So, at first, I was really excited by the argument I’m going to make in this post, and I still think it’s kind of fun. But all it really is is yet another argument for two-boxing. And there are kazillions of arguments for two-boxing out there. At any rate, here’s one more, presented for your delectation.
What’s two-boxing? It’s a particular belief about the correct way to play a game in a puzzle of decision theory called Newcomb’s Paradox. (Continued)
Although I’m a realist about scientific entities, I’m not a realist about natural kinds. In fact, anti-realism about natural kinds was, at one point, going to be the focus of my dissertaion (around and about my second year). Nothing *deeply* has changed about my problems with most standard accounts of natural kind terms, but I do think I can articulate some of those problems a bit more clearly and succinctly. This week, I’ll look at one of the few relatively empiricism-friendly accounts of natural kinds: Quine’s.
I’m not really a verificationist (see here for the beginnings of my account of content), but I have a lot of general sympathy for verificationism, and I think the verificationists were certainly onto something both true and important, even if they didn’t get the formulation quite right.
I am not a metaphysical anti-realist, though, and it’s always bugged me quite a bit that realism and empiricism (especially verificationism) are contrasted. Which they are, regularly, by realists like Boyd, and even by empiricists like Van Fraassen (who isn’t actually an anti-realist, but believes that the truth of scientific laws isn’t something we should be concerned with).
This is the conclusion to my own Failure Seminars contribution. Here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2.
And then I came back, and started to look for a job. All I really had in mind at that point was “something in the tech industry”–and that, really, only because I had a (very modest–about the equivalent of an undergraduate minor, and that 6 years old) background in computer science and because I wanted to stay in the Silicon Valley. For a few months, I cast about wildly at various not-really-an-options, not helped by some of the advice I received. (I actually had somebody in the industry, of all things, telling me that I should look for an R&D job starting at about $40k/year, which was ridiculous in both directions at once–there was no way someone with my background at the time could have landed, let alone done, an IT R&D job, and on the other hand, $40k is a starvation wage in Silicon Valley–no full-time worker in IT, no matter how far down the totem pole they are, actually makes that little money).
