Neo-Confucian Moral Psychology

There will be a mini-conference on Neo-Confucian moral psychology later this week (April 8-12), at the APA Pacific Division meeting in Vancouver.  It looks very interesting, and I would love to attend but it’s too far away.  Fortunately the conference organizers have made the papers available here.

Everything Exists

According to Quine, the question that ontology asks is: “What is there?”  And the lazy but obvious answer is: “Everything.” 

Now to show my utter ignorance of logic.  I’m trying to rephrase Quine’s answer—i.e., “Everything exists”—in first order logic, but find myself stuck.  Here’s why.

On the one hand, I shouldn’t write: ∀x Exists(x).  For in first order logic, existence is not expressed by means of a predicate, but by means of existential quantification.

On the other hand, this doesn’t seem to work either: ∀x ∃x.  That doesn’t look well formed, since quantified statements have the form ∀x …x…, ∃x …x…, ∀x ∃y …x…y…, and so on.

Here’s a third option: ∀x x = x.  Or let me try: ∀x ∃y x = y.  But these are not what I wanted to say.  I want my statement to express the thought that everything exists, not the different thought that everything is identical to itself, or the thought that for anything there’s something identical to it.

So the question is, how do I state “Everything exists” in first order logic?  And while we are at it, how about also: ”Something exists”?

Do Absences Exist?

Well, do they?  Kevin Boyle gave a stimulating Grue Bag talk yesterday, which in part touched on the question whether absences, omissions and preventions can occupy the role of causes and effects in the causal nexus.  In discussion we found ourselves quantifying over absences, though peer pressure prevailed in denying their existence at the same time.  Such double-talk would have made Quine turn in his grave!

Here’s my proposal on how to admit quantification over absences with a clear conscience: paraphrase talk of absences in terms of relation-talk.  What we need is a three-place relation between: 

1. an absentee (the entity that’s absent),
2. locus₁ where it’s absent, and
3. locus₂ (that does not overlap locus₁) where it’s present.

That’s my basic proposal for explicating absence-talk in terms of relation-talk, eliminating the former in favor of the latter.  Absence-talk in counterfactual and manipulationist accounts of causation will require a more complicated modification of the basic proposal, but you get the idea.

P.S., this basic proposal is inspired by the Nyaya system of philosophy, one of the six Brahmanical systems in India.  The Nyaya philosophers admit absences into their ontology, which I find very curious.  My impression is that they take absence as a binary relation between the absentee and the locus where it’s absent.  But my further impression is that I’m probably misrepresenting and oversimplifying their account, and that a close study of the Nyaya position would be a fruitful, worthwhile endeavor.

On Comparative Philosophy

Below the fold is my personal take on comparative philosophy, written way back in 2001~2. I suppose it’s dated, even juvenile, but my view on comparative philosophy hasn’t changed much since then. Perhaps this means that I should reflect more deeply on the matter, but I prefer to think not. There is a point beyond which talking about how to do comparative philosophy loses its value, and one’s aim is better served by just doing some good comparative philosophy.

Vegetarianism 01: The Argument from Global Warming

Here’s an argument for giving up factory farmed meat products (we may call it the argument from global warming):

• Eating Vegetarian Is Taking Global Warming Personally, by Kathy Freston

Freston writes:

A U.N. report from just this past November found that a full 18 percent of global warming emissions come from raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food. That’s about 40 percent more than all the cars, trucks, airplanes, and all other forms of transport combined (13 percent). It’s also more than all the homes and offices in the world put together (8 percent).

Contractarianism as a Reductionist Program

With respect to natural and social sciences, I am a non-reductive physicalist.  I believe that biological, psychological, and social phenomena supervene on, but quite likely cannot be reduced to, physical facts.  With respect to ethics, though, I favor a reductionist approach.  I believe that morals can be reduced to biological, psychological, and social phenomena. 

To elaborate a bit, we have certain psychological abilities, namely the ability to maximize our utility by striving after what we most prefer, the ability to commit ourselves to long-term plans, and the ability to sympathize with the pains and pleasures that we ourselves do not currently feel.  I expect evolutionary game theory to explain why we have these three abilities.  More importantly for the purpose of this post, I claim that maximization, commitment, and sympathy are norm- and reason-giving faculties, which generate prudential as well as moral norms.  This is why I believe it possible to reduce morality to these psychological faculties without violating the is-ought gap.  For all I am claiming is that we can derive morality from our normative deliberations on morally neutral reasons given by these three psychological faculties.  And the best instrument of this reduction or derivation is the sort of contractarianism that Gauthier has developed.

Downward Causation III

Almost immediately after posting Downward Causation II, I had realized that my response to Objection 2 is flawed.  I will briefly discuss that here.  Then I will present my proposal for resolving the tension between downward causation and causal closure.  Namely, I will argue for the conceptual possibility of downward causation in the same way that Pascal argued for the conceptual possibility of God as a simple and yet omnipresent entity.  If God is simple in the sense of being unextended and hence indivisible, how is it conceivable that God is present throughout space at any given moment?

Downward Causation II

Continued from Downward Causation I.

Does the thought experiment show the possibility of downward causation?  Not by a long shot.  It needs to be bolstered by further considerations.  At least I hope my response to the first objection (which modifies the thought experiment to involve computers playing chess or kness in a Schroedinger’s Cattish setup) removes the worry about any question-begging appeal to the libertarian position on free will.  Let’s now move on to the second objection, which Aaron was quick to raise in his comment. 

Downward Causation I

Lately I’ve been fiddling with a thought experiment that seems to suggest the causal efficacy of higher-level properties and objects, and have been wondering how such causal efficacy may be compatible with causal closure of the physical (more exactly microphysical) domain.  Since I am gullible and prone to make mistakes I present my half-baked ideas on these matters, in search of further criticism and illumination.   

Contra Nagarjuna

Jay L. Garfield has an excellent translation and commentary of the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika (“The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way”).  And this reminds me of a problem I had while reading this book: Nagarjuna’s arguments seem to beg the question.  Below I explain why.