Symbolic Logic, by Phin Upham

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

By Phin Upham

A statement is closed under logical entailment if the operator penetrates to all logical consequences of the statement. Formally this would be expressed as the following: If O is an operator, and P and Q are statements, then “if P entails Q, then O(P) entails O(Q). ” For the sake of this discussion we will assume we are only speaking of known entailments. Without this addendum many otherwise penetrating operations become non-penetrating. Any operator that penetrates through all known entailments is called fully penetrating. Some operators are clearly fully penetrating. If it is true that P, and P entails Q, then it is true that Q (for example). This is the basis for our mathematical and logical systems of knowledge. We believe that we can build on one true fact to other true facts without independently verifying that each new fact is true. Less obviously, if you believe that P, and P entails Q (and you know this), then you believe that Q. Such fully penetrating operators have necessary properties. To formalize the former example: if P, then Q. This implies that if not Q, then not P. There are also non-penetrating operators. For example, it may be surprising that you beat the fastest runner in the world in a race. And that you beat the fastest runner in the world in a race does imply that you got at least the penultimate place in a race. But it is not therefor surprising that you got at least the penultimate place in a race.

What happens when we close knowledge under logical entailment? If I know that P, and P entails that not Q, then I know that not Q. If I know you are at the store, and you being at the store implies that you are not at the beach, then I know that you are not at the beach. But what happens when we apply this closure of knowledge to the skeptical argument. Perhaps in this case it is not clear that knowledge is fully permeable. And if knowledge is not fully permeable we need not necessarily be (as) troubled by the skeptical arguments. Dretske introduces an example that he believes demonstrates the semi-permeable nature of knowledge. While taking your son to the zoo, you see a cage containing zebras. Do you know that they are zebras? Surely if your son asked “are those zebras?” you would reply “yes.” But saying that the animals are zebras implies that they are not painted mules that look like zebras. And do you really know that they are not? Do you have any evidence at all that they are not? It seems clear that you do not know that they are not painted mules. But does this in turn imply that you do not know that the animals are zebras. If knowledge were fully permeable it would.

Dretske concludes that the semi-permeating nature of the operator “to know” makes it possible to know something without knowing that all relevant alternatives are not true. Whithin a semi-permeable class, such as knowledge, it seems unclear to me what our criterion for rejecting some elements as unpermeable and other elements as permeable often is, other than intuition. But this argument was supposed to reinforce our intuitions regarding knowledge. It cannot use intuition to reinforce intuition and remain a valid argument. Why is the painted mule objection not permeable? It can be considered a relevant alternative by a skeptic or an irrelevant alternative by a relative alternative theorist. Therefor it seems that if it is permeable or unpermeable is a question of intuition. Until a concrete method of differentiating what is and what is not permeable within the semi-permeable operator knowledge, Dretske’s argument will not convince me.

About the Author

While an undergraduate student at Harvard University, Phin Upham was the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Review of Philosophy. He graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a PhD in Applied Economics and currently works as an investor in New York City and San Francisco.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

It Seems Like There Aren’t Any Seemings

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

Via Philosophia

By T. Ryan Byerly

Abstract

I argue that the two primary motivations in the literature for positing seemings as sui generis mental states are insufficient to motivate this view. Because of this, epistemological views which attempt to put seemings to work don’t go far enough. It would be better to do the same work by appealing to what makes seeming talk true rather than simply appealing to seeming talk.

[Full article here]

Posted in Perception | Comments Off

Metaphyiscal Nihilism and Necessary Being

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

Via Philosophia

By Tyron Goldschmidt

Abstract

This paper addresses the most fundamental question in metaphysics, Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is framed as a question about concrete entities, Why does a possible world containing concrete entities obtain rather than one containing no concrete entities? Traditional answers are in terms of there necessarily being some concrete entities, and include the possibility of a necessary being. But such answers are threatened by metaphysical nihilism, the thesis that there being nothing concrete is possible, and the subtraction argument for this thesis, an argument that is the subject of considerable recent debate. I summarize and extend the debate about the argument, and answer the threat it poses, turning the tables on it to show how the subtraction argument supports a cosmological argument for a necessary being.

[Full article here]

Posted in Metaphysics | Comments Off

BonJour vs. Reliabilism: Round Four

Posted on March 14, 2012 by

By contributor Phin Upham

Laurence BonJour challenges the reliabilist position by showing how, in particular cases, it runs counter to our intuitions about rationality and justification. While the reliabilist holds that a perceptual belief is either justified of unjustified based on the epistemic reliability of the process or processes that are used to generate it, BonJour holds that the criterion for the justification of a belief cannot be completely independent of the believer or cognizer. BonJour believes that one must look at the cognizer and at the knowledge he holds about his belief and about the processes of arriving at them in order to judge whether his beliefs are justified. To prove his point BonJour constructs an example to expose the inadequacies of the reliabilist position. How successful is BonJour in challenging the reliabilist position? Can the reliabilist position weather such an attack?

The reliabilist, as supported by Alvin Goldman, considers that “the justificational status of a belief is a function of the reliability of the process or processes that causes it, where (as a first approximation) reliability consists of the tendency of a process to produce beliefs that are true rather than false.” Furthermore “there are many facts about a cognizer to which he lacks ‘privileged access’ and I regard the justificational status of his beliefs as one of those things.” . Thus whether or not a belief is justified is based on a criterion independent of the cognizer. It seems to be the way we actually feel we are justified in having beliefs about the world. Wishful thinking or believing things because they are contrary to all evidence results in unjustified conclusions. The common link that binds all justified beliefs, the relativist points out, is that the process that we use to reach them is a process that tends to result in true beliefs. In short, we are justified in believing in what works. Nevertheless just that they have worked is not enough: it could have been sheer luck that led to my belief that wishful thinking is reliable. It is rather a matter of epistemic reliability, that is whether a process is truly reliable that counts, argues the reliabilist. Just as we cannot know something that is false, even if we believe it to be true, the logic goes, we are not justified in believing something that derives from an unreliable process, even if we mistakenly believe the process is reliable. So it seems the reliabilist has revealed our criterion of justification. But has he really?

Countering the reliabilist position, Laurence BonJour generates examples where the reliabilist requirements for justification are met, but intuitively the belief is not justified. His most powerful example involves Norman. “Norman, under certain circumstances that usually obtain, is a completely reliable clairvoyant with respect to certain kinds of subject matter. He possesses no evidence or reasons of any kind for or against the general possibility of such a cognitive power, or for or against the thesis that he possesses it. One day Norman comes to believe that the president is in New York City, though he has no evidence either for or against this belief. In fact the belief is true and results from his clairvoyant power, under circumstances which are completely reliable.” BonJour then asks if Norman is epistemically justified in believing that the president is in NYC, so that this belief is knowledge? The reliabilist would say yes. The belief resulted from a reliable process, regardless of whether or not Norman knew this, and thus the belief is justified. BonJour attacks this position by first asking whether or not Norman believed he had clairvoyant powers and then by challenging both possibilities. Let us assume Norman believed he was clairvoyant and that this belief contributed meaningfully to his belief about the president. Since, according to the case, he has no evidence whatsoever that he has such a power nor any evidence that such a power even exists, his belief is not, to Bonjour, rational or justified. If this is so, he argues, is not the same true about his belief about the president which is generated by the believed-in mechanism? If you are unjustified in believing that such a mechanism exists, how can you be justified in believing in the products of the mechanism? On the other hand if Norman does not believe he is clairvoyant, his belief about the president becomes even more unjustified. From where does he think this belief comes? How can he believe something that must appear to him to be a random hunch. Thus BonJour concludes that Norman is irrational and unjustified for believing that the president is in NYC.

The disagreement between BonJour and the reliabilist centers around where the justification of a belief takes place. The reliabilist holds that a belief is justified or not by an external epistemic fact: is the cognitive mechanism used to generate the belief reliable or not? Of course the reliabilist includes reasonable limits, so if the cognizer had sufficient evidence against the cognitive mechanism, then he is not justified in believing its output. But even this rests on an external source, namely that rejecting beliefs that were generated from a mechanism you have evidence against is an epistemologically reliable process. So even here the source of the justification for the rejection of the cognizer is external to him. BonJour disagrees; he claims that the source of the justification must lie within the cognizer’s power or else “[the acceptance of the belief] is no more rational and responsible from an epistemic standpoint than would be the acceptance of a subjectively similar belief for which the external relation in question failed to obtain.” In other words, it is merely an accident from the cognizer’s perspective whether or not the belief is justified. Internal reflection on the reliability of the mechanism that generated the belief has not been a factor in the formation of that belief. Although the cognizer’s belief will not have been accidental (it will be derived from a reliable mechanism), this fact only provides the external viewer with insight and justification for the conclusion.

To further bring this point home, BonJour asks which belief would Norman bet his life on: his clairvoyant belief that the President is in NYC or a belief based on empirical evidence that the Attorney-General is in Chicago? Since the knowledge that his clairvoyance is a reliable system is not available to Norman, it seems likely and indeed more reasonable from his point of view that he would bet on his belief regarding the Attorney-General. Here BonJour makes a most convincing argument: “We have the paradoxical result that from the externalist standpoint it is more rational to act on a merely reasonable belief than to act on one that is adequately justified to qualify as knowledge (and which in fact is knowledge). … If greater epistemic reasonableness does not carry with it greater reasonableness in action, then it becomes difficult to see why it should be sought in the first place.” This is a heavy blow. How can the reliabilist claim to be resolving an age old problem, if his argument is only relevant on a level that seems to depart from the traditional concept of knowledge?

In order to delve deeper into the example we must examine how clairvoyance might work from the point of view of Norman and ask if, from his perspective, it makes sense for him to believe the president is in NYC. One way clairvoyance could work is as a kind of unshakable hunch. You just believe all of a sudden that the president is in NYC without any supporting content to the belief. It is not at all clear that Norman, upon feeling this belief come over him, should not dismiss it as the same kind of hunch one gets about a flip of a coin. From his perspective this belief should not be very convincing if it comes upon him this way, even though an overview might reveal its correctness. Another way his belief could be acquired is as a sixth sense. In the same way a blind person in a community of only blind people (as in H.G.Wells’ short story The ‘Valley of the Blind’) could suddenly acquire sight and might be justified in believing something based on this mechanism. This is intuitively quite appealing, but it still fails to be sufficient to be a justified belief if there is no reason and no evidence for Norman to believe that this sense is accurate, or reliable, or that it corresponds to reality. Furthermore, it would seem to me if one were to acquire sight or any other sense including clairvoyance, one could not make immediate sense of its information. As in the case of a baby who takes time and experience to develop a meaningful response to reality, a newly acquired sense would bring a bombardment of information with no organization or meaning until one began to group and differentiate the lessons of the new experiences. Discrimination and meaning develop out of time and experience. With new sight one would need to learn about what it means to be an object that corresponded with one’s other senses. What does it mean for an object to grow bigger (probably that it is coming closer)? What are the lessons for the rudimentary gestalt task of identifying whole objects? But if one needs information and converging evidence to make a new sense sensical, then the clairvoyant’s sense would make no sense to Norman until he had evidence about it, and this would violate the premise of the question and give him a reason, however insufficient, to believe in clairvoyance. But these two ways in which clairvoyance could work are not exhaustive. Perhaps there could be some other means through which Norman receives his belief that would lead him to be rational and justified in holding it. But until such a means is found, it seems Norman should reject the belief as unfounded, irrational, and unjustified (from his point of view).

For Bonjour, the central problem with the reliabilist position is that whether or not a belief is justified is an ethereal question. What is the basis for Norman’s belief from Norman’s point of view if Norman is not in possession of the facts about its reliability? If a belief seems unjustified from my point of view, what does it then mean to say it is an actually justified belief? What value does justification retain? BonJour shows in his Norman example that to maintain an intuitive understanding of justification as a meaningful concept it must include internal reflection – therefore the reliabilist is wrong in his analysis.

Posted in Reason | Tagged | Comments Off

John Rawls and the recent history of public administration

Posted on March 5, 2012 by

Via Journal of Management History

By Filimon Peonidis

Abstract

John Rawls’ theory of justice has had a direct impact on public administration, especially work in new public administration. His theory has influenced the obligations of public administrators, the scope of citizen participation in public administration, and the equitable distribution of public services. It has also contributed to the development of administrative ethics. In addition, it suggests ways in which a mediating model of public reason might be developed for public administrators working on deeply divisive social and economic issues.

[Full article here]

Posted in Philosophy | Tagged , | Comments Off

What is Reality?

Posted on February 28, 2012 by

By Phin Upham

If there were a brain in a vat (BIV) that had the same beliefs, experiences, and memories as I do, would he be as justified in its belief about the external world as I am? Would I have a better epistemic position than the BIV? This question invokes the debate between the reliabilist and the internalist. The reliabilist holds that a perceptual belief is either justified or unjustified based on the epistemic reliability of the process or processes that are used to generate it, while the internalist believes that the criteria for reliability is dependent on the cognizer’s knowledge about his belief and his knowledge about the processes of arriving at them. By this analysis the reliabilist would hold that the BIV was not justified in holding it’s beliefs and that I would be in a better epistemic position than the BIV. He would argue that the BIV’s processes for generating his beliefs were unreliable (since it was only the whim of the scientists that held them consistent) and mine were more epistemically justified. The internalist would disagree, claiming that both the BIV and I had the same evidence available to make a judgment, and so the quality of our judgments was the same. It seems to me that the internalist gets the better of this argument since it is unclear how good our own epistemic position in relation to the world is.
The brain in a vat and I have the same evidence upon which to generate beliefs. If I were justified in believing my conclusions and the BIV were not, based on external facts, what use would the term justification retain? The BIV, from his perspective, has acted identically to me. If I am epistemically praiseworthy, he ought to be too, if I am epistemically blame worthy, he ought to be too, and if I am justified, he ought to be too. The term justified should have to do with how responsible you were with evidence. Let us imagine two BIV’s. The first was very haphazard with his evidence, and jumped to conclusions based on whims. The second was very careful to accumulate evidence before believing something, and made sure he had as much evidence as he could find that his methods of reaching conclusions were reliable. For the reliabilist, both BIV’s would be equally unjustified positions to know anything since both used equally epistemically unjustified mechanisms to arrive at their conclusions. But does this not seem to violate the intuitive feeling that the second BIV was more justified in believing his conclusions? The internalist would conclude that the second BIV was justified, and the first was not. But if we conclude that some BIV’s are more justified than others, then ought we not to side with the internalist and say that the BIV with identical experiences, beliefs, and memories is equally reasonable and equally justified?
The most troubling aspect of the argument that the BIV is less justified than we are because his mechanism was unreliable is the assumption that we are in a better epistemic position than the BIV. How do we know we are not a BIV? In other words, how do we know that our mechanisms are reliable? We do not. But if we do not know that we are in a better epistemic position than the BIV, how can we claim that we are more justified? In the end it seems to me that the BIV with our memories, experiences, and beliefs would be as epistemically justified as we are, no more, no less.

About the Author
Phin Upham is a New York City and San Francisco based author and investor. He holds a PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. For more information and articles, visit his website at PhinUpham.com.

Posted in Perception | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Aristotle’s Relevance to Modern Democratic Theory

Posted on February 28, 2012 by

Via Franz Steiner Verlag

By Filimon Peonidis

Abstract

In this essay instead of trying to deal with the dubious question whether Aristotle is a democratic or an oligarchic thinker, I try to investigate whether he has developed particular views that can be constructively engaged by modern democratic theory. I argue that we can locate a rough model of democracy in Aristotle (as well as in Isocrates) in which direct and representative democracy successfully converge and complement each other. This model is indispensable for reflecting on the nature and the future course of contemporary liberal democracy. In addition, Aristotle was the first thinker who conceived the idea that democratic procedures may be epistemically valuable and he put forward two original arguments to that effect. The first of them, the summation argument, despite its ingenuity, does not seem to work, but the second, the user argument, can still serve as a starting-point for a plausible justification of popular sovereignty.

[Full article here]

Posted in Classical Philosophy | Tagged , | Comments Off

Subjective Well-Being and Desire Satisfaction

Posted on February 16, 2012 by

Article via Philosophical Papers.

By Donald W. Bruckner

Abstract

There is a large literature in empirical psychology studying what psychologists call ‘subjective well-being’. Only limited attention has been given to these results by philosophers who study what we call ‘well-being’. In this paper, I assess the relevance of the empirical results to one philosophical theory of well-being, the desire satisfaction theory. According to the desire satisfaction theory, an individual’s well-being is enhanced when her desires are satisfied. The empirical results, however, show that many of our desires are disappointed in the sense that the satisfaction of those desires does not make us any happier. So I develop an argument against the desire theory of well-being on the basis of these empirical results. I then provide a defense of the desire theory based on a careful examination of the measures of subjective well-being used by psychologists. I conclude that the empirical results do not threaten the desire theory of well-being.

[Full article here]

Posted in The Good Life | Tagged , | Comments Off

What is a Justified Belief?

Posted on February 10, 2012 by

By Phin Upham, contributing author.

Having a justified belief does require you to know that your belief is justified but it does not require you to know what this justification is. You need not be able to defend your beliefs against criticism. In holding these beliefs I take the Weak Internalist position. Most of our beliefs are clearly supported by others. I believe that this is Harvard University because I have gathered an enormous amount of convergent evidence that support this belief. The evidence that I gathered, in turn rests on other evidence, and so on. But does this chain continue forever, or are there some beliefs at the end of this chain that support other beliefs but are not in turn supported by anything and yet are immediately justified? We can call these beliefs (if they exist) basic beliefs and the view that basic beliefs exist is called Foundationalism. But does the idea of basic beliefs make sense, or must even these basic beliefs have some sort of justification in order to be justified. The argument that justified belief must have a basis is a denial of Foundationalism.

BonJour argues against Foundationalism by pointing out that to know something required epistemic justification and that epistemic justification is by nature necessarily truth seeking. Next he claims that you must have good reason to believe that a belief is true in order to say that it is justified. If you do not establish this connection you are epistemically irresponsible. But if this is true, then in order to be justified in holding a belief at any time, you must hold some reason to believe that that view is justified. By thus concluding that a person must be in cognitive possession of some fact that makes a belief likely to be true, BonJour has squared off against the Foundationalist. His last blow is directed at basic beliefs themselves. He claims that they are either cognitive states, and therefor requiring justification, or they are not like cognitive states, then it is hard to see how the intuition justifies the belief. BonJour’s argument has many flaws, and it seems to depend overly on the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic responsibility. Nevertheless, at its core lies a convincing argument: in order for a belief to be justified it must lean toward the truth, so in order for someone to be justified in holding it, they must be in cognitive possetion of evidence that it leans toward the truth.

While I am satisfied that in order for a belief to be justified we must cognitively have evidence that it is justified (i.e. that it tends toward the truth), it is not clear, from BonJour’s argument, that we must be aware of this cognitive evidence. It is this point that Alston attacks. Alston holds that he is a Weak Internalist. It is enough, for Alston, that the belief acquirable through internal introspection and reflection, and not directly known. Lastly, Alston argues against the idea that being justified in believing something means you are necessarily able to defend it against criticism is counter-intuitive. These authors are convincing in their arguments. BonJour makes a good case that justification is truth seeking by its very nature. If this is true, then it seems that the Foundationalist indeed has a problem justifying his basic beliefs immediately. I agree with Alston that we need not know that something is true in order to have cognitive possession of it. It does seem enough that introspection and reflection can arrive at justifications for a belief. I find Alston’s final point that we need not be able to defend out beliefs against criticism most interesting and most true. Steward Hampshire would agree with Alston. When he said “[if challenged] I would give you grounds for believing my statement, although I would not give you my grounds, or evidence, or source. ” It does seem that the reasons we give for believing something are not necessarily the reasons we internally use in justifying our beliefs. Often our internal reasons are unconscious, often they are intuitive. There is a difference between being justified in a belief and being able to justify a belief.

About the Author
Phin Upham is a New York City investor with an extensive background in philosophical study. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Review of Philosophy. To read more by Phin Upham, visit his website.

Posted in Reason | Tagged , | Comments Off

Can You “Know” Something that is Wrong?

Posted on February 8, 2012 by

By Phin Upham

Mr. Biggs, the owner of a vast industrial empire, wants to have the fastest computer in the world for his company. In order to accomplish this, he hires the best computer people to build him his computer. They labor and labor until finally they create a 100 KB HD, 66 RAM, modified Cray computer which they tell him (and show him evidence that) it is the fastest computer ever built (t). Mr. Biggs trusts these people (p) and he generates from their words the belief that he has been told by people that have never before lied to him that his company has the fastest computer in the world (f). From this belief (f) he in turn generates the belief that his company has the fastest computer in the world (w). Unbeknownst to Mr. Biggs there is an even faster computer o the planet. Mr. Smalls, who happens to work in accounting in Mr. Biggs’ company, has built in his office an even faster computer (z).

This Gettier type case demonstrates that there is more to knowledge than justified true belief. Mr. Biggs believes that his company has the fastest computer in the world (f), and he is justified in this belief because he the computer experts told him it was the fastest (t), and they were always trustworthy in the past (p). Lastly, the belief is true because of Mr. Smalls’ computer (z). But I would not say that Mr. Biggs knows that (w). The major impediment to his knowledge is that although (w) is true, it is only true coincidentally. What attribute do (must?) all the Gettier type cases have in common? It every case a belief is generated by one set of apparently true but ultimately false set of facts, then the belief is generalized (defocused). Then a new fact that is contained under the newly generalized/expanded belief makes the general belief true. The justification and the belief still come from the original now-falsified fact.

Since an infallibilist about knowledge would only know things on the basis of infallible evidence, and the evidence in the Gettier cases is necessarily fallible, the Gettier cases cannot get off the ground. The infallibilist is immune to this sort of example. An infallibilist is immune to making mistakes and beliefs that the infallibilist holds cannot be false.. The belief that (z) need not be true, it is true through luck alone. Thus an infallibilist would never hold this belief. The evidence of the computer experts was wrong. Thus an infallibilist would never use this evidence.

About the Author
Phin Upham is a New York City investor with an extensive background in philosophical study. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Review of Philosophy. To read more by Phin Upham, visit his website.

Posted in Reason | Tagged , | Comments Off