Featured Philosop-her: Heather Logue

November 14, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized 3 Comments

Heather Logue is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on issues in metaphysics and epistemology, and particularly on issues concerning perceptual experience. She has published and forthcoming papers on Naïve Realism, disjunctivism, skepticism about the external world, and the metaphysics of color; and she co-edited (with Alex Byrne) Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings (MIT Press, 2009). Before coming to Leeds, Heather completed her PhD at MIT in 2009 and her bachelor’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 2003.

How You Know You’re Not in the Matrix

Heather Logue

As it happens, the movie “The Matrix” came out just as I was taking my very first philosophy class, and as I was reading Descartes’ Meditations for the first time. I was gripped by the problem of explaining how we know we’re not being deceived by evil demons and machines. I eventually became interested in the philosophy of perception because I had a hunch that the metaphysics of perceptual experience might hold the key to the most satisfying response to arguments for skepticism about the external world. In what follows, I summarize my most recent attempt to make good on this hunch. It comes from my paper “World in Mind: Extending Phenomenal Character and Resisting Skepticism”, which is slated to appear in a volume on experiential reasons, and is based on a presentation that I gave to a general audience in Edinburgh last year. In case you’re interested, it’s available online here:

In “The Matrix”, humans are used as batteries by their robot overlords. They are blissfully unaware of their subjugation thanks to the Matrix—a machine that stimulates their brains so that they’re having perceptual experiences that they couldn’t tell apart from ordinary ones. By ‘ordinary experiences’, I mean ones generated through normal interactions with the world beyond the Matrix. And by ‘Matrix experiences’, I mean the ones that philosophers call total hallucinations—experiences that merely seem to be of the world, when in actual fact you’re not perceiving anything in you’re environment at all. It seems to the people plugged into the Matrix that they are taking walks through parks, enjoying delicious ice cream, stubbing their toes on bedposts (and so on), when all the while they are just stuck in vats of goo.

This imagined scenario is troubling: if the characters in the movie can’t tell whether they’re in the Matrix, how can we? On the face of it, what it would be like to be in the Matrix is exactly the same as what’s it’s like to interact with the ordinary world. Hence, we can’t tell our experiences apart from Matrix ones, and we can’t know that we’re not in the Matrix.

I think that this is a genuine worry only given two assumptions (which, it must be said, are held by most philosophers). In the rest of this post, I will explain the assumptions, how one can reject them, and how rejecting them could give us knowledge that we’re not in the Matrix.

The first assumption is that what it’s like to have an experience (its phenomenal character) is entirely “in our heads”. As I think of it, the phenomenal character of an experience is (roughly) its “feel”—it feels different to experience red than it does to be tickled, or to experience green. This assumption says that the feel of an experience is entirely down to what’s going on inside our heads (presumably, our brains).

The second assumption is that we can have knowledge of our experiences in the Matrix. The idea is that all we have to do to know things about our experiences is to (in some sense) look within. By looking within, I can at least be certain that I’m having an experience of a yellow thing, and that my experience has the feel associated with experiences of yellow things. Even the poor humans stuck in the Matrix can do this—they can look within, even if they can’t look without. So even though they can’t know anything about what’s going on around them, they can at least have knowledge about their experiences.

Contrary to conventional philosophical wisdom, I think we should reject these two assumptions. And if we do, we have a way of knowing that we’re not in the Matrix.

As for the first assumption, I think we should reject the claim that phenomenal character is entirely in our heads, and hold that it includes things outside it. In particular, we should say that what it is like to have an experience consists in perceiving things in one’s environment. (This kind of claim is a version of what’s commonly known as ‘Naïve Realism’, or the ‘Relational View’ of perceptual experience.) For example, on this view, what it is like to experience yellowness consists in perceiving an instance of yellowness. It would take me too far afield to explain why I am attracted this view here (but if you’re interested, you can check out my paper “Why Naïve Realism”). For present purposes, the pressing issue is why most philosophers don’t hold it.

Most would balk at what it entails about total hallucinations. Since total hallucinations don’t involve perceiving things in one’s environment, this view entails that there’s nothing it’s like to have them. Surely that’s absurd! Someone having a total hallucination can’t tell it apart from an ordinary experience. Surely that entails that what it’s like to have them must be exactly the same, and so that there must be something it’s like to have a total hallucination (since there is something it’s like to have an ordinary experience).

Or does it? This is where the rejection of the second assumption comes in—that we can have knowledge about our experiences in the Matrix. Let’s think more carefully about how we get knowledge of our experiences. Do we really learn about them by looking within? It seems to me that we actually learn about them by looking without—by attending to the things in our environments that we perceive. (This model of how we acquire knowledge about our experiences is inspired by the one outlined in Evans 1982: 227-8.) For example, if you ask me what I’m experiencing right now, I don’t know what to do in order to answer your question other than to look out to what’s going on in my environment, and report back: I’m experiencing something yellow.

Notice that this way of getting knowledge about our experiences couldn’t work properly in the Matrix. The subjects of Matrix experiences don’t perceive anything in their environments. So when they try to attend to what’s going on in their environments, it turns out that they can’t. Given that they can’t do what they’re supposed to do to get knowledge of their experiences, it wouldn’t be surprising if they ended up with a bunch of false beliefs about them. One such false belief could be that there’s something it’s like to have their Matrix experiences. That is, they would form the belief that there’s something it’s like for them to have their experiences, even though this belief is false—because their way of getting knowledge about their experiences can’t work properly in the Matrix.

In short, if we deny the second assumption, it’s not absurd to deny the first. The denial of the first assumption was that the phenomenal character of an experience partially consists in things outside the head. The reason this seemed absurd was that since total hallucinations can’t be told apart from ordinary ones, it must be that what it’s like to have them is the same. This means that total hallucinations have phenomenal character, which must be entirely a matter of brain stimulation. But if we deny the second assumption in the way I suggested, we can admit that total hallucinations can’t be told apart from ordinary ones, but insist that this is not because what it’s like to have them is the same. Rather, it’s because our way of knowing about them doesn’t work properly in the Matrix. (For more details, see my paper “What Should the Naïve Realist Say about Total Hallucinations?”)

Finally, if we deny the first assumption, we can know that we’re not in the Matrix. We can know we’re having ordinary experiences rather than total hallucinations by knowing that there’s something it’s like to have them. After all, on my view, only ordinary experiences have a feel to them. So we can know that we’re not having Matrix experiences by knowing that we’re having experiences that have a feel.

I realise that this isn’t going to initially strike most readers as satisfying. For given that we would falsely believe that there is something it’s like to have our experiences if we were in the Matrix, how can we rule out the possibility that the experiences we’re having right now are Matrix experiences? It seems to me that this question expresses a demand for the impossible: a way to “step outside” our experiences in order to compare them with the external world, in order to check whether they “match”. But, much as we might like to, limited creatures like us cannot take an experience-independent perspective on the external world. As far as I can see, that’s the only way we could go about ensuring that we wouldn’t believe that we weren’t in the Matrix if we in fact were. But since it simply isn’t available to us, I think we ought to reject the idea that knowing that p requires that one wouldn’t believe that p if it were false (i.e., that sensitivity is a necessary condition for knowledge).

This broad kind of strategy isn’t novel (see, e.g., Sosa 2000, Williamson 2000, and Pritchard 2012, among others). But I have found previous implementations of it unsatisfying. They are short on detail when it comes to the following question: what exactly is it about perceptual experience that puts us in a position to know that we’re not in the Matrix? I have suggested that its phenomenal character plays this epistemological role. Sure, we would falsely believe that our experiences had phenomenal character in cases of total hallucination. But (as even Descartes conceded in Meditation I) the fact that a mode of epistemic access yields false beliefs in conditions unfavourable for its employment does not impugn its capacity to yield knowledge in favourable conditions. So the fact that total hallucination is a defective context for getting knowledge about experiences (as I suggested above) doesn’t mean that it cannot afford knowledge that our experiences have phenomenal character—and thereby, the knowledge that we’re not in the Matrix—in ordinary circumstances.

References

Evans, G. 1982. The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Logue, H. 2012a. What should the Naive Realist say about total hallucinations? Philosophical Perspectives 26: 173-99.

Logue, H. 2012b. Why Naive Realism? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112: 211-37.

Pritchard, D. 2012. Epistemological Disjunctivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sosa, E. 1999. How to defeat opposition to Moore. Philosophical Perspectives 13: 141-54.

Williamson, T. 2000. Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Featured Philosop-her: Connie Rosati

November 7, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in featured philosopher, metaethics, moral philosophy

Gil, csr2

Connie Rosati is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. She received the Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan and the J.D. from Harvard Law School. Her research interests lie primarily in metaethics, the philosophy of law, and constitutional theory. She is currently working on a book on the nature of personal good.

The following post is an excerpt from work in progress on the kinds of normative reasons facts about our good provide.

“On Reasons of Personal Good”

Connie Rosati

Among the many things I came to believe when I was young was that people should be prepared to make at least some significant sacrifices for one another, including at least minimal physical sacrifices. In particular, I came to believe that, other things equal, people ought to donate blood. After all, what could be a more important, while still minimal physical sacrifice, than donating a pint of a bodily fluid that would readily replenish itself? As it happened, I didn’t weigh enough to give blood. So I vowed that if I ever met the minimal weight requirement of 110 pounds, I would make a donation. I did not stably meet that requirement until my mid 40s. Periodically, it would cross my mind that I had once committed myself to giving blood, if ever I could. Time continued to pass, however, without my ever doing much more than checking, on a few occasions, for the location of the local American Red Cross.

On Wednesday, January 13, 2010, I again located the nearest Red Cross blood donation center, but this time, I scheduled an appointment. On Saturday, January 16, 2010, I became an “FTD,” as the forms identified me: a first-time blood donor. When I arrived, the receptionist informed me that they were running behind, and my 12:00 appointment would be delayed by half an hour; I could come back another day if I wanted, she said. But I figured, no doubt correctly, that doing it later might well mean doing it never, and so I stayed, waiting until nearly 1:30, at which point another staff person took me into a room to check my hemoglobin and complete the required questionnaire. Giving blood was mostly uneventful, except for the part when, just after they finished drawing a pint and filling several vials, I passed out (twice).

There were, as it happens, excellent reasons for me to have arranged to donate blood when I did. A massive earthquake had just shaken Haiti to its knees, and news reports were grim. No doubt the disaster was in the back of my mind when I called. But in truth, it served more as a reminder of a vow as yet unkept than as a direct impetus to action. Perhaps it played some unconscious part in my doing what I did when I did it, but I can’t say that I felt any sense of urgency about donating blood, and when asked by the staff person why I had decided to become a donor, I didn’t mention Haiti. I had, in fact, already donated money to the Red Cross in response to the tragedy. And when I returned home after donating blood, I made a second monetary contribution. Surely donating money was enough and probably mattered more than donating a pint of blood, at least so far as Haiti was concerned. Given the lag time between when I made the donation and when the blood would be usable, and given the complexities of the blood distribution system, I couldn’t rationally have been moved by the thought that my blood would help someone in Haiti. Of course, someone, somewhere, at some time would presumably benefit, and I could rationally have been moved by the thought of that benefit, but it was no particular part of my thinking. The consideration of such a benefit was among the reasons for doing what I did, but it wasn’t the reason for which I acted.

It seems to me that I was ultimately moved to act, at least in part, by the fact of that long-ago vow, that somehow a commitment made by me then weighed with me now. Suppose, that I am right about this, that among other considerations, the fact of my having once made a vow did move me to act 35 years later. Did that fact give me normative reason to act? Do facts about our earlier vows or commitments give any of us normative reason to act? And if so, do they give reasons weighty enough to sometimes make a difference to what we ought to do?

As I shall explain, facts about earlier vows and commitments are among the things that can give an agent a special kind of reason—reasons of self-constitution—and such reasons are reasons of personal good.

Reasons of personal good include at least the following. There are first, intrinsic reasons of personal good. These are reasons that exist in virtue of the fact that something is good for a person at a time. The fact that an individual is engaged in activities that are currently a part of her flourishing, for example, is a source of reasons for doing what is constitutive of engaging in those activities, reasons distinct from whatever reasons morality may provide for doing so. Her engagement in parenting is a source of reasons to attend to her children. Her career as a lawyer provides reasons for carrying out the sundry tasks involved in the practice of law. There are also instrumental reasons of personal good. These are, as the name indicates, reasons that are grounded in facts about the means to be taken to attain or maintain what is now good for an individual.

In addition to facts about what is good for a person at a time, there are facts about what could be good for her, what could become a part of her good. The fact that something might be good for a person provides her with pro tanto reasons as well. Because they arise from facts about a person’s possible good, a good that could be hers if she were to choose it and do the necessary work to bring herself into a relation of fit with that possible good, let’s call these conditional reasons of personal good.

Conditional reasons are among what we might call constitutional reasons of personal good. Constitutional reasons are reasons to constitute our good in particular ways. A person might have constitutional reasons to make certain things a part of her good, to make her possible good her actual good. Constitutional reasons include reasons that bear on whether to pursue some ends rather than others, whether to undertake various sorts of education or training, whether to lead a particular sort of life. They also include reasons to undertake acts that will constitute, sustain, or reconstitute oneself as a particular sort or person. They include, that is, reasons of self-constitution.

Now here we must consider certain peculiarities about the good of persons. As persons, creatures with the capacity for autonomy, we live our lives not only with conscious awareness, but with a kind of self-awareness. We each have a certain need to make sense of ourselves to ourselves, and so we reflect on ourselves and our doings. We care about what sort of persons we are, whether for moral or aesthetic reasons or reasons of expected benefit, and we sometimes deliberately seek to alter or develop ourselves. We each have a self-ideal, a normative conception of the sort of person we are and of what our lives are about, though we typically embody that self-ideal imperfectly. Sometimes we find that we have changed in unexpected ways so that we have strayed from our self-ideals, or we become aware of ways in which we fail to fit our self-ideals, so that we are not as we conceived ourselves to be. As a consequence, we may experience a need to “reconsolidate” ourselves, to get back to who we were so as better to match our self-ideals, or to revise our self-ideals as we adjust to the persons we have become, perhaps integrating aspects of our former and current selves. Our ability to function effectively as autonomous agents, and so our ability to lead flourishing lives partly depends on our having and acting from effective self-ideals. If a person has a self-ideal that is too at odds with what she is really like, if she has a conception of what matters to her that is too at odds with how she acts, her ability to be self-governing and her ability to achieve a good life will be impaired.

A person’s ability to develop and sustain an effective self-ideal requires activity on her part. Aristotle famously emphasized the role of practice and habituation in the development of moral virtue, and the need for practice and repetition, as well as the cultivation of habits, is important, too, in developing and sustaining an effective self-ideal. Habits, though, may be just so sturdy, and a person may, due to poor choices, self-deception, a lack of self-knowledge, laziness, or circumstances beyond her control, come to act in ways that are “out of character”—not in keeping with who she conceives herself to be. She may also simply fall short of her self-ideal, because she has not fully developed habits and practices in line with her self-ideal. As a consequence, she may need to deliberately undertake to perform actions that she would perform as a matter of course, were she acting in line with her self-ideal, thereby working to make it true of herself that she is as she conceives herself to be.

No doubt we all fail to do some of the specific things that we take to be a part of being the sort of person we conceive ourselves to be. And no doubt failing in this respect is compatible with leading a satisfying life. Nevertheless, having specified some things as significant in this way, we create reasons of self-constitution, when circumstances permit, to undertake the actions in question. In my own case, although many acts would have been ways of acting as the person I conceive myself to be, there was a particular act that I had singled out, and I had done so by vowing that I would someday do it. Because of its relationship to my self-ideal, and because of the importance of our having effective self-ideals to our flourishing, it seems to me that I had reasons of self-constitution to give blood in a way that I did not have to do a great many other things.

Let me now bring the forgoing discussion to bear on the questions raised earlier. Here are my answers. The fact that a person made an earlier vow or commitment can give pro tanto reasons to act, even many years later. The kinds of reasons such facts give are reasons of self-constitution, which are reasons of personal good. These reasons can be significant enough to at least sometimes make a difference to what it makes most sense for a person to do. Reasons of self-constitution have this significance because they concern acts that are a part of our efforts to form, develop, and sustain effective self-ideals, and so to constitute ourselves as particular sorts of people.

Job: Arizona State University

November 1, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized

Because of its potential relevance to readers, I have been asked to post this on behalf of the department of Philosophy at Arizona State University:

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, Tempe, AZ (Job 10925) – The Philosophy faculty of the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies seeks to appoint a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor in Philosophy with an anticipated start date of August 16, 2015. Areas of Specialization (AOS): Social and Political Philosophy. Areas of Concentration (AOC): Open. We are especially interested in candidates working in some area of applied social/political philosophy such as one concerning race, gender, immigration, global justice, world poverty, or human rights. And we have a preference for candidates who can add to our existing strength in feminist philosophy. Some preference may be given to candidates whose work crosses disciplinary boundaries. For more information about our PhD program and its focus on practical and applied philosophy, please see https://shprs.clas.asu.edu/graduate/philosophy-0. We will not be interviewing at the APA meetings.

The full ad can be found here.

Featured Philosop-her: Lisa Bortolotti

October 31, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in applied philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of mind

Lisa Bortolotti is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. She works in the philosophy of cognitive sciences and in biomedical ethics. Her main research interests lie in irrational beliefs. From September 2013 to September 2014 she held an AHRC Fellowship. In October 2014 she started a new project, Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts (PERFECT), funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant. Her monograph on delusions, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP 2009), won the American Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2011. Her new book, Irrationality (Polity 2014), has just been released.

Reverse Othello Syndrome and Epistemic Innocence

Lisa Bortolotti

Can delusions playing a defensive function (hereafter, motivated delusions) have epistemic benefits? Arguably, they can prevent loss of self-esteem and help manage strong negative emotions. The claim that delusions are psychologically adaptive was recently discussed in the psychological literature (McKay and Kinsbourne 2010; McKay and Dennett 2009).

Without denying that delusions are typically false and irrational, and that they compromise good functioning, my goal here is to ask whether the psychological benefits attributed to motivated delusions can translate into epistemic benefits. Thinking about delusions in terms of potential epistemic benefits invites a reflection on the relevance of contextual factors in epistemic evaluation.

Motivated delusions

Clinical delusions are symptoms of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, dementia, and delusional disorders. Motivated delusions can be characterised as irrational beliefs, in that they are implausible, they do not accurately represent reality, they do not respond to evidence, and they may not be consistently reflected in behaviour. An example of a monothematic delusion with a defensive function that emerged as a result of brain damage is the case of Reverse Othello syndrome (Butler 2000). A man, BX, delusionally believed that he was in a happy relationship, when in fact his partner had left him.

Butler’s patient was a talented musician who had sustained severe head injuries in a car accident. The accident left him quadriplegic, unable to speak without reliance on an electronic communicator. One year after his injury, the patient developed a delusional system that revolved around the continuing fidelity of his partner (who had in fact severed all contact with him soon after his accident). The patient became convinced that he and his former partner had recently married, and he was eager to persuade others that he now felt sexually fulfilled. (McKay et al. 2005)

BX’s belief in the fidelity of his previous partner and the continued success of his relationship was very resistant to counterevidence. BX believed that his relationship was going from strength to strength, even though his former partner did not want to communicate with him and was in a relationship with someone else.

The delusion seemed to protect BX from an undesirable truth while he was coping with the consequences of permanent disability. Gradually BX developed the delusion that his former romantic partner was still in a relationship with him, and also that they had recently married. While still in hospital, he often asked to go home so that he could see his wife. Butler argues that the delusion relieved the sense of loss that BX was feeling at the time.

[A]ppearance [of delusions] may mark an adaptive attempt to regain intrapsychic coherence and to confer meaning on otherwise catastrophic loss or emptiness (Butler 2000).

As gradually as it had appeared, BX’s delusional system dissolved, and by the end of the process BX realised that his former partner had moved on, was not married to him, and had no intention to go back to him. This happened roughly at the time when BX had completed his physical rehabilitation and was ready to return home.

Butler argues that a psychological defence against depression contributed to the fixity and elaboration of BX’s delusional system. The delusion kept BX’s depression at bay at a very critical time. Acknowledging the end of his romantic relationship might have been disastrous at a time when he was coping with the realisation of his new disability and its effects on his life.

Delusions as a shear pin

According to the “shear-pin” account developed by McKay and Dennett, some false beliefs that help manage negative emotions and avoid low self-esteem and depression can count as psychologically adaptive. McKay and Dennett suggest that, in situations of extreme stress, motivational influences are allowed to intervene in the process of belief evaluation, causing a breakage.

What might count as a doxastic analogue of shear pin breakage? We envision doxastic shear pins as components of belief evaluation machinery that are “designed” to break in situations of extreme psychological stress (analogous to the mechanical overload that breaks a shear pin or the power surge that blows a fuse). Perhaps the normal function (both normatively and statistically construed) of such components would be to constrain the influence of motivational processes on belief formation. Breakage of such components, therefore, might permit the formation and maintenance of comforting misbeliefs – beliefs that would ordinarily be rejected as ungrounded, but that would facilitate the negotiation of overwhelming circumstances (perhaps by enabling the management of powerful negative emotions) and that would thus be adaptive in such extraordinary circumstances. (McKay and Dennett 2009)

Could motivated delusions be adaptive misbeliefs? The mechanism that inhibits motivational influences on belief evaluation is compromised, and as a result of this motivated delusions emerge, making negative emotions easier to manage and depression less likely to ensue. McKay and Dennett consider the possibility that motivated delusions count as adaptive misbeliefs, but interestingly argue that the extent to which desires are allowed to influence belief formation in the case of delusions is pathological. Delusions are the result of the maladaptive version of a psychologically adaptive mechanism.

According to the shear-pin account, the situation in which adaptive misbeliefs emerge is already seriously compromised. The premise is that the person is already experiencing high levels of distress, and can come to more serious harm unless her negative emotions are managed. Thus, the benefit here amounts to the prevention of more serious harm than the one the person is already experiencing. In other words, the adaptive misbelief is equivalent to an emergency response.

Epistemic innocence

According to the legal notion of justification defence, an act does not constitute an offence when it prevents serious harm from occurring and other ways of preventing the harm were not available to the agent at the time. The act is seen as an acceptable response to an emergency. I want to apply this notion of innocence to the domain of epistemic evaluation. In some contexts, a misbelief may help avoid worse epistemic consequences, and thus qualifies as an acceptable response to an emergency. A delusion is epistemically innocent if adopting it delivers a significant epistemic benefit that could not be obtained otherwise.

If a belief helps manage negative emotions, protect self-esteem, and relieve anxiety and stress (e.g., “I am now severely disabled, but my girlfriend still loves me”), it will have positive effects not just on the agent’s wellbeing but also on her capacity to function well epistemically. By having the belief, a person will be more likely to engage with her surrounding physical and social environment in a way that is conducive to epistemic achievements. Consequences of stress and anxiety include lack of concentration, irritability, social isolation, and emotional disturbances. These in turn negatively affect socialisation, making interaction with other people less frequent and less conducive to useful feedback on existing beliefs, and to the fruitful exchange of relevant information. Due to reduced socialisation and engagement, the acquisition and retention of knowledge is compromised and intellectual virtues are not exercised.

Notice that the delusional belief may bring relief at the time when it is adopted, due to the person being already in an epistemically compromised situation, but it often increases rather than reduces stress and anxiety when it is maintained in the face of conflicting evidence and challenges from third parties. Stress and anxiety no longer come from the negative emotions associated with trauma or loss (e.g., “My girlfriend left me”), but from the fact that the content of the delusion clashes with aspects of the person’s experience, conflicts with other things she believes or feels, and alienates other people. For all of these reasons, anxiety and depression do not always lessen after a delusion is adopted, they can also heighten. My claim here is modest: delusions can be epistemically innocent when they are adopted; and their epistemic innocence does not mean that they are also epistemically justified, or epistemically good overall.

Cannot the person adopt a belief that has the same epistemic benefits as the delusional one but fewer costs? One suggestion emerging from the empirical literature is that, in the extraordinary circumstances in which the agent finds herself, no other belief with the relevant characteristics is available. A belief that is more tightly constrained by evidence (e.g., “My girlfriend left me”) than the delusional one may not be as well placed as the delusional one to play a defensive function, in terms of defusing the negative emotions caused by trauma and disability. The non-delusional belief lacking those psychological benefits may also lack the epistemic benefits associated with the delusional belief.

Conclusions and implications

I suggested that motivated delusions have obvious epistemic costs but can also have a significant epistemic benefit that would be otherwise unattainable. When we think about adaptive misbeliefs, we usually think in terms of there being a trade-off. Believing something false can make us feel better, but it leads us further away from the truth.

The case for the potential epistemic innocence of motivated delusions puts some pressure on the trade-off view. It would be misleading to believe that motivated delusions provide anxiety-relief and protect self-esteem by compromising access to the truth. Rather, in the account I have sketched, the delusion is adopted at a time when access to the truth is already compromised, and it would be further compromised unless negative emotions were effectively managed. As a temporary response to an emergency, motivated delusions play a useful epistemic function.

In the case of BX with Reverse Othello syndrome, the clinical team decided not to challenge the delusion after they realised that there were no other psychotic symptoms and the delusion was playing a defensive function.

Persistent attempts […] to challenge B.X.’s delusional beliefs were unsuccessful and usually led him to become tearful and agitated.

All members of the treating team were instructed not to aggressively B.X.’s delusional beliefs but were also cautioned not to become complicit in his elaboration of them. (Butler 2000)

A clinical team might decide not to challenge a delusion if they think that it will be ineffective or disruptive, or if there is a high risk of depression ensuing from the agent’s insight into her mental illness. My discussion suggests that, in these contexts, challenging the delusion would not be advisable from an epistemic point of view either. At the critical stage, motivated delusions may serve a useful epistemic function, allowing the agent to overcome negative feelings or low self-esteem that would prevent her from functioning as an epistemic agent.

References

Butler, P. (2000). Reverse Othello syndrome subsequent to traumatic brain injury. Psychiatry: interpersonal and biological processes 63 (1): 85–92.

McKay, R. and Dennett, D. (2009). The Evolution of Misbelief. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6): 493–561.

McKay, R. and Kinsbourne, M. (2010). Confabulation, delusions and anosognosia. Motivational factors and false claims. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 15 (1): 288-318.

Acknowledgements

For the research on which this post is based, I acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (The Epistemic Innocence of Imperfect Cognitions, grant number: AH/K003615/1). A more detailed argument will appear in an article entitled “The Epistemic Innocence of Motivated Delusions”, forthcoming in Consciousness & Cognition.

Featured Philosop-her: Robin Jeshion

October 24, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in guest post, philosophy of language, political philosophy, race theory

Robin Jeshion is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. She specializes in the philosophy of language and mind, focusing especially on topics concerning the ways that language contributes to shaping cognition, and cognition shapes and is manifest in language. Her research includes work on the relationship between the semantics of singular terms and the nature of singular thought; the semantics of demonstratives and the nature of perception and spatial representation; the semantic, cognitive, and social functions of proper names. Most recently, she has been writing about slurring terms, and related expressions, attempting to understand to what extent attitudes and/or social structures are incorporated within their semantics and pragmatics. Outside of mind and language, she has written about mathematical intuition, a priori knowledge, the epistemological status of proofs, and Frege’s logicism. Before returning to USC, she taught at Yale University, the University of California, Riverside, the University of Arizona, and spent a year as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, supported by an ACLS Burkhardt Fellowship. This spring, she will deliver the Wedberg Lectures in Stockholm, presenting Dehumanizing Slurs, four talks that bring together much of her work on this topic.

Slurs, Dehumanization, and the Expression of Contempt

Robin Jeshion

Thank you, Meena, for running this terrific blog and inviting me to present a post. I’ve lately been thinking and writing about slurring words, expressions like “Kike”, “Chink”, “Spic”, and “faggot”, pejorative terms that target individuals on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, socioeconomic status, occupation, and various other socially important properties. Such expressions raise a spate of questions regarding their semantics and pragmatics: Do sentences containing slurs ever express truths? How can we account for what has come to be called in the literature the ‘offensiveness’ of slurs? Is it somehow semantically encoded as a proposition, perhaps a proposition encoding the stereotype of the group or a proposition encoding that the group merits contempt? Or is it rather that slurs are terms conventionally used for expressing a speaker’s attitude, perhaps an attitude of contempt? Is a semantic explanation needed at all to account for slurs’ offensiveness – perhaps it can rather be explained entirely pragmatically, e.g., by reference to social prohibitions on uses of slurs or socio-linguistic facts regarding which groups tend to use slurs? Do those who use slurs engage in actions of “othering”, and if so, is this captured linguistically? How can we explain the fact that uses of slurs are extraordinarily destructive – dehumanizing – to their targets and can tend to make hearers feel complicit? What accounts for the fact that those who use slurs signal something about their social allegiances and affiliations? How should we explain the appropriation of slurs, the phenomena through which a slur’s offensiveness is neutralized? What is the relationship between slurring terms and various other pejoratives, expressions like “jerk”, “freak”, “wino”, “blimp”, “commie” – are any of these of the same linguistic type? And how are they related to approbatives like “goddess”, “hottie, “saint”, and “ace”? And bare expressive intensifiers like “damn” and ‘effin”? It would be easy to go on, to spin out twelve more questions. With such a rich set of phenomena – and obviously deeply important social, political, and psychological matters at stake – it is no wonder that interest in such expressions has been rapidly accelerating.

The text that follows is adapted from a paper in which I offer a bare sketch of my semantic theory of slurs. The view is inspired by two key ideas. One is that there are multiple sources of the offensiveness in utterances of slurs, only some of which ought to be explained semantically. The dominant aspect of slurs’ offensiveness that should be explained semantically is needed to explain their capacity to dehumanize. John Amaechi, the first NBA player to openly identify as gay, called slurs “a threat to human dignity” and remarked about the slur “faggot”:

…young people are being killed and killing themselves simply because of the words and behaviors they are subjected to for being perceived as lesbian or gay, or frankly just different. This is…an indication of the power of that word, and others like it, to brutalize and dehumanize.

Amachi’s remarks are apt. Slurs dehumanize.

We need a theory of slurring terms that fully explains how and why they dehumanize, one that explains how they signal that their targets are unworthy of equal standing or full respect as persons, that they are inferior as persons. Extant analyses of slurs’ semantics have faired poorly on this score. I hope to do better with the account I offer.

The other key idea is that slurring terms function semantically in virtually the same way that their neutral counterparts function when given contemptuous intonation and when fronted by certain expletives or negative adjectives.

[1]Jake is a Kike.

[1a]Jake is a fucking Jew.

[1b]Jake is a JewC.

(I use italics to denote intonational stress, and superscripts to italicized material to indicate the type of prosodic pattern given to the word, where the superscript letter denotes the affective attitude conveyed by that pattern. Here, “C” denotes contemptuousness.) In effect, [1],[1a], and [1b] all mean the same thing.

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On the view I favor, slurring terms possess three separable semantic components. One is the group-designating component. A slurring term, references the group that is referenced by its neutral counterpart. The truth of sentence [1] depend only upon whether Jake is Jewish, and so is truth conditionally equivalent to [1NC].

[1] Jake is a Kike.

[1NC] Jake is Jewish.

So slurring terms share some semantic structure with their neutral counterparts. However, given that the slur and neutral counterpart make parallel semantic contributions along this dimension, the group-designating component does not account for slurs’ offensiveness. This marks its separation from the other two components of the semantics, both of which, likewise, make no contribution to the truth conditions.

The second component is expressivist: slurring terms are used to express contempt for members of a socially relevant group on account of their being in that group or having a group-defining property. Note that this component involves the expression of the speaker’s attitude toward his targets, not a separately semantically encoded descriptive content, say, contemptible on account of being Jewish. Views on which slurring terms semantically encode such descriptive contents are markedly different. Suppose that “Kike*” encodes the descriptive content given by “worthy of contempt on account of being Jewish”. Then, although it is not misconceived to regard the utterances of

[1] Jake is a Kike

[1c] Jake is a Kike*

as communicating the same information, they do so in different ways. While the utterance of [1c] encodes the proposition that the target is worthy of contempt on account of being Jewish, the utterance of [1] does no such thing. It communicates, rather, the speaker’s contempt itself, which is expressed, not asserted. A proponent of the analysis involving semantic descriptive encoding will be hard-pressed to explain why the negation of [1c], as in “Jake is not a Kike*” or “It is not the case that Jake is a Kike*”, are not what would be used to deny the derogating content of [1]. Yet they ought to do so if “Kike” is synonymous with “Kike*”.

This expressive component indicates that slurring terms share semantic properties with other expressives like intensifiers (“totally” in “That is totally interesting”), exclamatives (“holy crap!”, “Wow!” “Ouch!”) and other explicitly performative expressives (“right on!”) which similarly function to express speakers’ emotional or attitudinal states and do not contribute meaning by predicating a descriptive content.

Despite this similarity in semantic structure with other expressives, do not assimilate the expressive component of slurring terms to the “mere” expression of a feeling, like a flash of anger or a state of frustration. While contempt is an affectively laden attitude, often accompanied by feelings of abhorrence, hostility, and hatred, no particular “raw” subjective feeling need be felt by one who uses a slur. Indeed, one could express contempt for someone coolly, without any “heat-of-the-moment” feeling. Furthermore, the expression of contempt differs from the expression of purely subjective feelings like pain or fear or astonishment, which are largely insulated from normative assessment and neither implicate nor represent their objects as pain-, fear-, or astonishment- worthy. By contrast, contempt, like resentment, is a highly structured affectively- and normatively-guided moral attitude that is subject to evaluation for its appropriateness. As such, in using slurs, speakers not only express their own contempt for the target, but also implicitly represent (but still do not say or assert that) their targets as worthy of contempt. And because contempt is a moral attitude specifically held toward those one regards as inferior as persons, users of slurs thereby implicate that targets ought to be so-regarded as inferior.

The third component to slurs’ semantics is what I call the identifying component. Extant expressivist views neglect this component, and thus, to my mind, haven’t gone far enough in accounting for how the nature of contempt infects slurring terms’ semantics. Contempt involves taking those properties that are the basis for regarding the target contemptuously as fundamental to the targets’ identity as a person and this feature of contempt is semantically encoded. As a matter of the semantics of the slurring term, an utterance of

[2] He is a faggot

does not simply ascribe a property to the target, here, that of being gay. It classifies the target in a way that aims to be identifying. In calling someone “faggot”, the homophobe takes a property that he believes someone to possess and semantically encodes that it is the, or a, defining feature of the target’s identity. As such, it is used to shape the target’s social identity, and so to dictate how others ought to treat, regard, think of, and respond to its target. As a matter of their semantics, “Kike”, “Chink”, Nigger”, “faggot”, “whore” are used so as to signal that being Jewish, Chinese, black, gay, a prostitute identify what its targets are.

The classification of the target in a way that aims to be identifying should not be conflated with any notions of metaphysical identity or essentialism. In wielding slurs, racists, anti-Semites, and homophobes are not in the business of presenting their target’s group membership either as an essential, metaphysically necessary property, or as determining or explaining their other properties. Rather, they express that the target’s group membership is the, or among the, most central characteristic(s) for classifying what the target is, as a person, construed along a broadly moral dimension.

Notice that the identifying component is dependent upon the expressive component because the identifying component partially captures what it is to regard someone with contempt. That is, it follows from what it is to find someone contemptible on the basis of being gay that one takes that person’s sexual orientation as the most or among the most central aspects of that person’s identity. This dependence is, at heart, moral-psychological, but is manifest in the semantics. A speaker who expresses contempt toward her target for being G thereby also expresses and implicitly represents G as fundamental to her target’s identity as a person. Thus, within a single speech act, the speaker expresses both her contempt and way of identifying the target as a person.

Together, the expressive and identifying components explain slurs’ common and conventional capacity to derogate. As a matter of their semantics, slurs function to express the speaker’s contempt for his target in virtue of the target’s group-membership and that his target ought to be treated with contempt in virtue of that group-membership, because what the target is, as a person, is something lesser, something unworthy of equal or full respect or consideration. In this way, slurs, as a class, conventionally function to dehumanize.

Featured Philosop-her: Christine M. Korsgaard

October 17, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in featured philosopher, moral philosophy, political philosophy 5 Comments

Christine M. Korsgaard, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, is the author of four books. Creating the Kingdom of Ends is a collection of essays on Kant’s ethics and Kantian ethics. The Sources of Normativity is an investigation into modern views about the foundations of obligation. The Constitution of Agency is a collection of essays on practical reason and moral psychology. Self-Constitution explores the foundations of morality and practical identity in the nature of human action. She is currently working on Fellow Creatures, a book about the moral and legal status of non-human animals, and The Natural History of the Good, a book about the place of value in nature.

Provisional Rights and the State

Christine M. Korsgaard

Considered as normative entities, rights have an unusual feature: there is a sense in which they do not exist until they are instituted legally. For this reason, someone being abused or disrespected in certain ways can voice the exact same response by complaining that she has no rights or by protesting that she does have rights. In the text below, adapted from a section of a paper in which I defend the view that both non-human animals and the world’s poor have rights against humanity collectively speaking, I argue that Kant’s doctrine that natural rights in the state of nature are “provisional” gives us the best way to understand this feature of rights. At the same time, it grounds his argument that we have a duty to live together in the political state.

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So far, what I have said has been ambiguous between two claims: that animals should have rights and that they do have rights. There is a reason for this ambiguity, for there is a problem about what is going on when someone makes the case for a legal right.

If I say that I am arguing that someone “should have a right,” that has the disadvantage of making it sound as if all I am saying is that there is something to be said in favor of her having the right, some reasons that would support the policy of giving her the right. But that may not seem like the correct way to argue for a right, since a right ordinarily functions as a trump and a trump requires something stronger than some considerations in its favor. If I have a right to something, call it X, then you have no right to deprive me of X. My right is supposed to be a decisive consideration against your depriving me of X, however good your reasons for depriving me of X would be if I did not have the right. So to say that I have a right to X not just to say that there is a very strong reason for me to have X: it is to say something about the relations in which I stand to those against whom I claim the right. However good others’ reasons are for depriving me of X, they will be wronging me if they do so. That includes my relations to society collectively speaking. But if my right is a trump even against society collectively speaking, how can society collectively speaking be in a position to grant me the right? When someone claims that she has a right, she is claiming precisely that no one is in a position to deny her that to which she has a right. But if no one is in a position to deny her the right, then it seems as if no one is in a position to grant her that to which she has the right either. What she is saying is precisely that this is not the sort of thing that others may withhold or to grant, however good their reasons. Consider, for instance, the idea that a nation might give its slaves a right to their freedom. Is another human being’s right to her freedom something that it is ours (all of us? the rest of us?) to give? How can society give someone his freedom, if it was already his own by right?

Some philosophers propose to deal with this problem by invoking the idea of a “moral right” and saying that moral rights are the grounds on which we should establish legal rights. That enables them to split the difference – the moral rights do already exist, although the legal ones do not. Then we can say that what society does when it enacts laws protecting people’s rights is not granting them rights they did not already have, but protecting their moral rights by making them legal and so coercively enforceable.

That can sound sensible until we remind ourselves what exactly a right is. A right, at least according to Kant and others in the natural rights tradition, is – by definition – a claim that may legitimately be coercively enforced. You have a right when you have a claim on others to act in a certain way and it is morally legitimate for you (or for society on your behalf) to defend yourself with the use of force against violations of that claim. Not all moral claims, we believe, may be coercively enforced. I cannot sue you for hurting my feelings or being rude to me or have you thrown into prison for breaking my heart, though you should not do these things. I cannot have you arrested if you fail to open a door for me when my arms are full of packages or to help me change a tire by the side of the road. How do we draw the distinction? Some philosophers would argue that the distinction should be drawn on pragmatic or consequentialist grounds: on whether the costs of coercive enforcement are worth preventing wrongs of this kind. Kant, however, believed that the distinction is based on principle. Since coercion is in general wrong, we may only use it against coercion itself, when we are “hindering a hindrance to freedom.” According to Kant, I am free when I can pursue my own ends and in doing so I am not subject to the wills of other people. I am not made subject to your will when you try to break my heart, for I am perfectly free not to care. I am not made subject to your will when you fail to open a door for me, for that doesn’t stop me from going through the door. But I am made subject to your will when you enslave me or make use of my person or my property without my consent. So my claims against your doing those things are coercively enforceable – that is, they are rights.

This account of what makes a moral claim one of right makes trouble for the proposed use of the distinction between moral and legal rights. It follows from it that if there are any rights, there is a sense in which they already have the status of law: that is, they may legitimately be coercively enforced. This, after all, is why we think it can sometimes be morally legitimate for people to fight even their own governments for their freedom: because they have a coercively enforceable right to that freedom even if there is no positive law upholding it. On this view, natural right is underwritten by natural law; indeed they are almost the same thing. So the state cannot be seen as making it possible to coercively enforce a claim that is already there, since the claim was not only already there, but already coercively enforceable too.

Now this may not seem like a big problem. For of course there is still a question about the relation between law in this natural sense and the positive statutes that are actually passed by some political society. So why shouldn’t we say that a state that makes a law establishing a right is simply acknowledging a natural right that is already there, by making its own laws match the natural laws?

But there’s a problem with this too, which was brought out first by Hobbes, and then, following him, Kant. They pointed out that there is a sense in which rights do not exist even morally until laws upholding them are enacted by political society. After all, to say that a right exists morally is not only to imply that you are entitled to defend your claim with force. It is also to imply that people have a moral obligation to respect your claim. But Kant and Hobbes argued that no one can be morally obligated to respect my rights until he has some guarantee that I will respect his rights. For if I force you to respect my rights without giving you a guarantee that I will respect yours, then I am putting you in a position where you are subject to my will and so unfree. Or as Hobbes put it, a person who respects the rights of others when they do not respect his “would but make himself a prey to others, and procure his own ruin.” Hobbes and Kant argued that it follows that no one has a duty to respect anyone’s rights until some mechanism of enforcing everyone’s rights is in place. Since a right involves a duty on the part of others to uphold that right, and others cannot have that duty unless their rights are upheld as well, rights occupy what we might call interpersonal space – my rights and yours can only be realized together.

Kant argued that it is only the political state that can provide guarantees of the enforcement of everyone’s rights. So if I say, “I have a right to X,” I make a demand on others that I am not in a position to make unless we live together in a political state: claims of right presuppose the existence of the political state, that is, it presupposes our membership in a collective body with a General Will devoted to upholding the rights of all. Claims of right presuppose this even if we are in the state of nature and the political state exists only in idea, so when I claim a right in the state of nature I commit myself to supporting the existence of a political state. According to Kant, this means that we have a duty to live in the political state. Our rights in the state of nature, are, as Kant put it, “provisional.” They exist in the sense that we have the right to defend them, but not in the sense that anyone else has a duty to respect them. It is only when the state is actually formed that they become, again as Kant put it, “conclusive.”

Kant’s distinction between provisional and conclusive rights explains the status of so-called natural rights much better than the distinction between moral and legal rights does. Provisional rights are in one sense already legal, since the right-holder is morally entitled to coercively enforce them. In another sense, however, they are not yet quite moral, since no one else is obligated to respect them. What society does when it legalizes a right is neither to grant the right holder something that is already his own and not society’s to give, nor to acknowledge a merely moral right that is already there by making it enforceable. What society does instead is to realize a right whose existence is essentially incomplete or imperfect in the state of nature.

Featured Philosop-her: Janice Dowell

October 10, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in featured philosopher, philosophy of language Tags: semantics; metasemantics; 1 Comment

Janice Dowell

Janice Dowell is an associate professor of philosophy at Syracuse University and a Regular Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh’s Eidyn Centre. Her work spans several subfields in philosophy, including metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and ethics. In the philosophy of mind, she is best known for her work defining what it takes to be a physical property for the purposes of characterizing the thesis of physicalism. Her work in metaphysics has focused on methodological issues, particularly those concerning what it takes to justify metaphysical reductions. Her most recent work defends Kratzer’s canonical semantics for modal expressions against a series of challenges. Currently, she’s working on a book on deontic modals that supplements Kratzer’s basic semantics with an account of how it is modal propositions are determined at contexts of use (under contract with OUP). Her paper, “The Metaethical Insignificance of Moral Twin Earth”, received the 2014 Marc Sanders Prize for Metaethics.

Constructing and Justifying Semantic and Metasemantic Theories

Janice Dowell

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Thanks so much to Meena for offering me this opportunity to discuss an issue I’ve been thinking about lately! These are a few early-stage thoughts on how we might best construct and justify semantic and metasemantic theories. My own immediate interest in this topic stems from my interest in assessing rival semantic theories for modal expressions in English, especially deontic ones. But my hope is that these thoughts are of some interest to those interested in semantic and metasemantic theorizing more broadly, including metaethicists interested in understanding the semantics of normative and evaluative expressions in English. Comments, questions, and suggestions very welcome.

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Recently, there’s been a lot of really interesting work done by philosophers of language and linguists on understanding what sorts of meanings a semantic theory for some natural language, L, should assign the expressions of L. Is the content of a sentence at a context a set of worlds, a set ‘centered’ worlds, a set of probability spaces, a structured proposition, or what? In related debates, metaethicists wonder what sorts of meanings such a theory should assign L’s normative or evaluative expressions. How might we best approach these questions? What constraints, if any, do a plausible metasemantic theory place on good answers to them? Here are some preliminary thoughts on some of the constraints on constructing plausible semantic and metasemantic theories. (NB: Some of these thoughts are expressed in a forthcoming paper, The Metaethical Insignificance of Moral Twin Earth. The issues here, though, are not narrowly metaethical, but more broadly methodological ones for semantic and metasemantic theorizing.)

First, I make explicit a few of my background assumptions to keep us all on the same page:

A semantic theory for a language, L, assigns a meaning to each of L’s simple expressions and identifies rules of composition for complex expressions such that their meanings are the products of the meanings of the simples out of which they are composed, together with the rules they exemplify.

Among other things, a semantic theory should fit with and help explain data about what competent speakers are able to do with L, especially, communicate, coordinate, and collect information. This feature of semantic theories yields our first constraint on semantic theorizing: Since helping to provide such explanations is one of the central aims of semantic theorizing, let us call doing so the “Communication, Coordination, and Collection Constraint on Semantic Theories” or the “CCC Semantics Constraint”, for short.

In contrast to a semantic theory, a metasemantic theory for L is a theory that tells us why and how it is that the phonetic and orthographic sequences that make up L have the meanings our best semantic theory represents them as having.

How do these two kinds of theory relate to one another? Start with what we know:

1) There are noises we able to make, scribbles we are able to produce. Somehow, some of these noises and scribbles, those that correspond to words in the English language, acquired the meanings our best semantic theory, T, assigns to them.

2) Using a language with those meanings allows competent speakers to communicate, coordinate, and collect information.

Keeping this in mind, what should we think about the relationship between our theories? Should we think: Lucky are we! For we narrowly missed living in a world in which we spoke a language, but one which didn’t allow us to coordinate our activities or communicate and collect information. Or, rather, should we think: It’s no accident! Part of the explanation for why our expressions have the meanings that they do is that, in using expressions with those meanings, we are able to communicate, coordinate, and collect information. The latter is clearly so much more plausible than the former, that I propose the following,

CCC Metasemantics Constraint: A metasemantic theory should help us understand how the sequences that make up L acquired semantic significance such that speakers of L are able to do what they do with L’s expressions, centrally, communicate, coordinate, and collect information.

So far we’ve seen that that a standard characterization of semantic and of metasemantic theories each suggest constraints on candidate such theories for particular natural languages. I’ll now argue that there are important senses in which semantic and metasemantic theories are each contingent and empirical. Since contingent and empirical theories are justified by abduction (rather than, say, by derivation from a priori principles), these facts shed light on how best to construct and justify such theories.

In the sense reserved here, a feature of a world, w, is contingent just in case it varies across worlds considered as counterfactual, as ways w could have been. That there are albino tigers is a feature of the actual world, but not of all ways that world could have been, so it is a contingent feature of the actual world in this sense. A feature of a world w is empirical in the reserved sense just in case it varies across worlds considered as actual, as ways w could turn out to be. That water is H2O is an empirical feature of the actual world in this sense.

The phenomena to be explained by semantic and metasemantic theories—what the orthographic and phonetic sequences that correspond to L’s expressions mean and why they mean what they do—are contingent, empirical features of the actual world in these reserved senses; there are worlds considered as actual in which they mean a variety of different things and worlds considered as counterfactual in which they mean nothing at all. Had the actual world differed in relevant respects, the ability of speakers to use the signs they in fact do to coordinate, and what explained whether and why they have that ability, would itself have been different. The features of our world that support communication and coordination with natural languages are features that distinguish our world from others. This suffices to guarantee that those features are contingent and empirical. And that the phenomena to be explained by semantic and metasemantic theories are contingent and empirical suffices to make those theories contingent and empirical as well.

It’s perhaps easiest to see that this must be so in the case of semantic theories. First, recall the CCC semantics constraint, according to which the meaning assignments for a semantic theory for L must be capable of figuring in explanations of how it is L-competent speakers are able to communicate, coordinate, and collect information. To satisfy that constraint, a theory will need to be ‘cut down to human size’; that is, it will need to be one that reflects human cognitive and conative limitations, in particular, our limitations at the young age at which humans standardly learn their first language. Moreover, a theory that meets that constraint will need to reflect the environmental conditions under which humans learn that language.

This means that whether a semantic theory meets the CCC constraint is not a question that can be answered from the armchair (or by surveys that can be performed from many individual armchairs). This makes semantic theories more like other contingent, empirical theories–biological or psychological theories, for example–than like traditional philosophical theories about the nature of knowledge or morality. The former, though, are justified not by derivation from a priori principles, but by inference to the best explanation of the phenomena its central posits are posited to explain.

And that, I suggest, means that semantic notions, such as that of a meaning or of a semantic value, are theoretical notions, like the notion of a biological process as it figures in biological theorizing. Which semantic notions will figure in our best semantic theory for a natural language such as English will be determined by which ones figure in our best explanations of the phenomena it is the job of a semantic theory to partly explain, such as our ability to communicate, coordinate, and collect information. To make the connection between these ideas and the question with which I began clear: Deciding between hypotheses about what types of entities should serve as meanings in our best semantic theory’s meaning assignments will require taking into account the relevant human cognitive and conative limitations, as well as environmental conditions, that constrain what sort of entities could plausibly figure in explanations of human linguistic communication.

It’s perhaps less obvious that metasemantic theories are contingent and empirical in an important sense. An analogy with the debate in the philosophy of mind between physicalists of different stripes may be helpful for understanding the way in which I’m suggesting that this is so. Let a minimal physical duplicate of a world w be any world w’ that is an exact physical duplicate of w and has no additional features. A physicalist about the mental is committed to a certain necessary truth about the actual world, namely, that every world that is its minimal physical duplicate is a mental duplicate. But she is not committed to saying that the physical features that ground the mental properties instantiated at the actual world ground them at every world, whether considered as actual or counterfactual. For example, she is happy to allow that there are such worlds containing Lewisian Martians, who feel pain when fluid inflates their foot cavities. Such worlds differ from the actual world in containing physical features the actual world does not contain. On plausible empirical and metaphysical assumptions about what types of physical properties are possible, a world containing Lewisian Martians is a way the actual world could have been or even a way the actual world could turn out to be. This makes it an empirical and contingent matter which physical features of the actual world are the features that ground its mental truths. This part of the physicalist’s overall program, the task of settling the debate among physicalists about which are plausible candidate grounds for mental states and properties, is straightforwardly empirical. Moreover, as observed above, those candidate grounds will not be plausible candidate grounds in all ways the world could have been. For these reasons, the identification of candidate grounds will be largely the fruit of empirical investigation by neuroscientists into which contingent features the actual world has.

How do these observations help improve our understanding of the nature of metasemantic theories? Let S be the best such semantic theory for some natural language L. Metasemantic hypotheses for L are hypotheses about what grounds the meanings S assigns L’s expressions. Given the CCC Metasemantics Constraint, which grounds are plausible candidate grounds will depend in part on facts about human biology and psychology. Just as the entities a plausible semantic theory may assign as meanings to L’s expressions are constrained by human cognitive and conative limits, so too must the grounds of those meanings. (Slightly less abstractly: a meaning is an entity human beings are capable of communicating in part thanks to. Being a candidate grounds for such an entity must fit with this fact.)

Anderson on Democratic Ideals and Racial Integration

October 3, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in political philosophy, race theory, Uncategorized Tags: democracy; integration; empathy; oppression

Anderson on Democratic Ideals and Racial Integration

Meena Krishnamurthy

In her book, The Imperative of Integration, Elizabeth Anderson’s main claim is that integration is a core democratic ideal.[1] She argues that citizens from all walks of life should interact freely on the basis of equality and mutual regard in all institutions of civil society, and on voluntary terms in the intimate associations of private life (p. 95). Anderson argues that integration is central to democracy because it fosters democratic values of collective practical intelligence, accountability, and equality.[2] Anderson makes her case for these claims through an examination of Black individuals’ struggle for racial equality in the United States. Her careful consideration of historical facts teaches us that examination of a dark past can contribute positively to contemporary philosophical theorizing.

While I find much of what Anderson says in this work compelling, I have some concerns. I am sceptical about the extent to which the kind of collective learning that Anderson argues for can take place, even with integration. In what follows, I outline my concerns and try to offer some helpful suggestions where I can.

Anderson argues that, in a fully democratic society, public policy should take into account each citizen’s interests. She argues that this requires integration. By allowing people of different walks of life to meet face to face in political institutions and in greater civil society, integration will support public policy that takes into account the interests of a diverse populous. Interaction with people of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints, will enable citizens to form better conceptions of the common good and justice. It allows members of the public to educate one another about the nature of public problems and appropriate solutions to these problems. As an example of this phenomenon, Anderson describes the 1963 Civil Rights demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama (“educative acts”), which resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“the lesson”) (p. 96).

Three assumptions seem to underwrite Anderson’s arguments here. The first assumption is that people have superior knowledge with respect to their own interests and the interests of people like them (i.e., those of similar class, racial, or ethnic backgrounds). There is, to use Anderson’s own phrase, “asymmetrical knowledge” among different groups of people (p. 109). The second assumption is that this asymmetrical knowledge can be conveyed or communicated from one group to another. Anderson explicitly states that she is against the thought that “certain ideas possessed by one group are inherently ineffable to another” (p. 110). The third assumption is that people will listen to and take into consideration the expression of such asymmetrical knowledge. After all, without this, there could not be a transfer of knowledge or, in turn, collective learning.

I have some worries about each of these assumptions. Begin with the first assumption that there is asymmetrical knowledge. In general, this seems plausible. People have a more intimate and more sensitive understanding of their own interests and of the interests of those who are similar to them than they do of others’ interests. Anderson seems right in suggesting that it is only by interacting with others and hearing their views that we are able to fully understand their interests (what they are, what weight they give them, and so on). There is, however, the worry that sometimes people do not know what is best, even when it comes to their own interests. This may be particularly true when we are concerned with members of oppressed groups. False consciousness arising from adaptive preferences and internalized oppression may, in some cases, limit the usefulness of integration.[3] We might not always be enlightened about what justice requires by asking those who are suffering injustices what they want, for example.[4] Oppressed people sometimes internalize and adapt to their oppression so well that they do not have a deep sense of what they are entitled to as human beings.[5] They do not, in some cases, have a sense of what is just or unjust, right or wrong. In short, because the preferences of oppressed people may be adaptive, they may not be reliable indicators of what is morally right or wrong or what we ought to do in a given policy situation. Oppressed people may not have “asymmetrical knowledge” to translate to others.

If this is right, then there is a genuine reason to be sceptical about the tendency of integration to lead to the collective learning that Anderson has in mind.

In the end, this may not be a very strong objection. Worries about adaptive preferences might actually support integration. One way for members of oppressed groups to become more critical of their own preferences and values, to overcome false consciousness, may be to engage with others who are outside of their group and of goodwill. Integration is valuable then not only because it allows White individuals to form better conceptions of the common good, as Anderson argues, but also because it allows Black individuals to form better conceptions of their own good. Noting this point only strengthens Anderson’s argument.

A further point to make in response is that the oppressed are not the only ones who sometimes suffer from adaptive preferences. As Anderson’s own discussion of implicit bias suggests, privileged peopled, simply because of their positions of privilege, may lack an appropriate sense of what is just or unjust or right or wrong. They too may not be reliable indicators of what is morally right or wrong or what we ought to do in a given policy situation. Noting this only adds additional strength to Anderson’s argument, since the only way around the adaptive preferences of the privileged may be to integrate them with the oppressed.

Turn now to the second assumption. I am more sceptical than Anderson is about the extent to which asymmetrical knowledge can be conveyed or expressed. Some things are difficult to teach and to learn because they can only be fully understood with experience. To use a personal example, before having my own child, I had never understood why some women feel so strongly about breastfeeding rights. I had always vaguely supported the rights of women to breastfeed at home, at school, and at work, but I never understood why it might be of great importance in the fight for women’s rights and women’s equality. Having had my own baby and having breastfed her, I now understand the claim to breastfeeding. Interacting and talking with other women did not convince me of the force of this claim. Breastfeeding my daughter and having first-hand experience of the intimacy and closeness it underwrites, something that is rather difficult to articulate in its full, did. For example, I now understand why it is important for women to be able to continue breastfeeding while in school or at work. Moreover, I now understand why breastfeeding rights are of such importance in women’s fight for equality and why it is worth fighting for with such vigour. In the same way, experience might be necessary to understand why certain ends take priority in Black individuals’ struggle for equality. We might need to have certain experiences to understand why rights to assemble and protest rather than rights to vote have often to taken priority in Black individuals’ struggle for equality, for example. My point is simply that, in many cases, it may be difficult to teach and to learn from one another without experience.

Once we acknowledge that experience is needed for full knowledge, the question is whether, outside of stepping into an experience machine, there are ways of communicating or sharing our experiences with others. There are ways of sharing, at least in part, our experiences with one another and learning from them. Discussion and protest are surely part of this, but are less well suited toward sharing experiences than storytelling, literature, poetry, art, film, and music. These mediums are geared toward sharing the inexpressible. They are geared toward the sharing of emotions, memories, and the imagined. For example, though they may not fully communicate the experience of breastfeeding, stories, paintings, sculptures, and film might better convey the intimacy and emotion connected with breastfeeding. In this way, storytelling, literature, poetry, art, film and music can help us to share our experiences and, in turn, can help to us to teach and to learn more from one another. In short, these mediums are essential to the sort of integration and collective learning that are crucial to a fully democratic society. This is something that Anderson’s account misses and would benefit from acknowledging.

Finally, putting these points aside – that is to say, even if there is asymmetrical knowledge and this knowledge can be conveyed – there are concerns about whether this knowledge will be assimilated. In order to form appropriate conceptions of the common interest, we need to take into account the impact of various schemes and policies on a diverse populace. To do this properly it is important to take other people’s interests and points of view into account adequately without exaggerating our own viewpoint. Interacting with others and hearing their views is important to this process, for it is by interacting with others and hearing their views that we are able to understand their interests. Nevertheless, this can be difficult because it is often hard to listen to those who are very different from ourselves. It is also easy to see the downside, without seeing the upside, of other people’s views, especially when they are very different from our own. Anderson has shown us that the good listening and opened mindedness that are essential to collective learning are possible. The Birmingham demonstrations are an example (see p. 95f). But it is hard to know what to draw from this example. It is certainly easier to listen to those who are different from ourselves when the only other option we are faced with is to take their lives, but many matters are much more mundane than this. And I wonder, in these cases, what will lead to the kind of good listening and open mindedness that are essential to the collective learning that Anderson emphasizes?

In answer to this question, Anderson’s account might benefit from a discussion of the importance of empathy. The cultivation of empathy among members of society would encourage good listening. Empathy is the capacity to imagine ourselves in another person’s position and to discern her needs, motives, and feelings.[6] Empathy also involves introspection. We must look inside ourselves and determine our own needs, motives, and feelings. To be good listeners and to genuinely learn from others, we must know which feelings and motives are our own so that we will not take them to be, or misrepresent them as, those of the other person. Though there are important questions about how such a capacity can be encouraged in people and about the extent to which it will stimulate good listening, it seems clear that, if it can be encouraged, empathy will at least have the tendency to foster better listening and greater learning among diverse peoples.

In the end, Anderson makes an interesting and plausible argument for the value of integration in a democratic society. Anderson’s arguments show us that, even if they are often difficult and incomplete, vital lessons about the common good and justice can only be learned with genuine integration at the level of the state and civil society. However, literature, poetry, art, and film, and the cultivation of empathy among citizens have the potential to bring us even closer to complete learning and could work as a compliment to integration.

[1] Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton University Press, 2010).
[2] The core of her argument for racial integration as a democratic ideal is developed in chapter 5, “Democratic Ideals and Segregation” and chapter 6, “The Imperative of Integration.”
[3] A similar worry is raised in relation to “dialogic approaches” in Susan Moller Okin, “Gender Inequality and Cultural Differences” Political Theory 22.1 (1994), pp. 5-24.
[4] Ibid., p.19
[5] Ibid., p.19.
[6] On the importance of empathy and introspection to moral knowledge and good listening see Alison M. Jaggar, “Toward a Feminist Conception of Moral Reasoning,” in James P. Sterba et Al, Morality & Social Justice: Point/Counterpoint (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995), pp. 115-146.

The “Job Market” and the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy

September 29, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Inspired by Brian Weatherson’s post on the problems with posting discussions relevant to the discipline on Facebook only, I would like to post my recent Facebook status update here. I hope that it will spark yet another important discussion regarding the status (or lack there of) of women and other minorities in the profession.

One thing that I haven’t seen discussed lately is the job market and its potential connection to the lack of minorities, such as women, in philosophy. I mentioned yesterday that I thought about leaving philosophy during my last year of graduate school and when I was on the job market. What I didn’t mention was my reasons for thinking about leaving. The main reasons stemmed from being on the job market. Cornell was an idyllic place for me (I had extremely supportive advisors), but it was possibly too idyllic. It didn’t prepare me for just how mean and inappropriate people were often going to be while I was on the job market. Most of what I experienced was very similar to what most other women in the philosophy experience on the job market – e.g., being dragged around by drunk older men from table to table at the E. APA, being in one-on-one situations where inappropriate questions were asked and too personal things mentioned. In contrast, I didn’t experience anything of the sort when I interviewed outside of philosophy. I had only two such experiences, but they were totally different from philosophy interviews. People were less antagonistic and certainly more appropriate outside of philosophy. I was fairly shocked by the difference. Lately there has been a lot of talk about the problems within the profession and taking action aimed at positive change. I think the job market and best practices are something that should be revisited now (Meena Krishnamurthy, Facebook, September 27, 4:14 pm).

With this I ask, what should be done about the current state of the “job market” in philosophy?

[Note: The use of the words “job market” is meant to highlight the meat market quality of searching for a job in philosophy.]

Some Positive News

September 28, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized

As I mentioned recently, last year, I was critical of the Philosopher’s Annual because of its lack of papers in political philosophy. This year there were two papers in the Annual in political philosophy. Last year (see here and here), I was also critical of Ethics and PPA for lacking experimental papers. This year, as reported at the Experimental Philosophy blog, Ethics, Vol. 124, No. 4 is a Symposium on Experiment and Intuition in Ethics. It is unclear whether the changes in the Annual and Ethics are in response to my critical comments or not. Either way, it is so great to see progress being made on these issue. We should commend both the Annual and Ethics for taking steps to be more inclusive. I hope this trend will continue.