Teaching Early Modern

There has been some very interesting discussions on how to teach an introductory early modern class. My own undergrad experience has been the standard “rationalist vs. empiricist” story line, and some of the improvements suggested sound very interesting. I’m especially pleased to learn that there is an anthology of women philosophers from that period, and wish I had read some of that in my limited exposure to history. Anyway, I thought these links would be of general interest.

• “Textbook Prices: I Protest! – or – A Brief History of Modern Philosophy” by John Holbo in Crooked Timber
• “In which I chomp on some bait.” a reply by Dana McCourt in The Edge of the American West

[HT: The Ethical Werewolf]

Zombie Spouses

Would you be worse-off with respect to well-being if your spouse didn’t really love you, but only seemed to? Lots of people think you would be and are therefore persuaded that well-being/welfare must consist of something more than pleasure, happiness, or other mental states.

For example, Shelly Kagan’s “Deceived Businessman” believes he has a faithful, loving spouse but has an adulterous spouse who secretly despises him. Kagan argues that since the businessman is blissfully unaware of his spouse’s deceptions, mental state theories of well-being cannot distinguish between the deceived businessman and his doppelganger whose identical beliefs about his circumstances are true. Kagan concludes, “In thinking about this man’s life, it is difficult to believe that it is all a life could be, that this life has gone about as well as a life could go. Yet this seems to be the very conclusion mental state theories must reach! … So mental state theories must be wrong” (see Kagan’s Normative Ethics, p. 35).

OK, how about this: In 25%-Zombie world, every fourth person is a zombie, and every fourth spouse is a zombie. The non-zombie denizens of 25%-Zombie world know that every fourth person/spouse is a zombie who behaves exactly like (and is indistinguishable from) a normal person but feels nothing and doesn’t love anyone. (Never mind how they know this. It’s true, they believe it, et cetera.) I think the non-zombies would find it disconcerting that there were so many zombies around, but most would eventually get over it, marry someone, and assume that some other sucker had the zombie spouse. Many of the non-zombies would be wrong about this, but neither they (the non-zombies with zombie spouses) nor anyone else would ever know which spouses were zombies.

I don’t think the non-zombies with zombie spouses would, on average, be any worse off with respect to well-being than non-zombies with non-zombie spouses. (Of course, they’d all be worse off than average spouses in our world, since we don’t have to worry about whether our spouses might be zombies, but this worse-off-ness would apply to all married non-zombies in 25%-Zombie world, whether or not they were married to zombies.) What do you think? If you agree with me, do you think this constitutes a counter-example to thought experiments like Kagan’s Deceived Businessman? I sure do, but you might have guessed that.

I think that in our world, disloyal or unloving spouses usually are distinguishable from faithful, loving spouses because the former don’t feel and display the same respect and love for their spouses as do the latter. So deceived spouses typically suffer tangible, discernible harms to well-being that undeceived spouses typically do not suffer. However, if unloving spouses were completely indistinguishable from loving ones (e.g., because they were zombies or superb deceivers who never came out of character), I don’t think the unloved spouses would suffer any harms to well-being. Their situation might “look worse” to epistemically privileged readers of thought experiments since we know, e.g., that Donna’s husband is unfaithful or that Jack’s wife is a zombie, but that strikes me as a purely aesthetic matter — something that doesn’t look quite right from “the view from nowhere” — rather than anything to do with well-being.

Philosophers’ Carnival #90

You are hiyo by the 90th installment of the Philosophers’ Carnival!  This edition of the Carnival is hosted here at the University of Michigan Graduate Student blog Go Grue!.

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Since there’s no May JFP this year, you can spend your reading resources on these fine posts:

Booth 1: Wittgensteinian Investigations-Flavored Popcorn
In the first booth, we have a treat for the Wittgenstein lovers.  Adam See discusses Witty’s views on language in Wittgenstein on the Essence of Grammar (Adam See).

Booth 2: Lots of Talk about Universalism
The discussion at the next booth has been going for a while before we got there.  Fortunately, the wonders of the electronic carnival preserve the story.  To find out what all the fuss is about, check out A.P. Taylor’s A Quick Libertarian Argument for Universalism.  (Larry Navin responds to Taylor’s style here: Looking at syllogisms from both sides, now.)

(Projection) Booth 3: An X-Phi Video
Tired of reading? Well, experimental philosophy has a solution for you: watch this video blog post that illustrates a new experimental study based on an example from Aristotle at the Experimental Philosophy blog.  Unfortunately for your tired eyes, you’ll have to (and want to) read the comments.

Booth 4: A Throw Back to When Everything Made Sense
Next up, Kenny Pearce asks us to think about Locke’s and Berkeley’s account of common sense in Locke, Berkeley, and ‘Common Sense’.

Booth 5: Sing(er) Me a Song Mr. Ethicistman
The next booth contains another fine post by Terrance Tomkow entitled “The Good, The Bad and Peter Singer” where Tomkow discusses (i.e. rips into) Peter Singer’s new book and his long-standing views, all while being hovered over by a picture of Singer coddling some carrots.

Booth 6: Philosophy Short and Tweet
Over at TAR, Carrie Jenkins gives the results of the Philosophy Short and Tweet competition, where winners must argue their points in 140 characters or less.  Congrats to Go Grue!’s very own Dustin Locke for bringing home the prize for Cryptic Minimalism.

(Meta)Booth 7: The Booth of Many Other Booths
In the next booth, they’re selling group blogs.  Recently, these are in high supply!  In case you’ve missed them, here’s a few new group blogs:

It’s Only A Theory (General Philosophy of Science)
Choice & Inference (Formal Epistemology and Decision Theory)
Matters of Substance (Metaphysics)

Booth 8: Formally Speaking, These Posts are Great
Speaking of Choice & Inference, there are many great discussions of Formal Epistemology there.  Some of those include Rachael Briggs discussing Causal Modeling and Counterfactuals and Jonah Schupbach discussing A Connection between Bayesian and Mainstream Epistemology. If formal epistemology is up your alley, don’t forget to join us at the Second Formal Epistemology Festival aka “2FEF” at the end of May.

Booth 9: Intensionality with ADHD
In the last booth, to serve as an exceptionally exciting send-off, over at Matters of Substance, Dan Nolan has a very interesting discussion of hyperintensionality: The Age of Hyperintensionality

That’s all for this edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival!

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There were many good and some merely interesting submissions to the Carnival this time.  Not all of them made it here, but don’t fear: the next Philosophers’ Carnival will be hosted by sevenlayercake: a sweet philosophy blog.  Don’t forget to submit your exciting philosophy (and some boring philosophy, to keep it fresh) by May 25.

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Daniel J. Singer

Analysis Question

I’m hunting for a certain type of case and could use some help. I’m looking for a biconditional with something like the form

For all x, x is F iff blah blah x blah blah

that is BOTH correct as an analysis of Fness AND plausibly true for other reasons. In other words, this would need to be a biconditional of which we think: (i) it’s a correct analysis, and (ii) were it not a correct analysis, it’d still be true.

Any ideas?

Represent

Congratulations to the Michigan graduate students (gruers?)—Ian Flora, John Ku, Howard Nye, Dave Plunkett, and Ivan Mayerhofer—who will be presenting at this year’s Oxford Graduate Conference.

[HT: Nate Charlow, who presented at last year's conference.]

Yes! A Real Newcomb Case!

It’s time to reopen this can of worms. Michigan researchers have potentially discovered a gene responsible for both smoking and cancer:

“The gene is not the only element responsible for regular smoking, but it does signal a risk factor for nicotine dependency and cancer.”

Ann Arbor News reports on it here.

A more in depth article is here along with a citation to the research.

Thoughts?

the (x) habits of highly productive philosophers…

so i’m not really sure this is a methodology question, but…

i’ve been suffering from some serious jetlag, which has got me waking up at 3am. i’ve been finding, though, that 5am to 7am is a fantastic time for me to write. however, for various reasons, i suspect this schedule will prove untenable in the long run.

this got me wondering about other people’s writing habits (both good and bad), and, more generally, any tips or advice other people might have about how to increase one’s productivity, get more writing done and increase the quality of said writing, spend less time writing random blog posts when one should be finishing papers, etc etc.

example: i’m pretty good at starting papers, but i suck at finishing them. as a result i have like ten drafts of papers that are about 70% done. but that always seems to be the point at which i decide that the original idea is junk, or untenable, or uninteresting. how can i become more of a ‘closer’?

in sum: what are your best (and maybe worst) work habits? how can a grad student, who is typically balancing teaching and coursework and more personal projects, maximize his or her productivity? what sorts of habits (besides the obvious: drinking) undermine one’s productivity?

input is greatly appreciated by me, and, i suspect, other readers of this blog.

Re-Invention

Go Grue! was supposed to be a group blog, at least that’s what I had in mind when I registered the subdomain. Then I sort of tookover and wrote some nonsense. Now it’s being turned into a group blog again, focusing on the philosophy that we do here. Let me know if you want to contribute; you will have to get a (free) wordpress account.