Tis the Season

I know at least a few of you are, like me, spending most days in anticipation of any word from PhD programs. I'm of the opinion that any news, including the good-for-someone-else-but-bad-for-me, is better than no news at all, so I propose we use this space to post significant application news. I personally expect lots of rejections, so I'm not hesitant at all to share my own info if others do the same. If everyone feels the same, include the list of schools/programs you applied to in the comments below.

Another useful resource might be the Grad Cafe Forum, where people are reporting admissions decisions for grad programs of all sorts. Obviously it's not terribly complete, but it does seem like it will be of some help (for example, I see that two people have received acceptance phone calls from Chapel Hill).

"Internalising" McDowell

In my post, "Selling Out" McDowell, I addressed the main methodological objection to my claim that McDowell is a J-internalist. In this post, I will attempt to address what I take to be the primary theoretical objection to this proposal.

But first, what textual evidence do I have for holding that McDowell is a J-internalist? Two of the more suggestive passages are as follows:

I agree…that we lose the point of invoking the space of reasons if we allow someone to possess a justification even if it is outside his reflective reach. [McDowell 1998b, p. 418]

And:

[O]ne’s epistemic standing on some question cannot intelligibly be constituted, even in part, by matters blankly external to how it is with one subjectively. For how could such matters be other than beyond one’s ken? And how could matters beyond one’s ken make any difference to one’s epistemic standing? ([McDowell 1998a] p. 390)

I interpret the locution ‘how it is with one subjectively’, as an umbrella term for the sorts of things that are typically taken to be internally available to one, such as one’s thoughts, beliefs etc. By McDowell’s lights the circle delineating what is subjectively available to one exhausts that which may serve as a justifier for one’s beliefs. 

Read more »

To Gettier or Not to Gettier

I recently constructed a Gettier case (described below), designed to show that Justification-reliabilism is insufficient as a reply to Gettier. (For a full discussion of the application of this Gettier case, check out my blog post 'Un-discriminating Reliabilism'.) However, some have questioned whether the Gettier case I constructed is really a Gettier case at all (see comments in aforementioned link). Specifically, one reader felt that the subject described actually does have knowledge. I would like to get other folks intuitions on this question. Do you think the following represents a genuine Gettier case:

Suppose S has strong perceptual evidence for, and comes to believe, the proposition:

(a) There is a red cube in the box on the table.

Now, it so happens that there is in fact a red cube in the box on the table, though the cube is being obscured from S’s visual field by some sort of barrier. Furthermore, the box is rigged up to a computer which projects a visual hologram of a red cube in the box. However, the computer is programmed to only project the hologram of the red cube in the box when there is a real red cube in the box. Moreover, S lacks any of this background information, and forms her belief that (a) purely on the basis of the hologram of the red cube. All of the following seem true in the above case:

(i) (a) is true

(ii) S believes (a) is true

(iii) S’s belief that (a) is justified (i.e., formed via a reliable process)

Ex hypothesi, (iii) is true since the computer is programmed to only project the hologram of a red cube when there is an actual red cube present (one may build in whatever stipulations one likes, such as that the computer is eternal and infallible in its operation etc.). Thus, S’s belief that there is a red cube in the box is reliable (and, according to justification-reliabilism, therefore justified) since the process by which the belief was formed would, given the computer’s programming, tend to produce true beliefs. However, I believe this represents a bona fide Gettier case since, though S has a justified (i.e., reliably formed) true belief, we wouldn’t say that she has knowledge.

It may also be interesting to get a non-philosopher's intuition on this question, so you may consider trying it out on a roommate or friend and letting me know what you come up with. Cheers.

are we not horses

a new album by a mess of canadians going by ROCK PLAZA CENTRAL:
"a song cycle about mechanical horses programmed to think they're real horses, the implication being that their artificial minds and souls still act like real ones. AND they're caught in the middle of an epic war between good and evil."

check it.

Partial Apathy and Relativism

I've started to think about moral relativism again, so I dug out the paper I wrote on the general subject last semester. There, I argued that the psychological source of some forms of relativism is a sort of partial apathy. The position seemed plausible to me when applied to relativism involving predicates of personal taste (cf. Peter Lasersohn). It may account for relativism involving vague predicates (cf. Mark Richard). Partial apathy clearly is not the motivating factor for relativism involving future contingents (cf. John MacFarlane) or epistemic modals (cf. Egan, Hawthorne, and Weatherson). I'm trying to determine if I think the idea can apply to moral relativism. I give more explanation of this on my blog....

The Purpose of Philosophy

[As featured in Philosophers' Carnival #35!]

At the beginning of the year, Dustin (see previous post) challenged me to say what the purpose of doing philosophy is.  Now that the year is over, I realize that I never answered his question.

Partly this is because, at the time, I could think of no justification.  The purpose of philosophy, I said, was to make one's beliefs consistent in areas in which it's not clear what to believe.  Given two sides of a philosophical problem (say, the problem of free will versus determinism), you're presented with a paradox.  The paradox--at least, if you're a philosopher, or are in the right mindset--is frustrating, and you want to know what to believe.  Philosophizing ensues.  The question I felt unable to address at the time was: Why is this important?

It's possible that it isn't.  If you never see philosophical problems as frustrating, because they are below your radar, or because you think they can be dissolved in an obvious way, it isn't important to decide what you believe about philosophical problems.

But if you do see them as problems, deciding what you believe with regard to them is important.  To use an old accusation, one would be a misologist (Phaedo), a hater of rational accounts, if one refused to hear them.  One could just live as if philosophical problems don't exist; but I don't think that's a good solution.  Philosophy is one of the only areas in which we have all the tools to decide for ourselves about the issues in question.  Some input from science (and to guide science) is useful; but the problems are conceptual, so their solutions (I propose) will be conceptual as well, and so at least in theory within the reach of all who approach the problems.

There is another reason: I think philosophical problems are important in themselves.  They embody important features of our situation as humans, about the way our world is structured; about what it means to know something, or another person, to be free, whether there are any criteria for sense and nonsense at all.  These are significant aspects of the lives of both philosophers and non-philosophers, and they are aspects of our lives which produce philosophical puzzlement.  I cannot but think there must be some benefit from trying to get things straight with regard to them.

The Meaning of Philosophy

Hi Everybody, Perhaps it's time for a not-so-frivolous post to kick off the year. I will try to answer the question, what is the Meaning of Philosophy? Difficult, yes, but if I just throw out an answer, perhaps it will get some discussion going.

So, Philosophy is "Love of Knowledge", right? Not exactly... It's "Love of Wisdom." What is the difference between Wisdom and Knowledge, one might ask? Well, Knowledge is knowing things, knowing facts, or having an accurate understanding of things as they are. Of course, there are different definitions and criteria for truth, but those don't really change the fact that we know things. The epistemic question of "how" we know is different from the question of if we have knowledge. Science, for example, is one methodology, or "how," which helps us know facts about the physical world, and which has been quite successful. These facts are not, however, intrinsically valuable. Knowledge as a whole is not intrinsically valuable. Since value is only a result of attitudes we take toward the world--our valuations--then knowledge has only the value that it has for us. Yes, we can place a value on knowing the specific location and energy of an atom in a chair on which we are sitting, but why would we? Knowledge for the sake of knowledge (truth for the sake of truth) is misguided.

What, then, is Wisdom, and how is it not misguided in the way that a drive to Knowledge for Knowledge's sake is misguided? Wisdom, it seems, is having the ability to value appropriately, which then leads us to appropriate action ("appropriate" meaning in a manner conducive to life, health, and happiness.... oh, and ignoring our fellow beings--like Bush does--results in an emotional desensitization and disturbance antithetical to these natural, human goals). Wisdom is having the ability to discern between Knowledge that is useful and knowledge that is not, or is even destructive. Knowledge, being merely a tool to be used for the fulfillment of our natural goals, is definitely one component of wisdom, but only when properly tempered and understood within the context of it's uses. We can see quite plainly, then, that the central field of philosophy, or "first philosophy" cannot be Epistemology, Logic, or Metaphysics, but must be located within experience and is, if anything, a field such as Ethics or Aesthetics, which orient our values such that Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics, and even Science do not drift off into meaninglessness or even become destroyers of meaning. For, after all, what each of us truly wants--deep down--is a life full of value and meaning, and the happiness which accompanies such a life even in the face of deepest suffering.

Summer Vacation!

We're scattered all over the country, many of us probably sunbathing, about now. The Web of Belief, therefore, declares a Summer blogging hiatus. This doesn't mean that there won't be any new posts, or that new posts aren't encouraged--simply that there aren't likely to be any. Visitors are invited to look into any of our personal blogs in the "Our Blogs" section of the sidebar, where there may be more activity, and return to The Web of Belief in the Fall.

On the edge

On www.edge.org, a while ago, a very interesting question was suggested for its contributors: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Well, what do you think?

McDowell

These are some thoughts on McDowell prompted by the lecture on Friday at MIT. They represent at attempt to bring together an understanding of that talk with the other things of his I've read--Mind & World and a handful of essays.
The McDowell talk at MIT on Friday was very interesting. Several of my questions were asked, and his responses were often those I hoped or expected him to give. Not that the talk entirely made sense. The first part was about modest & immodest transcendental arguments, and he claimed to be offering a transcendental argument that was neither. I still don't understand how, though. The main point seemed to be that the skeptic can accept that our experience is either veridical or it isn't: that, for any particular perception, we're either hallucinating, or we're not. (That's the "disjunctivism.") But 1) I don't think the sort of perceptual experience we make claims about is exhausted by that disjunction, and 2) I certainly don't think experience is exhausted by that disjunction. This is the difficulty with Mind & World: he makes it sound as if we're always in the business of making claims about the world that we must justify. And this goes against the Wittgensteinian insight (and to some extent the parallel Austinian insight) that we only need to justify our claims when a question--an ordinary question--of justification arises; and that we only make claims at all for certain purposes and in certain circumstances.

Anyway, it isn't clear what the point of the disjunction is. Unless we say that it doesn't matter which side of it you're on. And that would be similar to what McDowell says (seems to say) in "Values & Secondary Qualities": that, with regard to perception, there is, on one level, no question about whether what I'm perceiving is real or not. After all, I'm really perceiving it. Ultimately, what I would want to accomplish, were I McDowell, would be a "softening" of the facts demanded by the skeptic when he or she demands that we justify our perceptual claims. The degree of softening necessary would depend on the situation: certain sorts of facts are not rightly demanded in certain situations. And one way to accomplish this softening would be to make it clear that we only need to justify a perceptual claim when there's some real question about it's rightness.

Towards the end of the talk, McDowell seemed to be championing ordinary methods of justification (I can "tell a zebra when I see one")...but it wasn't clear whether he meant to challenge the "internal" skeptic (whose skepticism arises and is settled within ordinary notions of justification) or the "external" or "global" skeptic (whose skeptical questions about justification know no bounds). He talked mainly as if he was addressing the "external" skeptic. This, at least, is the way it sounded given his disjunction. The disjunction, "Either I'm seeing a red cube, or I'm having an experience as-of seeing a red cube" assumes that it's responding to an "external" skeptic. (When else would such a statement suggest itself to us?) I think he intends this rather unnatural disjunction to respond to the "external" skeptic by saying that it's only because we have experiences we're willing to call "(veridically) seeing a red cube" that can we make sense of the possibility of "hallucinating a red cube." The response gestures towards particular contexts without actually describing them.

Perhaps that's what produced the impression in me that the upshot of what he was saying was rather like Austin. Granted, Austin (say, in "Other Minds") does describe in more detail ordinary ways of justifying knowledge claims. But to hold those up against the question of the "external" skeptic leaves "external" skepticism unscathed. It's like saying "it's because of this (what we call "telling a zebra") that you can ask your skeptical question." Ordinary methods of justification are a precondition for extraordinary ones. But that doesn't mean the extraordinary questions are always (should always be) in play.

This is a concern for me because, in McDowell's essays on rule-following, he supports the Wittgensteinian line that justifications come to an end--that at some point we reach "bedrock" in a given activity. His criticism of the anti-realist about meaning (Crispin Wright) is that he looks for "bedrock" "lower than it is" in demanding that we characterize our--for lack of better term I'll say "semantic"--agreement in terms that don't demand an insider's view of the language. This criticism seems right to me, albeit overly general. It's this over-generality--also present in the way he addresses the skeptic in the talk on Friday--that I'm trying to put my finger on.

Why is suicide avoidance a perfect duty?

I've been grading undergraduate papers on Kant and euthanasia for the last few days, and in making comments, I've come to realize that there's something that I don't get about Kant's argument for the immorality of suicide. I'm far from a Kant scholar, so I might just be misunderstanding Kant's view. (Luckily, my concern hasn't gotten in the way of my grading at all.)

In the Groundwork, Kant argues that suicide is immoral because it rests on the following maxim, which cannot be universalized without contradiction: "From self-love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction."

Something that genuinely loves itself, Kant tells us, cannot desire its own destruction; thus, the maxim results in contradiction. Now, I think it's debatable whether something that loves itself cannot desire its own destruction, but that's not the issue I want to raise. Kant says that suicide avoidance is a perfect duty, which would mean that this maxim results in a contradiction in conception. I think it looks more like a contradiction in the will, which would render suicide avoidance an imperfect duty.

I can see why the contradiction looks like a contradiction in conception. One cannot attempt to kill oneself if one is acting out of desire to preserve oneself. There is a clear contradiction there. But what makes this issue tricky is that it looks like someone who acts out of self-love could not will their own death. Isn't Kant's prohibition on suicide from self-love a case of an imperfect duty then? One can imagine the consequence of everyone killing themselves. That's not inherently contradictory. The problem stems from the willing.

One might try to make the following counterargument: imperfect duties are those that generate fully consistent perverted worlds when their maxims are universalized, but that have maxims that cannot be willed because the perverted world results in one's ends not being met. In other words, imperfect duties come about when there's a breach in a hypothetical imperative. The contradiction in the self-love maxim does not necessarily come about from a person's ends not being satisfied. But I think this is wrong. Self-love, Kant tells us, impels the improvement of life. It looks like the contradiction occurs because death ceases all improvement in life, thus one's ends are not being met.

Moreover, if we don't interpret "from self-love" as making a claim about hypothetical ends, then the maxim Kant offers does not correspond to the traditional "In situation X, I will do Y in order to achieve Z" template. Normally, if a maxim is contradictory simply in virtue of the "in situation X, I will do Y" portion (as maxims condoning lying or promise-breaking are), then it forms a perfect duty. If this is not the case, but the maxim becomes contradictory when Z is taken into account (in other words, the perverted world is consistent but does not achieve the ends of the hypothetical imperative), then the maxim forms the basis of an imperfect duty. "From self-love" seems to fit squarely into variable slot Z. If we insist that it does not but that it still generates the contradiction, then we give up on the standard maxim template, and we have to tell some sort of story about what sort of work "from self-love" is doing and why it's permissible to include in our maxim.

There is one other unique aspect of this maxim that may be relevant. It results in contradiction whether universalized or not. However, I don't know if this influences the perfection or imperfection of our duty, nor do I know why it should.

Cleanliness

This page now supports expanded entries, thanks to Richard and No Fancy Name. This means you can hide portions of your posts behind a link. This allows more posts to appear on the front page. All you have to do is type a special tag at the beginning and end of the lengthy part of your post. The tags are in the penultimate box (a blue one) on the No Fancy Name page.

Also, commenting is no longer restricted to blog members.

2 suggested paths from mechanism to consciousness

Irrationality is a necessary (and perhaps sufficient) condition for consciousness?? Think about it this way. You have a system like Drescher's which compiles statistics to direct its actions in a "world." For consciousness, the most important aspect of such a system is that which

"is defined not so much by its particular set of primitives as by its ways of combining structures to form larger ones, and by its means of abstraction -- its means of forming new units of representation that allows the details of their implementation to be ignored." (Drescher, Made Up Minds, p10)

As I read it, what this means is we get a system which combines its primitive processes into higher-level ones so that you get a "commanding" program with any number of functions, or sub-routines. For non-programmers, this means you could have the lower level processes carrying out the detailed statistical analyses to determine actions, while the so-called commanding program is "unaware" of of those activities. All it needs to operate is a "Yes" or "No" from the sub-routine based on its detailed statistical analysis.

What you end up with is a system, if it is indeed ignoring the primitive functions, that is unaware of its own internal processes and how its actions are determined. If it receives a command, say, to stack 3 blocks that are in its world, the primitive statistical processes are going to run in order to determine the locations of said blocks and make the parts move to execute the command. The higher order process of the system, though, undergoes only the "experience" of receiving the command, finding the blocks, and doing it. If you could ask what it is doing, it would say it was following the order, not that it was carrying out statistical analysis. I believe this is the first step towards conscious machines. There is nothing it is like to be a mechanism which merely compiles statistics and uses it to push buttons on and off. And maybe there is nothing it is like to be a higher-level program which "sees" only the results of such compiling and uses the "Yes" or "No" to push other buttons on and off. But maybe there is something it is like to be a higher-higher-higher ... -level program which pulls vast amounts of different types of input together in one orderly mechanism and is ignorant of the extraordinarily complex underworkings.

Why could this be true? Because it could be true that we are such systems. The complex set of processes that go into pouring myself a bowl of cereal feels simpler by orders of magnitude.

Women in Philosophy

To continue with the "topical" posts:

Some of us on occasion remark on the differences in tone of philosophical exchanges between men and those between women. I confess that I sometimes fail to see what's going on in exchanges between men, and I'm sure the reverse happens, as well. And I often find myself blaming gender for frustrations with philosophical discourse. Yet I also tend to think that gender is not what I ought to be blaming--if I ought to be blaming anything at all--, but something like cognitive styles, which vary along lines that correlate with, without being equivalent to, those of gender. Whether gender itself is a social construction or contains natural kinds is not terribly interesting to me; I would prefer to avoid positing anything external as far as possible. It may, of course, turn out that there is no other option if we want to make progress with respect to specific gender issues; but since I'm concerned with philosophy, and philosophy consists of conversation and thinking, I'm under the illusion that certain differences that fall within that domain don't need to be blamed but owned up to.

Earlier this semester, wondering if others had wondered about differences in philosophical method that tend to correllate strongly (but not exclusively) with gender lines, I found this post at Sappho's Breathing, which suggests that philosophical subfields are "gendered." Hence the title, "Real Men Do Metaphysics." It's a suggestive post, but the correlations don't match up with my experience. What might match up with my experience is a difference in method, regardless of subject matter.

What I mean by "method" must be combination of things, temperamental and cognitive. It's not clear where to draw the line between the two, or which can be rightly given "external" explanations and which cannot. For instance, women talking philosophy tend to be less careful of each other's pride; the interaction tends to be less tense, whereas men often tend towards combativeness. This difference is hard to internalize; it's difficult to think of it as anything more than "beyond one's control."

But combativeness often goes hand in hand with analytic method. Previously, I have referred to this as the "hunt-and-kill" method of philosophy and contrasted it with (what else?) the "gathering" method. Clearly, analytic thinking cannot be dispensed with in analytic philosophy. Nevertheless, I confess to having a preference for getting all the details onto the table before one starts analyzing things; and I prefer that analysis make the problem messier, not cleaner. To what extent these preferences are "gender-based" I don't know. But they are preferences that seem to be more "within one's control" than broader temperamental differences.

About the analytic approach combined with combativeness, Cleis had this to say: "I'm concerned that a primarily adversarial approach to philosophical argument alienates many smart women, who then turn their attention to other fields of study. That is philosophy's loss. I'm also concerned that philosophical talent is recognized most often when it's delivered in an aggressive package" , "The Brights and the adversary method" (no, one has nothing to do with the other).

The broad question I want to ask is, To what degree can the differences between the ways women and men approach to philosophy be ascribed to gender? Will the line be drawn at differences in aggressiveness and social hierarchy issues, or will cognitive differences also come into play? And if cognitive differences do come into play, should we think of them as gender differences? My worry regarding the last issue is that, as intellectuals with responsibilities to understand and make ourselves intelligible to others, there may be very good reasons why we shouldn't blame cognitive differences on (or for) anything.

It's possible, too, that my division of gender differences in philosophy into those that are "beyond one's control" and those that are "within one's control" is just an attempt to knock against the former with the latter, which may or may not be helpful.

Philosophy and Know-Nothing Conservatism

Perhaps you have a friend who read Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind when she was 17, concluded that all contemporary Anglo-American philosophy was bunk, and then decided to dress in school marmish frocks all day and to devote herself to getting money from corporations to disseminate culturally conservative propaganda at the American Enterprise Institute? Perhaps you are that friend from year-17 at an advanced stage of recovery. In any event, next time that friend shows up for dinner and bugs you with her half-informed opinions about your career plans, send her to the evisceration of Ross Douthat's put-down of analytic philosophy (see title link). Follow the connected links to the discussion on Matthew Yglesias' site as well. Ross writes for a blog, The American Scene, along with my dear friend Reihan Salam, who, despite having some Cro-Magnon political opinions, is at least gifted with the capacity for endless self-criticism and creative neurosis. [BTW, I wonder who that Crooked Ember guy is in Comments threads. All these references to contemporary Kantians and cranky Catholic intellectuals. . . Hmmm.]

The World's Greatest Acknowledgements Page

It's not to a philosophy book, but close enough: link

Uwe Meixner

Some good, old-fashioned German philosophy. Though I haven't read the book, I pretty much agree with everything in this excerpt: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwmeixner.html

Angry About Politics?

Not as angry as this man: http://www.nplusonemag.com/thong.html

The Monads

For those of you who haven't already found these through my blog--I present the apex of what can be done with knowledge of philosophy: songs about David Hume and counterpart theory.

The Monads

"Is there a thesis of Determinism?"

He asks, while birds most likely chirp.

I will be giving a talk in Metaphysics soon (not this week but next). I will be discussing, among other things, P.F. Strawson's essay, "Freedom and Resentment" (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwstrawson1.htm).

I wanted to start this week by throwing out some teasers of what I will be talking about. Getting some early feedback will be helpful in getting me prepared and in anticipating possible concerns.

Early on in “Freedom and Resentment” Strawson says,

“Some philosophers say that they do not know what the thesis of determinism is. Others say, or imply, that they do know what it is. Of these some—the pessimists, perhaps—hold that if the thesis is true, then the concepts of moral obligation and responsibility really have no application, and the practices of punishing and blaming, of expressing moral condemnation and approval, are really unjustified. Others—the optimists perhaps—hold that these concepts and practices in no way lose their raison d’etre if the thesis of determinism is true. [ . . .] If I am asked to which of these parties I belong to, I must say that it is first of all to the party of those who do not know what the thesis of determinism is.”

Since Strawson does not make much of this point (I used to just read it as a coy nod to ordinary language philosophy’s scruples), I want focus this post on this question—that is, on whether there is a thesis of determinism that is intelligible, well-motivated, and substantive. By “substantive” I mean a thesis that gives us reason to believe we are discussing what the actual world, in its most general aspects, is really like—that is, whether determinism is telling us something true about the world we experience on a day-to-day basis and explain via our best science.

One fairly standard way of construing the thesis of determinism is as follows:

“Consider now the existence of certain events governed by natural laws. It appears as if any such events must occur. Given a prior state of the world that is governed by laws of nature, a unique state of the world is forthcoming. It is helpful to think of the laws of nature operating as mathematical functions and the antecedent events as arguments for these functions. Once the function and the argument (input of the function) are settled, the output is necessitated. To implement the mathematical analogy, let f(x) = 5x + 2 and the input of the function be 3. The output of f(3) is 17, a mathematically necessitated result relative to the function and argument. Just as any other result is mathematically impossible—a violation of the laws or rules of mathematics—any event other than the one that actually occurs, relative to the antecedent state of the world and the laws of nature, is naturally impossible. Only by supernatural interference could an outcome other than the actual one occur in a world with the identical prior state and laws. Determinism can then be defined as claiming that it is logically impossible that there are worlds with natural laws and pasts congruent with the actual world and yet with futures distinct from that of the actual world.”

Mark Bernstein, “Fatalism,” Oxford Handbook of Free Will, p. 68

This kind of thesis of Determinism might be called a thesis of Global Determinism. It works as follows:

(1) Start with any possible world W whose causal order is structured by laws of nature. (Assume, for the time being, that the concept, ‘laws of nature,’ is coherent and we know how to construe it. Laws of nature, according to this construal, would operate like mathematical functions in Bernstein’s sense: taking definite inputs as arguments, they would produce definite outputs).

(2) Assume that at some of level of description there are structurally homogeneous, basic particulars in W out of which all complex objects and relations in W are composed (we can assume, to make it easier to imagine, that these particulars are physical, but they need not be to carry through the argument). A definitely describable system of relationships among all of these particulars at some time t is a ‘Global Event.’ Global Events are the “arguments” upon which the laws of nature do their computational work. In the worlds in which these particulars are physical, we can assume that the character of a Global Event will be given by a complete description of the spatio-temporal arrangements of basic particles in fields of force (or whatever our best science tell us is the best idealization of a Global Event).

(3) Conclude that, in any such world W, the laws of nature must compute, at t, only one possible future (one future Global Event at time t2 ).

The reason this is “Global Determinism” is because what the thesis is quantifying over is worlds:

(GD): There is a world W such that if (1) and (2) are true of W, then (3) is also true of W.

If the actual world satisfies GD, then we live in a deterministic world. Do we have any reason to believe we live in a deterministic world? We certainly deliberate and make choices as if there were alternative possible futures, so at first glance we do not act like we believe that GD is true. Are we simply massively self-deceived?—believing one thing in the philosophy classroom (or the physics laboratory) and another in ordinary practical life.

I think the best way of approaching this question is to ask: does the thesis of determinism make sense of the phenomena that our best scientific and common sense theories (including ordinary psychology) explain?

Bernstein’s analogy between laws of nature and mathematical functions is helpful, if massively deceptive. The kind of function that could map a Global Event is, to say the least, slightly more complicated than a one-variable, two-term algebraic equation.

I am sure that those savvy with the computer science, mathematics, and physics involved can help me out, but it would seem that the orders of magnitude involved in computing a state description of the world or ‘Global Event’ would quickly lead us to, at best, intractable predictability problems and, at worst, paradoxes of infinity.

But let’s be philosophers about this. Sure, what we imagine here is impossible for us, but not for an Omniscient Mind or Super-Laplacean Computer. The issues I am raising are a problem for epistemology, not analytic metaphysics. Verificationism died a long time ago. Let it rest in peace.

Ok, so now we are relying on another concept, ‘Omniscient Mind,’ to make sense of the thesis of Determinism (at least in its ‘Global’ variety). Unlike us poor souls, the Omniscient Mind knows that the actual world is composed of basic particulars, knows the number of and relations among these particulars, and knows the function that computes Global Events in our world.

But wait? What use does an Omniscient Mind have for a function? It knows everything, after all. Presumably, it knows the future before it happens. Presumably, the concepts of past, present, and future are useless to it (as well as any computations among them). The Omniscient Mind just looks at the whole of space and time and absorbs it in one gulp.

But wait, what is the Omniniscient Mind 'looking' at? Whether or not the world has a beginning and/or an end in time and space is presumably just an ‘an empirical issue.’ Space and time might be infinitely ‘self’-contorting manifolds. So what would there be for an Omniscient Mind to ‘look’ at? ‘Looking’ implies figure and ground, things that come before consciousness and things that move to the background. But there could be no such definite perspectival structures in the scenario we are imagining: it would just be one inifinite series of one damned indistinguishable thing after another.

These problems are not new (I first encountered them, I think, in Sister Regina’s fourth grade class as we debated whether God can square circles or create rocks he cannot move).

We started this discussion of Determinism by worrying about whether our best beliefs about the ‘world as it is in itself’ might threaten the world as it looks to us when we deliberate in practical life. And yet, it turns out the world as it is in itself is not something we have a firm grip on. We have helped ourselves to some half-formed metaphysical concepts—‘Global Determinism,’ ‘Omniscient Mind,’ ‘Laws of Nature as Mathematical Functions’—but then, as we actually examine how to cash out these shibboleths of our philosophical fancy in precise terms, we quickly lose our grip on the concepts. Better to end where we started--that is, with what we knew perfectly well before we started philosophizing in the first place: that we live our lives by imagining possible futures, deliberating about which among them would be the best, and acting so as to realize as our choices (except when we are weak willed).

The metaphysical question at issue is what kind of world makes this notion of freedom intelligible and whether or not we are justified in believing we live in it; the question is not whether some fantastic thesis of Global Determinism threatens it.