Close Range

Happy Meta-Christmas!

Well, since popular philosophy and metaphilosophy are both currently so hot, I thought I'd bring them together for the season. Apparently, there has already been a bit of work done in this area. So don't hesitate to jump on the seasonal bandwagon.

[NB: Since the collapse of descriptivism, it is no longer essetial for atheists to refer to Christmas as Xmas.]

The Solar System

I want to defend an ontology of all the things that we ordinarily take to exist and none of the bizarre things that metaphysicians have dreamed up (incars, gollyswoggles, snowdiscalls, klables, the fusion of my nose and the Eiffel Tower, etc.). And I want to do so without any kind of conventionalism or relativism. My opponents have much to complain about, and the most common complaint is that this ontology is somehow arbitrary or anthropocentric. This is a many-faceted complaint. I have many awesome things to say about many of those facets. What I want to do here is consider the facet that’s been the biggest pain in my ass.

The question is: what’s the ontologically significant difference between the solar system, on the one hand, and such strange fusions as the thing composed of my nose and the Eiffel Tower? Here’s the best answer I’ve been able to come up with. The fusion of my nose and the Eiffel Tower is a single individual. The solar system is not a single individual; it is many individuals. Don’t be fooled by the syntactic singularity of ‘the solar system’; some terms (like ‘the assortment’, ‘the plurality’, ‘the multiplicity’, ‘TomKat’) are plausibly syntactically singular but semantically plural.

Objection #1: The solar system can gain and lose parts, whereas pluralities are mereologically inflexible. So the solar system simply cannot be a plurality.

Response: It can be true that the solar system grows or gains parts even though there is no x such that x grows or gains parts. Compare: For it to be true that the democratic nominee gets more conservative every year, it is enough that whatever individual plays the role of nominee in any given year is more conservative than whatever individual played the role of nominee in the previous year; there is no need for any particular individual to become more conservative. Similarly, it is true that the solar system got bigger so long as the plurality now playing the role of solar system is bigger than the (distinct but overlapping) plurality previously playing that role. No one thing needs to itself get bigger in order for the solar system it grow. I’m not saying that this is obvious. I’m just saying it.

(Perhaps relatedly: Nothing actually gets longer as the part of this sentence that you’ve read thus far gets longer. Boo-yah!)

Objection #2: Fusions are “ontologically innocent.” ‘The fusion of my nose and the Eiffel Tower’ refers, not to a single thing, but rather to some things, namely, my nose and the Eiffel Tower.

Response: If indeed fusions are ontologically innocent (and not all universalists will agree that they are), then of course I accept that there is such a thing as the fusion of my nose and the Eiffel Tower -- since I accept that there are such things as my nose and the Eiffel Tower. So arbitrariness is avoided, not by finding an ontologically significant difference, but rather by embracing both fusions and solar systems.

Newcomb's Paradox

I presented Newcomb’s paradox to my epistemology class today, and I was shocked and dismayed to find that virtually all of them are one-boxers. I’m a two-boxer, and proud of it. I threw together an argument for two-boxing (which may already be out there in the literature, I don’t know), and I’m curious where exactly one-boxers will get off the boat.

Quickly, here’s the set-up: At t3, you’ll be presented with box A and box B and will have the option of taking both boxes or just box B. At t1, The Predictor scans your brain and predicts whether you’ll be a one-boxer or a two-boxer. At t2, if it predicted that you’d be a one-boxer, it puts $10,000 in box B. If it predicted that you’d be a two-boxer, it puts nothing at all in box B. And, either way, it puts $1000 in box A. Then it leaves the room. At t3, you’re shown the $1000 in box A; you’re told how the Predictor works; and you’re told that the Predictor has yet to make a bad prediction (in over a million trials).

Now, here you are at t3, already holding box A in one hand, and trying to decide whether to take B as well. Here’s the argument for being a two-boxer:

(1) Nothing that happens after t2 impacts what is in box B

(2) If nothing that happens after t2 impacts what is in box B, then picking up box A (while already holding B) can only increase the amount of money in your hands

(3) If picking up box A can only increase the amount of money in your hands, then you have nothing to lose by taking box A

(4) If you have nothing to lose by taking box A, then you should take box A too

(C) You should take box A too

Your move, one-boxer.