What does "I love you" mean?

Within the context of a romantic relationship, uttering the sentence, "I love you" can be quite significant.  Consider our friend George Costanza, who deliberates over telling his then-girlfriend that he loves her.  Hilarity ensues.

People wonder about when it is appropriate to tell their significant other that they love them.  Tell them too early, like during a first date, and that comes off as really creepy.  Waiting too long, of course, is also not good.  When is the ideal time to drop the L-bomb?

Part of understanding the appropriateness of the phrase involves understanding what the phrase actually means.  There are two possible approaches in understanding the meaning of "I love you."

In the philosophy of language, there are two approaches to understanding how language works.  One approach is called semantics.  The other is called pragmatics.  Semantics is the study of the informational content of words and phrases.  Under this approach, language contains information, which in turn can be evaluated as being true or false.  This information can affect our beliefs, actions and reasoning processes.  When most people think of meaning within the context of language, they have semantics in mind.

There is another way to approach language, however.  Words and phrases, instead of conveying information, can themselves be used to perform actions, similar to how we perform actions with our bodies like giving a handshake, making a pot of coffee, or signing a check.  These sorts of actions are called "speech acts."  For example, in a Blackjack game, you might say to the dealer, "Hit me."  This phrase, rather than communicating specific informational content, is interpreted as an action by the player, i.e. requesting to be dealt an additional card.  Likewise, in a wedding, the officiant my utter the phrase, "I now pronounce you husband and wife."  Again, the point of this utterance is not necessarily to convey information.  Instead, the officiant is performing an action, i.e. making official the marital status of bride and groom.

So, a big area in the philosophy of language involves determining whether certain phrases or types of phrases should be treated as semantic or pragmatic.  For example, there are words like "might" and "must" that are used in sentences like "Bob might be late today" or "The keys must be in the drawer."  How should we treat words like these?  Should they be treated semantically, i.e. as contributing to the informational content of the sentence, or should they be treated pragmatically, i.e. as performing a speech act?

We can ask the same question about the phrase "I love you."  When I tell my girlfriend that I love her, am I conveying some information, or am I performing a speech.act?  What would be the difference between these two approaches.  Well the main thing is this.  If the phrase is treated semantically, then it means that it has a truth value.  It has conditions under which it is evaluated as true and conditions under which it is false.  So when I tell my girlfriend that I love her, and were she to treat that phrase semantically, she might have in mind a set of conditions under which that claim would be true.

Suppose instead that she treated the phrase as a speech act.  A speech act doesn't have a truth conditions, because a speech act isn't true or false, much in the same way that making a pot of coffee isn't something that can be evaluated as true or false.  To interpret the phrase "I love you" as a speech act would be to interpret it as a gesture, like a hug or a kiss on the cheek.

Our attitude about the phrase "I love you" will differ based on how we interpret the phrase.  We often stress out about saying because we think we have to satisfy certain criteria before properly uttering the phrase.  To think that the phrase is only treated in one way would be a mistake, in my opinion.  Sometimes we use the phrase semantically, sometimes we use it pragmatically.

What is Feminism?

The word "feminism" is a lot like the word "ironic."  It's a word that a lot of people use, but don't quite fully understand.  The two words are similar in that there is some kind of gist or core idea that each word refers to that people typically grasp.  Something is ironic because it is unusual in some way.  Someone is a feminist because they advocate the rights of women in some way.  In both cases, it's the details that bring about confusion.

Being a feminist is not simply about being "pro-women."  This is too simplistic a notion of feminism.  Being a feminist also typically implies views beyond just positive attitudes towards women.  These views will often dictate what sorts of moral and political beliefs.

One important question related to feminism has to do with sex and gender.  Is there an objective difference between male and female?  Is there an objective difference between masculinity and femininity?

Does this question matter?  It seems like a similar question isn't really that relevant when we talk about racism and race relations.  Even if there are no objective differences between race, we can still talk about the rights of minority racial groups.  

The case with sex and gender seems to differ because there is a debate as to whether or not there is a perspective that is uniquely gendered.  Is there a feminine perspective on ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics?  Some would argue so.  This perspective can come into play when we discuss sexism.  Some people hold that the denial or belittling of this perspective can be considered a form of sexism.

So, it is true that feminism is a political movement advocating the rights of women, but it not entirely clear to what extent these rights encompass.  Some hold a more minimal view, advocating that women be given the same rights of opportunity that men have.  Others, hold a wider view, advocating furthermore that women's rights include the legitimization of their perspective.

I'm just writing this because it really bothers me how an ambiguous term like "feminism" is thrown around in debates everywhere you go.  This creates confusion and irrational dialogue.  That kind of stuff makes me sad.

It's a Wonderful Life, Meaningfulness, and Counterfactuals

It's a Wonderful Life is a classic example of the sort of movies that I call "coulda been" movies, i.e. movies that explore alternate possibilities. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, here's the Wikipedia summary:

The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be had he never been born. 

So George, in his despair, contemplates suicide. His repeated failures and disappointments in life lead him to believe that things would have been better had he not been born at all. Clarence intervenes and demonstrates that this is not the case.

The story makes use of what are called "counterfactuals." Counterfactuals are kinds of statements. More specifically, they are types of conditionals. A conditional statement is a statement that commonly takes the form, "If x, then y." Here, x is what call the antecedent. y is called the consequent. Given what has actually happened in the past, a counterfactual starts with the antecedent being some event other than the event that occurred at a particular time in the past. The consequent is an event that would follow the event stated in the antecedent. Here's an example.

Thirty minutes ago there was a sugar cube on my kitchen counter.  A counterfactual based on this past event might go, "If that sugar cube had been placed in a cup of hot coffee, it would have dissolved."  The counterfactual is stating that if things were different in the past, that would have led to a different state of affairs.

One way to see the movie is as a series of counterfactuals that Clarence states and vividly illustrates.  Here are a few.

"If George had not been born, then Bedford Falls would have become Pottersville."
"If George had not been born, then his brother Harry would have drowned."
"If George had not been born, then Mary would have become a lonely spinster."

Are these claims true?  How do we assess the truth of these kinds of claims?  In metaphysics and philosophy of language, a popular approach is to assess these sorts of claims by employing alternate scenarios.  This is what philosophers call "possible worlds."  So, a popular approach to evaluating counterfactuals is this:  consider the alternate scenarios that are the most similar to our actual scenario, and where the antecedent is true.  A counterfactual is true only when in all of these scenarios, the consequent is also true.

Let's use the sugar cube example.  Here's the counterfactual again:

"If the sugar cube had been placed in a cup of hot coffee, then it would have dissolved."

First we consider all of the alternate scenarios that are the most similar to our actual scenario, and where the sugar cube is placed in a cup of hot coffee.  These alternate scenarios won't be weird ones, where the laws of nature are radically different.  That means sugar is made of the same thing, coffee is made of the same stuff, etc.  So in all of these alternate scenarios where a sugar cube is placed in a cup of hot coffee, it seems plausible to think that the sugar cube will dissolve.  So, we tend to think that this counterfactual is true.

Now, what about Clarence's counterfactuals?  Are they true?  In order to assess their truth, we consider the alternate scenarios most similar to ours where George has not been born.  Given that the world of Bedford Falls would be very similar, excepting the fact that George is not around, can we confidently say that Harry would have drowned, Henry Potter would have taken over, and that Mary would have become a spinster?  These subsequent events are so far ahead of the moment of George's non-birth (i.e. the date that he was born) that it is incredibly difficult to say what exactly would have happened.  Compare this with the sugar cube example above.  That claim is plausible because one event immediately follows another.  The more time you place between antecedent and consequent, the more variables you introduce, and the harder it is to say what would follow in such cases.  For instance, Henry Potter taking over Bedford Falls would have taken place at least 20-30 years after George's birth date.  In that much time in between, there are an insane number of possible scenarios that could occur.  Why believe that the scenario where Bedford Falls becomes Pottersville is that one that will play out?

The point is that if George had not been born, any number of things, good or bad, could have happened.  Mary could have met another man and have ended up happily married.  Harry could have decided not to go out to the frozen pond.  Potter could have died in a freak accident.  So, it seems clearly obvious that Clarence's point is a false one.  What Clarence shows George is just one of many possibilities.  There is no reason to think that the possibility Clarence envisages is any more likely to occur than any of the other myriad of possibilities.

This raises an interesting question about what it means for one's life to be meaningful.  Many people measure the meaningfulness of life by the impact they have on others.  But, how do we measure this impact?  Understanding impact in terms of counterfactuals is problematic, as has been shown above.  If I weren't around, would people's lives be worse?  Maybe, but it seems just as likely that their lives might be better, or that there would be no qualitative change.  If having a positive impact on people's lives require that in every similar alternate scenario where an individual doesn't exist, people's lives are qualitatively worse, then no one would have a positive impact on anyone else's lives.

So, two questions from here on out.  First, does a meaningful life require that one have some kind of positive impact on others?  If so, then how do we measure this impact?

What's (ethically) wrong with suicide?

Suicide is a taboo subject.  It's hard to raise without creating the impression upon others that there might be something wrong with your life.  This alone makes me curious.  Why do people have the attitudes that they do about suicide?  I'll have to set that aside for another day.  Today, I reflect on a related subject, the ethics of suicide.

First I should specify on the sort of suicide I'm considering here.  Not all suicide is considered immoral.  In some cultures or time periods, suicide was not only permissible, but considered either obligatory or laudatory.  I'm thinking of Japanese ritual suicide in feudal Japan or suicide bombers in radical Islamist groups.  Some types of suicide is controversial in that there isn't yet any consensus as to whether it is morally permissible.  Here I'm thinking of assisted suicide, usually done in the context of terminal illness.  The type of suicide I consider here is the type most think of when they hear the word 'suicide.'  It is the act of ending one's life in response to what is perceived to be an unbearable amount of emotional pain or suffering.  It is essentially an act of despair.

When someone commits suicide, are they committing an immoral act?  If so, on what basis?  Two dominant ways of thinking about ethics is consequentialism and deontology.  Consequentialist ethics says that the morally of an action depends on the sorts of consequences of the action.  Deontological ethics says that the morally of the action depends on the obligations of the individual committing the action.

So, let's ask the question about suicide from both perspectives.  According to consequentialism, suicide would be immoral if it led to bad consequences.  What sorts of consequences are considered relevant will depend on the type of consequentialism that you adopt.  The most popular is utilitarianism, which considers the net pleasure or pain generated to be the sorts of consequences that are relevant.  So, according to utilitarianism, if the act of suicide generates more net pain than pleasure, then it is considered to be immoral.  We can easily imagine cases in which this is true.  Robin Williams' suicide probably generated more net pain than pleasure, and would seem to be considered immoral from the perspective of utilitarianism.

However, we can, probably just as easily, imagine cases in which the act of suicide would not generate more pain than pleasure.  In fact we could imagine the opposite.  If someone is experiencing a great amount of emotional or physical pain, and that individual is not directly related to anyone else, then his suicide would generate less pain than if his life continued.  For example, imagine a homeless guy in the grip of despair.  He has no family or friends.  His death would not be noticed by anyone other than possibly the local coroner, to whom he would just be considered a "John Doe."  If he were to commit suicide, then a utilitarian would concede that he did not act immorally.

Okay, let's shift to deontology.  Here, instead of consequences, we talk about obligations.  The kinds of obligations we are most familiar with are those that we have towards others.  A woman who is embedded in a social network probably has a variety of obligations.  If she is a mother, she has obligations toward her children.  Likewise, she may have obligations as a wife, daughter, sibling, employee, employer, friend, neighbor, colleague, etc.  For her to commit suicide from this perspective would be considered immoral because she would be violating or shirking these obligations.  

But, what if we were to consider this woman as a lonely homeless individual?  It seems in this case that she has no obligations, assuming that she has no family, no friends, no job, etc.  In this case, her suicide would not violate or shirk any obligations.  Wouldn't the deontologist concede that she is not acting immorally?  One might respond by claiming that she has an obligation to herself.  What does that mean?  What sorts of obligations do we have ourselves and why?  How does this square with the sorts of personal freedoms that we have?  Do I have an obligations to maintain a certain standard of physical health?  Don't I also have the freedom to act in certain ways that might be detrimental to my health, such as smoking, eating junk food, etc?

This leads us to another perspective on morality, i.e. the religious.  Perhaps suicide is morally wrong because we have some obligation towards God.  What does this mean?  Religious individuals, or at least Christians, are pretty down on suicide.  Some go so far as to say that suicide damns you to hell.  Why?  What is the theological argument against the moral permissibility of suicide?  Again, is it that we have some obligation to God?  In Christian theology, we have lots of obligations to God.  Why this one in particular?  Why is suicide considered a sin?  Notice that not all killing is considered sinful.  God commanded the Israelites to basically commit genocide against the Canaanite nations in the Old Testament book of Joshua.  It would probably be contradictory act if God commanded the Israelites to kill, and all killing is considered sinful.  So, if not all killing is considered sinful, then why is suicide considered sinful?

It might be easy to see why people think that there is something wrong with suicide out of despair.  It's tragic and indicates that the world isn't as it should be.  But it's harder to see why exactly this sort of suicide is morally wrong.  If someone has no obligations and commits suicide out of despair without harming anyone, then how is that individual to be considered blameworthy for what they did?  What is ethically wrong with that/

Punishment and Proportionality

So I've been thinking a little bit about punishment.  It's weird how society pairs crimes with punishment.  This is something that I read about a while back when I read Foucault's Discipline and Punish.  I thought I'd revisit those themes and reflect on them a bit.

What exactly is punishment?  As a first pass, it's a type of action performed by a certain individual to a certain individual for a particular reason.  This much is obvious.  Let's break down these parts.

A particular reason:  Punishment occurs as a consequence of some broken rule.  

The punisher:  The person administering the punishment can be an individual or it can be an organization.  One necessary condition is that either the individual or organization plays some kind of recognized role of authority.

The punished:  It is assumed that the individual who is justly punished is the one who broke the rule.

The action:  The action itself is supposed to be harmful in some way to the punished individual.

What I wonder about is how the action lines up with the infraction.  Sometimes we notice a symmetry.  Some states still enforce a death penalty.  So, if an individual breaks the right kind of rules, usually involving one or more murders, then he is punished by being killed.  Kill someone, be killed.  Seems pretty symmetric.

However, most punishments administered by a society like the United States come in two forms: forfeiture of property or imprisonment.  These sorts of punishments don't seem related at all to the corresponding crimes.  For instance, the punishment for distributing a high enough volume of illegal narcotics is some amount of imprisonment.  You sell something you're not supposed to, you get locked up in a building for a while.  Why does one follow the other?

Foucault has his own theory, which I don't fully understand.  It has to do with the connection between the criminal class and social uprising.  The idea is that the criminal class can potentially cite revolution and social upheaval, so social authorities (inadvertently?) keep them contained so as to maintain the status quo.

There might be something to that theory.  I want to explore other possibilities.  One question that we can draw from Foucault's theory is this:  What exactly is punishment for?  What is it supposed to accomplish?

When you take an intro to political philosophy class.  You learn that there are three different views on what punishment is for.

1.  Deterrence
This view states that punishment exists to provide a negative incentive against individuals committing crimes in the future.  So, punishment is a preventative act, focusing on future cases.

2. Retribution
This view rests on the intuition that there is something like justice in society.  The justice understood here is the kind that has to do with a balance between crime and punishment.  The basic idea is that if you do something bad to someone, something bad should happen to you, as a way to balance the scales of justice.  Notice that this view doesn't take into consideration what happens in the future.  It's just about satisfying a certain demand that many think is intuitive about the way that society should work.  "An eye for an eye," so to speak.

3.  Rehabilitation
This is similar to deterrence in that it is future oriented.  However instead of focusing on how others will act in response to the punishment, this view focuses on the individual being punished, and how they will behave in the future.  It's pretty self-explanatory.  The purpose of punishment on this view is to change the individual in some way such that they won't commit the same crimes in the future/

These views aren't mutually exclusive.  An act of punishment can satisfy the objectives of all three views.  However, they do come apart.  For instance, capital punishment might satisfy the goals of deterrence and retribution, but it obviously does not satisfy the objectives of rehabilitation.

Given these views, we might understand a little better the rationale behind the matching of crime and punishment.  Take parenting for example.  It seems clear that the objectives behind punishment in the context of parenting either fall under deterrence or rehabilitation.  It's weird to think of parents punishing their children simply because "they deserved it."

When we look at the aims of society, however, all three views are under consideration.  Deterrence and rehabilitation views are, in a sense, empirically verifiable or falsifiable.  We can measure the effectiveness of a punishment in deterring future crime and rehabilitating criminals.  Do punishments, as they are currently administered in the United States, meet the goals of deterrence and rehabilitation?  That's probably a very complex question, and I don't have the answer.

Many think that even if punishment failed the goals of deterrence and rehabilitation, it would still be required to meet the demands of retribution.  This view implies that at bottom, punishment is really about balancing the scales of justice.  Deterrence and rehabilitation are extras.  I'd like to reflect on this for a moment.

What is retribution about?  When do we satisfy the demands of retribution?  Suppose that someone commits a crime.  Let's say that we have someone who stole a car.  What kind of punishment would be fittingly retributive and why?

How would a retributive punishment fit the crime?  In general, a crime is considered to be type of harm that is done either to an individual or to society in general.  Some crimes are obviously harmful, like theft or murder.  Other crimes are not so obviously harmful, like speeding or jaywalking.  The latter category might be considered a form of harm in that it increases the probability of some harm being done.  Speeding might be considered harmful because it increases the likelihood of a car accident, which is clearly harmful.  So, it might be plausible to think of all crimes as harms of some sort.

In order to satisfy a general sense of retribution, the punishment must also be a form of harm.  Harm must be exchanged for harm in order to balance the scales, so to speak.  Is it enough for society to respond to an act of crime by inflicting harm upon the criminal?  Or, does the harm inflicted require further specification?

Punishment can be specified along two dimensions, quantitative and qualitative.  Quantitative aspects of punishment can include the magnitude of the harm inflicted, or the duration of the harm.   For instance, life imprisonment and a year long prison sentence differ in terms of the magnitude of the punishment.  Qualitative aspects of punishment can differ across the varieties of conceivable harm.  These include physical harm, psychological harm, economic harm, social harm, etc.  For instance, execution qualitatively differs as a form of harm from a fine for however much money.

It seems pretty clear that our sense of retribution places constraints on the magnitude of the punishment.  The common intuition is that the magnitude of the punishment should at least be approximately proportional to the magnitude of the crime.  We would think it unjust if a crime of murder was punished with a ten dollar fine.  Likewise, we would find it unjust if a crime of speeding were met with the death penalty.  The challenge here is trying to come up with some sense of quantification for all crimes and punishments.  Some crimes, like theft, might be relatively easy to quantify, but what about crimes like perjury?  How do you attach a number to something like lying under oath?  Punishments might be similarly difficult to quantify.  Punishments like fines are easy to quantify, but what about punishments like caning, or solitary confinement?

Things get more difficult when we try to match up crime and punishment qualitatively.  You'd think that this would be easy to do.  If a criminal steals something, then punish him by taking away some of his property or time.  But here's where things take an interesting turn.  In modern liberal societies like the United States, certain types of punishment are considered unjust, even if they qualitatively fit the crime.  Such crimes include the various forms of physical punishment, like caning or whipping, as well as forms of public shame like using those stocks that you see in colonial villages.  So even if a crime is something like rape, many think it unjust if the rapist gets raped in return.  Why is this?  Why do we have a sense of retribution regarding crimes, but at the same time think that the punishment shouldn't fit the crime in some respects?  Note that people would probably still disapprove of these types of punishments even if they were effect in rehabilitating the criminal or deterring future crimes.

The sorts of punishments that people disapprove of are usually sorted into the category of "cruel and unusual" punishment.  What makes a punishment cruel and unusual.  Let's assume that there is no disproportionate magnitude between crime and punishment.  Why are we not okay with the punishment qualitatively fitting the crime in certain respects?  It seems clear that this sensibility partly explains why most forms of social punishment pretty much come down to either imprisonment or fine of some sort.

The meaningfulnes of life

I recently finished teaching a class called "Human Nature."  There are various ways of approaching the content for this class.  What I chose to do is to make this class about the "big" questions.  In particular, the class was about perhaps the biggest question of all:  What is the meaning of life?

I used this book as a textbook for the class.  As the title suggests, the book covered twelve theories, which gave their own answers to the above questions.  In case you're curious, here are the twelve theories:

1. Confucianism
2. Hinduism
3. Buddhism
4. Plato
5. Aristotle
6. Judaism/Christianity
7. Islam
8. Immanuel Kant
9. Karl Marx
10. Sigmund Freud
11. Jean Paul Sartre
12. Neo-darwinism

Each theory is broken down into four components:  the metaphysical assumptions of the theory, the claims made about the nature of human beings, its diagnosis of the human condition, its prescription for human flourishing.

Teaching the class got me thinking about the question of life's meaningfulness.  I've been getting progressively sadder over time because I've been getting more and more doubtful as to whether or not there is any meaning to life at all.  So, as a kind of therapeutic exercise, I figure I'd do reflection on what it means for life to be meaningful.

I don't have a definition for "meaningfulness."  I'll have to start with some examples and try to extract some necessary or sufficient conditions.  Let's go over some cases.

A lot people think that individual death and the ultimate "death" of the universe makes life meaningless.  Why strive after things if we're all ultimately going to die?

Supposing that the eventual death of all living things eliminates life's meaningfulness, we can draw at least two conclusions.

First, the meaningfulness of life depends on temporality.  What I mean by this is that whether or not you think your life is meaningful now will depend on states of affairs in the future.  This is what I infer when people say “What does it all matter? We’re all just going to die anyway.”  This is what you can also interpret from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes.

Second, the meaningfulness of life depends on consciousness.  I get this from the claim that death erases the meaningfulness of life.  I’m assuming that consciousness is extinguished upon death.  The idea, then, is that in order for life to be meaningful, that meaningfulness, whatever it may be, must be recognized.  Recognition, of course, requires a conscious perceiver.  Therefore, meaningfulness requires there be some conscious entity that is capable of recognizing the notion of meaningfulness.

It seems plausible to think that these two conditions are necessary conditions for meaningfulness, but we are still miles away from any kind of well developed theory of meaningfulness.  I’ll come back to this when I have more thoughts.

Math and reality

It's hard to imagine science without any kind of math.  It gets even harder as you move down to the more fundamental sciences, such as physics.  So many concepts in physics are mathematical, such as mass, velocity, speed, force, energy, etc.  From physics and upwards to the special sciences, so many laws are stated as mathematical equations.  E=mc^2, F=ma, etc.

Now, the sciences are investigations into reality.  What does it signify when we conclude that math is an inextricable part of science?

We take it for granted that so much of what we observe in the world is describable in terms of quantities and relations between quantities.  But, the world needn't have turned out that way.  The physical universe could have had no discernible pattern, thus resisting the formulation of mathematical laws describing the behavior of objects.

So why is it that math so effectively describes the world?  One possible explanation is simply that math is just as much a part of reality as atoms and molecules are.  Ontology is the study of existence, as well as what exists.  We often think of reality in ontological terms, i.e. giving an inventory of what exists.  However, this isn't all there is to reality.  Reality is not just about listing things that exists.  There is also the structure of reality, i.e. the way in which existing things are related.  Structure matters just as much in understanding reality as ontology does.  For example, just listing a bunch of wooden planks isn't enough to understand why something is a boat.  A pile of wood doesn't get you said boat.  You need something more.  You need to know how those planks are related, i.e. how they're put together.  Likewise a full understanding of reality means acknowledging that reality includes both things and structure.

So, we can say that math is a part of reality in that it is the structure of reality.

We could say the same thing about logic.  Math is to physics as logic is to metaphysics, although perhaps to a lesser degree in the case of metaphysics.  One can think of physics as a way of applying mathematics.  Similarly, one can think of metaphysics as a way of applying logic.  If logic plays a role that is similar to the role that mathematics plays in physics, then one can infer by analogy that logic is also part of the structure of reality.  This shouldn't be surprising, given the close association between mathematics and logic.

One consequence of the view that numbers and logical concepts are just as much a part of reality as tables and planets are is that there is more than one way to gain knowledge about objective reality.  Scientific knowledge is knowledge gained primarily via observation, i.e. through sense perception.  Logic and mathematical knowledge is knowledge gained through what I call "rational insight."  I don't use the word "intuition" because of its connotation with the kind of snap judgment thinking that you read about in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Rational insight is the faculty through which we come to know that claims in math and logic are true.  It is distinct from sense perception, in that it does not involve the use of our eyes, ears, etc.

So, if we accept that mathematical and logical entities are part of the physical universe, then it turns out that perhaps philosophy, metaphysics in particular, might tell us just as much about the universe as physics does.

What is the meaning of "What is the meaning of life?"

This is a course description that I recently wrote for a class that I'll be teaching this fall called "Human Nature."

______________________________________

“What is the meaning of life?”

This is probably the most famous question you’ll hear that’s associated with philosophy.  It’d be nice if there was a definitive answer to this question, but unfortunately there isn’t (Or at least none that I’m aware of).  Instead, there are a variety of answers, some more established than others.

But, before we get to the answers, we need to be clear on what the question means.  This is what philosophers are really good, clarifying exactly what questions are supposed to be asking.  This is important.  If we don’t know exactly what the question is asking, then how can we be sure which answers are even relevant?

So what does the question mean?  In order to answer this question, we’ll need to make a distinction between two types of facts: positive facts and normative facts.  Positive facts are facts that describe things the way they are.  For example, “Obama is the president of the United States.” is a positive fact.  Normative facts are facts that describe things that way they ought to be.  For example, “People shouldn’t steal from others.” is a normative fact.

So, the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is combination of two more specific questions.  The first is, “What is life about?”  This is a question with a positive answer.  The second is, “How should people live their lives?”  This is a question with a normative answer.

It’s important to see how the two answers work together.  In order to know how you should live your life, you’ll need to know what life is like.  For example, let’s say that the right way to live life includes acts of prayer and worship to God.  This is a normative claim.  But, this wouldn’t make much sense if you didn’t believe that God exists.  The claim that God exists (or does not exist) is a positive claim.  So, in order for normative claims to make sense, it has to come with a set of positive claims that describe the reality in which we live our lives.

Every theory about the meaning of life will have a set of positive and normative claims.  The positive claims fall into two categories:

Metaphysics:  This first category has to do with what reality is like.  Does God exist?  Is there such a thing as fate?  Does everything obey the laws of science?

Human nature:  This second category has to do with what human beings are like.  Humans, of course, are part of reality.  But, are the a special part of reality?  Do they have souls?  Do they have free will?  Or, are they just like everything else in reality?  Is their behavior determined by laws of nature?  

The normative claims are also split into two sub categories:

Diagnosis:  We wouldn’t be asking “What is the meaning of life?” if life were peachy.  We experience all kinds of problems, conflict and suffering.  Where does all this negativity come from?  Each theory about the meaning of life gives us a diagnosis.  It tells us why things aren’t as they should be.

Prescription:  After a diagnosis, we need plan to make things better.  This is where we learn about how we should live so as to flourish and to live the best kind of life.  

Any theory that gives tells us about metaphysics, human nature, diagnoses the human condition, and prescribes a way to live a flourishing life is a theory that answers the question, “What is the meaning of life?”  In this class, we’re going to examine twelve such theories.  These theories include both religious traditions, as well as the thoughts of major philosophers.  From this survey, you’ll see just how diverse opinions are about what the meaning of life really is.  Hopefully the class will give you the tools you need to decide for yourself what the answer to the question is.

Voluntary bodily control vs involuntary functions

When I was in grade school, I learned that there were two types of actions with respect to my body.  There were voluntary actions, like using my muscles to type, walk around, and speak.  There were also involuntary actions, like my heart rate, digestive process, and metabolism.

I was taught that some actions in my body had to be involuntary, because if they were all voluntary, I'd have to concentrate on all of these functions in my body.  A lapse in concentration could lead to my death.

This is all well and good.  However, there are certain bodily functions that are both voluntary and involuntary.  Two examples include blinking and breathing.  When we don't pay attention, our body automatically breathes and blinks.  It is normally an involuntary action.  However, we can direct our attention to these actions and voluntarily control our rate of breath or the rate at which we blink.  Thus, these sorts of actions can be at times involuntary, and at other times voluntary.

What I always wondered about was why some actions had this property of being both voluntary and involuntary, while lots of other actions do not.  I can control the rate at which I breathe, but why can't I directly control my metabolism?

There are lots of things in my body that I have no direct control over.  I have no control over lots of sensations.  For instance, if I feel pain, I can't, without medication, decide to just not feel pain.  The same goes for emotions.  If I am sad, I can't just directly turn off this sensation.  Similarly I can't just decide to fall asleep.  If I am tired, I can close my eyes and drift off to sleep.  But there are plenty of times where I close my eyes, wanting to sleep, but don't fall asleep.  I have absolutely no direct control over my digestive and metabolic processes.  I can't directly command my body to convert the food I eat directly into energy, rather than storing it as fat.  The same goes for healing processes.

This makes me wonder about the relationship between me and my body.  It seems like I have very little direct control over a lot of things that go on in my body.  Can we conclude anything from this?    What's interesting is the fact that I have any direct control at all.  Why aren't all of my actions involuntary?  Why is it that have I some direct control rather than no direct control?  It's this mix of voluntary and involuntary actions that go on in my body that leaves me scratching my head.

This is an example of a curious feature of human beings (and maybe some other mammals as well).  We are self aware creatures.  We are not completely responsive to the environment around us.  Some parts of us are totally responsive to external stimuli.  Perhaps our metabolism, heart rate, etc. are examples.  But some of our actions aren't completely dictated by external stimuli.  Why is that?

This aspect of human beings, this sort of dual, two-tiered nature, is something I find highly fascinating.  I'll be writing about this more in later posts.

Who cares?

When you read philosophy articles, you'll often come across the "motivation" part of the article early on.  This is where the author tries to convince you that what he or she is writing about is worth your time and attention.  It's pretty clear that the truth of the article is not sufficient for it to be of value.  People also have to care about what the author has to say.

Unfortunately, there are lots of areas in philosophy that no one really cares about.  Here's one example.  In one of the intro classes that I teach, I cover six topics: knowledge/skepticism, the existence of God, the possibility of time travel, the relationship between mind and brain, personal identity over time, and free will.  Of these topics, I have the hardest time getting students to care about skepticism.  Do we really have access to the external world, or are we dreaming?  Or in a computer simulation?  Who cares?

If nobody cares about a particular issue or problem, then no one will work to solve it.  But how exactly do we understand this notion of caring?  Why do people care about the things they do, and how do the come to care about things that they didn't care about before?

Part of this is easy to explain.  People care about Maslow's hierarchy stuff like getting food, water, shelter, social interaction, etc.  This is explainable in terms of evolutionary concepts like survival or reproduction.

Other things that we care about might be explained as extensions of things that we care about for Darwinian reasons.  For instance, we often care about money because it serves as the means to stuff that ensures our survival or ability to reproduce.  Lots of things that we care about on a daily basis might fall into this category.

There are, however, things that we might care about that are don't directly serve our interests in surviving and reproducing, nor are they straightforwardly extensions of the aforementioned interests.  I'm thinking of things like art, music, literature, and philosophy.

Why do we care about these things?  There are lots of answers floating around that appeal to cultural, religious, or biological mechanisms.  I'm interested in a pedagogical standpoint.  If a student doesn't get them to care about philosophy, how do you get them to care?  Likewise for politics, art, etc.  Is concern for these things simply a function of how an individual was raised?  This doesn't seem quite right.  There are plenty of adults who come to care about these things when they had no prior interest.  What happened?  How do people come to care about something they didn't care about before?

An Argument for Epistocracy

Here's one really simplistic way of describing government.  The government makes laws, people have to follow them.  Now, we can sort different types of governments by answering the question, "Who makes the laws?"

In a dictatorship, you have one person making the laws.  In a pure democracy, every member of the state has a say in making the laws.  Dictatorships can be quite efficient.  One guy makes the laws, no one else gets a say.  If the dictator wanted to make a law that Friday would be no pants day, then bam, it's done.  No need to wait for anything to make the law official.  Democracies, on the hand, are quite inefficient.  Sometimes it takes a while to get consensus on a potential law.  Lots of candidate laws never see the light of day.  If there were an omniscient, morally perfect leader, then a dictatorship would be the best form of government.  Unfortunately, no such individual exists.  So, democracy, inefficient as it is, works out better than a dictatorship, since it allows people to decide for themselves what is best for them.  Dictators can and do often act in a way that benefits themselves at the expense of the other members of the state.

Another reason to think that dictatorships are no good as a form of government is that it is possible to manipulate the dictator to make laws that may not be beneficial to everyone.  Let's say you and your family were members of a dictator state.  If you wanted a law that made it easy for your family to get high-paying jobs, then you'd have to go through dictator, since the dictator makes all of the laws alone.  You could get the dictator to make such a law via some form of manipulation, e.g. bribery, blackmail, false information, etc.  A dictator who is corruptible, ignorant, or unreasonable would be susceptible to various forms of manipulation, and could thus instate laws that are harmful to the majority of citizens.

We would thus think that democracy is better because it's harder to manipulate a bunch of people than it is to manipulate one person.  All things held equal, this is true. Even though it may be relatively harder to manipulate a bunch of people, it is still certainly possible to do such manipulating with all of the mass media technology that we possess currently.

That's one reason to think that pure democracy is an inferior form of government to what I call democratic epistocracy.  An epistocracy is a state run by those who meet some minimal standard of rational aptitude and being informed.  John Stuart Mill championed a form of epistocracy where the number of votes you had varied positively with the degree to which you were informed and the degree to which you were capable of reasoning.  This is democratic epistocracy in a nutshell.  All citizens get a vote, but those in the know and are capable of thinking things through get more votes.

I think that democratic epistocracy is less susceptible to manipulation than pure democracy.  Like pure democracy, you have to deal with the prospect of trying to manipulate a group of people rather than one person.  Unlike pure democracy, those with the most say in what laws get enacted are less likely to manipulated via misinformation, appeals to sentiment, and bad reasoning.  Of course, such individuals are not incorruptible, but at least they are not easily led astray by soundbites and such.  This added resistance to manipulation is one reason to favor democratic epistocracy over pure democracy.

The most convincing argument for the existence of God

This is a follow up to my previous post regarding an argument against the existence of a Christian God.  It should be obvious that by "convincing," I mean convincing to me.  Anyways, here's the argument.

1. Human beings are fundamentally different from all observed entities in the physical universe.
2. If human beings are fundamentally different from all observed entities in the physical universe, then their origins cannot be completely explained by appeals to the physical universe.
3.  Therefore, the origins of human beings cannot be completely explained by appeals to the physical universe.

Of course, this argument does not show that a Christian God exists.  It doesn't even conclude that any kind of God exists.  It does, however, present a first step towards establishing that God exists.  At the very least, it shows that there is something other than the physical universe out there.

I would imagine that most people would reject the first premise of the argument.  Here's another argument given in support of the first premise.

1.  Human beings experience transcendental emotions.
2.  The fact that human beings experience transcendental emotions is best explained by the notion that human beings are fundamentally different from all observed entities in the  physical universe.
3.  Therefore, it is likely that human beings are fundamentally different from all observed entities in the physical universe.

Transcendental emotions are emotions whose scope is greater than regular social contexts.  We experience hope, despair, gratitude, and anxiety at a mundane level.  But we also experience these emotions at a far greater level.  When someone feels thankful to be alive, who are they thanking?  When someone despairs at possibility of life's meaninglessness, where is the emotion directed towards?  These sorts of emotions are data that require explanation.  Reductive accounts appealing to evolutionary mechanisms seem unsatisfying to me.  So, absent other candidates, the best explanation seems to be that sorts of emotions come from a part of human beings that isn't formed by physical mechanisms.

Summary of the third chapter of my dissertation

The Project 
I will explore and flesh out in further detail the epistemic connections between metaphysics and science. By "epistemic connection," I mean the following sorts of relations:

x epistemically justifies, or raises the justification of y.
x defeats justification for, or lowers the justification for y.

If you replace x and y with propositions commonly associated with science and metaphysics, then under what conditions will the above propositions be true or false? I will develop an account that clarifies this epistemic relationship between science and metaphysics. I will show when, if ever, propositions in science appropriately raise or lower the epistemic justification of beliefs in propositions in metaphysics, and also vice versa.

The Motivation 
Imagine the hottest nightclub in town, i.e. the kind of long lines, velvet ropes, beefcake bouncers, and $20 Cosmopolitans. Let's call this place "Club Knowledge." Now, suppose we have a fellow named "Metaphysics." Metaphysics, with his faux hawk, popped collars, and Affliction jeans, has been trying to get into Club Knowledge for months now. People have hotly debated whether or not Metaphysics should be admitted to Club Knowledge. Now suppose we have a lady named Science. Science is queen of Club Knowledge. She is admitted immediately to her own VIP area and rolls with her entourage of sycophants. Metaphysics thinks to himself, "Maybe I can friendly with Science, and she'll put me on the guest list." Will this plan work? Will Science include Metaphysics in her ever growing entourage? Will Metaphysics have to do anything or make any changes in order to gain the favor of Science? Does Metaphysics even need Science to get in the club? What happens if Science disses Metaphysics? Stay tuned for more!

The Plan 
Here's how the paper breaks down.

First, I'll clarify what I mean about the lowering and raising of epistemic justification. In formal epistemology, you might hear talk of credence. Credence is more or less the strength of belief that an agent has with respect to a proposition p. Credence takes on values from 0 to 1, where 0 is certainty that p is false, 1 is certainty that p is true, and 0.5 is agnosticism about p. You might think of epistemic justification as a sort of "normative" credence, i.e. the degree of credence that you should have given the justifiers present. My interest here is in determining which sorts of propositions serve as appropriate justifiers for a particular belief, and why. Armed with this knowledge, I'll move on to talk about science and metaphysics.

Once I've clarified the mechanics behind changes in epistemic justification in light of the evidence, I'll next clarify on the notions of science and metaphysics. The goal here is to more or less determine which propositions fall under science, which fall under metaphysics, and why these sorts of propositions are categorized the way they are. How does the subject matter of science relate to the subject matter of metaphysics? There are several possibilities here. The two subjects could be disjoint. One could be subsumed in the other. They might overlap to some degree, or they might be coextensive. What's the correct way to view the relationship between the subject of these two disciplines and why? Understanding the relationship between subject matter will help us further understand how the two are epistemically related. For instance, if the two are disjoint, that might go some way to explaining why there is little to no epistemic relation between the two.

Apart from subject matter, academic disciplines can also be differentiated by their methodology. What is the methodology of science and of metaphysics? How are they related? Like subject matter, the methodology of these two disciplines will help to shed light on the epistemic connections between these two disciplines. For instance, if the methodology science was completely empirical, and if the methodology of metaphysics was completely a priori, then it would seem that there is no epistemic connection between the two. Clearly things aren't actually so cut and dry, so further exploration will be needed.

Now that I've got my all my conceptual pieces, it's time to put them together to form a coherent theory about how claims in science are epistemically related to claims in metaphysics, and vice versa. This section will lean heavily on the work that I've done clarifying the concepts that are mentioned above. What I hope to show is that if there are connections between science and metaphysics, what precisely those connections are how they work, given my understanding of the above concepts. I hope to clear up some confusion and to clean up some ambiguities in current discussion involving the two disciplines. I'll also do some case studies. One popular example of the purported connection between science and metaphysics is the special theory of relativity in physics and presentism in metaphysics. Does the former defeat justification for the latter? If so, how? Armed with the theory given in this paper, we'll see what's really going in these sorts of discussions.

The Context 
This paper will be a chapter in my dissertation, which is about the epistemology of metaphysics. Of course, I'll be trying to get as much mileage out of this paper as possible, and thus preparing it for conference presentation and hopefully publication.

My teaching statement

Below is a draft of my teaching statement.  It's part of my application dossier that I'll be sending to schools when I apply for jobs.
______________________________

The Definition of Philosophy 
I define philosophy very broadly as simply the study of ideas and the relations between ideas. I find this rough definition pedagogically useful, as it allows me to draw from a variety of sources, both traditional and unconventional, ordinary and esoteric, in order to illustrate philosophy at work, and to give my students different ways to practice philosophy.

The Value of Philosophy 
If you are reading this, then you probably already believe that philosophy is valuable. If you do not believe that philosophy is valuable, then I probably won't convince you otherwise. I will however, give you two arguments that I give my students when I discuss the value of philosophy. 

James's Dad's Argument
1. Philosophy is valuable only if it directly provides some sort of substantial material gain.
2. Philosophy does not directly provide some sort of substantial material gain.
3. Therefore, philosophy is not valuable.

 James's Brother's Argument
1. Philosophy is valuable only if resolves long standing issues and debates that are part of its subject matter.
2. Philosophy has not resolved (at least not to my knowledge) such long standing issues and debates.
3. Therefore, philosophy is not valuable.

Understanding why both of these arguments are unsound goes some way into understanding the value of philosophy. Most of my students will agree that philosophy is instrumentally valuable. It strengthens the ability to participate in rational investigation, which is indispensible in just about every career field. Some of my students might even believe, as I do, that philosophy is intrinsically valuable. However, the former is sufficient to motivate the study of philosophy.

The Goal of Teaching Philosophy 
My goal in teaching philosophy is to train students to become philosophers. Of course, there is distinction between philosophy as an activity and philosophy as a profession. I don't teach with the expectation that all of my students will pursue a career in philosophy, but I do teach with the expectation (or at least hope) that my students will continue to practice philosophy in some form throughout their post-college life.

I hold that what distinguishes philosophy is its method, not its subject matter. While the methods of philosophy may not be as easily codified as the scientific method, it is clear that how philosophy is done is distinct from how the sciences are done. (Whether the methods of philosophy are distinct from other humanistic disciplines is less clear.) So, when I claim that the goal of teaching philosophy is to train students to become philosophers, I mean more specifically that the goal of teaching philosophy is to train students to become proficient in a certain method of inquiry. The difference between an amateur and a professional philosopher is simply a difference of degree of mastery, similar to the difference between an amateur and professional athlete. My task as a college instructor is to train my students to attain a certain degree of proficiency in the philosophical method which they can further hone in graduate school, or apply to other career fields.

The Method of Teaching Philosophy 
Now that I've stated what the goal of teaching philosophy, the question that follows is how this is to be done. As it is for all instructors, this is very much a work in progress. What I can say here is what I've tried, what seems to work, and what I'd like to try in the future.

At most universities, an Intro to Philosophy course briefly surveys topics in ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. In Syracuse, there is no such course. Instead ethics is covered in its own intro course, and there is an intro to metaphysics and epistemology course. I've taught both types of classes. I have two goals when I teach these classes: to pique their interest in philosophy, and to introduce them to an assortment of philosophical tools. I try to meet both goals by having my students apply such philosophical tools to situations that might be familiar or relevant to them. For example, one such philosophical tool is conceptual analysis. I often have my students perform conceptual analyses on ordinary concepts like sport or art.

Along with the two goals mentioned above, I also have the goal of exposing my students to well known issues in philosophy. This includes subject matter like skepticism, the existence of God, the mind-body problem, utilitarianism, ethical relativism, etc. This goal, however, is subservient to the two aforementioned goals. So, in order to pique their interest in philosophical issues, I will bring in sources to supplement primary sources. For example, science fiction movies can illustrative of the problem of skepticism in ways that are more accessible than reading Descartes' Meditations. I also use these topics as a vehicle for the introduction and application of philosophical tools. For instance, I use arguments for and against the existence of God to introduce Inference to the Best Explanation.

This approach may depart from the way many instructors teach introductory courses. Most instructors teach these classes by focusing primarily on the exegesis of primary texts. I have no problems with this method. You learn philosophy by doing philosophy. However, this seems sub-optimal to me. Consider an analogy from sports and music. One can learn to be proficient at playing the piano or playing basketball simply by learning songs or playing basketball games. But, you'd be hard-pressed to find a professional pianist or basketball player who didn't spend a considerable amount of time performing activities whose sole focus was to develop mastery of fundamental techniques. A good basketball player has likely done countless drills. Similarly, a good piano player has likely played numerous etudes.

I hold that philosophy is analogous to activities in music and sport. People can become good philosophers just by doing philosophy, but it seems that an explicit focus on philosophical method would yield even better results. I believe that the practice of doing philosophy, i.e. becoming aware of the ongoing discussions occurring among philosophers in person or in the literature and making one's own contributions to the discussion, can be supplemented with activities that sharpen fundamental techniques essential to the practice of philosophy. It seems clear that such an approach would move us closer to a more fruitful pedagogy of philosophy.

My dissertation abstract

Metaphysics has experienced a productive resurgence in analytic philosophy over the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty first century. I don't have anything to say about what "analytic philosophy" is other than that it is the kind of philosophy you see done at most English speaking universities. This renewed popularity is not without its skeptics and naysayers. In various ways, people question whether metaphysics is a legitimate epistemic project, i.e. whether or not the discipline provides us with knowledge. Questions related to this concern regarding metaphysics include, but are not limited to the following.

• What is metaphysics, precisely?
• How is one epistemically justified in believing a claim that is part of a metaphysical theory?
• How are metaphysics and science epistemically related? Put another way, do claims in one field enter into an implication relation with claims in the other field?
• Is there an epistemic procedure in metaphysics, as there is to some degree in science (i.e. scientific method).
• How does one decide between competing metaphysical theories? 

My project is to answer questions like these. I will do so by developing a theory of epistemic justification with respect to beliefs in metaphysical propositions. Metaphysical propositions are those that are at least implicitly agreed by self-identifying professional metaphysicians to constitute the subject matter of metaphysics. I will investigate the sorts of things that might go into the conferral of epistemic justification on beliefs of metaphysical propositions. I'll also investigate what sorts of things might defeat said justification. The plan is as follows.

The first chapter deals with intuitions and beliefs in metaphysical propositions. What are intuitions? In this chapter I go over the literature on intuitions and provide some commentary on what I take intuitions to be which will then be useful for understanding how beliefs in metaphysics are justified. I show how intuition can confer at least prima facie justification on beliefs in metaphysical propositions. I also respond to skeptics about intuition and its justificatory role in metaphysics.

The second chapter is about the relationship between metaphysics and science. In many discussion, there is an implicit assumption that a prima facie justified belief in a metaphysical proposition can be defeated by a well supported claim in science that is somehow not compatible with the aforementioned belief. I look further into what this assumption is all about. Does science have epistemic priority over metaphysics? Can any claim in science serve as a potential defeater for a metaphysical belief? Does relationship work the other way around, i.e. can claims in metaphysics defeat justification for scientific beliefs? Why or why not?

In the third chapter, I discuss the phenomenon of competing theories. Suppose that you have two theories that make logically incompatible claims. Both are supported by intuition and both are compatible with our best science. How do you decide between these two theories? A popular move that theorists make is to appeal to what are called "theoretical virtues." Theoretical virtues are properties that theories possess that supposedly make them more likely to be truth conducive. Examples of theoretical virtues include simplicity, explanatory power, fruitfulness for further research, fit with previous theories, etc. Are these sorts of properties really truth conducive? If so, how? The focus of this chapter will be a further exploration of these virtues, and how they might be used in order to break ties between competing theories.

(The foregoing three chapters constitute the core of my dissertation. Later chapters will be mainly about tying loose ends, such as applications, considering certain key objections, and generalizing this approach to other areas in philosophy. Once it becomes clearer what I'll be doing in these later chapters, I'll update this dissertation abstract.)

The Great Existential Question

I recently finished reading Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt.  It was enjoyable read.  It's a book that I would give to anyone who wanted to know what metaphysics was and what kind of research I do in philosophy.

The book addresses the following question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?"  This question is about as fundamental as you can get.  The book is basically an exploration of the nature of existence itself.  What explains the fact that anything exists at all?  Why isn't there just absolutely nothing?

My own take on this issue is that the concept of absolute nothingness is incoherent.  Holt talks about the concept of nothingness in chapter 3, but I find his discussion unsatisfying.

My opinion is that nothingness in everyday talk is a local concept.  When talk about nothing, we talk about it relative to some context, like a region of space.  We might say that there nothing in the refrigerator, or that there's nothing to do in Syracuse.  In this respect, the concept of nothingness is similar to the concept of a hole.  A hole is a local phenomenon.  We use the term to refer to particular regions of space.

Is absolute nothingness conceivable?  What is absolute nothingness?  When most people imagine absolute nothingness, they imagine empty space.  But is that really nothing?  Couldn't empty space itself be something?  In fact this is a view that's argued for in metaphysics.  It's called "substantivalism."  Suppose that empty space itself is something.  Then can imagine a reality without empty space?  What it be like?  Seems inconceivable to me.

It's kind of like trying to imagine a reality with no color.  People say that black is the absence of color.  This never made sense to me.  If black is the absence of color, then what color is a piece of glass?  It's not black.  Since it's not black, is it therefore colored?  That seems absurd.  I hold, therefore, that black is indeed a color, and to be colorless is to be completely transparent, like a piece of glass.  Suppose, then, that the universe was completely colorless, i.e. completely transparent.  Is this imaginable?  It wouldn't be black, it wouldn't be white, just transparent.  Seems inconceivable to me.  I think that absolute nothingness is like complete transparency.

What are Intuitions? Part Two

In my last post about intuitions, I made a distinction between conventional intuition, i.e. a cognitive process that allows us to make split second assessments of situations based on the information that we’ve gained over years of prior experience, and rational insight, i.e. a cognitive process that forms beliefs about a set of claims, which includes beliefs about claims made in math and logic.

In this post I’d like to say more about rational insight.  Much of what I’ll say here comes from George Bealer’s work.  However, I deviate a bit from his own views of intuitions.  Bealer makes five identifying remarks about intuitions.

1.  Phenemonology

Rational insight analogous to sense experience.  It has its own kind of experience.  In fact, I hold that there are three different types of experiences.  First, there are sense experiences.  Second, there are introspective experiences.  These are the kinds of experiences of your own mental states.  For example, the experience of an emotion like sadness fits under this category of introspective experience.

The third kind of experience is the experience brought about by rational insight.  This sort of experience is what you have when a particular claim just seems true to you, and this "seeming" can't be reduced to other forms of experience.  This sort of experience typically applies to claims in the foundations of mathematics and logic.  This sorts of claims come with their own kind of experience.  They "seem" true in a way that's analogous to how there seems to be a tree in front of us, or how we seem to feel pain.

This is probably the most important point about rational insight.  My argument supporting the role that rational insight plays in epistemic justification will depend on its relevant similarity to other forms of experience.

2. A Prioricity

The term "a priori" is used for a certain kind of knowledge.  It's knowledge that you arrive at by certain means.  A priori knowledge is knowledge that's gained independently of experience.  This is opposed to a posteriori knowledge which is knowledge gained by means of experience.

This definition of a priori creates a bit of a problem, though.  If rational insight, introspection, and sense perception exhaust all of the possible kinds of knowledge (memory and testimony being derivative of these forms), and if they are all forms of experience, then there is no a priori knowledge.  So, either we'd have to accept that there is no a priori/a posteriori distinction (which is fine with lots of people), or we'd have to redefine what a priori knowledge is.  Maybe you can say that it's knowledge gained independently of sense experience, and that a posteriori knowledge is knowledge gained by means of sense experience.  But that still leaves us with the question of how to treat knowledge gained by introspection.

Bealer holds that knowledge gained by rational insight is a priori knowledge.  I'm fine with this, I guess.  It doesn't matter to me either way.  For my purposes, it doesn't matter if knowledge gained via rational insight is a priori or a posteriori.

3. Distinctness from Belief

Bealer holds that rational insight is not a form of belief.  I agree.  Rational insight is a what I call an "epistemic faculty."  It is a means by which we receive information, and that information gives rise to belief.  This is true also of sense perception and introspection.  These comprise the three epistemic faculties.  All of our information comes via these faculties.  However, this information is not the same as belief.  We know this to be true because there are times when we receive information, but don't believe what we receive.  If I know that I'm under the influence of some hallucinogenic, then I might receive some information via sense perception that there is a unicorn in front of me, but I won't believe that there is a unicorn.

Likewise, sometimes we might receive information via rational insight, but we might refuse to form a belief based on that information.  Because of this distinction, rational insight is not a form of belief, but instead an epistemic faculty, i.e. a means by which we receive information.

4. Distinctness from Common Sense
The distinction that Bealer makes here is the same distinction that I made in my earlier post between conventional intuition and rational insight.

5. Fallibility
This aspect is related to what I've said above about the distinction between an epistemic faculty and belief.  Epistemic faculties aren't always going to give us good information.  They might malfunction, be defective, or work in misleading situations (like when a white ball is shown under red light).  Because of this, we shouldn't think that rational insight is always going to tell which claims are true.  Sometimes we can have false beliefs because of the bad information received via epistemic faculties like rational insight.

So, hopefully this gives you a fairly good idea of what intuitions are.  The bottom line is that the kind of intuition that I'm interested in, i.e. rational insight, is something that's very similar to sense perception.  But, instead instead of perceiving physical objects in the world around us, rational insight "perceives" the truth of more abstract claims.

What are Intuitions? Part One

As you might recall, my dissertation is on the epistemology of metaphysics.  In part of this dissertation, I talk about how intuitions play a role in giving an individual prima facie justified beliefs in metaphysical propositions.  I thought I'd write a bit here about what intuitions are supposed to be.

People use the word "intuition" in lots of ways.  By my reckoning, I take there to be two broad ways of understanding the term.

The first, and more common way that this term is used is to refer to a way of thinking that is fast and to some extent non-rational.  This form of intuition may be considered to be a species of memory.  It is the mind's way of recalling and packaging information very quickly so as to give the thinker a very quick reaction to some stimulus.  For instance, and experienced soldier might take a quick look at an area and form the belief that ambush lies ahead.  This belief is formed through rapid series of cognitive processes where the mind processes lots of relevant information about similar past situations.  When people talk about conventional wisdom, common sense, gut reactions and such, they are referring to this kind of intuition.  Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, and Daniel Kahneman, in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, provide extensive discussions about this type of thinking.  This type of intuition I'll call "conventional intuition."

The second form of intuition is what Laurence Bonjour calls "rational insight."  I hold that this is an altogether different cognitive process than conventional intuition.  This is a process that allows us to "see" the truth of axiomatic claims.  For instance, the law of contradiction "seems" true to us.  Foundational principles in logic and mathematics are the sorts of things that are the object of rational insight.  Just like we see trees or cars and form the belief that there are trees and cars, we "see" the truth of these sorts of claims in math and logic and form the belief that these claims are true.

I think there's a lot of wrongheaded debate in philosophy because people either conflate these notions, or confuse one for the other.  But, sometimes things get a little tricky.  As I'll discuss in a later post, it may not be clear whether a particular claim is appropriately an object of conventional intuition or an object of rational insight.  People who write about intuition (like George Bealer) make the division by arguing that rational insight only applies to stuff related to math and logic.  I don't think this is quite right.  Part of my project, then, will be to argue for a different way of understanding rational insight so as to make it more inclusive.  This allows for intuition to be a source of justification for beliefs in metaphysical propositions.

But, more on rational insight later.

My dissertation: Overview

My dissertation is about the epistemology of metaphysics.

So, what's epistemology?  Epistemology is the study of knowledge, and all other related concepts.  The central question in epistemology is, "What is knowledge?"  Put another way, we can ask, "Under what conditions does an individual know a certain claim?"  Traditionally, philosophers have thought that there were three such conditions that had to be jointly satisfied.  Let's consider whether James knows that p, where 'p' stands for any particular claim, like the claim that Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle, WA.  Here are the conditions.

1.  Belief
In order for James to know that p, James has to believe that p.  You can't know anything if you don't believe it.

2. Truth
In order for James to know that p, p has to be true.  You can't know something that's false.  For instance, you can't know that Jimi Hendrix played a show at Madison Square Garden in 2011.

3. Justification
In order for James to know that p, James's belief in p has to be justified.  What does this mean?  For a belief to be justified, it has to have an adequate amount of "support."  There are lots of theories about how a belief is supported.  For instance, maybe the belief in question is supported by other beliefs that you have.  An example of this would be a mathematical proof.  Or, maybe the belief is produced by some kind of cognitive process that is deemed reliable.  For instance, most people believe that your physical senses are reliable for the most part, so a belief that comes from the senses would be justified.

Now, there's lots of debate as to whether this is the correct analysis of knowledge.  Lots of people think that this isn't enough, and that we need a few more conditions.  I'm not going to get into all that for know.  The concept that is most pertinent for my project is that of justification.  I'll come back to this in a sec.

Let's move on to metaphysics.  What is metaphysics?  This is a tad bit harder to describe.  Metaphysics is basically the study of reality.  But wait, doesn't science study reality, too?  What's the difference between metaphysics and science?  There are two ways to differentiate between academic subjects.  The first is by their method of inquiry.  What does a subject do to acquire new information?  The most familiar method is the scientific method.  Other disciplines will have their own distinct method.  The second is by subject matter.  This is more familiar to us.  Biology and chemistry share the same method, but differ on the sorts of things that they study.

So, how do metaphysics and science differ?  Depending on who you ask, these subjects can differ in either method, subject matter, or both.  Most agree that metaphysics and science differ with respect to subject matter.  Metaphysics is about aspects of reality that are more general than the sorts of things that science gets into.  For instance, the subject matter of metaphysics includes the nature of causation, properties, sameness and change, laws of nature, existence, time, space, possibility, etc.

Most metaphysicians working in colleges and universities will argue that the methods employed in metaphysics are similar to those employed in science, especially in theoretical physics.  This is an open debate, however.  I'll have something to say about this in my dissertation, but I'll get to it later.

Okay, now that I've said a little bit about what metaphysics and epistemology are, let me get into what my dissertation is about.  Hopefully everything that I've said above made sense.  If not, let me know!

In my dissertation, I will develop a theory of epistemic justification with respect to beliefs about metaphysical claims.

What are metaphysical claims?  Metaphysical claims are those sorts of claims that metaphysicians investigate and debate about.  Here are some examples.

1. The ability to choose freely is incompatible with the claim that all events are caused by past events and the laws of nature.
2. God does not exist.
3.  Past and future events exist in the same way as the present moment exists.
4. Causation isn't "real."  That is, causation is just patterns that we observe.
5. Abstract objects, like numbers, exist, just like concrete objects exist.

I gave a brief explanation above what epistemic justification is all about.  What I'll be doing in my dissertation is coming up with a way of understanding how beliefs about these kinds of claims can be justified, i.e. rationally supported.  What does this theory look like?  I'll get into the different parts of it in later posts.