Certain Doubts

I just wanted to draw your attention to the conference on “Linguistics and Epistemology” I’m organising. The event will take place next year at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland, UK), and the dates of the conference are May 12/13 2007. The purpose of this conference is to try and find out whether the recent trend of using linguistic arguments to support epistemological positions is really motivated. Keynote speakers will be:

Kent Bach
Peter Ludlow
Jonathan Schaffer
Jason Stanley,

with comments from

Jessica Brown
Ram Neta
Duncan Pritchard
myself.

There also is a call for papers (actually, a call for abstracts) for this event, which you can find on the conference homepage.

Basically, abstracts should be emailed to me before November 27th 2006, and should not be longer than 250 words. Notification of acceptance/rejection will then be given by December 15th 2006. Do submit something if you are interested!

I often read that conditionals present deep philosophical problems. We’ve got to know what the real meaning of conditionals are, abstracts/forewords/grant proposals intone, and how to understand strict, material, indicative, subjunctive, counterfactual, probabilistic, suppositional readings of English sentences having the form “if…then…”, and how the modalities of tense, epistemic position, moral position fit together in them to effectively guide our practical reasoning, our decision making…to put order in our lives. What could be more important? Whitehead was wrong: Induction isn’t the scandal of philosophy, conditionals are.

And yet I don’t buy this, and neither should you. We see all manner of analyses and theories of conditionals, none of them living up to their advertised promise of explaining this supposed category of English expressions in a way that has anything to do with practical reasoning and decision making. This is because the theoretical category “conditional” in English is as pliable as a Texas congressional district.

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My colleague, Karsten Harries, e-mailed me & others the YouTube URL where you can see the Python skit involving Greek vs. German philosophers. See it here.

(Does anybody know?: Has this been available on the web for a long time? Are all the great Monty Python Flying Circus skits available somewhere?)

Joe Salerno is editing a special edition of Synthese, and I’m posting the call for papers for the issue for him. Here ’tis:

“This is a call for papers to be submitted by May 1, 2007 for inclusion in a special issue of Synthese, to be titled “Knowability and Beyond”. The issue will contain some invited papers by leading figures in the field, among others Jon Kvanvig (”The Incarnation and the Knowability Paradox”) and Neil Tennant (”Williamson’s Woes”), but will also provide the opportunity for new authors to make original contributions. Uninvited submissions will be double-blind reviewed. The link is here.”

Suppose you are deciding whether to do A or B, which are mutually exclusive. Suppose also that you believe the following:

1. If p, then I should do A.
2. If ~p, then I should do B.

But, being a philosopher, you think further, and realize that the truth of these conditionals is contingent. And, further, you believe that the contingency is based on some further claim q for the first claim and r for the second. So you believe:

3. If q, then (if p, then I should do A).
4. If ~q, then ~(if p, then I should do A).
5. If r, then (if ~p, then I should do B).
6. If ~r, then ~(if ~p, then I should do B).

Suppose then that you learn whether or not p is true. Since you believe 1 & 2, it looks like that would settle the issue of what to do. But you also believe 3-6, and we may suppose that you haven’t learned whether or not q is true and you haven’t learned whether or not r is true.

You have available to you the following line of reasoning: “the truth of 1 and 2 is dependent on information I don’t have, and so I shouldn’t be confident about either 1 or 2. So I shouldn’t use the truth or falsity of p as a guide to what to do in this case.”

Is this reasoning sound?

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It is Monday and Johnson is anxious. He’s competing with several other managers for a promotion at Acme, Inc. They are so evenly matched in qualifications, Johnson learns, that the candidate who scores highest on a ruthlessness test everyone took last Friday will get the job. The results won’t be announced until this upcoming Friday.

Meanwhile Johnson’s charge, Parker, has missed his sales quota for the month. It’s a fluke, since Parker is his top earner, and Johnson knows it. Still, if he sacked Parker this would give Johnson evidence of his ruthlessness and therefore give him reason to believe he had scored well on the exam on which his promotion depends. He really wants this promotion.

So, assuming that the numbers are right, the expected value to Johnson from his firing Parker could be greater than the expected value from his not firing Parker, even though his firing Parker cannot causally influence the results of the ruthlessness exam.

Should Johnson sack Parker? If not, why not?
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I just received a gracious email from Yu Guo, a reader of Certain Doubts who teaches at Communication University of China, and works on epistemology, philosophy of language, and Kant. Since we ordinarily think of analytic epistemology as being at home most in Anglo areas of the world, it is interesting and encouraging to see interest in it in other areas as well. I’m sure the possibilities of discussion with colleagues that many of us take for granted are not nearly so available in other geographic locations, so I’m posting here a quite interesting paper that Yu sent to me with the email. It’s about closure and the argument for skepticism typically called the argument from ignorance. The paper can be found here.

As always comments and discussion strongly encouraged.

At the very helpful suggestion of Greg Wheeler, I’ve added a new category for posts. If you’ve posted anything that would be appropriately categorized in this way, you may go back and edit the post by checking this category. Doing so will help readers sort through the posts here a bit easier. I plan to do some of this when I find some time, but I’m sure those who posted will have better memories than I here.

John and Gillian have written a piece on Jason Stanley’s Knowledge and Practical Interests. The paper can be found here. It looks really interesting, so check it out!

I will probably be teaching some MBA students some epistemology. Just six or so lectures. I would like to get some opinions regarding appropriate topics for such lectures. I am inclined to at least start out with going over some basic differences and relations among knowledge, belief, truth, and evidence. But other than that, what do you think would be best for MBA students?

Bryan Frances