You should change the descriptions to "the death of Caesar" and "the murder of Caesar", and then I think it will make more sense to think that they denote the same event (and you cannot really decide this just by analyzing the descriptions themselves, since it is after all possible for two different descriptions to denote the same event; e.g. "the death of Caesar" and "the death of the conqueror of Gaul"). — Fafner

That would be a valid objection if my criterion for saying that 'x' and 'y' refer to two distinct events is for them to have different Fregean senses. But that's not what my criterion of non-identity is. I'm rather saying that 'x' and 'y' refer to distinct events if (among other possible differentia of events) the predicates used to characterize the actions (or processes, etc.) that are predicated of some entities, in order to individuate those events, have different Fregean references. (Predicates, and not only singular terms, do have references as well as senses. They typically refer to properties, action forms, activities, etc.) In your example above, the same event is being referred to twice since the two singular terms "Caesar" and "the conqueror of Gaul" have the same reference. If they had had different references, then the events would have been numerically distinct, obviously. And so is it, on my view, if the references of the predicates has been different (as I'll argue some more below).

Since "murder" just means something like "violent death", then on your view it would follow that a person can die twice (if "murder" and "death" are two distinct things that happen to everyone who's murdered), which is be a pretty bizarre thing to say in my opinion.

I wouldn't say that Caesar died twice. I would say that he died because he was murdered. The 'violence' that is constitutive of the event's being a case of murder is the mens rea of the murderer(s). This mens rea isn't a constitutive part of Ceasar's dying. Hence, since the two events don't have the same constitutive parts, they are not the same. That is true (in this case, anyway) even when we restrict attention to what occurred in the actual world (and a fortiori if we consider the modal properties of those events).

I'm not claiming that dying and being murdered are always the same thing. I'm only claiming that in the particular case of Caesar the two descriptions happen to denote the same event (since they are non-rigid designators etc.). And there's nothing problematic in saying this. I'll try to illustrate this through your example. Crimson is a type of red, but it doesn't follow that a crimson apple has two distinct colors: crimson and red, but it has only one color that falls under two different descriptions (and this is consistent with the fact that being crimson and being red sometimes do refer to distinct colors).

I would not say that the apple has two different colors either, because counting as two colors a determinate quality and the determinable quality that it is a determination of would be misleading. That would be like saying that I have two pets: a cat and a mammal. But the fact that the apple is red isn't the same as the fact that the apple is crimson, is it? Likewise, (1) the fact that Pat is shorter than Chris isn't the same as (2) the fact that Pat is shorter than the Eiffel Tower. And neither of those facts are the same as (3) the fact that Pat is 5 feet tall. For all that, the properties ascribed to Pat in (1), (2) and (3) stand pairwise as determinable to determinate.

I don't agree, I think it is the same event under different description. And also I don't see the disanalogy between the two examples: why can't "...was murdered" and "...died" have the same reference just as "the son of..." and "the father of..."? — Fafner

Well, "the son of..." and "the father of..." will only have the same reference if you fill them up with singular terms in such a way as to turn them into complete definite descriptions.

As for "...was murdered" and "...died", there just is no way to fill those up and refer to the same event (or so would I argue). In order to achieve something similar to the previous case, you would rather need something like "the ... who was murdered at (some time and place)" and "the ... who died at (some time and place)". Then, yes, you could fill them up in such a way that they would refer to the same individual (under two different Fregean senses). But this individual would be a human being rather than a historical event.

The issue with Caesar's murder and Caesar's death is that they refer to two different things that happened to Caesar. For sure, the murder could not have occurred without the death also occurring, but, as I think you already noted, the converse isn't true. And this asymmetry isn't merely a matter of the modes of presentation (Fregean sense) of the events.

Another way to highlight the difference is to notice that "...was murdered" is a determination of the determinable "...died" rather in the same way in which the property "...is crimson" is a determination of "...is red". But it is clear that an apple's being red isn't the same thing as its being crimson under two different descriptions. Likewise for, say, Fido being a dog and Fido being a mammal. Being a dog is one determinate way for an animal to be a mammal and being murdered is one determinate way for someone to die.

Again, I think the root of the illusion of there being a common "thing" being referred to under different descriptions when two separate events occur at the same place and the same time is the fact that roughly the same individuals are involved in both cases and there is a tendency to identify what happens (the 'neutral event') with its 'raw' material supervenience base, as it were. But an event singles out not just the individuals involved while merely specifying some definite time interval when the action occurs. It ascribes to them some specific relations and/or action/process forms that those individuals are involved into, and leaves out others that are irrelevant to the constitution of the event. (Hence, say, an apple falling from a tree wasn't necessarily part of WWII even if it occurred right then and there).

On edit: I think the same error underlies Donald Davidson anomalous monism. He is right regarding mental events not being subsumable under universally quantified statements of laws under those descriptions (that is, qua mental events), but he is wrong about them being token identical with physical events that are so subsumable under those different descriptions. A physical event never is something mental that is being described differently. If something mental occurs, then when one proceeds to describe what is occurring in physical terms, one is thereby talking about something else. (Which is not to say that there aren't any relationships between mental events and some of their physical underpinnings).

Or my example of "Caesar's murder" etc. — Fafner

That doesn't seem to be quite the same since in the case of the earlier two examples (regarding the state of the weather, or George VI) the respective pairs of predicates, or singular terms, had the same Fregean reference (same Bedeutung) albeit different Fregean senses. But in the case of the events being referred to as "Caesar's murder" and as "Ceasar's dying" the difference in meaning runs deeper since the predicates "...was murdered" and "...died" have different Fregean references and not merely different Fregean senses. They are not two ways to single out the very same determination of the object (Caesar) but rather are ascribing different properties of him. On my view, there is no common 'event' that is being referred two under different descriptions. They are two numerically distinct events even though the very same individual is involved in both of them roughly at the same time and at the same place.

Characteristics of the apple; its sweetness and its redness separately make those corresponding statements true. It is that entity, that apple, which is both red and sweet. Just as with the two statements: that Caesar died and that he was murdered, it is the corresponding characteristics of that event that make them true. — John

Exactly. That's my main point. But then when you suggest that x and y are numerically the same 'event' you are conflating the physical movements where those events occurred (or some other such allegedly 'neutral' way to characterize what's going on), which are the particulars falling under the predicates "...exemplifying Caesar's being murdered", and "...exemplifying Ceasar's dying", on the one hand, and those particular events falling under the corresponding predicates, on the other hand. The former are particulars, which indeed are numerically identical, but the latter are structured propositions, which aren't.

OK, it seems now you are saying that it is a matter of interpretation as to whether he was murdered or justifiably assassinated, or something like that? If that's so, it's a different question, and could be gotten around simply by saying that he was killed. — John

Not at all. Part of the point is that events are particulars whereas being murdered (or being killed) are general concepts expressed by predicates. Claims and sentences have (minimally) subject/predicate form. What purports to "correspond" to claims such as to make them true must therefore have a similar structure.

Say, the claims that a particular apple is red, or that it is tasty, may both "correspond" to the same apple. This is just to say that it is the same apple that is being referred to in both cases, whereas the predicates (and the general properties ascribed) are different. But the apple itself doesn't make both claims true quite appart from its falling under the corresponding predicates. It's the same with events, since just like apples, those are particulars. "Caesar's dying" may seem to be referring to an event, and hence to a particular, but it's only really the individual Caesar (and also, possibly, a specific time, or the values of a time variable being quantified over) that are the particulars being referred to in the judgement expressed by "Caesar died". The "event" all by itself doesn't single out the general properties that it falls under such as to make claims about it true.

I can't see that, because assuming that Caesar was murdered then it is his being murdered that makes "Caesar was murdered" true, and that also makes Caesar's dying and Caesar's being murdered the very same event. — John

If x is the event of Caesar's dying and y is the event of Caesar's being murdered, then what makes x being a case of murder isn't the same thing as what makes x the same event as y.

What makes it the case that x is the same event as y, presumably, is that both occurrences are instantiated in the same region of space and time. (I am just trying to play along with the token-identity theory that seems to underlie your correspondence theory of truth). But what makes it the case that x is a case of murder is something else entirely. It depends on the significance of the concept of murder in a way its alleged identity with y doesn't.

They are the same event iff Caesar was murdered. — John

Precisely. In my post I only considered the actual world, not any alternative possibilities. And I assumed that Caesar was indeed murdered, and that x and y therefore denoted the same event/entity (on your own account!) It still does not seem to be the case that the actual event makes the claim that Caesar was murdered true. It is rather something specific about this event that makes the claim true: namely that the event happens to be falling under a specific concept expressed by the predicate ("...was murdered") in the claim.

If statement A and B do correspond to actuality, then they do, and if they do not, then they do not. Of course it is logically possible that they might not have both corresponded to the same event, but in that case actuality would have been different. Possibility has nothing to do with actual correspondence, though, as far as I can tell. — John

Maybe one way to explain what Fafner is driving at is this: If in the actual world A corresponds to x and B corresponds to y, where

A is the claim that Caesar died,
B is the claim that Caesar was murdered,
x is the event of Caesar's dying,
y is the event of Caesar's being murdered,

then, on the assumption that x and y denote the same numerically identical physical event, what make it the case that A is true is the very same thing that makes it the case that B is true, namely: x

However, it seems that there is something specific about x that makes it the case that B is true, namely that Caesar's actual death was a case of murder. But if it is only in virtue of x being a case of murder that x makes B true, then it would seem that what B "corresponds to" is something intensional about y, and not merely extensional; it is a concept under which the 'event' falls. And therefore it can't be y qua physical event that makes B true.

(On some accounts, it would rather be because the Fregean thought expressed by B is identical with the fact of Caesar's having been murdered that B is true. But then, this fact and the Fregean proposition expressed by B don't merely correspond to each other. They are identical.)

Pleasure, I suppose. — Terrapin Station

tl;dr

The object of agreement is different. For Wittgenstein as for Cavell, there is 'agreement in the form of life' at stake. It is not an agreement with respect to the conventional (by which I mean 'already-established') use(s) of language. That's the key difference. There are two analytic axes at work here: a language game and the form of life in which that language game operates. 'Agreement' operates at the latter level, as it were. — StreetlightX

The object of agreement seems to me to be the same sort of thing as the understanding Wittgenstein talked about when he said that there is a way to understand a rule that is not an interpretation. And it is regress blocking in the same manner.

This is a interesting thread and I wish I had the time to get involved in it. Recently, while browsing the items distributed by De Gruyter, I stumbled upon a book by Avner Baz -- When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy, HUP 2012. I thought it might interest some of the participants in this thread. (Charles Travis is being discussed extensively). I've placed it near the top of my reading list. Here is the overview:

"A new form of philosophizing known as ordinary language philosophy took root in England after the Second World War, promising a fresh start and a way out of long-standing dead-end philosophical debates. Pioneered by Wittgenstein, Austin, and others, OLP is now widely rumored, within mainstream analytic philosophy, to have been seriously discredited, and consequently its perspective is ignored.

Avner Baz begs to differ. In When Words Are Called For, he shows how the prevailing arguments against OLP collapse under close scrutiny. All of them, he claims, presuppose one version or another of the very conception of word-meaning that OLP calls into question and takes to be responsible for many traditional philosophical difficulties. Worse, analytic philosophy itself has suffered as a result of its failure to take OLP’s perspective seriously. Baz blames a neglect of OLP’s insights for seemingly irresolvable disputes over the methodological relevance of “intuitions” in philosophy and for misunderstandings between contextualists and anti-contextualists (or “invariantists”) in epistemology. Baz goes on to explore the deep affinities between Kant’s work and OLP and suggests ways that OLP could be applied to other philosophically troublesome concepts.

When Words Are Called For defends OLP not as a doctrine but as a form of practice that might provide a viable alternative to work currently carried out within mainstream analytic philosophy. Accordingly, Baz does not merely argue for OLP but, all the more convincingly, practices it in this eye-opening book."

... "Avner Baz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He has written about ethics, aesthetics, perception, judgment, and about the question of philosophical method in the works of Kant, Wittgenstein, Cavell, and John McDowell"

And then there is the "presidential" wedding.

Right. We know that. How about we analyze what it would amount to for it to make sense to you? Or is that a problem because you haven't read anything that you can regurgitate on that? You don't mean that you wouldn't say the same thing, right? — Terrapin Station

It really sounds to me like whenever the tea pot gets warm prime numbers above 17 suddenly get significantly heavier (except for 883, of course!). How about we analyze what it would amount to for this sentence to make sense to you? Of course, I'm not going ever to provide you with the slightest hint what it could possibly mean for me to say that. Why would I need to? It's all just a matter of arbitrary conceptual stipulation, after all. Or is that a problem because you are unaccountably prejudiced against tea drinkers?

So how about actually answering the question re what making sense amounts to for you in a case like this? — Terrapin Station

Well, it doesn't make sense to me. Saying stuff that makes sense rather than stuff that doesn't is generally considered a desideratum in philosophical discussion. Talk about phenomenology isn't an exception to this. And there is rather more to conceptual elucidation than arbitrary stipulation.

What does making sense of it amount to for you in a case like this? Surely not having the same opinon, right? How would any arbitrary opinion about either a moral issue (if you're parsing it this way) or a conceptual stipulation be a matter of making sense to you, at least in lieu of it being in respect to something else the person says? — Terrapin Station

I did not make it a specifically moral issue. "Responsible'' has a non-moral agent-causal (or substance-causal) attribution sense: The lightning strike was responsible for the forest fire; the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is responsible for global warming, etc. In any case, passing off your alleged phenomenological datum that you are feeling responsible for your sneezes as the expression of an arbitrary moral opinion or seemingly pointless conceptual stipulation is even more bizarre.

What you need help understanding is that there are no facts re whether something is a (strict) liability or not. — Terrapin Station

Let me grant that there is no fact of the matter. Very well then. My suggestion was unhelpful. The concept of strict liabilities seems to be of no use for making sense of your strange claim that you are feeling 'responsible' -- in the exact same sense of the word -- for all your bodily motions regardless of their causes. Well, I just can't help you then. Sorry about that.

The problem with that approach is that it seems to completely ignore the ontological issues re causality (in the physics sense). — Terrapin Station

I just presented a standard argument for incompatibilism (and also a standard argument for compatibilism). It's not a fully developed account of incompatibilist free will, for sure. Once some libertarian philosopher has convincingly argued that free will can't be consistent with determinism (if she has) then, of course, it is incumbent on her to explain how the practical abilities possessed by rational agents can be explained in a way that takes advantage of the leeway afforded by the indeterministic "gaps" in the underlying chains of physical causation. And that's precisely what libertarian philosophers, like Robert Kane, or Christian List (in a very different way), attempt to do. For sure, this raises ontological issues regarding causation, and not only at the level of physical processes. This is certainly not being ignored by libertarian philosophers.

The link you mentioned has this interesting idea ""the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty". I am not sure how it impacts the free will / determinism argument. — FreeEmotion

When one holds an agent responsible for her actions it's because for her to have chosen to act in this way (or recklessly let something happen) reflects well of badly on her character. The argument in favor of indeterminism(sic) (I meant to say 'incompatibilism') tends to focus on the fact that if an agent's character is determined by earlier events that aren't under her control, then there wasn't really any possibility for her to have done anything else. She is being moved around by her own character and never ultimately responsible for it. (This is a simplification of the standard argument for incompatibilism).

The standard argument for compatibilism, on the other hand, is that it doesn't really make sense to portray the character of an agent as something that is somehow external to her rather than its being a constitutive part of her. When she gives expression to her own character though acting, as we say, in character, then she simply is in control, and thereby free. She's doing what she wished to do, given that she is thus inclined. This is also, of course, a gross simplification of the standard argument(s) for compatibilism.

I think there are elements of truth in both of those arguments. The difficulty, of course, is to resolve the tensions between them and not just pick one and dismiss the other one without due consideration.

I think the voluntary/involuntary acts (the phenomenal feeling of them) are at the crux of the argument. That's where the controversy of the Libet experiment extends from since it suggests all acts are really involuntary and the feeling between the two is some form of illusion (plausibly put there by evolution). Although how we can express knowledge of the "illusion" is beyond me. There somehow seems room for metaphysical (non deterministic) free will in there somewhere. The compatibilists ignore this and focus more on the social aspect which is probably where the frustration comes from. — JupiterJess

It seems to me that one of the mistakes in the early interpretation of the infamous Libet experiment was a lack of attention to the way in which intentional actions always are intentional under some descriptions and not under other descriptions. It's not just that some consequences of what you do are unintended, but even some aspects that you are perfectly aware (and in full control) of, regarding what you do, aren't deliberately chosen either, and need not be, for your action to count as intentional.

For instance, if you walk in the cereal aisle at the supermarket intending to pick a box of corn flakes, and proceed to pick one, then the fact that you picked one specific box rather than the identical box right next to it isn't involuntary but it isn't intentional either. Your intention, effectively realized in your action, just was to pick *one* box of corn flakes and not necessarily that one in particular. Your responsibility (or freedom) in picking this specific box as opposed to another identical box nearby isn't at issue because there just isn't any reason to chose one over another.

So, similarly, in Libet's experiment, the subjects were tasked with pressing a button at some time chosen at random. Under this description the actions are perfectly intentional and under the full control and responsibility of the agents. They freely consented to abide by those instructions and to push a button at a randomly chosen time. They also were tasked with indicating the exact time when they "intended" (or is it "decided"?) to press the bottom using a visual indicator to help in assessing this precise instant. But there is no such moment of decision. The decision was just to press the button whenever they felt like it. So, of course, there was an "readiness-potential" registered in the motor cortex some time before the button was pressed because there is a necessary time delay before initiation of action and bodily movement due to the finite speed of neural impulses.

However, the requirement for the participants to attend to the "time of decision" didn't really make sense since the only relevant time that they are in control of is the time when their controlled bodily movements occur in the world, and this is the time of the button press. There isn't a specific "moment of decision" prior to that anymore than there is a "moment of decision" to pick this or that specific cereal box when you just pick one at random. The only choice that the agent freely makes is to pick one or another (just anyone) cereal box. And likewise, in the Libet case, one just presses the button whenever one feels like it, for no particular reason. Just because her brain gets "ready", in a sense, before she feels sure that "now" is the time when she has "chosen" to do it doesn't entail that it's really her brain that has made the decision for her. The good functioning of her brain merely has enabled her to do what she had freely consented to do, and this was just to press the button at any time.

Probably the best way to understand human behavior is to observe and study it. — Rich

That's for sure, but observations and studies always are performed on a restricted range of cases and against an already existing background understanding. We look at things through a specific conceptual lens with a definite focus. Philosophical inquiry is distinctive in the way in which it attempts to critically assess this conceptual background and look beyond the predefined boundaries set by the natural and social sciences. Case law and legal theory often is forced to push against its own boundaries because it has no choice but to deal seriously with subjects (the defendants) who had been let loose in the field of social life and weren't restricted in the range of their behaviors like subjects in psychological studies typically are, for instance. This is one reason why case law is instructive from a philosophical point of view.

I believe, based upon observations, that most people feel this way about responsibility, though there is a very wide variance among the population. Even with criminal acts of misconduct there is a very wide bandwidth of interpretation such as the varying degrees of manslaughter and murder. So, we to a large extent accept that there degree or feeling of responsibility by ourselves and others has many conditionals associated with it and very subjective. — Rich

Yes, indeed, and in the context of criminal law some of those degrees of responsibility are codified as levels of mens rea. Anthony Kenny wrote a delightful little book -- Freewill and Responsibility, Routledge, 1978 (recently reissued) -- in which he draws lessons from carefully scrutinized cases and legal judgments, and the various criteria that attach to specific levels of mens rea, to clarify the connections between, indeed, free will and responsibility.

Do I feel responsible for a sneeze? If it is from a cold, maybe I could have done something to prevent it. From an allergy? Maybe I shouldn't have gone into the area filled ragweed? — Rich

Yes, that would be a perfectly reasonable explanation why you could be held (or hold yourself, and indeed feel) responsible for sneezing on some occasions. In that case, your responsibility derives from earlier voluntary acts or decisions (or blamable omissions) that had the foreseeable consequence that you would later get sick. Your sneezing then is a manifestation of that. It's not merely because your own body is involved in the involuntary occurrence that you feel responsible for it (as Terrapin Station contends). It's rather because of the relevant involvement of your earlier decisions, as you correctly point out, that you may now incur a responsibility for your presently involuntary sneezes.

You don't seem to be getting, or you don't agree with yet you're not presenting any arguments about it, thatthere are no facts re whether something is a (strict) liability or not. — Terrapin Station

That doesn't help me make sense of your claim that you are feeling responsible for your involuntary bodily motions, whatever their causes might be, just because it's your own body. The concept of strict liabilities was a suggestion meant to help *you* pinpoint the source of your own intuition regarding sneezes. If it doesn't help, then help yourself. I can't do all your thinking for you.

Yes. It's my body, after all. it's not someone else's. — Terrapin Station

That's a non sequitur if ever there was one. Maybe there would be a charitable way to interpret this in the strict liability sense of responsibility, but we've been there already and it's just not plausible that, even restricted to cases where the body is involved, every involuntary motion is some sort of a strict liability for the owner of the body. I also had asked you if, on your view, the cause of the movement being endogenous was a requirement (as opposed to someone else grabbing your arm and lifting it up, say) but you had declined to clarify, as usual.

If you had used another sort of involuntary bodily movement as an example, I would have said the same thing about that instead. — Terrapin Station

Seriously? If some part of your body moves, whatever the cause, you always feel responsible for it?

So, first, let's see if we can agree on something. Did I say that there's something special about sneezing versus other involuntary body movements? — Terrapin Station

How could I possibly know? I've *asked* you repeatedly if there is, in your view, something special about it. Did you not notice the question marks? That's the only way to assess whether this putative phenomenological fact about your experience of sneezing constitutes, or does not constitute, a relevant counterexample to my general claim regarding involuntary bodily movements in general. But you've always feigned not to understand the question.

I'm asking you what you're basing your claim on that I said there was something special about sneezing. And the answer is? — Terrapin Station

I explained already, several times, but you keep ignoring the point. Either there is something special, in your view, and then I'm simply asking you what it is such that you feel responsible for sneezing but not for other involuntary bodily movements. Or there isn't anything special and then it's even more puzzling why you'd feel responsible for involuntary bodily movements in general.

Based on what? — Terrapin Station

You wan't me to justify my agreeing with you that I myself had brought it up? You are just playing silly games.

I didn't say there was anything special about sneezing. I just used that example because it's the one you had brought up. — Terrapin Station

Of course you did. I then brought up the point about strict liabilities because that was the most charitable way I could think of for interpreting your otherwise bizarre claim that you are feeling responsible for sneezing. You took that putative raw phenomenological fact about your own experience to be some sort of a refutation of the post where I had mentioned sneezing as a trivial example. But if you can't wrap your mind around the idea of there being a difference in point of personal responsibility between intended or unintended consequences of actions (or purely reflexive bodily motions), then I can't help you escape from the corner you painted yourself into. You can stay there if you want.

Okay, and are you claiming that distinction just as a personal idiosyncrasy, or as a statistical commonality with respect to usage, or are you saying that it's a fact independent of usage somehow? — Terrapin Station

No. I don't think my recognition of the quite trivial distinction between our attitudes towards involuntary bodily movements or unintended consequences of actions, on the one hand, and towards voluntary actions that achieve intended results, on the other hand, is a personal idiosyncrasy. It's rather more of a truism that this distinction is relevant to ascription of responsibility, including self-ascription as part of the phenomenology of action.

How many more questions will I need to answer before you will answer the simple questions I asked you several times and that you keep ducking? What's so special about sneezing -- as distinguished from other similarly involuntary actions -- that makes you feel responsible for doing it? Or do you likewise feel responsible for anything that causes your body to move regardless of your own volition?

I agree. Against this, I like Williamson's notion of 'knowledge first' - knowledge as foundational and in a separate zone from belief. But I've read Williamson, and even been to a little seminar run by him, and he's the nicest bloke - but every tiny possibility has to be explored by him too, footnote after footnote, and then there's the argument by Sproggins (2014) although Hackface (2015) would disagree...all that! I am a bit of a nit-picker by nature, I think that's why I enjoy the analytic approach mostly, but sometimes you've just got to see the bigger picture or you'll get awfully lost. — mcdoodle

Off topic:

I had greatly enjoyed Williamson's Knowledge and its Limits, OUP (2000). Though rather daunting in places, it doesn't suffer as much from the excessive narrowing down in focus that afflicts some later papers by him. Surely, the book format helps. But I am mostly indebted to John McDowell for the 'knowledge first' approach, expounded in a variety of papers including, most relevantly, Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge (usefully read in conjunction with John W. Cook, 'Human Beings', in Peter Winch ed., Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Routledge & Kegan Paul, (1969), that McDowell is indebted to for the idea of indefeasible criteria). The best elucidation of the big picture afforded by McDowell's own account of the 'knowledge first' approach that I encountered is the second chapter -- 'Belief and the Second Person' -- in Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness, HUP (2007). Lastly, I've bought recently Andrea Kern, Sources of Knowledge: On the Concept of a Rational Capacity for Knowledge, HUP (2017). I haven't read most of it yet, but it looks fantastic!

Which could just as well be meant legally. I'm just clarifying what you're asking about.

What is a strict versus non-strict liability in a non-legal sense? — Terrapin Station

The criterion for 'strictness' of liability is simple enough and just the same in the legal context as it is for my suggested extension to ordinary contexts. In both contexts, for cases of strict liability, Mens rea and good or ill will are irrelevant since the outcome (or involuntary bodily movement) was not consciously intended. It wasn't even a result of recklessness and it doesn't reflect on one's rational abilities or moral character and in any way. It's just like sneezing. It has nothing to do with the will.

Yes, I'm sympathetic to that camp, so it looks more like science subsuming elements of philosophy that were previously not available to science, rather than over reach. If for the sake of argument, I took the opposite position, I'm not sure I'd describe it as pedantry. For instance, I think that particle physicists, the notion that a physicist comes up with an interpretation of QM is overreach, as I think interpretation is exactly a philosophers job. I don't think of those physicists as being pedantic. — Reformed Nihilist

But the case I had in mind was not scientists essaying to do philosophy, which they are perfectly entitled to do, well or badly, of course (and some are actually pretty good; e.g. J. J. Gibson, Amartya Sen and George Ellis). Rather, I was talking about naturalizing paradigms within analytic philosophy. In that case, it is the methods of empirical sciences that encroach, not the scientists themselves.

Coming to think of it, most attempts to naturalize stuff (e.g. 'naturalize the mind', 'naturalize epistemology', etc.) in analytic philosophy may be best characterized as cases of scientific paradigms being over-extended and encroaching into properly philosophical areas of inquiry. Of course, proponents of the extension will view the resistance from people who object to their scientism as reactionary.

Could you give me a "for instance"? — Reformed Nihilist

Of course each example will reflect my own views since adherents of those programmes aren't going to agree to my offensive pigeon-holing of them. But it seems to me that, for instance, the post-Gettier attempts to analyse knowledge as belief + truth + (internal) justification + 'some complicated missing element' is some sort of a degenerative research programme in contemporary epistemology. A case of over-extension might be the subsumption of mental states and events, as well as actions, under a Humean metaphysics of event-causation rather than a metaphysics of substances and powers. But in that case I am unsure the over-extended paradigm has so much as a proper domain of application. I might try to think of a better example...

Having said that, I think there's value in general inquiry, and philosophy is often not guided by practical concerns, so I'm not sure that the normal ways of framing discussion work well in all areas of philosophy. — Reformed Nihilist

Yes, I agree that domains of inquiry in philosophy are quite different from scientific paradigms. There are paradigms in philosophy but there isn't much of a counterpart to 'normal science' and the different fields are much less separable, and of course much less 'practical', than the various 'special sciences' are. But there are clear analogues to degeneracy and to over-extension, and a common quest for understanding.

Two of his papers, in particular, reinforce some of the points that you were making. Regarding the role of salience in 'sound' informal reasoning: A Sensible Subjectivim. And regarding "the presentation of the issue and the applicability of the inference schema": Deliberation and Practical Reason. Both papers are reprinted in his Needs, Value, Truth, OUP, 1998.

Never read him, but he sounds like a pretty smart guy. — Srap Tasmaner

That's a clever deduction.

I can hear echoes of David Wiggins -- my second favorite contemporary philosopher -- in what you've just said. Is it an accident?

I have some thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to see what others have to say on the subject. — Reformed Nihilist

I look forward to hear what your ideas are.

My view is that pedantry, or the tendency to engage in it, is an intellectual vice that doesn't (usually) reflect badly on the intellectual character of the 'pedantic' individual as much as it does reflect on deficiencies of the theoretical paradigm that she occupies. To consider only the example of scientific paradigms, for sake of illustration: if the apparent hair-splitting is actually done in the context of the search for better foundations and/or solving persistent puzzles over the course of an episode of 'normal science' (in Kuhn's sense) then it's not a vice at all so long as the research programme remains productive (and the paradigm is valid). In that case we say that the researchers are being thorough and conscientious. If, on the other hand, the paradigm is pathological (as is the case with pseudosciences) or is in the process of being over-extended beyond its proper domain of application, then the arguments adduced for defending it in the face of anomalous results or reasonable theoretical objections will rightfully be deemed pedantic by outsiders who can clearly view the limitations of this paradigm.

We may thus rightfully view the pedantry of the practitioners of a degenerating research programme as a vice; but it is a circumstantial vice, as it were, that they manifest only so long as they remain captives of the deficient paradigm, and it only is a vice, also, if indeed the paradigm *is* deficient or is being over-extended.

First, let me clarify if you're talking about legal liabilities per se. — Terrapin Station

I suggested that the concept could straightforwardly be extended to non-legal contexts and provided the examples of accidentally bumping into someone or sneezing in the concert hall.