Many of us feel that we have a duty to participate in politics in one way or another. But a lot of political participation seems to be causally futile. Maybe the most obvious example of this is voting in very large elections (such as a national presidential election). The chances of casting the deciding vote are astronomically small. So a natural question arises: why would we have a duty to do something that is almost guaranteed to make no relevant causal impact? Chris Freiman, a philosopher at the college of William & Mary, proposes an answer: we have no such duty. In this interview, he addresses a number of objections to this response, including objections from free-riding, complicity with injustice, expressive duty, and, of course, the ever-popular "but if everyone thought this way...". We conclude with a discussion of Peter Singer-inspired arguments to the effect that not only are we allowed to ignore politics, but we are in fact morally obligated to do so.

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art, and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

For more on Chris Freiman's work, see his website.

Topics discussed:

0:00 - Intro to Chris Freiman and public goods5:12 - Futile political participation, voting, thresholds18:34 - "If everybody thought this way" and free-riding33:55 - Complicity with injustice and accepting state benefits43:09 - You can always leave, an obligation to tax evasion?54:52 - Ethics of complaining, expressive duties1:08:27 - The duty to ignore politics and the train to Singertown1:28:48 - Democracy, climate change

There's something puzzling about intentionally acquiring a new value: if we don't already have the value, what motivates us to acquire it? This is best understood through an example: a young student takes a music appreciation class in order to learn to appreciate the value of classical music. She doesn't already appreciate the value of classical music—if she did, she wouldn't need the class. But if she doesn't appreciate its value, why take the class? The class is hard work, after all: she must spend hours listening to music that she doesn't yet appreciate!

Philosopher Agnes Callard calls this kind of intentional value acquisition 'aspiration'. In this interview, we discuss a number of issues surrounding aspiration: how it is possible, how it begins, why one cannot aspire to be a gangster, and perhaps most surprisingly, how aspiration accounts for how we can author of our own lives. Along the way, we discuss the nature of motivation, future-to-past normative grounding, and the immortality of the soul. We end with a quick discussion of the value of public philosophy.

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art, and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Sources:

Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming (book)Agnes Callard (YouTube channel)Is Public Philosophy Good? (first in Prof. Callard's public philosophy series at The Point magazine)Angry Rainbow Mermaids (Prof. Callard's blog)

Topics discussed:

0:02 - Intro to Agnes Callard3:50 - What is aspiration?5:13 - What aspiration is not17:27 - Moral skepticism and aspiration24:04 - Proleptic reasons and motivation45:13 - Starting to aspire and the direction of self-creation55:40 - Future to past normative grounding, ontological commitment, and motion1:11:52 - The value of aspiration, the good life, and the immortality of the soul1:28:42 - The value of public philosophy

In recent years, philosophers have debated the question of logical pluralism: the view that there is more than one correct logic (see my interview with Greg Restall on this very issue). The idea, roughly, is that which putative logical laws hold depends on what sorts of "cases" we take logic to be about; different kinds of cases yield different (but equally legitimate) logics. A common logical monist objection is to say that a form of argument is only a logical law if it applies in all cases. If this is true, it raises the question: what argument forms do hold in all cases? At this point in the debate, a third position becomes viable, defined by the answer: none.

Gillian Russell, a philosopher of language and logic, argues both that applying in all cases is necessary for qualifying as a logical law; and that no argument form applies in all cases. As such, she believes there are no logical laws. Much of our discussion surrounds her claim that no argument form applies to all cases. Is this really true even of the law of non-contradiction, the "law" that says that 'A and not-A' can never be true? Of conjunction elimination ('A and B' entails 'A')? Of identity ('A' entails 'A')? Russell runs through purported counterexamples to these laws; what's more, she illustrates a method for conjuring counterexamples to any proposed "law".

We conclude with a discussion of how we ought to respond to logical nihilism. We can throw up our hands and say "logic is dead!". We can call the problematic counterexamples illegitimate monsters and bar them from our vocabulary. Or — as Russell prefers — we can study under what conditions, or in what sorts of circumstances, certain logical regularities hold, even while knowing that none of them hold under all conditions.

For more on logical nihilism and Gillian Russell's other work, visit https://gillianrussell.net/research/. 

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Topics discussed:

4:01 - "Social Spheres" and applying logic to social and political philosophy11:38 - Intro: logic, nihilism, pluralism30:22 - Reasoning, generality45:06 - The "law" of non-contradiction54:20 - Context-sensitive counterexamples1:24:00 - Response: lemma incorporation1:36:10 - Williamson's objection to non-classical logics

A primer on anarchism from individualist anarchists William Gillis and Ryan Neugebauer. Anarchism is sometimes assumed to be synonymous with a call for chaos and disorder, a characterization which most of its adherents consider to be quite the opposite of what they strive for. But it is difficult to pin down just what unifies the many strands of anarchism under a single umbrella. In this interview, we discuss some of the central ideas behind most forms of anarchism: power dynamics in relationships, hierarchical vs. 'horizontal' organization, freedom as consent vs. freedom as the availability of options, among others. We conclude with a discussion on strategy: just what would bring about the end of the state? Does it require violence against the state? Is the aim of anarchism primarily a cultural shift, or is it something more concrete?

For more of Ryan Neugebauer's take on anarchism, see 'An Evolving Anarchism'.

For more of William Gillis's anarchist thought, found on his website Human Iterations, read 'Your Freedom is My Freedom: The Premise of Anarchism' and 'You Are Not the Target Audience'.

Also discussed:

Center for Stateless Society (where William Gillis is Coordinating Director)The Seasteading Institute

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Consider the sentence C: "If this sentence is true, then David Ripley is a purple giraffe". Suppose the sentence is true. Then the antecedent of the sentence ("this sentence is true") is true. According to the inference rule modus ponens, if an if-then sentence (such as C) is true and its antecedent is true, then its consequent ("David Ripley is a purple giraffe") must be true. It follows that if C is true, then David Ripley is a purple giraffe. But this conclusion is C: in other words, by simply supposing how things might turn out if C were true, we have proved that C, in fact, is true. So C is true, and since C's antecedent is the claim that C is true, its antecedent is true as well. Now we can use modus ponens again to show that C's consequent must be true. In other words, David Ripley really is a purple giraffe. QED.

This argument is Curry's paradox. Obviously, the choice of "David Ripley is a purple giraffe" is arbitrary; a sentence of the form of "If this sentence is true, then X" can be used to prove any claim X. Now, in actual fact, David Ripley is not a purple giraffe, but a philosopher of language and logic. According to Ripley, solutions to paradoxes like Curry's (as well as the Liar and the Sorites) fall into two broad categories: those that solve the paradoxes by messing with the meanings of important concepts (such as the meaning of "if-then", truth, "not", etc.) and those that solve them by changing the structural rules of inference by appeal to substructural logics. The latter approach, says Ripley, is preferable because it allows us to keep the intuitive meanings of these important concepts. There are various structural rules that can be modified to avoid the paradoxes, but the one that Ripley prefers is the denial of transitivity. This would mean that even if we prove that a implies b and that b implies c, we have no guarantee that a implies c. Ripley tells a story about assertion and denial conditions to argue that, precisely because of the paradoxes, the denial of transitivity conforms to natural language inferential norms. We conclude with a discussion of "revenge" Curry paradoxes for Ripley's approach, and of frontiers for substructural logic.

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art, and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Sources:

David Ripley (website)Curry's paradox (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)"Comparing Substructural Theories of Truth" (David Ripley)"Revising Up: Strengthening Classical Logic in the Face of Paradox" (David Ripley)

Topics discussed:

0:19 - Introduction to David Ripley3:17 - Logic, reasoning, and ways to approach paradox11:00 - Curry's paradox25:19 - The Liar as analogous to Curry34:34 - Taxonomy of solutions: vocabulary-based vs. structural-based45:35 - Logical connectives and natural language analogues49:55 - Optimism vs. pessimism in responses55:23 - Substructural solutions: non-contractive59:42 - Substructural solutions: non-transitive1:06:52 - Assertion and denial conditions1:20:44 - Gaps and gluts and revenge1:33:01 - History of and horizons for substructural logic

An old problem: I say, "Santa Claus is fat". I am saying something true about Santa Claus. But (content warning) Santa Claus doesn't exist. So what is it that I am correctly saying is fat? And what - if not its ostensive subject - makes the sentence true?

This problem is at the center of ontology. The most influential approach in the 20th century was offered by W. V. O. Quine, who argued that we're committed to the existence of any object that we must quantify over in order to state the truths of physics in first-order logic. At first, this seems rather arbitrary. Why first-order logic? What makes quantifiers so special? Why physics? And what does what we're "committed to" tell us about what actually exists? For roughly the first half of this interview, philosopher Jody Azzouni unpacks the thinking behind Quine's famous criterion. In the second half, he expounds his own view: he rejects Quine's criterion, and so sees no problem with referring to that which doesn't exist. This leaves Azzouni open to embrace a radical nominalism, in which almost none of the objects we typically think of as existing really do. This is because, as Azzouni explains, "ontological borders" are projected. There is nothing "out there" that separates one object from another. The fact that our language is built around distinct objects tells us plenty about our psychology, but nothing about the world itself, which comes with "features" but not individual objects.

Want to hear a different take on the same questions? Check out my interview with Amie Thomasson.

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art, and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Sources:

Jody Azzouni (Tufts faculty page)"On What There Is" (W. V. O. Quine)Word and Object (W. V. O. Quine)Ontology without Borders (Jody Azzouni)Ontology Made Easy (Amie Thomasson)

Topics discussed:

0:19 - Trends in contemporary philosophy5:37 - Contested objects and proposed principles12:11 - Quine's criterion of ontological commitment18:43 - Why quantifiers?20:53 - Quine's Word and Object: "exercise in sophisticated paraphrase"27:39 - Evaluating paraphrases37:16 - Against Quine's criterion42:07 - Other metaontological criteria48:18 - Nominalism51:02 - Reference failure and the aboutness illusion57:49 - Object projectivism1:02:42 - Does the world come with implicit boundaries?1:10:02 - Truth about non-existent objects1:11:51 - Stuff, features, and individuation conditions1:20:45 -  Amie Thomasson's easy ontology1:26:54 - The role of natural language

I have a (true) thought that Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street. But what is this thought about? Is it about Sherlock Holmes? If so, is it about something that doesn't exist? Can we really have thoughts about non-existent objects? What makes those thoughts true or false, if there is no object for the thought's content to correspond to?

Philosopher Michael Hicks distinguishes fiction-directed thought from world-directed thought. A fiction-directed thought is knowingly about fiction; it is a kind of pretense. It is crucial that thoughts about fictional entities be fiction-directed. If if I think my "thought" about Sherlock Holmes is about a real person - in other words, if it is world-directed - then I don't have a thought at all, because the ostensive object of my thought does not exist. According to Hicks, world-directed thought is "environment dependent". It takes the intentional state and the object of the intentional state to make a thought. If the latter is missing, then there is no thought. Thoughts about fictional entities, as well as about hallucinations and other non-existent objects, must be fiction-directed in order to qualify as thoughts. Put another way, thought about fiction only successfully happens when we play a game of pretense set up by the author.

Be sure to listen to part 1 of this interview first.

If you're interested in the metaphysics of thought, I discuss higher-order thoughts in this interview with David Rosenthal.

Next week: Jody Azzouni: Ontology without Borders

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art, and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Sources:

Michael Hicks (homepage)"Pretense and fiction-directed thought" (Michael Hicks)"A note on pretense and co-reference" (Michael Hicks)

Topics discussed:

0:51 - Environment dependence4:11 - Shared hallucinations and optical illusions15:25 - Russell and risk of error23:24 - Thinking about Sherlock Holmes46:24 - Difference in the content of fiction-directed thought?

What is a thought? There are two ways to approach the problem, says philosopher Michael Hicks. One is as a question about introspective experience. The other - favored by Hicks - is as asking about the nature of interpersonal understanding. We do understand each other; and this is what constitutes the existence of thoughts. With this approach established, Hicks explains to what extent it does or doesn't imply an "external" view of mind. We also compare this conception of thought to Gottlob Frege's, and discuss whether it involves a commitment to a "third realm" of abstract objects.

Next week: Michael Hicks: Fiction-Directed Thought

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art, and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Sources:

Michael Hicks (homepage)"The Thought" (Gottlob Frege)"The Extended Mind" (Andy Clark, David Chalmers)

Topics discussed:

0:20 - Introduction to Michael Hicks2:42 - What are thoughts?14:15 - Internal or extended thinking23:46 - Meta-ontology35:03 - Frege and abstract objects

Political philosophy begins with the question: who should have political authority and why? Anarchism answers: no one. Popular mythology tells us this is synonymous with chaos and disorder, but there are many reasons to doubt this must be so. In this episode, I argue that anarchism - properly understood - is in fact the correct answer to the problem of political authority; it is the only answer that avoids unjust hierarchies, provides for individual and social freedom, and optimizes for general welfare. This is because, in a word, society is best seen (and run) as a web, not as a pyramid.

Much of my focus is on specifying what I mean by anarchism, and which version of anarchism I'm arguing for. Specifically, I argue that the notion of a free market - again, properly understood - is at the heart of anarchism. At the same time, I argue against "capitalism" as being a confused and rather unhelpful notion, quite removed from the notion of a free market. I also argue against popular libertarian approaches to free markets and anarchism, such as the so-called "non-aggression principle" and property rights. Instead, I zero in on a notion of free market defined as a cultural norm in which monopolies are viewed as unacceptable. This definition, I argue, properly communicates what a free market really is and it provides the necessary conditions for a free and prosperous society. It is, at the same time, a maximally permissive definition: it requires no particular views on interpersonal ethics or lifestyle, and is as compatible with (for example) communism as it is with more familiar notions of "free markets".

Visit http://williamnava.com or more info!

Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art, and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Sources:

"'Capitalism' and 'socialism' are anti-concepts" (Roderick Long, video)"Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism" (Roderick Long)Pressing the Button (website)

Topics discussed:

0:20 - Intro and disclaimers5:09 - The question of political authority7:49 - "The will of the people" justification12:19 - Resource allocation and "a web, not a pyramid"14:49 - Unjust hierarchies: the state, capitalism, and others21:48 - What is capitalism?26:33 - What is a free market?31:05 - Against free markets as non-aggression36:23 - Against free markets as property rights40:04 - Free markets as anti-monopoly cultural norm42:35 - Competition as the source of regulation48:18 - Property rights compatible tyranny52:44 - Cultural norms56:12 - Scale, weakness, communism1:01:50 - More on monopoly, hierarchy, and coordination1:07:32 - Objections: social order, market regulation, collusion1:12:44 - Objections: public goods, externalities, defense1:20:46 - Objections: rent & interest, natural monopolies, epistemic conservatism1:25:01 - Objections: utopian, people are evil1:26:26 - Competition as cooperation

Some things are true in virtue of other things. For example, the fact that it is either raining or snowing today is true in virtue of the fact that it is raining today (if, indeed, it is). Or consider another example, put in different terms: the fact that my cat Irene exists is sufficient to account for the fact that at least one cat exists. We might then ask: what is this being in virtue of, or accounting for?

Philosophers call this metaphysical ground. Thus, the existence of my cat Irene grounds the fact that at least one cat exists. But how does this grounding relation work? How is it related to logical entailment? To cause? To essence? Is it possible for there to be partial grounding? Can a fact ground itself? If not, does a vicious regress emerge? What is the role of ground in metaphysics? In this interview, metaphysician Kit Fine covers these questions and more before zeroing in on a logical puzzle of ground, related to the paradoxes of self-reference such as the Liar.

Next week: Left Market Anarchism

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Special thanks to Jackie Blum for the podcast art, and The Tin Box for the theme music.Click here for the full list of episodes!

Sources:

Kit Fine (homepage)"Vagueness, truth, and logic" (Kit Fine)"A Guide to Ground" (Kit Fine)"Some Puzzles of Ground" (Kit Fine)

Topics discussed:

0:20 - Intro to Kit Fine2:50 - Vagueness6:44 - What is ground?10:40 - Realism16:15 - Two notions of necessary ground19:10 - Relevance and ground24:35 - Ground and philosophy, cause and science28:00 - Ground and ontological reduction35:18 - Regress, circularity, and weak ground44:55 - Types of ground and the "source" of logic52:50 - Ground of ground1:03:02 - Essence and ground1:09:10 - A puzzle of ground