Suppose you're not Joshua.

Okay so here's a question that I've only thought a little about, but it seems important and underexplored in the philosophy of perception (not my AOS, so it might not in fact be underexplored). First, suppose you are not Joshua. Provided this supposition obtains, you believe that there are illusions. Cases of visual illusions abound. And illusions differ from hallucinations. What I wonder is to what extent there are cases of illusion for non-visual sensory modalities. I take it that examples of hallucinations are fairly easy to come by in many cases, but illusions seem to be much more rare. So are there compelling examples of haptic, kinesthetic, auditory, gustatory, or olfactory illusions?

Mass Terms

Suppose that there is a single gold atom lying on a table, T. In such a situation, is the following sentence true?:

(G) Some gold is on T.

I'm curious about this because, in many ways, mass terms seem to behave a lot like plurals. Suppose, for instance, I have some gold and this gold is subsequently scattered. Then the gold I had still exists, although it has been broken up into different portions of gold. Similarly, if I have some coins, those coins still exist even if they become scattered.

A natural proposal, then, is to take (G) to be true in just the same circumstances as:

(A) Some gold atoms are on T.

But if (G) is true in just the same circumstances as (A), then (G) should be true in the circumstances described above, in which there is only one gold atom on T.

I suppose that this train of thought leads to the idea that the mass term "gold" means the same thing as "gold atoms", or something along those lines, along with some sort of explanation of why "is" is appropriate in (G) but "are" is appropriate in (A). And perhaps such an idea could be extended to other mass terms as well.

So, what do you guys think about (G) and (A) and what do you think about mass terms?

(Real) Time Travellers Should Believe in Presentism

Okay so this is really inchoate, but I figured that's sorta what this is for. As far as I know, most philosophers are comfortable with the metaphysical possibility of Lewisian time travel. Lewisian time travel is just time travel as Lewis characterized it; roughly, a discrepancy between personal time and (external) time. I think this notion is perfectly coherent, but it does not capture another idea that seems probably worthy of the name 'time travel'. It's this. Often, as a kid, I wished I could go back and redo something I did in a different way. This usually happened when I got in trouble for doing something stupid and I deeply desired that I could undo my mistake. (I have wished similar things as an adult, but it occurred much more frequently when I was a kid.) It seems like something that I wanted to do might be naturally described as going back in time and doing things differently. Now forget whether I could do things differently without causing contradictions to be true for now. Note that the sort of time travel I wanted to do was not Lewisian time travel. I did not want my older self to go back and aid my younger self. I wanted to relive the experience (and change its outcome). In semi-Lewisian terms, I wanted to make some earlier personal time present again. It would have been cool, but not at all what I wanted, for a later "stage" of me in personal time to be simultaneous with a younger "stage" of me. (4d talk makes this easier to describe, but I use scare quotes to distance myself from the view--I don't think that one needs to accept stages, etc in order to make sense of all this.)

So: Whatever kind of time travel this is, it's not Lewisian time travel. Call it 'Real time travel', for lack of a better name.

My problem is this. I believe Real Time Travel is a coherent notion. But I cannot for the life of me make sense of it without invoking A-properties. It seems that A-properties are needed to even make sense of Real Time Travel.

Furthermore, if I can engage in Real Time Travel and change what happened, then it seems to me some version of presentism must be true. Here I am assuming the following:

a. Travel in 2d time is not sufficient for time travel.
b. Branching universe is not sufficient for time travel.
c. It is not the case that in every possible case in which Real Time Travel occurs, the time traveller is just mistaken about what happened "the first time around" (so as to avoid contradiction between H's happening at t "the first time around" and H's not happening at t "the second time around".

So I guess I think that someone who is on board with (a-c) and thinks Real Time Travel is possible should be a presentist. But I am not a presentist and I am inclined toward (a-c) and the possibility of Real Time Travel. Help!

Saul Kripke: The Movie

Just in case one of you didn't hear about it.

A related Point about mereology

This is related to my last post. So, I suggest reading that post before reading this one.

I was wondering if a similar Salmon like view might lead us toward the view that certain conversational activities on the parts of classical mereologists result in certain activity dependent entities and an activity dependent part/whole-like relation that satisfy classical extensional mereology.

The idea would be that there is a relation expressed by ' is a part of' in the mouths of classical mereologists. This is not the relation expressed by ordinary english speakers (well probably not). Rather it is an activity dependent relation similar to the property 'is a unicorn' or 'is deposited in' (as used with respest to chacking accounts. Moreover, there are certain activity dependent entities that stand in this relation to other entities (some of them are activity dependent and others are not). Thus, the classical mereologists expresses a truth, in some strange language, when he says "there is something that both Chris and the Eiffel tower are a part of".

Such a view would have the following strange problems. Just by engaging in some activities, the classical mereologists will make it such that the number of entities in the universe is 2^n-1. But, it doesn't seem like anyone could have that kind of power. Also, certain mereologists can make it such that there are no omniscient beings or other kinds of entities (because of Rosen-like worries). But, how could any mereologists have that kind of power.

Finally, I worry that this entire enterprise of using activity dependant beings to solve various philosophical problems is going to lead down a slippery slope to a stupid kind of view according to which all sorts of seemingly metaphysically robust entities are just mind dependant. Are we, going to slide into a stupid Lockean view about properties for example? That would seem like a bad consequence.

The average philosopher disbelieves this thesis

I take it most of us agree that some form of compositionality is true and that many of us have an aversion to paraphrase strategies. Nonetheless, even amongst those philosophers who share our commitments and aversions there are few, if any, who would accept that we should take phrases of the form ‘the average F is G’ at face value. Most of them will say either than it is literally false and conveys the some truth or other about philosophers or that it simply means the same thing as a truth that has a radically different grammatical structure. I wish to present a strategy for taking phrases of the form ‘the average F is G’ at face value.

Nathan Salmon, and others, have defended the view that certain activities give rise to certain kinds of mentally and socially dependant entities. For example, worship-like activities in ancient Greece gave rise to a particular kind of entity. These philosophers also think that some such entity is the referent of ‘Zeus’ in our mouths. I think that Salmon says, a bit more controversially, that some such entity is the referent of ‘Zeus’ in the mouths of the ancient Greeks.

The view sometimes seems a bit less crazy if we note that these entities are much like bank accounts. Few people would believe that bank accounts are physical objects. Rather, bank accounts seem to be entities the existence of which is dependant upon certain human activity.

I would like to suggest that the same strategy might be adopted to provide satisfiers to phrases of the form ‘the average F is G’. On this view, there would be an entity that arises from certain human activities and it is this entity that makes it true that the average philosopher has read Russell. This entity is the average philosopher. It is not itself a philosopher. But, the activities that give rise to its existence require that, for example, if the average philosopher has read Russell, then a randomly chosen philosopher will have read Russell. That is, there are interesting relations that obtain between the average philosopher and real philosophers.

Here is a problem for the view. Suppose that the average philosopher has 1.6 children. If the view suggested above is true, then it seems to follow that something has 1.6 children. It also seems to follow that there is an average philosopher. But, surely there is no thing that has 1.6 children and there is not average philosopher.

I am not sure how best to respond to this problem. I guess my first inclination is to adopt a kind of Meinongianism. I would reject that there is an average philosopher. This would require rejecting the seemingly plausible thesis that any instance of the following schema expresses a truth:

(S1) ‘Necessarily, if the F is G, then there is exactly one F and it is G.’

One idea might be to make a distinction, as Priest does, between the ‘there is’ quantifier and the ‘some’ quantifier. We might replace the schema above with the folloing:

(S2) ‘Necessarily, if the F is G, then some F is G and only one F is G.’

But, this doesn’t seem to get at the heart of the matter either. Although such a distinction allows us to avoid the inferences noted above, it doesn’t allow us to avoid the following inference: The average philosopher has read Russell. So, some average philosopher has read Russell. Moreover, (S2) just doesn’t sound quite right (even when we use some standard instances of the definite description).

I guess I would suggest rejecting any unrestricted schema like (S1) and (S2). But, I am not sure how plausible this is. So, I guess my questions to the crowd are the following: are there any more unhappy consequences of this view? Do the happy consequences outweigh the unhappy ones? And, relatedly, is it better to just say sentences of the form ‘the average F is G’ are just plain false but convey a truth?

Are the Following Sorts of Situation Possible?

So, I talked about this with Joshua and Andrew a bit yesterday on th way to Syracuse, but I thought it might be interesting to post about it here and get reactions from all of you.

Is it possible for there to be someone such that he should perform each of actions A1-An, but shouldn't perform all of those actions? That is, is it possible for there to be an agent S and actions A1-An such that all of the following are true?:
(1) S should perform A1.
:
(n) S should perform An.
(n*) S should not perform A1, ..., and An.

Alternatively, is it possible for there to be someone such that he should perform all of actions A1-An, but shouldn't perform each of these actions? That is, is it possible for there to be an agent S and actions A1-An such that the following is true:
(n**) S should perform A1, ..., and An.
but one of the following is false?:
(1) S should perform A1.
:
(n) S should perform An.

Let me make these questions a bit more pressing by mentioning a slight variant on a principle employed by Peter Singer in "Famine, Affluence, and Morality":
(PS) If it is in one's power to perform an action A and if one is able, in performing A, to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, then one should perform A.
Now it seems possible that there be two actions, A1 and A2, such that (i) it is in one's power to perform A1, (ii) it is in one's power to perform A2, (iii) it is in one's power to perform both A1 and A2, (iv) one is able, in performing A1, to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, (v) one is able, in performing A2, to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, and (vi) one is not able, in performing both A1 and A2, to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. It seems that, if (PS) is true, then one should perform A1 and one should perform A2. However, it is plausible (although (PS) doesn't have this consequence) that, in such a situation, that one should not perform both A1 and A2. So, assuming the truth of (PS) and assuming the plausible judgment just mentioned, this is a case of the first sort mentioned above.

Anyway, what do you guys think?

A Simple Argument for a Fact/True Proposition Dichotomy

The proposition that Andrew is male, it seems, is true in virtue of the fact that Andrew is male. (This seems like a perfectly good sentence of English, and I would expect that an ordinary English speaker would, if queried, agree to its truth.) However, this claim, call it 'C', spells trouble for the following thesis that I have been inclined towards:

Facts are True Propositions (FTP): For all S, if S is true, then the fact that S is the true proposition that S.

To illustrate a bit, if (FTP) is true, then the fact that snow is white is simply the proposition that snow is white, since that proposition is true and the fact simply is the corresponding true proposition.

Anyway, why does C spell trouble for (FTP)? Well, consider the following argument:

1. The proposition that Andrew is male is true in virtue of the fact that Andrew is male.
2. If the proposition that Andrew is male is true in virtue of the fact that Andrew is male, then: if (FTP) is true, then the proposition that Andrew is male is true in virtue of the proposition that Andrew is male.
3. Therefore, if (FTP) is true, then the proposition that Andrew is male is true in virtue of the proposition that Andrew is male.
4. The proposition that Andrew is male is not true in virtue of the proposition that Andrew is male.
5. Therefore, (FTP) is not true.

All of the premises of this argument seem true to me. I suppose that the best move for the proponent of (FTP) to make would be to deny either (1) or (4). But (1) definitely has ordinary language on its side and, insofar as I understand it, (4) seems true to me. So, facts are not true propositions.

(By the way, I don't mean to suggest a whole-hearted endorsement of this argument. As I said, all of its premises seem true to me. However, I also have some inclination to reject its conclusion. So, I'm not entirely sure what to say about the argument. I guess it pushes me towards somewhat towards accepting its conclusion. I also don't mean to claim that this is a novel or original argument. Honestly, I don't know the literature on facts very well, so I don't know if it is or not. However, given that it is such a simple argument, I suspect that someone's given it before.)