Sunday, January 29, 2006

Philosophy of Mind/Action theory

For those interested in the application of the philosophy of mind to the metaphysics of agency, here's a link to a paper I wrote for a grad seminar a while back:

http://gfp.typepad.com/online_papers/files/needasubstancedualistsurr22.pdf

Any comments? I'd really appreciate.

Tedla

Friday, January 13, 2006

UCSB Philosophy Blog

UCSB Philosophy Blog

Hi UCSB Philosophers:

This is Tedla. I really like your blog and discussions in there and have been meaning to post some of my thoughts. I've been crazily busy with grad applications. My philosophical interests are wide ranging but the core areas of interest constitute: metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of langauge, philosophy of logic/philosophical logic, philosophy of religion/philosophical theology, philosophy of time and mind, and metaphilosophy. The last one on this menu has lately become my most consuming area of research interest and almost all interesting philosophical problems that I choose to prusue revolve around it or underritten by it.

Here's an excerpt from a long paper that might be of interest to some of you and I'd love to receive illuminating feedbacks from the UCSB bloggers. The title of the paper is:“P ‘is True’ ”: Ambiguity and Equivocation in the Analysis of the Concept of Knowledge.In the paper I compare some possible epistemological consequences of holding to a Correspondence Theory of Truth(CTT) and a Deflationary Theory of Truth(DTT) while we do the traditional analysis of the concept of knowedge. Hope the following makes sense:

IV: Epistemological Implications of a CTT and a DTT

S knows that P, only if “P ‘is True’ ” But what do we mean when we say “P ‘is true’?”29 What difference would one’s commitment to a correspondence as opposed to deflationary theory of truth make to one’s analysis of the clause “P ‘is true’ ” as one of the required conditions in the standard analysis of the concept of knowledge? This section is devoted to exploring answers to such questions.“The decision to be an inflationist or a deflationist about truth has been called ‘the biggest decision a theorist of truth must make’”30, as Paul Boghossian once put it, and if this claim is true, I think, it is worth exploring what consequences such commitments as to inflationism as opposed to deflationism, or vice versa, would have for one’s philosophical views beyond that of theories of truth themselves. Thus I started wondering if holding to different theories of truth would matter to our understanding of the concept of knowledge. It seems to matter and also make a difference, at least to me, as to which theory of truth underwrites the reference to true/truth when our concern is to spell out what constitutes our understanding of the concept of knowledge.One recalls that when we talk and think about what it means for S to know that “P ‘is true’ ”, what this clause refers in the analysis of the concept of knowledge could, either be, to (a) a correspondence theory of truth or corresponds to condition (I) in section I; or it could refer to (b) a deflationary theory of truth or corresponds to condition (II) in section I above. The “P ‘is true’ ” locution, certainly seems to call for a theory of truth that underwrites it and let’s see by taking an example which theory of truth, of the two under consideration, that is behind this locution, if there is one or the other or if there is no difference which theory of truth is behind this innocent looking locution31. Let’s take the following example to see how that would work:(P): George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the USA.Now let’s plug this statement or sentence into the analysis of the concept of knowledge thus: S knows that (P) if and only if (P) is true. We say that S knows that George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the USA iff the state of affairs consisting in George W. Bush’s being the 43rd President of the USA obtains32. In order to attribute truth to (P), one who holds to a correspondence theory of truth assumes, at least, the following to be the cases, or the following are facts assumed by a correspondence theorist, that make this statement true: a) there exists such a person that the name George W. Bush refers to or picks out (at the actual time in history that such a reference is being made); b) there is (there exists) such a thing as a President of the USA and specifically the 43rd President of the USA, and c) that implies that there is (there exists) such a country or political entity called the USA, among other things. If what (P) says corresponds, or matches to (the mind-independent) facts enumerated by (a-c), then (P) is said to be true. That means that S knows that (P) if and only if what (P) says to be the case is actually the case. (It is a truism that one cannot claim to know something that is false; for example: One cannot claim to know that Alvin Plantinga, the author of The Nature of Necessity, is the current (=2006) President of the USA. Perhaps, he is one in another possible world, if Lewisian modal realism is correct!). Truth consists in a proposition or statement or sentence or belief corresponding to facts. Accordingly, the truth of (P) consists in what (P) states to be the case corresponding to the fact.Now it would do well to pause and recall the facts about the intuitions behind a CTT on which are predicated a number of metaphysically loaded assumptions that seem to constitute the core of a CTT33. Such assumptions, in our example, include the ones like the existence of facts, or states of affairs, that make (P) true like (a-c); and if one wants to deny the existence of (a-c) and wants to see if (P) would none the less be true, the answer seems to be no, according to a CTT. If (a-c) were not assumed to be the facts of the matter, or as the truth-makers of (P), then (P) would fail to be true in the actual world.34 In short, for (P) to be true, (a-c) must obtain in the actual world.35One might want to imagine a fictional world in which all (a-c) could be said to obtain for (P) to be true. Let’s call such a fictional world, FW. One might want to know how world FW and the actual world, let’s say, AW, would differ with respect to the correspondence theorist’s way of spelling out the truth of (P), for example. I think the correspondence theorist could point out to the similar correspondence intuitions that seem to operate in both worlds AW and FW in order for (P) to be true; but then there would immediately follow differences between these worlds with respect to ontological questions and corresponding ontological commitments that must play a role to enable us to draw distinctions between these worlds: AW and FW, in an ontologically relevant and significant ways36.Now one relevantly significant way of demarcating an actual world story from a fictional world story would help us bring up one of the central arguments for the correspondence intuition: the success argument or the causal-explanatory role of the concept of truth in our cognitive achievements. I will rely on Damnjanovic’s formulation of the success argument that is meant to capture the correspondence intuition as follows:1) If one has true beliefs about how to get what one wants, one is more likely to get what one wants.Therefore2) If one has beliefs about how to get what one wants which have the property of being true, one is more likely to get what one wants.Therefore,3) The property of being true is appealed to in a causal-explanatory generalization.Therefore,4) Truth is a causal-explanatory property.37This conclusion meshes so well with Alston’s claim that true beliefs as the central and basic goals of cognition which I take as another way of putting a causal-explanatory role of truth. To illustrate the above general success argument let’s take an example: Let’s take the USA map as accurate and reliable representation of the physical geography of the country. One needs to form true beliefs-that correspond to what is represented in the US map- in order to get to places one wants to get to (let’s say, NYC) and a person’s holding such true beliefs and intentionally acting on such true beliefs plays a causal-explanatory role in that person’s getting to those places. For example, if one wants to visit the philosopher Stephen Stich at Rutgers University in NJ, one would not get to Rutgers’ Phil Depart if one mistakenly goes to Stanford’s Phil Depart in CA!38 One’s failure to find Rutgers in CA could be explained by referring to one’s false belief about Rutgers’ being in CA, which does not correspond to the actual physical presence of Rutgers University in NJ.39What the above argument and example are meant to capture is the causal-explanatory role that truth (to be exact, “true beliefs” vs. “false beliefs” in our example) plays in our cognitive life and how such a role of truth piggybacks on the correspondence intuition. It is important to recall the centrally important features of a CTT that we have encountered before, especially, in the Fumerton quotation where the robust metaphysical assumptions are meant to capture the essence of a CTT. Consequently, we can say that such metaphysical assumptions play significant roles in the above examples and we can generalize from what we’ve been trying to say to capture the essence of the correspondence intuitions such that the metaphysical assumptions are intrinsic to the correspondence intuitions. Put another way, one can say that (the epistemological) correspondence intuitions supervene on the intrinsic metaphysical features of the correspondence theory of truth.