Jessica Berry's letter to the UNLV Board of Regents

UNLV is planning to respond to the fiscal situation in Nevada by simply eliminating the philosophy department and the women's studies department. Anything I wrote about this would be less eloquent than what Jessica Berry wrote, so let me put her letter up:

To the Members of the Board of Regents,
Shortly after being sentenced to death by a jury of his fellow citizens, Socrates observes: "It is for the sake of a short time, gentlemen of the jury, that you will acquire the reputation and the guilt, in the eyes of those who want to denigrate the city, of having killed Socrates, a wise man, for they who want to revile you will say that I am wise even if I am not." You have no doubt heard many defenses recently of the "cash value" of Philosophy as an academic research discipline, and of the claim that Philosophy is the core of the humanities, and of the many ways in which students who are able to study Philosophy as undergraduates are more "well-rounded" and demonstrably more competitive than students in many other disciplines, across and outside of the humanities. All of these things are true and well worth bearing in mind as you confront your state's current fiscal crisis. But consider also Socrates' suggestion: even if none of these things were the case, the reputation of your state, your city, and your university system is likely to suffer just the same. In a state that allows women legally to practice "the oldest profession," you will become known for having killed off a Women's Studies program during International Women's Month, and for having at the same time having focused your efforts solely on ousting your practitioners of the oldest academic profession there is.
Because those who devote their lives to the academy as a career are among the most highly-trained professionals in our country, people whose expertise is not so easily transferred to other places or fields, your administration will become known for having ruined the lives of many faculty members when doing so could certainly have been avoided. The University of Nevada will find it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain excellent faculty members, in any discipline, or to recruit students from out of state. The loss of these programs will outrage alumni, whether or not they studied Philosophy as a major or minor, thereby alienating a number of would-be future contributors to the university. Finally, and most obviously, the intellectual reputation of the university-nationally and internationally-will suffer. What may appear to you to be the loss of one department will have substantial, long-term repercussions for the entire University of Nevada.
When the University System of Georgia faced a proposed second year of $3M cuts, even Republican Governor Sonny Perdue called a halt, saying that he would not allow the Legislature to dismantle a world-class university system that it took generations to build. I can say without exaggeration that I believe the proposal currently under consideration by the Board would clearly have that effect on your institution. I would urge you to look to the solutions adopted by other university systems around the country who have weathered times just as trying as those in Nevada, but without such far-reaching and catastrophic consequences.
Respectfully,
Dr. Jessica N. Berry,
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Georgia State University

This joke will be my greatest contribution to early modern scholarship

If Hume were right about the missing shade of blue, it would be a pigment of our imagination.

Looking forward to the 2011 AAP

I just bought my ticket from Singapore to Christchurch for the 2011 AAP in New Zealand. The conference will be in Dunedin, at the University of Otago, from July 3-8. I've had a lot of fun with Aussie and Kiwi philosophers at past AAPs, and this year they're rolling both the Australian and the New Zealand conference into one. After that I'll make my way up to Auckland for the Naturalisms in Ethics Conference July 14-15. I'll probably be Down Under for another couple weeks after that to have a good time with more philosophers.

Jetstar was having some kind of fare sale, so I got a pretty good deal on this flight. The one-way ticket cost SGD 315 (USD 246), which is good for a journey of over 5000 miles. I'm good at sleeping on planes overnight, especially if I gulp down some melatonin, so if you meet me in Christchurch I should be awake and alert. And since New Zealand's duty free allowance is 3 liters of hard liquor, I should have some good stuff to share.

I need a friend with a video camera

Someday I'll go up to Jerry Fodor and say, "Gubap-boop meelip junga whinky-whinky." And he'll say, "What?" And I'll say, "Oh! Sorry. I thought you knew the Language of Thought."

A puzzle about your butt

Nineteen years ago yesterday, Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" was released. In commemoration of this significant cultural event, I've put together a little puzzle.

You are curious whether your butt is big or small. Unfortunately, you lack the ability to accurately assess the size of butts. Fortunately, there are three rappers before you. You are of their preferred gender, so they are willing to collectively entertain exactly one yes-or-no question from you, to which they will each give an answer. One rapper likes big butts and cannot lie. One rapper likes small butts and always lies. One rapper likes all butts but shares your inability to assess butt size, and will answer yes or no at random if asked whether a butt is big or small. You do not know which rapper is which. All the rappers know all other facts relevant to the situation, including everyone's identity and butt preferences. Before you are able to ask your question, one rapper receives a booty call (the size of the booty is unknown to you) and leaves the room. The other two rappers remain and are willing to pronounce on your question. You still do not know who any of the rappers are. To determine the size of your butt, what question should you ask them? (You may assume that all butts can be classified as either big or small and ignore contextual factors, e.g. from the presence of Oakland booty.)

Perhaps you will enjoy hearing "Baby Got Back" while working on this puzzle.
Thanks are due to Leah Velleman for inspiring the puzzle, Rob Helpy-Chalk for pointing out an inconsistency since corrected, and Dennis Clark and Supriya Sinhababu for playtesting.

Naturalisms in Ethics in Auckland

Here's where I'll be in the middle of July 2011: Auckland NZ, for the Naturalisms in Ethics conference. People of very different views (including some theists) will be there. In fact, since it precedes a philosophy of religion conference, they might be a majority. It should be exciting!

Moral epistemology in action

When we went out for drinks after I presented "The epistemic argument for hedonism" at ANU, Dan Korman and I both demonstrated our favorite ways of forming beliefs about the good.

Dan is using rational intuition to reach into Plato's heaven and grasp the Form of the Good. I'm using phenomenal introspection on my experience of pleasure to recognize its goodness.

Thanks to Jo Lau for taking the picture.

Podcast!

A while ago, I recorded a philosophy podcast with Luke Muehlhauser on Possible Girls, the Humean theory of motivation, and my version of hedonic utilitarianism. He's gone to the trouble of transcribing the whole thing so anyone interested can click over there and read it or download it to listen as you please.

Luke has been doing this sort of thing for a while with lots of philosophers (including ethics people Stephen Finlay, Don Loeb, and Ruth Chang) and he asks good questions.

Down Under in December

I'm going Down Under in December! The philosophical agenda looks like this:

December 2: presenting "Zarathustra's Metaethics" at UWA.

December 5-9: attending the AAP New Zealand and presenting "Why My Pants Are Not Subject To Requirements Of Rationality."

December 16: presenting something at ANU. I've been wavering on what to do.

(Then: fun exploring the Great Barrier Reef with Dan Korman, and maybe hanging out with some wonderful folks in Brisbane.)

The schedule is a bit lighter than last December, when I gave 8 talks in Australia and NZ. That's mainly because I've spent a lot of this semester polishing up old papers into talk form and sending them out.

Farewell, Philippa Foot

Just as I was preparing a lecture on her "Utilitarianism and the Virtues," I heard the news that Philippa Foot passed away. She was 90 years old. I wish I could've met her. (Longtime readers of this blog will remember a cheeky song dedication to her.)

Last night I was looking over the paper and enjoying the liveliness of her writing. In reading her, there's a feeling of interacting with a complete human being that I often don't get when reading philosophy.

I really like the picture on the right, taken in the early 1940s. I imagine that she's just heard somebody present a view, and she's about to respond. I want to hear what she's going to say.

I think in acronyms

When I saw the title of Brian Leiter's post, "National Association Representing Computer Scientists Denounces NRC Rankings", I wondered if that was actually the name of the organization. They would then be the NARCS.

As it turns out, the association is actually called the CRA.

I review Robert Pippin's new Nietzsche book in NDPR

It's a harsh review. I'm going to step back and say some things about why it came out this way.

In retrospect, being a reviewer rather than just an ordinary reader made reading the book an especially painful experience. The book is very unclear, often with very different directions in which each bit of unclarity could be resolved. If there are 2 ways to read each unclear bit, and n unclear bits, you end up with 2ⁿ possible interpretations. (A lot of the unclear bits admit of many more than two possible interpretations, so really it's more.) Trying to live up to your obligations of charity as a reviewer and figure out which of this huge array of different interpretations is the best one is exhausting. An ordinary reader can just shrug, say it's unclear, remember the bits he liked, and forget the rest. But a reviewer has to correctly describe the view to everybody.

Usually things wouldn't be this bad. The organization of the book, perhaps, would enable one to slice down 2ⁿ to a manageable number, perhaps by isolating separate elements of the position. But the book is very disorganized. As far as I can tell, the clearest expressions of the positive view are scattered throughout middle parts of late chapters.

It wouldn't be so bad either if the differing interpretations had substantial and distinctive virtues. If you're a connoisseur of philosophical positions, which is a good thing to be in our profession, you might enjoy savoring each one. Instead, I spent hours and hours figuring out which of a large range of yucky views I had to attribute to Pippin. It was a miserable, frustrating experience.

I met Pippin at a conference a few months ago. He's a nice man, and he was nice to me and one of my graduate students. I think of him without any negative emotion, and I don't want my review to cause him anguish. (I don't expect it will -- I'm sure he's doing well enough for himself to shrug off a harsh review written by some guy on the other side of the world).

But insofar as this makes any sense, I'm angry and resentful towards his book for the misery it inflicted on me. As I wrote I wanted to avenge myself against it, and rescue readers from it, by making its faults clear so it would be avoided by all and honored by none. If there are points in the review where you're wondering what emotion drove me to write as I did -- well, that's the feeling.

PhilosophyTV with Jason Brennan

I'm on PhilosophyTV with Jason Brennan of Brown University! The first half is him talking to me about his argument that the right to vote and the right to hold office aren't really valuable to the individuals who hold them. I found a surprising amount to agree with in the argument, at least once his conclusion was spelled out narrowly enough.

Unfortunately my computer isn't able to display video properly for some reason, so I haven't watched the finished product yet. For anyone who does: Assuming that the PhilosophyTV folks didn't get horrified and edit them out, I can promise you some silly visual gags in the second half of the video. I think I started them at some point after 35:21 when I start the segment focused on my work, which is the epistemic argument for hedonism.

If I can figure out how to embed the video properly, I'll post it here too.

The Desire-Belief Account Of Intention Explains Everything

That's the new paper I've uploaded. I'll be submitting it somewhere by the end of the month, just in case some folks I sent it to want give me feedback before then.

I'm looking at a bunch of the things that the desire-belief view of intention supposedly can't explain -- for example, our tendency to rise in confidence that we're φing when we intentionally φ, our ability to choose which of several reasons we act on, and the stuff Michael Bratman describes in his 1987 book mostly dealing with the ability of intentions to explain deliberative phenomena. I argue that the view in fact explains all this stuff, often better than opposing views, because it can tell you why these phenomena obtain and say something about why, in some cases, they don't.

The title is kind of big and in-your-face because I got really annoyed with how casually the desire-belief view gets dismissed for supposed explanatory inadequacy. People didn't think seriously about functional properties of desire other than its motivational effects (and sometimes not even those) when dismissing it. My friend John Maier told me when I was giving a talk on something else at ANU in December that nobody accepted the view anymore. This got me really motivated and I gave talks at KCL and Tufts and Illinois and UChicago and Illinois State defending it this summer. If you're interested in intention, have a look and tell me how well I did!

The regress argument against understanding philosophers

Via Brian Leiter. The argument proceeds from the premise that to understand any philosopher, you have to understand the philosophers who influenced him/her. This pushes you back down the history of philosophy until there's nothing you can write a good dissertation on after Aristotle. (People in well-funded doctoral programs might be able to make it up to Epicurus.)

Obviously things aren't that bad. The big point to be made here is that it's impossible to produce work that comes from a perfect knowledge of everything. You pick the things you're going to be really good on, and you're going to be mediocre at some other stuff. Some of us are going to know Montaigne and we'll be able to understand what Nietzsche is saying about him, and what that means about Nietzsche. Others are going to know metaethics and we'll be able to characterize Nietzsche's metaethical position in more precise terms. Maybe imperfect knowledge of the areas we're not expert in will impair our efforts. That's why we talk to each other.

Also: I admire philosophers who do interdisciplinary work that engages with the humanities and social sciences. There's lots of bad philosophy out there, and the world seriously needs philosophers who have the intellectual ability, patience, and academic social skills to help people there see that their (often very worthwhile) projects shouldn't be shaped by bad theories.

Video up soon

I just did a diavlog (I think that's what we're calling it) on hedonism about value with fellow hedonist Ben Bradley of Syracuse. It went really well, and I look forward to putting it up here.

Fin

It's finally done! Not just this summer's philosophical travel (8 talks, 4 conferences only one of which I was speaking at) but everything from the big grant I got in early 2009. In total, I got 25 talks out of that pot of money. Things went well, but I'm feeling pretty tired right now.

I'm going to be roving around the UK for the rest of July, writing and sightseeing. Then I return to Singapore.

Remaining summer schedule

I've been remiss in not posting about where I'd be traveling. Here's the agenda ahead:

Now until June 26: Austin, TX
June 26-29: NYC
June 29-July 5: DC
July 7-9: Southampton, UK (Nietzsche's Postmoralism conference)
July 9-12: Dublin (Joint Session)
July 13: Giving a talk in St. Andrews
Until August 1: Bumming around the British Isles in some way or another until I fly from London to Singapore.

So far I've given 6 talks: at KCL, Tufts, Illinois-Urbana, UChicago, Illinois State, and Northern Illinois. I also attended SLACRR, which was great.

Habermas interview

I don't know a lot about Jurgen Habermas' philosophical views, but I'm impressed with the thoughtful and sensible answers he gives when asked about contemporary political issues.

Things you learn while grading exams

From a delightfully digression-packed essay on John Mackie's argument from relativity:

Anyway, back to monogamy, at some point humans become monogamous. It may have been brought about by natural selection processes that favour our species (a human is likelier to shoot you for sleeping with someone else, perhaps? than an animal would kill its mate → not just because animals have no firearms & excluding the likes of black widows that devour their male companion for nutrition after creation. More sensibly, the formulation of settlements and organized living would decrease the pool of mates met.)