proxy bleg for a textbook

A post by request: one of my colleagues will be teaching a course for philosophy majors called "Contemporary Philosophy" focusing on what is current in the discipline now. Does anyone know of any good textbooks/anthologies that would work well for such a course?

antimeta in the house

One of my favorite bloggers, Kenny of Antimeta, was in Vegas last weekend and gave an interesting talk on philosophy of mathematics to our department. His basic aim was to find criteria that separated probabilistic proofs from other proofs (including, hopefully, proof sketches and computer-aided proofs). I'm not going to discuss that directly here.

I'm interested in a related claim Kenny made: that in mathematics, a theorem will be accepted only if the proof does not (he put it variously) appeal to authority/ depend on the reliability of other people/ rely on the testimony of others. That is, for a specialist in the field, they should be able to start out as serious skeptics of the theorem's truth, but end up at the close of the proof as believers. The contrast with experimental science is pretty clear: even specialists in a sub-field of experimental science have to trust (to some degree) the experimental reports of their fellow-workers, or the field would grind to a halt.

Question: Is there such a thing as mathematical fraud, of the sort we hear about periodically in experimental science? If not, that fact looks like evidence for Kenny's distinction being important and robust (since fraud is much harder in the absence of trust).

Comment 1: Some of the posters on FOM endorse Kenny's idea to the extreme: someone suggested that Fermat's Last Theorem will not really be proved until it is written in a way that average mathematics PhDs (whoever that is) can work through it themselves. I don't think Kenny wants to say anything nearly that strong, but the fact that such a strong position exists is a sign that the sentiment Kenny claims to discern really is there in the mathematics community.

Comment 2: At the end of the talk, Kenny suggested that philosophy may be closer to mathematics than experimental science in this regard. He may be right, but one thing that distinguishes philosophy from math in this regard is that in philosophy far more than in mathematics, one person's modus ponens is another person's modus tollens. This is just a direct result of mathematical axioms' being widely accepted throughout the mathematical community, whereas philosophers will challenge any premise, no matter how obvious or fruitful.

Yet another way to think about Quine's critique of Carnap

Several of the blog entries here have been about the Quine-Carnap debate over the status of analytic truth. Generally, I don't feel the force of Quine's arguments as they are usually presented, either because his interpretation of Carnap is unfair or inaccurate, or the arguments just aren't that persuasive. Multiple commentators on the Quine-Carnap debate have suggested that the two are 'talking past each other,' at least to some degree. So, I am constantly trying to find a way to make Quine's view make sense to me, AND simultaneously really disagree with Carnap. This seems like installment 19 or so in that endeavor.

Carnap and Quine agree that language can be studied at various levels of abstraction. Using Carnap's taxonomy, we start at the level of pragmatics, where we study how individual speakers use expressions under particular circumstances. This level contains the most detail: speakers, their circumstances, plus the meanings of the words for particular speakers under particular circumstances. At the next, more abstract level, we have semantics, which abstracts away from particular speakers and particular circumstances. And at the highest level, we have syntax, which abstracts away the meanings of words, leaving just the symbols, the way they are put together, and which strings follow from others.

In each transition from pragmatics to semantics to syntax, some information about language is omitted/ discarded. (Like the move from Euclidean geometry to neutral geometry, which drops the parallel postulate.) Now, we can conceive of Quine's indeterminacy of meaning thesis (the radical translation thought experiment) as critiquing Carnap in the following way: Carnap is importing or introducing new information at the semantic level, because the semantic facts Carnap includes in a semantically-characterized language [a "semantic system"] cannot be 'read off' even the information contained at the pragmatic level. The analogy in the geometry case shows why this is clearly an unacceptable maneuver. It would be: thinking that there exists some claim that could be proved in neutral geometry (= Euclid's first four postulates only) but couldn't be proved in Euclidean geometry.

This may not be Quine's actual worry; his concern may stem from the fact that applied semantics (or whatever branch of language study) underdetermines pure semantics (or whatever). However, Carnap is perfectly happy to accept that claim: Creath says this is why Carnap's copy of Word and Object Ch.2 (Indeterminacy of Translation) has no marginalia. [But how does the geometry analogy fare here? Would Carnap admit that applied geometry underdetermines pure geometry? My guess is yes; and that that's not so bad...

Is arithmetic empirical?

One of the questions I've been wanting to think about (in part because of my interest in the Quine-Carnap relationship) but haven't really got around to yet is: Is there any important sense in which arithmetic is empirical? I know there is some good literature on the subject, but I've thus far only perused it without really digging into it.

For me, one consideration that makes me think it might not be crazy to think of arithmetic as empirical is what happened with geometry and general relativity. If Einstein can show that the space in which we live is non-Euclidean, isn't it at least imaginable that some future scientist will show us that the 'true' arithmetic of our physical world is non-classical (which I suppose means: it does not obey the Peano axioms). [There could still be a mathematical structure that obeys classical arithmetic, just as Euclidean space is still a mathematical object that obeys all five of Euclid's axioms.]

However, I've always had a hard time imagining what possible observation could cast doubt on classical arithmetic. In last week's Science, there's a report that at least might merit consideration as a candidate. Researchers found that if you add one photon to a light beam and then take one away, you observe a different end-state than if you reverse the order of operations, i.e., first remove one and then add one. In other words, x + 1 - 1 does not equal x - 1 + 1. Even stranger, the authors find that "under certain conditions, the removal of a photon from a light field can lead to an increase in the mean number of photons in that light field," that is, (roughly) that x-1>x. The summary and background for non-specialists is here, and the full technical report is here (both behind subscription walls).

Now, this effect depends on the failure of commutation relations ubiquitous in quantum mechanics, so it is quite possible that this in no sense makes arithmetic look empirical. But I'm not 100% sure about that. Any thoughts?

Logic job at Alberta

From my man at the University of Alberta, Ingo Brigandt, comes news of a logic job in his department:

The Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, invites applications for a tenure-track position in Philosophy, with a specialization in Logic. Other areas of research and teaching specialization and competence are open. The appointment will be made at the rank of Assistant Professor, effective July 1, 2008. Responsibilities include undergraduate and graduate teaching and maintaining an active research programme. Tenure stream faculty normally teach four one term courses per year. Candidates should hold a PhD in Philosophy and provide evidence of scholarly and teaching excellence. Salary is commensurate with qualifications and experience, and the benefit package is comprehensive. Applicants should arrange to send a letter of application indicating the position applied for and describing areas of research interest, curriculum vitae, all university transcripts, a sample of written work, letters from three referees, and, if available, a teaching dossier and teaching evaluations to Bruce Hunter, Chair, Logic Search, Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA, T6G 2E5. CLOSING DATE: November 10, 2007. The University of Alberta hires on the basis of merit. We are committed to the principle of equity in employment. We welcome diversity and encourage applications from all qualified women and men, including persons with disabilities, members of visible minorities, and Aboriginal persons. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority. For further information concerning the Department, please consult http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/philosophy/.

Ingo also tells me that Alberta will be advertising a postdoc and an open Associate professor position this year, so all you Oilers fans should start polishing your CVs.

Haslanger on conceptual analysis and social construction

Last Friday we were lucky enough to have Sally Haslanger visit. She gave a lecture that was open to (and aimed at) the general public, called "But mom, crop-tops are cute! The Social Critique of Social Knowledge". We also basically had a seminar on some of her recent work on social constructionism and the metaphysics, epistemology, and semantics of social kinds, where we peppered her with questions and she enlightened us. We also talked a fair amount about the current deplorable level of sexism in academic philosophy. (Her recent paper on this topic has generated a good deal of discussion, and I, like much of the rest of the philosophical blogosphere, can unequivocally recommend it.)

One thing that I especially like about her work is that she takes the basic ideas of social constructionism and (re-?)formulates them in a way that is much more palatable to analytic philosophers. I always felt some basic affinity for the social constructionist project, yet oftentimes the way it is couched by sociologists, anthropologists, social historians, etc. either confuses me or seems just a bit too crazy. She translates good bits into the idiom of current Anglophone philosophy in a very helpful way.

An example: Social constructionists might say that our conceptual scheme forces us into ways of thinking and acting that is often opaque to ourselves; that our concepts somehow create an illusory false consciousness that 'masks' their true nature. Haslanger has a nice way of thinking about such an idea that (I think) makes sense to an analytic philosopher. How can we misunderstand our own concepts? She says we should distinguish between the manifest concept, which is (roughly) captured by the dictionary definition an ordinary language-user would give, and the operative concept, which is (roughly) captured by the way the community in question actually draws distinctions/ applies the concept in practice. As an example of where these two things pull apart, she suggests race: the 'ordinary' person's definition of race will include some sort of biological (or at least broadly physical/ natural) component; yet the way we actually classify people as white, black, etc. actually does not track some single shared genetic -- or even biological -- trait. So now we have (to my mind) a clean account of where the 'illusion' or 'opacity' comes in: the operative concept will be used in the vast majority of everyday life, but when we consciously reflect on what we're doing (specifically, what distinction we are drawing), then the manifest concept takes the leading role.

What should we do when the manifest and operative concepts split apart like this? Haslanger does not want to say that we should always opt for one over the other as somehow the real meaning. Rather, she says, when we have this mismatch, that creates an opportunity to re-think the question 'What, exactly, do we want this concept for? -- What function (if any) do we want this concept to serve in our thinking?' And here we have a third concept, which she calls the 'target concept.' And here is where the normative aspects of ideology critique can appear: what should this concept be? (Note: we do not need a mismatch between operative and manifest concepts in order to ask about the target concept -- but the presence of a conflict generates a desire for a resolution, and the target concept holds out the promise of resolving the conflict between the operative and manifest concepts.)

I'm pretty sure I haven't captured Sally's ideas in exactly the way she would put them, but I hope I'm not horribly far off. If this is in the ballpark, I'm wondering about a couple of things concerning this tripartite picture:

(1) Are there really ethical ways to sort entities and unethical ones? Just creating a set with a certain group of members does not seem to me like the kind of thing that can be moral or immoral. Of course, classifications can be used to commit horrible injustices – insert any oppressed group here for an example. But, I want to say, just as the atomic theory of matter is not really ethically good or bad in itself, though it can be used to build an atomic bomb which can be used to commit ethical atrocities, the act of classification is not good or bad in itself (even though it may be a necessary precondition for injustice – or reparation). [I should note that after her talk, Sally did mention that she had thought a lot about whether the normative dimension of ideology critique should be separated from the conceptual analysis part; so this remark would be no news to her.]

(2) This is my being thick, I think. I’m having trouble seeing how exactly the idea of ideology (as studied by people in the social sciences) maps onto Haslanger’s tripartite conceptual scheme. Why? Because ideology (when it’s working ‘well’) is “implicit” knowledge, i.e., it is taken for granted and deployed without even noticing that we are using it, only semiconsciously or unconsciously. When it is articulated explicitly, it ceases to be as effective. So that sounds like it maps onto the ‘operative concept.’ But e.g. in the case of race, a social constructionist or an eliminativist about race wants to say the idea of race being biologically grounded is a key part of racial ideology – but that is the ‘manifest concept.’ So maybe ideology doesn’t map neatly onto Haslanger’s conceptual classifications, but I got the sense that she wanted it to.

It was great having Sally here. She is as rigorous and uncompromising an analytical philosopher as you could hope to meet, but she actually works on things that matter to people’s lives. So she really should be a model to the philosophical community.

Out of Africa

I came back from Africa just in time for the new school term. To my pleasant surprise, we have returned uneaten by the wildlife, and (apparently) uninfected by any of the various diseases that the guidebooks said were rampant in sub-Saharan Africa.

I had hoped that spending over a month working in (first) rural schools and (second) refugee camps, that I would have some sort of insight or revelation about circumstances in the developing world, or the proper relationship affluent Western people and countries should have with developing areas. Or some epiphany about globalization etc. No such luck. I met many people who were very smart, very kind and generous, and very funny. I worked on some very small projects with some of these folks. I miss them now. But no deep enlightenment about the difficult conditions of the majority of the world's inhabitants.

I also didn't have any real thoughts about philosophical stuff; just one little note that I might try to incorporate into an intro to political philosophy class. So one issue that comes up in political philosophy 101 in the debate between Hobbes and Locke is whether it is worse to live in the state of nature, or under a dictator. Hobbes says the former is worse, Locke the latter. I always thought this was an important question in the dialectic between the two, but answering it seemed difficult to impossible -- how could you really decide?

Well, during the 50 hours or so I spent riding travel buses in Zambia, I read a great book by Martin Meredith, called The State of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence. It was perfect for an ignoramus like me: not too much detail, but still plenty of concrete material. And the history of the last several decades in Africa makes Locke's answer to the above question look prima facie pretty good. The large majority of the strongmen were absolutely brutal to citizens, and not just people who "got on the dictator's bad side" -- you could be from the wrong tribe; you could have starvation-inducing taxes levied upon you; as we see in Zimbabwe today, your currency could be massively devalued to the point of worthlessness. If you have a problem, then you are killed -- horrifically -- along with your friends and family. In the state of nature, you at least have a chance of overpowering your neighbor; but imagine if, in a Hobbesian state of nature, God gave one person the power of throwing deadly lightning bolts at will... that's what a strongman's presence is like. And as e.g. Mobutu's power in the DRC waned, and his paramilitary power dwindled, you no longer have a capricious and wrathful Zeus hanging over your head. (Though then another strongman, Kabila, fills the void, backed by neighboring countries, and horrors continue.)

I say this is prima facie evidence, because I think a Hobbesian could conceivably retort that as the strongman's ability to throw thunderbolts decreases, some other social entity steps in to take his place, so that the people are not in the state of nature. But this is all just my amateurish speculation; I am certainly not an expert in early modern British political philosophy.

Off to Africa, and 2nd birthday

This blog turns two years old today. I'm only averaging about two and a half posts per month, and certainly fewer than that this year. I'm finding myself spending more time on polishing up articles (and a book), and less on writing about brand-new, half-baked ideas better suited for a blog dedicated to obscurity and confusion.

Posting will be even lighter over the next 7 weeks or so, since my wife and I are headed to Zambia under the auspices of a couple of non-profits that she works with: FORGE, which works in refugee camps, and Project Educate, which aims to improve educational, medical, and other infrastructure in western Zambia. We're looking forward to the trip with a lot of anticipation, but a bit of trepidation too, since neither of us have ever been to Africa.

And many, many thanks to the folks who have provided feedback on the book manuscript. I am in your debt. If anyone wants a copy WITH the archival material appendix, please email me. I can't put it on the web, because the Archive from which it comes maintains control over it. This updated version also was my first sustained undertaking with LaTeX, so there are still typographic kinks in it.

Help me write a book

This post falls under the category of "shameless begging." I am in the later stages of writing a book (based on my dissertation) called Carnap, Quine, and Tarski's Year Together. The plan is to send the manuscript to the publisher in about two months, i.e. very early July. Between then and now, the only thing I'm working on is the book.

I need your help with this. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, large or small, on the manuscript. It definitely needs to be looked at by a fresh set of eyes (preferably attached to a clever mind, but I'll take what I can get). The manuscript can be downloaded, as a 1MB Word file, here.

Thanks in advance to anyone who lends a hand. In my limited experience, the greater the number of people who tear apart something I've written, the better the final product is.

Can a sentence without a truth-value ever be approximately true?

I am curious to hear people's thoughts on the question in the title. There has been a lot of philosophical work done on the idea that a sentence can be strictly speaking false, yet nonetheless approximately true (or 'truthlike' or 'verisimilar'). For example: I am 5'11", but if someone said 'Greg is 6 feet tall,' we want to say that that claim is approximately true or something like that. But what if the claim was (strictly speaking) neither true nor false? (Readers may insert their own favorite truth-valueless sentence here.)

I ask because, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm toying with the idea that the Pessimistic Induction over the history of science plus something like Kuhnian incommensurability (esp. untranslatability) will lead us not to the conclusion that current science is likely to be false, but rather is likely to lack a truth-value. For if we cannot translate the claims of a pre-revolutionary language into the post-revolutionary one, then the pre-revolutionary language (from our current point of view) is truth-valueless, not false.

I ask the question in the title because one common realist response to the Pessimistic induction is: "Well, yes, our current scientific theories are probably not exactly true, but they are approximately true." If truth-valueless sentences cannot be approximately true, then this response is not available to the realist.