Essays

Toward the end of his interview on Elucidations, Greg Salmieri [S.] argues against Aristotle’s view that some of our life-activities are intrinsically valuable apart from the whole they constitute, in order to make room for valuing productive work alongside the candidates Aristotle himself prefers. This raises a question about Aristotle and a worry about S.’s own view. The question is this: what was Aristotle’s criterion for distinguishing the intrinsically valuable activities from the rest? The answer lies in the function argument of Nicomachean Ethics I.7. Aristotle argues there (to a first approximation) that our activities have intrinsic value when they express our characteristic nature, which is rational. So the intrinsically valuable activities just are the essentially rational activities, among which are contemplation and exercising practical wisdom. These are then the candidates for the governing activity of a happy human life. ...

In this post, I would like to propose an elaboration of Salmieri’s (Episode 50) discussion of instrumental and constitutive means, and his suggestion of a holistic approach to the evaluation of activities (the ‘holistic view of life’). In particular, I will suggest one way in which we can see a blurring of the distinction of instrumental and constitutive means as leading us to the holistic picture that Salmieri sketches in the episode. This post should not be taken as a definitive interpretation of Salmieri—I will not contend that he would necessarily adopt my elaboration—but it will hopefully help listeners to think about the connection between the discussion instrumental and constitutive means in the middle of the episode, and the reconceptualization of productive activity that Salmieri advocates at its conclusion. ...

In our latest episode, Frey sketches out Aquinas’ “exemplary method of philosophy,” the ‘quaestio format.’ With this format, Aquinas models a core pedagogical technique of the universities of his time—quaestiones disputatae (lit: questions debated). For this technique, students would take up sides of an issue, articulated as a question, and offer arguments for each side. The master (think professor) would then evaluate the arguments and adjudicate. That Aquinas structures many of his texts around this technique (especially his magnum opus, the Summa Theologica) indicates that he is concerned with students reading his texts acquiring not only the content of the view Aquinas himself supports, but also the proper method for thinking through an issue and arriving at a view—one which engages with contrary arguments and show the superiority of one’s own view to such arguments. As Frey points out the in episode, this pedagogical value of Aquinas’ writing is not restricted to his own students; philosophers today can gain much from a close study of Aquinas’ method. ...

In Episode 47, Baltag and Matt briefly discuss what they call the ‘KK principle,’ or the ‘principle of positive introspection.’ The basic formulation of this principle is: (KK): If I know that p, then I know that I know that p. (Where ‘p’ is some proposition.) For example, if I know that 2+2=4, then I know that I know that 2+2=4. A close cousin of the ‘KK principle’ is what we’ll call the ‘K-not-K principle,’ or the principle of negative introspection. The basic formulation of this principle is: ...

In the Veltman episode on normality (46), Matt mentions the “No True Scotsman Fallacy,” in its relationship to statements of normality. I’d like to sketch out what the fallacy is just a bit more fully, and further highlight how it brings out the problem of how we falsify normality claims. The basic idea behind the No True Scotsman Fallacy is that one can make a generalization of some sort (from the offensive ‘All Greeks are lazy’ to the more benign ‘Bears normally hibernate’), and then protect this generalization from any counterexample by claiming that it isn’t a real counterexample. But by doing so, the person making the assertion has made a contingent statement into a logically necessary statement, illegitimately. That is, ‘All Greeks are lazy’ could turn out to be either true or false until we go out, find some Greeks, and check (and quickly discover our error). But if the person who has made the assertion systematically rejects any example that undermines the generalization (‘That’s not a real Greek person.’), then it seems that the statement could never be falsified—it’s logically true. But “All Greeks are lazy” is obviously not a logical truth; it’s not a truth at all! In essence, the person who makes the ‘No True Scotsman’ move is perpetually moving the goalposts, preventing us from ever convincing her that that she made a false claim. ...

In the first part of this post, we talked about the motivations behind the epistemic interpretation of probability. Now, let’s take a look at one of the core mathematical theorems employed by those who subscribe to such an interpretation: Bayes’ Theorem (which is mentioned by Fitleson in Ep. 31). Before introducing Bayes’ Theorem, it is important to get clear on one last concept: conditional probability. The basic idea behind conditional probabilities is that we offer the probability that some event occurs, given that something else is true. It’s helpful to think about this once again in a gambling analogy. Let’s say that we want to bet on whether the Philadelphia Phillies will win the World Series next year. I might only wish to make a bet on this if one of their star players (say, Ryan Howard) is not injured this year. So we might make bets conditional on Ryan Howard not becoming injured—if Howard is injured, the bet is simply off. Referencing another of our blog posts, we say that conditional probabilities restrict the set of possible worlds we are considering (say, those possible worlds in which Ryan Howard is not injured for the 2013 season), and compute the probabilities from this restricted set of possible worlds. ...

Two recent episodes (Fitelson, Ep. 31; Vasudevan, Ep. 45) have mentioned ‘epistemic interpretations’ of probability and Bayes’ Theorem. For Fitleson, Bayes’ Theorem provides a model for inductive reasoning, and he is concerned with deviations from this model (as in the ‘base rate fallacy’ and ‘Linda cases’). Vasudevan takes epistemic interpretations of probability as the historical response to the apparent tension between determinism and our intuitions about chance events like the flip of a coin—a response which he ultimately rejects. Bayes’ Theorem and the epistemic interpretation of probability are intimately related, as one view in the philosophy of probability, Bayesianism, uses Bayes’ Theorem to represent changes in our beliefs in light of new evidence, which assumes an epistemic interpretation of probability. In the first part of this post, let’s take a look at some of the basic ideas and motivations behind the epistemic interpretation. In the second, we will look at some of the ‘mathematical machinery’ the Bayesian, who assumes an epistemic interpretation of probability, employs. ...

Much of our last episode dealt with what Aristotle meant by words like ’every’ and ‘some.’ As we discussed at some length in our previous post, in the Aristotelian setting, the meaning of ’every’ was slightly different from what we’re used to. Under today’s meaning of the word ’every,’ when I say ’every frog is green,’ you can check to see whether what I just said is true by checking to see whether the set of frogs is a subset of the set of green things. But in Aristotle’s philosophy, it takes more to make the sentence ’every frog is green’ true. It’s not enough for the set of green things just to contain the set of frogs. ...

In our latest episode, Peter Kail addressed a popular misreading of David Hume’s views about induction—the process of inferring things about the future on the basis of facts about the past. According to this reading, Hume is a skeptic about induction. Let’s distinguish skeptical from non-skeptical views about induction like this: Skepticism about induction: we are never justified in believing things about the future on the basis of facts about the past. ...

Thus far, three of our episodes (12, 25 and 28 have contained some discussion of possible worlds semantics. Most memorably, we learned in our last episode that John Searle is rather critical of the enterprise. But what is possible worlds semantics? Let’s take a look. This possible worlds business originally stems from the work of 17th-century philosopher and polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz got the ball rolling on possible worlds by putting forth the idea that a statement is necessarily true just in case it is true in all possible worlds, and possibly true just in case it is true in some possible world. The idea also plays a role in his controversial view that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz was resolutely mocked for this idea in Voltaire’s Candide. ...