If-Then Knots ---------------------->

Strawman

2007-02-11T15:17:34-06:00

Redstate has a post up criticizing predictions of Venusian runaway warming. True, some proponents of addressing the ways we are causing the present warming trend have probably predicted Venusian runaway. It would not surprise me to find that there are folks that are ignorant of climatology on both sides of the political debate. However, in the scientific debate the risk of Venusian runaway warming is assessed as minimal. This does not mean that we are out of the woods as far as all bad effects from our impact on the climate goes, of course. On thing that particularly concerns me is the fact that changes in seasonal patterns and rainfall patterns may upset agriculture, especially in regions already susceptible to famine. It will not take Venusian runaway warming for us to have those kinds of impacts. I was going to slam Redstate in this post, but this comment and fact...

Modeling Epistemic Agents

2007-02-11T11:46:56-06:00

Suppose you could define an ideal (maybe just a median) Bayesian agent. Then you could make definitions along these lines: Testimony Skeptic: One who is more reluctant to accept testimony than the ideal Bayesian agent. Testimony Denier: One who will not accept testimonial evidence at all. You could start to model different epistemological types by defining scalars on outcomes of probability assessments for given classes of evidence, to get a piecewise function. Like this: Pα(h|e&b&c) = Pideal(h|e&b&c) for e not in B Pideal(h|e&b&c)*s for e in B To get the definitions of skeptic and denier given above you let B be the class {evidence based testimony}. But you could let it be {evidence based testimony about __________}. You could have any number of classes defined in different ways and model all sorts of individuals this way.

An Argument for the Irrelevance of Egoism

2007-01-15T12:24:21-06:00

An egoistic act is one that has as its primary motive one's own interest. There are of course smart and stupid egoists. Sometimes an act that we think is in our own interest is not, so some egoistic acts are not actually in one's own interest. There are a number of complicated questions surrounding egoism, whether we necessarily are egoists, and whether we should be egoists. There are many kinds of egoist theses. A sampling: Psychological Egoism (PE): It is a psychological fact that humans only ever act egoistically. Ethical Egoism (EE): Humans may sometimes act non-egoistically (PE is false), but it is not ethical for them to do so. Rational Egoism (RE): Humans may sometimes ethically act non-egoistically (PE and EE are false), but it is not rational for them to do so. There are many complicated arguments for and against the various versions of egoism. Here are two...

Writing Process

2007-01-14T23:13:04-06:00

Finishing my paper on Williamson's "Knowledge and Its Limits" is going torturously. I have always done this and I think its a pattern I need to break out of. Rather than just writing then going back and editting, I tend to belabor every single point as I'm writing. So, if I can't quite make my mind up I'll just do something else for a bit. I can't get myself to move on from a point then come back to it later. I guess its an odd kind of perfectionism or something. Presently it's driving me batty. I've had this paper pretty well worked out in my head for weeks. I just keep ruminating the same points over and over. Then I sit down to write and can't spit them out. Bahhhh. Tomorrow I must finish.

Varieties of Bunk

2007-01-12T21:42:55-06:00

There's high-brow bunk and then there's low-brow bunk. Don't fall for it.

Chills Down My Spine

2007-01-12T14:53:28-06:00

Innumeracy Watch

2007-01-06T11:20:21-06:00

I have no comments on the main point of this article expressing skepticism about Peak Oil. It's not an issue that I have personally researched very much, though my sense is that when it comes to oil we've got most of the low-hanging fruit at least. (There are other reasons besides Peak Oil to get off our petroleum addiction, like global warming and resource nationalism). In any case, I wanted to call attention to an instance of innumeracy in a popular scientific article: The reason we have seen so many bad guesstimates is that even the most advanced technology can't tell us how much crude the Earth holds. No method has been devised to search for new reserves with precision, or even to gauge the true size of known reservoirs. While the mainstream view is that oil resources are finite, no one knows just how finite they are. Far from...

Libertarians Love Rawls.

2006-12-11T11:16:00-06:00

UPDATE (12/12/06): More from Wilkinson. I had no idea. Brink Lindsey's recent article "Liberaltarians" has sparked some interesting discussion at the CATO Institute's blog and elsewhere around the web, including the at lefty hub DailyKos (I picked this up initially at the left-libertarian blog Freedom Democrats). Will Wilkinson in particular has applauded the idea of "Rawlsekianism"; basically taking Hayek's empirical findings in economics and plugging them into a Rawlsian framework. That post got me wondering why a libertarian such as Wilkinson would count Rawls (and not Nozick, e.g.) with Hayek as " the greatest social/political thinkers of the 20th Century." Well, in a recent post by Wilkinson I have my answer. A few friends and colleagues have asked me why I think Rawls and not, say, Nozick, was the best political philosopher of the 20th Century. What kind of libertarian am I to think that? Well, I certainly think Nozick...

Knowledge by Inference from False Testimony

2006-12-10T12:54:57-06:00

Over at Certain Doubts Claudio has a post about knowledge by inference from false testimony. Here are the cases: The Spokesperson: The very reliable spokesperson for the president assures me that (q) the president is in Jordan. Based on my belief that q, I infer that (p) the president is not in the Oval Office. Suppose that p is true and q is false: A last-minute change in his Middle Eastern tour schedule now has the president in Israel, not Jordan. Don’t I know that p? The Santa Claus Case: Mom and Dad tell young Virginia that Santa will put some presents under the tree on Christmas Eve. Believing what her parents told her, she infers that there will be presents under the tree on Christmas morning. She knows that. First: An observation about the Santa Clause and Spokesperson cases. On the basis of parental testimony p = "Santa will...

Philosophy Isn't Easy

2006-12-08T13:22:20-06:00

I'm having a difficult time understanding the sentiment expressed here, regarding Hannah Arendt: Yet if her star shines so brightly, it is because the American intellectual firmament is so dim. After all, who or where are the other political philosophers? The last great political American philosopher, John Dewey, died in 1952. Since then American philosophy — with the partial exception of Richard Rorty — has vanished into technical issues; within the subfield of political philosophy, the largest of its figures, John Rawls, remains abstract and insular. His work may quicken the attenuated pulse of academic philosophers, but it does not move the rest of us. No kidding. Philosophy is abstract? Who'da thunkit. Philosophy is a difficult subject and getting things right involves drawing careful distinctions. That leads one quickly to technical issues; a theory of knowledge can hinge on one's views on the semantics of gradable adjectives. Unfortunately for those...

Breyer and Scalia

2006-12-07T17:44:30-06:00

The American Constitution Society has video of a recent discussion between the two justices.

Identity Crisis

2006-12-07T17:35:57-06:00

I can't seem to settly on how I want the blog to look. Ultimately, I think I'm just going to have to upgrade my subscription so that I can customize more.

SciFri on SC Greenhouse Gas Case

2006-12-05T09:12:27-06:00

This American Life on Iraq Mortality

2006-11-28T17:10:28-06:00

Here is This American Life's second episode on the Lancet mortality studies.

"Exactly as Predicted"

2006-11-27T22:07:58-06:00

Recent work published in Science further confirms the consensus view that recent climate change is caused by humans. Realclimate headlines "The Sky IS Falling" and emphasizes that the results disconfirm denialist claims that solar forcing can explain the recent trends.