For the material from the A section of the course, see here.

For the material from the B section of the course, see here.

For the material from the C section of the course, see here.

Assignment D
due by email Sun Dec 10th midnight (when Monday starts)
This assignment covers course material from Nov 14th to Dec 5th.
It is governed by this final CD Guide, with one exception:
Although probability is higher-ranked than plainness (& below),
you don't have to first establish a tie on probability to drop to plainness.
So you can delay digesting the material on probability, if you need more time.
Again, you can pick any topic you wish for Assignment D.
 

Assignment E
due by email Wed Dec 20th noon
(Since we'll be grading down to the wire,
late assignments risk incomplete grades
which we may or may not be able to expunge.)
The topic is more restricted than before.
It should be drawn from the E1/E2 readings below
or from the lectures and sections on or after Dec 5th.
Uses the same Guide as D, with the same
optional exemption for probability rules.
If you need to do extra CDs due to missing class on or after Dec 5th,
they will count toward E and should follow the E rule
(unless--for Ivan's sections--you have already
made up for the miss in your D assignment).

Assignment F
due by email Fri Dec 22nd noon
(Since we'll be grading down to the wire,
late assignments risk incomplete grades
which we may or may not be able to expunge.)
The topic--not just the method--should be drawn
from the material of the course,
e.g., it is not enough to apply the methods
to some topic from another field
or from another subfield of philosophy.
Beyond that, though, the topic can draw from any part
of the course, unlike Assignment E.
(Links to older course material are near top of this page.)
Uses the same Guide as D, with the same
optional exemption for probability rules.
Everyone should do exactly one CD here,
because there was no F period of the course to miss.

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Happy Afternoon Siesta Theater Notes

Nov 14   Skepticism about the past/memory

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Nov 16   Skepticism about the external world/perception

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Nov 21   Formalist paradoxes

This first slide belongs with the previous one from Nov 16.  Remember also the excellent objection raised by Front-Row Joe, which could go something like this: Suppose if you pass your body through the baggage scanner conveyor belt at the airport, it wipes out all your beliefs. (Or in another version: it "resets" your mind to Renee's "scratch" starting point, preserving e.g. some logical beliefs and some beliefs about your own mind.) If plainness is such a great target for beliefs, why wouldn't it require putting yourself through the brain wipe?

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Nov 28   Explanationism

In class, Front-Row Alex proposed a way for ethical hypotheses to explain things. E.g., if we suppose
   (1) certain human beings are bad,
then the ethical hypothesis
   (2) random killing is bad
would explain the nonethical (purely ordinarily descriptive, perceptually-based) data
   (3) there is random killing.
I responded not-so-well to this in class. I said since that since (1) is itself ethical, if we treat this as data (a supposition), then our overall data (1)+(3) would be partly ethical rather than purely nonethical. So even if (2) explains (1)+(3), this wouldn't be a rational way of getting from purely nonethical data to ethical hypotheses. But Alex's point is better understood as being that only (3) is data--purely nonethical data--and could be given an ethical explanation using (1)+(2).

I would then have to admit that ethical hypotheses--such as (1)+(2)--do give candidate explanations of purely nonethical data--such as (3). But I would say that such an ethical hypothesis never outscores its easily available rivals. I would revise the slide a little to say that ethical principles don't best explain anything (nonethical). The easiest way to see this is to compare (1)+(2) with this rival explanation of (3):
   (1*) certain human beings are good,
   (2*) random killing is good
I claim (1*)+(2*) would be just as good an explanation of (3) as (1)+(2). And in general, if you try any set of ethical explanations of purely nonethical data, you can easily generate a just-as-good rival by swapping "good" and 'bad", "right" and "wrong", etc.

As a last resort, someone who already believes (2) could try to invoke conservatism to support (2) over (2*). In that case I would emphasize that an ideal thinker (e.g., Renee) wouldn't start with (2) as a belief, and I would use variability (the expedience boost from giving new theories a genuine try) to counter conservatism.

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Nov 30   Probability

The next three slides appeared on Dec 5th, but fit better with the Nov 30th slides above.

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Dec 5 Lecture   Why is there something concrete? (Theistic answers)

We also covered the first two slides listed under Dec 7 below.

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Dec 5 Section   Why are there laws that support intelligent life? (Theistic answers)

The last three slides listed at Nov 30 above were covered on this day.

The link above is Quentin Smith, Anthropic Coincidences, Evil and the Disconfirmation of Theism

The link above is Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship”

The link above is Big-Bang-Cosmological Argument Against God’s Existence

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Dec 7 Lecture   Why is there something concrete? (Possible World Realism)

The first two slides below were covered in Dec 5 lecture.

The next one completes the previous one.

We also covered the first four slides listed under Dec 12 section below.

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Dec 12 Section   Why are there laws that support intelligent life? (Anthropic answers)

The first four slides below were covered in Dec 7 lecture.

The link above is Terry Bisson, "They’re Made Out of Meat"

The link above is a debate between Ed Curley and William Craig.

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Dec 12 Lecture   Why is there something concrete? (Creative Ethical Facts)

I may have been mistaken in thinking we had already discussed the infant torture case.
I thought I had described it as an alleged a priori certainty.
But maybe I only talked about it in my section. Here is the idea:

The following ethical claim might seem certain (=obviously necessary):
“torturing infants to death just for fun is morally impermissible” (Judith Thomson, The Realm of Rights, 15-21).

But consider this possibility (Robert Nozick, Invariances, p. 349):
“Consider the world where unfortunately adults are blocked from any source of pleasure
other than that they find in torturing infants.
The infants later forget the torture and are not permanently harmed.
Each adult in the society has been tortured as an infant, and each thinks it is better to allow this torture,
giving the adults some modicum of pleasure in their lives,
even though this endorses the fact that they themselves were tortured as infants.
(In that world, only those adults who have themselves been tortured are allowed to torture infants.
The guardians of infants, who have their best interests at heart, might consent to their being tortured
as infants in order to acquire for them the right to do such torturing later.)
It seems plausible that one could elaborate this—admittedly extremely gruesome—story
so that in that possible world, torturing infants for fun would be morally permissible.
But torturing them to death? The process of torture might hold some small risk of death—
the guardians consent to this risk—and when it eventuates, the infant permissibly has been tortured
(as it unfortunately turned out) to death, for fun.

Fundamental facts in our world make it wrong ever to torture infants:
we do have other sources of pleasure, etc.
But these fundamental facts do not hold in all possible worlds,
and so neither does our reaction or the moral principle that is based upon these facts.”
 

Also, while I'm at it, here is the part of the old slide in which I tried to show how to apply plainness to ethics:
Evaluations: Maybe ethical principles don’t explain anything (much),
so maybe universal/fair principles like “treat everybody nice” (or “… mean”) don’t explain any more than
egoism/racism/patriotism/sexism/speciesism/blahism,
but the latter are more complex, so (other things being equal) irrational.
Just as irrational, and for the same reason, as believing little invisible elves make the wind …
more complex than an alternative without explaining/unifying more premises.
So inference to the best belief may justify a better way to do ethics than reflective equilibrium from (yechh) ethical intuitions.
 

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