I’m not even sure I’ll put up any papers I write until I’ve submitted them for publication. Anyone else in a similar situation have thoughts on works in progress online?

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Alexander Pruss suggests a thought experiment about language, in which you have a curious lisp, causing you to sound like you’re speaking Hittite. Thus, the question, What Language Am I Speaking?

Tom Kow explains why he thinks ” Intentionality is an artifact of the homuncular picture of thinking as talking to yourself” in a post about why Frege is wrong.  (Against Intentionality)

At Brains, Gualtero Piccinini argues that “cognition is computation plus X, where X is what is needed, in addition to computation, to account for P(s)”, where P(s) are things like ” mathematical insight, intentionality/understanding, consciousness, embodiment, and embeddedness.” The full content of the post is really in the paper that he’s posted–so normally I wouldn’t have included the post, but due to a small collection of submissions, it’s in. (The Resilience of Computationalism)

At Enigmania, we have a discussion of Richard’s Paradox,a set-theoretical paradox that worried Gödel, and also bothers Enigman greatly.

Finally, at Philosophy, et cetera, Richard argues that moral relativism is incoherent (Reflecting on Relativism)

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Also, the Philosopher’s Carnival is here on Monday, so get your submissions in!

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I won’t say that Maher’s recent docu-flick is atrocious, but I did have some problems with it. Since I don’t have the time for a full review, below are a few bullet-point complaints and compliments for the film. If you want to skip all that, here’s the upshot: go see the movie if you a) are a big Bill Maher fan b) are an atheist or agnostic and want some entertainment and fuel for your fire c) want the atheist equivalent of Expelled.

That last comment is going to get me in trouble, so here’s my huge caveat: at least Religulous has an overarching legitimate point, in contrast to the dubious conspiracy theory of Expelled. That said, in ascending order from minor quibbles to the major (with perhaps some positive stuff in between) here goes my review-let:

• If you’re going to quote a book of the Bible, spell it right (”Revelation” is not plural).
• The evidence for Jesus’ existence is not doubted even by the most secular scholar; it’s pretty much equivalent to the evidence we have for Plato’s existence.
• That said, there are great questions to ask about what we know about the historical Jesus. Maher babbled too much about Jesus’ existence to go there, however.
• Interrupting people you interview makes you look like a tool.
• Accusing an “ex-gay” of having a hard-on when you hug also makes you look like a tool.
• Standing behind a pulpit on a platform while you’re having a “conversation” doesn’t encourage discussion, but makes you look (again) like an arrogant tool.
• That said, there is a sense in which if you let the religious viewpoint have dominance in an interview, they will quickly make you defend yourself rather than you get your questions answered.
• Connected with interrupting is the problem of quick cuts and splices. We know that’s what documentaries do, but making it a little less obvious could help your interlocutor hoist herself with her own petard.
• While I know you couldn’t get the Pope, Billy Graham, etc. to talk to you, Bill, still, what’s up with interviewing the marijuana cult in the Netherlands? How does that help your general point?
• That said, the piece in London at Trafalgar Square where Maher is dressed as a crazy guy and spouting Scientology babble is classic.
• Talking to Ken Ham and the Creationist Museum was a great idea, but what’s with the Catholic astronomer? Doesn’t his rational presentation kind of undercut your presentation of “Moderate religious people are also at fault?” What are you going to do with that?
• Similarly, presenting Muslims as primarily violent, terrorist misogynists is, while, popular, not really a fair description of the varieties of Islamic communities in the world. Back to the problem of moderates–why didn’t you let the gay Muslims talk? Did you think to talk to Irshad Manji for a liberal, queer-friendly, Muslim yet historically informed viewpoint?

I could go on, but I won’t. Maher starts and ends the film at Megiddo, the site of the purported last battle in the book of Revelation (singular!). Whether that is understood metaphorically or analogically, even in John’s own day, isn’t really brought up by Maher, which isn’t surprising. It’s much easier to splice together images of nuclear explosions, chanting Muslims, crazy Phelpsians and say, “Watch out for the crazies!” (Oh, and what’s with the Andrew Newberg cameo? He’s also taken out of context, entirely, since Newberg is pretty sympathetic to religious experience as being in some way veridical).

That said, I do, obviously, agree with Maher in a lot of ways. I think religious belief is probably a function, in some ways we don’t yet fully understand, of evolutionary modules that are maladapted to the modern world. We see patterns and interpret events causally and personally–to our detriment (Maher interviewed a former Jew turned Christian who told stories of coincidences he interpreted as miracles). However, to let politics and rabid nationalism (arguably a kind of religious impulse) off the hook, as Maher does in a few hand-waving spots, is naive.

Personally, this film was jarring in another way: a family I knew from a former church shows up being interviewed by Maher at the Holy Land Experience. They’re Reformed, so I was surpsied they’d be at a place usually construed as breaking the Fourth Commandment by its portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion (this, by the way, is one of the more disturbing and successful parts of the film, as overweight, conservatively dressed Christians applaud during Jesus’ bloody walk to the cross). Knowing them as I do, I’m sure their responses to Maher were cut and presented out of context. It’s unfortunate, because I think presenting them in full would make their replies fall flat on their own merit.

Here is where I conclude and explain my comparison to Expelled. Although I think Maher has legitimate points about the dangers of rabid fundamentalist fideism (generally connected with rabid nationalism, I’d add), he makes enough errors that refuting his claims will be easy. His approval of an analogy of the Trinity which is heretical (Modalism) shows that he just doesn’t know enough theology to spar with his opponents. I’m betting that Christian websites already do, or soon will have, “answer sheets” to the film which correct Maher’s small mistakes, while neglecting the overarching problem of how religious belief is justified and how it is implicated in the world’s atrocities.

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Yes, there are the injunctions about non-violence and avoiding harm. Still, when faced with a particular species, whose days seem to be numbered, regardless of any effort humans can muster, could a Buddhist response be to let the being slip into extinction and not to induce suffering by keeping a few representative beings cooped up in zoos? While this could easily be twisted into an incitement to apathy, the horror of extinction seems to incite clinging.

Any thoughts?

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• Maxim of Quality
• Maxim of Quantity
• Maxim of Relation
• Maxim of Manner

*I recognize that technically, Palin wasn’t making conversational implicatures, but still, given that Grice proposed these as the rational underpinnings of communication, the fact that she really violated/stretched all of them is interesting…

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Through reading Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, I’ve become interested in the discussion of giving reasons and providing causes when justifying and/or explaining action (two different things, of course). Donald Davidson’s causal theory of action, in which reasons are causes under a different description, was a response to the neo-Wittgensteinian view, as I understand. In the Wittgensteinian approach, we interpret behavior against a socio-linguistic background. We’re not giving causes under another description when we provide reasons, and talking about mental states as causal isn’t part of Wittgenstein’s shtick. In fact, he studiously avoids this talk. (There’s a question of disentangling the epistemic claims from the ontological ones in this debate–and in the PI, this is tough, since even finding a *claim* is tricky business.)

While I find myself attracted to Davidson’s view, I am also reading this discussion against the background of Nagarjuna, who might have said, had he been asked, that the ontological monism of Davidson is misguided (even while perhaps endorsing the view that psychological descriptions can’t be reducible to physical-causal ones). If causal powers are problematic for Nagarjuna because of looming regress, what does that entail for our rational conversation about actions and giving reasons? That is, for any cause I cite as an explanation, I must then provide another cause B to explain cause A. To stop the regress requires an uncaused-cause, or a self-caused cause, or a cause caused by both self and another cause–the general form of Nagarjuna’s objections to causation as reified phenomena.

Another question I’m finding interesting has to do with philosophy of language. There are, of course, ontological questions crowding their way in there, too, but basically the upshot is: what relationship holds between “natural kind” terms and the world? Is there a way to recognize the deep implications of human social concerns in how we “carve” the world without lapsing into an incoherent nominalism? Again, Nagarjuna seems promising, but with his being appropriated by Graham Priest (who many would charge with incoherence at crucial points), I’m wary.

Right now, I’m working through a few sources on Nagarjuna, along with some Tyler Burge, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson–along with reading Wittgenstein, some classics of philosophy of language (Russell, Frege, Grice)–and dipping into some discussion of comparative projects.

The questions I have continue to circle around connected areas, certainly the LEMMings aspect of analytic philosophy, and in particular problems about causation and language, content of thought and rationality in general. Once I have something more interesting to say about these topics, I hope to post. And I’m debating turning my del.icio.us auto-blogger back on, since my effort at a “lighter” blogging schedule is obviously not going to work!

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Informal Fallacy Bingo!

You and your friends can download this free PDF and play bingo during tonight’s debates. Just put an “X” over the spot where the speaker commits one of these errors. For advanced players, confident in their ability to spot fallacies regardless of their cognitive state, informal fallacy bingo can double as a drinking game.

(The third page is for you to record fallacies in order to confirm your win. I really should have provided more than one page for this task.)

Look for the Vice Presidential version in time for the Palin-Biden debate. It will, of course, have more squares available to you.

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