Scottish Nous

Blog Against Racism Day

I'm aware that I am jumping the gun by a few hours, but internet access is currently scarce.  Anyway, here's my minimal contribution to BARD: a symposium on "Racial Incidents and White Privilege" is being held by the CU sociology department in Benson Earth Sciences 180, Monday, Dec. 5 from 7:00 - 9:30 PM.

Internet Access Down

I'm sorry about the lack of recent blogging. I lost my internet access at home, and I am not sure when it will be back up. (My internet access was my neighbor's wireless connection, which is now down.) I've also been training for a new job at the Cheesecake Factory on the Pearl Street Mall. I suspect I will make good money, but the training period, which is coming to a close, has taken a week and a half already. It will be another week and a half before I am officially on the schedule, which amounts to about three weeks of so far unpaid labor. Grrr. In any case, internet access will definitely return once I start making a bit of cash at the CF.

The World's Ugliest Bookshelf

The Penguin Classics Library available at Amazon for $7,989.50 does not make for a sophisticated looking bookshelf.  It seems a customer has uploaded this image of what looks like a library fit only for someone who doesn't read.  I think I might kill myself if my bookshelf looked like that.  I'd much rather pay $1 - $3 for a decent used book with some character than the $8 apiece Amazon is charging for this hideous monstrosity.  Part of the fun of reading is the book buying.  I surmise that those who make this purchase have never discovered how much fun reading can be.

Anthropodomeric Bibliopegy

Did you know that binding books in human skin is not as unpopular as you might have thought?

One common practice was to bind accounts of murder trials in the murderer’s skin, sometimes as a by-product of the use of their bodies for anatomical dissection. Bristol Royal Infirmary, for example, has an account of the trial, execution and dissection of John Horwood in 1821 bound in his skin, and a similar volume on the trial of William Corder, executed in 1828 for the murder of Maria Marten (the Red Barn murder) is in a museum in Bury St Edmunds. In both cases the skin was prepared by a local surgeon. [link]

Some such books are apparently in library circulation.  If you go to Harvard, you could even check one out.  This is what you might find inside the cover:

The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace. [link]

It just makes so much sense!

Better Never To Have Been

An unconfirmed rumor has it that the title of this post is the title of a forthcoming OUP book by David Benatar,  a professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.  Benatar has published on this before, in American Phil. Quarterly 34(3): 345-55,  so it wouldn't be wholly unsurprising.  As Sophocles said:

Not to be born at all
Is best, far best that can befall,
Next best, when born, with least delay
To trace the backward way.   -Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

I hear that Benatar's argument has as its conclusion that extinction is the best option for all sentient (feeling) life.  Benatar must be, like Saul of Tarsus, sticking around only to get his message out.  I'll bet you if I saw this  argument in clear premise-by-premise form, I could instantly pick out the false premise(s).  And, of course, we know that either some of the premises must be false, or else that the premises somehow fail to support the conclusion.  That's one of those deliverances of commonsense.

 

Another Robertson Rant

There's something very near to Pat Robertson's heart: Jesus.  Unfortunately, it's blocking the bloodflow to his brain.  What Pat needs is some reverse open heart surgery to get that thing out of his chest.  Unfortunately, he likely wouldn't stabilize post-op.  As old as he is, the recognition that his entire life has been a waste would be too traumatizing.  As I posted here, voters kicked out the academically handicapped  religious rightwingers who were sitting on the Dover school board.  Poor Pat is pissed:

I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there. [PFAW Video: Broadband or Dialup]

I guess that's intended as a threat.   Scary.  I suppose it would be like the god of the OT to punish the entire city of Dover based upon the (eminently rational) decisions of the voters.  If god were really irritated that he's being kept out of science classes, let him speak up.

Scientific Evidence That "Something Mystical" Created Organisms

The teach-the-god-belief-in-science-class folks  have already lost in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that Scopes II hasn't yet been decided:

Voters on Tuesday ousted a Pennsylvania local school board that promoted an "intelligent-design" alternative to teaching evolution, and elected a new slate of candidates who promised to remove the concept from science classes. [Reuters]

8/9 incumbents (all Republican) were evicted in a landslide election and expression of voter disapproval.  They were replaced by eight Democrats.  But check this:

... the [Kansas] board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena. [NYT]

Submitted without comment.

On Inductive Track Record Arguments

Ok.  You probably won't read this, but my working definition of epistemic circularity is currently as follows:

An argument A is epistemically circular for S just in case (i) the conclusion c of A asserts that a belief, class of beliefs, or belief forming way is epistemically successful; (ii) if A is to be a cogent argument, one or more of  the premises of A must enjoy, for S, the kind of positive epistemic status c ascribes to the belief, class of beliefs or belief forming way AND/OR the premises of A have positive epistemic status for S in virtue of being formed in the belief forming way mentioned as epistemically successful in c; (iii) S has no (and therefore could not rely upon) c-independent evidence for the satisfied consequent(s) of (ii), and finally (iv) if S were to have c-independent evidence for the satisfied consequent(s) of (ii), this evidence would probabilistically confirm the conclusion c of A.

This definition combines the right features of the accounts out there without succumbing to any counterexamples (that I have thought of).  I'm fairly confident that it's pretty good, and of course, since epistemic circularity is a somewhat technical notion, there is room for me to stipulate the definition.

If you're familiar with inductive track record arguments, the most famous example of which is the inductive track record argument for the reliability of sense perception, then you might be interested to know that my definition of an ec-argument has it that inductive track record arguments need not be epistemically circular.  Here's one inductive track record argument:

1.1  S formed the belief that p1 using a RBFM.
1.2  S is justified in believing p1.
2.1  S formed the belief that p2 using a RBFM.
2.2  S is justified in believing p2.

                    .
                    .

n.1  S formed the belief that pn using a RBFM.
n.2  S is justified in believing pn.
================================
Probably, S is justified in believing propositions formed using a RBFM.

ITRAs such as these are commonly considered to be epistemically circular.  But I claim that they are only epistemically circular if we place a reliability constraint (As Alston has been wont to do) on justification.  Such a reliability constraint is a constraint to the effect that an epistemic subject S cannot be justified in believing any proposition p unless S formed the belief that p in a reliable way.   Suppose (per impossible!) such a reliability constraint is true.  In this case, I take it that conditions (i) - (iv) of my definition are satisfied, and the argument will turn out to be epistemically circular for all cognizers.

But suppose that a subject was foundationally justified in believing all pairs of premises n.1 and n.2.  Further suppose that (correctly) the internalist is right about justification.  Then condition (iii) of my definition is not satisfied, for it is possible to have c-independent evidence that the premises have positive epistemic status (i.e., are foundationally justified) which makes no reference to a RBFM.  If this is the case, the argument merely demonstrates an interesting correlation between being justified and beliefs being formed in a reliable way, but since the obtaining of the latter is not a condition for the possibility of the former, the argument fails to be epistemically circular.

If I am right, then discussions of epistemic circularity that have taken ITRAs as paradigmatic examples of epistemic circularity are a bit misguided, at least in so far as ITRAs need not always be epistemically circular.
 

Friday Random Ten

1. Pennyroyal Tea by Nirvana
2. Tame by The Pixies
3. Parachutes by Coldplay
4. Siempre Te Amare by Poncho Sanchez
5. When It's Sleepy Time Down South by Louis Armstrong
6. Sin City by AC/DC
7. Sorrow by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerard (Gladiator Soundtrack)
8. Well, You Needn't by Thelonious Monk
9. Hopeless Case by G. Love & Special Sauce
10. No Surprises by Radiohead

Wisdom From On High

Ask Philosophers has been online for a few days over one month now, and in that space of time they have managed to spit out answers to 424 questions.  Not to disparage any of the contributors, but the panel includes several of my personal favorite philosophers: Simon Blackburn, Mark Crimmins, Tamar Szabo Gendler, Richard Heck, and Peter van Inwagen.  Unfortunately, neither Blackburn nor PvI have answered any questions yet.  This can be remedied through blogging activism.  If you study philosophy at Notre Dame or read philosophy at Cambridge, you have a duty to goad one or the other of these gentlemen into paying the curious masses more attention.  AskPhilosophers has been reviewed by Open Access News, Brian Leiter, and The Age.  Articles appear in Inside Higher Ed, The Guardian, and the Times Higher Education Supplement. [Via Majikthise via Guardian NewsBlog]