In a recent column, Ellen Goodman writes about the increasingly common practice of hymenoplasty—a medical procedure to replace the hymens of women who are no longer virgins.  The justification for the procedure is that it potentially protects women living in cultures that consider bridal virginity to be mandatory for the sake of honor and decency from the sort of consequences that these women would suffer if their would-be grooms and families ever discovered that they hadn’t waited until marriage to have sex.

In this post I’m particularly interested in a comment that Ms. Goodman includes in her column from a representative of the French gynecological association (France being a country where these procedures are becoming increasingly common).  Even if we take for granted that the zealous insistence on female (but usually not male) virginity at the time of marriage is an outdated and wrongheaded view, it’s still not clear to me that the doctors who perform hymenoplasty operations are doing anything wrong. (more…)

Mark Johnston thinks that there is a difference between a cloud and the molecules that constitute the cloud.  He thinks that there is a difference between an F and its F-shaped constituting matter.  For those who think that there is a difference, what could it be?  Johnston, as I read him, doesn’t feel a need to give an answer, and he thinks its an error to try to give an answer.  He writes that it is

the error of supposing that our practice of distinguishing Fs and their constituting matter and counting accordingly could only be justified if the distinction is secured by the independent metaphysics of the matter (Material Constitution, p. 58)

While Johnston speaks disparagingly of those who embrace this error, I still don’t understand why it’s an error.  The best I could make of Johnston’s take on how to justify the difference between an F and the F-shaped matter that constitutes it is that we talk in our ordinary language in such a way that it is useful to think that Fs and their F-shaped matters that constitute them are different.  But that doesn’t tell me at all how an F and its F-shaped matter are different.  It doesn’t tell me how the statue Goliath and the lump of clay that composes him is different.  Any help?

Are the following properties different?

1) the property being green

2) the property being green and being such that 1+1=2.

I’ve been thinking about whether good or bad motives can make a difference to the rightness or wrongness of an action.  Consider the following two cases:

Suppose that Fred is menacingly waving a gun in the air and threatening to kill people, and you and he both have the false belief that his gun is loaded.  You shoot and kill him; your motive is to stop a threat.  Intuitively, this was morally permissible.

But suppose you knew that the gun was not loaded and only he believed it was loaded.  You shoot and kill him.  Fred is a weakling whom you could have walked up to and knock out with your fist.  Your motive is to kill him.  Intuitively, your action was morally wrong.

(These cases were motivated by an example from Shelly Kagan (1998), Normative Ethics, p. 93).  So it seems that the motive is what makes the difference to the rightness or wrongness of the action in these cases.  Yeah?

Fantl and McGrath use a case like the following.  It matters very little to Smith whether a train will make various stops.  Smith asks a man he’s been conversing with if the train will make the various stops.  Casually, the man says “yep, the upcoming train makes those stops; I just checked the ticket.”  The man has no indicators which make him look unreliable.  Supposing it’s true that the train will make the stops and Smith believes this, we are inclined to say that Smith knows that the train will make various stops. (more…)

In Knowledge and Practical Interests, Jason Stanley asks us to consider the following case, which he calls ‘Ignorant High Stakes’ (IHS):

Hannah and her wife Sarah are driving home on a Friday afternoon.  They plan to stop at the bank on the way home to deposit their paychecks.  Since they have an impending bill coming due, and very little in their account, it is very important that they deposit their paychecks by Saturday.  But neither Hannah nor Sarah is aware of the impending bill, nor of the paucity of available funds.  Looking at the lines, Hannah says to Sarah, ‘I know the bank will be open tomorrow, since I was there just two weeks ago on Saturday morning.  So we can deposit our paychecks tomorrow morning.’ (p. 5)

Stanley then writes that “our reaction is that Hannah’s utterance of ‘I know the bank will be open tomorrow’ is false”.

In a previous post (http://philosophy.missouri.edu/show-me/?p=328#comments), I asked people’s intuitions about this case.  Many said that they don’t have Stanley’s intuition, although one person did.

But what if we revised IHS so that Hannah ought to know that there are high stakes.  Suppose Hannah had been reminded of hte bill by the landlady or suppose she knew that she should write accounts of her bills in her planner, but had neglected to do so.  Call this revision of the case ‘Culpably Ignorant High Stakes’ (CIHS).

Are people still inclined to think that Hannah knows in CIHS?  I really could use people’s intuitions on this matter, even if you don’t focus on epistemology.

Peter Markie’s review (Phil. Quarterly 58, July 2008) of Bergmann’s book Justification Without Awareness is out.  It’s a very nice and clear review, and it’s fun to see some of the discussion from our reading group on Bergmann’s book (two summers ago) come to fruition in this publication.

I want to consider one of Markie’s objections to Bergmann’s arguments.  (more…)

I’m wondering about the following argument given by Plantinga:

the truth of p and q is not sufficient for the truth of the counterfactual if p then q.  This is a point on which the usual (Lewisian, Stalnakerian) semantics for counterfactuals is inadequate.  Consider quantum effects: perhaps in fact the photon went through the right slit rather than the left; that is not enough to entail that if it had gone through either slit, it would have gone through the right.  I toss the die; it comes up 5.  That is not sufficient to entail that if I had tossed the die, it would have come up 5.  The truth of a counterfactual requires not just that p and -q be false in fact; it is also necessary that even if things had been moderately different, it still wouldn’t have been the case that p and -q.  To put it in familiar semantical terms, the counterfactual is true only if there is no sufficiently close possible world in which p is true but q is not.  How close is sufficiently close?  That is of course a question without an answer; counterfactuals are in this way quite properly vague. (Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, pp. 328-329)

I remember reading this passage a few years ago and being convinced, but for some reason, when I read it now, it doesn’t strike me as true.  It seems that the truth of p and q is sufficient for the truth of if p were true, then q would be true, and Plantinga’s counterexamples don’t seem intuitive to me.  Any thoughts?

Suppose I believe that the widgets I see are red.  I am appeared to redly, and my visual faculties are working as most humans’ visual faculties would work.  There’s nothing abnormal about the situation.  Intuitively, I know that the widgets are red.

Suppose, then, that a lying factory worker (whom I don’t know is a liar, but looks like an ordinary factory worker) walks in and tells me that there are red lights shining on the widgets.  Intuitively, I now have a defeater for my belief that they are red.  I ought to withhold belief.  If I continued to believe, my true belief would no longer be warranted (where ‘warrant’ is used to designate whatever turns a true belief into knowledge).

Note that there were certain faculties responsible for my forming belief that the widgets are red (mostly visual faculties), and there was a different set of faculties responsible for my coming to withhold belief (my aural faculties, faculties responsible for taking account of testimony, etc.).

Let’s revise the case in the following way.  Suppose, instead, that when the factory worker tells me that there are red lights shining on the widgets, my aural faculties suddenly and momentarily malfunction (I get hit by a stray cosmic ray) so that I do not end up hearing what the factory worker says.  I smile and nod, the factory worker smiles and nods, and then he walks away.  I continue to believe that the widgets are red, guessing that what the factory worker had to say was something like, “Hello, the weather sure is nice today!”

Intuitively, is my belief no longer warranted?  Or does my true belief not count as knowledge?

Epistemologists (influenced by Chisholm) tend to split our doxastic attitudes into beliefs and withholdings.  For any proposition p that I’ve considered, I either believe that p, withhold belief that p, or believe the denial of p.

I wonder if withholding belief that p can be reduced to having other beliefs about p.  Here’s one shot at an equivalence:

1) S withholds belief that p iff S believes that there’s some likelihood that p and that there’s some likelihood that ~p, and it’s not the case that (either S believes that p or S believes that ~p)

In other words, to withhold belief in a proposition is really just to have two beliefs about its likelihood (and not believe it or its denial).  Is this plausible?  Suppose I withhold belief that it’s raining in Beijing right now.  Is all this really saying is that I believe that there’s some likelihood that it is raining there, I believe that there’s some likelihood that it isn’t raining there, and I don’t believe either way?  It seems plausible at least in this case.

Aren’t there cases where I withhold belief, but I don’t form those corresponding beliefs?  I’m not sure.  Any help?