cdethier.bsky.social
Philosophy of science, epistemology, and random flights of fancy. Currently a postdoc at UMN. He/him/whatever. coreydethier.com
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Corveni, Corvidi, Corvici?
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But also I haven't thought about this particular problem, so maybe there's some clever and intractable problem that I'm not seeing.
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So we'll get into the various problems associated with higher-order attitudes.
But I don't see that as something inherently wrong with the idea -- it just indicates that there are tough questions about how to do this rationally.
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I don't think it would be *odd* to have such concerns. People enjoy surprises!
As for your actual question, if you take your own epistemic states to be in the domain of your utility function, I don't see how you avoid assigning probabilities to your epistemic states.
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You want controversial? I'll give you controversial.
"You Make Loving Fun" is the best Fleetwood Mac song.
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I had a moment last year where I knew that the paper was accepted and I still could barely bring myself to look at the referee reports where I was like "Oh, this reaction is just anxiety."
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I really like that book, but I think all that it took for me to like it was the point in the introduction where you said essentially: "thinking you're right doesn't make it right."
So you could have blueskied it out too.
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Interesting! I've been looking for a source of this peculiarity for years, and this seems like the most plausible suggestion.
Of course, I'm also always happy to learn that I'm in agreement with Austin: I think Hart is completely wrong about "obliged." But that's neither here nor there.
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I think you're not going to get anywhere searching for a reason; even if there was one once, it's now just a convention.
Similarly: "obligated" when "obliged" is right there.
(FWIW: my impression is that we got the practice from law, but I have no idea why I think that.)
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Tangential, but my undergrad advisor, on the 1st day of class said something along the lines of: "At some point during this semester, you will begin to wonder whether I wear the same shirt every day or if my closet is full of identical shirts."
He then moved on without answering the question.
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My not-so-secret reason for (pretending) to be a formalist is that all you "vibes" people seem to be incapable of correctly evaluating the vibes.
E.g.: surprisingly good vibes:
Modal realism
Meignongianism
Real bad vibes:
Origin essentialism
Reference magnetism
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I don't have an answer for you, but I found it annoying enough that I finally up and switched to duck duck go for 95% of my searching needs.
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Also: "I'm here to be the value of a bound variable and kill god, and I'm already the value of a bound variable."
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Can't decide if my habit of naming RPG characters after dead scientists makes us natural allies or mortal enemies.
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Bright and early, 9 am!
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Waffles vs. pancakes vs. french toast is one area where everyone has different opinions but where I've never seen anyone get mad.
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I'm more impressed by the fact that your work at Princeton had that much of an effect on British dissertations, personally.
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I think you're aiming for cheese that is as thick as one slice of bread before it starts melting, so however many slices that is.
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"evidence fathering" is two small steps away from "epistemic parenting" and bam! you've got yourself a new cottage industry.
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I suspect -- though my evidence for this is much worse -- that it hurts me with some other schools.
Even if I'm right about that, though, I'd be shocked if it was strong enough to show up in the inevitably tiny samples available to us.
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And just one more "of course": reputation is much more fine-grained and complex than any sort of average can capture.
Having Notre Dame on my cv absolutely helps me with Catholic colleges and maybe with universities that have a combined philosophy and religion department.
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then prestige will matter more for students in whether they get a job.
But the same effect could appear in the context of research jobs, or jobs in the US, or any other way you slice the pie.
(I'm sure I'm just saying things you know here.)
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More importantly, my point was just that even if the degree to which (say) having Harvard as opposed to Notre Dame on a cv matters less for each hiring decision, it can still matter more for students.
One way: if the number of jobs decreases faster than the prestige does, ...
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Dan, I really like that paper, and think it's really valuable.
But also: I think the result is kind of a non sequitur. For one, the way that y'all operationalize prestige means that that particular result isn't necessarily relevant to discussions about prestige in the context of PGR rankings.
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Kevin, I really like this thread; one thing I'd note here that I'm sure you know:
Given that the market has changed in the last 30 years, even if reputation matters less in each individual search, it might nevertheless matter more to (say) whether a candidate gets a job at all (or an R1 job or...).
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I sortof feel like the fact that people do seem to believe the tech guy fundraising pablum indicates that they are making assertions -- or at least are being treated by their intended audience as doing so.
But also: I have *no idea* how speech acts are individuated.
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Special attack: pause the game so that a voice-over from a male character can explain that the mute woman is scantily-clad because *checks note* she breathes through her skin.
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I'm not going to look up how many hours I spent on Starfield, but it's in that vicinity.
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I'm willing to forgive most writing sins if the content is good enough, but I think that any written paper should exhibit much better engagement with / citations of the existing literature.
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Here's a really hot take: N&N exhibits all the sins of writing that analytic philosophers claim to be against.
And that's fine, because it's not a written piece, it's a talk, and the evaluative standards are (rightly) quite different.
But also: any paper written like N&N should get desk rejected.
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I don't think I'm disagreeing with you when I say that I basically think of HOPOS as:
322 BCE - 1962 CE: the central question is method.
1962 - 1999 CE: but what about metaphysics!?
2000 - ??? CE: the central question is method.
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I used to drive north from Notre Dame semi-regularly and would be struck by a similar thought every time.
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If this is your peak philosophy internet, you might enjoy the (mostly) German philosophers love song, which is probably from 2010 or so?
soundcloud.com/andreas-radu...
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I would be amusing if some level of self-citation resulted in the same scolding.
Each of the last three papers I reviewed ... well, let's say they all covered one author's contributions to the literature very thoroughly.
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I *think* this is the official position, yes. I'm pretty sure van Fraassen wants to avoid even assigning beliefs about unobservables.
I'd have to go back to check to be 100% sure, however.
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I thought it was Putnam's view, but when I attributed it to Putnam my then-professor told me I was misinterpreting him. 🤷♂️
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You might check out @hkandersen.bsky.social's "Trueing."
That paper approaches the problem from philosophy of science rather than traditional epistemology, but the heart of the argument (at least as I read it) is a kind of complaint about the factivity of knowledge.
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I have a more helpful idea that I'll post in a second, but I've always been tempted by:
Externalism about content means that the brain in the vat has true beliefs about the world, because their beliefs are really "about" electronic signals being fed to them.
People don't like this view.