Requests and obligations

By requesting something from someone, we create a reason for them to fulfill the request. On an individualistic view of human beings, this is a rather awesome power—somehow I reach into your space of reasons and create a new one.

It is tempting to downplay the force of reasons created by a request. After all, it seems that a mere request can always be legitimately turned down.

But that’s not right. There are times when a request creates an obligation. For it may be that apart form the request one’s reasons for an action were nearly conclusive, and with the request they become conclusive.

And besides that, a successfully transmitted request always creates a moral obligation to consider the request. Sometimes, the request may be quickly rejectable on the basis of a background policy. But a quick rejection still requires a consideration.

Questions, of course, are a type of request: they are a request for an answer. Thus, they too always create a moral obligation.

Wolterstorff on worship and intention

In Acting Liturgically, Wolterstorff offers a necessary and sufficient condition for when someone “is performing acts of worship or just saying the words and making the gestures”:

if a participant performs some prescribed verbal or gestural action with the intention of not thereby performing whatever be the act of worship prescribed to be performed thereby, then he has not performed that act of worship; otherwise he has

In other words:

1. One worships with the action as the community does if and only if one does not intend to dissent from the community’s understanding of the action.

But both directions of the biconditional are false.

Case 1: Alice visits a foreign country where she does not know the language and enters an ornate religious building. She believes the building to be a pagan temple and, seeing people kneeling, she thinks them to be thereby worshiping some pagan deity. She feels an urge to pray to God, and she kneels with the dual intention of thereby worshiping God and of not doing what the local community is doing. Her worship is heartfelt and sincere. But unbeknownst to her, the building is a church and the people are worshiping God by kneeling.

Alice is worshiping God by kneeling. An intention to worship God by kneeling while acting in a heartfelt and sincere way is sufficient for the kneeling to constitute worship of God. But by Wolterstorff principle, because she also intends—perhaps in Wolterstorff’s own words (she might be a reader of his)—to “not thereby perform[…] whatever be the act of worship prescribed to be performed” by the kneeling, she is not performing “that act of worship”. But that act of worship—the one the community has prescribed the kneeling to constitute—is worship of God. So if Wolterstorff’s no-intended-dissent condition is necessary for worship, Alice doesn’t worship God. But she does. So the no-intended-dissent condition is not necessary.

Objection: Alice is not worshiping communally but individually. The community is worshiping communally. So, Alice does not perform what the community understands the action to be, namely communal worship.

Response: Add to the story that this particular church has a special meaning for “kneeling”: it’s not just worship, but individual worship.

Case 2: Bob visits a foreign country where he does not know the language and enters an ornate religious building. He believes the building to be a Christian church and, seeing people kneeling, he thinks them to be worshiping God. He intends to worship God, kneels and prays in a heartfelt and sincere way. The thought that there might be some pagans in this country does not even occur to him, since the country is known for being very Christian. He kneels with the intention of worshiping God. But unbeknownst to him, the building is a pagan temple and the people are worshiping a pagan deity by kneeling.

Since it doesn’t occur to Bob that the community’s kneeling might be worship of a pagan deity, he does not form any intention to dissent from the community’s understanding. Granted, his own explicit intention to worship God disagrees with the community’s understanding of what they are doing. But to have an intention that in fact disagrees with the community’s understanding of what they are doing is not the same as intending to do otherwise than the community understands. Compare: If an expert uses complicated verbage to deny the existence of life on Mars, and I misunderstand him to be saying there is life on Mars, and I say “Indeed, there is life on Mars”, I am not intending to say otherwise than the expert did—even though what I am intending to say is, as a matter of fact, otherwise than what the expert said.

It is tempting to say that explicit intentions about the meaning of the action trump implicit ones, and so both Alice and Bob are worshiping God, and neither is worshiping a pagan deity. But that’s not quite right. A religious person may intend for the community’s understanding of an action to trump at least certain aspects of their own understanding. For instance, when a Christian prays the Nicene Creed, they may have their own understanding of “consubstantial with the Father”, but they would do well to defer to the Church for what it really means. Thus, their explicit intention to worship the Son as X (where X is their understanding of consubstantiality with the Father) is overridden by their faithful intention to worship the Son under whatever description the Church means by these words.

So, probably, what we want to say is that the individual worshiper can have a complex of set of intentions with priorities between them. For instance, the faithful Christian who prays the Nicene Creed may have intentions where their understanding of “consubstantial” is subordinated to the community’s understanding, but only within some limits. If it were to turn out that what the community means by “consubstantial with the Father” is that the Father and the Son are finite deities with beards of equal bushiness, then the faithful Christian’s intention to worship an immaterial and infinite God trumps their intention to go with the community’s understanding. I suspect there is no good way to encapsulate the complex ways that the prioritization between intentions can go in a simple definition like Wolterstorff’s.

Could there be a grain of truth in Wolterstorff’s condition? I think one could say that one defaults to worshiping as the community does in the absence of overriding intentions. I am not sure I would agree with that, but it might be true.

I am grateful to Tyler Sharp and Juliana Kazemi for pointing me to Wolterstorff’s very interesting ideas on this, and for conversations on this. In a recent conference presentation, they gave an example that has a lot of similarity with Case 2.

Random causation across temporal gaps

Suppose that causation across temporal gaps is possible: that an object x can have a direct effect in a future time, with no intermediate causes. Given that a cause clearly can have a random effect—say, you press a button and you get a green light or a red light at random—then it should also be possible for a cause to have an effect at a random future time.

Now imagine a button that, when pressed, causes a flash of light at a random time in the future, from tomorrow onward, with the probability that the flash happens in n days being 1/2ⁿ.

This is not very different from a button that, when pressed, triggers a sequence of fair coin tosses, one per day, with a beep that goes off as soon as heads comes up. The probability that there will be a beep in n days is 1/2ⁿ.

But there is still an important difference between the flash and the beep, even though they are probabilistically isomorphic. The flash is guaranteed but the beep is not (it is possible to get tails everyday). On open-future views, it is true that the flash will happen but not true that the beep will.

One could imagine the flash method being used by God in connection with indefinite-time future promises like “One day I’m going to make a flash of light.” God can just create the button that causes the flash to happen on a random future day and then trigger the button.

Appearances of atemporality

Here’s a way to think about presentism. We have a three-dimensional reality and temporal modal operators, such as Prior’s P, F, H and G (pastly, futurely, always-pastly and always-futurely), with appropriate logical rules.

But now imagine this scenario: Reality consists of an eternally frozen time slice from a complex two-way-deterministic Newtonian world resembling our world—“frozen Newtonian world” for short. There are particles at various positions with various momenta (I assume that q = mdx/dt is a law of nature rather than a definition of momentum, and momentum is fundamental), but they are ever still, unchanging in their Newtonian properties. Now if Q is one of the operators P, F, H and G, define the operator Q′ as follows:

• Q′p if and only if either (a) reality consists of an eternally frozen Newtonian world and in an unfrozen Newtonian world that agrees with reality on its present slice we would have Qp or (b) we have Qp and reality does not consist of an eternally frozen Newtonian world and we have Qp.

Then the primed operators behave logically just like the unprimed ones. But according to the primed operators, “there is change and motion”. For instance, for a typical particle z eternally frozen at location x, it will be the case that P′(z is not at x) and F′(z is not at x), since in an unfrozen Newtonian world whose present slice is just like our world’s, there will be past and future times at which z is not at x.

So what? Well, the presentist’s big intuition is that on a B-theory of time there is no change: there is just a four-dimensional block, where one dimension just happens to be called “time” and things are different at different locations along that dimension, but simply calling a dimension “time” doesn’t make it any different from the spatial ones.

But the B-theorist can respond in kind. On presentism there is no change: there is just a three-dimensional world related to other three-dimensional worlds via certain modal operators that are called “pastly”, etc., but simply calling a modal operator P “pastly” doesn’t make it any different from deviant operators like P′.

The presentist will, presumably, say that it’s not just a matter of calling the operator P “pastly”, but rather the operator is the primitive pastly operator, so that if something pastly is different from how it’s now, it has changed. But now the B-theorist can just respond in the same way. It’s not just a matter of calling one of the four dimensions “time”, but rather the dimension is the primitive time dimension, so that if something is different at a different time from how it is now, it has changed or will change.

(Granted, a B-theorist does not need to think that the distinction between space and time is primitive. I am inclined not to, and hence I cannot make the above response.)

Presumably, even after this dialogue, the B-theorist’s alleged reality will look static to the presentist. But I think the presentist’s alleged reality can look atemporal to the B-theorist—it’s just a three-dimensional world with no time dimension and some modal operators relating it to other three-dimensional worlds.

Always-false open-futurism and the end of time

On always-false open-futurism, reports of future contingents are always false.

Now, imagine that it is contingent whether the time continues past t₁. Perhaps God sustains the world in existence, and has promised to sustain it until t₁ inclusive, but is free to stop sustaining it right then.

Suppose it is now t₁. Thus, now is potentially the last moment of time, but potentially not. What does the previous sentence mean? It seems to mean the conjunction of these two claims:

1. How things are now is compatible with its not being the case that there will be time.

2. How things are now is compatible with its being the case that there will be time.

But on always-false open-futurism, when the very existence of future time is contingent in light of how things are now, all will-claims have to be false. Thus, how things are now necessitates that its not the case that there will be time. In other words, we don’t have (2).

If this is correct, then on always-false open-futurism there cannot be a moment which is both potentially the last moment of time and potentially not the last moment of time. Each moment of time either is necessarily not last or necessarily last. This is a bit of a burden for the theory.

On trivalent open-futurism on which will-claims about future contingents are neither true nor false, the problem disappears. That now is potentially the last moment of time but potentially not can be taken to be equivalent to:

3. It is neither true nor false that there will be time.

A Thomistic argument for the Principle of Proportional Causality

The Principle of Proportionate Causality (PPC) defended by Aquinas and other scholastics says that a perfection P can only be caused by something that has P either formally or eminently. To have P formally is to have P. Roughly, to have P eminently is to have a perfection greater than P.

(Some add: “has P virtually” to the list of options. But to have P virtually is just to have the power to produce P, and as our student Colin Causey has noted, this trivializes PPC.)

There are obvious apparent counterexamples to PPC:

• Two parents who are bad at mathematics can have a mathematical genius as a child.

• Ugly monkeys typing at random can produce a beautiful poem.

• A robot putting together parts at random can make a stronger and smarter robot.

It’s tempting to throw PPC out. But there are also cases where one feels a pull towards PPC:

• How can things that represent come from non-representing stuff?

• How can the conscious come from the non-conscious?

• How can something with dignity come from something without any?

• How can the active come from the inactive?

• How can an “ought” come from a mere “is”, i.e., something with normativity from something without any?

Many contemporary philosophers think there is no impossibility even in these cases, but I think most will agree that there is something puzzling about these kinds of causation—that we have some sort of an intuition towards PPC in these cases, of a sort we do not have in the cases of the “obvious apparent counterexamples”. What is the difference between the cases?

Well, in the counterexamples, the differences between the cause and the effect are, arguably, a matter of degree. The two parents have a much lower degree of mathematical ability. The monkeys have a certain beauty to them—being productive of beauty is a kind of beauty—albeit perhaps a lesser one than their lucky output. The robot’s output is just a more sophisticated bunch of moving parts than the robot itself.

But in the examples where one feels pulled to PPC, the differences appear to be differences in kind. Indeed, I think we can all agree that the most plausible way to resist the implied claim in the “How can…?” questions that the thing is impossible is to show how to reduce the seemingly more perfect thing to something of the same sort as the alleged cause.

But “differences in kind” doesn’t seem quite sharp enough. After all, pretty much everyone (even, I assume, young earth creationists) will agree that dogs can come from wolves.

I’ve been puzzled by how one might understand and argue for PPC for a long time, without much progress. This morning I had an inspiration from Nicholas Rescher’s article on Aquinas’ “Principle of Epistemic Disparity”, that lesser minds cannot comprehend the ways of greater ones.

Suppose we order the types of good by a comprehensibility relation ≤ where G ≤ H means that it is possible to understand G by understanding H. Then ≤ is a partial preorder, i.e., a reflexive and transitive relation. It generates a strict partial preorder < where G < H provided that G ≤ H but not H ≤ G.

Next, say that good types G₁ and G₂ are cases of the same perfection provided that G₁ ≤ G₂ and G₂ ≤ G₁, i.e., that each can be understood by the other. Basically, we are taking perfections to be equivalence classes of types of good, under the relation ∼ such that G₁ ∼ G₂ if and only if G₁ ≤ G₂ and G₂ ≤ G₁. The relation ≤ extends in a natural way to the perfections: P ≤ Q if and only if whenever G is a case of P and H is a case of Q then G ≤ H. Note that ≤ is a partial order on the perfections. In particular, it is antisymmetric: if we have P ≤ Q and Q ≤ P, then we have P ≠ Q. Write P < Q provided that P ≤ Q and P ≠ Q.

Now on to a Thomistic argument for the PPC.

Being, truth and goodness are transcendentals. The cognitively more impressive perfection Q is thus also axiologically more impressive. Thus:

Axiological Thesis: If P < Q for perfections P and Q, then Q is a better kind of perfection than P.

The following is plausible on the kind of Aristotelian intrinsic notion of causation that Thomas works with:

Causal Thesis: By understanding the cause one understands the effect.

Thomistic ideas about transcendentals also yield:

Understandability Lemma: To understand a thing one only needs to understand the goods instantiated by the thing.

Finally, let’s add this technical assumption:

Conjunction Lemma: The conjunction of co-instantiable goods is a good.

And now on to the PPC. Suppose x causes y to have a good G and y has a type of good G that is a case of a perfection P. By the Causal Thesis, we understand G by understanding x. By the Conjunction Lemma, let H be the conjunction of all the good of x. By the Understandability Lemma, we understand x by understanding H. Thus, G ≤ H. Let Q be the perfection that H is a case of. Then P ≤ Q and x has Q. Then either P = Q or P < Q. In the former case, the cause has P formally. In the latter case, by the Axiological Thesis, the cause has P eminently.

Of course, the Axiological and Causal Theses, together with the Understandability Lemma, all depend on large and controversial parts of Aquinas’ system. But I think we are making some progress.

I am also toying with an interesting concept. Say that a perfection Q is irreducible provided that it cannot be understood by understanding any conjunction of perfections P such that P < Q. It’s not obvious that there are irreducible perfections, but I think it is plausible that there are. If so, one might have a weaker PPC restricted to irreducible perfections. I have yet to think through the pluses and minuses here.

Divine willing

A correspondent asked me how a simple God can choose. I've thought much about this, never quite happy with what I have to say. I am still not happy (nor is it surprising if "how God functions" is beyond us!) but the following helps me a little.

Suppose I am choosing between making a brownie or a smoothie, and end up making a smoothie. Then there are four stages with each stage causing the next:

1. Deliberation between brownie and smoothie (and any other options).

2. An internal intention for a smoothie.

3. Physical movements.

4. Output: smoothie!

At Stage 1, I am still open between brownie and smoothie. Starting with Stage 2, I am internally set on the smoothie, and at that point I become morally responsible for setting myself on the smoothie.

Now one great thing about God’s power is that God doesn’t need means: he can produce effects directly.

In particular, God will omit stage 3: he doesn’t need moving limbs (nor anything else beyond himself) to produce the smoothie in the way that I need them.

Now suppose we apply perfect being theology to God. It’s a perfection of power not to need means. But stage 3 is not the only means in the above story: stage 2 is also a means. If God really doesn’t need means, then stage 2 will also be omitted in God, and we will have the two (non-temporal) stage production:

1. Deliberation between brownie and smoothie (and infinitely many other options).

2. Output: smoothie!

In particular, nowhere in this account is there an internal intention. It’s not needed: God acts directly on the external world.

We might ask: How does God know that he intends to create a smoothie? I think it’s by direct observation of the output, stage B in the divine case. (And God’s knowledge of contingencies is extrinsically grounded in the contingencies.)

If that sounds wrong, let’s ask how we know what we intend. Sometimes we know what we intend by introspection: by observing the internal intention of stage 2. But not always. Sometimes stage 2 is not conscious—we deliberate, we presumably form an internal intention but we are not directly aware of it, and then we act. When we deliberate whether to do something minor like whether to lift the left or the right hand, sometimes the first thing we are aware of is not an internal intention or specific act of will, but the movement of the hand itself. Thus, even in us, knowledge of our intentions is sometimes read off from stage 3.

Moreover, in some cases, for us, stage 3 is not distinct from stage 4. For we have bodies that we move, and sometimes—as in the hand-lift case—the output is the same as the physical movements. In some such cases, then direct knowledge of the merges stages 3 and 4 is how we know our own intention. There may even be rare cases where stage 3 and stage 4 are distinct, but in our consciousness, the knowledge of stage 4 comes first. Suppose I am deliberating whether to press the space-bar or the enter key in response to the computer saying “Press any key”. I choose to press the space-bar. It may well be that in the order of consciousness, I first feel the impact of my finger on the keyboard, then I discern the subtler kinesthetic sensation of my finger having moved through the air, and then only then do I realize what key I intended to press. I don’t know if this is how it happens—it’s too fast to be confident of phenomenology—but it seems like an intelligible possibility.

In any case, there is nothing absurd about knowing an intention by direct observation of the output.

While writing the above, it occurred to me that perhaps we shouldn’t be all that confident that we always have a stage 2. In the cases where our knowledge of what we intend comes from knowledge of stage 3 or 4, and we do not have direct conscious access to an internal act of intention, the internal act of intention is a mere theoretical posit. Perhaps that theoretical posit is correct, but perhaps it is not. If it is not, then one can intend a specific output without having an internal specified act of intention.

Why do we like being confident?

We like being more confident. We enjoy having credences closer to 0 or 1. Even if the proposition we are confident in is one that is such that it is a bad thing that it is true, the confidence itself, abstracted from the badness of the state of affairs reported by the proposition, is something we enjoy.

Here is a potential justification of this attitude in many cases. We can think of the epistemic utility of one’s credence r in a proposition p as measured by an accuracy scoring rule given by two functions T(r) and F(r), where T(r) gives the value of having credence r in p when p is actually true and F(r) gives the value when p is actually false. Most people thinking about scoring rules think they should satisfy the technical condition of being strictly proper. But strict propriety implies that the function V(r) = rT(r) + (1−r)F(r) is strictly convex. Now suppose the scoring rule is also symmetric, so that T(r) = F(1−r). Then V(r) is a strictly convex function that is symmetric about r = 1/2. Such a function has its minimum at r = 1/2, and is strictly decreasing on [0,1/2] and strictly increasing on [1/2,1]. But the function V(r) measures your expectation of your epistemic utility. How happy you are about your credence, perhaps, corresponds to your expectation of your epistemic utility. So you are most unhappy at credence 1/2, and you get happier that closer you are to 0 or 1.

OK, it’s surely not that?!

Observations and risk of confirmation/disconfirmation

It seems that a rational agent cannot guarantee their credence in a hypothesis H to go up by choosing what observation to perform. For if no matter what I observe, my credence in H goes up given my observation, then my credence should already have gone up prior to the observation—I should boost my credence from the armchair.

But this reasoning is false in general. For in performing the observation, I not only learn which of the possible observable results is in place, but I also learn that I have performed the observation. In cases where the truth of H has a correlation with whether I actually perform the observation, this can have a predictable direction of effect on my credence in H.

Suppose that the hypothesis H is the conjunction that I am going to look in the closet and there is life on Mars. By looking to check if there is a mouse in my closet, I ensure that the first conjunct of H is true, and hence I increase my credence in H—no matter what I find out about mice.

This is a very trivial fact. But it does mean that we need to qualify the statement that any observation that can confirm a hypothesis can also disconfirm it. We need to specify that the confirmation and disconfirmation happen after one has already updated on the fact that one has performed the observation.

Epistemic utilities and decision theories

Warning: I worry there may be something wrong in the reasoning below.

Causal Decision Theory (CDT) and Epistemic Decision Theory (EDT) tend to disagree when the payoff of an option statistically depends on your propensity to go for that option. The most example of this phenomenon is Newcomb’s Problem (where money is literally put into a box or not depending on what your propensities are), and there is a large literature of other clever and mind-twisting examples. From the literature, one might get a feeling that these cases are all somehow weird, and normally there is no such dependence.

But here is a family of cases that happens literally almost all the time to us. Pretty much whenever we act we gain information relevant to facts about ourselves, and specifically to facts about our propensities to act. For instance, when you choose chocolate over vanilla ice cream you raise your credence for the hypothesis that you have a greater propensity to choose chocolate ice cream than to choose vanilla ice cream. But truth about oneself is valuable and falsehood about oneself is disvaluable. If in fact you have a greater propensity to choose chocolate ice cream, then by eating chocolate ice cream you gain credence in a truth, which is a good thing. If in fact your propensity for vanilla ice cream is at least as great as for chocolate ice cream, then by eating chocolate ice cream, you gain credence in a falsehood. The payoffs of your decision as to flavor of ice cream thus statistically depend on what your propensities actually are, and so this is exactly the kind of case where we would expect CDT and EDT to disagree.

Let’s be more precise. You have a choice between eating chocolate ice cream (C), eating vanilla ice cream (V) or not eating ice cream at all (N). Let H be the hypothesis that you have a greater propensity for eating chocolate ice cream than for eating vanilla ice cream. Then if you choose C, you will gain evidence for H. If you choose V, you will gain evidence for not-H. And if you choose N, you will (plausibly) gain no evidence for or against H. Your epistemic utility with respect to H is, let us suppose, measured by a single-proposition accuracy scoring rule, which we can think of as a pair of functions T_H and F_H, where T_H(p) is the value of having credence p in H if in fact H is true and F_H(p) is the value of having credence p in H if in fact H is false.

The expected evidential utilities of your three options are:

• E_e(C) = P(H|C)T_H(P(H|C)) + (1−P(H|C))F_H(P(H|C))

• E_e(V) = P(H|V)T_H(P(H|V)) + (1−P(H|V))F_H(P(H|V))

• E_e(N) = P(H|N)T_H(P(H|N)) + (1−P(H|N))F_H(P(H|N)) = P(H)T_H(P(H)) + (1−P(H))F_H(P(H)).

The expected causal utilities are:

• E_c(C) = P(H)T_H(P(H|C)) + (1−P(H))F_H(P(H|C))

• E_c(V) = P(H)T_H(P(H|V)) + (1−P(H))F_H(P(H|V))

• E_c(N) = P(H)T_H(P(H|N)) + (1−P(H))F_H(P(H|N)) = P(H)T_H(P(H)) + (1−P(H))F_H(P(H)).

We can make some quick observations in the case where the scoring rule is strictly proper, given that P(H|V) < P(H) < P(H|C):

1. E_c(C) < E_c(N)

2. E_c(V) < E_c(N)

3. At least one of E_e(C) > E_e(N) and E_e(V) > E_e(N) is true.

Observations 1 and 2 follow immediately from strict propriety and the formulas for E_c. Observation 3 follows from the fact that the expected accuracy score after Bayesian update on evidence is better (in non-trivial cases where the scoring rule is strictly proper) than before update, and the expected accuracy score after update on what you’ve chosen is:

• P(C)E_e(C) + P(V)E_e(V) + P(N)E_e(N)

while the expected accuracy score before update is equal to E_e(N). Since P(C) + P(V) + P(N) = 1, it follows from the superiority of the post-update expectation that at least one of E_e(C) and E_e(V) must be bigger than E_e(N).

The above results seem to be a black eye for CDT, which recommends that if what you care about is your epistemic utility with regard to your propensities regarding chocolate and vanilla ice cream, then you should always avoid eating ice cream!

(What about ratifiability? Some CDTers say that only ratifiable options should count. Is N ratifiable? Given that you’ve learned nothing about H from choosing N, I think N should be ratifiable. But I may be missing something. I find the epistemic utility case confusing.)

It also seems to me (I haven’t checked details) that on EDT there are cases where eating either flavor is good for you epistemically, but there are also cases where only one specific flavor is good for you.

"Swapping memories"

In Shoemaker’s Lockean memory theory of personal identity, in the absence of fission and fusion personal identity is secured by a chain of first-personal episodic quasimemories. All memories are quasimemories, but in defining a quasimemory the condition that the remembered episode happened to the same person is dropped to avoid circularity. It is important that quasimemories must be transmitted causally by the same kind of mechanism by which memories are transmitted. If I acquire vivid apparent memories of events in Napoleon’s life by reading his diaries, these apparent memories are neither memories nor quasimemories, because diaries are not the right kind of mechanism for memory transmission, and so Shoemaker can avoid the absurd conclusion that we can resurrect Napoleon by means of his diaries. If you wrote down an event in a diary, and then forgot the event, and then learned of the event from the diary, you should not automatically say “I now remember” (of course, the diary might have jogged your memory—but that’s a different phenomenon from your learning of the event from the diary).

It seems to me that discussion of memory theory after Shoemaker have often lost sight of this point, by engaging in science-fictional examples where memories are swapped between brains without much discussion of whether moving a memory from one brain to another is the right kind of mechanism for memory transmission. Indeed, it is not clear to me that there is a principled difference between reading Napoleon’s memory off from a vivid description in his diary and scanning it from his brain. With our current brain scanning technology, the diary method is more accurate. With future brain scanning technology, the diary method may be less accurate. But the differences here seem to be ones of degree rather than principle.

If I am right, then either the memory theorist should allow the possibility of resurrecting someone by inducing apparent memories in a blank brain that match vivid descriptions in their diary (assuming for the sake of argument that there is no afterlife otherwise) or should deny that brain-scan style “memory swapping” is really a quasimemory swap and leads to a body-swap between the persons. (A memory swap that physically moves chunks of brain matter is a different matter—the memories continue to be maintained and transmitted using the usual neural processes.)

An instability in Newcomb one-boxing

Consider Newcomb’s Paradox, and assume the predictor has a high accuracy but is nonetheless fallible. Suppose you have the character of a one-boxer and you know it. Then you also know that the predictor has predicted your choosing one box and hence you know that there is money in both boxes. It is now quite obvious that you should go for two boxes! Of course, like the predictor, you predict that you won’t do it. But there is nothing unusual about a situation where you predict you won’t do the rational thing: weakness of the will is a sadly common phenomenon. Similarly, if you have the character of a two-boxer and you know it, the rational thing to do is to go for two boxes. For in this case you know the predictor put money only in the clear box, and it would be stupid to just go for the opaque box and get nothing.

None of what I said above should be controversial. If you know what the predictor did, you should take both boxes. It’s like Drescher’s Transparent Newcomb Problem where the boxes are clear and it seems obvious you should take both. (That said, some do endorse one-boxing in Transparent Newcomb!) Though you should be sad that you are the sort of person who takes both.

This means that principles that lead to one-boxing suffer from an interesting instability: if you find out you are firmly committed to acting in accordance with these principles, it is irrational for you to act in accordance with them. Not so for the principles that lead to two-boxing. Even when you find out you are firmly committed to them, it’s rational to act in accordance with them.

This instability is a kind of flip of the usual observation that if one expects to be faced with Newcomb situations, and one has two-boxing principles, then it becomes rational to regret having one-boxing principles. That, too, is an odd kind of inconsistency. But this inconsistency does not seem particularly telling. Take any correct rational principle R. There are situations where it becomes rational to regret having R, e.g., if a madman is going around torturing all the people who have R. (This is similar to the example that Xenophon attributes to Socrates that being wise can harm you because it can lead to your being kidnapped by a tyrant to serve as his advisor.)

Virtue and value

Suppose you have a choice between a course of action that greatly increases your level of physical courage and a course of action that mildly increases your level of loyalty to friends. But there is a catch: you have moral certainty that in the rest of your life you won’t have any occasion to exercise physical courage but you will have occasions to exercise loyalty to friends.

It seems to be a poor use of limited resources to gain heroic physical courage instead of improving your loyalty a bit when you won’t exercise the heroic physical courage.

If this is right, then the exercise of virtue counts for a lot more than the mere possession of it, as Aristotle already noted with his lifelong coma argument.

But now modify the case. You have a choice between a course of action that greatly increases your level of physical courage and feeding one hungry person for a day. Suppose that you don’t have the virtue of generosity, and that feeding the hungry person won’t help you gain it, because you have a brain defect that prevents you from gaining the virtue of generosity, though it allows you to act generously. And as before suppose you will never have an occasion to exercise physical courage. It still seems clear that you should feed the hungry person. Thus not only does the exercise of virtue count for a lot more than mere possession of virtue, acting in accordance with virtue, even in the absence of the virtue, counts for more than mere possession of virtue.

Next, consider a third case. You have a choice between two actions, neither of which will affect your level of virtue, because shortly after the actions your mind will be wiped. Action A has an 85% chance of saving a life, and if you perform action A, it will certainly be an exercise of generosity. Action B has a 90% chance of saving a life, and the action will be done in accordance with physical courage but will not be an exercise of virtue. Which should you do? It seems that you should do B. Thus, that an action is an exercise of a virtue does not seem to count for a lot in deliberation.

Nuclear deterrence, part II: False threats

In my previous post, I considered the argument against nuclear deterrence that says it’s wrong to gain a disposition to do something wrong, and a disposition to engage in nuclear retaliation is a disposition to dosmething wrong. I concluded that the argument is weaker than it seems.

Here I want to think about another argument againt nuclear deterrence under somewhat different assumptions. In the previous post, the assumption was that the leader is disposed to retaliate, but expects not to have to (because the deterrence is expected to work). But what about a case where the leader is not disposed to retaliate, but credibly threatens retaliation, while planning not to carry through the threat should the enemy attack?

It would be wrong, I take it, for the leader to promise to retaliate in such a case—that would be making a false promise. But threatening is not promising. Suppose that a clearly unarmed thief has grabbed your phone is about to run. (Their bathing suit makes it clear they are unarmed.) You pick up a realistic fake pistol, point it at the them, and yell: “Drop the phone!” This does not seem clearly morally wrong. And it doesn’t seem to necessarily become morally wrong (absent positive law against it) when the pistol is real as long as you have no intention or risk of firing (it is, of course, morally wrong to use lethal force merely to recover your property—though it apparently can be legal in Texas). The threat is a deception but not a lie. For, first, note, that you’re not even trying to get the thief to believe you will shoot them—just to scare them (fear requires a lot less than belief). Second, if the thief keeps on running and you don’t fire, the thief would not be right to feel betrayed by your words.

So, perhaps, it is permissible to threaten to do something that you don’t intend to do.

Still, there is a problem. For it seems that in threatening to something wrong, you are intentionally gaining a bad reputation, by making it appear like you are a wicked person who would shoot an unarmed thief or a wicked leader who would retaliate with an all-out nuclear strike. And maybe you have a duty not to intentionally gain a bad reputation.

Maybe you do have such a duty. But it is not clear to me that the leader who threatens nuclear retaliation or the person who pulls the fake or real pistol on the unarmed thief is intentionally gaining a bad reputation. For the action to work, it just has to create sufficient fear that one will carry out the threat, and that fear does not require one to think that the threatener would carry out the threat—a moderate epistemic probability might suffice.

Nuclear deterrence, part I: Dispositions to do something wrong

I take it for granted that all-out nuclear retaliation is morally wrong. Is it wrong (for a leader, say) to gain a disposition to engage in all-out nuclear retaliation conditionally on the enemy performing a first strike if it is morally certain that having that disposition will lead the enemy not to perform a first strike, and hence the disposition will not be actualized?

I used to think the answer was “Yes”, because we shouldn’t come to be disposed to do something wrong in some circumstance.

But I now think it’s a bit more complicated. Suppose you are stuck in a maze full of lethal dangers, with all sorts of things that require split-second decisions. You have headphones that connect you to someone you are morally certain is a benevolent expert. If you blindly follow the expert’s directions—“Now, quickly, fire your gun to the left, and then grab the rope and swing over the precipice”—you will survive. But if you think about the directions, chances are you won’t move fast enough. You can instill in yourself a disposition to blindly do whatever the expert says, and then escape. And this seems the right thing to do, even a duty if you owe it to your family to escape.

Notice, however, that such a disposition is a disposition to do something wrong in some circumstance. Once you are in blind-following mode, if the expert says “Shoot the innocent person to the right”, you will do so. But you are morally certain the expert is benevolent and hence won’t tell you anything like that. Thus it can be morally permissible to gain a disposition which disposes you to do things that are wrong under circumstances that you are morally certain will not come up.

Perhaps, though, there seems to be a difference between this and my nuclear deterrence case. In the nuclear deterrence case, the leader specifically acquires a disposition to do something that is wrong, namely to all-out retaliate, and this disposition is always wrong to actualize. In the maze case, you gain a general disposition to obey the expert, and normally that disposition is not wrong to actualize.

But this overstates what is true of the nuclear deterrence case. There are some conditions under which all-out retaliation is permissible, such as when 99.9% of one’s nuclear arsenal has been destroyed and the remainder is only aimed at legitimate military targets, or maybe when all the enemy civilians are in highly effective nuclear shelters and retaliation is the only way to prevent a follow-up strike from the enemy. Moreover, it may understate what is permissible in the expert case. You may need to instill in yourself the specific willingness to do what at the moment seems wrong, because sometimes the expert may tell you things that will seem wrong—e.g., to swing your sword at what looks like a small child (but in fact is a killer robot). I am not completely sure it is permissible to have an attitude of trust in the expert that goes that far, but I could be convinced of it.

I was assuming, contrary to fact in typical cases, that there is moral certainty that the nuclear deterrence will be effective and there will be no enemy first strike. Absent that assumption, the question is rather less clear. Suppose there is a 10% chance the expert is not so benevolent. Is it permissible to instill a disposition to blindly follow their orders? I am not sure.

Memory theories of personal identity and faster-than-light dependence

Consider this sequence of events:

• Tuesday: Alice’s memory is scanned and saved to a hard drive.
• Wednesday: Alice’s head is completely crushed in a car crash.
• Thursday: Alice’s scanned memories are put into a fresh brain.

It seems that on a memory theory of personal identity, we would say that fresh brain on Thursday is Alice.

But now suppose that on Thursday, Alice’s scanned memories are put into two fresh brains.

If one of the operations is in the absolute past—the backwards light-cone—of the other, it is easy to say that what happens is that Alice goes to the brain that gets the memories first.

Fine. But what if which brain got the memories first depends on the reference frame, i.e., the two operations are space-like separated? It’s plausible that this is a case of symmetric fission, and in symmetric fission Alice doesn’t survive.

But now here is an odd thing. Suppose the two operations are simultaneous in some frame, but one happens on earth and the other on a spaceship by alpha-Centauri. Then whether Alice comes into existence in a lab on earth depends on what happens in a spaceship that’s four light-years away, and it depends on it in a faster-than-light way. That seems problematic.

Killing coiled and straight snakes

Suppose a woman crushes the head of a very long serpent. If the snake all dies instantly when its head is crushed, then in some reference frame the tail of the snake dies before the woman crushes the head, which seems wrong. So it seems we should not say the snake dies instantly.

I am not talking about the fact that the tail can still wiggle a significant amount of time after the head is crushed, or so I assume. That’s not life. What makes a snake be alive is having a snake substantial form. Death is the departure of the form. If the tail of the headless snake wiggles, that’s just a chunk of matter wiggling without a snake form.

What’s going on? Presumably it’s that metaphysical death—the separation of form from body—propagates from the crushed head to the rest of the snake, and it propagates at most at the speed of light. After all, the separation is a genuine causal process, and we are supposed to think that genuine causal processes happen at the speed of light or less.

So we get a constraint: a part of the snake cannot be dead before light emitted from the head-crushing event could reach the part. But it is also plausible that as soon as the light can reach the part, the part is dead. For a headless snake is dead, and as soon as the light from the head-crushing event can reach a part, the head-crushing event is in the absolute past of the part, and so the part is a part of a headless snake in every reference frame. Thus the part is dead.

So death propagates to the snake exactly at the speed of light from the head-crushing, it seems. Moreover, it does this not along the snake but in the shortest distance—that’s what the argument of the previous paragraph suggests. That means that a snake that’s tightly coiled into a ball dies faster than one that is stretched out when the head is crushed. Moreover, if you have a snake that is rolled into the shape of the letter C, and the head is crushed, the tail dies before the middle of the snake dies. That’s counterintuitive, but we shouldn’t expect reality to always be intuitive.