Jonathan Ichikawa put forward an interesting idea on “intuitions as enablers” at the Arché Methodology blog. Access the discussion on this idea by clicking here.
Category Archives: Philosophers
Responsible Belief in the Face of Disagreement
I just discovered a conference concerning the value of knowledge and responsible belief. Full details here. Conference theme and keynote speakers found below.
Conference Theme
The ethics of belief and the phenomenon of disagreement are two epistemological topics that show an interesting revival during the last few decades. This conference aims to draw the two issues together: What is it to acquire or hold responsible belief on some issue if that issue is the subject of (fierce) controversy? How does the existence of (known) disagreement affect the epistemic status of our beliefs? And what sort of cognitive response is appropriate when one is confronted with opposed views on a subject matter considered? Some of the key questions and issues to be considered in this area include: Are we responsible for what we believe? If so, in what sense and if not, why do we often talk as if we are? Is there an ‘ethics of belief’? What are the norms, principles, obligations, and permissions that might constitute an ethics of belief? Are we to take responsibility for our beliefs and what does that amount to? Are beliefs in any sense under our voluntary control? Is our having responsibility for what we believe compatible with doxastic involuntarism? What is disagreement? Is there faultless disagreement? What is responsible belief when confronted with disagreement among one’s peers? What is responsible belief in the face of testimony to the contrary? Is belief in the face of disagreement ever responsible if one’s evidence is inconclusive?
Keynote Speakers
- Robert Audi (University of Notre Dame)
- Richard Feldman (University of Rochester)
- Bruce Russell (Wayne State University)
- René van Woudenberg (VU University Amsterdam)
Rawls’ Views on Religion
An interesting article on Ralws’ views on religion is found here. The article is written by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel. Here’s a quote from the article:
the moral and social convictions that the thesis expresses in religious form are related in complex and illuminating ways to the central ideas of Rawls’s later writings on moral and political theory. His notions of sin, faith and community are simultaneously moral and theological, and despite fundamental differences they prefigure the moral outlook found in A Theory of Justice.
Methodology Conference Schedule Online
There is a methodology conference at Arché in April. The conference schedule has just been posted here. Of personal interest is Anand Vaidya’s talk on the value of philosophy. I’m currently taking an epistemology class from him and it has been a rewarding class. If his lectures are any indication of his presentation it should be a good presentation.
A Symposium on Audi’s Intuitionism
I’m looking forward to the upcoming Brackenridge Philosophy Symposium. It will feature 2 days of critical discussion on Robert Audi’s moderate intuitionism. I was just informed that I’ll be moderating one of the talks. Here’s a link to the list of participants and moderators. I encourage you to attend if it’s possible!
The Additive Assumption Underlying Contrast Cases
A common way to argue for a philosophical claim is to set up a pair of contrasting cases. All factors are held equal across both cases except the factor in question. Tweaking a factor has the effect of isolating the contribution the factor makes to the overall value of the scenario. Jason Stanley (2005) used this method by varying the stakes (low/high) between cases. In a recent paper, Mark Schroeder borrowed and adapted Stanley’s cases to argue that stakes are not the only relevant factor when it comes to the subject-sensitivity of ‘knows’. For Schroeder the relative costs of making errors matter as well. Practical rationality theorists would be well-advised to heed the work of Shelly Kagan (1988). Kagan identified the additive assumption underlying contrast cases. In this post, I explore this assumption in an effort to help the future avoid repeating the past.
One of the problems of using contrast case methodology to make generalizations (i.e. rational belief is subject-sensitive because it varies with the stakes or the relative costs of errors) is that it often commits the additive fallacy. Generalizing from contrast cases it is assumed that a certain factor (e.g. the subject-sensitivity of rational belief) will make a similar difference in other cases. Using this assumption the goal is to show that the favored generalization is able to yield intuitive predictions across many contexts and cases.
A strategy to undercut contrast case arguments is to take away the contrast case proponent’s ability to generalize his conclusion or transport his conclusion into more complex cases. The proponent’s methodology involves isolating the contribution of certain factors. Once the weight of a factor is isolated it is inferred that this factor will have a similar weight in general or in different contexts. In Schroeder’s paper this found detailed expression in his model of the cost of type-2 error. He then used this model to show it correctly predicted what was going on in further cases. Contrast case opponents argue against such methodology by arguing for context-dependence. Kagan did this by showing the additive assumption is false. As Kagan (1988) remarked about the contribution of a factor in a given case:
if the contribution is dependent not only on the single feature, but on other factors as well, then despite the preservation of the feature considered in isolation, a changed context could easily result in a significantly altered contribution (p. 24).
Underlying the additive fallacy is the assumption that the governing function is additive. The governing function maps the value of the factors onto the overall status of the act. If the function is additive it is assumed one can sum the separate contributions of the individual factors (i.e. costs of errors) to determine the overall status of the act. Schroeder’s model presupposes the governing function is additive and costs make independent contributions that can be summed to determine the overall value of the act.
When Schroeder presented his paper at Stanford Krista Lawlor raised the question of how Schroeder’s model would handle a more complex scenario. Krista’s example involved two couples in the same car in a forced choice situation where the choice of either couple would prevent the other couple from reaching their goal. I took Krista’s example to imply that the governing function cannot be strictly additive. That is, the right assessment of the scenario is not accomplished by simply adding the costs of error for each individual couple. What might be required is a multiplier governing function. This occurs when factors do not make contributions to be summed; rather, clusters of factors must be multiplied to generate the correct assessment of the case. Kagan (1988) used the suffering of Trixie and Fritz as an example of the need for a multiplier governing function.
The problem is that the additive assumption requires this same model even when Trixie is morally to blame for having performed the act which created the situation. Perhaps, for example, Trixie had attempted to harm Fritz, but her scheme had gone awry, harming them both, and her more significantly. The additive model can point to her guilt as a reason for not helping Trixie, but it is forced to maintain that the magnitude of her suffering provides just as strong a reason to aid her as if she were innocent. Yet many would want to reject exactly this latter claim: the suffering of the guilty simply does not count as much as the suffering of the innocent (p. 20).
In Krista’s example a second factor comes into play: either couple’s choice will be responsible for plight of the other couple. That is, Hannah and Sarah will be partially responsible for Bill and Tom missing their mortgage payment. Viewed in an additive manner Hannah and Sarah’s choice makes a positive independent contribution to the overall status of the act for Hannah and Sarah and a negative contribution to the status of the act for Bill and Tom. Simply adding up the costs and benefits may not yield the correct assessment of the case because we need to account for how the choice of Hannah and Sarah will be responsible for plight of Bill and Tom. We might want to say the benefits for Hannah and Sarah do not count as much because they are achieved at the expense of Bill and Tom. Another complication is a situation of malice where Hannah and Sarah make their choice in an effort to make Bill and Tom suffer. Such cases would be better handled by multiplying factors instead of simply adding them up. Krista’s intuition of the weirdness of Schroeder’s view applied to more complex cases may, implicitly, be grounded on the idea that his model, which presupposes the additive assumption, cannot adequately capture what is going on when factors multiply in important ways.
The Weighing of Evidence
Hats off to Alex Baia and Alex Grzankowski for running a 5-day workshop that featured instructive sessions where professors presented current work, stimulating conversations with grad students and faculty, and enjoyable social events where the dialogue continued into the night. I also want to give props to the UT Philosophy Department. Many thanks to David Sosa, the faculty who participated in the workshop, and the many grad students who attended the sessions. The department was a gracious host and an encouraging place to think hard.
One of the presentations at the conference was Ernest Sosa on intuitions. I am somewhat of an intuition skeptic, but the way he outlined what an intuition is made it reasonable for me to believe there are such things as intellectual seemings. In a previous post, I mentioned the ambiguity of the term “weight” and how it, like other terms, is used loosely by the analytic community. I’d like to pick up on that thread and discuss the term as it relates to Sosa’s intuition project. Sosa identifies intuitions with seemings. A seeming is an attraction to assent (i.e. an attraction to affirm a proposition). Seemings come in two flavors: prima facie and ultima facie (or resultant). Seemings can conflict. Such is the case when one views a Muller-Lyer display and initially the lines seem incongruent. This prima facie seeming can conflict with the opposite seeming that the lines are in fact congruent.
Seemings can come by way of different sources. These sources might include testimony, empirical data, or intellectual data about what seems to be the case upon reflection. When there is a conflict between seemings, for example, that the Muller-Lyer lines are congruent and that they are incongruent the resultant seeming is determined by weighing the conflicting seemings. These conflicting seemings are weighed based on the sources of evidence that count in their favor. My question, then, is this:
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Is the weighing of evidence for a seeming agent-relative?
Put differently, is there no objective way to determine how an agent should resolve the conflict of seemings or take certain evidence to be decisive? Even if a person has measured the lines and been told that the seeming incongruence of the lines is an illusion it is plausible that if all evidence is agent-relative in terms of how it is weighed, then the person could still have a resultant seeming of the incongruence of the lines (because they weighed the perceptual prima facie seeming of incongruence heavily) despite the amount of strong evidence to the contrary. If weighing of seemings is strictly agent-relative (i.e. there is no objective way of ranking evidence or saying more evidence of a certain sort is better), then it looks as if there is no way to say the person has produced the wrong resultant seeming based on a mis-weighing of the evidence. Any ideas on how to objectively determine the weighing of evidence?
Playing “Fast and Loose” with Terms
One of the things I’m interested in in philosophical methodology is the “loose” use of terms. Such terms are used as argumentative shorthand. I want to explore terms that have attained metaphorical status and delineate them more precisely. I define playing “fast and loose” with a term as:
- (FAL): A term r is used imprecisely when the argumentative weight r must carry within the argument is disproportionate to the actual weight presented for the term either within the argument itself or within one’s peer community.
(FAL) might cover using terms out-of-context and misusing terms against their actual (or disputed) use within one’s peer community.
Objection: Isn’t this is what analysis is—the percise use of concepts and language? Why not just say people are doing bad analysis when they use terms loosely?
Answer: People are doing poor analysis, but (FAL) helps focus on the poor use of terms within the broader analytical apparatus.
An example of (FAL) in action is a recent blog post by Kvanvig. In his post Kvanvig used the term “reflective equilibrium” loosely. I raised this to his attention in reply #7 found here. He clarified his use of reflective equilibrium as not a method of justification but as shorthand for the result of achieving consistency between general and particular judgements. However, reflective equilibrium is a method of (moral) justification. It is a further misappropriation to use it in the epistemic sense; or, at a minimum, it is a poor choice to use it epistemically because it “takes on” an insurmountable number of deficiencies (i.e. problems within no known solution in belief revision, objections to coherentist methodology and problems with intuitions). Reflective equilibrium is not the result of consistency between general and particular judgments. This blurs the distinction between judgments and principles and wide and narrow versions of the method. There are more problems with his use of the term, but my question is this: Why didn’t he just say he was talking about prodding his students toward a search for consistent beliefs?
Answer: Because Kvanvig was using the term to carry weight in his argument that was disproportionate to its actual weight or value.
(FAL) is a tempting technique because it’s an easy way to add force to your argument without much work. When this occurs over time, such terms become the bloated technology stocks of the late 1990′s. And, like the stock market, one’s peer community can buy into the hype and perpetuate the false perception. There are probably a host of justifications for the habitual use of (FAL) terms: why raise such “minor” issues, everyone seems OK with using it loosely, and so on.
Ironically, (FAL) must itself be revised because a term within the definition is another term used loosely by the analytic community (i.e. weight). When I get back from the upcoming workshop I plan on exploring “weight”. It is used in many different contexts across a spectrum of sub-disciplines within philosophy. What is going on when people use the term “weight” as something that carries argumentative force? What does it mean to say that X outweighs Y? What does the use of this term presuppose? Does the use of the term vary across philosophical concepts (e.g. intuitions, beliefs, desires, reasons, judgments, principles, and so on)? Those are a few of the questions that might be worth exploring.
Good Philosophy Presentations
I just returned from the Society for Student Philosophers (SSP) annual conference at UT, Austin. It was a well-run event with good presentations and discussions. I wrote a comment elsewhere about how good presentations involve multi-media elements. At one level, the goal of a good presentation is the same as the goal of a good argument.
(G1) A sound argument is an an argument that is valid and contains only true premises.
Added to G1 is G2 which states:
(G2) An argument is valid if and only if it is necessary that if all the premises are true, then the conclusion is true.
Soundness and validity are basic standards of what makes an argument good. A good philosophy presentation should be held to the same standard. The presenter should state a conclusion, bolster the conclusion with premises that necessarily lead to the conclusion, and make evident the truth of the premises. A further criterion of a good argument is cogency. A.P. Martinich in Philosophical Writing states cogency as:
(G3) A cogent argument is a sound argument that is recognized to be such in virtue of the presentation of its structure and content.
The cogency requirement is a requirement of recognizability: the soundness (and validity) of the argument should be easily recognizable. If adequate evidence for premises is not presented, then even a sound argument can miss the mark of cogency. Evidence for a premise should make it obvious that the premise is true. The structure of the argument must also be apparent. The relations between premises and their tie to the conclusion should be well-articulated. Cogency is a place where many philosophy presentations miss the mark. With this in mind, there are two elements of a good presentation that must be held in tension:
(A1) A philosophy presentation is accurate if it contains a sound argument conveyed with precision.
Accuracy is held in tension with cogency:
(A2) A philosophy presentation is good if and only if it engages an audience with the recognizability of its accuracy.
Both A1 and A2 involve performative elements. All aspects of a presentation should be filtered through A1 and A2. The basic question is, “Does this medium aid in reaching the end of a good argument presented well?” The overall goal is to achieve the right balance between accuracy and cogency. I’ve been wrestling with how to achieve the right balance between A1 and A2 since the conference.
Most students at the conference erred on the side of accuracy to the determent of cogency. Most students read a shorted version of their extended paper. This facilitated achievement of A1, but it left the audience groping for A2. Students who read their paper tended to overwhelm the audience with a complex argument that didn’t make apparent how the evidence presented was supporting the premises. Put simply, too much information was thrown at the audience. This meant that ‘question time’ often involved clarifying questions instead of sharp questions addressing the support (or lack thereof) for the premises.
Overall, I was pleased with my presentation. I was glad I put more time into the slides and allowed that process to inform a tightening of my argument. It also served the end of peaking Scanlon’s interest and led to an interesting debate with him in the break-room over the details of Reflective Equilibrium. When one talks extemporaneously from bullet points (using PowerPoint or an outline in the form of a handout) it can facilitate achieving A2, but it can often do so at the expense of A1. I wish I would have achieved more accuracy by having the premises of my argument on a one-page handout. This would have also achieved a greater recognition of the soundness of my argument (or lack thereof).
Scanlon’s presentation was amazing. He talked extemporaneously off bullet points on an overhead projector. He did this because he’s Scanlon and he has been thinking and presenting for more years than I’ve been alive. But, I think he served as an excellent example of talking simply about a complex subject (rationality and reasons). His talk was engaging because he conveyed his ideas with both accuracy and cogency. The media he used did not get in the way of the ideas he was conveying. However, he could have moved his bullet-points to PowerPoint slides and his presentation would have been more engaging.
All that to say, I’m still wrestling with the best way to hold A1 and A2 in tension, how to achieve the right balance between these two vital elements in a good presentation.
