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Hume and the Epistemic Argument

I hadn't noticed this passage in Hume's A Treatise on Human Nature until now:

In common life 'tis established as a maxim, that the streightest way is always the shortest; which would be as absurd as to say, the shortest way is always the shortest, if our idea of a right line was not different from that of the shortest way betwixt two points (Book I, Part II, Section IV)

Hume is arguing against the suggestion that the definition of straight line is the shortest path between two points. It can't be, Hume says, because if it was saying that the straight line is the shortest path between two points wouldbe as uninformative as saying that the shortest path between two points is the shortest path between two points, and it isn't.

This is reminiscent of Kripke's so-called epistemic argument against descriptivism: "Plato" cannot mean Socrates's protegé because, if it did, it would be a priori (uninformative) that Plato is Socrates's protegé, and it isn't. Hume's example, though, would not pass another prominent Kripkean test: it is impossible for a straight line not to be the shortest path between two points -- assuming Euclidean geometry. philosophy+39 nyway, it seems to me now that a Kripkean would have to agree with Hume that the shortest path between two points does not give the meaning of "straight line". Which is, maybe, unexpected.

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@A Philosophy Forum I am a big fan of stackexchange, but I didn't know about philosophy.stackexchange.com. Don't know if it's going to be very useful, though. Questions are mostly clueless.

The Albert-Krauss Exchange

Two very bright persons being an asshole. The physicist Lawrence Krauss writes a book, On the Origin of Everything, in which, he claims, the question of how it is that there is something rather than nothing is dealt with and answered. David Albert, a philosopher of science, writes this review, claiming that the nothingness Krauss starts with is full of relativistic quantum fields -- hardly nothing. Krauss, Albert suggests, is a petty nerd. Later, Krauss calls Albert moronic. All in all, very edifying.

Leaving aside the issue of manners, what do you guys think about the controversy? I have the impression that Albert is probably right, and there is a sense of emptiness which is important and according to which a universe with quantum fields is not empty.

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@Let's Talk Hello, I've created a group to discuss philosophy, and matters of interest to philosophers.  If you are interested in these issues, you could maybe drop by. It's at @A Philosophy Forum

Deception in Sender Receiver Games

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A new blog post. 

Deception in Sender-Receiver Games - and the like by Manolo Martinez on Manolomartinez

I don’t think this will be of much interest to many. Mainly, I publish it to test my workflow from Multimarkdown to html. As you will see, some things do not work, BibTex most importantly. If anyone is familiar with MMD and can help me, it’d be g...

@A Philosophy Forum A recent piece about homosexual marriage. I defend homosexual marriage wholeheartedly, but I don't think the argument here is compelling. Maybe I've read it too quickly, but it seems to claim that because homosexuality is natural, homosexual marriage is permissible. Now, surely there are many claims about the naturalness of kinds that do not warrant marriage among members of the kind. Any thoughts?

Homosexual Marriage-Posner - The Becker-Posner Blog on Becker-posner-blog

President Obama’s declaration of support for homosexual marriage has focused public attention on the question whether such marriage should be permitted, although so far the response has been rather tepid. It no longer seems a hot issue, though it m...