philosopher makes mistake

In “How to Define Theoretical Terms” (1970), David Lewis says the following. Take a theory T that introduced a new term ‘t’. Replace ‘t’ in T with an appropriate variable to form an open sentence R`. Lewis now claims that ‘t’ is correctly defined as follow:

t = the unique x such that R`

Note the uniqueness requirement. If there are multiple realizations of R` (that is, variable assignments that satisfy R`) differing in what they assign to x, then ‘t’ is denotationless. Van Fraassen (1997) argues that, provided only that T is consistent and has an infinite model, such will always be the case.

Plantinga on Whether Belief that God Exists is Properly Basic

Alvin Plantinga argues for the following two claims (Warranted Christian Belief, 186-190):

(1) If God exists, then basic belief that God exists is probably properly basic.

(2) If God does not exists, then basic belief that God exists is probably not properly basic.

Let’s assume that he’s right about (1) and (2). However, from (1) and (2) Plantinga infers that

(3) To answer the question of whether basic belief that God exists is properly basic, we must answer the question of whether God exists.

Here is what Plantinga says when he makes the inference:

And this dependence of the question of warrant or rationality on the truth or falsehood of theism [the dependence stated in 1 and 2] leads to a very interesting conclusion. If the warrant enjoyed by belief in God is related in this way to the truth of that belief, then the question whether theistic belief has warrant is not, after all, independent of the question whether theistic belief is true. So the de jure question we have finally found [of whether basic belief that God exists is properly basic] is not, after all, really independent of the de facto question [of whether God exists]; to answer the former we must answer the latter. (191, bold added)

There seem to be two importantly different readings of (3)—and, similarly, the bolded line above. On the first reading, (3) is unimportant. On the second, the inference from (1) and (2) to (3) is fallacious.

personal and doxastic justification

In their “The Basic Notion of Justification” (Phil. Studies, 1989), Kvanvig and Menzel incredibly attempt to defend the equivalence (J) by appeal to the lambda calculus:

(P) S is justified in believing p

(D) S’s belief that p is justified

(J) (P) ≡ (D)

Kent Bach and my friend Clayton hold that (P) involves the notion of personal justification — roughly, the kind of justification that is a property of responsible cognitive agents — while (D) involves the notion of doxastic justification — the kind of justification that is a property of justified beliefs. According to them, these are distinct notions and so (J) is a false equivalence; there are cases where an instance of (D) is true of some person, but the relevant instance of (P) is not, and vice versa.

Kvanvig and Menzel give a counterargument which I think is wrong. They begin by assuming that the logical form of (D) is as follows:

On Ruth Byrne, The Rational Imagination

Recently I have been reading Ruth Byrne’s book The Rational Imagination (2005). The book turned out less relevant to the things I am interested in. To make sure it wasn’t a total waste though, I would like to raise a worry I have with the general argumentative strategy of the book.

The Rational Imagination is really two books in one. The descriptive book summarizes many interesting results of the psychology experiments Byrne and her associates have done on how people’s counterfactual reasoning tends to be influenced. When thinking about how things might be different, people tend to focus on short-term consequences of actions, long-term consequences of inactions, controllable events, and enabling (as opposed to causal) relations. Ch. 3-7 presents interesting empirical results that should be of interest to philosophers interested in modal epistemology. The normative book promises to argue that counterfactual reasoning is rational, but I am not sure she delivers on this promise. I will raise a worry for her argument, and from that, suggest some things she would need to explain in order to spell out a more complete theory of rationality for counterfactual reasoning.

The stated overarching argument of the book is as follows (208):
1. Humans are capable of rational thought.
2. The principles that underlie rational thought guide the sorts of possibilities that people think about.
3. These principles underlie counterfactual imagination.
C. Counterfactual imagination is rational.

Peter van Inwagen on Clifford’s Principle

While preparing for the philosophy of religion course I’m teach this summer, I just came across Peter van Inwagen’s essay “Quam Dilecta”. The essay appears in God and the Philosophers (1994, Thomas Morris, ed.), a collection of autobiographical essays where the authors (professional philosophers of varying distinction) explain

how they personally see the relationship between the spiritual and the philosophical in their own lives, or else [show] with their own stories how a person of faith can grapple with some of the problems and prospects of religious belief from a philosophical point of view. (p. 4)

At the end of his essay, van Inwagen presents his reasons for trusting “the Church” rather than “the Enlightenment”. There is much (much) one could say about these reasons, but, there is no need to, since van Inwagen himself admits that he believes what he does on the basis of “insufficient evidence”. However, prior to giving his (insufficient) reasons for “trusting the Church”, van Inwagen dedicates a section of his essay to explaining why he rejects the demand for sufficient evidence. This is the section of his essay I’d like to say just a little about here.

Equivocation in Feinberg’s “Infinite Regress” Argument Against Psychological Egoism

What may not be evident from the title of this post is that I’m fairly sure that there is an equivocation in Feinberg’s “infinite regress” argument against psychological egoism. This appears in Section C of his article “Psychological Egoism” in the popular anthology Reason and Responsibility (12th ed., ed. Feinberg & Shafer-Landau).

Set-up
Feinberg makes a point to distinguish the following:

(Mere) Desire Fulfillment (DF): DF is simply the “coming into existence of that which is desired” (479). For instance, a desire for the obtainment of some object x is fulfilled when and only when x is obtained. (With DF, there need not be the requirement that the bearer of a given desire experience its fulfillment. Death-bed wishes can be fulfilled.)

Pleasure₂ (P2), or Satisfaction: This is the type of positive feeling/s that one tends to experience upon getting what s/he desired (and, of course, being aware that the desire was fulfilled). That is, P2 is the pleasure that often results from and in virtue of DF.

An “At-At” Theory of Causal Influence

Salmon, in Causality and Explanation, suggests that causal processes are demarcated from pseudo-processes by their ability to transmit marks - causal processes can transmit marks; pseudo-processes can’t. About mark transmission: “A mark that has been introduced into a process by means of a single intervention at a point A is transmitted to point B if and only if it occurs at B and at all stages of the process between A and B without additional interventions.” (CaE, p. 197)

Here’s a simple example: There’s a rotating spotlight in the center of a circular room which casts a spot of light on the wall. The light ray traveling from the spotlight to the wall is a causal process; interpose a red filter in the beam near its source and the spot on the wall will be red. The spot of light moving around the wall is a pseudo-process; no interposing of a red filter (or intervention of any sort) can make the spot maintain its redness (or retain a mark of any sort) as it moves on.

We can ask this question, though: How does the process make the mark appear elsewhere within it? (CaE, p. 197) Salmon thinks the answer is ‘astonishingly simple’: it doesn’t (not in any deep sense, anyway). The transmission of a mark from point A in a causal process to point B in the same process just is the fact that it appears at each point between A and B without further interactions.(CaE, p. 197)

I don’t think this is right. It doesn’t get mark transmission right in close by possible worlds (maybe even in our world). Consider a world w. In w there’s a particle a. a can have properties P, Q, and R. Choose any time t. The probability that a will be P at t is 1/3. Likewise for Q and R. There’s another particle b in w. If b strikes a, a will be P, but only during the strike. Suppose b strikes a at t1. b then ricochets and barrells into space. a, then, is P at t1. Suppose also that, by chance, a is P at t2 and at all times between t1 and t2. It seems that, by Salmon’s criteria, a mark (i.e. P) is transmitted from t1 to t2 along the a’s-travels-process. But clearly it’s not. Mark transmission seems to not be as simple as Salmon takes it to be.