E.G.

The movie "Speed" makes an effort to show that the hero (the Keanu Reeves character) is not stupid.  For instance: Throughout the movie there are several scenes in which the hero pauses, stares ahead for a moment, and then produces an accurate prediction of the villain’s next move.  Such scenes are meant to establish that the hero is smart, or at least insightful.  But despite being smart, the hero isn’t supposed to be very wordy; he does not speak much, and it’s hard to imagine him engaging in extended conversation.  By contrast, the villain (the Dennis Hopper character) speaks often and excitedly; he is delighted by the cleverness of his evil plot, and seems barely able to restrain himself from explaining it in full detail to anyone who is willing to listen.  As I recall, he even explains it to himself when nobody is around.

I think "Speed" is, in this regard, a fairly typical action movie.  Action heroes are generally supposed to be just as smart as action villains, though smart in a much different way.  Action heroes can often "just see" what is the best or right thing to do; there is often "no time to explain" how the hero knows what he knows, though the hero always does turn out to know it.  On the other hand, villains almost always seem to have time to explain.  Action movies tend to give their villains plenty of time to go over their plans and motives with their underlings, with their victims, and eventually even with the hero himself.  As a result, action movies usually contain a villain’s elaborate attempt at justification for doing evil, but fail to include any counterargument. 

Another example: Consider "Apocalypse Now," in which the Marlon Brando character (the villain) provides an engaging and potentially persuasive, though mostly incoherent, defense of his weird death cult.  The movie does not provide any real response to Brando’s diatribe.  Nobody, to my recollection, ever gives any reasons against Marlon Brando’s view.  The Martin Sheen character, who is the movie’s hero (if the movie has a hero), simply sits quietly, listening and waiting, while Brando explains.  Of course, in his voice-over, Sheen does say that the Brando character is obviously insane, but that is not a counterargument; Sheen does not say where or how Brando is mistaken.  (Anyway, that is how I remember the movie; I may have forgotten important details.)

Generally speaking: Heroes pronounce, and report what they know; villains explain, and attempt to compel assent.  Why is this so often the case in action movies?  Maybe the explanation is simple.  Anyone can come up with a bad argument, but it is sometimes difficult to come up with a good one.  But any argument for doing evil is going to be a bad one (hopefully), so writers have no problem coming up with arguments to give to their villains.  But perhaps writers don’t want to go to the trouble of coming up with a good argument for the hero’s view, so they just give him a kind of deep, inexplicable insight into the truth of his view instead.

Maybe that’s not right; maybe the explanation lies in audiences’ demands rather than in writers’ choices or limitations.  Maybe audiences would be suspicious of any attempt to explain how what is right is right; perhaps they feel that they can "just see" what is the right thing to do in their own lives, so they think that any good hero will "just see" it as well.  Or maybe audiences think it would be undignified for a hero to engage in debate with a villain.  Submitting to a debate carries the risk of losing the debate; what does the hero gain from taking such a risk?  At any rate, if the hero is perceived to have lost a debate with the villain, this would significantly diminish the amount of satisfaction the audience is able to feel when the villain is eventually slain by the hero. 

For one reason or another, anyway, it seems that action heroes tend to keep the verbiage to a minimum, leave the reasons to the villains, and simply kill villains whenever given the chance.  I wonder if this has any negative effects on audiences.  Maybe it makes people feel entitled to refuse to give reasons for their views.  Or maybe it leaves people with the impression that rightness does not require, or cannot be given, an explanation.

This is old but good.  (Via CSOTD.)

This post will just be a reiteration of my previous argument in what I hope will be a clearer and more correct form.

Here is how I now want to put the thing I am calling "entitlement closure": "For any propositions p and q, if I know p, and I know p=>q, then I am in a position to be weak epistemically entitled to write ‘q.’"  And here is how I now want to put the thing I am calling "knowledge closure": "For any propositions p and q, if I know p, and I know p=>q, then I am in a position to know q."

The proposition "(p, and p=>q) => q" is always and necessarily true.  Let us call this the "underlying fact" of modus ponens.  As argued previously, this underlying fact of modus ponens is not modus ponens itself, because modus ponens is not a fact at all; it is a rule.  I want to understand modus ponens as a rule which entitles one to write some proposition q under certain circumstances.  In the previous post, I suggested three ways to understand how this rule is supposed to work:

(i) Logical MP: For any p and q, whenever I have already written "p," and already written "p=>q," then logical MP entitles me to write "q."
(ii) Weak Epistemic MP ("WEMP" for short): For any p and q, whenever I believe p, and believe p=>q, then weak epistemic MP entitles me to write "q."
(iii) Strong Epistemic MP ("SEMP" for short): For any p and q, whenever I know p, and know p=>q, then strong epistemic MP entitles me to write "q."

I think there are more than three senses in which a person can be "entitled to write q."  But I think the three rules above highlight three of the most important of these senses.  I will say a person is "logically entitled" to write q whenever it is Logical MP which entitles her to write q; a person is "weak epistemically entitled" to write q whenever it is WEMP which entitles her to write q; and a person is "strong epistemically entitled" to write q whenever it is SEMP which entitles her to write q.  I will say a rule "works" when the rule really does provide the sort of entitlement it is supposed to provide, and that a rule "always works" when the rule always provides such entitlement.

Here’s my argument for the view that "entitlement to write" is closed (i.e., for the view that "entitlement closure" is true):

1. If WEMP does not "always work," then Logical MP is an arbitrary rule; it cannot be given a plausible rationale. (Assumption)
2. If "entitlement to write" is not closed, then WEMP does not "always work." (Assumption)
3. Logical MP is not an arbitrary rule. (Assumption)
4. So, WEMP does "always work." (1,3)
5. Thus, entitlement is closed.  (2,4)

I take it that premise 3 is obviously true.  Given the way I’ve defined terms above, I think premise 2 has to be true.  So premise 1 is hopefully the only premise which might be controversial.  That is the premise I will try to defend here.  Premise 1 would be true if (a) the claim that WEMP always works provides a plausible rationale for adopting Logical MP as a rule, and (b) no other rationale for adopting Logical MP as a rule would be plausible. 

We can see that (a) is true simply by considering an example.  Suppose that Pete is trying to explain basic logic to John.  Pete has written the following things on the blackboard:

(1) George Bush is made of iron;
(2) If George Bush is made of iron, then ketchup glows.

Pete claims that he is now entitled to write "(3) Ketchup glows."  John objects: "Why should you be allowed to write such an absurd thing?  It’s obviously false."  Pete replies: "Yes, (3) is obviously false, but it follows from (1) and (2)."  John: "But (1) and (2) are obviously false also."  John: "Well, in logic, we are acting as though we believe the assumed premises of any argument under consideration.  And surely you see that, if I did believe (1) and (2), then I would be entitled, in some sense or other, to write (3).  In other words: I am logically entitled to write (3) because, if I did believe (1) and (2), then I would be entitled to write (3)."

In this example, I think Pete hopes that John will intuitively "see" that, given belief in some "p" and some "p=>q," no matter how absurd "p" and "p=>q" happen to be, one would be entitled in some sense to write "q."  That is, Pete hopes that John will have an intuition that WEMP "works."  And this hoped-for intuition plays a central role in Pete’s attempt to motivate logical entitlement to write (3).  At any rate, this line of support would probably not succeed if John thought there were exceptions to WEMP.  For instance, if John were to say: "I can imagine cases in which I believe (1) and believe (2), but am still not entitled in any sense to write (3)," then Pete would not be able to appeal to WEMP to get John to see that Pete is logically entitled to write (3); Pete would need to appeal to something else.

This example makes it reasonable to think that it is at least possible to use WEMP to support Logical MP.  Is there any other way to support Logical MP?  Of course, I cannot show that there is not any other way; at best, I can only show that a few of the main other ways which have been proposed cannot succeed.

Sometimes people try to support Logical MP by appeal to what I have called the "underlying fact" of modus ponens — the fact that "(p, and p=>q) => q" is true.  But this clearly cannot provide full support for Logical MP, because "(p, and p=>q) => q" is always true, but Logical MP does not always entitle me to write any q.  However, one might be able to use the underlying fact of modus ponens in conjunction with something else to motivate acceptance of Logical MP.  We can get an example of that kind of strategy by returning to Pete and John.  Suppose John is still not convinced that Pete is entitled to write "(3)," so Pete tries another line:

Pete: "If (1) is true, and (2) is true, then (3) must be true.  You see that, don’t you, John?"
John: "Yes, I see it; but I see no reason to think that (1) or (2) might be true."
Pete: "Well, suppose (1) and (2) were true.  Then (3) would have to be true."
John: "I agree.  But how does that entitle you to write (3)?  You have not shown that (1) and (2) are true; you’ve only written (1) and (2)."
Pete: "When I write (1) and (2), I’m asking you to suppose they are true.  If you make that supposition, you’re committed to say that (3) has got to be true.  I’m entitled to write anything which has got to be true, so, given the supposition that (1) and (2) are true, which I have asked you to make by writing (1) and (2), you have to admit that I am entitled to write (3)."

In the first line, Pete tries to support his employment of Logical MP by direct appeal to the underlying fact of modus ponens.  John is not satisfied by this, so Pete brings in the supposition that (1) and (2) are true.  This supposition, in conjunction with the underlying fact of modus ponens, should get John to admit that Pete is entitled, in some sense at least, to write (3).  But of course to "suppose" (1) and (2) is merely to assume (1) and (2) are true.  And to "assume (1) and (2) are true" is nothing more than to proceed as though one believes (1) and (2).  But now we are back to an appeal to WEMP; for it is WEMP which entitles one to write (3) whenever one believes (1) and (2).

In this case, then, it seems to me that some sort of implicit use of WEMP is necessary in order to bridge the gap between the underlying fact of modus ponens, and the claim that Logical MP "works."  I do not see any way to motivate acceptance of Logical MP without appealing to WEMP.  My failure to see such a way does not, of course, show that no such way exists, but perhaps it gives us reason to think no such way exists.  If no such way exists, then we have good reason to accept premise 1 in the argument above.  So, if I am right that premises 2 and 3 are clearly true, then it should follow that we have good reason to accept the conclusion of the argument: "Entitlement to write" is closed.

I think that natural languages are primarily supposed to be instruments of communication.  In this regard, I assume some languages are better than others; probably, some languages enable their speakers to get ideas across more quickly, clearly, and precisely than others do.  However, even if there are languages which are extremely bad at enabling their speakers to communicate, I think that this is still primarily what such a language is supposed to do.  The ability to enable us to communicate is, I think, the "essence" of language: it makes any given language what it is, i.e. a language.

Even so, one can use the words of a language to do things other than to communicate.  For instance, one can utter a string of words primarily in order to comfort a crying baby, rather than to communicate with it.  When one does this, the words retain their meaning, but they could perform their present function just as well (or just as poorly) even if they had no meaning whatsoever.  This, I suppose, explains why parents so often speak gibberish to their babies: a parent’s words do not need to mean anything in order to have their intended effect.

Song-writers usually need to meet two requirements: (1) Each word in the song must "mean something"; it must not be gibberish (although this rule is occasionally suspended); (2) Each word must meet the formal requirements of the song (i.e., the last words of each line must rhyme with one another; each line must contain a sequence of words with the correct number of syllables; etc.) (this rule seems very rarely to be suspended, although it is clear that different songs have different structures).

I want to suggest that these requirements at best make communication difficult, and at worst make communication impossible.  Let’s consider the song "Sweet Betsy From Pike":

Oh don’t you remember sweet Betsy from Pike,
Who crossed the wide prairie with her lover Ike,
With two yoke of oxen, a big yellow dog,
A tall Shangai rooster, and one spotted hog?

Here, it has to be admitted, a very simple set of ideas are communicated.  The song tells us that there was a person named Betsy, her husband was named Ike, they had a lot of animals, and they went on a journey.  Betsy might have actually existed, although that would involve a remarkable set of coincidences; it would require, for instance, that Betsy’s husband’s name just happened to rhyme perfectly with the name of her own home town.  It’s probably more likely that the details of Betsy’s life, along with possibly even Betsy herself, were mostly made up in order to satisfy demands of the song structure.  So the meaning of the song is probably, at least in large part, determined by the song-writer’s effort to conform to the song structure.  Nevertheless, the song clearly does mean something.

Incidentally, even this rudimentary level of meaningfulness breaks down in the chorus:

Singing dang fol dee dido,
Singing dang fol dee day.

None of this means, of course, that "Sweet Betsy from Pike" is a bad song; it only means that it does a bad job of getting across the song-writer’s intended meaning (if the song-writer had any intended meaning at all before sitting down to write).  We should forgive the song-writer for this; after all, only a finite number of words rhyme with "dog," so if the song-writer wanted to say anything other than "hog" at the end of the fourth line, he was probably simply unable to say it without starting over or abandoning the song structure.

At least in this case, I think it is clear that the song structure impedes the communication of certain ideas.  But is it possible that the song structure makes it easier to get other ideas across?  Perhaps the song structure can enhance meaningfulness in some ways, even as it diminishes or prevents meaningfulness in other ways.  But I see no reason to believe this might be the case.  In what way does rhyming or syllable-counting enhance meaning?  The number of syllables in a word, line, or sentence have nothing to do with its meaning.  So, it seems to me, if your goal is to get something across to your listeners, the song structure will not help you to do this; it is a set of hurdles you will need jump in order to meet your goal.  Perhaps you will successfully jump those hurdles, or perhaps not, but in any case, I think that they remain hurdles. 

So: If you have a specific set of ideas you want to get across, and this is your primary goal, you’re better off abandoning the song structure.  At best, the imposition of the song structure frustrates the aim of communicating quickly, clearly and precisely; at worst, it can prevent you from being able to communicate certain ideas at all.  Thus: If, as I have claimed, language "essentially" communicates, then the song structure does a certain kind of violence to language; it makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for language to do the very thing which language essentially does.

All this sounds like a horrible thing to do to language, but I don’t think so.  A parent trying to quiet her baby might lapse into gibberish without doing anyone or anything any harm.  What is coming out of her mouth cannot properly be said to be language anymore, of course; but she has not claimed that it is, and there is no reason to think that it ought to be.  Similarly, the writer of "Sweet Betsy From Pike" has, in adopting the song structure, accepted a set of limitations on his ability to communicate; but this only matters if communication was his primary goal.  Probably, his primary goal was to create a catchy, happy tune, or something along those lines.  I suppose he succeeded at this.

In general, however, I think all of this means that communication is rarely the primary goal of a song-writer.  Song-writing would be an incredibly frustrating experience if communication were the goal; song-writing would be like trying to write an essay in which all the words begin with the letter "N."  Such a rule would be utterly arbitrary with respect to your purpose, and you would have no reason to conform to it unless someone forced you.  But nobody forces song-writers to adopt the song structure; they generally seem to think that the song structure is not an arbitrary hurdle, but an essential part of whatever it is they are trying to do.  So I think we should assume that the song-writer’s primary goal is not to get across any particular meaning; probably, they have other goals in mind. 

If song-writers really want to communicate with us, I think, they should write an essay or otherwise speak to us like normal people do.

If modus ponens is a valid form of argument, then the proposition "If (p&(If p, then q)), then q" is true.  But this does not mean modus ponens just is that proposition.  In fact, modus ponens is not a proposition at all; it’s a rule. 

Rules do two things: They entitle you to do certain things, and they bar you from doing other things.  For instance, perhaps there’s a rule in the library which says you may not use a cell phone in Quiet Areas, but may use it in other areas.  This rule entitles you to use your cell phone in any area which is not designated as "quiet," and bars you from using it in the other areas.  Rules usually apply within certain domains; and usually, a rule is inapplicable in any domain other the domain to which it belongs.  For instance, suppose I’m on an airplane and I turn my cell phone on.  The stewardess asks me to turn it off.  I cannot respond by claiming to be entitled to use my cell phone on the airplane just because I am not currently in one of the Quiet Areas.

If modus ponens is a rule, what does it entitle me to do or say?  In a logical context, modus ponens simply entitles me to write "q" whenever I have already written "p" and "If p, then q."  It does not matter, in a logical context, whether "p" or "If p, then q" are true or false.  It also does not matter whether I know or even believe "p" or "If p, then q."  Indeed, it might turn out that "p" and "If p, then q" are known by me to be wildly false.  Even in such a case, as long as I have already written these propositions, modus ponens, as a rule of logic, entitles me to write q.

This "logical sense" of modus ponens is, perhaps, the one which most people have in mind when they talk about modus ponens.  But I believe there is another, wider, sense of modus ponens; let us call it the epistemic sense of modus ponens.  We can divide epistemic modus ponens into two parts: weak epistemic modus ponens, and strong epistemic modus ponens.  According to weak epistemic modus ponens, I am entitled to write "q" as long as I already believe that "p" and "If p, then q" are true.  According to strong epistemic modus ponens, I am entitled to write "q" as long as I already know that "p" and "If p, then q" are true. 

Consider that when people explain the idea behind modus ponens, they usually say something like: "If p is true, and "If p, then q" is true, then q must also be true."  This fact does indeed explain what motivates the adoption of a rule like modus ponens, but it is important to note that the truth of "If (p&(If p, then q)), then q" probably never, on its own, entitles me to write "q."  For if I have not already written "p" or "If p, then q," it does not matter what else happens to be the case; I am not logically entitled to write "q."  Likewise, if I do not believe "p" or "If p, then q," I am not "weak epistemically" entitled to write "q"; and if do not know "p" or "If p, then q," I am not "strong epistemically" entitled to write "q."  Indeed, there probably isn’t any meaningful rule which is justified solely by the truth of "If (p&(If p, then q)), then q."  For "If (p&(If p, then q)), then q" is always true; yet there is no meaningful rule according to which I am always entitled to write "q."

Which of these senses of modus ponens is the primary one?  I am not sure whether the answer to this question matters very much.  It probably doesn’t matter, either, whether you think that one of these "senses of modus ponens" does not properly deserve the name "modus ponens" at all; the important thing is that the three senses are distinguishable and have been given different names.

Now consider two "closure principles."  According to what I’ll call "entitlement closure," if one knows "p," and knows "If p, then q," then one is in a position to be entitled to believe q.  According what I’ll call "knowledge closure," if one knows "p," and knows "If p, then q," then one is in a position to know q.  (The "in a position to" clause just functions to ensure that these forms of closure don’t fail for uninteresting reasons.)  In this post, I will try to show that to deny entitlement closure would be very bad.  In a future post, I will argue that to deny knowledge closure might not be so bad; as things stand now, in fact, I think that knowledge closure probably does fail.

Straightforwardly, if entitlement closure fails, then strong epistemic modus ponens would not "work."  Indeed, the negation of entitlement closure is really just a statement of the conditions under which strong epistemic modus ponens would be an bad rule.  Similarly, weak epistemic modus ponens would not "work" either, since knowledge entails belief.

These facts alone might not show that entitlement closure has to be upheld.  Certainly, if your view implies that modus ponens is a bad rule, then your view has extremely counterintuitive consequences.  But if you think that the epistemic senses of modus ponens which I have suggested are not "really" representative of modus ponens, then denying entitlement closure does not entail that modus ponens is a bad rule.  So a view on which entitlement closure fails does not, at least not yet, entail that modus ponens is a bad rule.

Let’s consider the logical sense of modus ponens.  If neither of the two epistemic senses of modus ponens are the "real" modus ponens, then, I suppose, the logical sense of modus ponens must be the real one.  According to the logical sense of modus ponens, as long as you have already written "p" and "If p, then q," then you are entitled to write "q."  But why should you be entitled to write "q" under these circumstances?  Perhaps it is simply because, if "p&(If p, then q)" is true, then "q" must be true.  But this, I think, cannot be the whole reason.  I have merely written "p&(If p, then q)"; that does not mean it is true, nor does it mean q is true, and still less, I think, does it mean I am entitled to write q.  I claim that the following is a non sequitur:

1. I have written "p&(If p, then q)"
2. If "p&(If p, then q)" is true, then q must be true
3. Therefore, I am entitled to write q

Something, I think, must come between 2 and 3 to make this a complete line of reasoning.  What must come between?

When one wants to explain what is "right" about modus ponens in its logical sense, one typically says something like this: "Logically, modus ponens works whether the premises are true or not, and it works whether you believe the premises or not.  But it works because if you did believe p, and you did believe p entails q, then you would (or should) believe q.  Indeed, if you believe "p&(If p, then q)," then you really must believe q; if you were to deny q, then you couldn’t really believe both of the premises after all.  But in logic, we are acting as though we believe everything which has already been written."  This line of reasoning, I think, is very close to a formulation of weak epistemic modus ponens.  I suggest, then, that weak epistemic modus ponens provides the rationale for the logical sense of modus ponens.  If weak epistemic modus ponens didn’t "work," then one would be left without any compelling reason to think that modus ponens in its logical sense does "work."  Logical modus ponens would become an arbitrary rule without any available justification.

You might, of course, think that logical modus ponens is just an "arbitrary rule without any available justification".  But I think most people would want to avoid this consequence, if possible.  You might also think that logical modus ponens has a justification other than the ones which have been considered thus far.  So I have not proved that denying entitlement closure has very bad consequences.  But perhaps I have given the outlines of an argument which could show this.

In this post, I have been extremely vague about what I have meant by "entitlement."  I hope, however, that context has made my meaning something less than completely obscure.  I have said that there are rules in various domains, and that these rules entitle one to do certain things.  In the epistemic domain, I think, one is entitled or not entitled to believe various things, and one’s entitlement or lack of entitlement derives from whether one has "followed the rules" in arriving at one’s belief.

[UPDATE: Rereading this post, I notice a few confusions in my argument.  In the next post on this topic, I’ll try to de-confuse myself.]

I just watched Harry Frankfurt’s appearance on the Daily Show.  I liked the interview, but I wish I could have seen the two of them have a longer conversation.  Jon Stewart has drawn a lot of attention to himself by calling bullshit on various media personalities (e.g. in the Crossfire appearance); it seems to me that Harry Frankfurt and Jon Stewart each have relatively thought-out views about bullshit.  It would be interesting to see the two of them discuss that topic at greater length.

By the way, I am not sure whether Frankfurt is right to say that bullshitting is worse than lying.  Specifically, I don’t see why bullshitting is supposed to show less "respect for the truth" than lying.  Deliberately ramming your car into pedestrians is probably worse — and probably shows less respect for human life — than driving recklessly without caring whether you hit anyone.  Perhaps something similar is the case with utterances: Deliberately uttering things which are false, i.e. lying, is worse than uttering things without caring whether they are true or false, i.e. bullshitting.  As Frankfurt says, the liar does care about the truth, but he cares about it in precisely the wrong way; perhaps it’s better not to care about it at all. 

Another analogy: The bullshitter is to Han Solo as the liar is to Darth Vader.  Han Solo doesn’t care about the Force; he just wants to fly the Millenium Falcon around and around.  Darth Vader, on the other hand, does care about the Force, but he cares about it in precisely the wrong way.  But when we watch Star Wars, we’re supposed to think that being like Darth Vader is worse than being like Han Solo.

Oh, and another thing: I think having the notion of "bullshit" would have been useful during the election, when everyone was arguing about the lead-up to the Iraq war.  For instance, a lot of people have accused Bush of having lied about weapons of mass destruction.  Bush supporters typically respond to this by saying that Bush didn’t know whether Saddam had WMD’s.  Once that response is made, the conversation typically degenerates into a discussion about the circumstances under which a person can be said to have lied.  Bush may or may not have lied, but he probably did bullshit about the WMD’s.  That is, he probably did claim that there were WMD’s in Iraq without caring whether there were or were not.  Bullshitting may be worse than lying, or it may not be as bad as lying, as I suspect; but whatever the case, bullshitting is still clearly wrong.  Perhaps the election would have gone differently if we had had a polite way to talk about whether Bush bullshitted us into Iraq.

When I was little, I was familiar with the word "beauty," but I don’t think I ever really understood what the word was supposed to mean.  Of course, I had heard people say that certain women were beautiful or not beautiful, and I think I pretty well understood what was meant in those cases.  "Beautiful," when applied to women, meant something like "attractive," although I knew one could say a woman was beautiful without raising the issue of attraction.  But I also knew that people sometimes said that things, such as sunsets or paintings, were beautiful or not beautiful.  This was the more confusing usage.  I still don’t know what "beautiful" is supposed to mean when it’s applied to sunsets or paintings. 

In this post, Ken Taylor asks whether we should choose a life which contains many useful things, but very little of beauty, or a life which contains many beautiful things, but very little of use.  Ken says he would choose the former life.  I don’t know which life I would choose, but here’s another question.  People use a lot words which might be synonyms for "beauty": they say that certain things are "interesting," or "fun," or "funny," or "strange," or "exciting."  But can something be interesting, fun, funny, strange and exciting without being beautiful?  I think the answer is probably "yes."  If the answer is "yes", then I think most of us could be pretty happy even if we never laid eyes on one beautiful thing, as long as we had enough interesting, fun, funny, strange and exciting things around.  The reverse, however, is probably not the case. 

At any rate, if I had to choose between a life which contains many interesting, fun, funny, strange and exciting things, on the one hand, and a life which contains many beautiful things, on the other, I’d probably take the first life over the second.  At least I know roughly what I would get if I chose the first life.  The second life is sort of a coin toss.

It is often said that overdetermination is not or cannot be "widespread."  Whether this is true or false depends on just how common something needs to be in order to qualify as "widespread." 

Nobody should deny that overdetermination of events can happen, and probably has happened.  There probably has been at least one occasion on which someone has been shot in the heart by two simultaneous bullets, for instance.  After all, I think I’ve heard that it was at one time common practice to execute criminals by having a dozen or so men simultaneously shoot the criminal.  This kind of practice provides a lot of opportunities for overdetermination to occur.  So even if, in each such case, it is highly unlikely for overdetermination to occur, the fact that there have been so many such cases makes it fairly reasonable to suppose that overdetermination has occurred at least once.

But how many times has overdetermination occurred?  Does the claim that overdetermination is not "widespread" amount to the claim that less than 1% of all events are overdetermined?  Or to the claim that less than .00001% are?  Or even less than that?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I think we can put some tentative limits on the answer by considering some examples.  Suppose I am unsure why, exactly, rocks fall to the ground.  But I have two theories in mind.  The first theory is that there is a force called "gravity," and this force acts on rocks to make them fall.  The second theory is that rocks have some kind of intrinsic tendency to move toward the center of the Earth.  Suppose I am torn between these two theories; I think there are reasons to believe each one.

These two theories are not mutually exclusive; it is logically possible that rocks both tend to move toward the center of the Earth "intrinsically," and are acted on by an "extrinsic" force which compels them to do the same.  In such a case, the event in which a rock falls would be overdetermined: there would be two sufficient causes for that event.

If I accept the view that overdetermination is not "widespread," I should think that there is a good chance that one theory is correct, and a good chance that the other theory is correct, but not very much chance that both theories are correct.  Perhaps I should believe that there is almost no chance that both theories are correct.  But does this commit me to say that overdetermination almost never occurs?  Does it commit me to say, for instance, that it is extremely difficult to find any cases of overdetermination?  I do not think so.  In fact, I think that in the case just described, one could think that overdetermination is fairly common, and fairly easy to find, even if one thinks that that overdetermination is highly unlikely in any given case.

To illustrate this, consider another case.  I’ve just gotten home.  My roommate is usually home from work by now, but he is nowhere to be found.  Two explanations spring to mind: 1. My roommate was delayed at work; 2. My roommate was hit by a drunk driver on the way home from work.  I probably have very little reason to believe 2; I should probably believe 1.  After all, it is highly unlikely that my roommate, in particular, was hit by a drunk driver.  But this does not commit me to say that nobody is ever hit by a drunk driver; nor does it commit me to say that it is hard to find a case in which someone is hit by a drunk driver.  Indeed, if I turn on the evening news, I am fairly likely to find that someone was hit by a drunk driver.  So I can believe that "getting hit by a drink driver" is a fairly common event even if I think it is not widespread enough to support the hypothesis that someone in particular is missing because he was hit by a drunk driver.

I think that those who hold the view that "overdetermination is not widespread" can take a similar line.  Perhaps overdetermination happens all the time; perhaps it is extremely easy to find cases of overdetermination, if you know where to look.  But this is compatible with the view that overdetermination is quite rare — rare enough, anyway, that one should usually assume, when trying to explain a given event, that overdetermination has not occurred in this particular case.  And this more modest result is, I think, the one at which people are usually aiming when they make the claim that overdetermination is not "widespread."

As most of you probably know already, the newer conservative philosophers’ blog is here.

Enwe‘s been putting up a lot of interesting posts about the role of intuitions in philosophical practice.  Here are my two cents.

I assume that an "intuition" is supposed to be a certain kind of reason to believe that some proposition is true.  Two questions: 1. What is the best way to characterize this kind of reason?  2. Under what circumstances would a person be entitled to use this sort of reason in an argument?

One way to answer the first question is contained in the following passage, in which Enwe quotes Bealer:

According to Bealer, intuition is a “sui generis, irreducible, natural (i.e., non-Cambridge-like) propositional attitude that occurs episodically, […] an intellectual seeming…”. Bealer argues that the fact that something seems to be true can be independent from the fact that we believe it to be true. Bealer is not the only one who thinks that this last thesis is quite obviously true.

That some proposition seems true is certainly a reason to believe it is true.  But it’s not an indefeasible reason.  In this respect, "seeming to be true" is like many (most?) other reasons to believe a proposition.  For instance, I can have empirical reasons to believe P is true even if I have even better reasons to believe P is false.  Indeed, I might have the former kind of reasons even when the latter reasons are so good that my belief that P is false counts as knowledge.

But in many respects, this particular reason — "seeming to be true" — is very different from many other sorts of reasons to believe.  For instance, in the quotation of Bealer provided by Enwe, these reasons are supposed to be irreducible.  I take this to mean that they provide a non-inferential reason for belief.  In this respect they differ importantly from empirical reasons for belief.

What, if anything, would entitle us to use these sorts of reasons, i.e. intuitions, in an argument?  We would be entitled to use intuitions in an argument whenever such reasons can justify belief.  It is possible to offer a regress argument to show that some such reasons have to justify at least some beliefs, if any beliefs at all are justified.  Such an argument would be especially strong if we were entitled to assume that all non-inferential reasons for belief are intuitions.  If we make that assumption, then one could simply argue as follows:

Any given belief is either inferentially justified or non-inferentially justified.  If it is non-inferentially justified, then (per our assumption) it is justified through intuition; in that case there is at least one intuitively justified belief.  If it is inferentially justified, then it is justified by inference from some other belief.  Proceeding in the same way, we can show that this "other belief" is either justified through intuition or justified by inference from yet another belief.  Eventually, we must either arrive at a non-inferentially justified (hence intuitively justified) belief or continue indefinitely.  But we cannot continue indefinitely; this would be an unacceptable infinite regress.  Thus, there must be at least one intuitively justified belief.

This line of argument mirrors typical foundationalist arguments.  It assumes, of course, that an infinite regress really would be unacceptable; in this way it is assumes that coherentism and "linearism" (or "infinitism") are unacceptable.  This assumption may or may not justifiable through other arguments.

At any rate, I think we can infer from the above that if you believe (1) The typical foundationalist regress argument succeeds, and (2) All non-inferentially justified beliefs are justified through intuition, then you are committed to say that intuition justifies at least some beliefs.  This, of course, does not say under what circumstances intuition can justify some beliefs, so we haven’t answered the first question above.  It only says that there must be such circumstances.