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Week 10 – Hard choices

Plan for today

  • A lot in this paper
    • Too much?
  • Just going to focus in on her reasons for rejecting other views

Task 1, the apple pie

  • The apple pie example
    • A case where (as she says) we have all the information, but we cannot choose either way
  • Come up with a criticism of this example
    • Hint: She does point out which moments she thinks are more controversial
    • Hint in a different direction: is her description of the question you're asking when you have to pick a desert the correct one?
      • Is her reason bad?
      • Would this get in the way of her argumentation?
    • Hint: If we think better or worse tasting are commensurable, could we reject a premise of the small improvement argument?
      • Needn't be clever

Interlude

  • Help me out!
    • What job does this discussion of practical certainty on p5 do?
  • Cardinality vs ordinality

Task 2, affirming the consquent?

  • At the end of section 2, it reads to me like she is affirming the consquent. Can you see it and explain it? \((P \rightarrow Q)\vdash(Q \rightarrow P)\)
    • 'If A implies B, then B implies A' -
  • 'If I see Abigail then I'm happy, then if I am happy, I must have seen Abigail' - Falascious reasoning, I could have seen an ethernet cable
  • Hint: the actual version here is \(\lnot(P \rightarrow Q)\vdash\lnot(Q \rightarrow P)\)
  • Any responses to defend chang?
    • Are we missing something?

Interlude

Rationality

  • What is acting 'rationally'
  • The possibility of rationally picking randomness
    • Having no reason to pick randomness
  • A difficult spot in this paper
  • How do we feel about the weight put on 'rationality'?
    • Distinction between rationality and arrationality

Other stuff

  • The term 'Qua'
    • 'as a'

Task 3, incomparibility

  • Come up with more criticisms!
  • Collapsing the dichotomy
    • Arational vs rational but random