ideasleftover

I'm Not Sure What's Going on Here

2006-08-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a post by Thomas Nadelhoffer on his blog Truth to Power. Following the original post is a series of comments by myself and one Patrick S. O'Donnell. I'm not sure what Patrick is doing. I can see that he is doing a lot of name dropping and skipping around the point but I think that he thinks he is to be taken seriously. Take a look at his two sentence post. It looks to me like someone got mad and gave up. If I am wrong here, which wouldn't be the first time, I would really appreciate it if someone could explain to me what it is I am wrong about and who it is that I am making fun of. Specifics would be nice.

I Can't Believe This Stuff

2006-08-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a discussion of the 'impending apocalypse" on Truth to Power. The religious right is absolutely crazy. It used to be funny to me but after reading so much of their mindless, dangerous, and loony crap I am truly frightened. I know a guy who I would consider a fundamentalist christian. He is the nicest guy in the world when you are talking about normal stuff but he is so indoctrinated that he doesn't think for himself when it comes to spiritual matters (that just so happen to affect millions of people). That scares me. Turning off your brain scares me more than anything, I think. This stuff really freaks me out. Take a look at this and this. This is so crazy it doesn't seem real.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research... Duh, Duh, Duuhh

2006-08-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a post, and my comment, on embryonic stem cell research on Nadelhoffer's new blog Truth to Power. Take a look and feel free to express your opinion in comments on my blog. It is a tough issue and to repeat what I said in my comments on Nadelhoffer's blog, I think everyone could use a little less dogmatism with respect to this issue and really every issue.

Ideally Speaking...(new lemming)

2006-08-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

A friend and fellow-student of mine, A.P. Taylor, has relaunched his blog "Ideally Speaking..". I believe that Patrick's newish blog will be along the lemming (language, epistemology, metaphysics, mind) lines. Check it out. I will provide a permanent link soon.

Patrick will be leaving for Buffalo soon to begin his PhD studies at SUNY. Good luck Patrick.

Ad Hockery in Eternalism?

2006-07-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

For a brief summary of the positions of Temporalism and Eternalism, with respect to propositions, take a look at my previous post . Some eternalists want to give an account of semantic meaning so that under different time constraints the truth value for these ad hoc sentence components can change. I have a hard time taking the eternalist position seriously. I know that temporalism is the minority view but it seems like eternalists want to account for the fact that something in a sentence/proposition changes its truth value over time, they just don't want to say that it is the proposition.

I have another concern about the eternalist position. It seems arbitrary to me that the eternalist claims that there is an intrinsic time indexical in propositions like 'John is a firefighter'. The eternalist claims that the sentence 'John is a firefighter' is incomplete with out the implicit 'John is a firefighter at t*'. It seems that if the eternalist wants to say that there is an intrinsic time in propositions like 'John is a firefighter' then they should think that there is also an intrinsic world. I guess the eternalist would say that there is an intrinsic world, the actual world where the proposition is expressed. But, if we think of the proposition 'John is a firefighter' to be an abstract proposition, could there be an intrinsic world component to the proposition. I hope to have an answer to this question soon. I will email my professor today because I don't think that I can wait until class next week.

Also, I emailed William Lycan last night about a question I had about the metaphysical/conceptual debate. He emailed me back this morning and answered my question. I thought that it was pretty cool that he took the time to email a student that he has never met and who does not attend the university, or any university, that he teaches/taught at. Not to mention he is a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, my cinderella school for a PhD.

My First Comment!

2006-07-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

Well it has only taken a month but I have received my first comment. Here is a link to the comment. Please feel free to reply to my comment or the anonymous commentor's remarks. Comments are definitely welcome so please don't hesitate to flap your gums.

Worldwide Thought Experiment

2006-07-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

I saw this link in a post on Piccinini's blog today. While the poll is interesting it does not do a good job of representing the rigor that goes into forming a well conceived philosophical thought experiment. Nevertheless, it is fun to see what other people would do in 'ethical dilemmas'.

Testing Hallucinogens Again

2006-07-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

This article is interesting. What they call the subjects at one point in time is hilarious. This test makes me think of the experiment in Stephen King's Firestarter.

Temporalism or Eternalism?

2006-07-14T00:42:00.000-07:00

It is my privilege to be taking a seminar in metaphysics from Professor Brit Brogaard this summer. The theme of the class is Propositions, Time, and Tense. It is a very stimulating class to say the least. Right now we are discussing the pros and cons of temporalism and eternalism. To quote from Dr. Brogaard's forthcoming book, Transient Truths, temporalism is committed to the following two theses:

Content Invariance: some sentences lacking explicit time determination (e.g. 'John is a firefighter') are capable of expressing the same proposition at different times.

Truth Variance: some propositions (e.g. the proposition that John is a firefighter) are capable of changing their truth-values over time.

Eternalism denies the claims of Content Invariance and Truth Variance by holding that:

Content Variance: Sentences lacking specific time determination (e.g. 'John is a firefighter') express different propositions at temporally distinct contexts of use.

Truth Invariance: Propositions are not capable of changing their truth-values across time.

Content Invariance, as far as I can tell, means that temporal propositions can express the same proposition at different times because at the time (t*) when the proposition is uttered in the form of a sentence the time (t*) is not a component of the proposition, rather, it is one-half of the circumstances required for evaluating the truth-value of the proposition. Therefore, the proposition 'John is a firefighter' can express the same proposition at different times and at the same time generate different truth values by virtue of the difference in the circumstances for evaluation, namely, the different time at which the sentence which expresses the proposition is uttered.

Now, eternalism holds that even when a time is not made explicit in the sentence itself (e.g. 'John is a firefighter') the time at which the sentence was uttered (1:00 a.m. July 14, 2006 CST) is a component of the proposition that the sentence is expressing. Therefore, the truth-value of that sentence cannot change over time due to its built in time.

For me, eternalism is a lot easier to understand but it generates many more problems than temporalism does. For a much clearer exegesis of both positions check out Dr. Brogaard's book. I have provided a link to her new blog in my links. I will be checking it often, it might help me to know what I am talking about in class for once.

Interested in Moral Psychology, try Adam Smith

2006-06-15T23:45:00.000-07:00

If anyone who reads this post is interested in a very good descriptive account of moral psychology I urge you to take a look at the work of Adam Smith, as I will be doing the same for the next month, I have a class on Smith this summer. While Smith is most famous these days for his massive work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, or as more commonly referred to as, The Wealth of Nations, he was famous in his own time for his book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. As luck would have it, I just finished a seminar on David Hume's magnum opus, A Treatise of Human Nature. The luck is due to the fact that both Hume's and Smith's work deal with the idea of sentiments, rather than a priori reasoning as we see in Kant, as fundamental to the idea of morality. Additionally, both men have quite a bit to say about the role that sympathy plays in our moral judgments.

It seems that in Hume's conception, sympathy is more of a feeling, and a naturally occurring one at that, and for Smith sympathy is kind of a product of a process that he believes we instantiate when we attempt to view things through the eyes of an ''impartial spectator". Anyway, it is truly a pleasure to read Smith, especially after a semester where I was reading people like Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. I would recommend both the TMS and WN to anyone who is interested in the field but especially to my friends and anyone who is in or is planning on going to law school.

By the way, I am also lucky in that the Smith course is being taught by a visiting professor who is the chair of the philosophy department at the University of Alabama, Dr. James Otteson. Dr. Otteson has a book out now about the relation between Smith's two works, Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life. Again I really do recommend both of these books, especially to law students.