Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Peter Baron, paraphrasing J.L. Mackie, offers an argument against the intuitionism that W.D. Ross and G.E. Moore (and I) share, in meta-ethics or (what is it seems to me the same) moral epistemology.  The Baron/Mackie argument runs thus: 1. Objective moral values and the faculties that intuitionists posit to detect them are strikingly queer, or as Mackie put it, "utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else." 2. We should not believe in such a queer concept without very strong evidence. Lemma: We should not believe in objective moral values or a moral sense without very strong evidence. 3. There is little or no evidence in favor of these queer things. Conclusion: We should not believe in them. Notice that the article proceeds as two syllogisms, with the conclusion of the first serving as one of the premises of the second.  The whole thing seems to me to be a bit of evidential gerrymandering. It is strikingly odd, even queer, that bright highly-trained

  In philosophical writings about epistemology today there is a rather big to-do about internalist versus externalist accounts of knowledge. I'll define the distinction here speaking very roughly.  To an internalist, I know X to be the case if and only if (a) X is the case, (b) I believe X, and (c) I have a good reason, or warrant, or justification, to believe X. To an externalist, on the other hand, I know X to be the case if and only if (a) X is the case, (b) I believe X, and (c) the reason why I believe X has an appropriate causal connection with X.  The point of the labels is that justification (or whatever a particular theorist in this line may call it) is internal to my state of mind as the believer-of-X.  Causation may be entirely external to my state of mind.  Direct sense perception provides the simplest example.  I form a belief that the leaves of this tree in front of me are green. It IS the case that they are green. The reason why I believe them to be green has a causal

  Looking back on the second impeachment trial of the former President. I think it may have been a tactical mistake for the Democrats in the House of Representatives to go with a single simple "incitement" count. A better approach would have been to indict Trump both on incitement to riot and on conspiracy to cause or produce a riot. Thinking in terms of first amendment law [yes, there is a lot of room for argument as to whether we ought to be thinking in those terms in this matter -- but let us go with it anyway for sake of discussion] -- and thinking of the specific speech of Trump's on which attention at first focused -- the claim that this was "incitement" and punishable (a false cry of "fire" in a crowded theatre) is a tricky one. Any evidence that this was not a spur of the moment reaction by the crowd, any evidence that it had been planned, EVEN IF TRUMP WAS ONE OF THE PLANNERS, tended logically to weaken the claim of incitement.  Trumps lawyer

 I can't really claim to understand this, but I'll link to it here because some of you might.  So maybe you can explain it to me. I believe that the Supreme Court has in recent terms (since the Baker/Gay-Weddings thing -- actually since further back) in essence erased everything on the blackboard with regard to free exercise of religion law. And perhaps establishment law, too. Since then, instead of trying to put some new coherent guidelines up on the blackboard, they have been going in a very ad hoc way through the cases that get to them, deciding everything on the basis of spit polish and gut feelings and hoping that at some point it will add up to a coherent doctrine.  It hasn't yet. Some day it might. Stranger things have happened.    Anyway, the thing I don't claim to understand is the judgment, and cluster of decisions in Harvest Rock Church and South Bay United Pentecostal.     The court seems split several ways: I don't grok the alignment.  (That's Alit

Yes, Brady kicked butt. The Greatest of All Time in professional football, the Tiger Woods or Ken Jennings of his sport put on a demonstration of what a GOAT looks like in action.   Though he is now sailing under the piratical banner of the Tampa Bay Buccs, whenever I hear an announcer calling a Brady pass to Gronkowski I naturally think I'm watching a Patriots game.  This was fun. The half time show, less so. Maybe the symbolism of the ranks and files of masked up (bandaged up?) faces escaped me. I fear that, like my contemporaries in general, I'm out of touch with youth culture, so I certainly didn't recognize the music. Some of the ads were clever. I enjoyed the Paramount ads, in which Patrick Stewart, unseen, was urging various pop culture figures to keep climbing a mountain.  Beavis and Butthead were involved. Huh huh, nhuh huh.  There was also a gig-economy ad for a service that helps you create a website for your own gig-economy business. The ad involved Dolly Parton

I'm going to attempt to go up to three posts a week for now.  Elizabeth Chika Tippett, of the University of Oregon School of Law, has written a new article available at SSRN, Enslaved Agents .  The article begins with the fact that between 1798 and 1863, in the slave states of the US (and CS), certain slaves would conduct business negotiations and conclude transactions on behalf of their owners. This, as one might expect, sometimes became fodder for litigation when one party to a deal wanted an escape clause, since they could not reasonably have expected a court to hold them to promises made to a chattel. But that argument doesn't seem to have done them any good.  Some of the specific situations Tippett mentions are fascinating. Consider  the case of "Robert Gordon, an enslaved man who profitably managed a coal yard, and in exchange was allowed to sell the 'slack' coal on his own behalf, through which he purchased his freedom." So he not only managed the coal

  My recent reading includes HORACE GREELEY, a biography of the famed editor-publisher of that name, written by James M. Lundberg of the University of Notre Dame.  Much about Greeley I am just learning as I go along.  Greeley was born in February 1811, in New Hampshire, though he did most of his growing up in Vermont. He went to New York City to seek his fortune in 1831. So it wasn't "go west young man" for him -- it was head south. Like a lot of young men from the provinces who have headed toward the nearest metropolis over millennia, he had a high opinion of himself and big plans to effectuate that opinion. It took him a decade to find his footing and to create the vehicle with which he will be forever associated. Greeley created the New-York Tribune in 1841. (Yes, the hyphen was standard then). This was a vehicle for a reform-oriented Whiggery associated also with William Seward and Thurlow Weed in the context of New York state's politics and beyond it that of the

  What is this about? Who carries such an umbrella through a snowstorm?  This individual would look devastatingly alone in a big snowy wood were we not all inclined by now to think about who is holding the camera.  Still, this sight make me weary.  So ... why did I put it here? Perhaps so that the next thing I put up here, whatever it will be, will seem upbeat in contrast. 

  Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave.   First, Plato  is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability.  I  only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

  I may have said this before at some point, either in this blog or in its precursor. But it is worth a repeat, and I'm too lazy to  check anyway.  Lots of books have been written trying to make sense of Rousseau’s various writings on the subject of whether Rousseau may be said to have helped set off the French revolution. The three most important original texts are, the DISCOURSE ON INEQUALITY, THE DISCOURSE ON THE ARTS AND SCIENCES, and the SOCIAL CONTRACT. There are minor works that one would have to include in any comprehensive survey, such as Rousseau’s LETTER ON SPECTACLES. Speaking in very broad-brush terms, I will say that if Rousseau had any impact on the course of the revolution it was to delay it. Because the over-all impact of Rousseau’s writings was counter-Enlightenment. What follows is the TL;DR version. The real justification for the French revolution came from the enlightenment figures, Diderot, D’Alembert, Voltaire, Holbach. Their message was “ you, the people of

Certain matters simply have to be settled.  That is it. That's the entry.