Specter of Reason

I've been wondering when Jason Stanley's book, Know How , would come out. I wasn't watching closely enough, cuz it's been out for a few months now and I didn't know it. I searched inside the book on amazon, and was happy to see that he acknowledges me as one of the people whose comments "occcasioned changes" to the book. I'm eager to see how he develops his criticism of Ryle and his epistemological views. I was only able to read up to page 6 on amazon, but I'm anticipating a big problem already. It's clear from the outset that Stanley wants to give Ryle more credit than he has done in past publications. I don't know what, exactly, he wants to give Ryle credit for, but he says on page 2 that he wants to "distinguish Ryle's correct insights about action from his incorrect conclusions about the relationship between knowing how to do something and knowing that something is the case." That's a welcome addition to Stanle...

Tim Maudlin makes some interesting comments about the philosophy of cosmology. I have a few objections and observations. (See update at the bottom for an additional criticism.) First, Maudlin claims that the universe is just "one huge physical object." This could be a significant conceptual error. I'm not convinced that "the universe" picks out a unique physical object. I'm not a non-cognitivist about the universe. I do think "the universe" picks out a single, coherent idea . But I doubt that idea represents or corresponds to a thing. I'm not an idealist, exactly. I'm a realist about everything that we say is part of, or constitutive of, the universe. But none of the objects of our experience--nothing we can conceptualize--fully constitute the universe. So "the universe" is an idea about something we never directly indicate. So I have this suspicion that when we conceptualize the universe, we are using a different l...

Here's something I didn't know: Bishop Berkeley argued for non-cognitivism with respect to a number of linguistic terms, such as "self," "personality" and "substance," as well as more obviously theological terms, like "grace" and "trinity." You can read a very nice introductory discussion of Berkeley's arguments by Lewis Powell at The Mod Squad, a new group blog devoted to Modern Philosophy. Like Powell, I wonder how Berkeley negotiated his non-cognitivism with respect to his religious beliefs as a whole. It's hard to imagine how he could be a non-cognitivist about grace and the trinity, and yet still be a realist about God. Powell suggests Berkeley may have tried to have it both ways, though I'm not clear on how that is supposed to work. In any case, Berkeley used unconventional linguistic principles to very strongly suggest , if not plainly conclude, that the core of theological discourse is nothing more than...

Can you be sued in Australia for mistakenly calling somebody a Baptist? We might find out, if Melinda Tankard Reist follows through on her promise to take Jennifer Wilson to court . In addition to being legally threatened for calling Tankard Reist a Baptist, Wilson is getting heat for saying Tankard Reist has been dishonest about it. It's pretty silly, if you ask me. If Tankard Reist isn't a Baptist and takes offense at being called one, she can say so publicly. I don't see why she'd want to sue somebody over it. What kind of PR move would that be? From what I can tell, Tankard Reist's public attitude towards her religious views is anything but forthright. That could make it hard for her to build a case against Wilson. It also makes it unlikely that she'd want to take Wilson to court, since her religious views and sympathies would take center stage. Even if it's an idle threat, the threat itself is a powerful tool. As Russell Blackford has been warn...

A while back I posted an argument against Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN) . At the time, I didn't do a whole lot of research about other arguments against EAAN, but I looked aroung a bit and didn't see anybody making the sort of argument that I was making. I let the topic go until just recently, when my interest in the subject was aroused by a discussion over at Russell Blackford's blog on a new book by Plantinga and Dennett . From what I can tell, the book is an extended version of a recorded debate between the two philosophers which took place a couple years ago. I haven't read the book, nor have I listened to more than the first fifteen minutes of the debate, so I won't speak about either directly. Still, EAAN is not new, and I don't think its formulation has changed significantly over the years. As I said, my interest was aroused. I've contributed a few lengthy posts over at Russell's blog, and I also did a littl...

Just one more quick thought on the Consequence Argument. Consider the premise, "If we have no power over X, and X completely determines Y, then we have no power over Y." The logic of this statement seems to conflate power and determination. One of the common ways "determinism" is defined is as follows: If you are given the state of all of the elements of the universe at any particular time, you can theoretically deduce any future state of the universe. The idea is that we, as investigators, can determine what will happen by looking at what has happened, or what is happening. Similarly, if determinism is true, then what happens is determined by what has happened in the past, which means that whatever happens is the necessary consequence of what has already happened. Determinism doesn't postulate some particular relationship of power between all past and future events. Nothing in the notion of determination implies anything about what events have power over...

The consequence argument is as follows: If we have no power over X, and X completely determines Y, then we have no power over Y. If determinism is true, then the past and the laws of nature together completely determine the future. We have no power over the past or over the laws of nature. Thus, if determinism is true, then we have no power over the future. Thus, free will and determinism are incompatible. I've posted on the Consequence Argument a couple times in the past. My conclusion was that the argument is flawed because it ignores the role the present plays in the way the past shapes the future. If we recognize the present as an integral part of the process by which the future is determined, then the argument loses its force. I want to elaborate on my point of view and point out some weaknesses with the Consequence Argument. I am not a staunch determinist. However, I do think that any coherent notion of free will (that is, any free will worth having) is compatible with...