Certain Doubts

Some minor glitches with the transfer, so let me ask for holding off on posting or commenting till we get things sorted out.  Hopefully tomorrow…

The new site is up and running.  Please email me if you notice anything that needs attention.  first name (Jonathan) underscore last name (Kvanvig), with baylor dot edu after the ‘at’ symbol.

A quick alert about an impending move for Certain Doubts. On March 30, we will be upgrading to the latest version of WordPress as well as moving the site to a different server. When the process starts, the site will be shut down so that the database can be moved. The hope is that the entire process won’t take that long, but I’m sure that some functionality will be compromised initially (especially sidebar items that rely on old plugins). I’ll work on those issues as time permits, but we’ll get the site back up as quickly as we can so that the epistemically addicted do not need to find a new drug!

The Review of Symbolic Logic has just published on line a special issue devoted to recent developments in formal epistemology. The issue contains the following papers and an introduction to the special issue:

Horacio Arló-Costa: FORMAL EPISTEMOLOGY, CONTEXT AND CONTENT: INTRODUCTION TO SPECIAL ISSUE ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FORMAL EPISTEMOLOGY
Niel Tennant: BELIEF-REVISION, THE RAMSEY TEST, MONOTONICITY, AND THE SO-CALLED IMPOSSIBILITY RESULTS
Jeff Helzner:EXPECTED CONTENT
Haim Gaifman: CONTEXTUAL LOGIC WITH MODALITIES FOR TIME AND SPACE
Rohit Parikh: SENTENCES, BELIEF AND LOGICAL OMNISCIENCE, OR WHAT DOES DEDUCTION TELL US?
Sergei Artemov: THE LOGIC OF JUSTIFICATION
Giacomo Sillari: QUANTIFIED LOGIC OF AWARENESS AND IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE WORLDS
Joseph Halpern: INTRANSITIVITY AND VAGUENESS

The articles deal with a variety of topics from the logic of context and content, to the problem of logical omniscience, to belief revision, to the logic of justification, to formal models of vagueness. I assume that the printed version will be available soon.

From initial submission to acceptance, this one took eleven months. That’s not bad at all. But as many of you know, it sure seems like it takes forever, even when things move rapidly by journal standards. Now finally the wait is over! “Epistemic Invariantism and Speech Act Contextualism” will soon feature in a volume of The Philosophical Review near you.

The short abstract: This paper shows how to reconcile epistemic invariantism with the knowledge account of assertion. My basic proposal is that we can comfortably combine invariantism with the knowledge account of assertion by endorsing contextualism about speech acts. My demonstration takes place against the backdrop of recent contextualist attempts to usurp the knowledge account of assertion, most notably Keith DeRose’s influential argument that the knowledge account of assertion spells doom for invariantism and enables contextualism’s ascendancy.

I’m being chased through enemy territory, and a warning light on my (eccentric) car indicates that either I am about to run out of fuel, or the radiator is about to boil over. I’m pretty sure it’s the fuel. Bother! If I hadn’t been going to run out of fuel, I would get away. Of course, I could be wrong about the fuel. But then, if I don’t run out of fuel, the radiator would boil over.
–Dorothy Edgington, “On Conditionals,” Mind 104 (1995): 235-329; p. 239)

I’m wondering which conditionals are in place in Edgington’s example — which seem accurate or likely accurate, and are the right way to put things. Which are the right things to say, or can be made the right things to say by inserting a “probably” or “likely” in the relevant place? Above, Edgington herself gives two:

A. If I hadn’t been going to run out of fuel, I would get away

B. If I don’t run out of fuel, the radiator would boil over

I’m not sure about these. Not saying they’re wrong. That’s just not the way I would put things. Is that just me? I am personally very unlikely to use anything like the “hadn’t been going to” of (A)’s antecedent, but if I were to start a conditional of that way, I’d be inclined to finish it off differently:

A2. If I hadn’t been going to run out of fuel, I would have gotten away [or would have been about to get away]

But that I’m very unsure of. Is (A) right (perhaps with a “probably” in there), or (A2), both, neither? And if we switch to antecedents with “were” in them, which if either of these is good (perhaps with a “probably” inserted):

A3. If I were not about to run out of fuel, I would get away

A4. If I were not about to run out of fuel, I would have been about to get away

And if I started a conditional off with (B)’s antecedent, I would finish it off differently, using “will” instead of “would”:

B2. If I don’t run out of fuel, the radiator will boil over

Is (B) right (perhaps with a “probably” inserted), or (B2), or both, or neither?
Any reactions to these?

From: Prof. Dr. Thomas Grundmann, Universität zu Köln, Germany

The Fourth Cologne Summer School in Philosophy on

“Reliabilism and Social Epistemology: Problems and Prospects”

will take place in Cologne, August 24 – 28, 2009. Our special guest this year will be Alvin Goldman (Rutgers University). The main focus will be on the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science and sociology. We will discuss foundational issues in epistemology (the analysis of knowledge and justification, the controversy between internalism and externalism), but also topics from applied epistemology (knowledge in a social world, the methodological role of intuitions). The Summer School mainly aims at professional philosophers, cognitive scientists, sociologists, and advanced graduate students.

The attendance is free, but limited to 50 participants – on the basis of motivation and qualification. Online application is possible through April 30. Please add a short letter of application where you briefly explain your academic background and your main motivation for participating in the Summer School. Soon after the deadline, we will inform you about the success of your application.

For more information and for our email address please visit our website.

Here’s a way of thinking about the value of things. The relationship between what is valuable and our valuing can take two explanatory directions. Sometimes we value things because of the value that they have in themselves or in relation to other things that have value in themselves. Other times, things have value because we value them.

This simple point has implications for the notion of final value and the attempt to explain the special value of knowledge in terms of final value. (more…)

Wondering how on earth you got through graduate school only to land up back in junior high school fretting over your credentials for sitting in the back of the school bus? You, my friend, need a vacation! And to help you select a suitable destination, you’ll of course want to consult the 2009 World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report. 133 countries are ranked, and the top 5 are…
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It is officially Spring Break for us at SMU and while my students party on islands so exclusive their names are unknown to me, I’ll be heading to Oklahoma for the Epistemic Goodness Conference. I’m not jealous, by the way. Riggs and Pritchard have put together what promises to be a really exciting conference and I won’t have to worry about sunburn. I thought I’d do a quick post on something that I’ll be discussing next Saturday.

In old paper of Richard Feldman’s (’Subjective and Objective Justification in Ethics and Epistemology’), he stakes out a view concerning the relationship between the justification of belief and action that I’d like to discuss here. In criticizing some recent work on ‘actionable intelligence’ (e.g., Neta’s forthcoming proposal about when it’s permissible to treat something as a reason for action and a similar view defended by Fantl and McGrath in their forthcoming book), I’ve worked from the assumption that considerations that bear on the justification of action bear on the justification of beliefs about the justification of that action. If because of certain facts, someone cannot justifiably A, I’ve claimed that these very facts prevent someone from justifiably believing that they must A. (And, of course, whatever it is that ensures that your belief that you must A is justified will thereby provide an adequate justification for the intention to act in accordance with this judgment as well as the action itself.) Feldman thinks this isn’t right.
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