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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.)

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.

Phenomenal Content is Not Existential

A bliger looks like a single animal from afar but, on closer inspection, turns out to be several small animals traveling in formation so as to give the appearance of a large predator. ‘The bliger’ (like ‘TomKat’) is syntactically singular but semantically plural. The bliger isn’t one single thing, it’s several things.

Suppose that at t1, I see a bliger from afar but don’t realize it’s not a single thing. At t2, I learn the truth about bligers. At t3, I again spot one from afar. It seems quite natural to say that things are exactly the way they look to be at t3, even though there is another sense in which it still looks to me as though there is a single animal out there. (Compare: It may sound to me as though a gun has been fired when in fact it was a car backfiring, yet I did not mishear anything.) If so, then it cannot be part of the phenomenal content of my experience at t3 that there is something (i.e., some one thing) that has so and so qualities, for in that case my experience would be nonveridical even at the most fundamental level.

Objection 1: “After learning the truth about bligers, the content of the experience changes. At t1, the content is that there is a thing there with such and such qualities, but at t3 the content is that there are some things there with such and such qualities.” Yet it is quite plausible that, at least at some level, things look the same to me now as they did before I learned the truth about bligers. This would require that the content be plurally existential at both times.

Objection 2: “The several small animals *do* compose something; composition is unrestricted.” But the thesis that composition is unrestricted is open to decisive counterexamples. For instance, bligers. I can give other counterexamples too, if you want.

Objection 3: “You’ve shown only that phenomenal content of the bliger experience does not involve *singularly* existential quantification. But maybe what this shows is that the phenomenal content is plurally existential: there are some things that (collectively) have so and so qualities.” Maybe that’s right. But my bliger experience is not relevantly different from an ordinary experience of a panther from after. So, by parity, the phenomenal content of an experience of a panther is not (singularly) existential. By parity, the phenomenal content of an experience of a panther up close is not (singularly) existential. By parity, none of my experiences are (singularly) existential.