fragments of consciousness

J.T. Leroy and the causal theory of reference

The J.T. Leroy case raises some interesting philosophical issues. For those who haven't been paying attention: three novels have been published under the name of J.T. Leroy, and many people take themselves to have had phone conversations with Leroy and to have met and talked with him in person.  Leroy is put forward as a reclusive 25-year-old transgendered former child prostitute and drug addict.  It now seems plausible that novels attributed to J.T. Leroy were written by Laura Albert, a 39-year-old musician who the official Leroy narrative holds to have rescued Leroy from the streets since 1993, and to have lived with him and her husband Geoffrey Knoop since then.  It also seems plausible that most phone conversations apparently with Leroy were with Laura Albert.  However, the person identified as J.T. Leroy in public appearances and in face-to-face conversation appears to be Savannah Knoop, Geoffrey Knoop's half-sister.

(For background, see the New York article "Who is the Real JT LeRoy? A search for the true identity of a great literary hustler", and the more recent New York Times article "The Unmasking of J.T. Leroy", as well as the Wikipedia link above. Or for another perspective, see the official J.T. Leroy website and blog.)

Let us assume for the sake of discussion that the facts are roughly as suggested by these articles.  Then we can still ask the question: Who is J.T. Leroy?  Four answers seem to be possible:

(1) J.T. Leroy is Laura Albert
(2) J.T. Leroy is Savannah Knoop
(3) J.T. Leroy does not exist
(4) It is indeterminate who J.T. Leroy is

Set aside (4) for now, and try to choose between the first three if you can.  (Stop here to form your own judgment before reading on.)  (2) seems to me to be clearly the least plausible, so that the leading contenders are (1) and (3).  I can see someone making a case for (1). But my own intuition is that the best thing to say is (3): if the facts are as described, then J.T. Leroy does not exist.  I'm interested to hear others' judgments, though.

The naturalness of this judgment gets some support from other famous literary hoaxes, such as the Ern Malley case in Australia in the 1940's.  Here, the poems attributed to Ern Malley (who like J.T. Leroy was put forward as having a specific life story) were in fact written by James McCauley and Harold Stewart, in an attempt to debunk modernist poetry.  Since the facts were revealed, the standard description of the case usually involves the claim that Ern Malley did not exist.  Even the official Ern Malley website characterizes him as "the poet who never lived".  And as distinguished a source as David Lewis tells us that "Ern Malley was a nonexistent object".

If (3) is correct, and J.T. Leroy does not exist, then 'J.T. Leroy' does not refer.  Likewise for 'Ern Malley'.  This has consequences for the causal theory of reference.  The dominant causal source for 'J.T. Leroy' is clearly Laura Albert, I think.  Savannah Knoop complicates things, but it appears that she only entered the picture late in the day, around 2001.  So one might think that if a simple causal theory of reference were correct, the name would refer to Laura Albert, and we could correctly say that Leroy is Albert.  The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for Ern Malley.  (Again, this case is complicted by the two authors, but it seems likely that people would still say that Ern Malley did not exist even if there were just one author.)  So our intuitive judgments here tend to cast doubt on a simple causal theory of reference.

Of course there are more subtle versions of the causal theory of reference, which allow speaker's intentions to play a central role, although such theories have not been developed in much detail.  But at the least, cases like this can help show the form that such a theory would have to take.  The obvous suggestion here is that there are also descriptive as well as causal constraints on reference: for example, it might be required that for someone to qualify as the referent of 'J.T. Leroy', they have to fit Leroy's purported life-story well enough, and no-one does.  Of course this is tricky: no-one says that James Frey did not exist, because his purported life-story was greatly exaggerated.  And even with the largely fabricated life-story of Helen Demidenko, people are inclined to say that Helen Demidenko is Helen Darville.  If the Leroy case were more like these cases, then presumably we would say that J.T. Leroy exists and wrote the novels, but that Leroy did not do most of the things that he/she claims to have done.

Here it is interesting to examine what sort of modifications to the Leroy case lead to a difference here, and to see what are the relevant differences between the Leroy and Malley cases on the one hand, and the Demidenko and Frey cases on the other.  The name of the actual author seems to matter: If one modifies the Leroy case so that Albert's name had in fact been 'J.T. Leroy' all along, while leaving other facts the same, then I think my judgment would incline toward the view that Leroy exists.  But the Demidenko case suggests that this is not all that is going on.  Some similarity in actual and purported characteristics seem to matter: both Demidenko and Frey at least share an age and a gender with the characters they describe.  In the Leroy case, if one modifies the case so that the Albert figure is a 25-year old male, I think I would incline much more in the direction of (1).  So there seems to be a strong sensitivity of our judgments to certain descriptive information, but it is far from obvious what the relevant information is, or why it should be relevant.  I'd say that this is a good case for experimental philosophers!

Of course one might just throw up one's hands and say (4), or perhaps decline to answer altogether.  There is certainly some appeal to the suggestion that the whole issue as to who counts as "J.T. Leroy" is terminological.  On the other hand, it is possible that the issue matters at least for some legal issues.  For example, if Leroy's name appears in contracts, then the issue could matter a great deal -- though I suspect that Albert has designed any contracts very carefully! And, like other terminological issues, the question at least has consequences for the philosophy of terminology -- here, in its embodiment as the theory of reference.  So it would be nice to get clearer on just what's going on here.

Post-docs at ANU

The following ad will appear in the November 10 issue of Jobs for Philosophers:

The Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, seeks to appoint one or more research-only Postdoctoral/Research Fellows (Level A/B).  The fellows will be appointed in association with Professor David Chalmers' Federation Fellowship project on 'The Contents of Consciousness', and/or in association with other projects in the Program in related areas.  Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in philosophy or a related discipline prior to appointment, and should specialize in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and/or epistemology.  Appointment will be for up to three years.  The Program will consider proposals to fill the positions by secondment, and particularly welcomes applications from women. Send applications (reference: SS3074) to: The Staffing Recruitment Officer, Chancelry 10A, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia, or by e-mail (Word, rtf, or pdf format) to jobs@anu.edu.au.  Full details are available at http://consc.net/fellows.html.  Closing date: 1 December, 2005.

The official ANU website has full formal details.  As with last year, I've posted online a few informal comments for potential applicants for the position.  Particularly worth noting among the informal comments is that it is possible that applicants for this position may also be considered for two other post-doctoral fellowships in the RSSS philosophy program, one in the philosophy of mind and one in epistemology.  (Funding for these fellowships was just announced this week, too late to put an ad into JFP.)  So that's all the more reason to apply.

Australasian philosophy family tree

In an earlier post, I mentioned Josh Dever's philosophy family tree project.  To help out with this project, I've now compiled an Australasian philosophy family tree.  Thanks to many Australian and New Zealand philosophers for their help with this.  Of course it is still incomplete, but I think it is probably well over halfway by now.  It's very interesting to see the various lineages, even though they are highly imperfect mirrors of influence.  If you have any additions or corrections, please let me know here or by e-mail.

Philosophy family tree

Josh Dever at Texas is putting together a philosophy family tree, consisting of (mostly) philosophers related by the Ph.D. advisor relation.  By now it has excellent coverage of some corners of the philosophical world, but there are also some big missing areas (e.g. most of Australian and British philosophy) and some key bits of missing information in the corners that are present.  Josh has started a blog to gather missing information, and welcomes information either on the blog or by e-mail.  It would be good if people could collectively supply as much information as possible.  E.g., if you have a Ph.D. in philosophy and this information isn't already there, let Josh know the identity of your advisor, your advisor's advisor, and so on, as well as any advisees, siblings (advisees of your advisor), and so on.

For my part, my main advisor (at Indiana) was Doug Hofstadter, whose advisor was a physicist at Oregon, so I don't go far back on that line.  But officially my co-advisor was Mike Dunn, whose advisor (at Pittsburgh) was Nuel Belnap, whose advisor (at Yale) was Frederic Fitch, whose advisor (at Yale) is not currently known (update: Fitch now goes back via F.C.S. Northrop and W.E. Hocking to Josiah Royce, and from there via a few intermediate steps to Kant and Leibniz!)  so that's at least a partial hook-up into the body of the tree.

Terminological disputes: Request for examples

For the paper I'm writing on terminological disputes, I would like as many examples of terminological disputes as possible.  There are a lot of potential examples within philosophy, but it would be good to have some from outside philosophy, too.  In particular, it might be nice to start with an example from literature.   If anyone can think of good examples from a work of fiction -- say, two characters having an argument that starts out looking like a substantive disagreement but which turns out to be an argument over a word -- please let me know.  Examples from politics, science, everyday life wouldn't hurt, either.  For that matter, I wouldn't mind gathering a lot of philosophical examples.  So you're hereby requested to post suggestions in the comments or by e-mail.

I'll be giving this paper (abstract here) at the Australasian Association of Philosophy (Sydney, July 3-8), for which the really excellent program is now online.

Advertisement: PhD at ANU

It's well-known that the philosophy program at the Australian National University is one of the best in the world.  (See e.g. the Gourmet Report, where ANU is ranked something like seventh internationally.)  But as I've discovered since moving here, ANU doesn't receive remotely as many applications for its Ph.D. program as a comparable program in the US.  Obviously many international students don't think about applying to ANU, partly because of distance and because of a different application schedule. But at the same time, this means that it presents students with a great opportunity to get into a strong program.  This entry is part of an attempt to raise the visibility of the program as a destination for prospective Ph.D. students.  (If you don't like advertising, feel free to stop reading now!)

First, the joys of the program.  A look at the Gourmet specialty rankings will show that ANU is especially strong (i.e. in a tie for first or second internationally) in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of cognitive science, the philosophy of biology, and applied ethics.  It is also very strong in metaphysics, meta-ethics, and political philosophy (top ten) and the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, and decision theory (top fifteen).  In addition, I think it's fair to say that for the philosophy of consciousness specifically, there is an unmatched group of people working in the area.

Philosophy in the 1960s

An interesting conversation at the Pacific APA: name great works in analytic philosophy published in the 1960s.  One can find important papers and books if one tries.  But it's not as easy as you'd think, and even in many of these cases, it's not the most important work by the philosopher in question.  The contrast with the 1950s and the 1970s, where truly major works just roll off the tongue, is pretty striking.  Of course there's no doubt that a lot of important work was going on in the 1960s, and the many major books and articles of the early 1970s were presumably the result of hard thinking in the preceding years.  But going by publication dates, there's nevertheless the appearance of a mild down period.  Why the drop-off just then?  (In a period of fruition for so many other areas, too.)  Perhaps it was some sort of intergenerational period of consolidation.  It's surprising, all the same.

Still, one might take the phenomenon as hopeful.  Lots of people have discerned a similar drop-off in truly important philosophical work in the 1980s, or the 1990s, or choose your decade.  Of course perspective makes this hard to assess, and there's unquestionably been a lot of very good work in these decades. But it's a common enough judgment, one that makes some people worry about the future of the field.  Nevertheless: if we take the 1960s as a model, one might hope that any contemporary drop-off is just another eye in the (multiple-eyed?) storm.

Anyway, suggested explanations of the phenomenon, and/or defenses of the 1960s, are welcome.

Philosophers' Annual

It's time for nominations for the 2004 edition of the Philosophers' Annual, which attempts to select the "ten best" articles published in a given year.  The way this works is that each member of a 43-person editorial board submits up to three nominations, and then the four editors choose ten articles from this group.  Results are online for 1978-2001, 2002, and 2003.

I'm on the editorial board, and I'd welcome suggestions for nominations.  It would be good to cast as wide a net as possible.  It's sometimes said that selections for the Annual reflect connectedness in the profession, and that the same authors are selected repeatedly.  So I'm especially interested to hear about articles and authors that might otherwise be overlooked.  But suggestions of all sorts (except self-nominations), in all areas, are welcome.  I can't promise to read everything that's suggested, but maybe other members of the editorial board will be reading this too, and in any case it's interesting to hear about good work.

(I notice that two of the papers mentioned in a corresponding thread last year on Brian Weatherson's site made it onto the 2003 list.  See also the discussion of 2004 epistemology papers at Certain Doubts.)