Close Range

Snowballs and Islands

Members of phased kinds can cease to be members of that kind without ceasing to exist. Of course, as a matter of de dicto necessity, all toddlers are toddlers. But it’s not the case that all toddlers are necessarily toddlers. Members of individuative kinds belong to that kind as a matter de re necessity. A person can’t cease to be a person without ceasing to exist. A statue can’t cease to be a statue without ceasing to exist. If you flatten the statue, it’s not just that it ceases to be a statue; it ceases to exist.

Assuming you’re on board with those cases (i.e., assuming that your modal intuitions aren’t completely defective -- oh snap!), I’m wondering what you think about snowballs and islands. When you flatten a snowball, does it cease to exist, or does it just cease to be a snowball? Suppose you’ve got a low island, and it gets completely submerged every day at high tide. Does it cease to exist at high tide? Or does it continue to exist, but cease to be an island? Or perhaps you want to say that it still exists *and* it’s still an island at high tide? 

I say the snowball survives flattening but ceases to be a snowball, and the island survives being submerged (and probably is still an island). If I’m right about this, it seems that Hawthorne’s complaint that (“barring an anti-realism that none of us should tolerate”) it’s intolerably arbitrary to include islands in one’s ontology and exclude (Hirsch’s) incars. One, but not the other, has extraordinarily weird persistence conditions. Similarly for Sosa’s claim that a realist who lets in snowballs is going to have to let in snowdiscalls as well. Anyway, my question is whether what I say about snowballs and islands seems right to you.

CFP: 62nd Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference

The 62nd Annual Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference

Keynote Address: Ted Sider (NYU)

Hosted By
Fort Hays State University
Hays, Kansas

Thursday, October 23^rd to Saturday, October 25^th 2008

Accommodations: TBD

Papers on any topic of philosophical interest will be considered.  E-Mail submissions are preferred and should be no longer than 3000 words, suitable for reading aloud, and prepared for blind-reviewing (detachable title page).  Please include a 100-word abstract in your cover letter, indicate the preferred AOS of your referee, and indicate whether, should your paper not be accepted, you would be willing to serve as a commentator or session moderator.

Deadline for Submission: July 15, 2008

Send submission by e-mail to (please, no MS Word2007; older versions are fine): Franz-Peter Griesmaier (University of Wyoming), fpg@uwyo.edu.

Shout Out

Just a little shout out to the UW master's students whose hard work has paid off in some nice graduate school placements.

• Jeremy Bryant Weiss, Ohio State University (full funding)
• Thomas Scott Dixon, University of California, Davis (full funding)
• Erik Hoversten, Rutgers University (full funding)
• Adam Ross Thompson, University of Nebraska (full funding)

Major congratulations, fellas!! Enjoy the ride.

Activities Post

[Update]:: If you are bringing a spouse, spousal equivalent, or other family member and would like to set up something on one of the conference days for them, please let me know and I will see what I can do. At the moment, I have one person interested in horseback riding on Saturday.

This is an activities post for the upcoming SEP Conference. In order to co-ordinate individual interests and get everyone the best price possible for the various activities, it would be helpful if people who are interested in engaging in one of the "free day" activities would post their interests in the comments.

Thus far, I have the following requests:

1 person for the scenic float trip

2 people for the evening horseback ride w/dinner.

Here is a list of the activities on offer:

1. SPECIAL OUTING: Snowshoeing the High Country: Libby Creek Trail, Snowies

Thirty minutes to the west of Laramie lies the Snowy Range. This is the northernmost point of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Snowy Range is part of the 3 million acre Routt-Medicine Bow National Forest and sports impressive alpine peaks ranging over 13,000', glacial lakes, and lots of wildlife.

We’ll hike up along the ridgeline of Libby Creek canyon and break for lunch, overseeing a spectacular view of the Laramie valley. The trail descends into Libby Creek and ties into Barber Lake Trail. The whole loop is roughly 6 miles with some moderate elevation gain. No prior snowshoeing experience is necessary. Transportation, lunch and equipment are provided. A personal equipment list and detailed pre-trip information will be provided after registering. Limit: 10 participants.

• Departure date: Friday, May 16, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
• Meeting location: Half Acre Gym, front lobby (west side of building)
• Price: $69

Registration for this special outing is required: Call Dan McCoy, Coordinator of the Outdoor Adventure Program at (307) 766-6488. Please specify that you are part of the UW philosophy conference. Full payment will be required to reserve a spot. Cancellation policy: Fifty percent is refundable if five-business-days notice is given prior to the trip departure date. For more info call (307-766-6488) or e-mail (oap@uwyo.edu).

2. SPECIAL OUTING: Introduction to Rock Climbing in Vedauwoo

Vedauwoo (pronounced vee-da-voo) is a world renowned rock climbing area. Vedauwoo is a beautiful labyrinth of granite rock formations just about 10 miles east of Laramie and is well worth visiting just for the scenery. This outing is primarily for beginning or intermediate climbers, though experienced climbers might find it worthwhile.

Join the UW Outdoor Adventure Program for an outing to southeast Wyoming’s premiere climbing spot. This is a great opportunity to learn basic climbing safety, belay technique and movement from our knowledgeable and friendly instructors. No prior experience necessary, though a good level of physical fitness is important. Persons with prior climbing experience are also encouraged to attend. All climbing equipment, instruction, lunch and transportation provided. A personal equipment list and detailed pre-trip information will be provided after registering. Limit: 10 participants.

• Departure date: Friday, May 16, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
• Meeting location: Half Acre Gym, front lobby (west side of building)
• Price: $69

Registration for this special outing is required: Call Dan McCoy, Coordinator of the Outdoor Adventure Program at (307) 766-6488. Please specify that you are part of the UW philosophy conference. Full payment will be required to reserve a spot. Cancellation policy: Fifty percent is refundable if five-business-days notice is given prior to the trip departure date. For more info call (307-766-6488) or e-mail (oap@uwyo.edu).

3. Local Area Birding trips

If, like Marc, you happen to be a bird-geek, we can set up a local birding expectation through Bird Brained Expeditions. (No price yet, but fairly cheap overall.) If you are not from the West, this is a good opportunity to increase your lifetime bird list by 10 or 12 species. Post interest in comments.

4. Horseback Riding on Sheep Mountain

Snowy Mountain Lodge offers horseback riding trips out of Centennial, Wyoming (home to Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Proulx) about 30 minutes from Laramie. They offer 1, 2 and 3 hour rides, as well-as an 8 hour ride. The three hour ride is done in the evening and includes a chuck wagon steak dinner (total cost $90.00). Post interest in comments.

5. The Old West

Western history buffs might enjoy a day trip out to one of the many historic sites within a few hours of Laramie. One natural spot is Fort Laramie; about a two and a half hour drive. Locally, a trip to the Territorial Prison is a good way to spend a few hours. For a sense of the West, a two hour horseback trip plus a turn around the Territorial Prison would be a good, not too strenuous, option.

6. Fishing/Floating the North Platte

Four Season Anglers provides both guided fishing trips and scenic floats on the Platte River. Cost for each will be determined by the number of participants, but a rough estimate is about $150.00 per person for the scenic trip and $210.00 for the fishing trip.

At that time of year, the scenic trip will be run down the North Platte River near Saratoga. This is a beautiful float of about 13 miles. Lots of waterfowl, bald eagles, deer (mule deer and white-tail; sometimes moose), beaver, mink and other wildlife. Service to and from the shop in Laramie to the raft point, lunch, drinks, gear.

The fishing trip would be along the North Platte near Casper, an area known as Gray’s Reef. Gray’s Reef is one of the two or three premiere fishing waters in the country for large trout (cutthroat, rainbows, browns, cuttbows). An experienced angler would typically land about 15 fish over 18” with a real chance of catching something over 5lbs. A novice angler will probably hook-up, but the size of the fish will lead to a lot of break-offs. If need be, FSA can provide rods, etc. The scenery here is not outstanding (more like a high desert), but you will see plenty of antelope and deer. Post interest for either fishing or scenic float trip in comments.

Propositions and Proto-attitudes

I have been going through Jeff King's book The Nature and Structure of Content in my metaphysics seminar and wanted to put down some thoughts (time permitting).

Very generally, King's account of structured propositions is as follows. Propositions are certain kinds of facts whose constituents are structured in the same way as the sentences which express them are structured at LF. Consider, for instance, the proposition that Rebecca swims. On King's account, this proposition is analysed as:

The fact of there being a (possible) context c and lexical items a and b of some language L such that a has as its semantic value in c Rebecca and occurs at the left terminal node of the sentential relation R that in L encodes the instantiation function and b occurs at R's right terminal node and has as its semantic value in c the property of swimming.

It is clear from reading the book (though the issue is not addressed directly) that King intends his language variable to range over languages-in-use (rather than, for example languages as abstract objects). Consequently, on King's view languages are mind-dependent entities which do not exist prior to the development of language.

This gives rise to the following worry. On the most widely accepted views of what it is for a language to be the language of a given community, this will involve various highly complex propositional attitudes (intentions, beliefs, etc.) on the part of the members of that community. But it seems clear that one cannot have those propositional attitudes unless, well, there are propositions. So it appears that King is commited to the claim that there must be propositions prior to language. But this is apparently inconsistent with his view of propositions.

King notes that he has two options (i) adopt the Language of Thought Hypothesis or (ii) appeal to protobeliefs/protointentions. The second option is important to King because he doesn't want to hang is hat entirely on the LOT hypothesis. But I am doubtful that this is a genuine option for him. Call the "contents" of the protobeliefs/intentions "protopropositions". Whatever else we want to say about protopropositions, it seems clear that if they are going to do the work that King wants they had better be both truth-evaluable and structured. But these are two of the primary characteristics of propositions which King's theory was supposed to capture. If he is now commited to giving a theory of structured protopropositions with these characteristics, it is likely that whatever theory is put in place can be adapted to handle propositions directly. If that is right, then King is more heavily committed to LOT than his discussion in the book suggests.   

Ride Share Post for SEP

A number of people attending the SEP conference in May will be flying into DIA and driving up. For those of you who wish to get in touch for the purposes of sharing a rental car, please post your arrival and departure dates and times in the comments and (possibly) contact information.

Sabbatical Replacement at UW

UPDATE: We are pleased to say that we have filled the position. Thank you for your inquiries.

Here is an opportunity to get some low-stress teaching experience outside your home institution.

University of Wyoming. Laramie, WY: We are seeking to hire a visiting instructor (ABD near completion) for a sabbatical replacement, either for the entire AY '08-'09 with a 1-2 load or for just the Spring of '09 with a 3 course load. Teaching duties will include a section of Introduction to Philosophy and the possibility of a graduate level (M.A.) seminar in your dissertation area. There are no service or advising duties. AOS and AOC are open, though we have a very slight preference for someone who can teach a seminar on Kant's First Critique. (We are more interested, however, in simply getting somebody good who will be fun to have around for the year!) Salary is $15,000 plus benefits. The University of Wyoming is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Send dossier including a personal letter of application, vita, transcripts (unofficial), teaching portfolio including teaching evaluations, and three letters of recommendation to: Professor Ed Sherline, Head, Department of Philosophy, College of Arts & Sciences, Dept. 3392, 1000 E. University Ave., Laramie, WY 82071. Mail inquires to Sherline@uwyo.edu. We are not doing formal interviews for this position, nor are we formally advertising it. We will fill the position as soon as we find a strong applicant. For more information see: http://www.uwyo.edu/Philosophy.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

SEP deadline almost here

The deadline for the 36th annual meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy is almost here, January 31st. 

The meeting will take place here in Laramie from May 12-17. The 16th will be a day off for enjoying some of the great wilderness/cultural opportunities in the area. We also have a great line-up of speakers on metaphysics and meaning: Graeme Forbes, George Bealer, and Charles Chihara. Finally, a selection of the papers will be published in Synthese.

Intellectualism and Ryle's Regress

I want to make two points in this post about know-how and intellectual ability: one critical, one defensive.

In The Concept of Mind, Ryle argues that a certain "intellectualist" view of the mind is mistaken. According to this intellectualist view, all intelligent action consists in a two-step process of theorising about a course of action and then making use of that theorising in order to go guide one's action. Ryle is not particularly clear on either of the two crucial notions invoked in this claim, namely, "intelligent action" and "theorising". For my purposes, it is adquate to suppose that theorising consists of any sort of propositional deliberation and, in particular, propositional deliberation about ways of acting. The other notion is more difficult to pin down. The following is, I believe, a fair characterization of the class: an action is an intelligent action iff it is the sort of action which can be appropriately characterized by terms of intellectual evaluation (as I will call them). The terms of intellectual evaluation are then given be (partial) enumeration: "witty", "clever", "stupid", "brilliant", etc.

Against this background, Ryle argues that intellectualism leads to a vicious, infinite regress. The argument goes roughly as follows.

1. According to intellectualism, every intelligent act of psi-ing involvess deliberation about a way of psi-ing together with the implementation of that way.
2. Implementing a way of psi-ing is an intelligent action.
3. But then in order to impeliment a way of psi-ing one must engage in (n+1)-order deliberation about a way of implementing one's n-order deliberation about a way of psi-ing together with an implemenatation of that way.
4. But then, in order to psi intelligently, one must first run through an infinite number of theoretical deliberations.
5. This is not possible.
6. Therefore, the intellectualist theory of intelligent action is wrong

In place of the intellectualist theory, Ryle proposes the following: x is able to psi intelligently iff x knows how to psi.

Now, it is relatively easy to see that there are a large number of cognitive abilities which do not give rise to intelligent actions and which are not appropopriately described in terms of know-how. For instance, I am able to see red, but seeing red is not an intelligent action, nor do I know how to see red. For instance, it is not appropriate (generally) to say things like, "Gee Marc, that was a clever seeing of red" or "Wow, you really know how to see red!" Here then is the critical point: the fact that seeing red is not an intelligent action is a bit of an embarassment for Ryle; so is the fact that I don't know how to see red. The problem that such cases give rise to is that cognitive abilities fall into two classes, those that give rise to intelligent actions and those that don't. And the challenge for the Rylean is to say what distinguishes the two (and why) in such a way that does not entail intellectualism. From what I can see of the terrain, this doesn't look like an easy task. For instance, I doubt that it can be done simply in terms of learning. For instance, there is nothing concpetually incoherent about saying that somebody know how to psi innately (or at birth).

But these observations also provide the basis for an intellectualist response to Ryle's regress. For once it becomes clear that there are cognitive abilities associated with our intellectual lives which do not give rise to intelligent actions (or know-how), it becomes clear that there is very little intuitive support for premise (2)--the claim that implementing a way of psi-ing is always an intelligent action. But if implementation is not always an intelligent action, then Ryle's regress fails.

Survey

I’m inclined to accept the unpopular view that (i) there are tables, mountains, and pretty much all of the other kinds of material objects that we ordinarily take there to be, and (ii) there are no incars, fusions of noses and the Eiffel Tower, and other strange things dreamt up by metaphysicians. There are lots of reasons for rejecting this view. Some of those reasons get more attention than others. What I’m curious about is which of those reasons actually worry people the most -- that is, which of them, if debunked, would go the furthest toward relieving anxiety about this view. Here are some categories of reasons:

(1) Those having to do with vagueness (e.g., the Lewis-Sider argument from vagueness)

(2) Those having to do with co-location

(3) Those having to do with explanatory redundancy (e.g., Merricks’s causal exclusion argument)

(4) Those having to do with the imaginability of strange ways of carving up the world into objects

(5) Those having to do with the difficulty of specifying interesting general principles that can accommodate all or most of our intuitions

(6) Those having to do with the subject matter of material-object metaphysics (e.g., intuitions don’t matter when the object of inquiry is existence/synthetic truths/natural joints)

I’m interested to hear which of these actually make people the most nervous about the (dare I say) commonsense view of material objects. (Feel free to rank them if you find more than one compelling.)