘insightful,’ ‘pre-givenness’ or ‘the itself-giving’” (ibid.) being thrown around in a way that leaves novitiates at a loss to understand their meaning.

Adding to the recent discussions of Eric (here), Catarina (here), and Mohan (here) regarding the use and significance (or lack thereof) of intuition in analytic philosophy, one obvious place to turn to where intuition does appear to loom large is the work of Husserl. Husserl’s work, however, was also an important source of inspiration for Gödel’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and mathematics, and thus it bleeds significantly into a number of problems within the analytic tradition.

Do we have too many philosophy conferences?

A thought-provoking comment at Feminist Philosophers deserves discussion: 

Why not kill a bunch of birds with one stone and just have fewer conferences? They’re terrible for the environment and a completely decadent use of money that should be going towards financial aid for students or helping lower-income people heat their homes. Even at prestigious conferences, I find the papers are often lackluster, and at any rate, I consistently find that I could have learned just as much by staying at home, reading papers from authors’ websites, and Skyping or e-mailing them.

As to the present point — a gajillion conferences all across the globe, on hyper-specialized topics, often by invitation, with sketchy review procedures when not, and the prospect of being the only woman at quasi-party full of dudes in a faraway land — of COURSE you’re going to get gender disparities. So yay to the GCC, but I’d like to see an Anti-Conference Campaign (ACC) as well!

14N: European Day of Action and Solidarity -- against austerity

UPDATE: 14 November, 2:40 PM CST: Amazing 14N photos at Riot TV's Facebook page.

Guardian Business Blog live coverage / A Tumblr / The #14N Twitter feed. 

European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), who called for the action: 

• ETUC Strategy and Action Plan.
• List of ETUC proposals:

Beyond Unconscious Bias & Sexual Harassment: a case study

A recent spate of all-male headlined conference announcements (note this one at Princeton here) made me reflect again on the mechanisms at work. Our friends at the GCC have been emphasizing the ways in which implicit bias and stereotype threat reinforce each other and, more recently, Brian Leiter has reminded us (rightly) that "sexual harassment is still the scandal of philosophy profession." Petitions (the call to action initiated by Martin Kusch and Mark Lance has almost a 1000 signatures; here is the official GCC petition; and an interdisciplinary one sponsored by Virginia Valian and Dan Sperber and friends) are not enough to solve these issues, of course. But I do not think that implicit bias, stereotype threat, and sexual harassment exhaust the pernicious mechanisms at work.

Recently, I wrote some young scholars who ended up hosting a resource-rich conference with a line-up of ten (mostly early career) males. (I wouldn't be surprised this particular conference also ends up being a special issue of a journal.) This surprised me because I had noticed the cfp and it explicitly mentioned blind review of abstracts, and had made no mention of invited speakers. Their response is illuminating because it shows how even selection designs that aim at quality can lead to unfair, gender-imbalanced outcomes without any malice or gender bias (I'll qualify this in a bit) at all:

From a call for papers, we have selected 7 papers (out of a total of 10 to be presented at this workshop). Possibly 7, but at least 5 (out of 24 submitted), abstracts have been submitted by women (judging on the basis of first names). All abstracts have been anonymously evaluated double blind by a pool of 30 reviewers (of which roughly half were authors that had submitted abstracts). The resulting rank order was arrived at by straight averaging, gender was not a factor in the decision. The group of authors selected remained the same irrespective of assigning weights (between 60/40 and 80/20) to reviewers’ scores or authors’ scores. We checked for gender only after the blog post [by the GCC] had become known to us. The best “female abstract” is probably on rank 11.

3 out of 10 talks are given by invited speakers. These had been planned before the call for papers. 2 of these are given  by scholars from [our home universities]. These authors had been asked before the call for papers, as we seek to give precedence to work originating [at our home universities]. Prof. X is the one invited speaker external to the [home universities.]

Berkeley's anti-mathematics

"In physics sense and experience which reach only to apparent effects hold sway; in mechanics the abstract notions of mathematicians are admitted. In first philosophy or metaphysics we are concerned with incorporeal things, with causes, truth, and the existence of things. The physicist studies the series or successions of sensible things, noting by what laws they are connected." (Berkeley, De Motu 71, [Translated by Luce].)

Yesterday, I mentioned that aspects of Hume's Treatise belong to eighteenth century anti-mathematics without explaining what I meant by the term. By "anti-mathematics" I mean expressed reservations about the authority and utility of (Newtonian) mathematical sciences, especially the application of mathematics in inquiry into nature. (I have done posts on this theme before, recall these posts on Mandeville here and here; and on Adam Smith here). I distinguish between two general strategies (although in practices the strategies may be blended): (i) "the devaluation" strategy," which tries to undermine the epistemic status (recall my post on Hume) or epistemic reach of the mathematical sciences; and (ii) what I call a "containment" strategy, which grants the success of Newtonian science, but insists that there are domains of natural inquiry in which applying mathematics lacks utility or is inappropriate (see, for example, Mary Domski's beautiful paper on Locke). While in my story anti-mathematics originates in Spinoza ("Letter on the Infinite"; I quoted a crucial passage here), the strategies get developed in response to efforts to use the authority of Newtonian natural philosophy to settle debates within philosophy (something I call "Newton's Challenge to Philosophy").

Letters of Recommendation--two body problem(s)

Let's imagine a "friend," a professor in a PhD granting department, who has to write letters of recommendation for her talented PhD students on the market. (No, it's not autobiography. My own students are a few years removed from the market.) Unlike most of her peers she really likes writing detailed letters; she enjoys helping her students and has come to believe that detailed letters are helpful to hiring departments. Now my friends happens to know that two of "her" students are in a serious relationship. Her initial strategy is to keep such personal matters quiet. (Unlike me she dislikes gossiping.) But it occurs to her that hiring departments might find such information useful; the information might, of course, be used to disqualify her students from short-lists, but she reasons that mentioning the (existence and academic virtues of the) other partner also might make her students more interesting as a package to some departments; these might, say, be able to use one search to fill a lot of needs at once (an argument that worked nicely with their ambitious, but cost-sensitive Dean in discussions of her own department's most recent search). Recruitment is expensive, of course, and couples do tend to stay around.

But my friend is also sensitive to the fact that one of her coupled students is really the philosophically weaker of the couple {let's call this mate, "the upwardly mobile mater"}; so mention of the relationship might help the upwardly mobile mater, but maybe hurt the upwardly mobile mater's mate. (To complicate matters the couple has just submitted their joint paper to a journal.) Even leaving aside privacy considerations, would it be ethical to help the career of the upwardly moble mater, and hinder the career of the mate of the upwardly mobile mater? Should any of this information be revealed in a letter of recommendation? Ethics aside, would it be legal to do so in all jurisdictions?

The premature obituary of Occupy and the role of academics

Despite recently haven been declared dead in the press, Occupy has recently launched two major new projects.  In Brooklyn, Occupy Sandy has put on a massive aid effort, coordinated at a completely grassroots level, with very few capital resources, and by some reports outperforming the Red Cross. (When you factor in that the RC has, probably, 1000 times the resources to devote, ...)  See also this, this, this, and perhaps most amazingly this

A note on Hume's social epistemology & anti-mathematics

There is no Algebraist nor Mathematician so expert in his science, as to place entire confidence in any truth immediately upon his discovery of it, or regard it as any thing, but a mere probability. Every time he runs over his proofs, his confidence encreases; but still more by the approbation of his friends; and is rais’d to its utmost perfection by the universal assent and applauses of the learned world. Now ’tis evident, that this gradual encrease of assurance is nothing but the addition of new probabilities, and is deriv’d from the constant union of causes and effects, according to past experience and observation.--Hume Treatise, 1.4.1.2

I have been revisiting a terrific paper by Kevin Meeker (recall this post). Like a lot of Kevin's other work the paper argues for interpreting Hume as an old-fashioned skeptic (even about purported mathematical knowledge). Because of it I re-read Hume's Treatise 1.4.1 ("Of scepticism with regard to reason"). In  historical 18th century context the significance of 1.4.1 is two-fold:

1. Together with much of Treatise 1.2.4, Treatise 1.4.1.2 reinforces Hume's attack on the epistemic status of applying mathematical concepts to nature: "all [purported] knowledge degenerates into probability." (1.4.1.1) In particular, the epistemic status of mathematical, natural philosophy "becomes at last of the same nature with that evidence, which we employ in common life," (1.4.1.4) That is, Hume is here part of a much larger trend of what I call, 18th century "anti-mathematics." This is much indebted to Spinoza's "Letter on the Infinite" and even if we allow that Hume had not read Spinoza (which goes against a lot of circumstantial evidence), Hume almost certainly would have been familiar with species of such anti-mathematics either in Berkeley or in Mandeville (recall here; also here and here).

Minds on Monday: Kripke and Intuition

There is a symposium underway on this blog about how intuition plays in philosophical methodology. Eric talked about Tim Williamson’s review of Joshua Alexander here, and Catarina discussed a 3AM interview with Herman Cappelen, author of Philosophy Without Intuitions here. Catarina and Eric seem to believe that contemporary “analytic” philosopher is perniciously and retrogressively dependent on intuition. Cappelen is on the other side: he thinks intuition doesn’t play a role at all. Personally, I have found him very persuasive. What follows is inspired by what I have read of his excellent book.

As we all know, intuition, or its close cousin—an ear for the idiom of everyday speech—played a large role in ordinary language philosophy. Austin, for example, observed that when you say “I know the horse is in the barn,” you must be implying that either there is some doubt about the matter, or that someone had been questioning it. You can’t say ‘know’ without implying this. (Imagine the response: “Nobody said it wasn’t!”) In the absence of doubt or denial, you would have said: “The horse is in the barn.” Ergo, ‘know’ cannot be used in the way philosophers use it, i.e., to signal epistemic security of belief.

New Philosopher's Carnival

#145 HERE.

Deep in Thought?

To be fair, the eye does have a will of its own at times. And Jiang is evidently quite frail . . . 

Are hand axes works of art?

It's hard not to be fascinated by hand axes, those enigmatic guide fossils of the Lower Paleolithic. Hand axes were symmetrical tools produced by diverse species of hominids from about 1.7 million years ago. A small proportion of them are highly symmetrical, finely finished and polished, much beyond what you would expect for purely practical purposes. The beauty of such extreme hand axes has made some people muse whether they could be considered as artworks. For instance, the philosopher of art Gregory Currie describes a British hand axe as follows:

a piece of worked stone, shaped as an elongated tear drop, roughly symmetrical in two dimensions, with a twist to the symmetry which has retained an embedded fossil. In size and shape it would not have been a useful butchery implement, and is worked on to a degree out of proportion to any likely use. While it may be too much to call it an “early work of art,” it is at least suggestive of an aesthetic sensibility (Currie, 2009, 1).

Archaeologists have voiced similar sentiments:

If one stresses aesthetics […] at least a borderline, case of art before modern humans is provided by a tiny proportion of the billions of Acheulean handaxes produced in Africa and, subsequently, Eurasia from about 1.5 million to 35,000 years ago (if the Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition is included). An estimated 1 in 100, or perhaps even 1 per 50 (which is an enormous number, given the total amount of handaxes) shows up symmetry and regularity seemingly beyond practical requirements (Corbey, Layton & Tanner, 2008).

So can we go a bit further and argue that these hand axes are, or could be, works of art?

Kahneman on System 1 and System 2 as 'fictitious characters'

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow is making quite a splash (the other day, I saw at Bristol airport that it is currently at the top of the bestseller list for non-fiction -- naturally, it still can’t compete with Fifty Shades of Gray). I haven’t read it yet, but people whose opinion I hold in high esteem tell me that it has been successful in striking the difficult balance between being accessible to a wider audience and scientifically accurate (for the most part at least) at the same time. The book summarizes research on cognitive and reasoning biases of the last decades, a research program in which Kahneman himself has been a major player. The conceptual cornerstone of the book is the (still) popular distinction between System 1 and System 2, the two systems which allegedly run in parallel underpinning all our cognitive processes, and which often conflict with each other. 

Now, as I’ve stated a few times before (here for example), I am no fan of System 1/System 2 talk at all (not even of weaker versions, the so-called dual-process theories of cognition), even though I agree that the empirical findings on cognitive biases should be taken very seriously. (I also agree that there is something to the idea of debiasing as suppressing automatic processes.) So I was curious to see how Kahneman himself introduces the System 1/System 2 distinction, and took a quick look at the book (my husband was reading it during our holiday of a few weeks ago, after having gotten it from me as a birthday present – that’s what you get for having a nerdy wife). The first thing that struck me is that, on footnote 20, he lists some of the pioneers of dual-system theories, including Jonathan Evans, Steve Sloman and Keith Stanovich, and adds: “I borrow the terms System 1 and System 2 from early writings of Stanovich and West that greatly influenced my thinking” (he refers to their 2000 BBS article on individual differences in reasoning). But what is puzzling is that Stanovich himself now overtly rejects the conceptualization of the distinction in terms of systems, which unduly suggests reified entities, and now uses the process terminology instead (same with Jonathan Evans).

But perhaps most striking is what Kahneman says in the conclusion of the book:

Veterans Day Poppy

(In remembrance of, among others, Captain Beefheart.)

It may well be that the conception of well-marked generations got its impetus from the world wars, now usually called One and Two. The first, once simply The Great War, was the war of my grandparents; the second, that of my parents. That distinction was clear, easy to remember, soundly based in events.

Institutions and altruism: On FEMA and Occupy Sandy

This NYT article on Occupy Sandy (h/t to Mark on FB) is noteworthy for highlighting a pressing problem for more-or-less anarchist strains of thought as they cross political affect.

"Occupy Wall Street has managed through its storm-related efforts not only to renew the impromptu passions of Zuccotti, but also to tap into an unfulfilled desire among the residents of the city to assist in the recovery. This altruistic urge was initially unmet by larger, more established charity groups, which seemed slow to deliver aid and turned away potential volunteers in droves during the early days of the disaster."

The question is how to institutionalize for efficiency without losing the face-to-face that helps drive empathy and altruism. I tend to take a modest evolutionary psychology angle here -- there really is something about faces for human beings and that something is plausibly an evolved predisposition for emotional resonance. Of course, the big question here is the ontological status of "predisposition."

RIP: Ray Frey (1941-2012)

The transition between graduate school and a tenure track position is (the few 'chosen' excepted) anxiety driven, and worse. I experienced APAs where I was apparently invisible to others at the Smoker. Papers would get rejected by journals without comment after a year's wait. So, all small tokens of kindness were much appreciated. The few genuine, critical engagements with my work, thus, stand out in memory.

Brian Leiter just reported that Ray Frey (1941-2012) passed away. I was not very close to Ray, and saw him less frequently than I would have liked. But I learned from him each time we met. In particular, he was the commentator on my paper at the "Adam Society" meeting at the central APA in 2003. (The article got published here.) It was the last "graveyard" session of the conference, and there were more people on stage than in the room when I started my talk. Ray offered incisive criticism. I emailed him after the conference, and much to my amazement he sent me detailed, elaborate further comments; we went back and forth, and then I finally realized I had to learn how to do real thinking. Five years later, I sent him a publication with a footnote that states, "This paper originates as a response to a serious question by Ray Frey on a paper." He wrote me to tell me how much he liked the paper, and that now he would have to think about his response. I had never felt more proud, and so grateful.

Weekly Philo of Economics: on Child Development, or Adam Smith-no-Empiricist

But all the appetites which take their origin from a certain state of the body, seem to suggest the means of their own gratification; and even long before experience, some anticipation or preconception of the pleasure which attends that gratification. In the appetite for sex, which frequently, I am disposed to believe almost always, comes a long time before the age of puberty, this is perfectly and distinctly evident. The appetite for food suggests to the new-born infant the operation of sucking, the only means by which it can possibly gratify that appetite. It is continually sucking. It sucks whatever is presented to its mouth. It sucks even when there is nothing presented to its mouth, and some anticipation or preconception of the pleasure which it is to enjoy in sucking, seems to make it delight in putting its mouth in the shape and configuration by which it alone can enjoy that pleasure. There are other appetites in which the most unexperienced imagination produces a similar effect upon the organs which Nature has provided for their gratification.--Adam Smith (“Of the External Senses,” 79, p. 165)

Smith clearly commits himself to the existence of what (in my book-manuscript-in-progress) I label "proto-passions." In fact, the two examples he offers (appetite for sex and appetite for food) are two of the original passions (not unlike the natural sentiment of resentment).

Here, Smith is adamant that such proto-passions are innate (“long before experience…the new-born infant…the most unexperienced imagination.”) So, while it is, of course, possible that some proto-passions are themselves a consequence of habitual experience (this is implied, perhaps, by a passage that I have discussed here), Smith appears to think that a group (“there are other appetites”) of the proto-passions are innate (in his terminology: they are provided by Nature, not experience). Of course, that proto-passions are innate is compatible with the further claim that they require environmental cues or triggering objects to be activated. While below I describe some pre-conceptions that according to Smith do require such triggering objects, Smith clearly thinks some of those innate proto-passions are self-activating: the infant “sucks even when there is nothing presented to its mouth.” Even though Smith was a life-long, childless bachelor, he clearly showed an active interest in child-development (and I think this makes him so insightful on the mutual emotional regulation that Helen calls attention to).

Brazilian music on Fridays: Joao Bosco

Here's a quick BMoF, which will not do justice to the magnitude of the musician whose songs I'll be posting today: Joao Bosco. He is highly regarded as a composer as well as a guitar player and singer, and known for the complexity and sophistication of his songs. My two favorite songs by him are 'Papel mache'' (1984) (in live version below so you can appreciate his guitar virtuosity -- studio version here) and 'Desenho de Giz' (1987); so with no further ado, here they are.

Fatherhood: Familiar, but undefined.

Before my son was born (nearly three years ago) I showed very little interest in children. I was not 'anti-', just indifferent in the way that I am still indifferent about, say, Nascar racing, clubbing, or (I apologize to my academic friends) wine-tasting. On a glorious late afternoon after I got my flu-shoot I was walking along the Brouwersgracht (see here for a picture, but imagine less leaves on the trees), grateful for the lack of rain and thinking about various deadlines. When I walked by a crowded playground (see here, but imagine lots of children), I stopped and looked at the kids absorbed in their play. Before I knew it I was filled with joy, fatigue and innumerable number of other recently familiar feelings. After a moment's immersion in the scene and the accompanying feelings, it occurred to me that some kind of associative mechanism had done its work.

While I have an impossible-to-find publication that argues there are fatal problems in Hume's account of the associative mechanism, I never doubted that we do associate. But this may have been the first time I felt the mechanism's existence as a kind of brute force that could overwhelm a prior disposition otherwise. But this realization did not please me; rather, I was reminded of another fact--I completely lack a vocabulary for the recently familiar feelings that accompany the recurring mixed joy-fatigue state. (Not all of these are joy.) Echoing Socratic midwifery, Hume famously describes the fate of his philosophical works with parent-child metaphors, but it occured to me that many of the  philosophers (e.g., Plato, Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume,  Adam Smith, Nietzsche) that I have been thinking about during the last fifteen years, or so, died childless (or at least without acknowledging their children). A few of them had very intense experiences tutoring young men, but their accounts of the passions  do not offer me the concepts to name the feelings. Reading Rawls or other more recent philosophers and economist hasn't helped. Has, say, feminist philosophy made a difference on this score? It ought to, so I would love to hear from informed readers.

Obama-as-event and "underground history"

Nothing here will contradict Mark's analysis of the content challenges Americans face post-election. But following Ed Kazarian (blog, website) on Facebook, I found the formal elements of these passages about Obama in a piece by Charles Pierce to have a distinct Deleuzean echo: 

He came into this office a figure of history, unlike anyone who's become president since George Washington. The simple event of him remains a great gravitational force in our politics. It changes the other parts of our politics in their customary orbits. It happens so easily ... that you hardly notice that it has happened until you realize that what you thought you knew about the country and its people had been shifted by degrees until it is in a completely different place....

Parade, raining upon

It is - as a gay hating, anti-environmental, corporatist, war criminal of a former president once said - morning in America.

Obama was elected over Romney; the Democrats held or increased their lead in the Senate, gay marriage is legal in Maryland and Maine, and small victories were won against the insane drug war.  Liberals were partying in front of the White House once again. I'm happy for all of that, and for them. Really, I am.  Given the alternatives, these results buy us a bit of time for dealing with crucial issues, and will make significant differences in the lives of many Americans.  So ok.  Cool.  I hope everyone had a nice celebratory evening.  Now can we face up to the cold reality of the situation in which we find ourselves?

Of course, we never use intuitions

Catarina confronts the canard that we "philosophers don’t rely on intuitions."

From a recent review by one of our very best philosophers:

"In Part One ("Demoralizing Marriage"), Brake focuses on the ethical significance of marriage for the individuals involved. Chapter 1 discusses whether marriage involves a promise. First, she argues that the typical marriage vows -- "to love, honour, and cherish, until death us do part" -- cannot literally be taken as promises. It is not clear that we can promise love at all. If we could, it would follow, counter-intuitively, that divorce counts as promise-breaking. Then she considers what strikes me as a more plausible suggestion"--Ralph Wedgwood.

That's the whole argument. Now from the way Wedgwood phrases the matter, it's not clear to me (really) if he believes that "If we could, it would follow, counter-intuitively, that divorce counts as promise-breaking" or if he is just summarizing the book's view. (I first inclined to the former, but now hedging my bets.) It doesn't matter, because the appeal to intuition goes unremarked here. We philosophers are so used to doing this that we can't help ourselves saying "it is not clear that," etc. Now I am willing to believe that Wedgewood never formed an intuition on the matter--he clearly just means to convey that either he (or the reviewed book) finds a view silly/dumb (whatever--pick your favorite). But it is basically an argument from authority that hides behind bogus intuitions or the language of intuitons..

I am no party to the first order debate, by the way (except, ahum, that I got married this year).

Cappelen's rather 'partial' account of the history of analytic philosophy

As many readers will have seen, there is an interview with Herman Cappelen in the latest issue of 3:AM Magazine. Moreover, Cappelen has recently published the much-discussed Philosophy without Intuitions, where he seems to argue (I haven’t had the chance to check out the book with my own eyes yet) that the X-Phi critique of ‘armchair’ methodology misfires in that it criticizes an inexistent straw-man: there are no (serious) philosophers for whom intuitions play the philosophical role that X-Phi’ers claim is the case in traditional, armchair philosophy. Here are some relevant passages from the interview:

3:AM: Your latest book, Philosophy without Intuitions, enters a hot debate in philosophy, that of the role of intuitions. Philosophers' alleged reliance on intuitions has been source of concern. This concern is unwarranted?

HC: Right. Not because reliance on intuitions is unproblematic, but because philosophers don’t rely on intuitions. It turns out that those who assumed philosophy was intuition-based hadn’t done their homework: they made broad, sweeping claims about an activity (philosophising) and a group of people (philosophers) without careful study of those people and that activity. When you look at what real – as opposed to caricatured – philosophers write (and say), there’s nothing there that is appropriately characterised as ‘relying on intuitions as evidence’.

Minds on Monday: Are Philosophers Qualified to Diagnose Causes?

In the late 1970s, Benjamin Libet showed that motor cortex activity preparing for an action occurs before the conscious act of willing that action. (Here is a nice demonstration of the experiment by Patrick Haggard.)

 

Libet's result has been replicated countless times (as above), and though it is perhaps rash to generalize too broadly, let's just say we have strong evidence for:

1. Conscious acts of "willing" an action occur after the brain activity that cause the action, and so
2. Conscious acts of willing do not cause action.

As a philosopher, which of the following conclusions can I legitimately draw?

 

In Memoriam: Annette Baier, by Lynne Tirrell

Most of our readers will know that Annette Baier died recently.  This is a loss that is shared by students, friends, and philosophers in general. I invite others to post rememberances, thoughts, etc. in the comments to Lynne's post.  (ML)

In Memoriam: Annette Baier

 Annette Baier was my teacher and a steadfast friend for over 30 years. That number staggers me, in part because I realize that I am now around the age Annette was when we first met, back in 1980, when I arrived at Pitt. She was such a brilliant, sophisticated, witty, and cosmopolitan person—unlike anyone I had ever met. With annual hikes in the Alps, traveling the earth from end to end, befriending people everywhere, Annette had a commodious life. Coming into her own, as she really did after 50, she showed us, by example, that one’s best work may be yet to come.  Those who know her writing are familiar with her insightful approach to the history of philosophy, are awed by the depth and breadth of her knowledge, and swayed by the power of her original ideas. But to those who knew her personally, Annette was a generous, compassionate, and deeply loyal friend. When Annette was in your corner, you were lucky indeed, because her confidence in you was a great gift through thick and thin.