What Do We Study?

The end of the academic year, as usual, is making for less blogging all around the academic blogosphere, and the Garden is no exception.  Here's something to help keep us alive during this dry spell.  It's not substantive philosophy, but it's quite important from a practical point of view.

On Wednesday I was at my brother-in-law's graduation from CSU Long Beach and I was talking to my mother-in-law.  I was explaining to her that I'm just now writing my dissertation prospectus and she asked, "So, what's your dissertation about?"  Now, this is related to the old "What are going to do with your philosophy degree" or the "What does philosophy study" question, but it is much more specific and requires a more specific answer.  After stumbling a bit trying to explain what the heck moral responsibility is, I decided then and there that I needed a "stock answer" prepared for times like that.  On the way home, I tried out a few suggestions on my wife:

Me: "What if I said this -- I'm intersted in figuring out the conditions that have to be satisfied in order for us to appropriately hold one another morally responsible for our actions."

Anna: "What the heck is a "condition to be satisfied"?  And what does it mean to hold someone morally responsible for an action?"

Me: "Don't normal people use the term 'morally responsible'?"

Anna: "Nope."

Me: "Okay, but surely people use the term 'blameworthy'.  What if I say that I'm trying to figure out when it's appropriate to say that another person is blameworthy for one of their actions."

Anna: "Nope, people don't usually use the term 'blameworthy' either.  Moreover, that way of putting it makes it sound like you are trying to figure out who should be blamed for what, but your interests are more abstract than that."

Me: "Yeah.  Okay, maybe I need a concrete example.  So what if I say this -- while it is appropriate to feel resentment toward other adults, it's not appropriate to feel resentment toward an infant.  I'm interested partly in figuring out what the difference is between infants and adults such that we can resent one but not the other."

Anna: "You're getting closer, but just to let you know, nobody uses the phrase 'such that'."

And so on.  So, I put the question to you, Gardeners.  If you were trying to explain what you study to someone who didn't know anything about philosophy, what would you say?  (It should be short and clear, but you can't cheat by just saying "I study ethics".)

Physics and Free Will

Check out this article in the London Times by Brian Appleyard (thanks for visiting, Brian!). 

I think the article illustrates a point I like to press:  that what the physicists ultimately say about whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic simply will not impact people's view of themselves as free and responsible, even if the philosophers chime in with a consensus view (like that's gonna happen!).  My prediction is that if the physicists said the universe is deterministic and the philosophers said incompatibilism is true, not much would change about the way people think or act. 

If the physicists and philosophers agreed about, say, the physical nature of consciousness (and that was reported in the press), well that might have more of an impact (but it wouldn't matter whether the physicists said the physical laws were indeterministic).  But the relevant sciences to most people are psychology and neurobiology (and maybe genetics)--these are the ones whose findings the press reports (and misreports) and people read to suggest that we have less free will and responsibility than we thought.  Whether the science is right (or the way it's reported is misleading) or whether any conclusions about free will and responsibility are the right ones to draw, well, there's some good philosophy to be done there.

Where are the gardeners?

As you all should know, there's a really interesting exchange over at the On-line Philosophy Conference between John Fischer and Kadri Vihvelin, on Vihvelin's claim that Frankfurt-style cases should never have convinced anyone that PAP is false. The garden is even cited by John in a footnote. But gardeners have been conspicious only by their absence (apart from me). I thought we (and I include myself) were all so verbose and argumentative that a post on GFP alleging that the sky was blue would generate 24 responses, most sceptical! C'mon, let's make this thing a success. You've already missed an opportunity to point out that I said something quite daft (I believe the correct expression is D'oh).

Good news...

...for Derk Pereboom and for our field.

Congratulations Derk!

The Garden Turns 2

Believe it or not, this month marks our blog's second birthday.  That's right, it was in May 2004 that the Garden first found its way to the blogosphere. (Though I think it was closer to the end of May.  Details, details.)  As far as blogs are concerned, I'd say the Garden has been a huge success.  I've learned a lot from reading and contributing to the various posts, and I've made some new friends along the way.  Thanks to everyone who has helped make this a great place to exchange ideas, including all of our regular contributors and commenters.  And special thanks to both the UCR philosophy department for helping to fund the blog, and to John Fischer for encouraging the idea and helping to keep it all running smoothly.  I doubt that the blogosphere will ever replace good, old-fashioned face-to-face conversation over a pint at the local bar in Moscow, ID -- but it may just be the next best thing.

In case you're interested, below are our stats for the past two years.  We're no TAR or Leiter Reports as far as the stats go, but we're certainly just as cool.

Total number of hits: 172,158

Average per day: 244