DISQUS

Will,

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I had a nice full mustache during the spring semester of last year all the way through the summer. I LOVED it. And actually, there's been a bit of a mustache trend amoung the hipsters out here in Los Angeles. That might be over by now. I'm always at least a step behind them...

My biggest disappointment, with repsect to the mustache, is that I booked a national Arby's commercial with the thing...and they never aired it. I was super-excited to get that thing out there to the American people...!

Oh well, next time. Until then, long live the stache!

BTW, in case you're wondering, I do realize that I'm a jackass for making that last comment. I'm well aware...

The title should be this:

'Utility' Does Not Mean Utility

Right?

Right. That sounds reasonable. Thanks!

Will,

Can you (roughly) state what the test for a theory being utopian in the pejorative sense is? How can we most easily tell if our theory has that property?

Just curious.

Jim and Gil,

I'm pretty sure that your disagreement is basically terminological.

Hang on, Julian. I feel like I must be missing something subtle about your comment. Because it seems to me that you're saying that the property of not having diabetes is an essential property of Will's. And so, there is no possible world in which Will has diabetes.

That's not what you're saying, right?

Will,

I'm pretty much with you on the first part of your post. But I do think that it we might be able to say that you were lucky to get *exactly* the genes that you did. I mean, is there not a possible world in which you got the gene for diabetes (assuming that you didn't)? And, all things equal, aren't you lucky that the actual world is one in which you didn't get that gene?

Also, I think I agree with Chris in that you *were* lucky that your mom raised you the way she did. And I don't think that the fact that she purposefully did so alters that fact.

Will,

I'm interested. Do you think that internalism about reasons is true? That is, do you think that there is some necessary connection between people having best reasop to do something and it being morally right?

The reasons that I ask is that you focus on what we have reason to do without explicitly talking very much about what's morally right (or wrong). So I'm thinking that you might think that if we have reason to do something (or best reason to do something, more likely), then that action is morally right.

Is that your view? Is it even close to your view?

I *do* think that that's funny when Harvard people do that. (I'm sure there are people from other top schools that do this too.) They are almost unwilling to just say where they went to school. I sort of understand it. But this type of joke would be well worth doing!!

Maybe? Interesting. I'll have to drag some more about that out of you at some point.

And thanks. The Jayhawks broke my heart last night. Such a disappointing season...Preseason #1. Start of 20-1. End up losing 6 of their last 9 games including their first 1st round NCAA tourney loss since 1978. Ugh.

God I wanted to see that matchup with Carolina in the Elite Eight...

Quite lovely. I don't know if I agree with Blackburn. But he's a wonderful philosopher.

I forget, are you a non-cognitivist, Will?

Also, I think of it as a virtue of your post that you are holding Rand to her word. That is, she makes fairly bold claims like "you must do such-and-such to live" when what she probably means is something like "you have a better chance of living if you do such-and-such."

Many Objectivists, when pressed, will admit that that's all she really meant. But they will not hold her responsible for her inexact use of words. In fact, they, as likely as not, will say that you are doing something wrong when you point this out.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

By the way, just so it's clear, in terms of that last comment from me, I'm NOT trying to imply that ALL Objectivists probably have silly responses to Will's post. Only that Glenn probably does.

Will,

I'm going to go ahead and guess that the thing that Glenn thinks you don't understand has something to do with A being A...

Yes! Nice to see this post! Although I was a bit surprised to see that you didn't touch specifically on Rand's egoism and things that you think are wrong with it. (Of course, maybe you don't think that there is anything wrong with it...)

Anyway, interesting post. Thanks!

Sorry, I don't have anything to contribute here. But I would like to know what a bleg is. That's the second time I've seen that term used in the last couple days.

Ouch! Sorry about that Will. But how many times do I have to tell you to always wear condoms during sexual encounters with strangers at big New Year's Eve parties??

Hopefully this will have really taught you the lesson.

Hope you had a blast! Happy New Year!

By the by,

I agree with you Will that 'atheist' does not have two distinct meanings. Posner is wrong about that. It's just that I think that there are two kinds of atheists.

monkyboy,

I think that to accept a theory is to think that it accounts for the facts in some important way.

Maestro,

The point is that there are tons of things that we say we don't believe in even though it's logically possible that they exist. We (and probably most agnostics about God) say that we son't believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, elves, goblins, or purple dragons. But it's logically possible that all of these exist.

So if you're willing to say that you don't believe in them even though they are logically possible, then you should be willing to say that you don't believe in God even though it's logically possible that He exists. (That is, you shouldn't say that you're agnostic if the only positive thing you can say about God existing is that it's logically possible.

The life on other planets example isn't exactly analogous to the God one , I don't think. B/c I don't think that we have much reason to believe one way or the other that there is other life in the universe. We're not agnostic about it just because it's logically possible. We also don't have lots of reasons to think that it isn't the case. (Whereas with Santa Claus, goblins, etc. we do.)

Julian,

I agree that many people who call themselves 'agnostic' merely think that it's logically possible that God exists and that since they can't prove that He doesn't exist they can't say that they believe that he doesn't. And that IS ridiculous.

But I think there are some people who say they are agnostic and truly think that it's just as likely that God exists as it is that He doesn't. And these people belong in a different (sub)category than the people mentioned above.

Will,

I'm not sure that there isn't an interesting point in here somewhere that has to do with people's attitudes towards propositions. Insofar as we're talking about whether there are different kinds of atheism (in some sense) I think we should be talking about the different probabilities that people assign to the proposition that God exists. (Assigning a probablity to a proposition is an example of having an attitude towards one, right?)

The case that I'm imagining does not necessarily include a person who has never considered whether not there is a God. I'm thinking of two people. One who assigns a .9 probability to the proposition that God exists (p) and another who assigns a .5 to p. The first person is clearly an atheist b/c he is very confident in p. It's not quite so clear what to call the second. He thinks, after considering all of the major philosophical arguments, that it's just as likely that p as it is that not p.

I want to call this guy an atheist. He does not have a positive belief in God. He is without a belief in God. Yet we cannot say of him that he believes that God does not exist.

It seems fairly clear to me that if he's an atheist, he's a different kind of atheist than the guy who believes that God does not exist.

Now, I'm not sure I understand how or if your point about quantifying god-making properties is relevantly related to this point. But I stand firm in my position that there is an interesting distinction to be made here.