The Naturalist's Sensus Divinitatis

Plantinga asks: What are the odds that, if we are the products of unguided natural selection, our belief-forming mechanisms are reliable? He thinks the odds are quite low and uses this conclusion as part of an argument against atheism.

When asking this question, he asks: would a creature that is the product of unguided natural selection have reliable belief-forming mechanisms?

The answer to this question is 'yes'. We are the products of unguided natural selection. Our beliefs are the product of reliable belief-forming mechanisms. Accordingly, by Lewis' truth conditions for counterfactual conditionals, it is true that were a creature the product of unguided natural selection, it would have reliable belief-forming mechanisms.

BTW: Lewis: "If P were true, Q would be true" is true if P and Q are true.

The (Un)Importance of the Past and the Value for Me of My Life

At first one thinks that the good and bad in life aggregates across time such that your life has an overall value to you that might be represented as (something like) a sum of a measure of the magnitudes of intrinsic value to which you were subject at each time in your life.

But: It is tempting to suppose that the past does not matter to my wellbeing -- except insofar as it has determined my present or future condition. So, for example, if I should discover that my childhood included a hitherto forgotten trauma, I am not sure I should think that my life is much worse than I thought it was. Or, if I do think this, I will think that its being worse than I thought it was in that way is not such a bad thing. Similarly, if I should discover that my childhood included a hitherto forgotten episode of bliss, I am not sure I should think that my life is much better than I thought it was. Or, if I do think this, I will that think that its being better than I thought it was in that way is not such a good thing.

What if I discover that the universe came into existence only five minutes ago -- as opposed to its coming into existence somewhere before 1974? How should I feel about this discovery? Should I think: in a certain way my life is going to be much shorter than I would have hoped? It is as if I learned that I have an illness that will kill me about 35 years before I would have expected to die. And yet: I find it hard to feel this way about the discovery that the universe came into existence only five minutes ago.

If this is the way I think about the past, then what sense could there be to the idea that the good for me of living aggregates such that there is a value to me of my whole life?

But: it would be a mistake to wholly give in to the temptation to believe that the past does not matter. There are certain things I do care about in the past. These seem to fall into two categories: (1) Facts about my connections with other people and (2)facts about the quality of my own action.

A New Atheistical Argument

(1) Our bodies are adapted for the performance of acts that are morally wrong. [Premise]

(2) If God existed and we are the result of special creation, then our bodies would not be adapted for the performance of acts that are morally wrong. [Premise]

(3) Therefore, either God does not exist or we are not the result of special creation. [from Lines 1 and 2]


Consider Line 1: what this means is not just that our aptitude for the performance of acts that are morally wrong is the side-effect of our being adapted for the performance of morally neutral types of action. Are we adapted for making atomic weapons? Well... not really. Rather we are endowed with general aptitudes for science and tool-making. By contrast, it is plausible that we are adapted for non-monogamy -- primarily, serial monogamy and cheating. Some evidence for this is that rates of non-monogamy are much higher among those who have the highest reproductive potential.

Consider Line 2: Special creation requires that our biological nature be fixed by design. Thus, if a particular aptitude is an adaptation, then its existence is the result of God's design. Things are going according to plan, insofar as we possess that adaptation.

Chisholm v. Classical Compatibilism: Part III

Sadly, the classical compatibilist derivation of PAPC from PAP will not apply in any straightforward way to the claim that you couldn't have decided to do anything other than what you did decide to do.

Here's a straightforward derivation:

You have the ability to decide otherwise.

Therefore, had you decided to decide otherwise you would have decided otherwise.

The problem is that it is not at all clear that the classical compatibilist's counterfactual analysis of ability (and hence practical modality) makes much sense here. If having the ability to decide otherwise requires that (in nearby metaphysically possible worlds) I decide to decide otherwise and so decide otherwise, I am doubtful I have this ability.

Chisholm v. Classical Compatibilism: Part II

As part of his argument that PAP is not equivalent to PAPC, Chisholm makes the following inference:

(1) You couldn't have decided to do anything other than what you did decide to do.

(2) Therefore, you could not have done anything other than what you did do.

This seems correct, but I've been wondering what one might do to resist Chisholm's inference.

What if "could" means different things in each line? The word "could" is a shifty beast and it can be hard to police. For example, if the first line asserts that it was morally impossible (i.e. forbidden) to decide otherwise, but the second line asserts that it was logically impossible to do otherwise, then the inference would equivocate in a way that would defeat the transfer of warrant from line 1 to line 2.

The classical compatibilist's view that we ought to understand PAP as PAPC rests on the thought that "could" here is a practical modality. I can do something if and only if I have the ability to do it. The classical compatibilist then gives a counterfactual account of having an ability. Thus, the classical compatibilist's understanding of PAP (as PAPC) can be derived like so:

(3) You're accountable for x only if you had the ability to not x.

(4) You have the ability to not x only if had you decided to not x, you would have not x-ed.

(5) Therefore, you're accountable for x only if had you decided to not x, you have not x-ed.

An effective argument against the classical compatibilist, then, will be one in which the modality in play is understood as practical possibility.

Chisholm v. Classical Compatibilism: Part I

The classical compatibilist argues that properly understood, the thought that we're accountable for having done something only if we could have done otherwise does not yield the conclusion that if determinism is true, we're accountable for nothing.

According to the classical compatibilist, what we indicate by utterances of "x couldn't have done otherwise" is that x lacked the ability to do otherwise. This, in turn, gets understood as its being false that if x had decided to do otherwise, then would have done otherwise.

Thus, on the classical compatibilist view,

x is accountable for y only if x could have done otherwise [call this PAP]

should be understood as

x is accountable for y only if it is true that had x decided otherwise, x would have done otherwise. [call this PAPC]

As it happens, on this construal, the idea that accountability requires the ability to do otherwise is no barrier to accepting that we're both determined and accountable.

Sadly, as Chisholm argues, it is far from clear that PAP is equivalent to PAPC. The problem is this: it could be true that you would have done otherwise, had you decided to, but false that you could have done otherwise.

His argument goes like this:

(1) Suppose that you couldn't have decided to do anything other than what you did decide to do.

(2) Therefore, you could not have done anything other than what you did do.

(3) But, it might nonetheless be true that you would have done something else had you decided to do something else.

(4) Therefore, PAP is not equivalent to PAPC.

The Possibility of Metaphysics

It seems to me that there are two paths to metaphysics. Each of them begins with the possibility of a kind of gap between knowing that some set of beliefs is true and having a kind of understanding of the way things are.

Sense and Truth-Making

One can know something without knowing what makes it true. Of course, God might appear to me and inform me that blablabah is true. Sadly, I do not understand his language and so -- even though I have some grip on the truth -- my epistemic position is less than perfect. But even if I am in a position to grasp the thought expressed by a sentence, I might desire to know more... and metaphysical reflection might well be supposed to help me.

Consider the predicament of Louise Lane. Her problem is not like my problem with God's unintelligible testimony. When someone tells her that Superman is in the City, she can grasp that thought. She often, indeed, wishes he was around more often. Moreover, if someone tells her that Clark Kent is in the City, she can grasp that thought, as well.

So, she might know that Superman is in the City and that Clark Kent is in the City. But, her picture of the world is incomplete. There is more she might reasonably aspire to know. She might know a great deal and yet -- because of the phenomena that motivates Frege's Puzzle -- not know what makes her thoughts true. She doesn't know that Kal-El and his location is what makes her thoughts true.

One wonders how complete a true picture of reality might be and still allow for ignorance about that which makes this picture true. Assuming leeway on this, perhaps one job of the metaphysician is to provide a picture of the underlying reality in virtue of which our thoughts are true.

The Great Chain of Constitution

Fred: Are there numbers?

Mike: Yes; there is, for example, one natural number between 3 and 1.

Fred: Great... so I guess we should become Platonists...

Mike: Well no... numerical facts obtain because [insert some story about sets or something]

Fred: So I guess you're saying that there is a kind of explanation, by which we show how some domain of (less basic) facts is grounded in some other domain of (more basic) facts.

Mike: Yes! I call it the 'Great Chain of Constitution'.

Fred: Awesome!

Mike: Totes.

Fred: I think I have some minimal understanding of causal explanations... I wonder, though, what this non-causal, constitutive explanation might come down to.

Fred: Me too... but if there is a hierarchy of constitution relations, which get picked out by true constitutive explanations, then I maybe I get to be a metaphysician.

Veridical Hallucination and a New Evil Demon

Consider the course of sensory experience to which I have been subject throughout my life. Being a natural empiricist, I have come to believe much of what I believe on the basis of this experience. Presumably, this experience has given me warrant for many of the beliefs I have formed on its basis, such that these beliefs rise to the happy status of knowledge. However, there are possible situations in which I am subject to a phenomenally identical course of experience which fails to produce knowledge. (pace the disjunctivist)

Descartes' evil demon scenario, one presumes, describes such a possibility. In his scenario, my knowledge is defeated because the beliefs I form on the basis of experience are false. It is something of an open question whether the existence of such knowledge-defeating possibilities entails that my beliefs in actuality fail to rise to the status of knowledge. Call this the Vexed Question. In asking the Vexed Question about the Cartesian scenario we ask "does the existence of a possibility in which my beliefs are defeated by being made false defeat my actual beliefs?"

However, truth is but one requirement on knowledge. And one might wonder whether there are possibilities in which my beliefs are defeated, but not in virtue of being false.

Consider, then, veridical hallucination. To be subject to veridical hallucination is to be subject to visual experience that is accurate (i.e. veridical), but part of an episode of hallucination. Imagine, for a (sort of) example, dreaming, that the house is flooding, when (in reality) it is.

If veridical hallucination is possible, and if the fact that one is hallucinating rather than perceiving defeats knowledge, then there exists a skeptical scenario. In this scenario, my course of experience is as veridical as it is in the actual world, but is nonetheless wholly hallucinatory. In this scenario, I form the same beliefs on the basis of experience as I do in the actual case. And, interestingly, almost all of these beliefs are true. However, because the course of experience is hallucinatory, rather than perceptual, despite their truth, these beliefs cannot constitute knowledge on my part.

In asking the Vexed Question of my evil demon we ask "does the existence of a possibility in which my beliefs are defeated by being gruonded in hallucinatory (though veridical) experience defeat my actual beliefs?" Does answering the Vexed Question work differently in these two kinds of cases -- the truth defeating demon and the perception defeator demon?

Has anyone written about this, I wonder.

"I am a published author!" is fictionally true.

Belief v. Desire: The Normative Authority of our Attitudes (OUP, 2009)

This short book contains a a groundbreaking exploration of the differences in subjective normative authority between belief and desire. It is an interesting fact that, while we might be alienated from our desires, we cannot be alienated from our beliefs. A believer must see her beliefs as entitled and entitling, while the desirous agent might fail to see her desires as moving her toward the good. Moreover, my beliefs speak for me, while my desires need not. It is persuasively argued that understanding this distinction has wide-ranging implications for moral psychology, epistemology, ethics of belief, action theory, and meta-ethics. "Holy crap is this a good little monograph!" -- David Velleman

Self as Society: Willing, Thinking, and Reasoning as Social Phenomena (MIT, 2009)

Drawing together diverse philosophical and psychological literatures, it is demonstrated that selfhood (both synchronic and diachronic) is metaphysically constituted by fundamentally social processes. Moreover, seeing how social processes constitute the self enables us to understand many of the puzzles that have blocked progress in the theory of content.

Pop Culture Update: The Bird and The Bee

I've been listening to the Bird and the Bee's new EP, "Please Clap Your Hands". Holy crap! I love these guys. "Who are the Bird and the Bee?", you ask. The band is composed of Inara George and Greg Kurstin. Greg Kurstin is the keyboardist whose sound is a huge influence on Beck's album, "Mutations" (which is just about my favorite Beck album). Mainly, my love of the Bird and the Bee is explained by my enduring love for Inara George, the chief vocalist for the Bird and the Bee.

Generally, she has a natural-sounding voice. She shies away from the kinds of histrionics that characterize American Idol singing. If you have heard Astrud Gilberto's work, then you'll have some idea of what Inara George's voice is like. Her simple vocal style is, however, the vehicle for sophisticated, but accessible, harmonic ideas. Everyone should check out her solo album, "All Rise", which, in addition to featuring her singing, indicates her skillz with guitar-based song-writing. At any rate, go to her website and check out "Fool's Work" and "Genius".

The Bird and the Bee has a bit more pop and electronica in it than her solo work. Additionally, it has more of a retro mid-60s feel to it. In the mid-to-late 90s, there was a bit of a mid-60s retro kitsch revival. This was witnessed by a brief enthusiasm for Esquivel, the madman behind the last baroque flowering of big band music. But, as these things go, what begins with a kind of ironic appreciation, often ends up being a serious appreciation. The 90s enthusiasm for mid-60s kitsch didn't go much of anywhere until now. The Bird and the Bee seem to me to have digested this late 90s ironic retro-ism and extracted a serious aesthetic from it. Especially check out their songs "Polite Dance Song" and "Again and Again".

Analytic Philosophers on the Fear of Death

I've been teaching some of the dialectic stemming from Nagel's article on the rationality of the fear of death again. This time through, a worry that had been inchoate became clearer to me. There are two kinds of interesting argument that our attitudes about death are irrational. The first set of arguments all conclude that being dead cannot be bad for you and so, if you fear it, you are being irrational. You are being irrational in the same way you would be if you believed something to be purple when it is not. The second kind of argument is a challenge to the consistency of our attitudes. It concludes that the horror with which we conceive our own demise is inconsistent with the mildness with which we conceive our prenatal non-existence.

The worry is this: the analytic response to these arguments consists in pointing out how these arguments turn on premises that are grossly inconsistent with our common sense attitudes. But, in a context in which the rationality of our fear of death is in dispute, it is not at all clear to me that one ought to treat the deliverances of common sense as authoritative. Taking the question -- should I be afraid of death -- seriously already requires rejecting the authority of common sense. After all, the thesis that death is not bad for you is itself grossly inconsistent with common sense.

To get a flavor of how this dialectic works consider the following line of thought: Nagel notes that if an argument for the conclusion that we ought not fear death rests on the supposition that the badness of a condition must be intrinsic to the time during which it exists, then we might reject it on the grounds that the badness of things like failure is not wholly constituted by the time during which one has failed. He points out, plausibly enough, that the special badness of failure is a relational matter. The special badness of failure consists in a relation between the condition you're in during which you have failed and the condition you could have been in had you not failed. Great. So common sense is committed to rejecting any argument premised on the claim that badness must be non-relational.

So should we be afraid of death or not? At best we have learned from Nagel that it is not a requirement of common sense that we not fear death. This is because common sense would recommend rejecting a premise that would oblige us to think that the fear of death is irrational. But this is not a surprise. After all, we already know that common sense would require that we fear death. If we are required by common sense to fear death, then it is no surprise that common sense does not also command that we be unafraid of death.

How is the philosopher to settle his mind on a question, which, if it is taken seriously, must undermine the authority of the evidence on which he would rely to settle his mind?

Stone Hill Norton: Weedy Goat (and not in a good way)

So I opened the Stone Hill Norton last night and sipped it while I watched the movie Black Book (which I loved, but that would be another post). Despite being about twice the cost of the Illinois Cellars' Norton, it was a worse wine. It wasn't particularly sweet or goaty, but it was thin and astringent. Perhaps it will have opened up since last night - thereby becoming a little less astringent - but this will probably not improve its body.

Part of the problem, presumably, was its aging in oak barrels. A little oak can improve a wine, but all too often vintners appear to use oak to cover up imperfection and so drinking a wine can turn out to be like sucking on a wood chip. This wasn't that bad, but it certainly was more like sucking on a wood chip than one would prefer. At any rate, the thin-ness was the real problem.

It had a little of that wet mammalian hint, which I would normally have welcomed. However, the wine was also unpleasantly weedy. Sometimes a wine is described as herbaceous or tasting subtly of grass... and this is supposed to be a good thing. In the case of the Stone Hill Norton, it tasted a little like bad hay... thus: "weedy". Interestingly, the weediness and the wet mammal melded in a way that removed any potential for pleasure from the taste of wet mammal. (I realize that the previous sentence contains what might seem like a paradoxical presupposition; but, trust me, a little wet mammal can be nice.)

Summing up: Thus far, the Illinois Cellars' Norton is still by far the best I've tried and at less cost than its rivals. I ended my last post - the one on the Catawba - with a list of whites I'd like to try. Perhaps I should branch out and try some different North American reds - in particular, the Baco Noir or Chambourcin.

The Pink Catawba

So I tried the Pink Catawba last night. The first impression was one of overwhelming sweetness. Luckily it was well-chilled, so that helped a little. Additionally, it had a very grape-y flavor, perhaps a little tropical fruit to it. The grapiness was not quite the same as the Welch's grape jelly flavor of the concord grape, it was more like the grapiness of the scuppernong muscadine grape. After the initial Koolade shock, a kind of pleasantly mysterious grassiness was manifest. Mostly, this was an aftertaste, though, once detected, it was manifest in subsequent sips. Also, it had a ton of body. This was surely due to the tooth-achingly huge amount of sugar in it.

Overall: I liked the muscadine grapiness, though it would be better toned down. I liked the grassy/herbaceous notes quite a bit. This would be a much better wine with more acid and much less sweetness. Is the sweetness of a wine mostly a function of its production, or does it depend more on the grape itself? That is, would it be possible to make a drier Catawba? I'd be interested in trying that.

Hmm... maybe I should try some other varietal: Chardonel, Vidal Blanc, Verdelet, or Vignoles. All of these are hybrids reputed to be drier than Catawba, but possessing interesting fruitiness

PS: If you haven't tried a scuppernong grape, you must get some. They are mostly grown in Georgia, but are shipped around the country (at least to fancy markets in the Midwest) around this time of year. They are fantastic and quite different from the run-of-the-mill grocery store grape.

why it would be cool to be a photographer, #3

Rythm, by 35 MM Studio

Belief and Religion

As a response to the new atheists, Scruton revives the view that since religious practice and thinking is not fundamentally a matter of doctrine, it is a mistake to respond to it as if it were flawed science.

Hitchens is an intelligent and widely read man who recognises that the arguments most useful to him were well known 200 years ago. His book takes us through territory charted by Hume, Voltaire, Diderot and Kant, and nobody familiar with the Enlightenment can believe that our contemporary imitators have added anything to its stance against religion, whatever examples they can add to the list of religiously motivated crimes. However, Enlightenment thinkers, having shown the claims of faith to be without rational foundation, did not then dismiss religion, as one might dismiss a refuted theory. Many went on to conclude that religion must have some other origin than the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and some other psychic function than consolation. The ease with which the common doctrines of religion could be refuted alerted men like Jacobi, Schiller and Schelling to the idea that religion is not, in essence, a matter of doctrine, but of something else. And they set out to discover what that might be.

The article continues with a fascinating discussion of some anthropological treatments of religious phenomena. It brings back dim (but fond) memories of the theory of religion class I took as a freshman in college. Check it out.