The future of analytic philosophy

This is a post to take with a pinch of salt because my starting point is Peter Unger's book Empty Ideas, which I haven't read, and in particular the response to its publication, which I haven't read in its entirety either. So why bother? Unger suggests that contemporary analytic philosophy is empty and he seems to have hit a nerve. That, really, is my point. If mainstream analytic philosophers feel insecure about what they are doing this does not prove that their work has no value, of course, but it strikes me as being interesting enough to warrant a blog post.

The initial responses to Unger's interview about his book accused him of being a hypocrite, of being obnoxiously rude, of saying things that have been said before by Rorty and others, and of overlooking all the work in philosophy that is not mainstream analytic philosophy. What struck me was the difficulty people seemed to have in coming up with obviously non-empty or non-trivial work to present as a counter-example. My favorite response was this:

The idea that contemporary academic philosophy (n all of its roots and branches; for instance, political philosophy), when compared to the diverse fields of the sciences (physical sciences but also mathematics, cosmology, biology, applied sciences such as medicine and biomedical research, technology, engineering, psychology, neuroscience, the social sciences, information theory, computer programming, etc.) fails to make clear, unambiguous contributions to our stock of knowledge about the world, only makes sense if one first assumes that science itself is primarily about clear, unambiguous advancements to knowledge. Yet clearly a great deal of science itself fails to make any such contribution.

Philosophy is like science because a great deal of science fails to contribute to our knowledge, and so does philosophy! Actually, though, the point of the comment is right (so I retract my snark): whatever value contemporary philosophy has is surely outside the scope of unambiguously producing new knowledge. But this means that we need to give up the idea of philosophy as being like science. 

Several comments mention Gary Gutting's book What Philosophers Know, but this (a book that I have read) does not deal with unambiguous advancements to knowledge made by philosophers. It deals with the ideas of people such as Quine, Rawls, and Rorty, that is, people who have certainly been influential and have many admirers but whose ideas are neither universally accepted as true nor universally rejected by other philosophers. It should perhaps be called What Many Philosophers Agree On. 

Brian Leiter writes:

I want to second the recommendation of Gary Gutting's book. Another possibility, of course, is that there are relatively few substantive results reached by so-called analytic philosophers, but that its value resides elsewhere: in intellectual hygiene, one might say, clarity of thought and reasoning, something in short supply in many other fields (as physicists are endlessly reminding us with their pronouncements).

This is surprisingly (to my mind) Wittgensteinian, although of course there is room for different ideas about what counts as clarity. And Wittgenstein comes up also in this response by Marcus Arvan (who I don't think of as a Wittgensteinian, which is why this is relevant, although I can't say I know his work well):

I've been thinking more and more lately about a worry about analytic philosophy that traces back at least to Wittgenstein, and which is enjoying a resurgence (see e.g. Millikan's Dewey Lecture, Avner Baz' recent paper which I commented on here, and Balaguer's paper on compatibilism and conceptual analysis, which I commented on here). The worry is simply this: analytic philosophy is, by and large, predicated on a systematic misunderstanding and misuse of language. 

We have also seen John Searle describing contemporary philosophy as being "in terrible shape." He calls it boring and lacking in insight. People have been saying this kind of thing for as long as analytic philosophy has existed, but could a new stage in its history be about to begin? Or will these complaints be soon forgotten? I wonder. I don't think we're about to witness a new golden age of Wittgensteinianism, but it might be more Wittgenstein-friendly than what we've seen in the last few decades. Or, of course, nothing much at all might change.

Spirit

Brian Leiter likes Spirit. I am surprised, although I don't know what I expected him to like. And I only really know this one song by them.

On last things

[The post's title quotes this but refers to dmf's comment here.]

This is a good response to one aspect of the bad stuff reported here. Selected highlights:

We know from reading the brief only that some future program shall exist, taking ‘the best parts’ from each of four programs: Religion and Culture, Philosophy, Women and Gender Studies and Modern Languages. Forgive us if we remain sceptical of the virtues of such a combination. The attitude of presumption that must be required for university administrators to suppose that they, and not the cumulative force of tradition, are sufficient to develop a new program from the base materials of these four programs is beyond us, and our understanding.

The problem with the creation of a such a unique program is that it is unclear what such a program could look like. The four programs that the university wishes to combine are not obviously similar in so many ways as to make their combination attractive. We must, then, suppose one of two things. Either we lack the imagination required to see the intellectual virtues of such a combination, or the administration lack the imagination required to see the intellectual vices of such a combination.

One gets the impression of an unguided flailing on the part of the university, as it responds to unhappy political decisions and poor financial ones by maintaining, as if hope could make it true, that all of these changes are beneficial for the university.

For more details it's worth reading the comments at Leiter Reports too.  

In favor of charity

Brian Leiter links to this piece in the New York Times and encourages "philosophers who seem to think charitable giving is an ethical imperative" to contemplate it. The author, Peter Buffett, makes some odd complaints about charity. Here's one:

Often the results of our decisions had unintended consequences; distributing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a brothel area ended up creating a higher price for unprotected sex.

How is this bad? If unprotected sex with prostitutes costs more than it used to then, other things being equal, there will be less of it than before. That's a good thing. The problem, or problems (the spread of AIDS and the existence of prostitution), isn't completely solved, but progress has been made. I suppose raising the price of unprotected sex incentivizes it for prostitutes, but if the price is raised by distributing condoms (thereby making unprotected sex rarer) then this distribution is not going to lead to more unprotected sex than before. At worst it will make no difference at all, but that isn't what Buffett describes happening.

But that isn't his main point. Here is something closer to that:

Money should be spent trying out concepts that shatter current structures and systems that have turned much of the world into one vast market. Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine.

The first sentence of this paragraph has a paradoxical sound to it. Too much commercialism? Let's spend money on fixing that! Maybe that would produce good results, but I doubt we'll find a better alternative to those currently available any time soon. There are already ideas other than neoliberalism and universal commodification out there. They need more political support, and I'm sure their supporters would welcome money from people like Buffett to spend on promoting them. (This is what Leiter seems to want, and I agree with him.) Buffett's next two sentences are false. Wi-Fi on every street corner (again, other things equal) is progress. I agree that the forced prostitution of children is worse than a lack of Wi-Fi. So would everyone. That's why we need to get our priorities straight. But progress in a relatively unimportant area is still progress. Increasing access to technology, education, or safer living conditions is not going to cause people to have worse lives (as measured by such things as how many of them are forced into prostitution).

In short, charitable giving done intelligently is far more likely to do good than harm, and almost certainly is an ethical imperative for most of the people who read Leiter's blog.

More (and better) from Neil Sinhababu at NewAPPS.

Critical thinking again

Thinking, like writing, ought to be about something, or at least might as well be about something. (Relevant to this point are this and this.) So I'm suspicious of courses that are simply in thinking or writing. I still think a good critical thinking course might be possible, if only because so many students seem not to know, roughly speaking, how the world works. That is, they don't know enough about science to know that its findings should generally be trusted, nor enough about science reporting and funding to know that scientific findings as reported in the media should not be accepted uncritically, and that one should often ask who is behind the research. Similarly they will distrust news sources they disagree with without asking or knowing who funds them, who works for them, what reasons they might have for promoting an agenda, and so on. That is, they might dismiss the mainstream media as having a liberal bias, but they couldn't say where this bias is supposed to come from. Or they might dismiss Fox News as unreliable, but they know next to nothing about Rupert Murdoch. And they don't know enough about how academia works to know that peer-reviewed works are more reliable than other works, that people with PhDs from reputable programs are more reliable than others, and so on. Maybe all this could be covered in a 100-level writing course, but apparently that isn't happening. And it would be good for them to learn something about fallacies, logic, the badness of bullshit, what Orwell says about politics and language, etc., etc. I think there's a course-worth of materials there. (Obviously there is if logic is understood in an unlimited way, but I mean the amount of logic that is likely to be directly useful to the average educated person, i.e. probably not much of it.)

Connected to all this is this post by Brian Leiter asking why "these people just make things up." Leiter does not make anything up in his post, but he does spin things quite a lot. Is it really reasonable to think that Graham Harman invented the reader he quotes? (And if not, why bother to call the reader "alleged"?) Is it reasonable to take "becoming a medium for a dismissive model" to mean "being himself dismissive"? I find myself a) tempted to say That's why these people just make things up, b) afraid to say anything lest I be publicly humiliated on Leiter's blog, and c) tempted to suggest the addition "...when you can just distort the truth" to the title of Leiter's post. What stands out is b, which is a symptom of a general problem in philosophy. (The good news for me is that I'm too insignificant for Leiter to be likely to bother with me, but of course that's bad news for me too. These power differences are differences in significance too, and so not only potentially unjust (if the power is not rightly distributed) but potentially painful too. I can imagine references to our all being grown-ups or big boys at this point, which would just add to the insult.) The problem is often associated with Leiter, perhaps unfairly, and comes out also in all this stuff. The discipline is not a straightforward meritocracy, but things like Leiter's rankings (which are useful) promote, intentionally or not, the view that it is a straightforward meritocracy. It is in this way (at least in part), I take it, that Leiter is seen to be part of the problem. His rankings encourage the view that not only are some departments better bets than others for prospective graduate students who hope to get an academic job after their PhDs but also (and there are varying degrees of truth in the following propositions) that some people are simply better philosophers than others, that some journals are simply better than others, that some areas of philosophy are simply better or more important than others, and that standard ideas about pedigree and ranking reflect these realities fairly (and) accurately. It doesn't help that when people mention Leiter in association with criticisms of some or all of this picture he uses the weight of his status in the profession to belittle the already relatively little (in terms of power). So that's another way in which Leiter is seen by some to be problematic.

What's the connection between the two previous paragraphs? It has to do with bias, power, and critical thinking. As Wittgenstein asked:

what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any . . . journalist in the use of the DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends.

It seems fairly clear that the most prestigious journals in philosophy don't simply publish the best work in philosophy: they prefer work done in certain areas of philosophy, done in a certain kind of way, and it may well help if this work cites certain people rather than others (whose work may be equally good), it may help if the author is male, it may help if the author works in a select group of departments, and so on. There is no escaping some bias, but that doesn't make it all OK. And that's why I'm hopeful that the new journal from the APA will be a useful addition to the journals already out there. These are laudable aims:

The APA sees a niche for a truly general philosophy journal, one that includes scholarship from all specializations and fields of study, from analytic to continental and beyond. J-APA aims to be just such a journal.

Further, as a top philosophy journal with excellent editors, J-APA will help to improve the current publishing environment in which it is exceptionally challenging for young scholars to publish at the levels necessary to secure a job or earn tenure.

[UPDATE: Aaargh! Jon Cogburn has kindly linked to this post from New APPS, and now far more people are likely to read it than would have otherwise. Which prompts me to try to clarify a few things in the second paragraph.

Leiter quotes Harman quoting a reader's email, according to which: "[Leiter has] also become a medium for a very specific model of anglophone philosophy that is dismissive of all forms of history of philosophy, metaphysics, pragmatism, continental philosophy, philosophy of art, etc." Leiter responds, in part, by saying that he doesn't write, teach, or believe anything so dismissive.  It seems to me that this misses the point of the complaint. There are philosophers who are dismissive of the things listed, and they seem to feel entitled to their contempt because of a certain culture within the discipline, a culture according to which there are insiders and outsiders, and a definite hierarchy of the more and the less respectable/contemptible. Leiter's rankings and the various polls he conducts largely reflect the views of this culture (partly perhaps because this culture is right about who/what deserves respect and who/what deserves contempt, but also partly perhaps because it is mostly those who belong to this culture who participate in the ranking process and the polls). Whatever caveats Leiter might attach to the rankings and the polls, I think they are regarded by many as supporting a certain view, based partly on prejudice, of who/what is good and who/what is not.

Why does this matter? Let's not count the ways, but here are a few. 1) It is contrary to the ideals of philosophy to dismiss a view on the basis of anything but careful thought (and yet I, for example, was told from day one of my philosophical education that continental philosophy is not really philosophy--this prejudice is widespread and often really seems to be nothing more than a prejudice), 2) it is contrary to the ideals of philosophy to dismiss a person on the basis of what they find interesting or worthwhile (it isn't very nice to do this either), 3) the dismissive attitude is not only contrary to things like wonder and open-mindedness, often thought to be vital to philosophy, but also has a narrowing effect on the discipline. More and better philosophers are likely to be drawn into respected areas of the subject simply because of the associated prestige (which, I take it, is not a good reason), and departments that care about their PGR ranking are likely to want to hire in these areas, even if they themselves regard other candidates as superior (which is also not good). In short, Leiter's rankings, polls, etc., without meaning to, contribute to a dismissive (and therefore unphilosophical) culture within philosophy. Those dismissive of continental philosophy (even Leiter's own) are likely to be drawn to his blog for this reason. And that goes double when he personally dismisses people like Harman (and now Cogburn). Leiter may be a Nietzsche scholar, believers in the model complained about might say, but my enemy's enemy is my friend. He can, of course, get away with a certain amount of dismissiveness if he chooses to precisely because he works on continental philosophy and the history of philosophy. 

This is related to the kind of fear that I said was a symptom of a general problem in philosophy. Because so many ideas, fields of study, kinds of people, and individuals are dismissed and/or insulted (sometimes with accompanying justifications for the contempt shown them, sometimes not), there is a chilly climate in philosophy, not an open or welcoming one. You must think like the people at the top of the hierarchy. And they do not usually bother to explain (what can certainly often seem to be merely) their prejudices. This is not racism, sexism, classism, or homophobia, but it has something of the same flavor: differences in power, status, job security, pay (these are all related) are used to silence or humiliate dissenters from the status quo. I don't mean that people like Leiter have not earned their salaries, status, etc. I mean that differences in status play more of a role in the life of the profession than they should (according to a certain ideal of rational discourse that I think/hope is widespread in philosophy).      

What about my talk of things being painful, and of insulting references to our all being grown-ups? I meant that if I were Harman (or Cogburn) I would be hurt by Leiter's comments. Let's imagine I'm Harman. I probably feel pretty good about my leading role in the speculative realism movement. But I probably have moments of doubt too. It's not as if this work has been universally embraced by philosophers. And then one of the biggest names in the discipline implies that I'm a crank who just makes things up! Harman is probably made of stronger stuff than me, but that would be a bad day at the office for me if I were in his shoes. And then I was imagining someone telling Harman, as some have said about the student allegedly harassed by Colin McGinn, that we are all grown-ups and should learn to take such hits on the chin. And it seemed to me that this would be like telling someone who has just been hit to grow up. Which is adding insult to injury. As I write this I have a strong sense that it is embarrassing or wrong, a deviation from disciplinary norms, to talk about people's feelings like this, and to believe that it is wrong to hurt them. But I do believe that, and I'm mystified by the apparent unconcern for others' feelings (to say nothing of the desire sometimes apparent to cause pain) in some of these exchanges. 

Finally, why did I just mention salaries and job security? I think these are relevant in two ways. For one thing, tenure and a big salary confer prestige, which in turn makes it easier (and more obnoxious) for those who have them to beat up on those who have less of them. For another, philosophy, the humanities, and higher education generally are on the ropes at the moment. With employment prospects within the discipline so bleak there is bound to be an increased desire to conform to the norms of those in a position to hand out jobs, tenure, invitations to speak at conferences, reputation, etc. The more prevailing prejudices are confirmed the more anyone who cares about being able to get a job (which includes not only graduate students and the un-tenured but anyone whose job is not 100% secure) will be inclined to conform and the more these people will be disinclined to, say, dabble in speculative realism. That is not necessarily bad, but I take it that it is bad to the extent that it happens because of prejudice and power-plays rather than the careful employment of reason.]

People like us

There are interesting discussions going on at Brian Leiter's blog here and here. In the latter, John Protevi recommends that philosophy job candidates have a sober, simple, clean website, and adds: "The style of a website is like the style of clothes worn to an interview; it shows something about the style of the person in social interaction." I agree with his advice about having a website like that, but I was also struck by how explicit he is about the importance of coming across as, for want of a better word, normal. He's not wrong, but the sociology is interesting to me, especially in light of the other thread about advice for graduate students on publishing.

Ben Hale asks "doesn’t it only make sense to reward the strong publications but not to punish the weak publications?" I would say Yes, but he feels the need to ask the question because others on the thread, including Brian Leiter himself, have referred to publications in some journals as being minuses or stains on one's CV. I find this incredible (and unpleasant). Even Ben Hale seems to concede too much when he writes:

Assume the Gourmet Report and imagine the following:

1) NYU: A sparkling young NYU PhD comes out onto the market with top letters from all the important players. Her pedigree and recommendations are stunning but her CV is empty.

2) Oxford: A similarly sparkling young Oxford PhD comes out onto the market with top letters from all the important players. Her pedigree and recommendations are equally stunning, but she has one publication in the _Journal of Value Inquiry_. (Apologies to JVI. It was mentioned above, so I’m just using it to make the case.)

Arguably, there may be a reason to discount the one with the publication: The Oxford student is evidently not as good as she appears on paper. A middling publication is evidence enough that a candidate is middling, where no publication demonstrates nothing about a candidate, so the candidate’s quality is left up to the letters and the pedigree, which are stunning. The NYU student, on the other hand, hasn't yet proven her mettle. She is _only as good as_ she appears on paper. If publication history is a better proxy of someone's potential than letters and pedigree, then publications trump all and Oxford loses to NYU.

Weird, but fair enough. 

Really? Fair enough? If publications trump all then why does the candidate with one publication lose to the one with no publications? What if the paper she published in the Journal of Value Inquiry was not her best work? What if someone advised her to publish there, or invited her to submit it there? Does it really make sense to hold it against her that she took this advice, or that she chose to publish something (perhaps several years ago) that was not as good as the work she is now capable of producing? The only way I can see it making sense for NYU to beat Oxford in this example is if we are snobs and want nothing to do with people who publish in journals like that, or who get advice to publish in journals like that, advice that, apparently, is contrary to what is given out at the top-ranked departments. It looks like an unhealthy concern with pedigree. I'm genuinely curious as to whether I'm missing something here, but I don't want to post this over at Brian Leiter's blog because it might seem to be attacking him (and "escalating").

The usual argument seems to be that publishing in humble journals shows poor judgment or else is evidence of an inability to publish in top journals. But given the job market it does not show poor judgment. It might reflect a lack of confidence in one's ability to land a top job, but that lack of confidence might be a thing of the past and, besides, need not be a bad thing. As far as evidence of ability goes, I don't see that relatively moderate achievement (so far) is worse than no achievement (so far) at all. If there's something about probabilities that I'm missing, I'd like to know it. 

Reading between the lines a little bit, by which I mean taking people at their initial word and ignoring what they say when they seem to backtrack, my inference is that departments that regard themselves as "top" really will hold non-stellar publications against applicants whereas it might be precisely such publications that you need to get a job anywhere else (because you need some publications and because stellar publications (where what is or is not stellar depends solely on the reputation of the journal it's in, not the quality of the paper itself) might make you look unsuited to life in a lowly department). So we have something like the 1% versus the 99% divide, given how few jobs there are at top departments. Job candidates have to decide which they are and submit to journals accordingly. Or submit to the stellar journals and then see whether they can make it into the top 1%, although that's a risky strategy. I find this very depressing to think about (perhaps because I have published in the Journal of Value Inquiry, but I hope that isn't it).

It would surely be a good thing if no publications were ever held against candidates (with the only exceptions being based on the content of the paper itself, and here I have in mind things like defenses of racism, not merely weak arguments from which the author might have since moved on). Top departments should not be snobs and lesser departments should realize just how much of a buyer's market it is.  

The gays of the other

Is this stupidity or a deliberate attempt to distort the facts? The headline claims that Michael Ballack's agent called the Germany squad "a bunch of gays." This implies that he is both bigoted and hostile to the German team. But the story makes clear that in fact what happened is that he is alleged to have told a reporter which members of the squad are gay. This implies neither of those things. It certainly isn't "an anti-gay slur on the national football team," although of course the players probably didn't want his speculations about their sexuality made public.

Identifying anti-gay slurs can be tricky, as this case shows. The email in the case is here and there's discussion here. Roughly speaking, an adjunct professor of religion has been fired because he made what were taken to be anti-gay remarks. Actually he wasn't fired since he was an adjunct and you don't have to fire adjuncts--you just don't offer them another contract. No need for a good reason or anything like that. This is one reason why tenure (which still allows you to be fired if you don't do your job) is a good thing.

Anyway, responses have varied, some people thinking he did nothing wrong and others thinking it was right to let him go. But others avoid the issue of judging whether expressing his views was an act of hate speech by suggesting that he should have been fired anyway for gross incompetence. That seems unfair, since we all make mistakes (although his characterization of utilitarianism is very odd, with its emphasis on consent and all).

PZ Myers seems to get things about right to me, although I'm not convinced that Howell has in fact got Catholic doctrine right (as Myers implies). Howell writes (in his email):

To the best of my knowledge, in a sexual relationship between two men, one of them tends to act as the "woman" while the other acts as the "man." In this scenario, homosexual men have been known to engage in certain types of actions for which their bodies are not fitted. I don't want to be too graphic so I won't go into details but a physician has told me that these acts are deleterious to the health of one or possibly both of the men. Yet, if the morality of the act is judged only by mutual consent, then there are clearly homosexual acts which are injurious to their health but which are consented to. Why are they injurious? Because they violate the meaning, structure, and (sometimes) health of the human body.

Myers seems to take this to mean "If it fits, you need not quit," but 'fitted' here is not like fitted carpet. It means something more like 'right.' Which makes the reference to health irrelevant. Yes, unprotected anal sex can lead to HIV infection, but so can vaginal sex. Masturbation does not make you go blind or grow hairs on your palms, yet it is considered wrong by the Catholic Church. So what Howell's physician friend told him is really nothing to do with Catholic doctrine as I understand it.

The structure of the human body is probably believed to reveal God's will by some people, but it tells us little about what is and is not a proper use of the body. If one thing fits in another thing and the result feels good, how can we know whether this pleasure is sinful or blessed? We need reason or revelation, not a lesson in anatomy or health.

So we would need to consider the meaning of the human body, as Howell puts it. And this depends on the meanings of other things, such as life, death, pleasure, sex, love, and so on. Once we've figured out the meaning of life, then we can start telling consenting adults what they can and cannot do with their bodies. Of course the Church has, and is entitled to have, a view on what the meaning of life is. But this view centrally involves faith.

The giveaway is probably Howell's use of capital letters:

sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same. How do we know this? By looking at REALITY. Men and women are complementary in their anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Men and women are not interchangeable. So, a moral sexual act has to be between persons that are fitted for that act. Consent is important but there is more than consent needed.

There certainly seems to be confusion about fitting here, but the caps show that he means something other than reality. In religion, caps often function like an unintended negation sign.

Naturalism and disenchantment

Alex Rosenberg's Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality seems like an important piece of work. He asks that people not quote from it without permission (for which I can't be bothered to ask), so I'll try to discuss it fairly without repeating his actual words. Actually I won't say much directly about it, because I can't hope to engage with his arguments here. Skim the whole thing yourself. It seems important because Rosenberg is well respected and, more importantly, because it summarizes a set of conclusions that are a) acknowledged to be harsh, lacking in hope, unappealing, etc., and b) forced on us (if Rosenberg is right) by naturalism, the dominant '-ism' of contemporary philosophy. These conclusions concern such central and perennial philosophical topics as morality, free will, and the nature of reality.

Wittgenstein offers an interesting perspective on the debate about naturalism and nihilism. Rosenberg tries to reclaim the word ‘scientism’ from those, such as most Wittgensteinains, who regard it as a bad thing. In response to Rosenberg’s argument, Brian Leiter responds with an affirmation of Nietzsche’s assertion that:

Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature—nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time, as a present—and it was we who gave and bestowed it.

Leiter goes on to say, still following Nietzsche, that projected values can nevertheless be embraced and, in at least some cases, when the values in question are necessary, should be. He rejects the “value” that “falsity is an objection to embracing the value of something,” and encourages Rosenberg to go farther with his Nietzscheanism: “from the correct observation that most of what we believe is false, to the conclusion that since such beliefs are essential for life, we should not give them up.” Rosenberg responds that he is prepared to accept this as long as what we have bestowed is understood to be something that does not exist, like the Ashes in cricket.

Leiter’s position looks very difficult to maintain: certain beliefs are to be recognized as false and yet maintained nonetheless because they are essential for life. In what sense are they not given up just as soon as they are regarded as false? I don't mean to suggest that Leiter’s position is simply untenable. Rather, I think it forces us to ask about the meaning of his words. I suspect that a Wittgensteinian interpretation of them might offer the best answer. The same goes for Rosenberg’s comic and mysterious idea that we can bestow something that does not exist. This would be a very puzzling riddle did he not give a kind of solution along with it: what is given is like the Ashes, once an actual heap of ashes but now, by association, simply the grand container that once held them or else simply the victory that earns this trophy.

Rosenberg is giving a précis of an argument, and Leiter summarizes some of this précis as suggesting (correctly, in his view) that "most of what we believe is false." So I should not treat this claim as being all that Rosenberg means to say, but I want to anyway. If it is a fact that most of what we believe is not true in the sense that scientifically-established facts are true, it does not follow that it is false in this sense. It could be nonsense, or it could be some other kind of sense, such as secondary sense. For instance, if I say that all members of Rusted Root ought to be coshed, I don't actually mean that criminal violence should be done to innocent musicians, but nor do I simply mean that I don't like them.* I might have strong feelings that coshing is precisely what they deserve. What I say is not straightforwardly true, false, or nonsense. Many, perhaps most, of the beliefs that Leiter/Rosenberg considers false might be like this.

As comments in a blog thread, naturally what Rosenberg and Leiter say is unelaborated. Wittgenstein’s view has the advantage of being less cryptic and less seemingly impossible to believe than their (understandably and perhaps inevitably) rather gnomic remarks. Ethical ‘statements’ are neither false, nor straightforwardly true, nor nonsense, nor merely expressive of some attitude. They are, rather, perfect examples of the use of words in a secondary sense.

*I do hate Rusted Root, but not because they are hippies or liberal or anything like that. I prefer my hippies like this and my politics are probably the same as yours.