PHIL 488 (X50): Current Research in Philosophy

PHIL 594 (X50): Selected Problems in Philosophy

“Intuitions”

Winter 2012

Mon 18.00—20.50

ETLE 008

This is the main course webpage for the course. I will put information onto this page over the course of the term, so you should check it frequently. I also will have links to other documents. (Here, for example, is a link to the Syllabus for the course. The syllabus contains information about how the course will be run, what the textbook is, what the requirements are for the course, and what the relative weights are for the various requirements. Check it out!...it is a pdf to be downloaded when you click on the link, as are most of the things I will be posting.)

Although we (probably) won’t read all of Gendler’s book, we will read all the papers in Part I; so, you can start at the beginning and just keep reading them. If you find one you are particularly interested in, you should keep that in mind as something for your to volunteer to give your presentation about.

On Jan 16^th we will again meet in ETL 1-008, to see if it is suitable for a seminar-course. In this class, Roxanna Akhbari will present material from Gendler’s chapters 1 and 2, and lead a discussion about the topics raised in these two paper. Everyone needs to read these chapters in order to be able to participate in the discussion. As you read them, keep a list of issues that either puzzle you or that you think are wrong. This will very much help us in the discussion! [And once again: Don’t be shy about talking!]

I have put the pdf document I used in lecture on Jan 9^th onto the website. You can download it from here.

The very nice discussion last week (Jan 16^th) had many good points. One of them – a comment about Platonism or a priori knowledge – put me in mind of a (longish) comment made by James Brown in the Introduction to his The Laboratory of the Mind, a book that I talked about on the first meeting. Here it is:

Like most philosophers, I encountered a bit of rationalism (Plato and Descartes) and a bit of empiricism (Hume ) in my first formal introduction to the subject. And like most students of philosophy I found the rationalists endless fascinating, but not in the least believable. It seemed obvious to me, as it does to most, that all our knowledge is based on sensory experience. Then one day I heard about Galileo’s thought experiment showing tht all bodies must fall at the same rate – I almost fell out of my chair. It was a wonderful intellectual experience. Suddenly, traditional rationalism seemed a live option; perhaps my philosophical heroes – Plato, Descartes, and Leibniz – were on the right track after all.

All of this remained on the back burner until a couple of years ago when I got around to looking at thought experiments in general. I was surprised by two things. … The second thing I was surprise at was that my old rationalist sentiments stood up; if anything, they have been reinforced by looking at this topic anew. I have long held a platonistic view of mathematics; I now hold a platonistic view of physics as well.

It might be an interesting term paper for someone to look at Brown’s more detailed argument for “a platonic view of physics” that is in the book somewhere (and also in other papers of his). Gendler argues against Brown’s view that every thought experiment can be converted into a (deductive or inductive) argument. Does this have any implications for Platonism in physics?

You might have noticed that in her Introduction (p. vi) Gendler says that a lot of her thinking was influenced by listening to the 1994 William James Lectures given by Roger Shepard. This was (apparently) a series of seven lectures that was supposed to become a book. I haven’t seen any references to the book (it’s not in Gendler’s bibliography, just the Lectures). I found the first two lectures online and have links to them here (Lecture 1 and Lecture 2). I think you’d find them interesting, coming from a very important psychologist who is famous for his work on “mental rotation”.

This upcoming week, Jan. 23^rd, we will meet in Assiniboia Hall 2.-2A, to see whether this is a more suitable classroom for our seminar. The presenter that evening will be Arjun Singh, and he’ll be leading the discussion of Gendler’s Chapters 3 & 4. Be sure to read them in advance! And think about some questions, either ones for clarification of some point in Gendler or ones that are criticisms of her point of view.

The following meeting, on Jan. 30^th, will be presented by Hassan Masoud on the topic of “reflective equilibrium”. Background reading for this is the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu) on reflective equilibrium (by Norman Daniels), a paper by Michael DePaul “Why Bother with Reflective Equilibrium?” (which is in M. DePaul & W. Ramsey (eds) Rethinking Intuition (1998) ). This book is not available electronically, so I have gotten access to a scanned copy, which is located here. The book has a common-to-all-authors bibliography, so if you want to know who DePaul is referring to, you have to look here, at the common bibliography. I note that (a) you will want to rotate the pages for best viewing, (b) that there is something funny about the first page, and (c) that some of the pages have the last line chopped off. (I hope this doesn’t cause any serious problems!) Hassan says that he will also be discussing the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Coherence Theories of Justification written by Jonathan Kvanvig. Please read all of these as preparation for the Jan. 30 presentation and discussion.

The method of reflective equilibrium is often seen as the main methodology of modern philosophy. Furthermore, a discussion of it is relevant to this course because some of the inputs to the method are intuitions.

Looking ahead a bit farther, on Feb. 6^th, Grace Paterson will present, and lead a discussion about, the material in Gendler’s Chapters 5 & 6. This will bring us to the end of her “Part I”. We will return to her book later in the term, when we study her Chapters 13 & 14 (on ‘alief’ and ‘belief’).

The slides that were used by Roxanna Akhbari in her presentation about Gendler’s Chapters 1 & 2 on Jan. 16^th are here (Chap. 1) and here (Chap. 2).

The notes that Arjun Singh used for his presentation about Gendler’s Chapters 3 & 4 are here. And the slides that Hassan Masoud used for his presentation about reflective equilibrium are here.

Upcoming topics are: Feb 13 will see Patrick Pasha present some material introducing and giving examples of “Experimental Philosophy”, paying special attention to their comments/critique of intuitions in philosophical thought experiments. And Feb 27 (the Monday after Reading Week) will see Justin Zylstra discuss some material from non-Experimental Philosophy philosophers that criticize Experimental Philosophy…especially about intuitions. Links to materials for both of those presentations will be posted on this website.

Those enrolled in Phil 488 have two “abstracts” of the readings due this term. The first one is due on Monday Feb 27^th. For this assignment, write an abstract of one of Gendler’s chapters 7, 8, 11, or 12 (chapters that will not have a presentation about). An abstract is a succinct re-telling of what is in the chapter. You should take two or so pages to discuss all or at least some of the following: outline what she said she was going to do in that chapter, say why she thinks it is interesting, and how she was going to carry out her project. Perhaps a short evaluation of your own feelings of her endeavour could be appropriate. Please submit your work electronically. I prefer pdf, but can accept pretty much any of the usual Word, tex, ps, and other things. Submit it before midnight on Feb. 27. (The first day after Reading Week). Please feel free to submit it earlier!

Those enrolled in Phil 594 have a “short paper” (4-7 pages) due on March 5^th. Please submit it electronically. I prefer pdf, but can handle most variants of Word (except docx when you use the equation editor), tex, ps, and other formats. Send it to me before midnight on Monday, March 5^th. Earlier is good.

Above on this webpage I listed who was presenting for the upcoming weeks:

Feb 6: Grace Paterson on Gendler. Her slides from the presentation: Chapter 5 & Chapter 6.

Feb 13: Patrick Pasha on Experimental Philosophy (papers used are available on these three links: Paper #1, Paper #2, Paper #3. You might also have extra fun looking at some other papers that Patrick won’t cover: Extra paper #1, Extra paper #2, Extra paper #3, as well as these websites: The XPhi website, with a picture of a burning armchair in the corner, is http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jk762/ExperimentalPhilosophy.html.  You can check out also the Youtube burning armchair (with music!) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt5Kxv8eCTA). The slides that Patrick used are available here.

Feb 27: Justin Zylstra on anti-Experimental Philosophy. The papers to be considered are: Deutsch 2009, Marti 2009, Sosa 2007, and Williamson (unpublished?). The Marti and Sosa are quite short papers. Williamson considers the “expertise defense” that we’ve talked about in class a bit, and Deutsch attacks all of X-Phi as being wrong about what Philosophy is up to. Justin’s notes for his presentation can be gotten here.

Here are people for the remainder of the term:

Mar 5: Nina Varsava on Gendler Chapters 9 & 10

Mar 12: Elizabeth Flaming on Gendler Chapters 13 and 14. Elizabeth had a handout that contained a bunch of definitions that Gendler used in these chapters (download docx or pdf). She also had notes on the two chapters (docx or pdf).

Mar 19: Nika Pona on some Psychology work concerning intuitions (Wisniewski, Shafir, and Evans)

Mar 26: Me—on some topics concerning Ordinary Language Philosophy, Linguistics and maybe other things. Here are the slides for this presentation.

Apr 2: Me—continuation. Also wrap-up.

If someone in class wants to give a second presentation on some topic of interest to them (and relevant to the class), they can have Mar. 26. Just let me know!!

Hassan Masoud send this nice article by Charles Sanders Peirce “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man” (1868). It deals with the notion of intuition. Among the other interesting things in this article is the endnote #1, which gives a history of the philosophical use of the word ‘intuition’. [I don’t know if it is right; but it sounds very scholarly!]

In class last evening (March 5^th) the topic of “inconsistent stories” came up, and I mentioned one by Graham Priest…which was written sort of like an account of his going through Richard (Routley) Sylvan’s belongings after his sudden death in 1996. It’s short, and definitely worth reading. Here is that paper. (I note that Gendler in fact referred to it somewhere, since it is in her overall bibliography. But I didn’t look for where she cited it.)

Another thing we talked about in class last night – in the course of discussing Gendler’s Chapters 9 and 10 on “Imaginative Resistance” – was her claim that certain insects just were inherently ugly and that no kid (or teacher or parent) could imagine calling their classroom “beetle” or “roach” or … -- but they could call them “ladybug” or “honey bee”. Hassan remarked that he had seen a particularly attractive ice sculpture of a praying mantis and has given us three pictures of this sculpture for our edification: mantis1, mantis2, mantis3. He also offers a sculpture of a grasshopper (which seems to have been partially eaten by the praying mantis…could that be why they are not cute?? --that and what the female praying mantis does to the male [it has something to do with the cup]).

I remarked that I had bought some glass objects when I was in Seattle: a beetle and a bee. Beetles are very interesting and pretty, as these photos might show: BeetleBee1, BeetleBee2. There is also a photo just of the Bee.

Students in Phil 488 have their Second Abstract Due Feb 19^th. Here are links to four papers. Please pick one of them to write an abstract about. These papers are each longer than one can reasonably do a “full abstract” in two pages. So, pick some central topic in the paper, state what the author is trying to do about that topic, give some of the author’s reasoning/evidence for his/her position, and state whether you think the author’s position has been successfully demonstrated. For any of the papers, you might wish to discuss what the author thinks an intuition is and what a thought experiment is. Here are the four papers: PeijenburgAtkinsonPoorThoughtExps03.pdf, VanBendegemMathThoughtExps03.pdf, YlikoskiSocSciThoughtExps03.pdf, and TurnbullEtAlCounterfactuals1990.pdf.

On March 26^th I will be discussing the school of “Empirical Semantics” that was founded by Arne Naess in the late 1930s, and which had some (minor) influence within philosophy and European society during the 1950s and 1960s. One of Naess’ students was Herman Tennessen (sometimes spelled ‘Tönnessen’), a professor at U. Alberta from 1962 until his retirement in the 1980s. Here are some papers from that group: a 1938 paper of Naess’ on “truth”, a 1949 paper on “interpretation and preciseness”, some papers of Tennessen (against revelation in semantics; another against revelation; all about private enterprise; and one about methodology in philosophy), and a paper by Stephen Toulmin which reviews an Arne Naess paper in the Philosophical Review (and perhaps made Empirical Semantics more visible in North America).

Another movement that happened in the 1950s and 1960s started with a 1957 APA colloquium that featured Benson Mates and Stanley Cavell (Wikipedia entries: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Mates and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Cavell). The two works were published the following year in the brand new journal Inquiry (founder and editor: Arne Naess). The symposium started with Mates reading his paper “On the Verification of Statements about Ordinary Language” and Cavell giving a rejoinder. But in the intervening year, Cavell lengthened his contribution to be huge – “Must We Mean What We Say?”, which has been reprinted in very many places, including many of Cavell’s own books. In turn, this started a long-lasting dispute in the literature that featured many luminaries and others. Jerry Fodor and Jerrold Katz (who were then either post-docs or beginning assistant profs) were among them. Much of this literature was collected in the anthology Linguistics and Philosophy (ed.) Colin Lyas (1971), which is unfortunately out of print.

Either that same day, or in the following class, I will be talking about the role of intuitions in Chomskean-influenced linguistics. You might look at an article by me with Barbara Scholz and Geoff Pullum in the Stanford Encyclopedia: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics. Not all of it is relevant, but do check out especially Section 3. However, it is difficult to understand Section 3 without first at least getting the main terminology of Sections 1, 2.1 and 2.2. I may also talk about some of the more recent attempts to do something like “the expertise defense” when it comes to linguistics (by Michael Devitt).

People have asked when the final paper for the class is due. I am going to make it be Monday, April 16^th (which is a week after what I thought was the last day of class…although I was wrong, because April 9^th is a holiday). I would be VERY happy to receive your papers earlier!! (Just think: if you do them in the week after our last class on April 2^nd, you’ll be entirely finished with this class before the semester is over!!)

I have been asked to specify how I would like to see references and citations appear in the final paper. For a quick statement of what I’d be happiest with (and which is also the most common form of reference these days) go here. A document that explains different styles of reference is here…you might wish to check it out in order to see how some “non-standard” journals do it (and how it is done in different academic fields).

I also have a document that gives some ideas on how to go about writing a paper.

The rationale for any method of reference is to give credit to others, when it is due. This normally means to say which of your ideas and words came from others. Not to do so is called “plagiarism” and is considered a serious academic offence, both within the university and in the greater academic field. Not only does it generate a bad reputation for the offender within the academic community, but also there are lots of lawsuits based on it.

You MUST give credit (use a citation) whenever you are using someone else’s words, and you MUST give credit even when you are just paraphrasing them. If you are directly using another author’s words, then you need not only to mention that it comes from such-and-so article but also you need to put the material within quote marks if it is short (say, two sentences or less) or set it off as an indented block quotation if it is longer. If you quote someone, you are either using exactly their words or you are making minor changes to their syntax so as go have the quotation make sense in the context of your paper. In this latter case you indicate changes by putting square brackets around your new material. For instance, you might change the tense of their verbs, or their capitalization, etc. Or you might add a brief explanatory comment.

One indicates that small parts of the original material have been left out by using “ellipsis dots”, i.e.: “blah-blah….blah-blah.” You may NOT leave out things that will change the meaning of the original (like negations! or qualifications, etc). To emphasize that something really did appear in the original just as you are quoting it (even thought it might sound strange), one uses [sic].

The important point is that you should ALWAYS say where your material comes from when you use it. The exact style you use is much less important than the fact that you are giving due credit to someone else.

Although the above examples mentioned direct quotation, you should also make sure to cite someone whom you are paraphrasing, especially for any ideas generated by them.

FINALLY and IMPORTANTLY:

It is NOT sufficient for you merely to put the work you are quoting or paraphrasing into your bibliography and not indicate where in your document you are using their words or ideas. More generally, the moral is: If you are quoting or paraphrasing, then you must mention that fact in your paper at the appropriate place!!