UCSB Philosophy Blog

UCSB Debating Darwin Conference

2011-01-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

This blog isn't really active, but this is a good place to announce:

The Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara is pleased to announce a Steven Humphrey Fund for Excellence in Philosophy Conference:

Debating Darwin: Philosophical Issues in Evolution and Natural Selection
February 18-20, 2011
UC Santa Barbara

Invited Speakers

Richard Boyd (Cornell)
Jerry Fodor (Rutgers)
Peter Godfrey-Smith (Harvard)
Paul Griffiths (Sydney)
Elisabeth Lloyd (Indiana)
Mohan Matthen (Toronto)
Alex Rosenberg (Duke)

Discussants

Additional details TBA at: http://www.philosophy.ucsb.edu/conferences/

Contact: ucsb.conf@gmail.com.

Registration: For those wishing to attend the conference, registration is appreciated. It’s free, and it helps our planing. To register send an email to the conference email address (ucsb.conf@gmail.com) with “Registration” in the subject line. If you give us your name and institutional affiliation, we will have a name tag waiting for you.

Philosophy Media

2008-08-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of philosophers on the Internet and in various other media over the past year or so. I thought some readers would like to know, in case they don't already.

- Daniel Dennett is interviewed by Bill Moyers (in place of Charlie Rose).

- Jesse Prinz can be seen on Bloggingheads.tv.

- Joshua Knobe on Bloggingheads.tv (1).

- Joshua Knobe on Bloggingheads.tv (2).

- Joshua Knobe on Bloggingheads.tv (3).

- Shaun Nichols on Bloggingheads.tv.

- Geoffrey Sayre-McCord talks about meta-ethics on Bloggingheads.tv.

- Martha Nussbaum talks about religious equality with Bill Moyers.

- David Chalmers talks about consciousness on Bloggingheads.tv (this is older).

Progress in Philosophy

2007-07-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

Hi all. I'm not sure if this blog is dead, or if anyone still checks this thing, but I have something that might be interesting to discuss:

I've been thinking about progress in philosophy. I don't like that philosophy is often perceived, especially by undergrads, as just "a bunch of philosophers throwing ideas around." I get the impression that many of them think that philosophy is subjective in some god-awful sense---that, unlike the empirical sciences, we don't (or can't?) seek truth. Of course, that is quite a misperception of the facts. But what causes this?

Of course, part of the problem is that this is somewhat the way that philosophy is portrayed in pop-culture. Another problem is that undergrads are probably too quick to judge without being exposed to much philosophy. But are we not in part to blame? Or is there not something we can do to help?

I see some potential ways in which we might be contributing to this problem ourselves, primarily with the way philosophy is taught. First, "Philosophy of X" courses are often taught by merely providing what major philosophers have said about X throughout history. I think this often gives students the impression that there is no fact of the matter. Although, it is, I think, actually a great method of teaching philosophy. It often helps to touch on the historical background of an issue in order to understand where we stand now with respect to that issue, etc. But, this is problematic if there are no morals or conclusions drawn in the course with respect to issue X. I take it that philosophy professors are often worried about drawing any conclusions with respect to X and teaching them as fact since, so it is often assumed, "everything is controversial in philosophy" and they don't want to be accused of teaching in a "biased" manner.

But is this right? I don't really see why philosophy is any different in this respect from any empirical science (e.g., chemistry). In chemistry, students are taught some history of the field and then told what "the facts" are. But, then, five years later, those are no longer "the facts," they are replaced by something else. That is, science classes are allowed to teach certain opinion as fact, but allowed to modify it later, change their minds in light of new evidence and considerations.

Now I think this practice is all fine and good (since it's of course backed up by research, data, rational thought, and other things that warrant attributing progress to such disciplines). My question is: why can't we do it? The scientific community too is often in disagreement about things. Now, one might retort: "But, there is not as large of a portion of the philosophical community that agrees about anything." But, first of all, I'm not sure that's true. Second, even if it is true, so what? There's still a fact of the matter regardless of whether over 50% of the philosophical community agrees on some claim (excluding, of course, especially weird cases dealing with, say, vagueness or something).

But let's concede that point. Perhaps we do need to keep our professors on some sort of leash. Perhaps they should only teach what's not significantly controversial (how "significantly" is cached out, I'm not sure). This is probably the case. But is it not true that there are some things that the majority of philosophers agree on? That is, isn't there progress in philosophy that's at least somewhat similar to the progress in any other academic discipline that seeks truth (which surely we do, contrary to popular undergraduate belief)?

Now we can finally get to what I wanted to ask the readers of this blog:

(*) What sort of progress has been made in philosophy?

Imagine you are teaching an Intro to Philosophy course and you want to teach it like an Intro to Chemistry course. What are the main sorts of morals, conclusions, or generally agreed-upon points of progress that have occurred in philosophy? Answers of course could be quite general or specific.

Allow me to throw out some suggestions. I'm thinking that some answers would be something like:

(1) The development of modern propositional logic with quantification over categorical logic.

Perhaps one might also include:

(2) Since the 20th century people have tended more to realize the proper differences between the necessary, the a priori, and the analytic, and don't consider them to be obviously extensionally equivalent.

Is that the end of the list? Is that even a good list?

Help, save our discipline from subjectivity! :)

In ur university, bloggin ur blogz

2007-06-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

This might amuse some of you:

http://community.livejournal.com/loltheorists

Philosophers in the News

2007-01-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

Hi, all. This is a bit late, but there have been two major spottings of philosophers recently in the news (specifically, comedic news):

Harry Frankfurt was on The Daily Show plugging his new book, On Truth. (Watch it here.)

Also, Peter Singer was on The Colbert Report plugging his new book, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. (Watch it here.)

As many of you know, philosophers are not often allowed to talk to the general public. They are often thought to "corrupt the youth" and so forth. In a way it's sad that philosophers can only promote their work on Comedy Central. However, as far as I'm concerned, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are the best damn news programs in the U.S.

The "Beta" Comic

2006-12-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

HT: Andrew Bailey

Can you name these philosophers?

Merry X-Mas Everyone!

2006-12-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

The Mind-Body Problem Down Under

2006-10-09T17:40:00.000-07:00

A radio show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has done an interesting episode commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of U.T. Place's "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?". There are interviews with Smart, Armstrong, Chalmers, and others.

The audio can be found here: "The Mind-Body Problem Down Under"

I found out about this at fragments of consciousness which has additional links.

The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever

2006-10-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for “yes” and “no” are “da” and “ja” in some order. You do not know which word means which.[1]

[1]George Boolos (1996), p. 62.

Saucy Jack

2006-09-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

Brian sent out the following question. I was going to just reply via email, but I thought it better to put it up here, in case anybody else wanted in on the action.

Do you guys get a difference here?

(12) If Prince Albert committed those murders, he is Jack the Ripper.

(13) If Prince Albert had committed those murders, he would have been Jack the Ripper.

If so, how would you make sense of the difference? Any thoughts?

My response (a little rough, but hopefully readable):
The most natural reading of "Jack the Ripper" is as a name, and the most natural reading of (13) is as a counterfactual conditional, (12) as a material conditional. So (12) could be true, and if so is necessary in virtue of the necessity of the consequent (on the other hand, if false, it's necessarily false). If someone's having committed the murders is good evidence that they are JtR, then the antecedent is even good evidence for the consequent, so it could plausibly be given some kind of relevance (non-truth-functional) reading. I know very little about relevance logic, but it seems to me that some kind of Bayesian (evidential probability) sorta guy might do that job for cases like (12) (ordinary, non-counterfactual conditionals).

(13) is weird, since counterfactual conditionals sound so much like relevance conditionals (perhaps even more so than do ordinary indicative conditionals); that's perhaps reason to believe that the Lewis/Thomason semantics for them doesn't capture English usage (since it's open to the same "paradoxes of the conditional" as the ordinary strict conditional is). On the L/T reading, (13) is false only if Prince Albert is not Jack the Ripper (that identity being necessary if true and impossible if false) and it's possible that Prince Albert committed those murders (and so it's probably false). I can't make sense of an evidential relevance reading of (13), probably because I can't make much sense of such readings for any counterfactual conditionals (more on this below). Furthermore, I'm not sure I can give ANY kind of coherent relevance reading for (13), or at least a coherent and true reading. That's because relevance readings typically express exclusivity, and so a conterfactual relevant conditional implies the falsity of its consequent as well as its antecedent. Given the falsity of the consequent (which is then impossible), nothing could have made it true, not even murder. I'm not sure if that's a false relevance reading or just not a coherent relevance reading since there's no relevance. Counterfactual + relevance + identity (or another necessary/impossible proposition) = weird, and probably just false. As I said, I think a relevance reading is the most natural reading (caveat: I know almost nothing about relevance logic), and taken in that way, (13) is either false or incoherent.

The natural readings of (12) (material or evidential relevance) allow that it be true. However, given an evidential relevance reading of (12), I'm not sure what COULD count as evidence for the consequent, since I assume that we (in place of the dudes from Scotland Yard) aren't so strange as to lack the belief that JtR is JtR or that PA is PA, and so the belief that JtR is PA (iff that's true). So I definitely don't want to say that the antecedent could be evidence supporting BELIEF in the conclusion, although perhaps 'evidence' is broad enough to include things that make you recognize stuff (where that's not a matter of belief so much as having the OBJECTS that are involved in your beliefs "lined up" in a certain way in thought).

As for an evidential reading of (13), I have trouble making sense of such a thing because evidential evalutation seems to be tied to my perspective in a way that ordinary truth-evaluation is not. In other words, if I consider a hypothetical situation and what would be evidence for what for me, I can't but evaluate it in terms of my actual evidence; thus counterfactuals can't be given evidential readings that aren't rather weird. In the case of (13), I can only consider my actual evidence for the antecedent and the consequent; if PA is not JtR, then NOTHING is evidence for the consequent, no matter what I would think if I knew/believed different things. This understanding of counterfactual evidence may all depend on my not much understanding a sense of evidence (or reason to believe/recognize, if there is such a notion) that isn't factive. I'm inclined to say that if P is false, then you don't have evidence for P or a reason to believe that P, although you may think you do. Now perhaps there's a coherent category of stuff that's like evidence (or reasons) but not factive. Perhaps one might be inclined to say that it's one's "qualitative evidence", or "seemings", and furthermore that the antecedent of (13) should be understood as specifying conditions in terms of this "kind of evidence". I think that's a rather theory-laden (i.e., poorly motivated) response; I'm not currently convinced that it's incoherent or anything, but I'm mostly inclined to think it's false. In other words, I don't think such a notion (if coherent) is sufficiently evidential to give us a coherent and possibly true reading of (13). I think (13) just doesn't work like that, nor does other evidential talk in English.

Philosophical Powers

2006-08-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

Check out these crazy, buffed-out action figures of famous philosophers. :)

Constructing a Gettier-style Example

2006-08-21T22:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

I wrote the following last year for one of Tony Brueckner’s classes. Since it was long time ago, some portions of it (footnotes 2 and 3) are not very clear even to myself. Anyway, I post it here for fun.

-----------------

Consider the following case:

It is widely known to the people who work in philosophy and logic that the Incompleteness Theorem is proved by the person who has been called ‘Gödel.’ Suppose, however, that his real name was not ‘Gödel,’ but ‘Schmidt.’ Suppose also that he did not really prove the theorem. The real author of the theorem was someone who is totally unknown to contemporary philosophers and logicians, whose name was ‘Gödel.’ What happened was the following: Gödel, the real Gödel, proved the theorem and died. His death was not known to anyone except Schmidt. Schmidt somehow had gotten hold of the theorem and pretended that he was the author, secretly changing his name into ‘Gödel.’ The truth of this thriller-type story has not been revealed to any contemporary philosophers and logicians. As a result, Schmidt, known as ‘Gödel,’ has been regarded as the author of the theorem in the contemporary philosophy scene. Now, Jones, a philosophy major at UCSB, has formed the following belief while taking Salmon’s logic class:

P: Gödel proved the Incompleteness Theorem.

It seems that Jones is justified in believing P. First of all, there is no doubt that P is true, since Gödel is the person who proved the theorem, as already assumed in the description of the case. It is also assumed that Jones believes P.[1] Finally, Jones seems to be justified in believing P. Let us say that, adding to the fact that Salmon mentioned the name ‘Gödel’ many times in the class, Jones borrowed several books from the library and they all attribute the authorship of the theorem to the person named ‘Gödel.’ These are very good evidences for him to accept P.

The considerations so far strongly suggest that knowledge is not equal to justified true belief, since although P seems to be a justified true belief of Jones, it is hard to say that he knows P. However, an advocate of the causal analysis of knowledge would argue that Jones is not justified in believing P. According to the causal analysis, in order for one to be justified in believing some proposition, his belief must be caused by some fact in the world that makes that proposition true.[2] Jones’s belief was not caused by the fact that makes P true – i.e. the fact that Gödel proved the Incompleteness Theorem, since this fact was not known to anybody in the contemporary philosophy scene. Rather, his belief was caused by the fact that Salmon attributed the authorship of the theorem to the name ‘Gödel,’ and the fact that the books he borrowed from the library ascribed the authorship to the person named ‘Gödel,’ etc. Obviously, these are not the facts that make P true.[3] Thus, Jones was in fact not justified in believing P. This explains why Jones does not know P.

[1] Someone might point out that the person whom Jones had in mind in this belief is different from the one who is referred by ‘Gödel’ in P. That is correct. However, it does not follow from this that Jones does not believe P. At least, if we follow Gettier’s reasoning, we should say that Jones believes P. In the example Gettier provided, Smith is granted to believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket although the person whom Smith had in mind in that belief, i.e. Jones, is different from the man who will get the job, i.e. Smith himself.

[2] According to the stronger version of causal analysis, one’s belief must be caused by some fact in order for it to be knowledge. If we take this interpretation, we should say that Jones is justified in believing P, but since his belief was not caused by the fact that makes P true, it is not strange that he does not know P.

[3] What (counterfactually) can be made true by these facts is the following proposition: “Schmidt proved the Incompleteness Theorem.”

I'm a Giraffe

2006-08-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

This was quote of the day on my Google home page:

"I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe."
- Richard Gere

What is this supposed to mean? It's funny. And it may have some philosophical import. Any comments?

Do unicorns exist?

2006-08-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

Do unicorns exist? If so, what are they? If not... what are they?

not dead; summer groups

2006-06-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

Sometime soon I'll have time for a real update, but I've been extremely damn busy. Here's what you need to know about the summer reading groups:

Philosophy of Mind: hasn't been scheduled yet. Contact John Chandler for info.

Modal logic: Wednesdays at 4pm in 5705 South Hall (the small seminar room), starting June 28th. Text is Melvin Fitting & Richard Mendelsohn's First-Order Modal Logic, read chapter 1 for the first meeting. Contact Luke Manning for info.

Practical reasoning: hasn't been scheduled yet. Contact Ian Nance or Jonny Way for info.

Rawls's A Theory of Justice: I'm not sure if it's been scheduled yet; contact Jennifer Scott for info.

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: Probably Tuesdays or Thursdays at 4pm at Luke's place. The first meeting will be Thursday, June 29th, and we'll go through section 45. Contact Luke Manning for info.

Sorry if I missed anything. Right now I'm writing like a writing robot, but I thought it would be nice to get some of this info out there. There's plenty of philosophy going on here this summer, so don't miss out if you're in town.

Some kind of update

2006-05-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

Yeah, we're in the end-of-the-quarter crunch here. Pretty much, yup.
Just a few quick notes: I added another comment to the "Kung-fu argument" thing. I think there are some interesting issues left to discuss about it.
The Wittgenstein group met last Wednesday to discuss the rest of the 5s, but only made it up to 5.55. Probably next time we'll read through the first half of the 6s and just see how far we get in discussion.
The Guerrilla Radio Show had another re-run due to us not having time to prep for a new show. We're hoping to prevent this somewhat frequent occurrence next year by pre-recording some shows to play during busy periods.
I'm going to run a modal logic group during the summer. I don't have a book in mind yet, but we may use some of Hughes & Cresswell, and probably a few papers or excerpts from other books (e.g., Kripke's "Semantical Considerations..."). I may try to collect some "homework problems" for those of us who want to do some, though this will not be required of the group participants. We'll probably do classical modal propositional and first-order logic, semantics (model theory) and perhaps a little metalogic for both of those, and then perhaps some related things like "conditional logic" (sometimes called "counterfactual logic") and who knows what else.
Oh, and surprise, surprise, we're going to have another colloquium here on Monday June 12th (first day of finals week?!) with Ben Caplan!
That's it for now. Come on, Megalon, rise up!

When he's not publishing in ANALYSIS...

2006-05-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

Although the spelling here is 'b-r-u-c-k-n-e-r' and not 'b-r-u-e-c-k-n-e-r', I still found it funny.

More kung-fu

2006-05-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a question that popped into my head today. Consider the following argument:
1. Maybe I know kung-fu.
2. I don't know kung-fu.
---
3. Maybe I know kung-fu.

Is this argument valid? It strikes me as invalid, when I ignore my logical indoctrination. But it looks like 3 is just a reiteration of 1, and reiteration is a valid rule of inference if anything is. My options seem to be to explain how/why it's really invalid by explaining what rules of valid inference are being broken, or to say that it's valid and explain away my impression that it's not. This second option will probably require that we flesh out the situation in which the argument is made, but I'm not sure what kinds of details would be relevant. Do all-y'alls have any thoughts about this?

Who will teach the robots to love?

2006-05-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

Hi folks. We're past the halfway point in the quarter and I'm finally grading midterms. Woo! That's part of the reason I'm behind on the philosophy blotter. To catch you up since the last episode:

The bowling photos are up

We had a cool colloquium with Thomas Hofweber, talking about "Logicism Without Logic"

Tomorrow (Friday, May 12) we're going to have another colloquium (the last one this year) with Sam Rickless, talking about "Berkeley's Argument for Idealism"

The Guerrilla Radio Show had that second show about paradoxes and puzzles, with special guest star Dylan Dodd on which we discussed the Ship of Theseus (briefly) and the Lottery Paradox (also somewhat briefly) and played a recorded interview with Nathan Salmon about Kripke's Puzzle About Belief.

The GRS then took a break this past Tuesday; we'll likely come back next week to talk about skepticism. Ooh, spooky!

The Wittgenstein group met and then took off this week; most likely next week we'll discuss roughly the first half of section 5.

Somewhat recently, two of our beloved philgrads received awards! Carl Barnes for his teaching, and Jonny Way for an excellent paper. Show me up, will you? [Diabolical laughter]

From the rumor mine (we don't have a mill yet): The philosophy of mind reading group may reconvene this summer, after it's golden slumbers.

Ok, that's enough <li> tags for me. Thanks to Huiyuhl for posting and generating discussion. I hope I have time to read through it and perhaps add something (though I'm not up on that literature). And on a random note, if you've ever watched the tv show Wonder Showzen, see if you can catch the "diversity" episode (the one where the letters and numbers are fighting) for a funny presentation of the problem of evil. Best of all possible worlds, my ass. :)

Voluntary Action and Knowledge

2006-05-06T23:44:00.000-07:00

I’m trying to find a plausible principle concerning the relationship between voluntary actions and knowledge. There are three candidates:

(A) If S φs voluntarily, then S knew the relevant facts concerning φ-ing.
(B) If S φs voluntarily, then S would φ if S knew the relevant facts about φ-ing.
(C) If S would φ if S knew the relevant facts about φ-ing, then S φs voluntarily.

First, I thought that (A) is not correct, and thus should be revised as (B). (But now I’m not sure) The counterexample that I thought is the following:

Jack went to the zoo. He saw a building and was wondering what were inside. Thinking that there might be something interesting, he entered the building. But it turned out that the building displayed various kinds of snakes. Since Jack had been scared of snakes, he went out immediately and said, “I would never have entered the building if I had known that the snakes were inside.”

Let ‘φ’ be ‘entering the building’ and ‘p’ be ‘the snakes are around the building.’ It seems that Jack entered the building voluntarily, but he did not know that the snakes were around in the building. (Jack φs voluntarily, but did not know that p)

Someone pointed out that p is not a relevant fact for φ-ing, though. His point was: “let ‘ψ’ be ‘entering the snake house.’ P is a relevant fact for ψ-ing, but not a relevant fact for φ-ing. Thus, the above example is no good: Jack φs voluntarily, but p is not a relevant fact for φ-ing; p is a relevant fact for ψ-ing, but Jack does not ψ voluntarily.”

This objection makes me wonder: “Are φ and ψ are two different actions? Or, are they just different descriptions of one and the same action?” One may think that they are two different actions, and says: “We do not want to say that Oedipus killed his father voluntarily although we want to say that he voluntarily killed the obnoxious old man on the road. Oedipus’s killing his father and his killing the obnoxious old man must be two different actions, because if they are one and the same action, how could one action be voluntary and involuntary at the same time? In the same manner, φ and ψ are two different actions.”

However, it seems to me, intuitively, that φ and ψ are one and the same action. We’re just describing one action differently. About the Oedipus case, I think that it is okay to say that Oedipus killed his father voluntarily. Of course, he would not have killed the old man if he had known that the old man was his father. But still, at the time of killing, he was acting at his own will. Similarly, I think it is okay to say that Jack went to the snake house voluntarily.

So the question is this: let’s say that φ and ψ are one and the same action. Is p a relevant fact for that action (no matter how we describe it - i.e. whether we describe it as φ or as ψ)? (Similarly, in Oedipus case, is the fact that the old man was Oedipus’s father relevant for his action of killing (no matter how we describe it)?) Why or why not?

GRS + reading group + more aesthetics = kung fu sex

2006-04-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

Hello party people. I just got back from another episode of the Guerrilla Radio Show, and it was pretty good. It's a good thing we're spending 2 weeks on puzzles and paradoxes, because we only just started to get rolling with it tonight. Next week we'll have some guest input (I hope), which is always a thrill. And by "thrill" I mean "relief". Tomorrow night meets the Wittgenstein reading group, and we'll be working on the first half or so of part 4 of the Tractatus. Some weird stuff happens therein: some of the clearest continuities between Wittgenstein's early and late thought, and some of the clearest differences. 'S'fun!
I'm working on updating the notes I have on my online version of the Tractatus, as we go through it, and I've found a few more basic points worth noting even in what I had covered already. I don't know if anyone is interested to read what I have to say about it, but I put it up more for the purpose of giving very minimal guidance through a difficult work, rather than trying to impose interpretations. So most of what I do there is point out connections between propositions and issues in various places in the book, to help myself and others get a more cohesive picture of what's going on in it. I welcome the comments of anyone who gives a damn about my notes or even on any typos you might find in that copy of the Tractatus text (I've been told, non-specifically, that there are some).
Some more photos were posted on the department site, some of which were long overdue to be put up. Check out our December party and Philosophy of Language Conference. Between those two sets, that's well over 100 photos of members of our department, friends and visitors. Before long (I mean it this time) we'll have another set up with pictures from the recent Philosophy/Statistics bowling "tournament". We're probably the most photographed philosophy department I know (well, the one with the most photos online, anyway). Is that weird? Does anybody else do this? Not that there's anything wrong with it.

On another note, after I posted that bit last time about aesthetics, I had a few long discussions with some of my fellow philgrads (including the Josh-meister) about the issue, so this thing ain't dead yet. Here's one issue of interest: It seems like some arguments for the subjectivity of aesthetic value rely on views about what is and isn't appropriate to tell someone about art. For example, some people have the intuition that it's inappropriate (in a sense to be specified) to tell someone that they shouldn't like X. However, I think we can separate views about the propriety of communicating our aesthetic evaluations in certain ways (e.g., trying to convince someone else of them) from the question of whether that evaluation is irremediably subjective. For example, although I would feel wrong telling someone that their taste in music is bad, i.e., that they shouldn't be into what they are into, I have no problem telling someone that they should like something that they don't already like (as long as I can give some reasons for this that have any hope of bringing about the change in taste). So the issue of whether it's appropriate (warranted, or felicitous, perhaps?) to tell someone that their aesthetic evaluation of something is wrong is perhaps separable from whether people can be wrong about these things, or can convince others of their views, or whatever other kind of subjective/objective issues are keeping you up at night. What do you think?

3rd week from the sun

2006-04-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

Hello, people of Earth. I'm back with another minor update. Tomorrow night, the Guerrilla Radio Show, our "seriously awesome" and "awesomely serious" philgrad-run philosophy radio show, will be in full effect discussing the Philosophy of Mind with UCSB's very own Dr. Aaron Zimmerman. Wednesday night at 8pm (contact Luke for more info) the Wittgenstein reading group will meet to discuss section 3 of the Tractatus, which is around 10 pages. I haven't been following the Aristotle group, so you'll have to check one of its standard contacts about that (see the department's activities page). By the way, if you're wondering about the department's other usual reading group, the Santa Barbarians... well, the group's fearless leader (Tony Anderson) is off teaching in the China, so it's on hiatus at the moment.
I've been getting busier each quarter, and it's tough to find time to think of something to say here. But there's a lot of stuff I've been thinking about, so next time I write up some notes about one of them crazy issues, I'll try to remember to post it up here.
But here's a quick question about aesthetics. For those of you who know the movie Roadhouse, it's quite an amazing movie, as pretty much every scene is packed with hilarity, preposterity, and actionacity. It's got more fun and interesting stuff in it than a good deal of movies that win Academy Awards. Here's the question: what's a perspicuous and non-crazy way of describing the sense in which Roadhouse is a good movie? A lot of people want to say that "it's a good bad movie", but this is retarded. It's not both good and bad, at least not in the same sense. And do we even care in this context about any sense in which it's bad? Why shouldn't we be able to give a purely positive characterization of what's good about it? If "bad movie" is an idiomatic non-evaluative expression for a certain kind of movie (i.e., it doesn't necessarily imply that a movie is bad), then what makes something that kind of movie, and what makes a movie of that kind a good movie of that kind? This seems like it should be an easy question, and it seems like we, as philosophers, should be able to figure it out, but I've been frustrated by how reticent a lot of philosophers are to even take the question seriously. So take this as a challenge: explain (in a general way, at least) the sense/way in which Roadhouse (or another such movie) is a good movie. Is it the same sense in which, e.g., Casablanca is good? If so, what else accounts for the difference between the cases? If it's a different sense, then what are the two senses, and what's the relation between the two kinds of good movies? I'm not looking for an ultimate answer here, I'd just like to hear someone's serious response.

Pirates and Pirating

2006-04-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

Indeed we are not dead. I posted a little something on my personal blog about Internet pirating:

http://blisshaha.blogspot.com/2006/04/thoughts-on-pirates-pirating.html

It's somewhat philosophy-related as it involves ethics. I didn't discuss the ethics of it there too much, but maybe we can here!

So, here's a condensed version of what I wrote, which focuses on the parts regarding the ethics of it all.

----

The music industry, software industry, film industry, etc. are all quite concerned about so-called Internet pirating (acquiring products digitally via the Internet without paying for them). Allow me to give you a rundown of how this goes. You want the latest Fitty-cent album, right? Why go and pay for it, like a sucker, when you can just download it for free? (Note: you could also download it and pay for it, but again, sucker.) As the story goes, the really crooked used to just go into the store and steal it, but now that it's so much easier and discrete online, many more people are getting into it. Software companies are especially worried now because their products sell for hundreds of dollars new and their market is probably a bit smaller compared to the average $15 to $20 for the latest Fitty-cent album, which, sadly, has apparently the market of the entire world (possibly to infinity and beyond).

I know pirating is characterized as flat-out stealing and, thus, is said to be just wrong. However, I just think that there are situations in which consumers may justifiably do it. I know it's a form of stealing and that it's illegal. But, we all seem to think that some forms of stealing are ethical (e.g., Robin Hood style stealing... you know, if it's for a greater good, etc.). And, frankly, I don't much abide by the law if I disagree with it... that is, unless I think there's a good chance I might get caught. Besides, who doesn't do a California stop every once in awhile?

See, us consumers don't have very many ways to tell companies that they are charging more than we're willing to pay. We can refuse to buy the product. But some of us are too weak-willed to not pay for the over-priced product, because we want it so badly. Why can we not communicate our disapproval by pirating the product? That way, not only do we not buy the product, but we cause a scene by pirating it. Clearly, pirating has gathered their attention. Some people think that pirating is just childish stealing. But I say it is consumers taking advantage of what little resources they have to fight back companies who are trying to screw them. So, these industries can continue to ignore their bread and butter (the consumer) or they can listen to us and pull their act together.

Basically, large companies have way too much control over consumers in the U.S. for this to be a true capitalistic market. So, we are being over-charged for products that we really want, because we can't make them lower prices or increase the quality of the product. Why can't we exercise the very little power that we have to try and balance the market? I think most pirates don't want everything for free, they just aren't willing to pay that much for that kind of product. But I can only speak for myself. These are my motives and thoughts. I'm sure there are those out there who will pirate no matter what, just for the fun of it. However, I think the majority of people will support companies they respect. And if you don't, I suggest you do.

So I don't think pirating is inherently good or justified. I just think that in certain circumstances one may be justified in doing it. I'm just tired of corporations having so much control and leeway in this country. And when consumers get a little bit of an advantage to try and even the playing field, we are struck down as immoral. Well, that may be true, but many of us are merely responding to similar treatment. In short, they rip us off, so why can't we do the same?

----

I'm interested in people's responses. I don't want to necessarily get into whether this is a Kantian or Utilitarian type of view, etc. I'm more interested in seeing how this fits with the hodgepodge of ethical views that we all actually practice. I know it has quite the eye-for-an-eye ring to it, which seems to have problems as a complete world-view. And perhaps this isn't so much about ethics in general, but about justice/fairness. I dunno. I don't claim to specialize in ethics!

Super-quick update

2006-04-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'll abbrev to save time. New quarter here... still no time! New episodes of Guerrilla Radio Show start tonight. Wittgenstein reading group (Tractatus) starts tomorrow night (email luke_manning@umail.ucsb.edu for info). Aristotle reading group also in progress (email hanser@philosophy.ucsb.edu for info). We're not dead, we're just pining.

2006 Stanford, Berkeley, Davis graduate student conference...

2006-02-24T00:15:00.000-08:00

...anyone game? It is still not too late to submit a paper, and get a chance to present in front of fellow grad students (which is a lot less intimidating than presenting at, e.g. an APA conference). I know that Jesse is going. I am, too. And I'm trying to get Dylan and Jake to go, too. If you're interested in presenting, here is the call for papers:

CALL FOR PAPERS

2006 Berkeley - Stanford - Davis
Graduate Student Philosophy Conference
April 8, Stanford University

Keynote Speaker: John Perry,
Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy,
Stanford University

Submission Guidelines:
1. Paper length should be suitable for a 20 min.
presentation (approx. 15 pages, standard format)
2. Include a cover page with author's name, title of paper,
institutional affiliation, and contact information
(preferably email)
3. Body of the paper should be in blind review format with
no information identifying the author.
4. Deadline for submission is midnight, March 15.

Please email submissions and all inquiries to tokyodrifter@gmail.com
preferably with "2006 BSD conference" in the subject heading.

This conference is open to all graduate students in philosophy
currently studying in California. Submissions on any area of
philosophy are welcome.

Boghossian on the Compatibility of the First-person Knowledge and Content Externalism

2006-02-20T00:25:00.000-08:00

I plan to write about (in)compatibility of the First-person knowledge and Content Externalism. As I understand, it is a worry of philosophers that the privileged status of the first-person knowledge seems to conflict with the main idea of content externalism. (So, e.g., when I sincerely utter, “water is wet,” I might not know that the content of my thinking was not: that twater is wet. This appears to conflict with the idea that I must know the content of my own thinking.) Boghossian argues that the compatibility of the two will generate a very absurd result – i.e. if compatibilism is true, then we would be led to know a priori certain facts about the world (which is clearly a posteriori). And I want to block his argument. So here’s his argument.
------

In his “What the Externalist Can Know A Priori” (1998), Boghossian says that a compatibilist (of the First-person knowledge and Content Externalism) is in a position to argue the following:

(1) If I have the concept water, then water exists.
(2) I have the concept water.
Therefore,
(3) Water exists.

According to Boghossian, if content externalism were true, then (1) is knowable a priori. Also, given the privileged status of the first-person, (2) is knowable a priori. From these, it follows that (3) is knowable a priori. [In arguing this, Boghossian holds that in a valid argument, the a priori knowability of the premises guarantees the a priori knowability of the conclusion.] However, (3) is clearly not knowable a priori. Thus, there is something wrong in the compatibilism.

Boghossian considers two routes of rejecting this argument. First, an externalist can argue that (the existence of) water is not required in order for one to obtain the concept water – thus (1) is not knowable a priori. Second, the externalist can argue that although (the existence of) water is required for one to obtain the concept water, that fact is not knowable a priori.

Admittedly (at least by Boghossian), the second route seems more promising. In taking this route, I would like to suggest two ways to show that (1) is not knowable a priori.

1. In order to know (1), I need to know (at least) both

(a) If I have a certain concept x, then the object(s) correlated with x (i.e. the extension of the term that expresses the concept x) exist(s).
and
(b) Water is correlated with the concept water.

Here, what I know a priori is only (a). I do not know (b) a priori; I know it a posteriori. As a result, I do not know (1) a priori.

2. It seems right to me to say that in holding content externalism, (the existence of) water is presupposed for one to obtain the concept water (rather than saying that in holding content externalism (the existence of) water is required for one to obtain the concept water). If the existence of water is merely presupposed, then the fact that water exists does not follow from the fact that I have the concept water. In other words, the externalist would not be committed to the claim that water exists from his holding that he has the concept water. Thus, an externalist need not take (1) as an a priori truth. For him, (1) is plainly false.

------
To be honest, I do not know if 2 is the right way to go. More specifically, I do not know:

(i) whether or not in holding content externalism, (the existence of) water is presupposed (rather than required) for one to obtain the concept water,
and
(ii) whether or not the blue-colored sentence is correct,
and
(iii) if I am right about (i) and/or (ii), what would be the good strategies to show that (the existence of) water is merely presupposed (rather than required), and that the externalist would not be committed to the claim that water exists from his holding that he has the concept water.

So I will appreciate greatly if you guys can share some thoughts. The comments about my (poor) wording would be of great help as well.

Superconference!

2006-02-14T17:42:00.000-08:00

Woo lord, we have quite a sequence of events lined up for this weekend. The superconference supertrain hits UCSB, and the big-shots will be duking it out for the championship belt. "And just how do I get in on this action?" you ask. Check our conference page for all the gritty details, lads and lasses. Also you can listen to the chairman of the board, Nathan Salmon, on the Guerrilla Radio Show, talking about Philosophy of Language and the superconference. The show was first run last week, but for legal reasons and to honor the Queen, it's being re-run tonight (7pm Pacific time). You can catch it on 91.9 FM within listening area of UCSB (that includes much of southern California, from what I hear), or on the webcast at KCSB, or in the Guerrilla Radio Show archive (where you can also hear the street inverviews that didn't get played on the show due to time constraints). It was a fun show, one of our best I think, and gives a good short introduction to some of what will be discussed at the conf-- I mean Superconference!. I hope to see you all there.
Oh, and thanks to you folks for posting! I'm happy to see some other people use this blog to get some of their ideas out there. Have fun with it, and be excellent to each other!

Jason Stanley's comments about our upcoming conference

2006-02-13T20:58:00.000-08:00

I'm sure a lot of you have come across the above comment that Jason Stanley made about our upcoming conference. I'd like to hear some of your thoughts about his comments.

Putnam's Elm/Beech Example

2006-02-10T13:57:00.000-08:00

Hi, guys. Just an observation on Putnam's Elm/Beech example.
--

In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” Putnam points out that the traditional theory of meaning rests on two fundamental assumptions:

(TR1) Knowing the meaning of a term (i.e. grasping the intension) consists in being in a certain psychological state.
(TR2) Intension determines extension.

(TR1) and (TR2), respectively, have the following corollaries:

(TR1´) The sameness of the psychological states (of two persons) entails the sameness of the intension (that they grasp when they are uttering or thinking some words or sentences).
(TR2´) The sameness of intension entails the sameness of extension.

From (TR1´) and (TR2´), it follows that:

(TR3) The sameness of psychological states entails the sameness of extension.

Aiming to refute the traditional view, Putnam proffers some counterexamples to (TR3). One of them concerns the concepts of two terms whose stereotypes are quite similar. Suppose I do not competently distinguish elms from beech. I might have some experiences like touching or seeing elms and beeches, but let us say that the concept that I associate with the word ‘elm’ has no difference from the concept that I associate with the word ‘beech.’ If (TR3) is true, Putnam says, the extension of ‘elm’ in my idiolect must be the same as the extension of ‘beech’ in my idiolect. Yet, the extensions of ‘elm’ and ‘beech’ are different from each other — I will refer to elms when I utter ‘elm,’ and to beeches when I utter ‘beech.’ Thus, Putnam concludes, this example also shows that (TR3) is based on a false theory of meaning.

Through the refutation of the traditional view, Putnam, as an externalist, attempts to establish the thesis that the meaning of a term, for the most part, is determined by the external linguistic environments of the speaker. On the other hand, Searle, defending the internalist view, tries to challenge the counterexamples provided by Putnam.

In the course of his objection to the elm/beech example in Intentionality (1983), Searle interprets Putnam’s argument as being based on the following:

(i) The concept of ‘elm’ in my idiolect = the concept of ‘beech’ in my idiolect
(ii) The extension of ‘elm’ in my idiolect ≠ the extension of ‘beech’ in my idiolect

Searle’s strategy is to deny (i). He asks how I (i.e. the speaker of (i) and (ii)) can know (ii) is right. According to Searle, my knowing (ii) depends on my knowledge of the following:

(K) Beeches are not elms and elms are not beeches.

Searle contends that (K) constitutes a part of my conceptual knowledge regarding elms and beeches. From this, he argues that, contrary to (i), my concept of ‘elm’ cannot be the same as my concept of ‘beech.’

This objection can be interpreted to indicate that, given my conceptual knowledge of the dissimilarity between elms and beeches, my psychological state in entertaining ‘elm’ will not be the same as my psychological state in entertaining ‘beech.’ However, this difficulty can be easily avoided with a slight change of the example. Suppose Arnold, an Austrian immigrant in the United States, is a German-English bilingual.[1] He knows that ‘elm’ designates certain types of trees he has observed in the United States, and he also knows that the German word ‘Buche’ designates certain types of trees he had seen in Austria. Given that he is not much into botany, the concept he associates with ‘elm,’ may well be just the same as the concept he associates with ‘Buche’ (= a German word for ‘beech’). He might not realize that the two concepts associated by him are the same (maybe he has never compared them before), or even he might think (mistakenly) that ‘elm’ is an English translation of ‘Buche.’[2] In either case, however, the extension of ‘elm’ in his idiolect is elms and the extension of ‘Buche’ in his idiolect is beeches. Everything is just the same as in the original elm/beech example except that Arnold does not possess the conceptual knowledge that beeches (as extension of ‘Buche’) are not elms (as extension of ‘elm’). Thus, Searle’s objection does not seem to refute the heart of Putnam’s elm/beech example.

[1] This example was inspired by another example offered by Putnam in “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” which is close to but slightly different from this example. Putnam’s example aims at making a different point: i.e. to show one can have two synonyms, like ‘beech’ and ‘Buche,’ in his idiolect and not know that they are synonyms.

[2] In fact, we do not need to assume that Arnold is from a foreign country. It may well be the case that a natural born American (or Englishman, whatever) associates exactly the same concepts with both ‘elm’ and ‘beech’ without realizing that he does. Or, he might (mistakenly) think that ‘elm’ and ‘beech’ are exact synonyms.

Probability & the Existence of God

2006-02-10T11:41:00.000-08:00

Hi all. Just something I've been wondering about...

When someone asks me if I think that God exists, is there anything wrong in responding with a probability? For example, suppose I say, "I think there's about a 15% chance that such a being exists." (Note: Talking here, of course, about the omni-being that philosophers talk about, not any particular religion's conception of God.) I feel much more comfortable and reasonable talking about it this way (at least regarding the debate as a whole), even though I may not be sure exactly why. I mean, I wouldn't want to respond to someone this way about a particular deductive argument concerning God's existence, like the Ontological Argument.

Objections:

(1) Your probability claim isn't a good statistic or wasn't arrived at via reliable statistical analysis.

Sure, but I'm not claiming that it's good science or stats or anything. I'm just wondering if it's reasonable to respond with a probability. I'm just acknowledging my own epistemic limitations. I'm not making a metaphysical claim that God's existence is probabilistic. All I'm just saying is that, given the evidence I have acquired so far, I think that it's unlikely (or likely, if you respond with a greater probability), but not willing to make the claim that such a being does or does not exist for sure.

(2) That's just agnosticism.

Maybe if I claimed that the probability was 0.5. But even that doesn't strike me as agnosticism, exactly. Maybe it's a kind of jury-still-out agnosticism. I dunno.

(3) Are you saying God's existence is a matter of chance, like a lottery? 'Cause that's hella stupid.

I don't want to be committed to that, but maybe it seems to. As I've said, I just think that some (but not all) talk of God's existence can be taken as probabilistic. For example, many think that the Problem of Evil isn't a knock-down argument against God's existence, but that it renders it unlikely or counts against it to a certain degree. That is, it's an inductive, rather than a deductive argument.

(4) You hate freedom and bald eagles, you America-hating terrorist!

That only works on the O'Reilly Factor... c'mon. (My objectors are always bumbling fools... it makes my argument sound better.)

So, in conclusion, I don't know what I'm pushing for exactly. It's an idea. Comments, please.

Nathan Salmon's collected works (vol. 1) now available

2006-02-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to our distinguished chairman! Needless to say, I've already ordered my copy.

On the philosophy job market

2006-02-09T09:11:00.001-08:00

Some sobering observations by a graduate student who's served on a search committee. See here.

What is Philosophy?

2006-01-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

First a quick news update. There's some new info about the upcoming Philosophy of Language conference at the department site. The Santa Barbarians is on hiatus. The Metaphysics discussion group will be discussing some recent work by David Kaplan. The Guerrilla Radio Show will talk with William Irwin next Tuesday night about Philosophy of Film. Check out the GRS blog for a lengthy followup to last Tuesday's show, with some more philosophical considerations about intelligent design. And now on to the show.
What is Philosophy? This question haunts a lot of us. There are lots of reasons an activity might be worth a damn, but most of them don't seem to apply to the big P. We don't really do tests or find things out like scientists do, and we're not just trying to sound cool like poets and fiction authors. We think we're trying to answer questions, but who ever gave a decisive answer to a philosophical question? What about these problems we're dealing with: they're often so obscure that they would sound crazy or impenetrable to non-philosophers, i.e., most of humankind. Might we not be fooling ourselves? Might the whole thing not be a sham?
Of course, not all of us have this skeptical, angsty take on the question. For some, Philosophy is in no need of justification, but perhaps could use some demarcation. What distinguishes Philosophy from Science, Art, and other intellectual pursuits? Or is Philosophy not distinct from them? In that case, why is it commonly perceived as a distinct field? These can be taken as purely sociological questions, but I will take them at least semi-philosophically. The thing about doing history or sociology of philosophy is that you have to do some philosophy to make sense of why philosophers do what they do. Ok, then.
I will present my picture in two passes. First, a very general pass that serves more to explain the justification of the practice of philosophy, to show that the field is grounded in an intuitively worthwhile activity. Second, a more specific pass to flesh out the picture of the practice of philosophy to distinguish it from similar intellectual pursuits.
First pass:
Philosophy is the activity and discipline of trying to answer questions and figure out problems that we don't quite know how to handle. We take these questions and problems and try to break them down, look at them from other perspectives, put them in hopefully revealing contexts, and bust out our whole toolkit in order to make them tractable. The goal is to get questions where we at least know what a good answer would look like, and (ideally) questions we actually know how to FIND an answer for. Some questions have been with philosophy since the beginning, and that's because they're persistently difficult--it's not that they are pseudoquestions, although it's almost guaranteed that they aren't formulated in the most helpful manner. The difficulty is simply that we don't know the best way to get a grip on them; all or nearly all questions that have been seriously discussed by philosophers point to SOME interesting/problematic area or other, even if the form of the question and the context of the discussion are unclear or even misleading about where their import lies. (For example, David Kaplan considers much of his work to have been shown certain putatively epistemological problems to be semantic problems.) It's not that there was no problem, it's just that a philosophical advance gives us a better handle on what exactly the problem IS.
Thus there IS progress in philosophy, contrary to the standard lore. First, we have more tools in our toolkit, more ways of dismantling problems and more ways of turning questions upside-down, which means that we'll be better equipped to figure things out. Second, we HAVE figured some things out; we HAVE gotten a handle on some problems. It's just that when we have a handle on them, they stop being philosophy. They become logic or empirical science, or whatever. For example, questions like "What are the ultimate constituents of matter?" and "What is deductive validity?" have been more-or-less nailed-down and are no longer especially "live" philosophical problems. The former will primarily get its answer from physicists, the latter from logicians. Of course, there are RELATED questions that are still philosophically live, such as "What is it for something to be an ultimate constituent of matter?" or "What is it for some relation to be one of deductive consequence?", and these are live precisely because we don't quite know how to answer them. But perhaps one day we'll grok ("wrap our minds around") them, and come up with a convincing way to approach them.
Second pass:
If that's what philosophers do, then what distinguishes philosophy from other question-pursuing/problem-solving activites/disciplines, like math, logic, science, engineering, and even everyday practical problem-solving? The primary difference is that philosophy deals specifically with questions we don't (yet) know HOW to answer, problems we don't (yet) know HOW best to approach. We have some intuitions, some hunches, but we don't have effective methods or even "pretty good" methods, let alone knock-down arguments or final answers. In many other fields, even if there may be some dispute about the import of a test, and there may be significant difficulty coming up with an appropriate test, there are still more-or-less well-established ways of answering questions. For example, in the sciences (especially the most well-established sciences like many areas of Physics and Biology), there are some tough questions, but the only questions really of interest in the discipline are those for which a good test is available or can be developed in the forseeable future. Tractable questions are distinguished from "far-off" questions that nobody has a clue how to handle (though many have their pet theories). In math and logic, the primary method of answering questions is by proof. Of course, there are propositions we know neither how to prove nor disprove, but our ways of approaching them are pretty well-established: work toward proof or disproof, perhaps by proving lemmas or by adding to our toolkit in other ways. On the other hand, there are "deep" questions that most mathematicians find silly (like, "What are numbers, really?"), and questions that logicians (not philosophers of logic) shrug off (such as, "How is deduction justified?"), because there's no clear way to approach them with the tools of the "exact sciences". The cases of engineering and everyday practical problem-solving are analogous to the foregoing: there are easy and difficult questions, and then there are the "far-out" questions that don't seem answerable with the standard toolkit, or even forseeable extensions of it. All of these "far-out" questions are the province of philosophy. We handle the questions that nobody knows how to even begin to know how to handle. If you "can't even begin think about knowing how to answer" a particular question, then it's a philosophical question. Still, there's no sharp divide between, e.g., the "really tough" empirical questions and the philosophical questions: it's a matter of how well we think we can handle them. If we think that we can produce an answer or good method for coming up with an answer, given forseeable extension of our conceptual/experimental toolkit, then it's not a philosophical question. The ones that we think are still a little (or far) beyond our ken are philosophical; but we can be wrong about these assessments.
Interestingly (and this is a more sociological observation), since Philosophy deals with such difficult questions, different perspectives on its goals and methods arise within the discipline. Some take a view like the one I'm describing, that philosophical problems are just incredibly tough problems that CAN be solved, if you're bad-ass enough. Others just sort-of revel in the lack of obvious answers and succumb to the dark side, obscurantism. Others with insufficient perseverence (or brain-power?) often lapse into relativism, dogmatism, or skepticism (about philosophy in general, not just knowledge). Thus many philosophers claim (though it might be some kind of practical contradiction!) that philosophy (or a certain area of philosophy) is silly or hopeless or just wheel-spinning, jargonizing, windbagging nonsense. Surely some work done under the banner of Philosophy deserves such descriptions; it's entirely up to us whether we stay on track toward getting a real handle on these problems, and some have strayed significantly (primarily, I think, by getting wrapped up in the game of making distinctions and arguments, or in obscurantism). But the worst bits of philosophy are merely outliers, and not representative of the good work being done.
So that's the picture. This post is basically first-draft material, though I'd been thinking about this stuff a lot before I wrote this. I'd like to hear whether you think this sounds crazy, or sensible, or what. Make a comment or even post a reply if you're interested. Deuce-out.

Philblog update #n

2006-01-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

Hey folks and Folk. First some phildept updates:
The Santa Barbarians group has once again awoken from its fitful slumbers, meeting last Tuesday evening to discuss Ned Markosian's article "How Fast Does Time Pass?" (PPR 53: 829-44), and this coming Monday (Jan 23) at 8pm (contact Tony Anderson for info, as usual) to discuss David Lewis's "The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics" (an excerpt from ON THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS) and Dean Zimmerman's "Temporary Intrinsics and Presentism", both in Peter van Inwagen & Dean Zimmerman (eds.), METAPHYSICS: THE BIG QUESTIONS (Blackwell, 1998).
The Metaphysics Discussion Group meets again next Thursday to discuss this beastie: Yablo, Stephen & A. Gallois. "Does Ontology Rest On A Mistake?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Volume 72 (1998): 229-261. See the group's site for more info.
Today (Friday, Jan 20) we're also having a department colloquium with Peter Graham from UC Riverside (see the department site for info).
Next Tuesday the Guerrilla Radio Show will discuss Intelligent Design Theory. See the site.

I've been thinking intently lately about what Philosophy is, what distinguishes it from other intellectual activities, etc. I'll probably write something up about it this weekend. I'd like to have some comments, because I'm worried that it's either too trivial to be worth stating or that it's missing some important facet of this baroque beauty we call philosophy.

No Time To Lose

2006-01-11T08:26:00.000-08:00

Hello gentle reader. Once again, the year has come full circle, and this year is no exception. Seldom can it have been a greater pleasure and privilege than it is for me to announce that the UCSB department website is being updated for the new quarter. We have added color photos of most philgrads and some faculty, cleaned up the dead links, updated some info here and there, reinstated the course description archives (the last two years so far; more to come) and added a Links page. As always, we (Chris Tennberg and I) are open to suggestions on how the site can be improved.
The Metaphysics Discussion Group meets tomorrow evening (location undecided, but contact Josh May if you're interested) to discuss our own views on several generally metaphysical issues, as well as Penelope Maddy's "Naturalism and the a priori". As far as I know, meetings for the other groups have not yet been arranged.
The Guerrilla Radio Show had another new broadcast last night, this time discussing Logic and Critical thinking, especially regarding their philosophical import. I wasn't expecting to get a lot of philosophical meat out of that topic (compared to, say, our show on Ethics), but I think we were suitably philosophical. Next week we'll have a special guest in UCLA's Chris Smeenk, helping us discuss the Philosophy of Science. Can't be bad. Toodle-oo.

Is your hair as dull and lifeless as your brain?

2006-01-03T16:33:00.000-08:00

Didn't work start at 9? Where's your shirt? Did you even remember to wear it?
I know you. I used to be you. That's when I started listening to the Guerrilla Radio Show. Tonight's show is part of our intro series, Ethics 101. Tune in, as we laugh, cry, and maybe even learn a little something about ourselves. That's right, the webcast is back up after being down for several weeks, and the show's back in action! Join us, won't we?

On another note, the department website is currently getting a minor overhaul. We're cleaning up the code crumbs and bringing you some more greasy goodness. Greasy in a good way.

Josh May has announced the rock and roll creation of another discussion/reading group, this one focusing on the Metaphysics. There's even a webpage. Hot damn.

Everybody keep thinkin'... and watch out for snakes.

I will choose free will

2005-11-29T16:47:00.000-08:00

Hey folks. The Guerilla Radio Show returns to full power tonight with a show on Free Will. What is Free Will? How can I get some? If you choose not to decide, have you still made a choice? Check us out on KCSB 91.9 if you can get it on your radio. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell the KCSB webcast is currently not functioning, so if you're not in our radio listening area, you won't be able to hear the show until we archive it on the GRS website, which should be fairly soon after the broadcast.

And here's a quick philosophical/logical question for your blog-reading (dis)pleasure: if laws (of nature) are more than just regularities, but the laws of nature could have been different (e.g. E=mc² might have been false), then is there a way to cash out physical necessity in terms of possible worlds? Here's the problem: Say we have a law of nature /\x(Fx->Gx), which is true in this world, but not necessary because in some worlds there are different laws. It looks like there's no way to make this law "necessary" in any weaker way that doesn't break down into making it a contingent regularity. If we say that it's physically necessary, in the sort of standard way of formalizing that ([](LP->/\x(Fx->Gx)), where LP is a proposition stating some specified set of laws of physics; thus, the laws of physics strictly imply the regularity), we end up with a proposition that's still contingently true, because making it "physically necessary" in this way just made it true in worlds where the laws of physics come out true. If it's contingent that these laws of physics hold, then it's no less contingent that our regularity holds, if it only holds where the laws of physics do. We seem to want to say: the laws could have been different, but given that they are such-and-such, this regularity necessarily follows. But the standard ways to formalize this can only render it as: there are regularities that hold in only some worlds (specifically, worlds where certain other regularities hold); this seems to lack entirely the "necessity" we're looking for. Unless I'm missing something, there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to formalize physical necessity in the non-Humean, "necessitarian" way that a lot of philosophers would like to assert it. If that's the case, then either this is a deficiency in possible worlds semantics (I believe, though I haven't here argued, that this problem generalizes to any semantics of modal logic given in an extensional metalanguage, including Lewis/Stalnaker counterfactuals), or it indicates an incoherency in "necessitarian" physical necessity: physical necessity either can't be cashed out in terms of truth in a certain set of worlds, or it can and it's thus nothing more than a contingent regularity. I hope this is stated clearly enough that you can see the problem; it's kind of off-the-cuff, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's obscure. Of course, you can leave a comment asking for clarification. :)

Wha Happen?

2005-11-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

Hey all 2 of you readers. Most of us philgrads have been busy lately, what with term papers and exams coming up. But there's still stuff going on. I missed giving a timely announcement, but there was a meeting of the Santa Barbarians last Monday to discuss more of Kaplan's "Reading 'On Denoting' on its Centenary". Here's the more timely news:

This Friday (tomorrow), our department will host a colloquium with Elizabeth Harman, whose talk is titled "The Mistake in 'I'll Be Glad I Did It' Reasoning: The Significance of Future Desires".

Chris and I will be performing some wide-ranging updates on the UCSB Philosophy Department's website sometime in the next month or two, including adding color portraits of many faculty and grad students, and cleaning up some odds and sods. If you have a photo of yourself you'd like to see replace our current photo (some of them are decidedly unflattering), please send it to one of us. If you have any suggestions for alterations to the site, let us know.

Next Tuesday's broadcast of The Guerrilla Radio Show may be preempted by a UCSB soccer match, so if we air, we'll likely replay a classic show. We do have some guests and topics lined up for future shows, however. See the show's website for details.

I should add that the November 8^th broadcast (and its rebroadcast last Tuesday) of the GRS was somewhat controversial (if you missed it, check it out in the GRS archives); some were disturbed by the discussion and some by the format of the show itself. Let it be known that it was a special show broadcast during KCSB's annual pledge drive, and differed somewhat from the format of most of our shows. Usually we actually do a good bit of philosophy (to "wage war against idiocy" as our slogan has it), but on that show we only barely started philosophizing, instead dedicating most of the time to a) soliciting pledges, and b) joking around. Only so much philosophy can be done in an hour-long show, and very little can be done in less than an hour, so we decided to "fight idiocy with idiocy" for a lark. Make of that what you will, but we had some fun. We now return you to your regularly scheduled philosophy talk show, already in progress. For some nearby value of "now".

There are 2 weeks (!) left in the quarter before finals, so there may be some dead air on der blog here, as it were. However, I happen to know that all the philgrads (and our special guest bloggers) are all philosophizing on a regular basis, so perhaps someone will give us a real philosophical post for the first time in a while. ;) ;)

How Not to Mend the Beta-Part

2005-11-07T22:23:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, the UCSB Philosophy Department was well represented this year at the 10th annual Southern California Philsophy Conference at Cal-State, Northridge. One of the highlights of the conference was Sean Choi's presentation on "How not to argue for principle beta" (aka, 'How not to mend the beta part'). Thanks to Sian Griffith, who was kind enough to snap a few photos during the conference, we're able to provide some visual representation of Sean doing his thing (click here for more conference photos). And if the photo isn't enough for you, check out the musical version of "How to mend the beta-part!"

Barbarians, Radio show

2005-11-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

Hello then. As mentioned in the last post, the Santa Barbarians are still going. Contact Tony Anderson for info. This coming Monday (7 Nov) we'll discuss the first 20 pages of David Kaplan's "Reading 'On Denoting' on its Centenary", available here.

The Guerrilla Radio Show will be conducting a quasi-philosophical counseling session for its next two airings. Regular shows will resume after that. Tune in for some philosophical hilarity.

Guerrilla Radio Show / Reading groups

2005-11-02T15:28:00.000-08:00

Hi people. It's retro news day. On the Guerrilla Radio Show on Tuesday we talked about Eastern Philosophy, with a special guest Dr. Roger Ames. See the GRS website/blog for some suggested readings on the topic.

Some of the reading groups in the department appear to be on hiatus. The Philosophy of Language group will be slumbering until next quarter, and will probably only be operating for the first half of the quarter, in response to attendance patterns. The Philosophy of Mind group is still MIA, but the Santa Barbarians should be back in action soon. Stay tuned.

Phil-lang group

2005-10-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

The Philosophy of Language group will meet tonight to discuss Nathan Salmon's "Time, Tense and Intension". Next week most likely we will discuss King's "Tense, Modality, and Semantic Value" (I think).
On another note, everyone feel free to post your philosophical ramblings. If you're not yet a member of the blog, post a comment or send me an email and I'll send you the official invitation you need to make posts. I'll get some more philosophical stuff on here at some point, myself, but I'm sure there's more brain activity going on among us than the posts lately have indicated! Blog whatever crazy philosophical stuff is on your mind. Chances are that the rest of us will find it worth reading and commenting on.

GRS tonight: Analytic and Continental Philosophy

2005-10-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

All you people of Earth, hear now that the Guerrilla Radio Show, the UCSB philgrad-operated philosophy talk show, will air tonight at 7 PST. The topic of discussion: Analytic and Continental Philosophy. We'll have a guest from UC Riverside, Dr. Pierre Keller, assisting us in the discussion. Check the show's website for listening info.

New barbarism

2005-10-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

Another reading group update: The Santa Barbarians will meet next Monday night (8pm, Oct 24) at the usual location, to discuss David Vander Laan's work in progress, "Omnificence and Counterfactuals of Freedom". Contact Tony Anderson for info or a copy of the paper.

Upcomingness

2005-10-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

The phil-lang reading group will be discussing David Lewis's "Index, Context and Content" and "Attitudes de dicto and de se" (not just the first of those, as previously stated) on Thursday at 6 at the usual location. Invited parties are interested to come, and vice versa.
Note that at the end of next week we'll have two southern-Cal conferences. On Friday the 28th at UCLA is ParsonsFest, and on Saturday the 29th is the 10th annual Southern California Philsophy Conference at Cal-State, Northridge. Check the page for the latter and you'll see some UCSB names in the presenter list. I'll probably be going to both of those; I encourage my fellow philgrads to get out to some of the upcoming conferences (there are more coming in November); even if you're carless, others will be going with whom you can hitch.

The Guerrilla Radio Show

2005-10-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

The new site for the Guerrilla radio show is up! Check out http://www.guerrillaradioshow.com for info about upcoming shows, archives of past shows, and more. Also check out the show's blog: http://guerrillaradioshow.blogspot.com
Tonight we'll be talking about political philosophy, hopefully with some guests. Catch us on the airwaves or online!

2005-2006 Job Market

2005-10-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

Hey all--
It is instructive to look at JFP, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the independent jobs for philosophers post. Each of these posts can let you figure out what the trend is in hirinings. Some of the interesting things to notice this year over last year is the increase in jobs in the following areas: Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, and History of Analytic Philosophy. Jobs in this area were low last year compared to: Applied ethics (esp. Bioethics and Business ethics), Ethical Theory, Meta-ethics, Social-Political Philosophy, and other (as I like to call it). So, get on the game and check the JFP against last years so you are aware of the projection trend.

Contingent Beings, Essence, and Existence

2005-10-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

Hi all-- I am interested in getting some feedback on the following issues. I am really not that good at reasoning through certain issues, and it would help to see what everyone thinks of the following. So the issue is about contingent beings and the essential properties that contingent beings have. Furthermore, I am interested in writing a paper on this issue. So, if you guys think that this is not a philosophically interesting issue let me know. So, I don't waste my time. Here are some basic definitions:

(C) A being x is a contingent being if x exists at least one possible world and not in all possible worlds.

(E1) A property P is an essential property of x just in case x has P in every possible world.

(E2) A property P is an essential property of x just in case x has P in every world in which x exists.

I think (E2) is the better definition of an essential property. Primarily becuase there are many properties that an object has in every possible world that have nothing to do with the kind of thing it is . In addition, I don't know how to square (C) and (E1). If (E1) holds then there are no contingent beings with essential properties, but that seems false. In addition, there is another issue here floating around. There are certain semantical tricks one can use to make it true that an entitiy has a property in a world in which it does not exist. However, this does not square with the ontological notion of exemplfying a property. For an object to exemplify a property in a world it would have to exist in the world. That is different from a proposition or sentence being true in a world, even when the object does not exist in the world. Okay last bit--

I am worried that certain views of of possible worlds lead to the following odd result:

If any contingent being has an essential property, then there are no contingent beings that exist in just one possible world, and so it is necessary that nothing exists in just one possible world. Quasi-proof: If you are a contingent being and have an essential property, then you have to exist in more than one possible world in order to distinguish the accidental properties from the essential properties, but you cannot exist in all possible worlds, for then you would be a necessary being. But then it seems to follow that it is necessary that nothing exists in just one possible world, since necessary being exist in all worlds, and contingent beings have essential properties. This is odd because prima facie it is possible that something exists in just one possible world. Furthermore, if it is true that nothing can exist in just one possible world, and that this is necessary truth, is this truth a synthetic a priori truth.

Okay please don't make fun of me if I made an obvious mistake. Any comments would be helpful

Reading group updates/corrections

2005-10-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

Hi again. My last post wasn't entirely accurate, as I later learned. Here's the scoop on the reading groups, where it differs from before.

The Phil-mind reading group discussed Fodor's "A Theory of Content I", and when they next meet they will discuss "A Theory of Content II" and perhaps some of Fodor's The Elm and the Expert. A meeting time has not yet been set, but it won't be Tuesday at 4pm.
The Phil-lang group will meet again next Thursday (Oct 20; same time/place) to discuss David Lewis's "Index, Context and Content".

That's all for that stuff. And thanks to Chris for bravely making the following true: (he is not Luke & he posted to this blog). Yea! Come on Megalon, rise up!

Omniscience --> ~Free Will?

2005-10-14T02:26:00.000-07:00

In light of Luke’s latest urgings, I’ve decided to “blog” a bit about an issue that I’ve been contemplating recently in relation to the material being covered in Tony B’s “Freedom and Determinism” class. Ok, here goes.

Suppose a being named TONI exists. Let’s further suppose that TONI, by nature, possesses the following basic attributes: (a) TONI is omniscient in the sense that she knows everything and all her beliefs are true beliefs; (b) Moreover, TONI is not temporally bound in the same way that we (normal beings) are temporally bound, so TONI’s omniscient powers allow her not only to know everything about the past, but everything about the future as well. Let’s also assume that TONI’s knowledge of the future is not restricted to various “soft facts” about the future, but is such that she is able to know “hard facts” about the future as well.

Now, consider the following scenario. Suppose TONI knows at t (= 10.14.05) that Luke Manning (the ‘one and only’ Luke Manning) will win the California state lottery at t* (= 10.20.05) by going to the 7-11 store in Goleta and purchasing a “quick pick” ticket. Given this supposition, is it possible that Luke Manning could have done otherwise? Is it possible that Luke Manning will not win the lottery on 10.20.05? Is it possible that Luke Manning will win the lottery on 10.20.05 by purchasing a “quick tick” instead of a “quick pick” ticket? Or would Luke Manning’s very ability to do otherwise in this situation (whatever that may be) necessarily falsify TONI’s omniscience? Given TONI’s attributes, is it even possible to falsify TONI’s omniscience?

Well, that’s it for now. I’m not exactly sure what to say about such a case. I have some intuitions, but I’d like to hear some commentary from the “peanut gallery” before I lay all of my cards on the table. Anyway, that's my first contribution to this burgeoning blog site. Have fun!

Reading groups and other goings-on

2005-10-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

Hi again. There are several things to catch up on. As far as I can tell, three reading groups are presently running among the UCSB philgrads and faculty. They are:

The Santa Barbarians: organized by C. Anthony Anderson (caanders@philosophy.ucsb.edu) and covering new articles from journals or working papers from within the department. Meets Monday nights at 8pm at Anderson's house. This Monday the group will discuss Nathan Salmon's "Vagaries about Vagueness".
The Philosophy of Mind reading group: organized by Jason Newman (jallennewman@hotmail.com), covering papers in the philosophy of mind. Meets Tuesday afternoons at 4pm in 5617 SH. This last Tuesday (sorry I missed it) the group discussed Jerry Fodor's "A Theory of Content" parts I and II. Next reading TBA.
The Philosophy of Language reading group: organized by Luke Manning (luke_manning@umail.ucsb.edu) and Tim Lewis (tslewis@umail.ucsb.edu), covering papers in the philosophy of language (currently in parallel with Aaron Zimmerman's seminar in the philosophy of mind). Meets Thursday evenings at 6pm at the Starbucks in Camino Real Marketplace. Today's reading (sorry for short notice, but many will have read this already for the seminar) is David Kaplan's "Afterthoughts".

We had our first colloquium of the quarter last Friday, with speaker Alan Nelson (UC Irvine); pending resolution of some technical difficulties, we'll have an mp3 audio recording of that available on the department site.

The Guerrilla Radio Show, our philgrad-run philosophy radio show, has switched gears: we will be broadcasting new live shows every other Tuesday night from 7-8pm. On the other Tuesdays we will broadcast pre-recorded episodes or other philosophical tidbits. Stay tuned for info about upcoming broadcasts.

We've had a few commenters here on the UCSB Philosophy Blog, and I'd like to thank them and ask them to make some posts of their own. I've sent some of you invitation emails so you can do that; if you need an invitation, please ask and I can send one (again, if need be). If you're not terribly interested in aesthetics (as I seem to be at the moment), post something about metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, or whatever else keeps you up at night (thinking!).

Random Action

2005-10-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

Time for a little update on department activities. Yesterday we had our fall gathering at Nathan Salmon's house, where we welcomed the incoming class of grad students. Chris took some pictures, so expect to see them at some point.
It's time for a little philosophy on the radio! The Guerrilla Radio Show (GRS) will be starting a brand new broadcast quarter this week (10.04.05) with two new co-hosts and a special show on which we'll determine topics for upcoming shows, and presumably goof off. Visit the above link for info on how to tune in, and help us out by calling in or emailing us with your topic suggestions. The GRS airs LIVE every Tuesday night, 7:00-8:00pm on KCSB 91.9 fm or on the World Wide Web at www.kcsb.org.
Finally, the Philosophy of Language reading group is no longer in suspended animation. This Thursday (Oct. 6) we'll be discussing David Kaplan's "Demonstratives" and "Afterthoughts" (yes, in parallel with the current Philosophy of Mind seminar). Email me or post a comment if you're interested in participating.

Common-sense Aesthetics

2005-09-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about aesthetics as a philosophical and as a common-sense enterprise. It seems to me that current common-sense aesthetics is almost entirely vacuous. I say this because it doesn’t explain (arguably) the most basic data of aesthetics: we think some works of art are good/bad, or at least that some are better than others. Common-sense aesthetics is relativism at its baldest; its purported explanation of these data is that such evaluations are essentially statements of personal preference. This is patently a non-explanation—the question would remain why we have such personal preferences, but the common-sense theory merely takes it as a brute fact that we have them. This is why I say that common-sense aesthetics (CSA) is vacuous.
Why have many philosophers and other intelligent people bought into this theory? The answer may be that while there are (and always have been) socially accepted experts in aesthetic matters, the qualifications for becoming such an expert do not include knowing what one is talking about (to the extent that we could reasonably establish this). That is, people who are considered experts about art (mostly artists and critics, and especially the more “highbrow” among them) can be wrong, sometimes dead wrong, about art. It would appear that the burden of my argument is now to demonstrate that this is so. But I put it to the reader that this is certainly no less intuitively plausible (and perhaps, no more capable of demonstrative proof) than the thesis that these experts are basically infallible.
If an artist (e.g., someone of repute, like Picasso) states that good art has property F (say, increases political consciousness), we are generally inclined to take him seriously. If anyone has the authority to say such a thing, this guy does. This, I take it, is a standard attitude of laity toward experts, or at least scientific experts. (Perhaps the epistemic sociology (for lack of a better short expression) of aesthetics hasn’t always mirrored that of the sciences, and perhaps it was quite different in even the recent past, or is different in certain circles/cultures. But the similarity expressed seems to hold now, in my community.)
But we are soon confronted with a difficulty that defeats the analogy with the scientific epistemic sociology: those commonly accepted as aesthetic experts agree about very little (if anything), in general. In contrast, scientific experts in each field can generally agree on a large number of substantial claims. The explanation of this disanalogy is something I’ve been working on for a while now, but more important here is the fact that CSA’s purported explanation is weak. Its explanation is basically that these experts are right, but only “subjectively” speaking (whatever that means). This is supposed to explain the fact that distinct experts can say conflicting things; but evidently, if the experts can’t muster an “objective” truth about art, then surely a layperson’s aesthetic evaluations are equally “subjective”.
Why is this explanation weak? Because, if true, it undermines the epistemic social structure: we are all equally experts, regardless of training or eloquence. But if Joe Schmoe’s theory of art is necessarily as valid as Samuel Coleridge’s, then there’s no point in thinking about art. This view reinforces the thesis that there’s no explaining aesthetic preference—if we could explain it, then there would be real aesthetic experts, people who could say with some authority why some works are good, or preferred, or whatever. But what if there were some explaining to do? What if some people are better than others at explaining how art works? Surely this ability needn’t strictly track artistic abilities or the attributes that make one a respected critic. What if there is a host of aesthetic questions that are being ignored because we have been convinced by a roughly circular argument that there is no use looking?
I haven’t demonstrated that the argument for CSA (or anyway, one based closely on the above reconstruction of the view) is circular, but it probably could be done. Certainly the argument, “if the experts can’t agree, then aesthetics is bunk,” is void if the class of experts is established de facto and not de jure. But whether or not CSA can be refuted, what I hope I’ve done is motivate the view that a serious aesthetics (i.e., one that seeks substantial explanations for what people do and say about art) should be taken seriously. It seems almost silly that I should have to do so, to philosophers especially, but most people I talk to about art raise these kinds of considerations in response—seemingly as answers—to my questions. There may be some philosophical depth to relativist views in aesthetics (though I doubt there’s ultimately much motivation for them), but we shouldn’t consider the field moot simply because the common-sense theory does so. As philosophers, we should expect there to be some digging to do under any common-sense theory, and aesthetics is no exception.

New department blog

2005-09-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome, fellow philosophers. This is the newly opened UCSB Philosophy Department blog, on which we hope to have some random discussion of philosophical (or other) issues. If you've got an issue that you're thinking about (and who doesn't?) write up a little something for other readers to respond to. I'll post some of my own concerns soon, but here are a few starter questions that I mostly don't know how to answer.

What is the object of belief? I.e., when George believes that it is raining, is there a thing to which he is thereby related, and if so, what is that thing? E.g., is it a Russellian proposition, a neural state type, or what? Is there an answer that is satisfying from both a semantic and psychological point of view?
Can I name anything anything? I.e., does a name have to be a linguistic entity, or could it be, e.g., a person or a tree or an event? Could I name something as the Battle of Trafalgar (not "The Battle of Trafalgar")? (MG's question)
Does art have moral properties, as well as aesthetic properties? Are good works of art morally good, or is art morally neutral? What's the relation between these notions?

Have fun with that.