Philosophers' Carnival IV

Welcome to the fourth Philosophers' Carnival. I'm sorry to say that I don't have the creative powers of some of the previous hosts. You'll have to think of this as the brand-X, generic Carnival. It may not have the aesthetic punch that you'd like, but it's cheaper and it gets the job done.

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We begin with a post from apiring supervillain Jason Kuznicki of Positive Liberty about evil robots, which are the worst kind of robots. Jason attempts to give an account of compatabilism, which would allow for free will and moral responsibility in a deterministic universe. He describes a process by which we might design an evil robot, and set it loose upon the world - a classic villainous plot. The robot doesn't have to be evil, but no good villain would want benevolent robots.

Moving to Desert Landscapes, we find this question: what's the purpose of a moral theory? It gets an answer, too:

"So what do moral theories do? Well, they give us a deeper understanding of moral claims. They give us an account for why certain things are good and others are bad. In some respects they may explain our intuitions (this seems bad because it is bad, and it’s bad for the following reasons…) and in some respects it may show us that our intuitions are wrong."

Jeremy at Parableman presents his analysis of the OED definition of racism. According to Jeremy, the good people at the OED have some explaining to do. They've adopted a definition of racism that presents it as an ideology or a theory, rather than an attitude. Jeremy uses this to argue that we should be ready to take on the dictionary when the editors are off base.

Allan of Fake Barn Country asks if a major premise for contextualism is in fact based on intellectual cowardice. When confronted with a skeptical hypothesis, the contextualist argues that ordinary speakers concede that they don't know anything - but perhaps this is due to confusion or cowardice on the part of the speaker, or philosophical intimidation from the skeptic. Fake Barn Country is, of course, plagued by roving gangs of skeptics who philosophically intimidate grandmothers and small children with far-fetched scenarios involving evil demons and brains in vats, so this seems a distinct possibility.

Over at Majikthise, we see a precis of Jaegwon Kim's "What is 'Naturalized Epistemology?'". She writes:

"At this point, I'm trying to make sure that I understand Kim's arguments against naturalized epistemology. What follows is my precis of Kim's argument. I'm writing a defense of Quine against Kim, so I want to be absolutely sure that I'm giving the opposition a fair shake. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated."

Brian Leiter of The Leiter Reports recounts his dialogue with Jerry Fodor on the question "What is 'analytic' philosophy?" It turns out that all of the analytic philosophers are in Australia. It must be something in the water.

Counterfactuals are the order of the day at Mixing Memory. In a stroke of good fortune, Chris wrote about that topic as well. He says, "if we had a cognitive account of counterfactuals, this would be it." What is "this?" Read and find out.

Mormon Metaphysics has a post on Derrida, presented in part "as a check on some of the egregious Derrida bashing" following his death. You, too, may receive the Gift of Derrida.

God makes an appearance at Prosblogion, in a post on belief and divine hiddenness. Ted tries to establish that a personal relationship between two individuals might exist even when the parties have only de re (rather than de dicto) beliefs in their companion's existence.

OrangePhilosophy is rapidly becoming the Internet's premier blog that contains posts about death and also involve citrus. In "Death Revisited," Ben asks which of these two scenarios is worse for the person involved:

Baby. A three-week-old baby, Baby, dies in an accident. Had Baby not died then, he would have enjoyed a happy childhood and adolescence, gone to college, entered a PhD program in philosophy, become a professional philosopher, and lived an enjoyable life until dying at age 80.
Student. A 23-year-old philosophy graduate student, Student, dies in an accident after a happy childhood and adolescence. Had Student not died then, he would have become a professional philosopher and lived an enjoyable life until dying at age 80.

Ben claims that Baby gets the short end of the stick in this scenario.

From The Garden of Forking Paths, we have a call for input regarding degrees of freedom. Eddy Hahmias provides this sketch of the concept:

Both an agent's possession of free will and an agent's opportunity to exercise free will on a particular occasion come in various degrees, which correspond to numerous factors, especially the degree to which the agent possesses and has the opportunity to exercise certain cognitive capacities.

Brandon of Siris offers a defense of an obscure section of Hume's Treatise entitled "Of Scepticism with Regard to Reason." Brandon claims that Hume is presenting a causal analysis of reason as part of a response to the rationalist account of reason justifying itself, and that his critique of this position hits home.

Carnival creator Richard Chappell offers a post on fiction and emotion at Philosophy, et cetera. The question under consideration: is it rational for us to respond emotionally to fiction?

Finally, Troy of PEA Soup attempts to resolve the problem of moral luck with reference to a notion of second-order desert. He presents a scenario in which a negligent truck driver, Unlucky, is involved in an accident as a result of his negligence in which a child is killed. Meanwhile, another equally negligent truck driver, Lucky, manages to avoid an accident. We seem to have conflicting intuitions in this scenario; we want to affirm that Lucky and Unlucky are equally deserving of something, and that Unlucky deserves blame in a way that Lucky does not. Second-order desert is his solution to this problem.

That should be enough philosophy to tide over your intellectual hunger for few weeks. We are always looking for new submissions and hosts, and don't forget about the mailing list.