Judge me not by what is known now, but in the light of what I knew when these events transpired
K. Setiya:
…I am trying to defuse a bomb, staring with confusion at an array of colored wires. Which one to cut? In desperation, not having a clue what the wires do, whether they will trigger the bomb or not, I disconnect the red wire—and the timer stops. Even though I did not know how to defuse the bomb, and managed to do so through dumb luck, I count as having defused the bomb intentionally. That is certainly what I meant to do, despite my uncertainty. … When I do something intentionally that I do not know how to do, I must at least know how to take some relevant means. In the present case, I know how to cut the red wire, and I think it might defuse the bomb, even though I can't be sure.
…It is impossible to do something intentionally without knowing how to do it or how to take the relevant means.
In other words, I pull a Homer. Why should I believe that I was defusing, or did defuse, the bomb intentionally? First of all, "uncertain" and "unsure" are unhappy descriptions of my state. I might be uncertain if, for instance, I have some knowledge of bomb construction, but this one is more complex than any I've encountered, and I can't, for obvious reasons, spend a whole lot of time examining its wiring. Having surveyed the connections as best I can in these suboptimal circumstances, I decide to go for the red wire, thinking that there's a reasonable chance that cutting it will stop the timer. I'm not certain, but I'm not in the situation described in the paragraph above, which is better captured by saying that I have absolutely no clue whatsoever how to proceed. (If I really have "no clue what the wires do", even my decision to try cutting wires seems to lack justification—am I doing this because that's the way it's done in movies?) If I were in a position to be so much as uncertain, the example as a whole would be different. Second, the whole situation seems parallel to the following:
I am wracked by penury, and staring at an array of numbers on the touch-screen of a lottery ticket machine. Which ones to choose? Having no sound basis on which to proceed, I choose numbers corresponding to significant dates in the lives of me and mine—and the next day learn that I have become a millionare. Even though I did not know how to win the lottery, and managed to do so through dumb luck, I count as having won the lottery intentionally. That is certainly what I meant to do, despite my uncertainty. … In the present case, I know how to feed a dollar into the machine and press the screen.
Let us make the following bold conjecture: there are no means to winning the lottery, and one cannot either intend to win the lottery or win the lottery intentionally. (One can intend to keep playing until one wins, but that is not the same thing—this being, I take it, substantially the same point as Setiya makes about dancing the tango a few pages later; I would think, also, that it tells against the description of defusing the bomb as "what I meant to do" as being more than "what I wanted to do" or "what I was trying to do", though even the description in terms of trying strikes me as potentially dodgy.) Surely if the question arises, in what fashion did I win the lottery, the correct answer is the first given in the block quote, not the second: I won through dumb luck: it was chance. (Of course I put myself in the path of a potential victory by purchasing the ticket in the first place—it's not a completely freak occurrence—but we all know the old proverb to the effect that chance favors the prepared citizen of a state that has instituted a lottery.) One might be tempted to say that it was done intentionally by noting that nothing I did, I did accidentally, or by mistake, or had any other typically exculpatory woe of commission attending it. (Though bad luck admittedly often is taken to be exculpatory.)
I can attach two senses to the claim that one knows how to take the relevant means to φ. On one, which strikes me as the more natural, I struggle to differentiate that claim from the claim that I know how to φ: it involves the supposition that I recognize the means as the relevant means, am able to determine what they are, and perhaps can recognize some connection between them and carrying φ out. On this interpretation I would need to have some practical knowledge about bombs, and lacking this, I clearly do not know how to take the relevant means to winning the lottery or preventing the bomb's explosion. The other involves determining the minimal action that might be undertaken that would result in φ's being accomplished, then describing this action in terms divorced from the actual situation, and claiming that I know how to do that. Thus: I know how with a wire clipper to clip wires, yea even red wires, and I know how to touch areas on a screen to select numbers in some order or other. Since, as it happens, doing these things would cause what I would like to come to pass to come to pass, I count as knowing how to take the relevant means. But if that is the only knowledge I have, it's mysterious why I should count as doing φ intentionally. (This doesn't really challenge the impossibility claim quoted above, or the principle (K) not quoted above, since obviously if the antecedent is false the claim as a whole is safe, but I think it does render mysterious why the consequent has a disjunction in it in the first place; it seems only to be there to save a deceptive appearance that vanishes on closer inspection. It seems clear that the intent is that it should be possible for the disjunction's truth to be ensured by the truth of the second disjunct despite the falsity of the first without jeopardizing the truth of the antecedent.) It is absolutely bizarre to me to think that one might be winning the lottery intentionally (not just because one doesn't find out about these things for a while), and in this case the same applies to the bomb-defusing situation. I lucked out. (Someone who kept his promises in this manner would not be a creature permitted to make them.)
It might be tendentious to say that the apt description of the bomb-defusing case is not just that I don't know how to proceed, but that I don't know what I'm doing. Nevertheless, I think that someone actually in that situation (of wanting, or feeling that he has, to defuse the bomb) wouldn't hesitate to volunteer that description himself, and this despite the fact that he will of course know that he is, say, clipping the red wire. After all, people do not hesitate to describe themselves as lost, or as not knowing where they are, while simultaneously being perfectly aware that they are, say, in Livingston, Montana, or at the intersection of Broadway and Spring Street (let's suppose that they intersect), and they do not do so because they are incapable (for want of knowledge how to move their bodies?) of taking the path that would, in fact, lead them to their destinations.
Trivia regarding the title of the post: if Kyle Gann is to be trusted (mvmt 1 of Custer and Sitting Bull; text), Custer said it in his own defense at his court-martial hearing. I am dead certain that I have read that either some Greek polis or other in Hellenic times, or some culture into contact with which they came at that time, used exactly that principle in evaluating generals, both when their actions had eventuated in success and when in failure, so that a decision in battle which actually worked out advantageously but which was nevertheless risky or, given what was known at the time, unadvisable, would be grounds for punishment. However, I cannot for the life of me remember who it was who is supposed to have had this custom, or where I read about it, or anything like that. I will be embarrassed if it turns out to be the Athenians.
Comments
on 2008-11-02 16:04:21.0, horus kemwer commented:
So, wait, you don't think he defused the bomb intentionally?
But isn't there this significant disanalogy between the bomb case and the lottery case:
In the case of defusing the bomb, there is a correct way of defusing a bomb, in the case of winning the lottery, there is no correct procedure.
To say, "not having a clue what the wires do" or "I did not know how to defuse the bomb" is to describe one's conscious assessment of one's actions. Yet one knows that there is a correct way of defusing bombs and one is desperately trying to realize this correct procedure. Furthermore, when one "guesses" in such a situation, information which is not consciously available ("subconscious knowledge"? - if we allow such a thing) contributes to one's guess. Consider, for example, the case of blindsight, where the patient claims he cannot see, yet always points correctly in the direction of the light. Even if the contributing information is as weak as what is seen in a movie, if it contributes to successful defusing, that is only because of the agent's intention to defuse.
This distinguishes the bomb case from the lottery case where there is no correct procedure. The guess made in picking numbers is not in any way geared toward realizing the correct or effective procedure for winning a lottery. No amount of intention on the part of the agent here can bring any resources of his whatsoever to bear on winning, conscious or not.
So, the lottery winning is just "dumb luck," but the bomb defusing appears to involve intentionality.
and, further, on 2008-11-02 16:13:11.0, ben wolfson commented:
There is a correct way to defuse the bomb, but I don't know what it is. The setup of the situation seems to be that I really don't know the first thing about bombs or their construction (aside from folklore about the importance of wires in their construction); this doesn't seem analogous to the blindsight case: where is this unconscious knowledge coming from? Am I secretly an electrician?
The situation in "Homer Defined" is perhaps starker, and seems to me to have all the relevant features of the bomb-defusing case: eenie-meenie-minie-moe is just as much an algorithm as is picking lottery numbers after birthdays, and is just as little oriented towards actually accomplishing the goal. The fact that there is a different procedure that could have been used by someone else, who knew what he was doing, doesn't strike me as important, if, ex hypothesi, that procedure is inaccessible.
One is trying correctly to defuse the bomb—as I said, this seems like a more or less acceptable description—but to say that one is trying to "realize the correct procedure" to do so doesn't strike me as helpful. Here the sense in which that true isn't that I have some acquaintance with the procedure but adverse conditions render it difficult for me to carry out, but that I know that there is some procedure or other and I desperately want to, let's say, have carried it out. I may as well observe the flight of birds.
and, further, on 2008-11-04 13:17:11.0, Andrew W. commented:
One thing about lotteries - there is a procedure which guarantees one wins the lottery - one either buys all the tickets or one buys one ticket for every possible number combination.
I know it's logistically and economically problematic, but I think the fact that one could do this points towards intentionality in the lottery example.
I think that if one said they intended to win the lottery after buying a ticket, one would be in a position to correct them because they made a lousy effort at it, because the procedure for winning the lottery, or following through on that intention, has not been carried out in any meaningful way.
So I would agree with you that in the case of buying a single ticket to win the lottery, it doesn't make much sense to talk about intention.
But I also think that this highlights the difference between the bomb example and the lottery. In the case of the bomb, you really just don't know. One could cut the wire, but perhaps it's actually the warmth of your hand on the bomb that stops the clock. Knowing what stops the bomb comes after any action has been taken.
The problem here seems to be one of knowing about solutions - in some sense, the lottery game is closed - one knows that winning a lottery is possible, and one knows how to do it, either efficiently or, as most of us play the lottery, extremely inefficiently, but we do know how the lottery numbers are chosen, we know the solution beforehand.
The bomb situation on the other hand, is open, isn't it? It strikes me that this is the distinction Setiya is trying to get at.
Anyway, I hope this makes sense! I miss philosophy sometimes...