In “Kripke and Functionalism” (Episode 61), Buechner describes how Kripke’s criticism of the dispositionalist response to the ‘rule-following paradox,’ found in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,can be generalized as a criticism of functionalist accounts of mental states, the thesis that mental states are abstract computational states realized in physical objects, like a brain. Here, I’d like to give a sketch of the rule-following paradox, the dispositionalist response, and Kripke’s criticism in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, in order to give you a clearer idea of the criticism of functionalism Buechner points to. (For those following along at home, the crux of the rule-following paradox can be found in §§185-202 of the Investigations; Kripke’s (articulation of what he takes to be Wittgenstein’s) criticism of the dispositionalist response can be found on pages 22-35 of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.) ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we talk to Sally Sedgwick Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Affiliated Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago) about Hegel’s critique of Kantian ethics. Click here to listen to our conversation. Over 200 years after Immanuel Kant published his work on ethics, it still represents one of the most influential perspectives in the field. Kant thought that ethics was based on a fundamental, universal principle that held necessarily for all people, regardless of time or circumstance: respect the dignity of all rational nature. What does that mean, exactly? Something like: in deciding how to act, always do the thing which will allow you and everyone else to most fully express your freedom. For example, don’t lie. If you lie, you’ll be spreading misinformation around, and if misinformation is allowed to spread around, then you won’t know the things you have to know in order to act freely. There’s something inherently self-undermining about the act of lying. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we talk computers, brains, and minds with Jeff Buechner, Permanent Lecturer in Philosophy at Rutgers University, Newark. Click here to listen to our conversation. Back in the 50s and 60s, a lot of philosophers were attracted to the idea that the human mind is basically a computer. Why would they find that idea attractive? Well, there was some excitement about the idea because it allowed us to characterize human minds not in terms of the stuff they’re made of (neurons, cells, brains, and so on), but in terms of what they do. Back when we were inclined to characterize human minds in terms of brains, we found it difficult to explain how e.g. I and my dog could both experience the same emotions, like fear or excitement. After all, we have totally different brains. But it seems comparably straightforward to say what a computer does in a way that abstracts over these distinctions: namely, it performs calculations. Think of a function as a rule that tells you how to transform an input into an output. In that case, you can think of what a computer does as computing the values of certain functions. For example, if you feed an adding machine the values 2 and 5, then it computes the value of the sum function for those two values, giving you 7. Thus, philosophers started calling the idea that minds are computers functionalism: if indeed the two are deeply similar, then maybe our minds are nothing more than mechanisms that compute certain functions. ...

If you’re interested in learning more about our distinguished guest’s proposed analysis of ‘ought,’ check out the following two papers: Fabrizio Cariani, ‘Epistemic and Deontic Should’ Fabrizio Cariani, ‘Deontic Modals and Probabilities: One Theory to Rule Them All?’ Matt Teichman ...

A central distinction in “Thoughts About Oughts” (Episode 60) is that between epistemic and deontic uses of ‘ought.’ As a quick review, here’s an example of an epistemic use of ‘ought.’ Imagine that you open the window in the morning, feel a strong breeze and suffocating humidity, and see a massive, dark wall of clouds on the horizon. You declare to your roommate: (Ep) It ought to rain today. And for an example of a deontic use of ought: Imagine that you have a final exam tomorrow, which you need to pass in order to graduate. You’ve been invited to catch up with some friends at the bar. Your roommate, ever loyal, reminds you: ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, Fabrizio Cariani (Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University) comes back for his second appearance on the program, this time to tell us about the meaning of the word ‘ought.’ You can listen to our conversation by clicking here. ‘Ought’ is a pretty important word in human affairs. Most famously, we use it to describe ethical obligations: when I say that you ought to be nice to your mother, I’m getting at the fact that some sort of moral rule is in place. But interestingly, the word also has lots of non-moral uses: if I say, ‘my keys ought to be on the kitchen counter,’ no allusion to ethics is intended! I’m simply saying something like, ‘I’m pretty sure the keys have to be on the counter, based on the information I have.’ ...

If you’d like read more about some of the issues we discussed with Rebecca Kukla, take a look at these two articles: ‘Measuring Mothering,’ Rebecca Kukla ‘The ethics and cultural politics of reproductive risk warnings: A case study of California’s Proposition 65,’ Rebecca Kukla Matt Teichman ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we talk to Quill Kukla, Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, about some of their work on reproductive risk. Click here to listen to our conversation. A pregnant woman is usually advised to be cautious about what products to purchase, whether to drink alcohol, and which locations to frequent. We tend to think that a pregnant woman is responsible not just for her own safety–she’s also the responsible for the safety of her unborn child. And of course that’s all true. But in this episode, our guest argues that the story doesn’t end there, and that many of the further details to how we think about these issues are problematic. ...

If you’d like to poke through some of the details of Shapiro’s theory, take a look at this article from a collection called Heaps and Liars: ‘Vagueness and Conversation,’ Stewart Shapiro Matt Teichman ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we are delighted to make our return to the topic of vagueness, this time in conversation with Stewart Shapiro, Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University. Click here to listen to our discussion. You may remember from our previous episode on vagueness that most of the adjectives, common nouns, verbs, and prepositions we use are vague. To illustrate the idea, think of the adjective blue. In the philosophical setting, to say that the adjective blue is vague is to say a couple of things. First, although some things clearly are blue (like bluejays) and some things clearly aren’t (like lemons), some things are right at the border (like this). Should we call that last borderline case blue or not? It’s not particularly clear. ...