Sometimes the best argument for a certain assumption is that it proves fruitful in various theoretical contexts: Why believe in a plurality of worlds? Because the hypothesis is serviceable in semantics, decision theory, theories of intentional content, the interpretation of modalities, the definition of supervenience, etc. -- and that is a reason to believe that it is true. Another example, again by Lewis, is the argument for universals, or at least for a fundamental distinction between natural and unnatural properties: the assumption is serviceable to account for objective similarity, the determinacy of meaning and translation, the interpretation of some quantified sentences, the analysis of natural laws, etc. Similar arguments can be put forward for the existence of temporal parts, states of affairs, events and numbers.
These arguments presuppose that it is really the very same assumption, rather than a diverse family of similar sounding assumptions, that does all the work it is supposed to do. The case for numbers would be much worse if lots of different arithmetics were 'indispensable' in different branches of science. The problem is quite obvious for events: the events employed in relativity theory can hardly do as the events used in Davidsonian interpretations of English adverbs.
I've finished the promised rewrite of Beta-Blogger.
I've just updated this blog to the freshly rewritten version of my blogger. Please let me know if you experience any problems. The RSS feed has a new URL, but the old one should redirect your aggregator automatically.
I'll tentatively enable comments, though I don't really know why, as I'm quite happy with the amount (and quality) of feedback I got so far. Perhaps it's because everyone else has comments. At any rate I hope the feedback I'll get is more like this than like that.
Question: What exactly is wrong with something like this as a (physical-cum-indexical) conceptual analysis of "pain" (in my idiolect)?
the state I am in now
One obvious problem is that it's too unspecific: pain is not the only state I am currently in. But that's not the only problem. What else?
Is it a priori that I feel pain now? Or does my knowledge that I feel pain depend on empirical information? Could it turn out that I don't feel pain? Could it have turned out?
I take back what said at the end of my last post about the need to distinguish two kinds of A-intension, one transparent and one intransparent. There's not really any need to do so, and it only leads to a lot of trouble. (For instance, is it a priori that elms satisfy the transparent intension, or the intransparent intension, or both, or neither?) I thought I needed a transparent conception to explicate some sort of speaker meaning and to account for rationality. Certainly, what we need for this is a conception of meanings that it in some sense 'transparent' or 'narrow', but that does not preclude it from making reference to unknown facts about other people or causal chains. For example, the belief that the actual F is not the actual G should not count as irrational (for suitable F and G) even if the actual F is (necessesary) the actual G. But 'F's and 'G's whose A-intension is full of causal and deferential components can nevertheless provide for that, as long as it isn't a priori that the F is the G.
Suppose theory 1 says that entity x has certain properties, and theory 2 says that entity y has those properties. If we believe both theories, should we conclude that x=y?
It depends. Sometimes we not only should but must conclude that x=y, for example when theory 1 says that x is the planet Venus and theory 2 says that y is the planet Venus. In other cases, there is little reason to draw the conclusion, as when the theories merely say of x and y respectively that it is some planet or other. In yet other cases, the conclusion can be motivated by methodological considerations. For instance, whoever first realized that Hesperus is Phosphorus probably realized that the identity makes for a simpler overall theory.
I just realized that I have inconsistent attitudes towards ontologically dependent entities, that is, entities x such that for some contingently existing entity y, i) necessarily, if x exists so does y, and ii) x and y are not parts or subsets or elements of each other. On the one hand, I don't believe that there are many such entities, except perhaps holes and borders. On the other hand, I also don't believe in general restrictions on the counterpart relation, or, perhaps equivalently, in restrictions on cross-world fusions of individuals. It follows that for any old property any world-bound thing has at our world, there is a thing which has this property essentially. For instance, there is somebody who leads exactly your life but who, unlike you, is essentially such that the cup in front of me is now empty. This somebody is a dependent entity: it can only exist if my cup does.
The other hand seems so obvious to me that I fear I must give up the one hand: there are lots of dependent entities. I can still say that they are not ordinary things, and that it is very hard or even impossible to refer to most of them (individually, of course -- I just managed to refer to them collectively). But still they exist. Hm.
One of the three other things I've been working on is Ned, a kind of web-based editor and file-manager. There are several reasons why I need this. One is that I often want to edit files on a server while I am at other places like the university where no (S)FTP or SSH client is installed. Another is that most of the servers I work with do not allow SSH access, so even if I only want to change a single character in a file, I have to open an FTP client, download the file, open an editor, change the character, save the file, and upload it again. Ned makes this much easier. Moreover, Ned also supports some filesystem operations (like copying files and recursively deleting folders) that are not supported by common FTP clients.
Hello, I'm back from wherever I was. Happy new year everybody!
In the train I wrote a few more notes on haecceitism and rigidity and physicalism and all that. I might blog them later so that I don't lose them. I also have to write applications for dissertation grants. Perhaps I should also start writing the dissertation itself. And then there are all those programming projects: I really need to improve my blogger (even more urgently now that it has been embarrassingly mentioned at various (1 2 3 4 5) blogs), and continue with the new tree prover. Today (or rather tonight) I made some not so urgent but simpler improvements to Postbote (mostly to do with encodings, but you might also notice that bouncing mails now correctly bounce back to you). I also have three new little things in the making that I hope to finish soon. One of them has something to do with philosophy, though I'm not quite sure if it's legal. Other people also want me to work on their webpages, as always. And I still haven't finished setting up my Linux system (the sound is obscurely missing). That all sounds really nice -- except that my main plan for 2004 was to get (a life and thereby) rid of RSI...
Here comes the solution to this year's Christmas puzzle:
First, is the story in the museum true or false? The crucial question is whether the last sentence in it is true. It goes:
*) If the story is true, the oracle finds out that it is.
Under what conditions is (*) false? It is false iff i) the story in the museum is true, but ii) the oracle doesn't find out that it is. On the other hand, since (*) is part of that very story, if (*) is false, the story is also false. So if (*) is false, the story is both true and false. So (*) can't be false.