New APPS

Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Mostly Philosophy.

recent posts

about

    • “I should!”

      I've been watching a few episodes of the BBC drama series "Foyle's War."   Its a decent show, but what interests me right now is just an expression that the main character, Christopher Foyle, often uses that I had never heard before.   It works like this:  someone will ask him if he thinks that they ought to ____, or if he wants them to ____, and he replies "I should!"

      For example "Do you want me ask all the jewelery stores in town if they've seen this necklace before?"; "I should!"  or "Do you think I should check the oil in my car?"; "I should!".

      Americans would, in a similar situation say "I would," which is short for, I take it, "If I were you I would do that."    How to get from one expression to the other is obvious:  you drop the "If I were you," and you drop the _proverb_ "do that."  "Do that," is a proverb because its anaphoric for the verb from the previous sentence, e.g. "I would do that" is anaphoric for "I would ask all the jewelry stores in town."  

      So, first question:  is this use of "I should," still idiomatic in British English?  Or have y'all degenerated to "I would" too?    

      I say "degenerated" because it's pretty clear that what's being asserted is not just a subjunctive conditional–what I _would_ do if I were you–but a subjunctive conditional about a normative claim–what normative facts would obtain if I were you.

      So the second question is, what is Foyle's "I should" actually short for.  I take it is something like:

      "If I were you, it would be the case that I should call all the jewelry stores."  (1)

      But notice that you can't even express that without the awkward "it would be the case that."      If you try to say "I would should do that," it becomes unparsable and horribly awkward.   "Should" doesn't like being embedded in a separate modal, and in fact even in (1) the brain recoils at the embedding of the "should" inside the "would."    I don't think our brains are at all comfortable with the very form of the construction.

      And yet, when Foyle says "_I_ should!"  with the right emphasis on "<b>I</b>" we have no problem understanding what he means, not even if we are Americans who have never heard that idiom before.

      I have some ideas about what this kind of example shows about language but they are fairly heretical, so I would hold off on expressing them for now. "_You_ should."

    • Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy – Final draft

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      I finally have a complete version of my paper 'Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy', which I sent yesterday to the editors of the volume where it will appear: Beyond the Analytic-Continental Divide: Pluralist Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century (edited by J. Bell, A. Cutrofello, and P.M. Livingston; in the series Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy).

      As some readers may recall, parts of the paper were posted as blog posts a few months ago:  Part I is here; Part II.1 is here; Part II.2 is here; Part II.3 is here; Part II.4 is here; Part III.1 is here; a tentative abstract of 2 years ago, detailing the motivation for the project, is here. The final version has two parts that I did not post as blog posts: III.2 Genealogy as explanatory, and III.3 The genetic fallacy. (The numbering in the final version is slightly different.)

      I am deeply grateful for the wonderful feedback I received from readers along the way (also in the form of comments and discussions over at Facebook). I could never have written this paper if it wasn't for all this help, given that much of the material falls outside the scope of my immediate expertise. So, again, thanks all!

      (And now, on to start working on a new paper, on the definition of the syllogism in Aristotle, Ockham and Buridan. In fact, it will be an application of the conceptual genealogy method, so it all ties together in the end.)

    • New hires in philosophy

      Reminder (reposting):

      PhilJobs is collecting news about new hires in philosophy here:  http://philjobs.org/appointments. Don't be shy — if you have good news to share (and we all wish there were more good news to share, i.e., more jobs to go around) please share it! If sharing your good news is not enough of a motivation, then please share it because it allows us to better track what's going on in the profession.

    • Why be a feminist?

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Today is International Women’s Day, so here is a short post on what it means to be a feminist to me, to mark the date. Recently, a (male) friend asked me: “Why do you describe yourself as a ‘feminist’, and not as an ‘equalist’”? If feminism is about equality between women and men, why focus on the female side of the equation only? This question is of course related to the still somewhat widespread view that feminism is at heart a sexist doctrine: to promote the rights and wellbeing of women at the expense of the rights and wellbeing of men. Admittedly, the idea that it’s a zero-sum game is reminiscent of so-called second-wave feminism, in particular given the influence of Marxist ideas of class war. However, there is a wide range of alternative versions of feminism that focus on the rights and wellbeing of both men and women (as well as of those who do not identify as either), and move away from the zero-sum picture.

      The much-watched TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘We should all be feminists’ (bits of which were sampled in Beyoncé’s ‘Flawless’), offers precisely one such version, which I personally find very appealing. (After recently reading Americanah, I’ve been nurturing a crush on this woman; she is truly amazing.) The talk is worth watching in its entirety (also, it’s very funny!), and while she describes a number of situations that might be viewed as specific to their originating contexts (Nigeria in particular), the gist of it is entirely universal. It is towards the very end that Adichie provides her preferred definition of a feminist:

      A feminist is a man or a woman* who says: yes, there is a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it. We must do better.

      (more…)

    • Healthcare, Statutory Interpretation, and Court Legitimacy

      By Gordon Hull

      The Affordable Care Act was in the Supreme Court again today, this time for oral argument in King v. Burwell.  For those who don’t follow the ACA’s legal woes, the challenge in Burwell is this: under the ACA, states are supposed to establish exchanges where citizens can purchase healthcare on the individual market.  For states that don’t want to run their own exchanges, the federal government steps up and does it for them.  Healthcare is expensive, and so the federal government heavily subsidizes the premiums (on a sliding scale) for those in the middle class.  However, buried in the part of the law to do with tax code, the statute says that subsidies are available for those purchasing from an exchange “established by the state.”  The challenge is basically a big, fat gotcha! moment. If you say you’ll pay me back for “dinner,” and I show up with pizza and beer, then I can plausibly expect you to pay me back for both.  On the other hand, if you say that you will pay me back for buying you a pizza, then I should understand that you don’t have to pay me back for beer.  By the same reasoning, if the law says subsidies flow to those whose exchanges are established by “the state,” then those subsidies are not available to those whose exchanges are established by “the federal government.” Gotcha!

      (more…)

    • Relativisim, Revolutionary Fictionalism, Moral Facts and #TheDress

      By: Leigh M. Johnson

      If you haven't already, you should read yesterday's Stone article in the NYT by Justin McBrayer entitled "Why Our Children Don't Believe There Are Moral Facts." There, McBrayer bemoans the ubiquity of a certain configuration of the difference between "fact" and "opinion" assumed in most pre-college educational instruction (and, not insignificantly, endorsed by the Common Core curriculum). The basic presumption is that all value claims– those that involve judgments of good and bad, right and wrong, better and worse– are by definition "opinions" because they refer to what one "believes," in contradistinction to "facts," which are provable or disprovable, i.e., True or False.  The consequence of this sort of instruction, McBrayer argues, is that our students come to us (post-secondary educators) not believing in moral facts, predisposed to reject moral realism out of hand. Though I may not be as quick to embrace the hard version of moral realism that McBrayer seems to advocate, I am deeply sympathetic with his concern.  In my experience, students tend to be (what I have dubbed elsewhere on my own blog) "lazy relativists." It isn't the case, I find, that students do not believe their moral judgments are true–far from it, in fact– but rather that they've been trained to concede that the truth of value judgments, qua "beliefs," is not demonstrable or provable.  What is worse, in my view, they've also been socially- and institutionally-conditioned to think that even attempting to demonstrate/prove/argue that their moral judgments are True– and, correspondingly, that the opposite of their judgments are False– is trés gauche at best and, at worst, unforgivably impolitic.

      (more…)

    • Vibrators as scaffolding

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      A few days ago the link to an interesting piece popped up in my Facebook newsfeed: ‘Three reasons why every woman should use a vibrator’, by Emily Nagoski. I wholeheartedly agree with the main claim, but what makes the piece particularly interesting for philosophers at large is a reference to Andy Clark and the extended mind framework:

      Some women feel an initial resistance to the idea of using a vibrator because it feels like they “should” be able to have an orgasm without one. But there is no “should” in sex. There’s just what feels good. Philosopher Andy Clark (who’s the kind of philosopher who would probably not be surprised to find himself named-dropped in an article about vibrators) calls it “scaffolding,” or “augmentations which allow us to achieve some goal which would otherwise be beyond us.” Using paper and pencil to solve a math equation is scaffolding. So is using a vibrator to experience orgasm.

      This is an intriguing suggestion, which deserves to be further explored. (As some readers may recall, I am always happy to find ways to bring together some of my philosophical interests with issues pertaining to sexuality – recall this post on deductive reasoning and the evolution of female orgasm.) Within the extended mind literature, the phenomena discussed as being given a ‘boost’ through the use of bits and pieces of the environment are typically what we could describe as quintessentially cognitive phenomena: calculations, finding your way to the MoMA etc. But why should the kind of scaffolding afforded by external devices and parts of the environment not affect other aspects of human existence, such as sexuality? Very clearly, they can, and do. (Relatedly, there is also some ongoing discussion on the ethics of neuroenhancement for a variety of emotional phenomena.)

      (more…)

    • Of Therapy And Personal And Academic Anxieties

      By: Samir Chopra

      Reading some of the discussion sparked by Peter Railton's Dewey Lecture has prompted me to write this post.

      (more…)

    • Net Neutrality!

      The FCC decided today to treat the Internet as a public utility and to (therefore) enforce net neutrality.  This means that ISP’s won’t be able to favor one form of content over another by offering (for example) higher transmission rates for a fee.  It also means that ISP’s can’t interfere with the transmission of content they don’t like (say, by a competitor).  Assuming it holds up in court (and the major telecom companies are prepared to spend a lot of money trying to get it overturned), this is a big deal.

      (more…)

    • Good News from Macedonia

      Readers may recall that last December we co-hosted an open letter in opposition to a draconian law that had been instituted in Macedonia, substantially abridging the autonomy the country's universities (more info here).  The letter ended up with more than 100 signatures, of which more than 50 came through New APPS. 

      A little while ago, I received an email update about the situation from Katerina Kolozova, Professor of Philosophy, Gender Studies and Sociology at University American College-Skopje.  The news is good: the law has been suspended and, negotiations have begun between the government and the 'Student Plenums' that have been organizing against the law.  

      Professor Kolozova writes:  

      Dear friends, Thank you so much for supporting us! And it hasn't been in vain. The plenums have won today: the law on higher education against which we have protested for months, against which we have been occupying universities, writing legal analyses we had no place to present except the social media, combating the Government propaganda through arguments presented on our blogs, Twitter and Facebook, the law which practically killed the university autonomy has been abolished. The Parliament voted a three year moratorium two weeks ago, and today the negotiations between the ministries and the plenums kicked off based on a concept proposed by the Plenums. 

      Thank you again for your signatures of support. They helped incredibly! 
      I would like to congratulate all the organizers, especially those on the ground who have worked for months to prevent this law from taking effect, but also those who have been working internationally to support them. And I would like to echo Professor Kolozova's thanks to all who signed on here and elsewhere in support of the campaign. 
       
      Today is a good day.