Objects and Arrows

Finally finished that intuition paper.  Here

How deeply do the lessons of experimental philosophy challenge contemporary philosophical methodology? At the very least, empirical results should force philosophers to clarify the evidential role of their uses of the notion of intuition. However, in terms of the skeptical consequences for intuition, I think empirical findings will have less impact than some of their proponents sometimes claim. For instance, it is worth noting that most advocates of intuition in philosophy are not in principle averse to revising their intuitions. George Bealer would be a good example… or Russell in “On insolubilia” More importantly, it may be possible to distinguish a plausible role for intuition in philosophical methodology which is independent of the truth or falsity of propositions favored by intuition.

I would argue that the possibility of arriving at a useful notion of intuition largely depends on distinguishing the faculty of intuition from propositions. Once we have made this distinction, a new, ameliorative project (for experimental philosophy) emerges. Rather than trusting blindly in our intuitive powers, the empirical study of commonsense or intuitive judgment holds the possibility of providing an informed understanding of the way that this “faculty” functions. We already know quite a bit about the pitfalls of intuitive or commonsense judgments. We know, for instance, that there are some unhelpful aspects of commonsense which we ought to flag, for example, the systematically irrational features of our gut feelings concerning probability which Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman describe. (1974) A study of our motivation for irrationally but systematically opting for falsehoods by failing to apply the basic axioms of choice theory and by ignoring the laws of probability will lead us to understand something about our tendencies to seek certain kinds of salient features over others. Herbert Gintis (2000) and others have noted that the heuristics governing our probabilistic judgments are ordinarily reliable given the demands of everyday decision making. In combination, or in more complex settings, these heuristics may lead to the kinds of systematic irrationality that we find in some of the standard cases. (Gintis 2000, 248)
While we are very likely to encounter reasons to revise our intuitions with respect to some moral, epistemic or metaphysical matters, rejection of all recourse to intuition in philosophical investigation is not warranted on the strength of current empirical criticisms. There are epistemological and methodological reasons for hesitating before accepting a full-blown skeptical attitude. As Matthew Liao (forthcoming) and Williamson (2004) note, skepticism with respect to intuition is misguided if it rests on the bad epistemic principle that we ought to always know what our evidence is. This principle, as Williamson points out, is self-defeating. (Williamson 2004, 121) Methodologically, total rejection of intuition is understood by many philosophers as equivalent to giving up on commonsense as a moderating influence in our investigations. David Lewis’ account of the role of commonsense assumptions is partly motivated by this kind of concern. (1986, 134-5) Lewis and others have argued that intuition (or something like it) plays a salutary role insofar as it contributes to methodological conservatism.
There seems to be few strong arguments in favor of giving up entirely on the kind of methodological role which commonsense or intuition serves. However, it is worth distinguishing methodological conservatism from uncritical acceptance of some proposition or set of propositions. There is at least one general feature of contemporary usage that requires clarification. Conflation of the content of favored propositions with the feelings which lead us to favor those propositions figures frequently in the literature and is responsible for unnecessary obscurity. The salutary effect of distinguishing between intuitions and propositions is that it clarifies the sources of justification in an argument. So, for instance, it would allow us to distinguish arguments which rest on the truth of propositions from those which rest on the authority of something like a faculty of commonsense or intuition.

While those propositions which are favored by commonsense are true or false independently of their relation to commonsense, a proposition’s having the property of being favored by commonsense or intuition might count as a reason to believe that it is true. However, we could only reasonably believe that this property is a guide to truth by virtue of some additional set of propositions concerning the reliability and nature of the faculty of intuition or commonsense. To say that we need reasons to heed the voice of commonsense is not equivalent to an epistemic principle to the effect that we ought to have evidence in all cases for the propositions that commonsense provides. This would be the kind of self-defeating operational principle that Williamson warns against. Instead, by focusing on our reasons for heeding the faculty of intuition, we embark on a general (largely empirical) project to give an account of the faculty and its place in the philosophical enterprise. One could imagine a range of possible accounts: An evolutionary story concerning the reliability of ingrained habits of thought, some notion of subconscious processing, some inductive account of the usefulness of commonsense in the past etc. Propositions or theories of this kind would be true or false independently of whether they are favored by intuition/commonsense and one could imagine counterintuitive explanations for the reliability of intuitive reasoning. Such accounts, rather than generalized skepticism with respect to philosophical intuition, might be the lasting payoff of the emerging field of experimental philosophy. Distinguishing between the truth value of a proposition and its relation to intuition is certainly not equivalent to denying the value of intuition in philosophical investigation or justification. Rather, the distinction is a necessary step in the search for a reasonable account of why (and when) we ought to heed intuition.

The web is unforgiving.  Archived audio of an interview I did with the local NPR affiliate show Science Studio just got posted. These guys do a great show on Sunday nights, usually talking with distinguished scientists about current developments.  It’s from fall of 2003 (I think) and I was very nervous.   There are a few things that I said on the show that I would disagree with today, especially my “philosophy is the underlaborer of the sciences” tone.     The funniest thing, for me is just how obsessed I was with anionic hydrogen.  I must have mentioned it six times.  No idea where that came from.  I’m also not so confident anymore about what I say regarding the origin of the word ’scientist’.  The show is here.

PhiBook is an annual volume devoted to philosophical logic and its relation to philosophy and science with particular emphasis on multi- agent and modal systems, active agency and social software. The yearbook is intended to inform the community of current and future directions of research and activity in philosophical logic, major events, books and important papers of the past year but also leaves extensive room for discussion in terms of columns, opinion pieces, and critical reports. More here

I caught some criticism for saying that graduate school in philosophy isn’t such a bad way to spend a few years.   Didn’t mean to encourage any false hopes that grad school is likely to lead to the kind of comfortable job in philosophy that previous generations could expect.

The job market in philosophy is horrendous on many levels.  Jon Cogburn has a very accurate portrait of the mechanics here.  (which I got to via Aidan’s site here) I particularly like Jon’s articulation of some of the intergenerational venom… nicely put.  I could add fuel to that fire, but will resist the urge.  If you need any convincing regarding the existential turmoil involved in this process you can read the philosophy job market blog (some very funny stuff in here).

In my case, it took three rounds of APA (three years) to find a decent job and when I did, it was with a modest little book and three accepted articles in hand.  The market is terrible unless you’re coming from a highly-ranked school.  Cogburn is absolutely right, because of the job process, the Eastern meeting has a bizarre and depressing freakshow quality.

My big gripe is the snobbery, grandstanding and the levels of abuse during interviews.    Now that I’ll never be going through the process again, (Go Miners!)  let me give you a taste:  In one interview for a Leiter-worthy department I got tongue-tied explaining how I’d teach Gettier cases and made a relatively simple error.    One of the crew, a moral philosopher of course, turns to his colleagues as I paused to recover and says, “well, there’s nothing here…” That was stunning.  The interview ended about three minutes later.   At another, an odd little man spent ten minutes lecturing me on why he thought Hintikka (my adviser) is a bad influence on philosophy.  His colleagues didn’t know anything about analytic philosophy and just let the guy ramble on and on… something about ineffability and Peirce and the sanctity of the standard first order quantifier.   He even scribbled notes on his pad to help me understand the errors of IF logic. Because of my working class Irish hooligan roots, both interviews turned ugly and profane very quickly.  There were a few others where I wish I had cursed… many’s the esprit d’escalier in the halls of the Eastern division.  Don’t let this stuff sap your dignity.  Chances are, you’ll never see (or want to see) these people again if the interview is going badly,  so I think it’s ok to stand up for yourself, even incoherently or in a clumsy or nervous way.   It goes without saying that interviewers should behave themselves and we on the other side of the folding particle-board table should control our freakish or mean colleagues during these events.

Roberto Poli just posted the timetable for his Levels of Reality Workshop  in Bolzano.   In addition to the  always interesting work of Johanna Seibt, Mark Bickhard  and Roberto ,  I’m especially interested in  Michael Healey’s  attempt to make use of category theory in ontology.  I’ve taken some baby steps in this direction, and have a short paper (coauthored with Vladik and Julio) on the relationship between category theory and physical invariance (here).  We are currently trying to understand the notion of naturalness in category theory.  I think there’s something very deep there.  There are many good papers on category theory in philosophy of math, but most focus on the relationship between CT and foundations of math rather than on ontological or philosophy of physics issues.  Bell’s 1981 paper Category Theory and the Foundations of Mathematics gives a good background on the issues for philosophers.   There is a good, but not widely publicized, collection  from Polimetrica What is Category Theory? that I’m  reviewing  for Studia Logica.  I’ll post that review here when  it’s  finished.  I’ll wait to see what Healey says before finishing. 

Roberto’s put together a good meeting and I hope that he will be able to make the talks available.  Maybe we can talk him into doing a podcast.   Here’s the schedule of the workshop: 

27 September

9,00                 Welcome
9,30     10,00   Roberto Poli (Trento), Introduction: The Old and the New Ontology
10,00—10,45  Roberto Poli (Trento), Levels: The Categorial Stance

 10,45—11,15  Coffee break

11,15—12,00  Roy Clouser (New Jersey), Reduction as a Strategy for Theories of Reality
15,00—15,45  Jorge Gracia (Buffalo), The Ontology of Categories and the Levels of Reality 
15,45-16,30     Jerzy Perzanowski (Cracow), Onto\logical Conditions for Emergence

 16,30—17,00 Coffee break

 17,00—17,45  Johanna Seibt (Aarhus), Levels of Reality as Forms of Interactivity
17,45—18,30  John Symons (El Paso), Emergence in the Interplay of Networks: A Non-fundamentalist Approach to Levels

28 September 
9,00—9,45      L. Albertazzi (Trento), The Ontology of Perception
9,45—10,30    Mark H. Bickhard (Lehigh), The Emergence of the Social Level of Reality

 10,30—11,00  Coffee break
11,00—11,45  B. Hiller (London), The Problem of Levels in Complex Systems: The Instructive Example of Cities
11,45—12,30  A. Kameas, Modeling activity spheres in ubiquitous computing environments
15,00—15,45  John F. Sowa (Vivomind), Logic and Ontology as a Byproduct Of Mapping Language to the World
15,45-16,30     Heinrich Herre (Leipzig), Principles of Core Ontologies and Levels of Reali

16,30—17,00  Coffee break
17,00—17,45  Matthew West (Shell), Levels of reality in ISO 15926 and Shell’s Downstream Data Model
17,45—18,30  Leo Obrst (Mitre Foundation), (title)

3nd day
9,00—9,45      Michael J. Healy (New Mexico), Category Theory as a Mathematical Language for Ontology
9,45—10,30    Costas Drossos (Patras), Mathematics and Levels of Reality
10,30—11,00  Coffee break

 11,00—12,30  Concluding session

Brian Leiter takes the time to correct a very lame article on Rorty’s relationship to the profession. The target of his criticism appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This Romano guy trots out the usual false gossip about analytic philosophy in a particularly lazy way. Leiter does a good job kicking him around.

Socratic Epistemology a collection of Jaakko Hintikka’s recent essays on epistemology and related topics is now available from CUP. I am happy report that our co-authored  paper on modes of visual identification is reprinted in the collection (with a few minor corrections). Jaakko’s work is brimming with new ideas and unorthodox perspectives on some basic topics. It’ll be interesting to see what the community makes of ‘Epistemology without Knowledge and without Belief’ for example. That paper hasn’t appeared previously in English.

This site looks like it will be a promising source of anecdotal info on peer review in the years to come.

Some of the other speakers at the Lewis conference: Brit Brogaard, Joe Salerno, John Cantwell, Vladan Djordjevic, Neil Tennant, Ulrich Meyer.