03/30/2007
African Philosophy: New and Traditional Perspectives, L. Brown, ed., Oxford University Press, 2004
Author is concerned with the study of the paranormal, and the widespread refusal to countenance it as a legitimate fact in the world by some western philosophers. Author takes some time in enumerating the various supposed occurrences: telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and precognition. Author points out that there is some problem in distinguishing these, given the possibility of one or the other. For example, is precognition just subconscious psychokinesis? Is telepathy the same as clairvoyance? Given different manners of describing the same phenomena, it may be possible to reduce these attributes.
The debate about whether such paranormal abilities can be a source of knowledge was taken on by Bodunrin. His claim was that this might be a way to get a belief, but certainly not a justified one. Author first says that this approach conflates being able to justify a belief and having it be justified. A 'knowing how/knowing that' distinction. Further, if you're a reliabilist, then perhaps that belief can be justified, if the relationship between the belief and the paranormal ability is of the kind that tends to produce true beliefs.
The reliabilist position is attacked by Bonjour, who offers various (4) counterexamples, all of which are designed to show that even if paranormal traits could ascertain true beliefs, nobody would be justified in believing them. But in each case, author replies, this is in a culture where nobody believes in the paranormal anyway, so it 'intuitively' seems unjustified to believe in them.
Another problem for the paranormal in the general atmosphere in the west is that most believe all claims about paranormal beliefs have been debunked 'in the laboratory'. Author gives examples of higher-than-chance occurrences that have been produced in the lab. Author also suggests that it might be more useful to study these processes 'in the field', as a field biologist would. (pg 145-6)
Horton argues that the spiritual beliefs in Africa take the place of naturalistic explanations that the west has given over to germs, molecules, and a modern scientific worldview. The rest of the paper is a survey of various different beliefs about the paranormal found in Africa.
3/30/07
3/23/07
Henig, Robin - Darwin’s God
03/23/2007
New York Times Magazine, March 4, 2007
This is an article about the two sides in the debate about the science of belief, specifically about the possible biological origin of the belief in god and other religiosity. The argument proceeds roughly that belief in spirits, supernatural forces, omnipresent, omniscient or omnipotent is a universal component of human culture. This is prima facie evidence that it has a biological component. To start off, this article misses a few major distinctions at the outset that are important: religion vs. belief in god, and old-time religion vs. modern-day theologically souped-up religions.
The big debate is between 'spandrelists' (Atran) and 'adaptationists' (Wilson). The spandrelists claim that it is a mixture of other adaptive traits that, when working in conjunction, make it very easy to believe in a god. The three main candidates are the aspects of our brains that deal with 'agent detection', 'causal reasoning' and 'theory of mind'.
'Agent Detection' the default assumption is the presence of agency (a creature with beliefs/desires) when dealing with events or things.
'Causal Reasoning' the belief that things happen because of previous causes, rather than at random.
'Theory of Mind' another term used is 'folkpsychology', but it is the intuition that other individuals have beliefs and desires similar to how we do.
The argument is that the conjunction of these adaptive biases 'primes' us to believe in god-- a causal force with agency behind the occurrences in the world. The adaptationists claim that belief in god is itself adaptive. This claim immediately finds objections, since acting religiously (when there is no basis in reality) would likely hurt an individual agent's survival prospects. Yet this view is championed by Wilson, who claims that this might be the best example of group selection. Group selection is an out-of-favor theory that claims that some adaptations can take place at the level of the group, or, perhaps more appropriately, that genetic adaptations that take place across generations of individuals will be responsive to the relative fitness of the group those genes evolved in, not the individual's fitness.
3/16/07
Graukroger, Stephen - Home Alone: Cognitive Solipsism in the Early-Modern Era
03/16/2007
APA Proceedings and Addresses, Vol. 80, No. 2, 2006
Author makes a distinction between cognitive solipsism and epistemological or skeptical solipsism. Cognitive solipsism involves not realizing that there is an external world at all, where it is true of an animal that sensations are presented to it as though they are modification/changes in it's mind. Of course we are using 'mind' loosely here-- it could be just a place were perceptions come together, the 'sensus communis', a medieval hold-over into early modern philosophy where it was assumed the five senses came together to form a full representation.
Author discusses two neurological disorders that pull apart the cognitive and the affective: Capgras syndrome and Cotard syndrome.
Capgras: patient recognizes faces but feels no affective connection, often therefore thinking they are impostors
Cotard: patient doesn't think it lives in the external world, thinking instead it is dead (thinking there is no external world?)
Author's main point is that we might be looking for answers to the skeptical arguments in the wrong place: don't just start with the epistemological, also look at the affective. Author traces this dual approach back to the early moderns, who had a dialectic about the affective aspects of cognitive solipsism.
Once the science of perception developed, thinkers began to shrug off the old aristotelean claim that perception was just taking in resemblance and realized that perception was re-presentations, or representation. But now that we know it is a re-presentation, the threat of skepticism and solipsism arises.
Descartes, claimed that in order for us to be free of cognitive solipsism, we had to have both sensation and conscious judgment, which humans have, but he claimed that animals did not have the judgment part, so they were, for the most part, cognitive solipsists. They see, he thought, 'as we do when our mind is elsewhere'. [Blindsight?] The interesting thing here is that having the judgment capacity to overcome all forms of solipsism is also the feature that gives us our moral agency and personhood. It is that self-reflective capacity that Descartes identifies that unifies our cognitive life and gives us ability to reason morally (pg 70).
Locke claimed instead that perception is just successful sensation, not sensation+judgment. The difficulty here is that personal unification cannot be tied into the perceptual capacity like Descartes did. But Locke is an empiricist-- any moral agency from humans will likely come from experience one way or another.
Diderot enters the picture and realizes that if the empiricist picture is right, then someone with impaired sensation might have impaired moral agency. This was the gist of his Letter on the Blind. Diderot began to try to create a basis for morality based on the senses (pg 72). So here is an example of cognitive solipsism (or a leaning toward it) affecting our affections and moral sensibilities. [But we have two skepticisms!? One about the external world, one about other minds!]
So one of the issues is how we can have morality and ethics once we eliminate the rationalist picture and are empiricist. The other issue is whether skeptical/empirical solipsism represents a sort of bad moral fiber, or someone who is intellectually dishonest with himself.
APA Proceedings and Addresses, Vol. 80, No. 2, 2006
Author makes a distinction between cognitive solipsism and epistemological or skeptical solipsism. Cognitive solipsism involves not realizing that there is an external world at all, where it is true of an animal that sensations are presented to it as though they are modification/changes in it's mind. Of course we are using 'mind' loosely here-- it could be just a place were perceptions come together, the 'sensus communis', a medieval hold-over into early modern philosophy where it was assumed the five senses came together to form a full representation.
Author discusses two neurological disorders that pull apart the cognitive and the affective: Capgras syndrome and Cotard syndrome.
Capgras: patient recognizes faces but feels no affective connection, often therefore thinking they are impostors
Cotard: patient doesn't think it lives in the external world, thinking instead it is dead (thinking there is no external world?)
Author's main point is that we might be looking for answers to the skeptical arguments in the wrong place: don't just start with the epistemological, also look at the affective. Author traces this dual approach back to the early moderns, who had a dialectic about the affective aspects of cognitive solipsism.
Once the science of perception developed, thinkers began to shrug off the old aristotelean claim that perception was just taking in resemblance and realized that perception was re-presentations, or representation. But now that we know it is a re-presentation, the threat of skepticism and solipsism arises.
Descartes, claimed that in order for us to be free of cognitive solipsism, we had to have both sensation and conscious judgment, which humans have, but he claimed that animals did not have the judgment part, so they were, for the most part, cognitive solipsists. They see, he thought, 'as we do when our mind is elsewhere'. [Blindsight?] The interesting thing here is that having the judgment capacity to overcome all forms of solipsism is also the feature that gives us our moral agency and personhood. It is that self-reflective capacity that Descartes identifies that unifies our cognitive life and gives us ability to reason morally (pg 70).
Locke claimed instead that perception is just successful sensation, not sensation+judgment. The difficulty here is that personal unification cannot be tied into the perceptual capacity like Descartes did. But Locke is an empiricist-- any moral agency from humans will likely come from experience one way or another.
Diderot enters the picture and realizes that if the empiricist picture is right, then someone with impaired sensation might have impaired moral agency. This was the gist of his Letter on the Blind. Diderot began to try to create a basis for morality based on the senses (pg 72). So here is an example of cognitive solipsism (or a leaning toward it) affecting our affections and moral sensibilities. [But we have two skepticisms!? One about the external world, one about other minds!]
So one of the issues is how we can have morality and ethics once we eliminate the rationalist picture and are empiricist. The other issue is whether skeptical/empirical solipsism represents a sort of bad moral fiber, or someone who is intellectually dishonest with himself.
3/9/07
Wolf-Devine, Celia - Preferential Policies Have Become Toxic
03/09/2007
Cohen and Wellman, eds., "Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics," Blackwell, 2005
Author's major struggle is against Albert Mosley and 'preferential' or 'strong' affirmative action. This can be contrasted to 'procedural' affirmative action, where members of the targeted groups are encouraged to apply and receive fair consideration for jobs. Author claims that preferential affirmative action is in play when you get a 'yes' answer to the following question: "If another black person had applied whose credentials matched those of the rejected white candidate, would that person have gotten the job over the black candidate who was in fact chosen?"
The author sets the stage about the difficulty in discussing this issue. Calling it 'politics of inclusion' is misleading because the job market is a zero-sum game-- one is included, necessarily the other is excluded. Furthermore, there is an entanglement of race and sex in these policies, author spends some discussion to try to distinguish that many of the arguments for race don't work for sex (women).
Author evaluates the various affirmative action arguments:
1) Compensatory argument
2) Corrective argument
3) Consequentialist argument
1) Compensatory: one party has harmed another, that other need to recover damages. There could be material damages, or cultural damage.
First considered is material damage. This argument is hard to apply to entry-level workers, most of whom are born in 1970-1980, and therefore missed much of the overtly racist Jim Crow and other overt racial institutions. Also, it is hard to claim in the specific instance of one white person turned down, a black person hired, whether that one white person ever had the advantages and that one black person had the disadvantages. Also, there is a difficult moral question of whether an innocent, unaware beneficiary of an unjust action is obliged to give the advantage back. Author also objects to "projecting moral intuitions that concern one-on-one interactions onto a large and complex society".
Next is cultural damage. Well, whatever the black culture is, it is tough to say that it is 'worse' than white culture. Second, if you claim that your culture makes you disabled for a certain job, why is it reasonable that you should have it?
Two final problems with the compensatory project:
Origin problem: 'you can't blame your mother', because if it weren't for her, you wouldn't have been born. If we hadn't brought you over, you would have had to immigrate.
Completion problem: 'when are we over with this'? without a good answer (which author thinks there is none) you'll have 'endless turf war'. Mosley assumes proportional representation is fair, but author denies this due to the fact that you may never have that, for cultural reasons.
2) Corrective: stop the existing bias in hiring practices. Author replies to the argument that there are existing biases against blacks in the hiring process. Author concedes there could be some shown bias and that would allow for corrective action. But when applied on a grand scale, bias is assumed, not shown.
3) Consequentialist arguments are 2:
A) Role Models: we need blacks as role models. Author: you already have them; and you don't need the 'mixed message' of affirmative action.
B) Diversity and representation: diversity is good! Author: not all diversity is good, and don't assume that more black means more diversity. About representation, author claims that people just represent themselves, not anything else, so this argument has a false premise.
Positive account
Author argues that we should instead focus on programs to elevate the poor from the cycle of poverty, and this would disproportionally help blacks, since the poor are disproportionately black. Author also claims that affirmative action has led to more black drop-outs and failed lawyer/doctor exams. Author ultimately claims that she wants racial categories eliminated, as opposed to Mosley, who wants to preserve them.
Cohen and Wellman, eds., "Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics," Blackwell, 2005
Author's major struggle is against Albert Mosley and 'preferential' or 'strong' affirmative action. This can be contrasted to 'procedural' affirmative action, where members of the targeted groups are encouraged to apply and receive fair consideration for jobs. Author claims that preferential affirmative action is in play when you get a 'yes' answer to the following question: "If another black person had applied whose credentials matched those of the rejected white candidate, would that person have gotten the job over the black candidate who was in fact chosen?"
The author sets the stage about the difficulty in discussing this issue. Calling it 'politics of inclusion' is misleading because the job market is a zero-sum game-- one is included, necessarily the other is excluded. Furthermore, there is an entanglement of race and sex in these policies, author spends some discussion to try to distinguish that many of the arguments for race don't work for sex (women).
Author evaluates the various affirmative action arguments:
1) Compensatory argument
2) Corrective argument
3) Consequentialist argument
1) Compensatory: one party has harmed another, that other need to recover damages. There could be material damages, or cultural damage.
First considered is material damage. This argument is hard to apply to entry-level workers, most of whom are born in 1970-1980, and therefore missed much of the overtly racist Jim Crow and other overt racial institutions. Also, it is hard to claim in the specific instance of one white person turned down, a black person hired, whether that one white person ever had the advantages and that one black person had the disadvantages. Also, there is a difficult moral question of whether an innocent, unaware beneficiary of an unjust action is obliged to give the advantage back. Author also objects to "projecting moral intuitions that concern one-on-one interactions onto a large and complex society".
Next is cultural damage. Well, whatever the black culture is, it is tough to say that it is 'worse' than white culture. Second, if you claim that your culture makes you disabled for a certain job, why is it reasonable that you should have it?
Two final problems with the compensatory project:
Origin problem: 'you can't blame your mother', because if it weren't for her, you wouldn't have been born. If we hadn't brought you over, you would have had to immigrate.
Completion problem: 'when are we over with this'? without a good answer (which author thinks there is none) you'll have 'endless turf war'. Mosley assumes proportional representation is fair, but author denies this due to the fact that you may never have that, for cultural reasons.
2) Corrective: stop the existing bias in hiring practices. Author replies to the argument that there are existing biases against blacks in the hiring process. Author concedes there could be some shown bias and that would allow for corrective action. But when applied on a grand scale, bias is assumed, not shown.
3) Consequentialist arguments are 2:
A) Role Models: we need blacks as role models. Author: you already have them; and you don't need the 'mixed message' of affirmative action.
B) Diversity and representation: diversity is good! Author: not all diversity is good, and don't assume that more black means more diversity. About representation, author claims that people just represent themselves, not anything else, so this argument has a false premise.
Positive account
Author argues that we should instead focus on programs to elevate the poor from the cycle of poverty, and this would disproportionally help blacks, since the poor are disproportionately black. Author also claims that affirmative action has led to more black drop-outs and failed lawyer/doctor exams. Author ultimately claims that she wants racial categories eliminated, as opposed to Mosley, who wants to preserve them.
3/2/07
Orr, Allen - A Mission To Convert (book review of The God Delusion)
03/02/2007
The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54 Num 1 January 11, 2007
Author is critiquing Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion as the most ambitious and the most public of the recent publications by biologists and philosophers in the area of the science of evolution as it relates to religion and the belief that a creator is necessary for the explanation of life.
Dawkins, author argues, has written a fantastic book in The Selfish Gene, but The God Delusion is much less. The major issue from author is that Dawkins doesn't really engage with some of the intricate reasoning from theology. Author claims Dawkins can't distinguish 'unitarians from abortion clinic bombers'.
Dawkins presents 'the ultimate argument' against creationism that is couched in non-deistic terms: Intelligent Design demands an intelligent designer, but the designer needs to be more complicated than the design. Therefore the designer needs to have been designed by an even more intelligent designer, thus an infinite regress. Of course infinite regress might be avoided by a 'brute fact' of an earlier designer. Any claim that stipulating a brute fact is unscientific should have to account for the 'brute fact' of 'matter' and 'laws of nature', author claims.
Dawkins also makes an empirical claim; that religion has made our world worse, not better. He cites crime rates, persecution, terrorism, and the closing of children's minds, etc. Most of the evidence, author claims, is anecdotal. Author replies that most of the history of the 20th century has been an experiment in institutional atheism and has shed a lot of blood. Author also argues that religion is worse compared to what. Most of our value/moral and aesthetic judgments come from a society that is deeply shaped by Judeo/Christian teachings, so this is a problem of circularity. Dawkins' ethical claim looks a lot like Mill's Harm Principle, which, author argues, wouldn't be the ideal in a traditional Confusion culture, which would suppress individualism.
Author's final argument is that Dawkins is making a big stink over a particular part of history that pitted the church against Darwinism and science. Believers might have said 'so what?' and we wouldn't see this conflict as important. Of course saying they have nothing to do with each other is over-simplistic, but Dawkins is also over-simplistic with his book.
Daniel Dennett replies to Orr in 'The God Delusion' Letter to the Editors, The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54 Num 3 March 1, 2007.
Orr replies, and Dennet replies again on a Blog.
The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54 Num 1 January 11, 2007
Author is critiquing Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion as the most ambitious and the most public of the recent publications by biologists and philosophers in the area of the science of evolution as it relates to religion and the belief that a creator is necessary for the explanation of life.
Dawkins, author argues, has written a fantastic book in The Selfish Gene, but The God Delusion is much less. The major issue from author is that Dawkins doesn't really engage with some of the intricate reasoning from theology. Author claims Dawkins can't distinguish 'unitarians from abortion clinic bombers'.
Dawkins presents 'the ultimate argument' against creationism that is couched in non-deistic terms: Intelligent Design demands an intelligent designer, but the designer needs to be more complicated than the design. Therefore the designer needs to have been designed by an even more intelligent designer, thus an infinite regress. Of course infinite regress might be avoided by a 'brute fact' of an earlier designer. Any claim that stipulating a brute fact is unscientific should have to account for the 'brute fact' of 'matter' and 'laws of nature', author claims.
Dawkins also makes an empirical claim; that religion has made our world worse, not better. He cites crime rates, persecution, terrorism, and the closing of children's minds, etc. Most of the evidence, author claims, is anecdotal. Author replies that most of the history of the 20th century has been an experiment in institutional atheism and has shed a lot of blood. Author also argues that religion is worse compared to what. Most of our value/moral and aesthetic judgments come from a society that is deeply shaped by Judeo/Christian teachings, so this is a problem of circularity. Dawkins' ethical claim looks a lot like Mill's Harm Principle, which, author argues, wouldn't be the ideal in a traditional Confusion culture, which would suppress individualism.
Author's final argument is that Dawkins is making a big stink over a particular part of history that pitted the church against Darwinism and science. Believers might have said 'so what?' and we wouldn't see this conflict as important. Of course saying they have nothing to do with each other is over-simplistic, but Dawkins is also over-simplistic with his book.
Daniel Dennett replies to Orr in 'The God Delusion' Letter to the Editors, The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54 Num 3 March 1, 2007.
Orr replies, and Dennet replies again on a Blog.
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