Philosopher X

the moral equality of combatants

2008-03-13T13:03:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking about war and the conditions under which it is obligatory for a combatant to refuse to fight in a war. Traditional Just War Theory has as one of its principles the principle of just cause. This principle basically says it's only permissible to go to war provided one's cause is just.

Certain theorists (e.g. Michael Walzer, Dan Zupan) argue for a principle often called the Moral Equality of Combatants (hereafter, MEC). The principle says all combatants, whether fighting on the just side (if indeed there is one) or the unjust side, share the same moral status with regards to jus ad bellum--the resort to war. One counterintuitive result of adopting this principle is that a combatant cannot be held blameworthy for conducting acts that essentially amount to murder since warring in the name of an unjust cause doesn't give one a justification or excuse for taking human lives.

I have a crude argument against MEC and i'm wondering what people think of it. It goes as follows:

Argument against MEC

Combatants have a moral obligation to not go to war for an unjust cause.
If (1), then combatants who go to war for an unjust cause are morally blameworthy.
From (1) and (2) it follows that combatants who go to war for an unjust cause are morally blameworthy.
Combatants who go to war for a just cause are not morally blameworthy.
Therefore, MEC is false.

I'm aware that Dan Zupan argues that combatants on the unjust side cannot be held morally responsible for jus ad bellum because of invincible ignorance--i.e. combatants epistemic states are such that they lack the requisite knowledge to determine the justness of a war effort. Provided i can answer this objection (and i think i can), are there any other worries about the argument?

suggestions for readings

2007-08-07T15:51:00.000-05:00

so, i am going to be teaching my first class this winter session and i was wondering whether anyone had any suggestions about course readings. the class is "current social and moral issues" and it's 3 weeks long. of course, i'll be covering the usual topics: abortion, euthanasia, blah, blah, blah, but i'm also looking to include readings regarding issues surrounding race and maybe the ethics of war. if anyone has any suggestions for readings or even topics i'd appreciate them.

primitive thisness

2007-07-22T19:38:00.000-05:00

my friend Gaurav presented me with an argument from Robert Adams:

Consider two spheres, call them A and B, and possible worlds W,

(1) in W1, there are two distinct spheres A and B that are identical in all their properties except that A has some contingent property p,

(2) in W2, there are A and B where everything is the same as in (1) except that B and not A has some contingent property p,

(3) in W3, only A exists, but without p,

(4) in W4, only B exists, but without p,

(5) in W5, both A and B distinctly exist, but neither having p.

The upshot of the argument is that objects aren't individuated in virtue of their properties, but that individuation is not reducible, or primitive. But if you like Leibniz's law, which basically says you can't have two distinct objects with identical properties, you shouldn't like this argument. i don't know what to say about this argument. It feels like there's some sneaky move being made but i can't quite say what. Any thoughts?

new additions

2007-06-22T09:46:00.000-05:00

great news! Brian Weatherson and Ishani Maitra have finally ;) accepted Rutgers' offers and will be joining our department. this has been an interesting time as we've added great people but also lost some great people as well. you can read more about Weatherson and Maitra here.

naturalized morality

2007-05-26T23:52:00.000-05:00

Alex Byrne wrote a brief overview of 20th century meta-ethics here.

Got Wisdom?

2007-05-07T09:49:00.000-05:00

The New York Times Magazine has a link to a questionnaire that attempts to measure one's wisdom. You can link to it here. (According to the test, I have relatively high wisdom!)

(HT: Leiter Reports)

Sweet!

2007-04-23T10:08:00.000-05:00

It's official. Jeff King is coming to Rutgers. This means that the world's foremost department in the philosophy of language is getting even better. Don't hate.

Race, Gender, and Philosophy

2007-04-16T17:49:00.000-05:00

Over at the Leiter Reports, there's a very interesting post on the role of race and gender in hiring practices in philosophy departments. You can link to it here.

singular thoughts and agnosticism

2007-03-31T18:05:00.000-05:00

In his book "Basic Christianity", John Stott offers a prayer for someone who is interested in investigating the claims of Christ in the gospels (e.g. The Gospel of Mark or the Gospel of John) that he or she can pray before reading:

'God, if you exist (and I don't know if you do), and if you can hear this prayer (and I don't know if you can), I want to tell you that I am an honest seeker after the truth. Show me if Jesus is your Son and the Saviour of the world. And if you bring conviction to my mind, I will trust him as my Saviour and follow him as my Lord.'

The prayer seems to suggest that one can have singular thoughts about objects one is not sure exist. This sounds a bit strange. What would be the semantic values of 'God' and 'you' in such a situation?

I'm inclined to think that in situations like this, one could not have a singular thought. This appears to include the assumption that the epistemic state of the thinker is relevant for having a singular thought. However, I'm not particularly sold on the idea that one needs to stand in some sort of acquaintance relation with an object in order to have a singular thought. For example, if my friend tells me,

(1) 'Jones will be coming to the party',

then, it seems perfectly reasonable to think that I can utter a sentence that expresses a singular thought about Jones,

e.g. (2) 'Matt said that Jones is coming to the party. Since he's not here yet, he must be caught in traffic.'

Even though I'm not acquainted with Jones, this utterance still expresses a singular thought, so it seems to me.

I don't have anything else to say about this at the moment...

**Update--Jason Stanley (J to the izzo) suggested a way to think about this case. The deal is that the agnostic, though not grasping the proposition, nevertheless expresses a singular thought. Something like this seems to be what's going on in (2) above.

Rutgers in the news

2007-01-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has published an article on philosophy at Rutgers, here. The article points out Rutgers' #2 ranking in the Gourmet Rankings. In discussing why some schools choose not to participate in the Philosophical Gourmet rankings, John Stuhr notes:

“Schools like Rutgers and N.Y.U. emphasize analytic philosophy, and most of the evaluators emphasize that, so schools like Vanderbilt and Northwestern and Penn State, which don’t, aren’t going to do as well... It’s like asking about the best painters of all time. If you asked Cubists, you would get a list of Cubists; Impressionists, the same thing. I’m sure Rutgers has a good department. It just doesn’t emphasize what we do.”

Stuhr's comment makes me wonder; is it possible to compare the merits of analytic and continental philosophy? Or are the two incommensurable?

(Thanks to Jason Stanley, aka Jigga, for the link)

*Brian Leiter comments on Stuhr's comments here.

Compositionality Sessions

2007-01-10T10:02:00.000-05:00

There is an exciting new group meeting this semester at Rutgers. The Compositionality Sessions, organized by my man Martin Jonsson, will bring philosophers such as Jerry Fodor, Paul Horwich, Zoltan Szabo, Stephen Schiffer, Peter Pagin, and linguist Maria Bittner to discuss their work in the area of compositionality. You can find information about the group here.

Conditionals

2007-01-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

This semester I'm taking a class on conditionals which will be taught by Jason Stanley and Barry Loewer. It should be interesting. Predictably, much of the subsequent posts will be on issues I encounter and questions I have about the material. Until then...

Williamson on Philosophical Method

2006-12-14T12:43:00.000-05:00

Timothy Williamson is at Princeton University this week delivering the Carl G. Hempel lectures on material from his book manuscript on philosophical methodology. Princeton has posted a link to the entire manuscript here. It looks pretty interesting.

Favorite Christmas Movie

2006-12-06T08:42:00.000-05:00

okay, a few of us were congregated over Ted Sider's house watching the louisville v. arizona game on his new plasma tv last night and i brought up this question, 'what is the best "christmas" movie?" Josh Armstrong thought that clearly, a christmas story was the obvious choice. then we broadened the category to movies that had christmas in them but weren't necessarily about christmas. someone suggested die hard while i'm partial to trading places myself.

so, what is your favorite "christmas" movie?

Interpretation as Consistency

2006-11-15T21:12:00.000-05:00

In his article, “Writer, Text, Work, Author”, Alexander Nehamas attempts to offer an alternative conception of interpretation. His version proposes that the aim of interpretation is not to uncover the meaning of a text, but to find consistency.

Nehamas claims that “…interpretation is the activity by means of which we try to construe movements and objects in the world around us as actions and their products”. Texts become actions and interpretation then becomes the business of explaining the relation between those actions in a consistent manner.

To aid in bringing about this consistency Nehamas introduces his notion of the 'author'. Nehamas makes a distinction between 'writer' and 'author': (1) Writers are historical persons who exist outside of their work in truth, that is, writers perform actions that do not pertain to their works, (2) The author figure emerges from the whole oeuvre; authors do not precede the work in truth, (3) The author is a “transcendental” figure that is neither identified with the writer nor composed wholly in a work. As a result of this distinction, all of the actions that are literary works, that can form part of the oeuvre are attributed exclusively to the author figure.

The picture of interpretation Nehamas presents is one of an un-ending process. He calls it a “broadening, extensive process”. The idea is that more and more information is used to shed light on some particular act or set of actions. Thus, as time continues on, we get more and more material with which to further our interpretation. Furthermore, interpretation is about establishing what the work is. “The most we can assume in interpreting a text is that it constitutes a work, not that we know what that work is.”

My problem with his view is that it seems to lose the work. If interpretation is an on-going effort to establish what the work is, we don’t ever appear to arrive at something we can appreciate. Furthermore, we attribute value to works, but if Nehamas’ conception of interpretation is correct, we can never be sure of the features a work possesses and hence cannot assign value to the work in light of those features.

The Trouble With Tolerance

2006-11-11T09:11:00.000-05:00

There is an interesting review by Stanley Fish in The Chronicle For Higher Education about a book by Wendy Brown that critiques the liberal value of toleration. You can read all about it here.

Legislating Hate

2006-11-04T13:29:00.000-05:00

In On Liberty, Mill argues for a very broad conception of freedom of expression. The only instances when anyone can interfere with the liberty of another is if the expression constitutes "a positive instigation to some mischievous act." An example of this would be yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater or Mill's example of telling an angry mob of poor workers "Corn dealers are starvers of the poor" while they are standing outside a corn dealer's house. Both of these examples seem to result in or at least create a situation where physical harm is caused.

According to Mill, the only justification for interfering with a person's liberty is to prevent harm to others. This is commonly called "the Harm Principle. I am wondering whether this principle would justify some version of hate speech legislation.

Perhaps we could think of a situation where what is said creates the requisite situation described above. For instance, some fairly respected person makes a nationally televised speech blaming a certain population of immigrants for the country's woes, which results in widespread acts of genocide. Should this be punishable by law? Or should it be protected as free speech?

World Champs!

2006-10-27T22:51:00.000-05:00

After 24 years, my beloved St. Louis Cardinals are finally World Series Champions again!
Oh the joy!!!!

Sensitive Politics?

2006-10-20T18:20:00.000-05:00

The National Assembly in France approved legislation that would make denying genocide against the law there. The lack of character of those who deny such atrocious acts not withstanding, isn't this an abuse of governmental power?
Read all about it here.

Coercion and the State

2006-10-05T20:59:00.000-05:00

In his article "Grounds for Coercion" Joel Feinberg discusses what is called 'Legal Paternalism'. Legal Paternalism basically says that in certain situations it is ok for the government to interfere with someone's free actions for the purpose of preventing harm to himself or herself. Feinberg defends a weak version of paternalism, which says the state is justified in intervening in one’s free activity only when it has good reason to think he/she is acting involuntarily.

Feinberg proposes a voluntariness standard that must be met by a person to demonstrate he is acting in a fully voluntary way. A person fails to act fully voluntarily, for example, if she is immature (e.g. a child), is mentally impaired (e.g. suffers from some neurosis or is drunk), or is misinformed. If a person is not fully voluntary in her pursuit of an action, then this provides a justifiable reason for the state to step in to prevent harm.

One of the illustrations Feinberg gives shows how fuzzy this picture can get though. I recreate it below:

Dr. Doe: I cannot prescribe drug X to you because it will do you physical harm.

Mr. Roe: I don’t care if it causes me physical harm. I’ll get a lot of pleasure first, so much pleasure, in fact, that it is well worth running the risk of physical harm. If I must pay a price for my pleasure I am willing to do so.

The question that arises from this example is one about drug use. Is it ok for the state to prohibit individuals from the recreational use of drugs? Even if it may ultimately cause the person irreparable harm?

Generics and Quantifiers

2006-09-29T21:32:00.000-05:00

so, tonight i went to a semantics workshop here at rutgers in the cognitive science department where i heard a talk by sarah-jane leslie on generics, e.g. generalizations such as 'tigers are striped'.

in her paper "generics and the structure of the mind", she tries to lay out conditions for predicting the truth conditions of generic statements. statements like 'ravens are black' and 'tigers are striped' appear to be true, even if there are instances of non-striped tigers, e.g. albino tigers.

sarah then says that we may be tempted to think of generics as employing quantifiers, i.e. a generic 'Fs are G' is true if some Fs are G. but this gives the wrong truth conditions in some instances, e.g. 'birds are female'. sarah takes this to show that generics are more basic than quantifiers.

also, statements such as 'mosquitoes carry the west nile virus' also seem true, even though less than 1 % of mosquitoes actually carry the virus.

sarah points out that children are actually able to use generics at a very early stage in their linguistic development which suggests that there is an early development of a mechanism in our cognitive structure for making these types of generalizations .

sarah lists four features of this mechanism:

1. it identifies 'characteristic dimensions', i.e. things that are characteristically true of natural kinds, with dimensions of regularities, e.g. 'ducks lay eggs'
2. it looks for a 'good predictor' of the property being generalized where the propery in question is particularly striking, e.g 'sharks attack bathers', comes out true even though only relatively few sharks actually have attacked bathers, .
3.when not dealing with instances of (1) or (2), a majority of Fs must be G in order for the generic to be true, e.g. 'barns are red',
4. where an exception to the generalization occurs, the generic is true if the case of a negative counterinstance, e.g. 'birds lay eggs' is true, though male birds do not lay eggs. but in the case of positive counterinstances, the generic seems to be false. peacocks have fabulously blue tails' is true though female peacocks do not possess blue tails, but have unimpressive stumps. if it were the case that female peacocks had fabulous pink tails, then we could not make a true utterance with 'peacocks have fabulous blue tails' but would have to utter instead, 'peacocks have fabulous blue or pink tails'.

i found the talk very interesting, though i'm not entirely sure her account is satisfactory. i can't put my finger on what is bothering me yet. i will have to think more about it.

greetings!

2006-09-29T11:16:00.000-05:00

hello world! my name is luvell anderson and i am a first year graduate student in philosophy at rutgers university. at the moment i am interested primarily in pragmatics in philosophy of language and issues about identity in social and political philosophy, but i have a considerably wide area of interests which is ever widening as i learn more and more.