John Searle in the Chinese Room. Not picture: Zhu Tao in the Searle Room.

After 54 years of teaching at Berkeley, the man inside John Searle’s head has announced he will be entering a three-year phased retirement after the end of the current semester. The diminutive Zhu Tao made the announcement at a press conference Monday in a rare out-of-costume appearance.

At the conference Zhu said he is retiring from his current position in order to spend more time with Searle’s family. “I have become quite attached to these people,” Zhu said through a translator. “Although, admittedly, not being able to understand a word they say has limited the intimacy of our relationships.”

Though it never afforded genuine understanding, for the most part Zhu’s English-to-English instruction manual served him well during his time as Searle. One notable exception was the famous Searle-Derrida debate, in which Searle leveled charges of “deliberate obscurantism” against Derrida and other deconstructionists. ”Some people do not use words according to their prescribed manner,” said Zhu, reflecting on the exchange. “This results in great confusion.”

While he expressed sadness at the end of an era, Zhu looked back with pride at his time inside John Searle’s head. Zhu is popularly credited with sparking the shift away from brain-based cognition. Today that shift continues apace, with figures such as Andy Clark and David Chalmers outsourcing their thinking to call centers in India as part of a growing movement of philosophers who believe cognition can extend beyond the boundaries of one’s skull.

In the spring of 2014-15 and 2015-16 Zhu will hold a visiting position at Tufts inside the head of Daniel Dennett, after which he will officially become emeritus at Berkeley.

“Flrrrgh hrrhrzgh shfflr,” said Springer CEO Derk Haank when asked for comment.

The APA referee lockout entered its sixth week today with no end in sight. Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley-Blackwell refuse to return to the bargaining table, claiming in a joint statement issued Saturday that the demands of the APA Referees Association are “simply not feasible.” The Referees Association responded by reiterating their demand for an improvement on their current contract, under which referees collectively work thousands of hours per year, enabling publishers’ profit margins of 30 percent or greater, in exchange for no pay or benefits. The association is asking for a 5% raise over three years.

Tensions reached a high point last week after replacement referee Dietrich Zimmerman rejected a paper by Almeda University’s Peter Daniels. “Hedonistic utilitarianism claims that the right action will result in the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” wrote Zimmerman in his referee report. “But there is no greatest number, for adding one to any number results in a greater number. Hence utilitarianism is incoherent. Daniels’s paper does not address this fatal flaw.” Just six weeks ago Zimmerman was a foreign-exchange student with a questionable grasp of the English language reviewing papers for the Southern Journal of Undergraduate Research.

Zimmerman’s decision quickly drew criticism from philosophers and fans alike. “These college refs just aren’t prepared for the fast-paced, high-stakes game of professional philosophy,” said blogger Hannah Ward, writing about the incident the next day. For his part, Daniels was fined $5,000 for verbally abusing a referee after he asked Ratio‘s editor to forward a profanity-laced tirade to “Referee 1.”

The referee lockout is only the latest challenge facing professional philosophy, which is still reeling from last year’s disclosure that several high-profile philosophers tested positive for Humean Growth Hormone. Whether their image problems will force publishers to resume talks with the Referees Association, however, remains to be seen.

[Special thanks to Noel Dominguez for the refutation of utilitarianism.]

Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller displays the January 14 letter that certifies him as a one-judge panel of the US Supreme Court. 

Sheriff Tim Mueller                                  

1115 SE Jackson St

Albany, OR 97322

Dear Sheriff Mueller,

I am writing to thank you for your recent letter to Vice President Biden, in which you pledge to prevent federal agents from enforcing any new gun regulation or executive order that you deem unconstitutional. Mastering the nuances of constitutional law and personally scrutinizing every federal, state, and local law that comes before you no doubt requires much time and effort. In fact, for lesser beings it is a full-time job. (Those people are called “justices.”) For this reason alone you have my thanks and admiration.

I wholeheartedly agree that we must not allow “the actions of criminals, no matter how heinous the crimes, to prompt politicians to enact laws that will infringe upon the liberties of responsible citizens who have broken no laws.” It’s the same reason why we don’t let TSA agents at the airport search us or our bags without a warrant. The actions of criminals cannot justify the limitation of our constitutional rights.

Sadly you are correct when you write that, “In the wake of the recent criminal events, politicians are attempting to exploit the deaths of innocent victims by advocating for [new gun] laws[.]” It seems like just yesterday politicians were exploiting the deaths of innocent victims of automobile accidents to advocate for seat belt laws. They truly have no shame. Whether you’re for or against gun control, I think we can all agree that the debate must proceed without reference to the harmful effects of guns. Anything else would be exploitative. At the very least, politicians should not attempt to push through new gun laws while the nation mourns. Respect for the victims of Newtown requires that action is delayed until the nation is too distracted or unmotivated to enact legislation that might prevent future shootings.

I do fear, however, that perhaps your letter does not go far enough. What if — despite your best efforts — residents of Linn County are brought to trial under new gun laws? If you do not trust nine Ivy League-educated justices to decide matters of constitutionality, surely you cannot trust twelve randomly selected jurors to decide matters of guilt and innocence. Perhaps you should consider sending Vice President Biden an addendum to your letter, politely informing him that you reserve the right to decide which (if any) of the residents of Linn County are guilty of violating federal gun laws.

Once again, Sheriff Mueller, I thank you for doing all that you can to ensure the constitutionality of the laws governing the residents of Linn County. It’s a tough job, but someone has got to do it. (Again, those people are called “justices.”)

Sincerely,

Gerald Mueller

Strom Thurmond Chair of Conservative Thought

University of Cascadia

7641 SW Barbur Blvd

Portland, OR 97219

Members of the Moral Philosophy Research Group hard at work

A previously unrecognized moral principle was discovered last week after ethicists at the University of Mesa realized that they would rather kill an old lady’s cat than a young girl’s puppy. The principle of moral naivete, as it is being called, justifies this preference by holding that the wrongness of inflicting a given harm can depend in part on the degree to which the victim has previously been exposed to such a harm.

The breakthrough came late Thursday as several members of the Moral Philosophy Research Group analyzed the results of a thought experiment they had run earlier in the night. ”We were messing around, getting pretty sloshed,” explains Anthony Vega, the group’s principal investigator. “Basically it was just another night at The Lab,” a local bar and the group’s favorite venue for conducting research. Vega and several graduate students were playing Would You Rather, a party game and the standard research tool in normative ethics. Before long the group hit upon the question that has since sparked a firestorm of scholarly interest: Would you rather kill an old lady’s cat or a young girl’s puppy?

“We were unanimous in our preference to kill the old lady’s cat,” says Amy Fletcher, a graduate student and member of the research group. “Naturally, we then asked ourselves what morally relevant difference between the killings could justify that preference. Then we asked ourselves if we’d rather have an opportunity to play the St. Petersburg game or Newcomb’s problem, but later some of us remembered about killing the cat and got down to business on it.”

As news of the discovery spread, philosophers swung into action to justify the preference for killing the old lady’s cat. It appears that most accept the principle of moral naivete, but the justification of the principle is itself controversial. ”To kill a young child’s pet is to introduce that child to death, an event of great moral gravity,” Cynthia Lu writes in a blog post discussing the issue. Albert Montag disagrees, focusing instead on the effect of killing on the agent herself. “We are naturally inclined to protect and shelter those who are naive to loss, such as children. To kill a girl’s puppy is to do violence to one’s better nature and thus to brutalize oneself.”

Discovery of the principle of moral naivete has sparked a flurry of related research. Just three days after the original discovery philosophers from Sloan University hit upon “the lolly problem,” a dilemma in which the subject must choose between stealing candy from one baby or from five grown men. Preliminary analysis of the lolly problem and a number of variants is expected in the coming weeks, with philosophers hopeful that the problem will shed light on the hotly contested issue of confectionary theft.

- From “A Deflationary Account of Illusion,” now available in draft form. You can read the abstract and download the paper here. The paper was coauthored by Todd Ganson and myself.

]]> http://fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/kermit-on-visual-illusion/feed/ 6 fauxphilnews http://fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/lets-face-it-new-arrivals-drain-the-economy/ http://fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/lets-face-it-new-arrivals-drain-the-economy/#comments Sat, 05 Jan 2013 06:44:25 +0000 fauxphilnews http://fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/?p=1967 ]]> The following is an editorial by guest author Gerald Mueller, the Strom Thurmond Chair of Conservative Thought at the University of Cascadia.

With the fiscal cliff fresh on our minds, it seems appropriate to ask ourselves what policy resolutions we might adopt for the new year. While the prospects for true reform are bleak, it’s obvious that one of the most pressing problems facing America today is demographic in nature. There is an identifiable group of people who are demonstrably a drain on our economy and our finances. They’re unskilled, uneducated, and survive largely on handouts. Here’s a hint: They don’t speak English. You guessed it – babies. While the Left loves to coddle them, it’s time we took a good, hard look at these little fiscal sinkholes.

Babies lie around all day being pampered – they’re like cats, except it’s not socially acceptable to eat a baby.

First, babies are only here thanks to the labor of others. On average, a first-time mother is in labor for approximately 16 hours, but let’s leave that aside. I’m talking about real labor – the kind that makes money. Babies need someone else to pay for everything: food, housing, clothing – you name it, they get it for free. It’s no wonder the typical baby can’t be troubled to get a job when all its time and energy is spent suckling at the government teat. At least I assume that is the government’s teat in its mouth. In any case, the bottom line is this: While millions go to subsidizing the baby lifestyle, babies contribute little in terms of taxable income.

Worse yet, babies’ idleness is contagious. In a recent Rasmussen poll, 88% of respondents reported having less energy after assuming care of one or more babies. Seventy percent reported spending less time at work. And 67% said they are saving more of their income and spending less, further hurting the economy.

Finally, babies are here to take our jobs. Don’t let their practiced nonchalance fool you. If recent history is any guide, the babies of today will occupy literally millions of jobs currently held by hardworking Americans in as little as twenty to thirty years.

The conclusion is obvious: Babies are sucking this country dry. Will 2013 finally be the year Congress resolves to get tough on babies? It’s unlikely, but you can’t blame a guy for hoping.

[On a completely unrelated note, I don't think I've yet plugged the latest paper by Todd Ganson, my former advisor and occasional co-author. The paper is forthcoming in Philosophical Studies. In it, Todd argues that "plausible assumptions at the heart of Shoemaker's theory [of color perception] make trouble for his claim that color experiences represent the colors of things.” Go take a look!]

“These comments simply confirm that my opponent is an elitist, out-of-touch, liberal intellectual,” says Schmidt Geldbesitzer (pictured), the current neighborhood association president.

Des Moines, Iowa – Karl Marx’s campaign for the presidency of the Beaverdale Neighborhood Association was engulfed by controversy this week after a video surfaced of Marx addressing supporters earlier this year at Hessen Haus, a local bar. In the video, Marx suggests that 0.47% of the population are takers who leech off the rest of society.

“There are 0.47% of the people who will vote for the [current neighborhood association] president no matter what,” Marx says in the video, referring to the 0.47% of Beaverdale residents who own a business with employees other than themselves. “All right, there are 0.47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government for the enforcement of their property rights, who believe that they are entitled to the surplus value produced by the proletariat. These people already own the means of production, so our message of workers’ control doesn’t connect.”

The video was leaked to local news stations by an anonymous businessman who surreptitiously recorded Marx talking to a small group of supporters. After airing on Tuesday, the video immediately caused an uproar on aSmallWorld, Diamond Lounge, and other social networking sites for the wealthy.

Marx held a press conference on Friday to address the controversy. “If elected, I promise to be president of 100% of the residents of Beaverdale,” Marx said before adding with a wink, “But I also promise to round to the nearest percent.”

This is the second time that Marx has run for president of the Beaverdale Neighborhood Association, after a failed bid in 2008. Marx lives in Beaverdale with his wife, Jenny, and their children, Jenny (age 16), Jenny (15), and Jenny (5).

“Barack Obama. Now there’s a river you wouldn’t want to step in twice.” In perhaps the most groan-worthy moment of the evening, Heraclitus riffs on his well-known river aphorism to caution against re-electing the current president. He’s speaking to perhaps a dozen supporters at a Dairy Queen outside Nashville, Tennessee, on the third stop of his tour of the American Southeast.

Though you wouldn’t be able to tell from his speech tonight, Heraclitus’s official platform has three planks: (1) Things are constantly changing (universal flux), (2) Opposites coincide (the unity of opposites), and (3) Fire is the basic material of the world. The platform is summarized by the slogan, “Change. Unity. Fire.”

“People like the ‘Change’ and ‘Unity’ parts,” explains campaign adviser Jill Harnish. “They don’t actually realize what he means, but it sounds good. When he gets to ‘Fire,’ however, people usually get a little creeped out.” As a result, Harnish has steered Heraclitus away from detailed discussion of his positions and towards the cliches and sloganeering familiar from more mainstream candidates.

“I thank you for coming out tonight. Gods willing, in three weeks we will and will not take back the White House!” Heraclitus wraps up the night’s speech, bringing a grimace to Harnish’s face. “Clearly we have more work to do ironing out the whole coinstantiation-of-contraries thing.”

A Nashville woman displays her support for the doctrine of universal flux.

While he’s mostly been ignored by Obama and Mitt Romney, Heraclitus has drawn sharp criticism from another third-party candidate: Parmenides. Indeed, Parmenides’s platform can be seen largely as a critical reaction to that of Heraclitus. While his refusal to clarify ambiguous remarks has drawn comparisons to the Romney campaign, Parmenides has been interpreted as claiming that the universe consists in a single, unchanging, homogeneous substance.

“I can agree with the emphasis on unity,” says Parmenides, speaking by phone from his own campaign tour, “but Heraclitus’s change is an illusion. The only thing Heraclitus can offer is stasis.” Parmenides goes on to enumerate the contrasts that have formed the backbone of his campaign. “Where Heraclitus wants to change this country, I stand for timeless American values. Where Heraclitus sees differences, I see commonalities. Because whatever the appearances, when you think about it, we’re really all the same: we’re all Americans.”

Whether either candidate’s message will prove successful come election day remains to be seen.

[Note: The text of Heraclitus's planks is taken verbatim from the introduction to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Heraclitus, written by Daniel W. Graham.]

Responsible voters come in all shapes and sizes. Some are tall. Some are short. Some even have freckles!

The election season provides a prime opportunity to reflect on the state of our democracy. And, upon reflection, it is hard to deny that we face significant and growing threats to the integrity of our electoral system. Here are four of the most important (and least discussed) steps we should take to strengthen our democracy.

1. Keep out-of-state interests out of local politics

People like David and Charles Koch are often criticized for using their wealth to influence state politics around the country, but there is another threat to the integrity of local politics that has gone ignored. We need to protect small towns from the out-of-state interests who live in those small towns: college students. As New Hampshire Speaker of the House William O’Brien explained last year, college students are “taking away [small] towns’ ability to govern themselves” by outnumbering and outvoting long-term residents, and “that’s not fair.” Fairness demands that we expand restrictions on voting by out-of-state students. If you will not be around for the long haul, why should you have a say in the laws you will live under for the next four years? (Which is why we should also prevent voting by those who plan to move within the next four years, but that is another issue.)

2. Increase voter education

We can only expect elections to produce good governance if voters can make informed decisions about who best represents their interests, which is why we need to increase the level of voter education. And the best way to do that is to raise the voting age, allowing kids to gain valuable life experience before casting their first ballot. As Representative O’Brien noted when discussing voting by out-of-state students, “foolish” college kids “just vote their feelings” because they “don’t have life experience” yet. (Incidentally, this leads to “voting as a liberal” because “that’s what kids do,” but my point is about voter education, not disenfranchising either side of the political spectrum.)

3. Eliminate the corrupting influence of money in politics

As Mitt Romney has pointed out, 47% of Americans will vote for Barack Obama “no matter what” because they are financially dependent on the government. These people are voting with their pocketbooks rather than with the nation’s interests in mind. This financial incentive is a powerful ulterior motive corrupting the democratic process. I would be the last person to suggest disenfranchising the poor. Anyone can vote if they so desire. But I am suggesting that we make receipt of benefits like food stamps and Medicaid conditional on the suspension of voting privileges. A judge has to recuse himself if he has a conflict of interest — why should a voter not do the same?

4. Stop voter ID laws aimed at disenfranchising minorities

As Blackstone said, it is better to let ten guilty men go free than punish one innocent. But in the case of states like Pennsylvania, it is better to disenfranchise ten percent of the voters than have no voter fraud. Unfortunately, voter ID laws end up disenfranchising elderly White Americans as well. We need to confront the problem of minority voting head-on, in a way that will not cause this kind of collateral damage. How might we do that? First, if both you and a political candidate belong to an identifiable minority, you have a conflict of interest and should not be allowed to vote. Second, if you have family who are Mexican citizens, you should not be allowed to vote. There is simply too much temptation to vote for immigration-friendly candidates and against the national interest. (Such a law would apply if you have family in Mexico, whether you are Hispanic or not. That way it is not racist.) These suggestions are simply illustrative, however; we can deal with additional sources of minority bias as needed.

Are these reforms likely to happen? Probably not. But then again, a hundred years ago the victories of the civil rights movement would not have seemed very likely, either. That does not mean we should give up the fight for democracy.

UPDATE: Ann Coulter reminds us that the true test of voting responsibly is voting Republican. While Ms. Coulter might go too far in endorsing the disenfranchisement of all women, I am drawn to the idea that those women who fail to vote Republican might have their voting privileges revoked on the grounds that they are voting irresponsibly and damaging the national interest.

After conducting a Google search for ‘princeton philosophy’ today, this reporter was surprised to see the image above. Under the heading ‘Princeton University Department of Philosophy’ were four links: ‘Philosophy’, ‘Search Results’, ‘Viagra no prescription’, and ‘Viagra online’. A subsequent search for ‘princeton university viagra’ revealed two departmental pages with both ‘viagra’ (sic) and ‘Princeton University’ in their titles.

Without confirmation from the department it’s too early to say for sure, but FauxPhilNews is going to go ahead and call this one: the Princeton philosophy department is partnering with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to provide direct-to-consumer marketing and sale of Viagra. No longer will men have to turn to shady online retailers; now they can purchase their sex drugs straight from one of the most respected names in higher education.

With many departments facing serious funding problems, the decision may be one of economic necessity. Still, an institution as prestigious as Princeton surely had its choice of corporate partnerships, and FauxPhilNews commends the university for selecting such a deserving product. While Princeton philosophy has traditionally focused on the mind, it’s nice to see them recognize the importance of a properly functioning body as well.

UPDATE: As “x” points out in the comments, the search results referenced above are no longer available. FauxPhilNews was, however, able to find evidence of an enduring relationship between Princeton University and Pfizer, reproduced below.