PEA Soup

Welcome, Alec Walen!

We are pleased to welcome Alec Walen as a contributor here at PEA Soup.  Alec is Associate Professor at Rutgers University, jointly appointed in Law, Philosophy, and Criminal Justice, and he works in both moral theory and legal theory.  Welcome aboard, Alec!

Survey says: Doug’s wrong

Well, not quite. The survey showed that about one-third of the respondents shared my intuition that I (qua subject of the example) have no reason to purchase ITEM and that about two-thirds of respondents have the contrary intuition that I do have a reason to purchase ITEM. This doesn’t show that I’m wrong, but it does show that my intuition is not widely shared.

Now, here’s why this is important. In his excellent paper “Parfit’s Case against Subjectivism,” David Sobel argues that subjectivists – those who think that an agent’s reasons for action are all ultimately determined by the contingent pro and con attitudes that she would have under some procedurally specified conditions – can accept Parfit’s claim that we have current reasons to do what will prevent us from suffering future agony regardless of whether or not we have any current pro attitudes towards our avoiding future agony. Sobel argues that subjectivists will claim that anyone who will be in future agony will, in the future, necessarily have a future desire (when in agony) to get out of agony and so will, when in agony, have a reason to get out of agony. And he argues that, by appealing to this fact and what he calls the Reasons Transfer Principle, the subjectivist can hold not only that anyone who will be in future agony will have a future reason to get out of agony, but also that those who can avoid future agony have a present reason to avoid future agony. According to Sobel, the Reasons Transfer Principle (RTP) says: “If one will later have a reason to get O, then one now has a reason to facilitate the later getting of O.”

Monads announcement

If you like music, or philosophy, or philosophy-themed music, or giving away money, then you might be interested in this exciting announcement from the philosophy supergroup The 21st Century Monads!  Please be advised that some moral theories entail that you are morally required to purchase Monads music.

Avoiding Future Agony: Survey Says

I disagree with one of my fellow PEA Brains about something. Part of what our disagreement hinges upon is our differing intuitions about the following sort of case. Although it's clear that we have differing intuitions about this case, it's not clear whose intuitions are more widely shared. Of course, I don't think that because an intuition is widely shared that means that it must be true, but I do think how widely an intuition is shared among fellow philosophers does affect how persuasive certain arguments that rely on those intuitions will be. So here's a survey that tests people's intuitions.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QGF6XDD

If you have the time, please take the survey. In a few days (after there have been several responses), I'll explain what the disagreement is and what of philosophical interests hangs on it. I post below the fold the set up for the survey in case people want to ask questions about it.

Conceptual Role Semantics and Reference

I’ve been reading David Enoch’s great Taking Morality Seriously. Enoch defends Robust Realism according to which there are judgment-independent non-natural (causally inert) normative properties. One of the objections to Robust Realism briefly discussed in the book is the problem of semantic access. Enoch is explicitly very modest when he responds to this objection (he merely explains how a response might go). I still want to raise a question about this response as I think that we are getting here into very deep and interesting questions about normative concepts and properties.

Ethics Discussions at PEA Soup: John Gardner and François Tanguay-Renaud's "Desert and Avoidability in Self-Defense" and Jeff McMahan's "Response," with commentary by Victor Tadros

We are pleased to present the latest installment of our partnership with Ethics, in which we host a discussion on one, or in this case more than one, article from each issue of the journal.  The articles selected from Volume 122, issue 1, are John Gardner and François Tanguay-Renaud's "Desert and Avoidability in Self-Defense" and Jeff McMahan's "Duty, Obedience, Desert, and Proportionality in War: A Response" (particularly section IV).  We are very grateful that Victor Tadros has agreed to provide the critical précis, which appears below the fold.

Ethics Discussions at PEA Soup: John Gardner and François Tanguay-Renaud's "Desert and Avoidability in Self-Defense" and Jeff McMahan's "Response," with commentary by Victor Tadros

(Moving to the front from Dec. 10)

We are pleased to announce the next installment in our collaboration with Ethics, where we host a discussion of one article from each issue of the journal, and the journal makes a copy of that article freely accessible (for a limited time) to our participants. 

Because the current issue (Volume 122, issue 1) features a symposium on Jeff McMahan's Killing in War, this time around we are focusing on two articles, John Gardner and François Tanguay-Renaud's "Desert and Avoidability in Self-Defense" and McMahan's reply.  Ethics has generously agreed to provide open access to both articles, which are now available here.  We are also pleased that our own Victor Tadros will provide a précis of the article to kick off the discussion.  Professor Tadros'  précis will appear, and discussion of the article will begin, Wednesday, January 4, 2012.

Final CFA: SLACRR (St Louis), Dec 31

This is the final call for abstracts for the next St. Louis Conference on Reasons and Rationality, meeting May 20-22, 2012 in the Moonrise Hotel.  Jonathan Dancy will be the keynote speaker. Abstracts are due December 31, 2011. 

St. Louis Annual Conference on Reasons and Rationality (SLACRR) provides a forum for new work on practical and theoretical reason, broadly construed. Please submit an abstract of 750-1500 words by December 31, 2011 to SLACRR (at) gmail.com. In writing your abstract, please bear in mind that full papers should suitable for a 30 minute presentation.

For more information, see http://www.umsl.edu/~slacrr/

Hybrid Theory in Edinburgh

Guy Fletcher and Mike Ridge are organising a conference on hybrid theories in metaethics in Edinburgh this summer from 2nd of July to 4th of July. As you all know, these are views according to which telling a complete story of normative judgments requires talking about both beliefs and desire-like attitudes. The line-up is incredible: Dorit Bar-On (UNC-Chapel Hill), Stephen Barker (Nottingham), Dan Boisvert (UNC-Charlotte), Matthew Chrisman (Edinburgh), David Copp (UC-Davis), John Erikkson (Gothenberg), Steve Finlay (USC), Guy Fletcher (Edinburgh), Ryan Hay (Occidential College), Jennifer Hornsby (Birkbeck), Mike Ridge (Edinburgh), Mark Schroeder (USC), Laura Schroeter (Melbourne), Francois Schroeter (Melbourne), and Jon Tresan (UNC-Chapel Hill). Phhew! More information about the conference HERE. Just after the conference, there's also Joint Session and BSET in Stirling (see HERE and HERE).

The Smoker: A Proposal

The "smoker" has been getting a lot of bad press and deservedly so. See here for some of the relevant links. I have a proposal. Either members of the interview teams should not attend the reception/"smoker" or they should refuse to talk to prospective job candidates during the reception. They should, then, let all their interviewees know that they will not be attending (or talking to them during) the reception. This is what I would propose to my department if we were conducting APA interviews.

I take it that there is no point in getting rid of the reception. What's problematic is not the reception itself; rather, it's that many schools treat the reception/"smoker" as an extended part of the interview process. We should put an end to that, and it seems that my proposal would do that. What do others think?