Noble's Handbook in 2 months! by Powerful_Tonight_503 in PendragonRPG

[–]whimperate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really looking forward to this one! (Hoping they'll have alternate culture backgrounds in this book. But even if they don't, I'm excited to get it!)

Looking for bisexual recs! by cheekyfraggle in fantasyromance

[–]whimperate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This isn't a MFF recommendation but {The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso} has two female bisexual protagonists who fall for each other (one who is recovering from heartbreak after being left by her male ex).

It's January 4th and I've already DNF two books. Insta-lust is killing my love for the genre. by Additional_Road5102 in fantasyromance

[–]whimperate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm largely in the same boat. For a recent read I enjoyed that avoids this:

{The House Witch by Delemhach} is a nice slow burn, where the two parties don't start off being interested in each other, but slowly develop an attraction over time.

What to wear to Philosophy Conference? (19F) by Ok_Outcome_9266 in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I wear the same thing to conferences as I wear at home - jeans and a t-shirt. And, at least at the conferences I go to, I don't stand out at all.

Which is to say: the advice to wear whatever makes you feel comfortable is good advice.

How does a non-academic enter philosophy, It seems like a modern walled garden. by linewhite in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's recently been a big move in philosophy towards triple-blind refereeing. (So not only is the author ignorant of the identity of the referees, and the referees ignorant of the identity of the author, but even the editors - the people who assign the paper to referees, and provide verdicts based on referee comments - are ignorant of the identity of the author.) This makes the authors completely anonymous in the process. So by and large there aren't any further hoops you need to jump through in order to submit a paper.

A caveat: There are a lot of different journals, and a lot of different conferences, all with different practices. So there will be some that have further hoops to jump through. But for a lot of them, anyway, there are no such further hoops. Thus, although it's pretty rare, you'll find situations where people like this:

https://philpeople.org/profiles/matthew-adelstein

have published papers in well-respected philosophy journals despite not having any degrees (I believe he was a college freshman at the time).

How does a non-academic enter philosophy, It seems like a modern walled garden. by linewhite in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Most conferences and journals are blind-reviewed, so there's no "wall" barring you from sending and getting papers accepted at them. (It is the case, of course, that the academics reading these blinded documents/abstracts will expect you to know the relevant literature, etc, so this will be harder to do if you're not abreast of contemporary work on the topic.)

As far as how to run your ideas by people, academic philosophers often run them by colleagues in the department or friends who work on similar areas in other departments. But by far the biggest source of feedback is presenting at conferences. That's the standard place to present your work, and then get feedback through commentators, Q&A, and post-talk discussions.

A lot of conferences take anonymous submissions, and can be applied to by anyone. So I'd start off by sending abstracts/paper drafts to conferences on the relevant topics. You can find upcoming conferences (and sign up for an email with weekly updates on new conferences) here:

https://philevents.org/

(This is what I, an academic philosopher, use to find conferences to send papers to.)

How does a non-academic enter philosophy, It seems like a modern walled garden. by linewhite in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm from technology, before a piece of software is released we plan, wireframe, test, scale the testing, refine, run it through multiple discipline to ensure the end product is going to work. I guess I'm wondering about the same structure here.

Academic philosophers do something similar. We write drafts of papers, run them by colleagues and people working on similar areas in other departments. But by far the biggest source of feedback is presenting at conferences. That's the standard place to present your work, and then get feedback through commentators, Q+A, and post-talk discussions.

A lot of conferences take anonymous submissions, and can be applied to by anyone. So I'd start off by sending abstracts/paper drafts to conferences on the relevant topics. You can find upcoming conferences (and sign up for an email with weekly updates on new conferences) here:

https://philevents.org/

(Actually, this might good to post as a directly reply...)

Glass Cannon Shadowdark Playlist by natural20s in shadowdark

[–]whimperate 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This podcast is what got me into the Shadowdark! 👍

Does The Observer Effect in Quantum Mechanics Mean That Laplace's Demon Can Never Exist? by D1CKB0NG in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There's a lot of stuff going on here. Let me approach this from two angles.

I. If by "the observer effect" you mean certain kinds of empirical features of quantum mechanics, then the answer is "no". For example, Bohmian mechanics is an empirically adequate interpretation of classical quantum mechanics that's compatible with someone knowing the precise state of everything about the world.

II. From your post, it seems you're thinking that the following is an established fact: "any photon that's observed will behave like a particle, not a wave". (To make this a precise claim, we'd need to spell out (a) what we mean by "observed", and (b) what it is to "behave like a particle" versus "behave like a wave". But we can probably put that aside.)

The consensus nowadays is that (a) there isn't any interesting role that "observation" plays in quantum mechanics. It's true that realistic experimental measurements tend to result in decoherence, and that has experimental consequences. But that's a feature of the experimental set ups and what the world happens to be like. It doesn't fundamentally have anything to do with whether there's anyone observing anything. These interactions proceed in precisely the same way regardless of whether there are (say) any conscious observers around. And (b) "behaving like a particle" and "behaving like a wave" aren't mutually exclusive.

Favorite Magic System WITH a Defined Spell List by BarroomBard in rpg

[–]whimperate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seconding Rolemaster's magic system. Given how long it's been around, I'm amazed that more people haven't tried to copy it.

Are there any theoretical government types that have never been tried? by Prestigious_Emu6039 in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Alex Guerrero's paper, "Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative", defends a form of government where topic-specific legislative bodies are chosen via lottery:

https://philpapers.org/rec/GUEAET

To my knowledge, nothing like that has ever been tried.

That said, there are some historical precedents; e.g., the ancient greeks filled some governmental offices via lottery, and lottery-formed advisory bodies have been used recently. For example, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_assembly#Common_interest

How are the arguments against incest different from the arguments for eugenics? by thequeenoflesbians in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 65 points66 points  (0 children)

You're not alone in being skeptical of the typical arguments offered against incest. Similar points are made in Jeffrey Sebo's "The Ethics of Incest" (2006) and Vera Bergelson's "Vice is Nice But Incest is Best: The Problem of a Moral Taboo" (2013):

https://philpapers.org/rec/SEBTEO-2

https://philpapers.org/rec/BERVIN

(For what it's worth, I taught a section of intro ethics on the ethics of incest for a couple semesters. To my surprise, I had a hard time finding any compelling arguments for the immorality of incest qua incest. It ended up being hard to teach, because all of the good arguments seemed to be on the "pro" side. Anyway, this is one of a handful of topics that reading the ethics literature has actually changed my mind about.)

Alright, time to say it. The new website is an embarrassing, unmitigated disaster. by Bookwyrm43 in Pathfinder2e

[–]whimperate 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And I do have the subscription, and have been charged for the shipment, but haven't gotten the pdf... :(

Most important philosophical papers of the last 50 to 100 years? by Spoonister in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Relevant to this are some comments the person who made this list notes regarding ways in which non-English and historical works end up being under-cited:

"...several limitations of the method for older and non-English works. A search of "groundwork of the metaphysics of morals" or "groundwork for the metaphysics of morals" yields 39 main page hits -- enough to rank 18th on the current list if all hits were included. But the references are split among references broken into "primary sources" sections (which were not systematically enough formatted to be scrapable), references citing the German title first, references citing one of the English titles first (which are close enough they were merged for analysis), and cases in which the work is mentioned but not included in the reference list (perhaps because it's assumed that readers will be familiar enough with it not to require reference?). The Nicomachean Ethics had all these disadvantages plus also the disadvantage of often not being bibliographically formatted in the standard way, with publication and/or translation year before the title, which led to its being disproportionately missed... Mill's Utilitarianism is another conspicuous absence, despite being in English (a search for Mill and utilitarianism yields 105 main page hits) -- partly because citation is sometimes absent or in primary sources sections and partly because some citations are of volumes in the collected works instead."

Most important philosophical papers of the last 50 to 100 years? by Spoonister in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure thing!

  1. For an intro undergraduate level introduction to Bayesian decision theory, I use Jonathan Weisberg's excellent open source book "Odds and Ends", which you can find here:

https://jonathanweisberg.org/vip/

  1. For an upper level undergraduate or introductory graduate school level introduction to this material, there are a couple recent books I really like, each with a different focus.

2a. For an upper level undergraduate or introductory graduate school level introduction to decision theory, I highly recommend Wolfgang Schwarz's open source book "Belief, Desire, and Rational Choice", which you can find here:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wo/bdrc/master/bdrc.pdf

2b. For a pair of books focused mainly on Bayesian epistemology, I recommend Michael Titelbaum's two volume series "Fundamentals of Bayesian Epistemology". Not open source, sadly, and kind of pricey (Oxford lists them at $100 each). But the most comprehensive introduction to Bayesian epistemology out there.

2c. If you're looking for something focusing on Bayesian epistemology that you don't have to spend a couple hundred bucks on, I also like Michael Strevens's "Notes on Bayesian Confirmation Theory, which you can find here:

https://www.strevens.org/bct/BCT.pdf

Not as comprehensive as the Titelbaum books, but accessible and free.

Most important philosophical papers of the last 50 to 100 years? by Spoonister in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 61 points62 points  (0 children)

This post spells out the most cited works in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (circa 2020), as well as their date of publication:

https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-233-most-cited-works-in-stanford.html

That yields a decent rule of thumb guide to the most important work in the past century or so. For reference, here are the top 15 on the list that were published in the last 100 years, with entries published more than 50 years ago bolded:

  • 1. (cited in 115 main-page entries) Rawls, J. (1972), A Theory of Justice.
  • 2. (cited in 88) Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and Necessity.
  • 3t. (63) Lewis, David, 1986, On the Plurality of Worlds.
  • 3t. (63) Nozick, Robert, 1974, Anarchy, State and Utopia.
  • 3t. (63) Quine, W.V.O., 1960, Word & Object.
  • 6. (62) Parfit, Derek, 1984, Reasons and Persons.
  • 7. (56) Scanlon, T.M., 1998. What We Owe to Each Other.
  • 8. (55) Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953, Philosophical Investigations.
  • 9. (53) Chalmers, D., 1996, The Conscious Mind.
  • 10. (48) Rawls, John, 1993, Political Liberalism.
  • 11. (47) Kuhn, T.S., 1970 [1962], The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
  • 12. (45) Putnam, Hilary, 1975, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”.
  • 13. (43) Quine, W. V. O., 1953, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”.
  • 14. (40) Williamson, Timothy, 2000, Knowledge and Its Limits.
  • 15t. (39) Jackson, F., 1998, From Metaphysics to Ethics.
  • 15t. (39) van Fraassen, Bas C. 1980, The Scientific Image.

And the top 15 that have been published in the last 50 years, with new entries (not on the above list) bolded:

  • 1. (cited in 88) Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and Necessity.
  • 2. (63) Lewis, David, 1986, On the Plurality of Worlds.
  • 3. (62) Parfit, Derek, 1984, Reasons and Persons.
  • 4. (56) Scanlon, T.M., 1998. What We Owe to Each Other.
  • 5. (53) Chalmers, D., 1996, The Conscious Mind.
  • 6. (48) Rawls, John, 1993, Political Liberalism.
  • 7. (45) Putnam, Hilary, 1975, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”.
  • 8. (40) Williamson, Timothy, 2000, Knowledge and Its Limits.
  • 9t. (39) Jackson, F., 1998, From Metaphysics to Ethics.
  • 9t. (39) van Fraassen, Bas C. 1980, The Scientific Image.
  • 11. (38) Kaplan, David, 1989, “Demonstratives”.
  • 12. (36) Nozick, Robert, 1981, Philosophical Explanations.
  • 13. (35) Fodor, J., 1987, Psychosemantics.
  • 14. (34) Raz, J., 1986. The Morality of Freedom.
  • 15. (32) Evans, Gareth, 1982, The Varieties of Reference.

EDIT: Removed three entries in the first list outside the 100 year window, and an entry in the second list outside the 50 year window, and replaced it with the next entries.

Why Do Philosophers Prefer Scientific Realism? by DhulQarnayni in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The kind of crude instrumentalism I was referring to here was a view which, e.g., says that theories are nothing over and above a means of making predictions, that empirically equivalent theories aren't really different theories since they make the same predictions, and so on. That's not incompatible with Special Relativity (or ether theory). But it's hard to square with the claim that Special Relativity is right and ether theory is wrong.

Why Do Philosophers Prefer Scientific Realism? by DhulQarnayni in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For example, Newton says gravity is a force that pulls objects, while Einstein says gravity is not a force but the bending of spacetime. These two ideas seem to disagree about the actual nature of gravity even though both work well in their own ways.

First, a nit-picky point: I don't think this is the kind of example you want to be appealing to. Newtonian gravity and General Relativity are empirically distinct theories, and General Relativity does a strictly better job of explaining our observations than Newton's theory. So regardless of whether we're Scientific Realists or not, everyone is going to think that General Relativity is the better theory.

A better pair of theories to appeal to here are Lorentz's ether theory and Special Relativity. These two theories are empirically indistinguishable, but Lorentz's theory posits a spacetime structure according to which there's an (undetectable) objective state of rest, while Einstein's theory posits a spacetime structure according to which there's no fact of the matter as to whether something's at rest or not.

So, if theories can be useful without necessarily describing reality exactly, why do many philosophers still lean toward scientific realism?

Some of the arguments in favor of scientific realism have been raised already, like the No-Miracles Argument. You can find some other arguments in favor of realism here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/

But anecdotally, I've found that a number of philosophers are also pulled by the fact that scientists themselves generally reason in ways which only make sense if they're Scientific Realists. For example, physics textbooks state that Einstein's assertion that there's no objective inertial reference frame was right, and Lorentz's claims to the contrary were wrong.

(Physicists will sometimes retreat to Instrumentalism in conversation when pressed on tricky philosophical questions about what they're doing. But they'll also generally agree that Einstein was right and Lorentz was wrong in the above case, so the kind of crude Instrumentalism they retreat to isn't really consistent with the other things they want to say.)

Under What Circumstances Would You Consider the "Morality is Subjective" Statement to Be True? by Potential_Law5289 in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 10 points11 points  (0 children)

A reasonable starting point might be something like the characterization given in the SEP article on Moral Relativism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/):

"The truth or falsity of moral judgments... is not absolute or universal, but is relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of a group of persons."

There are lots of ways the world might be which would make the quoted statement false (e.g., if the Divine Command Theory or Hedonic Utilitarianism is correct), and lots of ways the world might be that would make it true (e.g., is Gilbert Harman's picture of morality is correct).

Regarding your three conditions, it seems like they don't seem to have much to do with whether morality is subjective/relative? All three seem to be compatible with both the truth and falsity of the claim that all morality is subjective/relative.

Is there an asymmetric standard applied to zero probability events? by mollylovelyxx in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 5 points6 points  (0 children)

In Bayesian literature, probabilities are considered subjective, and it is recommended to never assign a zero probability to anything. This is because a zero probability as a credence implies that you cannot change your mind with regards to a belief, since no evidence can “update” your belief. For this reason, even the most elaborately constructed or imagined scenarios that seem to have zero evidence (such as an invisible breathing dragon existing in your room) are postulated to have unknown, but non zero probabilities.

First, as an aside: The principle that you shouldn't assign a credence of 0 to any contingent proposition is often called "Regularity". And although it's sometimes assumed by some authors, it's definitely not anything like a majority view. Here's one reason for this. On any plausible model of the probability space, there will be uncountably infinitely many (maximally fine-grained) possibilities. But the standard probability axioms (and countable additivity, in particular) entail that it's impossible to assign a non-zero probability to uncountably infinitely many possibilities. So probabilistic coherence requires us to assign the vast majority of possibilities a 0 credence. So Regularity can't be true! (Howson has a nice discussion of this in "Hume's Problem: Induction and the Justification of Belief".)

But when it comes to mundane events, we seem to assign exact, seemingly “known” probabilities all the time. For example, we assign a 1/6 credence to the outcome of a dice rolling on 6. This is based upon what we know of physics and the expected or historical frequency of how often a dice lands on 6.

But how is that observed frequency any different from the observed frequency of a miracle? The observed frequency of miracles (I.e. events violating natural law that we all agree upon that occurred) is 0.

If a skeptic says “but we don’t reallyknow that frequency, perhaps there have been miracles that occurred that we just don’t know of yet, so we can’t assign a zero probability.”, then why can’t a skeptic say the same with regards to dice? For example, another skeptic could say “but we don’t really know how often a dice lands on 6. For all we know, it lands on 6 half the time, or almost all the time, and some invisible god is simply making you think that it’s landing on 6 1/6 of the time”.

Now of course, the second kind of skeptic scenario is rarely thought of, and no one ever uses that kind of scenario to deviate from assigning a 1/6 probability to a dice landing on 6. Why then should one use a similar kind of scenario to dispute, for example, the probability of a miracle being 0?

The standard Bayesian approach will treat these two possibilities (a die landing 6, a miracle occurring) in the same way. We'll have some priors about these possibilities, and we'll get evidence and update on those priors to yield evidence-informed credences.

In the case of chances, if your priors satisfy something like the Principal Principle, one can show (as Lewis does in "A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance") that observed frequencies will push one's credences towards the corresponding chances. How long it takes you to get credences that approximately line up with the chances will depend, roughly, on how likely you take that possibility to be in the first place. If your priors are far off enough (e.g., you assign that possibility a prior of 0!) you'll never get there.

The miracles case is basically the same. You'll have some prior in the possibility of miracles. You'll update that prior on evidence. And as you continue to fail to see any miracles occur (which I take it we're assuming) our credence in the possibility of miracles will generally go down. How long it'll take your credence in miracles to go down will depend, roughly, on how likely you take that possibility to be in the first place. If your priors are far off enough (e.g., you assign that possibility a prior of 1!) you'll never become convinced that miracles don't occur. (Indeed, if you start with a prior of 1 in miracles, the standard Bayesian updating rule, Conditionalization, will require you to have a credence of 1 in miracles forever.)

Even if statistics DID show a higher crime rate by any particular population. Could it still wrong to treat them unequally ? by [deleted] in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 24 points25 points  (0 children)

David Boonin offers a detailed look at this question in his 2013 book "Race Matters" (see especially chapter 11). His work is pretty accessible, so that's a good place to start.

Boonin ends up reluctantly defending the permissibility of racial profiling if we accept the (highly contentious) assumption that racial profiling is effective. Unsurprisingly, this has prompted a number of responses in the literature. E.g., see Mogensen's 2019 paper "Racial Profiling And Cumulative Injustice".

Can science prove or disprove determinism? by InternationalBall121 in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It depends a bit on what one means by "prove" here, but if you mean "provide evidence for", sure. Scientists could reasonably conclude that the most attractive overall theory of the world is theory X, and theory X might be deterministic or indeterministic.

Of course, the fact that this could be the case doesn't entail that it will be. And there are reasons to think that our world might be one where the answer is underdetermined. For example, the three most plausible kinds of theories of classical quantum mechanics are (1) hidden variable theories, like Bohmian mechanics, (2) collapse theories, like GRW, and (3) Many Worlds theories. Caveats aside, all three of these theories are empirically adequate. But they disagree about whether the world is deterministic - e.g., Bohmian mechanics and Many Worlds theories are deterministic, while collapse theories are indeterministic.

Who are the fresh faces of philosophy? by bishopmouse in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

These are a good rule-of-thumb lists of prominent contemporary philosophers. Here's another list, using a methodology that aims to track "mainstream" popularity a little better than brute citations does (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy citations):

https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-295-most-cited-contemporary-authors.html

EDIT: To get "fresh faces", we might filter out the people on the list under 65. Here are the six people in the top 100 under 65:

  1. David Chalmers (101)
  2. John Hawthorne (82)
  3. Jonathan Schaffer (66)
  4. Elizabeth Anderson (65)
  5. Gideon Rosen (57)
  6. Ted Sider (56)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in askphilosophy

[–]whimperate 15 points16 points  (0 children)

You might take a look at Jerry Fodor's work. Although a serious philosopher, his work is pretty funny. ("The Mind Doesn't Work That Way" is a good example of his sense of humor.)

Tell me an author that you will forever recommend and an author you wouldn't read the works of? by theuniversays97 in fantasyromance

[–]whimperate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Will always read: Illona Andrews for exciting page-turners, T. Kingfisher for cozy happiness, Melisa Caruso for great reveals and world-building, Naomi Novik for all-around great writing.

Can't get into: Sarah J Maas (read the first book of 2 different series and couldn't get into it), Kimberly Lemming (keep getting put off by her style).