Intriguing post on the Legal History Blog argues that serious historians should stop using the phrase "the founders". This is how one uses the phrase in a sentence: It is not clear whether the founders approved of a broad reader of the commerce clause when they wrote it. The problem with such a sentence is that it suggests a sort of chicken-entrails reading of the constitution that "the founders" wrote. What they thought of the commerce clause depends on which one or which cluster you want to discuss. The clusters you might want to understand overlap and/or contrast in confusing ways, and using the phrase "the founders" as if it is itself a coherent cluster of individuals living and working in the US in the late 18th century adds nothing but confusion. In that particular case, we could also have used the phrase "the framers". But part of the problem is that, complicated as "the framers" itself is as a concept, "the founders...
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Can "refute" simply mean "deny"? If so: isn't that unnecessarily confusing? Typically and historically, refutation means "to prove a claim to be false or a person to be in error." Example: "The observation of noontime shadows at both Alexandria and Syene can refute the flat earth theory." [There is no noontime shadow at Syene, on the equator. There is a shadow at Alexandria, at a latitude of 31 degrees.] Yet one irritatingly often encounters the word "refute" used where "deny" would suit the context better. "At a news conference, the Senator refuted claims that he had embezzled campaign funds to finance an excursion to Alexandria with prostitutes." I just made that one up. But the following less amusing example is authentic: "Sometime in 2023, blockchain firm Forte acquired game studios Phoenix Labs and Rumble Games. However, it would be a year before this came to light, because according to a report fr...
Colin McGinn, via his blog, recently offered an intriguing definition of philosophy. He said it is "the study of logical reality." What did he mean by that? Well ... the idea was to put the question "what is philosophy" within a family of other such questions, which have known answers, and then to locate philosophy as a member of that family. So: what is physics? the study of physical reality. What is psychology? the study of mental reality. What is history? The study of historical reality. And so forth. If philosophy belongs in this family, then philosophy is the study of some [aspect of?] reality. If we say that it is the study of logical reality we say that it is at core about (McGinn's words here), "All the relations of entailment, consistency, and inconsistency that exist." Entailment in particular has to be understood in a capacious sense to make this work as a definition. One of McGinn's examples of how his definition may s...
Cezary Cieslinski has written a new book about the place of the concept of truth within epistemology, and the history of questions about that place. Its title? THE EPISTEMIC LIGHTNESS OF TRUTH. Obviously this touches on matter central to the concerns of this blog. And it has nothing at all to do with the horror film "Truth or Dare?" whence comes this illustration. For now, though, all I will do is refer you, dear reader, to a discussion of this column in Notre Dame Philosophical Review. Here is the link: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-epistemic-lightness-of-truth-deflationism-and-its-logic/ Unfortunately, I am not sufficiently up on the argumentative context to make sense of that review, so I doubt I'd be able to make sense of the book. Consider this claim, from the reviewer: "Cieslinski does not accept semantic conservativeness as a precondition for an axiomatic truth theory being deflationist." If your response to that sentence is "gee why ...
Most talk of "priorities" is nonsense. Whenever someone chooses to work on, advocate, or contribute money to A, there will it seems always be someone who says, "but what about B?" Since there are always a variety of good causes, there will always be a host of possible Bs. If you contributed to A, then A must be your priority then, right? Well, no, not necessarily. You could make that true by definition, but the definition will end up being rigged and arbitrary. By any useful definition, prioritizing A over B means valuing A more than B, and it simply is NOT the case that by acting to advance A today I prove that I value A more than B. I use the algebraic language precisely because the particular range of applications is so broad. Ask yourself: if I am feeding my cat at this moment, does it follow I value my cat more than my dog? or my child? No: each of the latter two may be well feed and content, the cat may be unfed for this day and meowing angrily a...
"The moment one tries to define what habit is, one is led to the fundamental properties of matter. The laws of Nature are nothing but the immutable habits which the different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions and reactions upon one another." So writes William James early in the fourth chapter of Principles of Psychology. Is he, as may at first appear, playing a semantic game here? I think not. We say that the electrons of an atom have a "habit" of acting in various law-like ways in a sense somewhat stronger than metaphor. After all, on such a basis we can also say that our neurons have a habit of acting in certain ways. It is a fair guess that certain thought patterns correspond to pathways of electrocal charges through a possible line of our neurons, and that once these pathways have been oft followed, their continued use in the future becomes more likely. Such a conjecture would provide a physical basis for habits of thought. We might sa...