Certain Doubts

June 6-7, 2006 St Andrews (Scotland) The Arché Research project in the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Modality Conference (contact: rlh@arts.gla.ac.uk)

Conference on Understanding the Dynamics of Knowledge, November 17-19, 2005 Certosa di Pontignano, Siena (Italy)

This is just to let CD-ers know that the Knowledge, Mind and Value project at the University of Stirling, which has hosted a number of epistemology-related events in recent years, is now also hosting a weblog specifically devoted to Epistemic Value.

I just sent the older of my two sons off to college. Some other parents in that same position have asked me about postmodernism, which they have heard is running rampant through our institutions of higher learning. They want to know what it is and what I think of it. The brutally brief answers are: “That’s hard to say” and “Not much.” But in trying to explain a bit more fully what postmodernism is and why I take such a dim view of it, it occurred to me that my answers and my reasons for them might be fairly typical of “analytic” philosophers, and so my explanations might also be of some use to those who wonder just what philosophers of my type have against postmodernism, and what it is that we think we’re reacting against. It’s largely in that hope that I post this.

I considered changing the title of this post. I intended “take a dim view of” to indicate that I don’t hold postmodernism in high regard. It occurred to me that it might also suggest that my view is dim in the sense that I don’t understand my subject matter very well. But I’ve decided that, since I really don’t understand the subject matter all that well, it’s fine if that suggestion is made.

In section 9, I’ll also have a little something to say about whether, where and to what extent postmodernism really is running rampant through colleges and universities – though on this matter, what I’ll mostly be doing is linking to an excellent post by somebody else on just that question. Actually, throughout this post I’ll be linking to on-line material that I’ve found helpful, and those links may well prove to be the most valuable aspect of this exercise.

Below the Fold:
1. The Postmodern Team
2. Characterizing Postmodernism
3. Fashionable Nonsense and French Heroes of Postmodernism
4. My Experiences with American Postmodernism
5. The Claims of Postmodernists – Wild or Tame?: The Case of Prof. Fish and a Brief look at Prof. Robbins
6. Some Positions – Both Tame and Wild – That Might Be Attractive to Some with Postmodern Sensibilities
7. Forewarned is Forearmed
8. A Suggestion for Teachers of Introductory Philosophy Classes
9. Where and to What Extent is Postmodernism Prevalent in Our Colleges and Universities?
10. “This Postmodern World of Ours”
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I’m off to a philosophy of religion conference at Wheaton tomorrow. Keith and I are in the same session; maybe we’ll try to figure out what a contextualist view of hell would look like…

In the meantime, I thought I’d post an argument that Ernie LePore used in a graduate seminar on Quine to see if he should switch from being a philosopher of language to being an epistemologist! Ernie maintained that anything can justify anything. I think he meant that anything can justify anything else, since that’s all the argument has a prayer of establishing. So here’s the argument:

Take any p and any q, and suppose S believes both p and q. Then either can justify the other, needing only the suppose that one of the beliefs is justified and that there are present linking beliefs that are also justified. So if you justifiably believe p and justifiably belief that if p is true then q is true as well, and believe q on the basis of competently inferring the second from the first, then p justifies q for you. Since these claims are arbitrarily chosen, we get the result that anything can justify anything else.

Do you like this argument?

I just got a note from Jennifer Lackey about some changes that have occurred with this journal. First, Alvin Goldman is now the editor, and they have added four new associate editors, two of them being Fred Schmitt and Jennifer. Jennifer reports that there is a fast turnover between submission and publication (roughly 6 months) and a slightly higher acceptance rate than competing journals (it is currently 14%).

Submissions are being encouraged for the journal, and with editorial leadership like this, there’s a bright future for the journal. Here’s a link to the journal site:

http://www.episteme.us.com.

Here’s a draft of a new paper by Ram on warrant transmission, engaging a debate between Crispin Wright and Jim Pryor/Martin Davies. It concerns Moore’s proof of an external world and the question of what epistemic value the proof could have.

In the “Hot Topics” post, a new topic of discussion has begun, and it may be useful to call attention to it in a separate post so that it doesn’t get lost in the other one. It is about the basing relation, and it began with Jim’s comment:

Here’s an example: one promising way to draw an internalism/externalism contrast is to say: X is eligible to be an INTERNAL justifier of your belief iff X is the sort of thing upon which you could BASE that belief. This preserves some of the familiar contrasts: e.g., intuitively, the reliability of your belief is not a candidate basis. But it may end up diverging in some ways from the more familiar definitions of internalism. Still, I think it’d be a fruitful contrast—if only we had some informative, independent story about what can count as a basis…

Ram followed up with 2 proposals:

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Last year CDers had a discussion about what the most important developments in epistemology over the last quarter century have been. I thought it would be interesting if CDers had a similar discussion that looked more toward the future than toward the recent past of epistemology. So, what do you think are the hottest new topics in epistemology? What topics do you think are emerging as or are on their way to becoming hot topics in epistemology? Are there new debates or ideas whose presence on the contemporary scene is a refreshing change of pace and promises to lead to fruitful research in the future?

I just saw Michael Kremer’s review of Soames’ two-volume work on the history of analytic philosophy, noticing especially the strong role he assigns to G.E. Moore in showing how pre-philosophical thinking is relevant to philosophical theorizing (”the recognition that philosophical speculation must be grounded in pre-philosophical thought”). Kremer is distressed by the rather extensive lacunae in the story of the book, but doesn’t give an alternative story that is more inclusive. Soames’ story is teleological, culminating in Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, but it strikes me as myopic to see that as the story of analytic philosophy. The heart of the story involves Moore, but not simply through the Moorean methodology that requires the grounding of philosophical speculation in pre-philosophical thought. So here’s what I think is more the truth of the matter.

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