2008: My Web of Beliefs

Time for my annual blogging summary. (Cf. 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.)

Metaphysics

An early post set out what I see as "The Ultimate Question" in metaphysics: whether there are substantive facts about identities, essences, etc., or whether (as I'm inclined to think) it is all ultimately reducible to qualitative facts. I argue that this issue goes hand-in-hand with whether we prefer a Constituent- or World-based Ontology. I then consider a couple of objections to my anti-haecceitism.

One important shift in my views came in the post, 'Structure and Similarity', in which I argue that some properties are metaphysically privileged (e.g. green over grue). Speaking of 'grue', I argue here that - contrary to the standard presentation of the argument - the objectively gerrymandered nature of the grue predicate can be established (without question-begging) on epistemic grounds.

Finally, some methodological aids: I summarize Yablo's helpful take on 'Logical Subtraction and Partial Truth', quote Sider on Semantic and Metaphysical Intuitions, and spell out what I take to be involved in so-called 'Ontological Reduction' (e.g. of the mental to the physical).

Mind

My 'Zombie Review' gave a short but relatively comprehensive assessment of the 'zombie' argument against physicalism (and various objections). Perhaps the most interesting related post was the one on 'Zombie Rationality', though my curiosity was also piqued by the question whether there could be (metaphysical) constraints on qualia, and whether inverted emotions are possible.

Shifting gears, 'The Homunculus in the Chinese Room' explains why I think Searle's argument is deceptive and invites conceptual confusion. And I offer A New Knowledge Argument that pre-empts the standard 'ability hypothesis' objection.

Religion

Nothing really new here, though I recently diagnosed the flaw in the ontological argument with greater precision than I'd previously managed. 'Respect and Religious Belief' discusses exactly what you'd expect. 'The Logical Problem(s) of Evil' makes an important point against those who claim that the LPE has been refuted. And 'Human Sovereignty' discusses an interesting issue relating to the so-called 'free will defence' (a long-standing interest of mine).

Epistemology

My two main interests here have concerned (i) higher-order evidence and meta-coherence, and (ii) rational objectivity. These intersect in my arguments concerning Personal Bias and Peer Disagreement.

On more traditional topics, I propose a rather deflationary understanding of Knowledge as Sufficiently Safe Belief. And my discussion of 'Skepticism and Wacky Priors' raises some important issues concerning the commitments we incur by rejecting radical skepticism.

Philosophical Methodology

I already discussed some 'methodology'-related posts in the 'metaphysics' section, above. Another central point of interest concerned 'Assessing Arguments and Begging Questions', and (relatedly) the role of thought experiments in advancing the rational dialectic. On the other hand, I warn against 'Bigoted Moral Intuitions', arguing (in comments) that there are formal grounds for considering intuitions of impermissibility to be more easily debunked than intuitions of conceptual possibility (which I rely upon elsewhere). [See also the comments here.]

'Derivative Objections' makes an important point about confusing objections to an analysis with merely derivative objections against the analysans itself. A couple of more critical posts argued against the overuse of logical formalisms and substituting opinion polls for philosophical analysis (the latter post includes a must-see video clip).

Meta-blogging

Though never made explicit, I think I may have previously assumed a kind of naive 'egalitarian' ideal of discourse, whereby every online discussion is open to all (regardless of substantive ability, at least; there could be constraints against formal abuses), and one should try to reason with whomever one meets in the discursive space of the blogosphere. But frustrating exchanges with some unusually clueless interlocutors convinced me that I no longer have the patience for this. So my post on 'The End(s) of Discussion' set out my new thoughts on the matter. I've also grown more comfortable with the idea of deleting low-quality comments and banning repeat offenders (truly a blessing, as long-time readers might have noticed).

Moral Theory

One favourite topic is 'value holism', which I've recently discussed in relation to individual longevity, and earlier in terms of the world as a whole. See especially 'Welfare and Contributory Value', and 'World Consequentialism'.

I've discussed some standard objections to consequentialism, defending its 'Evaluative Non-Integration', and potentially self-effacing nature. I also argued that fairness considerations reinforce rather than mitigate the "demands" of benevolence (contra Liam Murphy) -- though I favour a 'minimalist' account of private obligation, on grounds that the impartial good is better advanced through political action.

The best objection to utilitarianism I've come across is G.A. Cohen's anti-fungibility argument. I guess I also have some concerns about how conservative our moral methodology should be, as discussed in 'Moral Roots and Alienating Aspirations'. (See also Rationality and Reflective Endorsement.)

Turning to some abstract advances in 'conceptual engineering', I struggled a bit to clarify for myself exactly what is involved in following a reason. I also learned a lot from summarizing Murphy's view on 'Moral Demands and Compliance Effects' -- arguing that the latter concept has greater moral significance. 'Theorizing about Desire' and 'Coercion isn't Compulsion' also argue about the theoretical roles of certain moral concepts.

[Update] I should also mention 'Reflecting on Relativism', which argues that sophisticated moral relativism (of a sort I'd previously had some sympathy for) is incoherent.

Applied Ethics

The only thing approaching a common thread here was my concern to pin down what, if anything, talk of 'authenticity' amounts to. My post on 'Authentic Development' is perhaps my primary effort, though my later discussion of 'Authentic Affect' also seems relevant. Along the way I explore how to define (gender) dysfunction, question the distinction between enhancement and curing impairments, and defend the desirability of 'Virtue Pills'. Related discussions of interest concern whether we owe recompense for turning someone evil (e.g. if police work causes officers to become racist), and whether it is preferable to be outstanding or well-rounded.

Other discussions of interest include 'Rape by Fraud', the moral implications of (our lack of concern about) spontaneous abortion, whether it's bad for babies to die, and whether there are Moral Experts. Finally, I'm very interested in assessing 'The Grim Aesthetic', or whether bubbly cheerfulness is a virtue.

Political Philosophy

'Initiating Force' undermines the standard basis for deontological libertarianism. (See also Libertarian Parables.)

I'm also bothered by common misunderstandings of civic virtue. See, e.g., Civic Virtue and Negative Campaigning, Bipartisanship and In-Betweenism, and (more recently) Obama, Warren, and Civic Inclusion.

A more traditional topic of interest is raised in 'Free Collective Speech': should states seek to "express" the "voice of the people", or merely provide a neutral liberal framework for the interactions of free individuals?

Happy new year!

Philosophers' Carnival #84

... is here, and presented in verse!

(I submitted my post on 'Gambling Life for Immortality' -- though 'Obama, Warren, and Civic Inclusion' also seems to have received a passing mention in relation to one of the other entries.)

Arguing from Ostension

When a Skeptic claims that something (e.g. knowledge, free will) does not exist, a tempting response is to point to the world, and say, "There's some important difference between this case and that one, so I'm just talking about whatever it is that sets the former apart. You can't deny that there is such a thing." For example, there's an important difference between our ordinary actions and those performed out of compulsion -- e.g. hypnotic suggestion or mental illness. It is arguably just this difference that talk of 'free will' is supposed to track. Is this a legitimate anti-skeptical move?

It's always open to the Skeptic to argue that there isn't really any such "important difference" there. We assume there's a difference, but it may be superficial. A skeptic may argue that on closer examination we will find the various cases to be relevantly similar. That's a fine counter-response, if they can manage it. It shows that the anti-skeptical argument from ostension is never a knock down argument. But I think it may often serve an important philosophical purpose nonetheless.

Skeptical arguments often proceed in a very 'top-down' form. They start from a theoretical assumption (e.g. that knowledge requires certainty, or that free will requires ultimate sourcehood), and go on to show that nothing can meet this assumed requirement. That's fine as far as it goes, but if a requirement is impossible to meet, that should set off some alarm bells. In particular, it should make us question whether it's really such an important requirement after all. And that's where the argument from ostension comes in. It's a way to bring the Skeptic's theoretical assumptions into question. Maybe the Skeptic can meet the challenge, but it's often worth asking.

It's easy to make mistakes when one is engaging in a priori theorizing, after all. So the bottom-up (ostensive) method serves to keep us grounded, reminding us of the (apparently) important distinctions that our theorizing sought to capture in the first place. This assumes that intuitions about particular cases are generally more reliable than top-down theoretical intuitions; but that strikes me as a fairly safe assumption. (It is possible for systematic theorizing to override more particular judgments, of course; but some justification is required. Not just any old theoretical intuition will do.)

Value Holism draft

I've finally finished a rough draft of my paper on 'value holism' -- you can check it out here. Any feedback would be very welcome (even just to point out the sections that seem most unclear or in need of further work). Thanks!

Defining into Existence

The ontological argument:

1. We can think of a greatest conceivable being – call it 'God'.
2. It is greater (qua being) to exist than not.
3. So for any being X to qualify as the greatest conceivable, X must exist.
4. So God [the greatest conceivable being] exists

The refutation:
Distinguish the properties things are conceived to have vs. those they really do have. (Santa is conceived to be a material person, made of flesh and blood, but in fact he's a mere figment of our imaginations.) When we think of the 'greatest conceivable being' in #1, is it actually great? Or merely conceived to be great? If the latter, then the premises are insufficient to establish the conclusion: it may be possible for us to conceive of some X as supremely great (existing) without it actually being so.

In other words: insofar as we can imagine the qualities of a supreme being, one of the things we imagine may indeed be that it exists ("according to the fiction", so to speak). This act of imagination is compatible with the being in question not actually existing -- and hence not actually qualifying as 'supreme'. It's one thing to be imagined as the greatest conceivable, and quite another to really be that way in fact. So, for the ontological argument to be valid, we would have to replace the first premise with:

1*: We can conceive of some being, 'God', and this being is in fact the greatest conceivable being.

But of course if we accept premise 2 then there's no reason at all to think that 1* is really true. There's no reason to think that any being actually possesses the qualities required to qualify as the greatest conceivable (which, after all, include necessary existence).

The ontological argument raises a lot of other interesting issues: whether existence is a predicate, whether it is a perfection, whether there is a unique set of qualities that would render a being insurpassably great, etc. But I think the above counterargument -- based on the distinction between the actual properties of a represented thing vs. the properties it is represented to have -- cuts to the core of the matter.

It's also worth noting that all I've done here is bring out the core insight that finds inchoate expression in the slogan, "You can't define God into existence." I recall there was a bit of a brouhaha a while ago as theists complained about Dawkins' so swiftly "dismissing" the ontological argument on these grounds. But it seems to me that Dawkins was exactly right. It's like Zeno's paradox. The argument is very obviously unsound -- sophistry, even -- and you don't have to be a philosopher to see this. The difficulty simply lies in pinpointing the error, and explaining it in a philosophically sophisticated way. Any old fool can recognize that there's an error there to be found (they even have a rough sense of what the error is).

Granted, the ontological argument is philosophically very rich, and rewards further discussion and exploration in the philosophy classroom. But that's not because there's any real question as to its soundness (as would be relevant to a popular book on the question whether God exists). It's simply because the mistakes - and the further questions it raises - are so subtle and interesting. It is, in short, of purely academic interest. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Gambling Life for Immortality

Bryan Caplan asks:

Suppose you were offered the following gamble:

1. With probability p, you will live forever at your current age.
2. With probability (1-p), you instantly, painlessly die.

What is your critical value of p? If you combine expected utility theory with the empirical observation that happiness is pretty flat over time, it seems like you should be willing to accept a very tiny p. But I can't easily say that I'd accept a p<1/3.

Caplan seems to be making two false assumptions about individual utility/wellbeing:
(i) Hedonism - all that matters is the felt pleasantness of one's mental states.
(ii) Additivity - the utility of one's life as a whole is simply the sum of the utilities of each moment in the life.

Now, (i) seems clearly false. We care (self-interestedly, even) about things other than subjective happiness. So the mere fact that 'happiness is pretty flat over time' doesn't suffice to show that what we care about is similarly constant in its realization.

More importantly: this sort of case helps to cast doubt on (ii). Rather than evaluating a life indirectly, by summing together one's evaluations of its temporal parts, we may skip to directly evaluating the life as a whole. Such global preferences may take into account the "big picture", including relations between the parts (e.g. we might prefer a life that improves rather than declines with time, even if the net momentary utility is the same), and the overall 'shape' of the life. [See this recent post for more detail.]

But if that is so, then it's no longer so clear that an infinitely long life (of moderate happiness) is thereby infinitely valuable. In fact, it may be only a modest improvement on a life of (say) 80 years -- much less, perhaps, then the gap in value between a life of 80 years and one of just 25 (say). It depends on what you want out of life, and how much of that is achievable between the years of 25-80, as opposed to how much is achievable only with immortality. If most of what I care about falls into the first group, then (unless the odds are very favourable) it would seem downright irrational for me to risk all that for a chance of attaining the lesser goods in the latter group.

An interesting test is to question whether my future self (age 79) would regret this decision. Assuming not -- assuming the decision not to gamble is endorseable from a 'timeless' perspective -- then this would reinforce the claim that it is indeed what is in my best interests. It would really be true, from a self-interested perspective, that the value added by living from 25-80 is greater than the value added by the eternity of 80+. On the other hand, it seems at least possible that my youthful preference is instead a result of temporal bias or discounting (or sheer lack of imagination), of a sort that my future selves would regret. This would clearly undermine my above claims about life utilities. (Though it raises tricky issues about how changing global preferences can be combined into a single 'lifetime utility' -- I'll probably post more on this in future.)

I leave the reader with two questions:

(A) What is your critical value for p? (In particular, is it larger than 'tiny'?)

(B) What do you imagine is the preferred critical value for p from the perspective of your future self? Do you think that, on your deathbed, you would be willing to risk "losing" the last 50 years [supposing that was really possible] for a shot at immortality?

Subjective Oughts

People often assume that there's some genuine sense in which what we ought to do (believe) is determined by whatever we believe we have most reason to do (believe). Call this 'subjectivism'. Subjectivist positions seem common in debates over peer disagreement and normative uncertainty (to name just a couple of examples). But I think it is mistaken.

Granted, there may well be wide-scope requirements e.g., to not believe (i) that the evidence conclusively supports P without also believing (ii) that P is true. But it doesn't follow from my believing of (i) that I ought to also believe (ii). Perhaps I should instead give up my belief in (i).

As I pointed out in 'Rational Objectivity', rational status is not perfectly transparent: we can be irrational without realising it. In particular, it's possible to believe that I rationally ought to φ [e.g. believe P] without this truly being so. This possibility of error is essential to any non-trivial rational norm, thus ruling out the possibility of subjectivism. (Bootstrapping cases are helpful to illustrate this objection more vividly. We can describe a scenario in which it an agent is patently unreasonable in believing P. But subjectivism implies, absurdly, that their belief may be justified by the mere fact that they erroneously take their evidence to support the ludicrous proposition.)

If subjectivism is so daft, why are so many people initially tempted to accept it? I think there are three main reasons. The first, noted above, is the confusion of narrow- and wide-scope requirements. The second is that in bootstrapping cases, the agent is at least exhibiting some (perhaps limited) procedural epistemic virtues. A good epistemic agent will, after all, align their beliefs with their judgments about the evidence. The problem is that this is woefully insufficient to qualify as a good epistemic agent, if one's judgments about the evidence are not themselves reasonable. Indeed, taken in isolation, partial "virtue" may simply lead one further astray. (Compare: an instrumentally rational psychopath at least displays certain 'executive virtues', but their competence actually becomes a bad thing given how warped their ends are.)

The third - and I think most important - reason has to do with considerations of 'action guidance'. The theoretical role of rational norms is, after all, to guide us when we can't tell what we (objectively) ought to do. So there has got to be something a bit more subjective about them. The considerations that make one option rationally superior to another must be considerations that are accessible to us. Subjective beliefs are the obvious candidates: they're accessible to us in a way that external facts are not. And, indeed, there are independent theoretical motivations for accepting a kind of 'internalism' about rationality, i.e. the thought that what's rational for me depends entirely upon facts internal to my mind, not the external world.

But it's simply a mistake to think that internalism implies subjectivism. After all, subjectivism restricts itself to a very specific subset of my beliefs, namely my normative beliefs about what I ought to do. What about my ordinary non-normative beliefs? If I know that a generally reliable source just told me "P is false", but I irrationally interpret this as evidence that P is true, subjectivism licenses my irrational belief that P. But we needn't go along with this. There's a perfectly accessible fact which counts against the belief, namely the testimonial evidence I just heard (and perfectly well remember). Again, I know full well what the source said -- this information is as accessible to me as any -- my error is one of normative interpretation. I unreasonably interpreted this basic fact as evidence for P when really it is (as I should have known) evidence against P. My mistake, right?

This is the key issue. The subjectivist claims that what's rational is determined by what the agent treats as evidence. These normative judgments are themselves taken as 'given' and beyond dispute. But I contend that we cannot get any worthwhile action-guiding norms when so much is taken as given. If my normative judgments are sufficiently unreasonable, then their implications are of no rational help. (Garbage in, garbage out.) There is no sense in which I 'ought', automatically, to do whatever it seems to me I ought to do. Even in the most subjective of genuine rational norms, tailored for non-ideal agents, my beliefs about what I ought to do are always open to question, and so might be rationally trumped by certain of my other beliefs -- even if I'm too irrational to realize it.

Obama, Warren, and Civic Inclusion

Many are complaining that by reaching out to Rick Warren, Obama is offering a slap in the face to progressives. This is silly. Yes, Warren has badly screwed up views on social issues. Most Americans do. That doesn't mean they must be shunned or demonized; it means that we need to do more to engage with them and bring them to their senses.

No matter the strength of our first-order disagreements, we should be able to 'detach' from these and treat each other with respect. That was kind of the whole point of Obama's "new politics". For those culture warriors who are shocked, just shocked, that Obama can bear to associate with evangelical conservatives, or who see such expressions of respect as somehow undermining his first-order commitment to liberalism, I can only ask: weren't you paying attention? This is exactly what we want: a president who will advance solidly liberal policies, without demonizing or alienating conservative-leaning people. If we can leave off the tribalistic hating for just a moment, maybe some of 'Them' can even be brought around to our side.

Adopting Open Access

Analysis is switching publishers from Blackwell to OUP, and it isn't the only high-profile philosophy journal with such migratory rights. This raises the question: how can we as philosophers ensure that the next time one of our journals' editorial boards ditches their commercial publisher, they aren't forced into the clutches of another? How can we secure the requisite funding to make open access publication (on the model of Philosophers' Imprint) a live option?

There's no shortage of funds in principle. After all, university libraries are already funding journals. They're just doing it in a ridiculously inefficient way -- buying subscriptions from commercial publishers, rather than funding the journals directly. The latter would end up being much cheaper on net, especially since the only significant expense (I gather) for online publication is the employment of an "editorial assistant" to take care of the administrative work. So in theory the decision for universities (collectively) to fund open-access journals seems like a no-brainer. The only question is how to bring this about. (I guess that's really two questions: what is the precise plan, and who has the power to implement it?)

The simplest option may be a piecemeal approach, whereby individual universities independently arrange to "adopt" -- and henceforth fund -- some prestigious journal. (Just as the University of Michigan funds the Philosophers' Imprint.) This won't solve everything, but every step helps.

Some questions:
(1) How difficulty would it be, in practice, to organize such an 'adoption'?
(2) Who, in each university, is in a position to authorize it? (Who should I be discussing this with?)

Alternatively: is there some appropriate academic body that can extract the requisite funding from its member libraries, and so solve the collective action problem in one fell swoop? (I assume we can't wait for Congress to fix this for us...) Any other ideas?

(N.B. A lot of philosophers share this ideal -- the 'Open Access Philosophy' Facebook group alone has over 350 450 members, including some very prominent philosophers -- so it seems like we really should be able to make progress here, if only we can figure out how.)

Meta-Charities

My previous post spurred some interesting discussion about how benefactors can get the most bang for their buck. Carl writes:

Singer promotes giving to Oxfam in public speeches because it's easier for most people to understand the direct benefits of their work, but in private conversation he agrees that it is far better to donate to meta-charities. For instance, you can donate directly to the Poverty Action Lab, which conducts rigorous controlled, randomized studies to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, often finding that billions of dollars are being wasted at low cost... Another strong candidate meta-charity would be the start-up nonprofit GiveWell, which seeks out the most demonstrably effective charities at improving human welfare in a transparent published research process to guide individual donors.

It's an intriguing idea: rather than trying to directly help the less fortunate, we would do better to serve as a 'catalyst' that boosts the effectiveness of others' giving. (Of course, it would defeat the purpose if everyone went the 'meta' route, as Brandon notes. But there's little risk of that in practice. And as things stand, it appears that we would do best to shift the balance at least slightly more in the 'meta' direction.)

Though it raises the question: are there meta-meta-charities to help us decide which of the various meta-charities is most worth donating to?

Oxfam for Xmas

It's a good time to help out a worthy charity,* and to do so publicly.** So I hope that any friends who would like to find me a Xmas present will instead donate that ten bucks to Oxfam MIT's Poverty Action Lab, and let me know (preferably in the 'comments' below) so that I can reciprocate. This offer is also open to "blog friends" -- and if you have a blog of your own, I'd encourage you to post a similar offer for your own readers. (Changing the details as you see fit, of course.)

My plan is to donate to Oxfam Poverty Action Lab a base of $100, which will increase by $10 for each reader who promises to donate to charity at least ten bucks themselves, up to a $300 cap (i.e. if I get twenty positive responses).

So: let me know if you're in! [Update: $170 it is. Thanks to all who chipped in!]

* = According to ReliefWeb:

International aid agency Oxfam has estimated the global financial crisis will create a $2 million hole in its budget before the end of this year, and is appealing for urgent help from its supporters.

** = As Peter Singer writes:

One of the most significant factors determining whether people give to charity is what others are doing. Those who make it known that they give to charity increase the likelihood that others will do the same. Perhaps we will eventually reach a tipping point at which giving a significant amount to help the world's poorest becomes sufficiently widespread to eliminate the majority of those 25,000 needless daily deaths.

See also the very successful UNICEF Facebook Chain.

Changing the Past

The Ethical Werewolf asks:

What modality applies to the impossibility of changing the past? Is changing the past logically impossible, metaphysically impossible, or physically impossible?

There are many possible questions here. On one popular reading, to "change" the past (or the future, for that matter) is logically impossible: given that Bob was shot at time t, it is not logically compatible with this to make the world such that Bob was not shot at time t. So we cannot "change" the past in the sense that "first" time t is one way, and "later"(?) that very same moment somehow differs. Change is when one moment differs from another; a moment cannot differ from itself. But this is a trivial kind of 'impossibility'.

At the other extreme, we may refrain from taking any merely contingent facts as 'given', and ask abstractly: is it possible that I perform some action φ, such that Bob isn't (and never was) shot at time t? And that seems possible in almost every sense: there's a physically possible world where I φ and Bob isn't shot. It just isn't this one. (And, more importantly, neither is it accessible in any important sense.)

So the real question must lie somewhere in between. Most plausibly, it depends on some notion of "dynamic" or time-relative physical (causal) possibility. That is, we take the present moment as given, and ask whether we have (sufficient) causal influence over what happens at time t. So the modality of my inability to (now) influence the past is simply a time-relative version of the modality barring me from time travel. 'Physical impossibility given my current circumstances', perhaps?

Cryonics and Continuity

Suppose we could be frozen at death, to be revived centuries later (perhaps as digital 'uploads') by a society of transhuman immortals. Sound good? Many of the folks at Overcoming Bias have little doubt. I lean in their direction, but rather more tentatively. Maybe some people would benefit from this transition, but I think there's a hidden incoherence in calls for more widespread adoption of cryonics.

The first thing to note is that, from an impersonal perspective, we're not doing the world any favours by populating the future with our primitive 20th(-21st) century minds. (What would they want us for? Anthropological interest? But this then raises the distressing prospect that we will 'awaken' only to live out our second lives in a scientific testing facility, or in some sort of transhuman zoo.) Cryonicists hope to be revived by benevolent transhumans, but assuming future altruists could get more bang for their buck by bringing into existence completely new (and better) minds, benevolence would presumably lead them to do that instead.

So cryonicists must assume that it is better to extend an existing life than to create a new one. Maybe we have special obligations to existing people, such that benefiting them personally takes priority over making the world a better place. So let's consider the question from a personal perspective: would cryonic revival make one better off?

To answer this we need to consider what makes for a good life (i.e. good for the person living it). It's not as though longevity is intrinsically desirable. Living longer is only good insofar as this enables us to live better. Put another way: death is only harmful insofar as our life, by ending then, is worse on the whole than it otherwise would have been.

A life has a kind of narrative structure, and a good one (like any good story) will fit together well. We have various life projects -- from developing a systematic philosophy to helping children develop into autonomous adults -- which give our lives much of their 'meaning' and worth. These projects are extended across time: decades, often, and sometimes an entire lifetime. But they are also typically situated in time, and may not survive one's sudden displacement into a radically different future society. So any would-be cryonicist must ask: "What is it that I really want from life? Could I still pursue it in the transhuman utopia?"

Some might. But many people are (quite reasonably!) wedded to the particularities of their life and situation, and would not welcome such drastic change. They would awaken to world where their central concerns and life projects no longer belong. Such radical discontinuity should concern any reductionist about personal identity. For insofar as this newly awakened person would be enculturated into a new society, acquiring new values and life projects, they are effectively becoming a new and different person. But notice that this completely undermines the only justification for reviving them. If the benefits of revival accrue to a different person, then revival is unjustified: a better new life could be created 'from scratch', so to speak.

So cryonics is (at best) only justified for people whose central concerns and life projects could continue to be fruitfully pursued upon revival in a transhuman society. That won't be everyone. For many, the cryovangelist's promise of a 'new life' may be taken literally: given its radical discontinuity with all that they care about, such a new life would do nothing to improve their (current) life.

Ultimate Responsibility

How does 'responsibility' enter the causal chain? Compatibilists may say it emerges from "reasons responsiveness" or rational agency. Past states of the world cause my cognitive functioning -- that is, me -- to exist, and I in turn cause downstream effects to occur through my actions, for which I am responsible. Responsibility enters the system when the causal chain flows through an agent -- through one's character, values, and practical reasoning. Incompatibilists object to this: "how can you be responsible for your actions if you weren't responsible for the upstream causes which determined your cognitive functioning (character, etc.) in the first place?" They claim, in short, that responsibility requires ultimate responsibility. But is this even possible?

Compatibilists respond that this can't be helped even if determinism is false. If our cognitive functioning isn't caused, then it's uncaused ("random"), and that's no better. Our initial state of being may not be determined by prior events, but that doesn't mean it's determined "by us" as ultimate responsibility would require. Rather, it's not determined by anything or anyone at all. (Some compatibilists have gone further and claimed that freedom requires determinism. That isn't quite right: in the right conditions, indeterminism is compatible with the same kind of non-ultimate responsibility as determinism is.)

A person cannot be ultimately responsible for their initial state of being. We have control over some things, but our exercise of this capacity must be underpinned by sub-personal mechanisms that govern how we exercise control. We cannot always control the manner by which we control, or choose the bases on which we choose, on pain of regress. As I once put it:

Suppose you got to choose your own personality. On what basis could you make such a choice? You must base it on some prior preferences that you have. But did you ever get to choose those preferences? If so, on what basis was that choice made? We must eventually reach some foundational standards of evaluation (preferences) that you never chose to have. So "pure" freedom is impossible.

This is a strong conclusion. I'm claiming that the kind of "ultimate responsibility" free-will libertarians are angling for is incoherent. Not even God could have it. And you know something's gone terribly wrong when you're hoping for powers that even an omnipotent being would lack! If ultimate responsibility is impossible in this way, it can't really be required for the kind of ordinary moral responsibility humans aspire to. Perhaps we can't know for sure that we really are morally responsible beings, but here's one thing we surely do know: there are at least some possible worlds containing responsible beings. So whatever our criteria for attributing free will and responsibility to agents, it had better at least be logically possible to satisfy.

Am I right that this rules out the libertarian criterion of 'pure self-creation'?

Beckstead on Divine Coordination Schemes

[Guest post by Nick Beckstead]

It seems self-evident that one has most reason to always act in one’s own interest, and it seems self-evident that one has most reason to always do one’s duty; but both principles can’t be right if there are ever situations where one’s duty conflicts with one’s interest. Famously, Sidgwick thought that, in a case of conflict, there was no reason to prefer acting in one’s own interest to doing one’s duty. This problem, called “the dualism of practical reason,” was thought by Sidgwick to pose a great difficulty for the foundations of ethics.

A way out of the problem is to invoke some hypothesis that makes interest and duty align. For example, many religions propose that if a person always does his duty, he will be amply rewarded in the afterlife. Though doubtful that God’s waiting around to do this, Sidgwick believes that this would be a way around the dualism of practical reason.

A cute little transcendental argument lurks:

Since it is self-evident that I have most reason to do what is in my own interest, and it is self-evident that I have most reason to do my duty, both must be true. The only half plausible way for these two to align is if God properly awards duty following. So, the only half plausible conclusion is that God properly awards duty following. Hence, if my duty and my (non-supernaturally affected) interest seem unaligned, it would be best to do my duty.

This argument is certainly open to other objections, but here’s a particularly entertaining one. God could make sure that one’s duty and one’s interest are aligned by other means. For example, if one’s duty is always to maximize the total well-being of all sentient life, just suppose that whenever anyone acts in his own interest, God sees to it that everyone else’s well-being is astronomically increased. Provided that the benefit God provides to others is sufficiently significant, there is no conflict between one’s duty and one’s own interest.

It might be replied that this divine coordination scheme is less plausible than the standard one. But, if it really isn’t true that I have more reason to do my duty than act in my own interest, it’s tough to see why. So maybe this objection could be overcome if the defender of the transcendental argument will work out the theology for us, but I’m not going to cross my fingers.

Oh, and why do we tend to like the reward-style divine coordination scheme the best, anyway?

-- Nick

Accessible Non-Actual Futures

The central argument of my recent post 'A Future Without Fatalism' might be clarified via possible worlds analysis. If it's true that I will φ, that's just a claim about how the actual world is, i.e. how things will - as a contingent matter of fact - turn out. It is not yet to introduce any substantive necessities whatsoever, for something is 'necessary' just in case it is true in all (relevant) possible worlds. For example, we may define some future truth as 'causally necessary' just in case it is true at all those possible worlds that share our history and causal laws. Note that if causal determinism is false, then there will be many causally possible futures. That is, there are many possible worlds with pasts and causal laws identical to ours, and yet different futures. So we can say that each of those worlds are (causally) 'accessible' from ours at this time.

We might define various other accessibility relations. Compatibilists will want something a bit weaker than causal accessibility: they may instead define a world as compatibilist-accessible to an agent if that's a way things would have turned out had the agent's desires been suitably different. (Or something along those lines.)

Note that an agent can (in sense r) bring it about that P iff there is a P-world that is r-accessible to the agent. The free will debate may thus be understood as concerning which accessibility relation 'r' is relevant to moral responsibility and the "ought implies can" principle. I won't get into that here: even the relatively strict requirement of "causal accessibility" will do for my purposes. I merely require some non-trivial accessibility relation (i.e. which doesn't rule out in advance the possibility that multiple possible worlds may be 'accessible' to us).

With the framework thus set up, it should now be obvious why future truth does not imply any kind of (non-trivial) necessity or fatalism. For the question of whether we 'can' do something is a question about what worlds are accessible to us. But the fact that some future-directed proposition P is actually true does not suffice to determine non-trivial accessibility relations. So the following are entirely compossible: (i) P is true in the actual future, and (ii) P is false in some non-actual future which is nonetheless accessible to me at this time. That conjunction is just another way of saying that I can (but won't) make it the case that not-P.

So, again: the argument from mere future truth to fatalism is mistaken for the fundamental reason that it confuses the modal implications of 'will' and 'must'. This is made especially clear through the above possible worlds analysis, whereby 'will' claims are analysed merely in terms of truth at the actual world, whereas 'must' claims also concern accessibility relations. You can't get from one to the other without adding further premises. So mere future truth is no threat to genuine contingency.

Coercion isn't Compulsion

"Did Sally freely φ?" There are two possible questions here that are commonly conflated. On the one hand, we may be asking roughly whether Sally intentionally φ-ed (as opposed to acting out of some unwilled compulsion, temporary insanity, or the like) -- i.e. whether Sally truly made a choice here. This is a question about 'free will' or agency. Alternatively, one might ask a question about 'political freedom', or whether Sally was subject to any kind of coercion or constraint in the options she was choosing between: e.g. did anyone have a gun to her head?

Some philosophers (at least since A.J. Ayer) discussing free will have used the gun case as a paradigm example of 'unfree' choice, for which the coerced agent is not morally responsible. This strikes me as simply mistaken. Sally is still responsible for her choice, within the given constraints. If the bandit tells her to kick me in the shins or he'll shoot, then Sally has a choice: she can choose between kicking me in the shins or getting shot. So she kicks me. Good for her, she made the right choice. This is worth emphasizing: it's not that she wasn't responsible for the choice -- on the contrary, she retained her free will, and moreover, she exercised it correctly (given the constraints). She did exactly what she had most reason to do.

Compare this to a case where Sally falls under a compulsion to kick me in the shins (maybe she was hypnotized). Notice how different the moral implications are. Here the action is wrong -- there's no justification for kicking me in the shins -- but Sally isn't responsible for it.

The question of coercion may be relevant when we want to clarify what reasons Sally had for acting as she did, or what options she was choosing between. But that is not a question relevant to the free will debate. There we are instead concerned with the question whether it was really Sally choosing at all. And to answer that question in the negative requires compulsion, not mere coercion.

Big Questions

Clark asks: What are the fundamental issues you are most interested in and see as very important? I've offered such a list before, but here's an updated (though no doubt similarly incomplete) list:

(1) Is value purely additive? Is the value of a whole (life, society) simply the sum of the intrinsic values of the parts (moments, individual lives), or do the relations between the parts also have non-instrumental import? See, e.g., my post distinguishing Welfare and Contributory Value. Related questions ask whether more pain is thereby worse, and whether duplication may be discounted. [Update: see here for my new paper on this topic, which should give a better sense of what these questions are getting at.]

(2) How should we understand Consciousness and Time? In particular, how radically could objective and experienced time diverge? (If we accept that the brain can represent time using something other than time itself, is there any necessary connection here at all? How exactly do temporally extended or 'smeared' representations work?)

(3) How objective is rationality? Is there any genuine sense in which one "ought" to believe as the 'equal weight' and 'automatic adjustment' views claim?

(4) Does rationality require impartiality? Are there agent-(time-)relative values/reasons?

(5) What's the relation between Rationality and Reflective Endorsement? If certain biases are good to have, is there some less-strict but still genuinely normative framework (perhaps what's "reasonable", rather than strictly "rational") for human beings to live by? How coherent will this be?

(6) Is Rational Pluralism possible, or is there one ideally rational belief (and desire?) set -- one objectively privileged 'prior'?

(7) Are there substantive facts about identities and essences, or are the 'base facts' of the world purely qualitative? (In other words: Kripke or Lewis?)

(8) What are the truth-makers for a priori philosophical truths? Is some form of meta-philosophical Constructivism defensible? Or some alternative view?

What 'big questions' most interest you, dear reader?

Teaching the Metaphysics-Epistemology distinction

Much philosophical thinking requires a solid grasp of the difference between what's true and what's demonstrable. This doesn't always come naturally to students. (For example, many seem to confuse the questions of whether an argument is sound, and whether it can be shown to be sound.) In such cases, what are the best pedagogical methods an instructor could use to help struggling students acquire the skill of working with this distinction in a philosophically mature way?

I guess that will depend on the nature of their resistance. It could stem from either:
(i) difficulty grasping the objective metaphysical concepts (truth, facts, etc.) as distinct from the more subjective epistemic ones (proof, demonstration, etc.); or
(ii) skepticism as to whether the former could ever matter without the latter.

The first problem seems like it should be easy enough to overcome with a few examples: we can't tell whether there are an odd number of stars in the sky, but there's presumably some fact of the matter nonetheless.

The second is trickier. I guess one way to bring out the importance is to note the important difference between "not certain" and "certainly not". That is, it's one thing to be unsure whether an argument is sound or not (because you can't decisively determine the truth or falsity of the premises), but it's quite another to claim that it is definitely unsound. But we need the metaphysics-epistemology distinction to make sense of this difference. If there's no difference between truth and proof, then one's inability to prove a premise would allow one, absurdly, to infer that it must be false.

A more complicated example is the epistemic externalist's response to radical skepticism. More generally: everyone agrees that if I'm actually deceived by an evil demon then I thereby lack knowledge. So the controversy instead concerns the epistemic status of my beliefs in those cases in which they are true. That is, to properly assess radical skepticism, one must consider a scenario in which the subject's beliefs are true, but where this fact is not absolutely transparent to the subject (since, from her perspective, she can't rule out the possibility of the evil demon). We may find -- especially if we accept an externalist theory of knowledge -- that the subject can count as having knowledge in this scenario after all. That suffices to refute the radical skeptic's claim that knowledge is impossible -- that we lack knowledge even if our beliefs happen to be true. But note that we never could have gotten this far if we didn't take care to distinguish the epistemic and metaphysical aspects of the problem, i.e. the difference between what's "not certain" and what's simply "not".

So that's one example of how it can be philosophically valuable to abstract away to a kind of "God's eye view" whereby we can consider what's true in a scenario independently from the question of what anybody in the scenario can conclusively demonstrate to be true. Can anyone suggest some other (perhaps better) examples of this philosophical method?

Self-Location

The Guardian breathlessly reports: 'Body swap research shows that self is a trick of the mind'. As one would expect given journalistic standards, there's nothing in the substance of the story that supports this headline. The research shows that our sense of self-location is fallible; we can be tricked into feeling like another body is our own. Our mental representations may be redrawn as though from a different perspective, i.e. 'centering' on a dummy rather than our true bodies. But that shouldn't be surprising. (It's in the nature of a representation that it may misrepresent.)

So I'm not sure how or why this is supposed to have any metaphysical implications for the 'self' (whatever they mean by this). How is this any different from noting that a twig in water appears bent, and concluding that "twigs are a trick of the mind"?

A Future Without Fatalism

People often confuse temporality and modality -- thinking that what 'will' be, 'must' be. This is simply a mistake. To illustrate, let Q be the proposition that tomorrow I φ. Distinguish:

(i) The actual truth of Q.

This is just to say that I will happen to φ.

(ii) Determinism about Q

This adds the claim that the conjunction of some past state P0 and the laws of nature L together entail that I will φ. Not only is Q actually true, but its negation is inconsistent with P0 & L. So in this sense I must φ. But I may retain some causal responsibility, in the sense that if I had been different, so would have been the outcome. It's merely the case that (given P0 and L) I could not have been different in the first place.

(iii) Fatalism about Q

This adds the yet further claim that Q is robustly overdetermined, such that I still would have ended up φ-ing even if my thoughts, desires, and intentions had somehow been different. So even various alternative past states P1, or P2, etc., when conjoined with L, entail Q. If it hadn't happened the one way, it would have happened some other way. This yields a much stronger sense in which I 'must' φ: even had things been different, my φ-ing could not have been avoided.

These various modalities are often confused. So it is important to be clear that just because something will occur, does not mean that there is any stronger sense in which it 'must' or is 'guaranteed' to occur. If you know beforehand, it may be 'certain' in an epistemic sense. But that is of no interest here; what matters is the metaphysical question of how things are in themselves. Compare the past: we may have certain knowledge that some past event E occurred, but that alone does not mean that E itself was in any way guaranteed or 'fated' to occur. As things turned out, E did occur, but that fact is obviously compatible with the claim that things could have turned out differently. And exactly the same is true of future events, such as my φ-ing. Actuality does not imply necessity; 'is' (or 'will') does not imply 'must'.

(In practice, others will rarely be in a position to safely assert 'Richard will φ' in advance unless I am unable to do otherwise. After all, how else can they be so sure? I might change my mind -- especially if I overhear them, I might change my mind simply to prove them wrong! So, in practice we are used to 'will' assertions being correlated with 'must' facts. This practical correlation might help explain why we are so easily tempted to conflate the two ideas, but clear thinking requires us to disentangle such associations.)

One may object (as did my confused past self, circa 2004): "If Q is true, then I cannot actually fail to φ, for that would render Q false, contrary to the assumption." But this is deceptive rhetoric. It is true, but utterly trivial, that one cannot hold the truth of Q fixed and at the same time make it false. But there is no substantive necessity here. For all that's been said, it might be entirely within my power whether I φ, and hence whether Q is actually true or false. If Q is actually true, then that's just to say that I won't actually fail to φ, but it says nothing about what I could have done. Don't let the order of words on the screen fool you: the direction of explanation flows from my contingent action to the truth of the proposition. (Q is true because I φ. It would get things backwards to think that I φ because Q is somehow antecedently true.)

A related caution: it may be true (now) that tomorrow I φ. But that makes it sound like the truth exists prior to the event. This is, again, a mere quirk of language. To say it's true that tomorrow I φ is simply to say that tomorrow I φ. It's a claim about tomorrow's events, and whether it's true or not depends entirely on those events. If it turns out that I φ, then we can say it was "true" all along. But you shouldn't be tempted to read anything deeper into such claims. (In particular, it's not to say the future truth is somehow 'contained within' or derivable from the present state of affairs -- determinism is a further claim!)

A final source of confusion stems from conflating descriptive and rigidly designating interpretations of 'the actual world'. Let '@' rigidly designate what philosophers call "the actual world" (and what really means the actual world-description, or a complete list of all the propositions that happen to be actually true). Now one might worry that it's a necessary truth that Q is true in @ -- or that 'actually Q' expresses a necessary truth. So we lack the power to change what's true in the actual world (@); but the actual world is the world we care about, so (the argument goes) we lack the only power we ever cared to have.

Can you spot the fallacy? We are not essentially concerned with @ -- in itself, @ is a mere world-description, a way the concrete universe could be. What we care about is the concrete universe, and how it turns out. In particular, if the universe turns out as @ describes (so that @ is the "actual world[-description]") then we care about that, for the universe's sake. Note that the power we're really concerned with is the power to change the universe, not some particular description thereof. In short: we can't change the description (de re) of the universe, but we can change the universe itself so that it meets a different description. And of course it's the latter power that we really cared about all along.

The Homunculus in the Chinese Room

Searle's Chinese Room argument:

Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese....

The point of the argument is this: if the man in the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua computer, has anything the man does not have.

I think this is a very misleading thought experiment. It's true that a homunculus implementing a program won't necessarily understand what's being implemented, but who ever would have thought otherwise? We may not actually have homunculi running around in our heads, passing electrical charges along from neuron to neuron; but if we did, they wouldn't share our understanding either. The mental states of the imagined homunculi don't limit the mental states that their efforts can give rise to (i.e. in us), and so it is with the Chinese Room. The homunculus' lack of understanding has no implications for the real question of whether there is understanding created by the Chinese Room. So by asking us to focus on the homunculus, Searle introduces a red herring -- and worse, an invitation to 'level confusion' and category mistakes. The SEP has a quote from Margaret Boden that perfectly captures my objection here (see further 4.1.1 The Virtual Mind Reply):

Computational psychology does not credit the brain with seeing bean-sprouts or understanding English: intentional states such as these are properties of people, not of brains... Searle's description of [the symbol-manipulating homunculus] involves a category-mistake comparable to treating the brain as the bearer, as opposed to the causal basis, of intelligence.

Technically, Searle's above conclusion is true: computers, as implementers of programs, aren't in the category of things to which 'understanding' may be predicated. But neither are brains. So this tells us absolutely nothing of interest. The real question is whether computational processes give rise to conscious and/or intentional mental states, as neuronal processes do. Seen in this light, the Chinese Room seems an entirely unhelpful distraction.