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2012-02-14
Discussion of Samuel Alexander, An Axiomatic Version of Fitch's Paradoxabout D: K(!x) -> !P(x)
Bruno Maret

Université Paris 8

notation : I use ! for 'not'

Perhaps you can avoid paradox but you have to admit this very strange proposition :
K !K x ->  !P K x
If you know that you ignore (x) it's impossible that you know (x)

I don't see how it could be compatible with the knowability principle :
x ->  P K x
else you can't have
(x) and (K !K x)

(excuse me if this message is out of place, I ignore the policy of tis forum,
excuse also my probable mistakes in english)
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/6605 Reply

2012-02-03
Discussion of Ben Bradley, Against satisficing consequentialismBlog response: Satisficing by Effort
Richard Yetter Chappell

Princeton University

In this blog post, I outline a new form of Satisficing Consequentialism that meets Bradley's requirement that it "does not permit the gratuitous prevention of goodness."
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/6601 Reply

2012-01-23
Discussion of Winthrop Staples & Philip Cafaro, The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration into the United StatesBlog response
Richard Yetter Chappell

Princeton University

For anyone interested, I've blogged a couple of criticisms of this paper, here.
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/6575 Reply

2011-09-15
Discussion of Joachim L. Dagg, Exploring mouse trap historyRambling scamper - don't get lost
Joachim L. Dagg
Ok, I collected all the historical evidence I could find that Michael Behe should have considered before making his claims about mousetraps and irreducible complexity.

Some of you may get lost because of technicalities concerning traps or my rambling style. But the main result is that taking a closer look at mousetrap history reveals similar patterns as taking a closer look at some organism's natural history. In the face of this evidence ID proponents can only revert to the same old strategies of emphasising gaps in the record etc. as we are used from their dealing with biological systems. In my opinion, nothing of the suggestive power of Behe's mousetrap analogy remains, if the real historical record is brought into consideration.

In fact, Hooker's patent of 1894 alone suffices to destroy Behe's mousetrap case for irreducible complexity. For a short and simple blog entry concerning Behe's mousetrap nemesis see: <http://historiesofecology.blogspot.com/2011/08/michael-beh ... (read more)
Latest replies:
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/6247 Reply

2011-09-10
Discussion of Tim Henning, Moral Realism and Two-Dimensional SemanticsBlog response on philosophyetc.net
Richard Yetter Chappell

Princeton University

I couldn't find Tim's email so am instead posting here a link to my critical discussion of his paper (which may also be of interest to other readers):
Moral Judgments, 2Dism, and Attitudinal Commitments.


Cheers,
Richard
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/6166 Reply

2011-07-04
Discussion of Julian Kiverstein & Mirko Farina, Do Sensory Substitution Extend the Conscious Mind?What does DSM show?
Luc Delannoy

Instituto de Neuroartes

What DSM seems to show is that sensation is non epistemic and that perception is a cognitive process. The sensory as non-epistemic, merely bare,
non-conscious occurrences, represent nothing until some perceiving, useful
or mistaken, has gone on.
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/6031 Reply

2011-06-30
Discussion of Max Albert, Methodology and Scientific CompetitionOh the irony...
David J. Saab

Pennsylvania State University

Just wondering if the irony of an article about the high quality of open science research being situated behind a pay wall was lost on anybody...
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/6016 Reply

2011-04-18
Discussion of David J. Chalmers, Absent qualia, fading qualia, dancing qualiarole of memory in the dancing qualia scenario
Jeremy Awon
What is the role of memory in the dancing qualia scenario?

It strikes me that i cannot perform direct comparisons between my conscious experiences at different points in time - no more than i can directly compare my experiences to those of others.

In claiming that my experience of a red apple has remained the same "redness" over time, i must be comparing a perceptual experience *now* against the experience *now* of a memory of a previous experience.

The reductio asks us to imagine there being a difference in experience just due to differences in the material substrate of cognition. It seems plausible to me that when an experience is serialized while running on one substrate and deserialized while on another, the difference should go unnoticed. For example, the red experience of a neural system could be remembered as a blue experience when invoked on a silicon circuit, so that the comparison always succeeds.

Put differently, i wonder in what way the following scenario is not analogous to da ... (read more)
Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/5748 Reply

2011-04-18
Discussion of Ronald N. Giere, Scientific PerspectivismSome facts in perspective
Alexandre Losev

Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Recently I started reading Ronald Giere's Scientific perspectivism but it turned out to be a demanding task: I became bogged in Chapter 2 and havent been able to go much farther. In a philosophy book one expects down to earth examples to bring some clarity about but here, rather the obverse, they turn out to be the problem.

Chapter 2 is entirely devoted to Color vision, which is presented in the first sentence (p.17) as "the best exemplar I know for the kind of perspectivism that characterizes modern science." And on the next page (18) we are told: "The fact that hues have a circular rather than linear structure means that there is no simple linear relationship between wavelength and color".

As I get it "circular structure" means that we percieve colors in a limited range and anything beyond is black.But should we say that  a sound dissolving in low frequency rumble is at the same time an inaudible piercing screech? Our field of vision is also limited, so  it might be ... (read more)
Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/5719 Reply

2011-01-29
Discussion of James H. Fetzer, Evolution and atheism: Has Griffin reconciled science and religion?Not Fit For Survival: Fetzer’s “Reading” of Griffin’s Theistic Evolutionism
Tod Fletcher

University of California, Berkeley

James Fetzer’s recent article, “Evolution and atheism: Has Griffin reconciled science and religion?” (Synthese [2011] 178: 381-396) purports to offer a well-founded critique of David Ray Griffin’s philosophical arguments for “a version of theistic evolutionism that can do justice both to the facts that count in favor of evolution and those that count against the neo-Darwinian theory of it” (Griffin, 2000, p 243). Fetzer claims that Griffin’s detailed characterization of neo-Darwinism is inaccurate, “exemplifying the straw man fallacy, where an exaggerated version of a position is presented in order to knock it down” (p. 382). Fetzer not only makes strong claims for the inadequacy of Griffin’s work on evolutionary theory, but also asserts that Griffin has made fundamental errors of logic and argument and is not “morally justified” in holding the views he propounds. Fetzer’s article, however, fails to back up these claims.

Amazingly, Fetzer does not provide any evidence that he has actua ... (read more)
Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/5272 Reply

2011-01-18
Discussion of Sarah Moss, Solving the Color Incompatibility ProblemWow, cool paper
Benj Hellie

University of Toronto

This is awesome. Tractatus power!
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/5234 Reply

2010-08-27
Discussion of David Bourget, Paperless Philosophy as a Philosophical MethodAbout the Philosophical Registry
Emmanuel Rens

University of Geneva

The Philosophical Registry is a very interesting project on its own, independantly of any use other than observing and participating in the systemic life of a philosophical community. However, it could lead to various uses and raise ethical questions : suppose that in few years it has grown enough to serve as a basis for the implementation of a philosophical version of the Turing Test, then, even a vote would not suffice to dissipate the ethical issue if it had not been addressed in the beggining.

There may be also issues related to preliminary theories on the nature of philosophy - specially in the last paragraph of the article - that could make this initial forumulation unsuited for an independant method of assessment. What if the new Lao Tzu gets the poorest evaluation?

This exciting project diserves that its ethical aspects receive thorough attention and prospective.

Emmanuel
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/4616 Reply

2010-08-25
Discussion of David Bourget, Paperless Philosophy as a Philosophical MethodThere is also part II
Zbigniew Lukasiak

Warsaw University

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2642
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/4564 Reply

2010-08-25
Discussion of David Bourget, Paperless Philosophy as a Philosophical MethodRelated links
Zbigniew Lukasiak

Warsaw University

A link to an article going in the same direction:
This guy apparently has some theories about socio-technical systems and on academic publishing as a special case of such a system - see for example: http://brianwhitworth.com/STS/STS-chapter1.pdf

Just browsing First Monday for the link I've also encountered
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2962/2580


Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/4563 Reply

2010-08-06
Discussion of Joseph Kaipayil, Relationalism: A Theory of Beingthe core of relationalism is...
John R Tracy

Western Illinios University

I have not yet read the full version of Joseph's book, but I can tell this ties directly into my own theoretical perspectives involving assessment, learning, behavior, and consciousness. To me, as laid out in my Education PhD dissertation at Colorado State University (2005), the core essence of being (reality) is individual and collective consciousness interacting and interconnecting with consciousness at every level of existence (seen and unseen) as an ongoing here and now creative process." Thus, primary learning is intuitive and secondary learning is rational-objective.

Rational objective, is by my definition, fixtional thinking that allows one to "fix" or position relations "as if" they were separate and disconnected in a cause and effect relationship and in which they must of necessity substantiate existence "as if" it were true. It entails a sort of machine mentality of parts, in which the parts equals the whole and the whole is what the parts c ... (read more)

Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/4515 Reply

2010-06-26
Discussion of Jonathan Way, The symmetry of rational requirementsTo 'drop a belief that one ought A' is not possible.
Andrew Martin Lorimer
Hi,

Jonathan Way writes: "Some irrational states can be avoided in more than one way. For example, if you believe that you ought to A you can avoid akrasia by intending to A or by dropping the belief that you ought to A".

Rather than avoiding akrasia by dropping the belief that one ought A; Jonathan Way has very clearly given a definition of the condition. Clearly the writer has in mind a prior sense of duty in the mind of a person described. This person's path is either to perform his duty, or to discover that his proposed action is not obligatory.
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/4204 Reply

2010-05-27
Discussion of Gregory Minissale, Enacting Higher Order Thoughts: Velazquez and Las MeninasHigher order thoughts and art
Gregory Minissale

University of Auckland

We have many framing devices in the arts, and one thing that is consistent in their use is a metacognitive process which they seem to stimulate. We see the contents of a picture, and while we are occupied with processing these details we might come across another picture inside it, or we might see an artist painting a picture (as we do in Velazquez's Las Meninas); or there might be a mirror in the depicted space, all of these framing devices allow us to step out of our current thought process, and become aware of it, or self aware of our viewing. How fair is it to say that visual experience can be ordered in the form of HOTs as framing devices in the visual field, or that HOTs can be visualised in this way? 
Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/3969 Reply

2010-05-27
Discussion of Gregory Minissale, Beyond Internalism and Externalism: Husserl and Sartre's Image Consciousness in Hitchcock and. BuñuelIs anyone interested in film and consciousness?
Gregory Minissale

University of Auckland

Perhaps we could begin with Hitchcock and Husserl/Sartre?
Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/3968 Reply

2010-05-05
Discussion of Erica Benner, Machiavelli's EthicsReply to NDPR review of Benner, Machiavelli's Ethics
Erica Benner

Yale University

Reply to NDPR review of Benner, Machiavelli’s Ethics.

Posted on May 5, 2010 by dikaiosis

My book Machiavelli’s Ethics was recently reviewed by Cary J. Nederman in the Notre Dame Philosophical Review. Here is the review:

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19448

Nederman published a book on Machiavelli (Machiavelli: A Beginner’s Guide, Oneworld Publications, March 2009) a few months before mine came out. Since our aims and approaches are very different, disagreements are to be expected. However, the review also contains some serious misrepresentations of my arguments. As the NDPR does not have a policy of publishing authors’ replies to reviews, I try to set the record (partly) straight here.    (Comments welcome)

1. Nederman thinks that I deal in an unjustifiably selective way with recent Machiavelli scholarship. He writes, “the way in which the preceding literature is or is not brought to bear on the arguments of this book has, in my opinion, the effect of distorting the record and, at times, of ... (read more)

Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/3818 Reply

2010-04-01
Discussion of Walter Ott, Régis's scholastic mechanismBerkeley and the Passivity of Ideas
Richard Brook

Bloomsburg University


Dear Professor Ott. I have enjoyed your work on Malebranche and I'm now considering Berkeley's doctrine of the passivity of ideas. In Principles 25 he argues that essentially if we looks closely at our ideas (objects of sense) we'll come to see (1) they are passive, (2) a stronger stronger claim--it's impossible that they be active--thus non-minded nature must be causally inert. (2) Seems the right way to go--the argument as J Bennett (Learning from Six Philosophers) suggests is a priori; from the doctrine that to be is to be perceived it logically follows that nature is causally inert. I don't quite see the deduction--both K Winkler (Berkeley) and G Strawson (The Secret Connexion) have outlined how the argument might go, but I'm not convinced. Recently Jeff McDonough (J Phil argued that with respect to Berkeley's claim that 'against Malebranche we move our limbs ourselves,' a concurrentist account might save Berkeley from the consequent problem that ... (read more)
Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/3418 Reply

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