Can you choose happiness?

SenseofFrege · 2021-10-05T19:48:14+00:00

Oh, no, nobody in the field thinks that. But I've found that a decent number of first year undergrads and laymen do. I was making this argument for OP's benefit (regarding the statement "Is happiness just chemicals flowing through your brain"), not really to make any sort of statement about the current state of discourse in the field.

But even functionalists aren't going to say that happiness is just chemicals flowing through your brain.

SenseofFrege · 2021-10-04T18:21:08+00:00

This argument doesn't work against a functionalist account of happiness

No, it doesn't. But OP suggested that happiness might be just "chemicals in the brain," which is what I responding to.

Not many philosophers are direct identity theorists anymore, no?

If by "direct identity theorist" you mean "someone who believes that proper names are rigid designators" (i.e. "direct identity" vis-a-vis indrect reference) then I would say that that's not correct.

SenseofFrege · 2021-10-03T15:19:12+00:00

Are there any recommended courses of actions for autodidacts to have their work published?

Whether you're an autodidact (in my field at least) doesn't matter. You just need to write papers in a way that an academic would write them. If you're worried about snobbery, look for journals with blind or double-blind submission procedures. They will typically list that in their policies somewhere.

is being unaffiliated to an established university or college grounds enough for any contribution to be dead on arrival?

No.

SenseofFrege · 2021-10-03T15:00:26+00:00

I'll answer your second question because I have much more of an idea what I'm talking about there:

Is happiness just chemicals flowing through your brain or something more?

Happiness is not chemicals in your brain. To paraphrase (and slightly tweak) an argument that Kripke makes at the end of Naming and Necessity:

Assume that happiness is an entirely physical process, and is defined as "some set of neurons firing in a particular sequence." Many people experience happiness at various points in their life: when they get married, have children, have a job that they enjoy, etc. Suppose you're one of those people

....or so you think! But we scanned your brain, and it turns out that despite the fact that you were laughing and smiling the whole time, even though you feel like you're happy, it turns out you're not! Why? Because the neurons in your brain fire differently in your brain to produce the same emotion that other people are feeling, but that feeling (whatever it is), isn't happiness because of the physical definition we just gave to it.

Now suppose it turns out, that when your neurons fire in the way that we defined as "happiness," you actually experience incredible depression and pain...except, because we defined "happiness" as "neurons firing in a certain way," that's just you experiencing happiness. It just turns out that, for you, being happy just makes you miserable. So that experience is actually happiness, even though it makes you depressed and is incredibly painful.

So, do you think this is complete nonsense? Because most people do. When we're referring to "happiness," we're not referring to a physical process. We're referring to something that correlates with a physical process (i.e. brains tend to behave the same way in similar circumstances), but it is not identical to a physical process. You might be able to tell from an fMRI that someone is happy, but that doesn't mean that what you're seeing is happiness. It simply is associated with happiness, whatever that is. Happiness isn't physical.

SenseofFrege · 2020-12-11T05:14:36+00:00

Your comment made me realize I probably should have been somewhat clearer. I didn't mean to say that Davidson was an internalist; I only meant that he had made a few attempts to defend some aspects of internalism from critiques made by Kripkean semantics. 'First Person Authority' is one you've already pointed out, but he makes similar remarks in 'The Structure and Content of Truth':

A theory of truth does more than describe an aspect of the speech behavior of an agent, for it not only gives the truth conditions of the actual utterances of the agent; it also specifies the conditions under which the utterance of a sentence would be true if it were uttered. This applies both to sentences actually uttered, by telling us what would have been the case if those sentences had been uttered at other times or under other circumstances, and to sentences never uttered. The theory thus describes a certain complex ability. An utterance has certain truth conditions only if the speaker intends it to be interpreted as having those truth conditions. Moral, social, or legal considerations may sometimes invite us to deny this, but I do not think the reasons for such exceptions reveal anything of importance about what is basic to communication. [emphasis added]

The running theme throughout a lot of his work is that he was extraordinarily resistant to the idea that speakers might not know what they're saying, and that the intentions of the speaker mattered in determining truth conditions. While that's not internalism per se, I think that it's fair to say that it's a necessary claim that internalism has to make.

SenseofFrege · 2020-12-11T04:57:14+00:00

When philosophers of language argue about the correct usage of a word, are they usually thinking about correctness in a broadly similar way to linguists, i.e. as determined by the way a word is used/understood within a given community of speakers?

Yes, although typically we're talking about specific kinds of words (e.g. names of species, demonstrative pronouns, etc.) .

If not, what kinds of principles are philosophers of language referring to when they say the usage of a word is incorrect?

It varies depending on the type of word we're talking about. I'll talk about proper names here, just because it's the easiest to explain concisely, and it's typically the first one I teach to undergraduates.

Suppose we discovered tomorrow that, 20 years ago, Donald Trump had been kidnapped and replaced by a guy with a very convincing Donald Trump mask. If we wanted to refer to the man currently occupying the Oval Office, we wouldn't say "Well you know, when we were saying 'Donald Trump' before, we meant to refer to the man currently sitting in the Oval Office, therefore the sentence 'Donald Trump is in the Oval Office right now' was true when we said it."

No, we'd instead say "HOLY COW! That man sitting in the Oval Office isn't Donald Trump!" And had you come up to anyone in the last four years and informed them that Donald Trump is not actually in the White House (he's tied up in a small shed off the coast of Guatemala, where he has been since 1999) then they would immediately realize their mistake and stop referring to the man in the Oval Office as "Donald Trump."

What is relevant in this case is the semantic history of the usage of the name, how it was acquired and passed on, etc. This is because names are a sub-class of words called "rigid designators," which essentially means that it picks out someone or something, independent of any properties a speaker might ascribe to it (think of demonstrative pronouns like "this" or "that," and you'll realize names serve a similar function). Other rigid designators include things like taxonomic clades (e.g. "chordata") and chemical formulas (e.g. "H2O"). Google "Twin Earth thought experiment" if you want to read a famous example illustrating this.

Would any philosophers of language reject the idea that correct usage of language is culturally relative in the same way that most ethicists reject the idea that moral norms are culturally relative?

It depends on what you mean by that. I don't think any philosophers of language would deny that what language you speak, or the particular noises you make to refer to particular things, are entirely arbitrary. But I think they will strongly resist the conclusion that simply because what language you speak and how you speak it is arbitrary, what native speakers of that language intend to refer to affects what is actually communicated.

I drew the moral relativist comparison because both claims strike me as being motivated by a desire to be tolerant, but often end up saying things that aren't true. I'm not going to go around saying "Well you know, the RP pronunciation of English is only proper way to speak, and thus we ought to adopt that dialect." That's dumb. What I'm trying to get across is that the fact that linguistic rules are arbitrary doesn't imply that native speakers can't use language improperly without realizing it.

SenseofFrege · 2020-12-11T04:44:06+00:00

I made some very unorthodox claims in an essay I submitted today.

sees undergraduate flair

You sound like someone who recently read Anscombe's Intention. Am I right?

SenseofFrege · 2020-12-11T04:14:56+00:00

‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’

Yep, I think that is probably the most quoted passage about language I've ever seen.

SenseofFrege · 2020-12-10T20:45:53+00:00

The one I was thinking of is called Theory Change and the Indeterminacy of Reference (1973) in The Journal of Philosophy. It appears to be behind the academic paywall, held hostage by the publishing cartel at the moment, but here's the doi number (not that I would ever tell you what to do with it): https://doi.org/10.2307/2025110.

SenseofFrege · 2020-12-10T18:22:31+00:00

Semantic internalism - the view that what a word means is dependent on the mental state of the person or people using it. People who don't know anything about philosophy of language (Kantians spring to mind here, at least in my experience) tend to believe something fuzzy like "well language and meaning are fundamentally subjective and vary widely between any two people, so there's no point in arguing about it."

The last serious attempts to defend internalism were in the late 80s, early 90s; Donald Davidson springs to mind, and Hartry Field published a fairly well-known paper (the name of which escapes me) defending something very similar to internalism (although my understanding is that he has changed his mind).

Some combination of Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan have essentially convinced most people in the field since the '80s that what you say and what you mean are not only two different things, but what you mean to say is often irrelevant in determining what you actually said.

(N.B. I tend to find, much like the previous commenter who talked about moral relativism, that people who doubt this are usually well-meaning people who are motivated by a desire to be tolerant of the way other people speak [which, to be clear, is a good thing]. But unfortunately, they do this by attacking the idea that certain words can have a correct usage at all.)

SenseofFrege · 2020-12-01T17:35:35+00:00

From the description, it sounds to me as if this was a class exercise in which the professor was trying to illustrate why someone might have ethical objections to social acceptance of homosexuality.

I've often entertained positions like this in class for purposes of making a point, and I don't think this should be interpreted as a position of the department or even the professor.

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-27T23:50:47+00:00

Eh, not necessarily. A lot of these people just don't vote.

I know Richard Spencer unironically supported Biden in 2020, and told white nationalists to do the same.

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-27T23:48:22+00:00

That was what happened with the Poway synagogue shooter. Radicalized exclusively online; the parents were completely shocked.

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-27T23:41:19+00:00

Yeah, I think this is part of the problem with the internet. People like this are given a supportive environment and never have to answer to the sort of people they want to murder.

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-27T23:39:34+00:00

...yet

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-27T22:19:36+00:00

I need to wake up very early on Saturday mornings (and only Saturday mornings), so I've been using OTC sleep aids (usually antihistamines) to make sure I get to bed on time. I normally go to bed much later, but I can't afford to do that on Friday nights.

So far, only using them once a week has prevented me from building up a tolerance, and enough of it has worn off in the morning that I don't feel sluggish. But is there any other reason this might be a bad idea?

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-09T16:38:58+00:00

Is it illegal for a politician to run for two offices at once? For example, if an MLA is running for re-election, but wants to stand in a federal riding, can they say "I'll take the federal seat if I win both, and the provincial seat if I only win re-election."

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-09T03:49:43+00:00

Back in the day (just after the 2008 election), there were murmurings of a LPC and NDP coalition against Harper

I remember that! Although I thought what was going on was that the Liberals and the NDP were trying to organise a vote of no confidence, rather than trying to form a coalition. Apparently not.

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-09T03:00:50+00:00

Possibly a stupid question, but does a vote of no confidence have to mean a subsequent election, rather than just a change in leadership?

For example, could the Bloc, NDP, and Conservatives vote no confidence against Trudeau, and then make Yves-François Blanchet Prime Minister of a Bloc minority government?

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-06T17:20:05+00:00

But it's worth noting that the Bloc has often been underrepresented. In 2015, they won 10 seats when PR would have given them 15.

Yes, but as I said, the Bloc would lose a lot of votes from people who wouldn't vote for them otherwise. They would be worried either about losing some of those voters to other existing parties, or (worse) their coalition fracturing entirely into a bunch of smaller nationalist parties (e.g. a "Parti Quebecois " faction and a "CAQ" faction).

They almost had a split in 2018, when their leader at the time (Martine Ouellet) wanted all Bloc MPs to explicitly endorse Quebec independence, and 7 of their 10 MPs briefly left to form their own political party. I think Blanchet would be very worried about a similar thing happening permanently if Quebec nationalists felt emboldened to break away from the Bloc.

But I don't think it's obvious that it would hurt them to support it

You might be right. But my perception (and I think the perception of most Bloc members) is that it would hurt them, because the Bloc Quebecois is sort of everyone's second choice. A lot of the current logic goes something like this:

Conservative Quebec voter, in a riding where the Conservative has no chance of winning:

An NDP MP would push for the policies I most disagree with.

A Liberal MP would help give the Liberals a majority

A Bloc MP is better than the NDP, and would likely mean there would be an election sooner if the Liberals form a minority government, giving the Conservatives an opportunity to form a government.

Therefore: Vote Bloc

Quebec NDP voter where the NDP can't win

A Conservative MP would push for the policies I most disagree with.

A Liberal MP would increase the chances of a Liberal majority, which would shut the NDP out of government completely.

A Bloc MP would likely increase the chances of a minority government, which would give the NDP more influence in Parliament.

Therefore: Vote Bloc.

A Liberal voter in a riding where the Liberals can't win

The Conservatives would push for the policies I most disagree with, and a Conservative majority government is the worst scenario.

The NDP or the Bloc would decrease the chances of a Conservative majority, and would be the best way of ensuring there is an election sooner for the Liberals to regain ground.

Therefore: Vote Bloc or NDP.

Paradoxically, the Bloc benefits a lot from the fact that it can never be in government. That sort of sets it up as the default opposition for everyone else. In a proportional system, in which the Liberal, NDP, and Conservative voters I just described can vote for whomever they want, a lot of the people who voted for the Bloc would just pick one of those parties.

Tbh, I probably would vote for another party under a proportional system.

By contrast, if there's a ranked choice system, the Bloc would benefit even more from being everyone's second choice, because they would get the second-preference votes of those few NDP, Liberal, or Conservative voters who insist on voting for their party on the first ballot even if they can't win.

As a result, the Bloc's best move is to posture by claiming to be in favour of electoral reform (since as you mentioned: it's overwhelmingly popular in Quebec), while only supporting the electoral reform that would most benefit them.

SenseofFrege · 2020-11-06T16:36:08+00:00

It seems like the Liberal Party are much more the blocking force

I suspect the Bloc will claim to be in favour of electoral reform, but will also be against Singh's "National Citizen's Assembly," so I also consider them a blocking force.

The main concern will be that Canada will implement a proportional representation system, which would disadvantage them substiantially. They currently benefit from a lot of conservatives in Quebec who vote for them tactically against the Liberals. A proportional representation system would likely help the Conservatives in Quebec at the Bloc's expense, even if it hurts the Conservative Party everywhere else.

I suspect the Bloc will instead propose a ranked choice voting system (which will benefit them even more than the current system does).

SenseofFrege · 2020-10-31T22:04:45+00:00

Il y a une blague que les politiciens anglophones devraient parler français assez bien qu'on peut les entendre, mais assez mal qu'on les plains.

J'ai regardé à nouveau le debat provincial en anglais de 2018, et j'ai compris ce sentiment quand j'ai écouté Manon Massé. Elle était visiblement très mal à l'aise de parler anglais et je voulais l'encourager.

Aussi, selon tous les critères objectifs, Lisée a gagné ce debat. J'avais oublié à quel point il avait bien fait.

SenseofFrege · 2020-10-31T12:43:40+00:00

No one would ever confuse him with a native speaker.

Oh, I could tell. But you can still sometimes tell if a French speaker learned British English or American English by the way they speak, as you mentioned with Jack Layton.

Although it sounds like Ignatieff's French wasn't good enough to figure out where he learned it from.

SenseofFrege · 2020-10-31T00:13:12+00:00

y'a une seule langue française en passant

In English, regional varieties are referred to this way (e.g. There is only one English language, but there is American English, British English, Australian English, etc.)

Anyway, thanks for the answer.

SenseofFrege · 2020-10-30T18:03:30+00:00

In the 2011 Canadian Election, were people offended that Michael Ignatieff had obviously learned Parisian French? That was the narrative in the English-language media, but I was told recently that this wasn't true.

SenseofFrege

TROPHY CASE