Lewis Powell

This is one of those times when I post without having looked into things carefully first, which means I run the risk of rehashing well worn ground or the like. However, I'd rather post this, and have someone link me to a good discussion of it than let the blog stagnate (especially after I officially declared an end to the hiatus and promised a post today).

This is something I've been thinking about since watching an episode of the West Wing in which it (sort of) came up.

When someone asks "Do you know the time?", it is rarely, if ever, the case that a correct affirmative answer to the question would be satisfactory.

At one point in thinking about this I was wondering if maybe a maxim of courtesy was in play, something like, "don't ask a question which you lack sufficient evidence to believe that others in the conversation will be able to answer." That formulation requires tweaking if we consider "I don't know" to be an answer to the question "What time is it?". It's also possible that such a maxim would be superfluous, and existing machinery can already explain what's going on there.

The phenomenon seems to be potentially related to what goes on in situations like this: "What time is it?" "I think its around 5", where the "I think" serves to generate an implicature about the speaker's confidence in that guess.

I haven't really looked into it any literature on implicature and questions, but investigating issues for implicature that are specific to the domain of questions is something I want to do in my spare time this semester (if I have any such time).

If you know of anything good to read on, or related to, this subject, please let me know.

Lewis Powell

Some philosophical questions can only be tackled by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

I will actually post something of substance soon.

Lewis Powell

A couple days ago I was reading through chapter one of "Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong", The Subjectivity of Values for a paper I was working on for the metaethics seminar I took this semester, and section 5, "Standards of evaluation" caught my attention. It is about two pages long, and in it, he is both clear and insightful. The section lays out the relationship between standards of evaluation and value judgements, as well as the appropriateness of standards relative to aims. He concludes that the objectivity of evaluation relative to standards in no way threatens a denial of objectivity about values in the sense that he means.

Right now, I suspect that he is wrong in that conclusion, and that the contents of that section either directly threaten, or play a role in something that does directly threaten a denial of objectivity, but I haven't had a chance to work that out, as I am trying to get this semester's work finished in a timely manner.

Which I should be getting back to now, actually.

Lewis Powell

Weatherson mentioned that wikipedia could stand to have a bunch of informed people clean up or augment wikipedia philosophy articles. I agree. For instance, this article on metaphysics could certainly use a lot of help. Cleaning up and organizing the big broad category articles is one way to structure which smaller articles in each area are needed/need to be cleaned up, and allows for people to contribute without tons of experience. So, if you have some free time, and want to contribute, you should.

Lewis Powell

At the session on Epistemic Relativism, Paul Boghossian was comparing epistemic and/or ethical relativism to a relativism that might be more palatable; relativism about motion. This post is about 'motion' talk, itself.

Basically, since modern science tells us that no motion is absolute, and the only applicable concept of motion is motion relative to some reference frame.

At one point, Boghossian was discussing what to say, once we've concluded how 'motion' talk works now, about what was going on with speakers before we discovered the relativity of motion.

One option discussed was that they were attributing some non-existent absolute motion property and were just wrong all the time. Another was that they were slyly and unawaredly doing whatever we do now. It is from this option that I came up with the title of the post. Retconning is something done in comic books wherein the history of the fiction is revised by current developments in the plot (and similar phenomena).

At first glance, something seems somewhat worrisome about a modern scientific discovery altering the semantics of, say, dead languages. However, to be fair, someone endorsing such a view would almost certainly think that languages have been this way all along and that fact about language is something that we only put together after this scientific discovery. Also, I think that, if one endorses semantic externalism for other reasons, that could reduce worries about this.

Lewis Powell

Firstly, let me apologize for being light on the updates. That is because the semester is winding down, which means end of semester work is piling up.

So, no lengthy update, but I will post a link.

If you find yourself bored with the same old Frege's Puzzles, time after time, and want to surprise your audience with something a little more exciting than Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens, this list of famous Pen Names may well revitalize that paper you're working on.

Also, I learned today that "Voltaire" was a pen name.

Lewis Powell

This carnival brought to you by the University of Nowhere

Lewis Powell

The UConn philosophy graduate students recently started a blog.

What is it like to be a blog?

Go check it out.

Lewis Powell

Some of the claims made about titles of artwork in the Title paper I recently stumbled across on JSTOR are:

1) Titles, unlike names, are parts of the things they title.
2) Titles, unlike names, are essential to the things they title.
3) TItles, unlike names, have descriptive content (or at least, something that functions as a guide to interpretation, and thus does more than just denote).
4) Titles can only be given by the author of the work.

I'm inclined to think that (1) is true, and (3) is plausible, though the words that make up the title can also be used simply to refer to the artwork.

(2) seems like it would be the first step towards some sort of view wherein every aspect of a piece of art is essential, which I don't know would be very plausible, and I'd like to see an argument for four. I didn't see one in the paper, but I was skimming parts of it and so I might have missed it.

What do other people think about these claims, and how close names are to titles.

Lewis Powell

This might be the best (and nerdiest) game ever. My friends Joshua and Chris at Rochester are responsible for it.

Game Rules:
Take a new issue of some philosophy journal. One player chooses an article in the journal, and reads off the names of the authors cited in that article. The other player(s) attempt to guess what the specific subject of the article is and/or the author of the article, on the basis of names of cited authors alone. The goal is to guess correctly on as little information as possible.

I just thought I'd share that so that you all know what to do if you're ever bored but have access to other philosophers with whom to play and some philosophy journals you haven't read.

Lewis Powell

Rochester is having an epistemology conference.

Lewis Powell

In Insensitive Semantics, Chapter 7: Objections to Radical Contextualism (I), Cappelen and Lepore give three tests for context sensitivity.

Test 1: Blocking inter-contextual disquotational direct reports
Take a clearly context-sensitive term like, "she" in the sentence "She is a banker".

Utterance made in context C1, by Jones, while in a bank, demonstrating a female bank employee: "She is a banker."

Indirect report in C2, made by Smith, who knows Jones, demonstrating a lawyer: "Jones said that she is a banker."

This is what test 1 blocking looks like. The indirect report is unacceptable because there was a context sensitive term and so Smith's disquotation is insufficient for a true report.

Test 2: Blocking collective descriptions
Staying with "she", consider the following:
Utterance 1: Jones, demonstrating the manager of the First Bank of Fredonia: "She is a banker"
Utterance 2: Smith, demonstating the manager of the Second Bank of Fredonia: "She is a banker"

The following is clearly false: "Jones and Smith both said that she is a banker" (note that it really doesn't matter who is indicated, since there is no one female who both Jones and Smith said was a banker.

Test 3: Admit of Real Context Shifting Arguments
The final test is, I think, slightly more confusing.
Consider:
U: "She is a banker"

(1) There can be false utterances of "She is a banker" even though she is a banker.
(1*) There can be true utterances of "She is a banker" even though she is not a banker.

If one imagines a demonstration accompanying the non-quoted she, it should be clear that (1) and (1*) are true.

Ok, so that's how the tests are supposed to work. In the chapter, Cappelen and Lepore argue that quantifiers do not pass the test, using the quantifiers "at least one" and "at least two". My intuition is that "at least one" is able to be used disquotationally, and so that is evidence against its context sensitivity (test 1). My intuitions are substantially weaker for test 2, where it is alleged that the following is acceptable:
If there is a true utterance in some context of "Jill bought at least two penguins" and a true utterance in some context of "Jill bought at least two ducks" then it is perfectly natural to say: "Jill bought at least two penguins and ducks". Set aside that worry for a moment though. In fact, set aside the quantifiers they've chosen for a moment, and consider the following:

(2) There can be true utterances of "every bat is flying" even though not every bat is flying.
(2*) There can be false utterances of "every bat is flying" even though every bat is flying.

(2*) strikes me as obviously false. (2) on the other hand, is far less objectionable, and were my intuitions not so skewed, I might find it utterly unproblematic. Consider the utterance as made by a Zookeeper who is showing a tour group the bat cage, and none of the bats in the cage are at rest. Now say sentence two stressing the non-quoted "every" so that it reads like this:

(2) There can be true utterances of "every bat is flying" even though not every bat is flying.

This sounds fine to me. Stressing the every seems to be a fair counterpart to imagining the "she is a banker" case with a demonstration for the non-quoted "she".

For the sake of completeness, I'll put "every" through the first two tests.
T1:
Beth, a zookeeper standing in front of the bat cage, in which no bat is at rest: "Every bat is flying".

Report by Steven, who is in a cave filled with many sleeping bats and who just got off the phone with Beth. He turns to his fellow spelunkers and says: "Beth said that every bat is flying"

Evaluation: "Every" seems fine to use disquotationally here, and I intentionally chose a case in which the context of the report was one in which not every bat was flying. This type of result is claimed by Capellen and Lepore to indicate that the word tested (in this case, "every") is not context sensitive. I suspect that contextualists would have something to say about this case, but I hardly think its necessary in light of the following two tests.

T2:
Beth, a zookeeper standing in front of the bat cage, in which no bat is at rest: "Every bat is flying".

Steven, having just dropped his flashlight, startled the bats in the cave so that none of them remained at rest. He says, "Every bat is flying."

Ming the Merciless, watching both Beth and Steven on some sort of monitors turns to an advisor and says, "they both said that every bat is flying"

Evaluation: Something seems wrong about this attribution.

So, T1 indicates non-context-sensitivity, while T2 and T3 indicate context sensitivity for "every" (or, arguably, "bat", but my money is on "every").

Most people probably don't see it as a startling discovery that there is evidence for context sensitivity for quantifiers, but Cappelen and Lepore claimed that the tests came down on the side of quantifiers not being context sensitive, so I thought I'd see if my reasoning above seemed right to others.

(this post is due in part to discussion I had with Geoff Georgi, a USC Graduate Student and all around good guy)

Lewis Powell

I attended the session on Knowledge and its Practical limits and have been thinking a lot about the bank cases mentioned at the session. The cases look something like this:
Low Stakes:
Hannah and her wife Sarah are driving home on a Friday afternoon. They plan to stop at the bank on the way home to deposit their paychecks. It isn't important that they deposit their checks right away, as they have no impending bills. But, as they drive past the bank, they notice that the lines inside are very long. In no mood for a long wait, Hannah says to sarah, 'I know the bank will be open tomorrow, since I was just there two weeks ago on Saturday morning. So we can deposit our paychecks tomorrow morning.'

Our intuition is that Hannah does know (under the assumption that the bank is open on Saturday).

Then we are asked to consider a case like the following:
High Stakes:
Same as Low Stakes, except that now Hannah and Sarah know they have impending bills that won't be covered unless they make their deposits by Saturday. Hannah notes that the bank was open two weeks before on a Saturday morning, but Sarah points out that banks do change their hours. Hannah says, 'I guess you're right. I don't know that the bank will be open tomorrow.'

Allegedly, the intuition in high stakes is that Sarah's claim not to know is true.

While I don't share that intuition, I have a two part case that I want to put out there.

Stubborn High Stakes:
Same as Low Stakes, except that now Hannah and Sarah know they have impending bills that won't be covered unless they make their deposits by Saturday. Hannah notes that the bank was open two weeks before on a Saturday morning, but Sarah points out that banks do change their hours. Hannah says, 'Banks don't change their hours that often. It'll be open tomorrow.' Sarah replies, 'You don't know that."

Presumably, in this case, one's intuitions will be the same as the intuitions in the normal high stakes case. Hannah's stubbornness doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would impact this question. But now, consider this:

Stubborn High Stakes Epilogue:
Sarah was driving the car, and so, despite Hannah's protest, stopped at the bank. After waiting through the long line, as they are depositing their checks, Sarah asks, 'Is this bank open on Saturdays?' The bank teller responds, 'Yes, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.' Hannah turns to Sarah and says, 'I knew it.'

My response is that, while Hannah might be more commendable had she not issued an "I-told-you-so", her utterance is correct. If you don't share the intuition, one thing to make sure of is that you are correctly imagining the case, keeping in mind that Hannah is epistemically in the same position in this case as in low stakes, where we had the inuition that she did know.

What can the IRI defender say about the case/those intuitions?

A Stanley-type account's best response, considering the intuition as data (i.e. rather than rejecting the intuition) is to argue that Hannah is conflating her epistemic position after the check's have been deposited, when the stakes are low again, with the position she was in throughout the case. And this would work well, I think, with Stanley's response to the intuitions for High Attributor-Low Subject Stakes (cases where the attributor is in high stakes, but is assessing the position of someone in low stakes). One might think that the response works just as well for this case as it does in H.A.L.S., but at the very least, this is another cluster of scenarios in which our intuitions have to be explained as the product of confusion and thinking someone was saying something they were not.*

Perhaps I can press this worry further with the following cases (for all of which, it is true that the butler is the killer):

Whodunnit? pt. 1:
James and Stephanie are watching a mystery movie at home. In the first half an hour of the film, Stephanie gets sufficient evidence to conclude that the butler was the killer (fill in whatever details you find necessary to get the intuition that she knows). She says to James, 'I know who did it. It was the butler.'

IRI-account predicts: Her ascription was true.
Good so far. I don't know precisely how to quantify stakes, but since they are described as higher or lower, I label the stakes in this part X and describe further stakes as X+ for higher, or X- for lower, and X? for when I am unsure as to how the stakes compare.

Whodunnit? pt. 2:
(Immediately after pt 1)
In response to Stephanie, James says, "You want to bet? A hundred dollars says it wasn't the butler.'
Stakes: X?.
I'm not quite sure what I think happens to the stakes at the mere possibility of a bet.

Whodunnit? pt. 3a:
Stephanie accepts the bet. James thinks to himself, 'It's still very early in the film, she doesn't know who the killer is.'
Stakes: X+. There is now money riding on the bet, and so, provided we are imagining the right sort of case, the IRI account (and the intuitions Stanley uses to motivate his view) would be that James's thought is right, she does not know.

Whodunnit? pt. 3b:
(Instead of pt. 3a) Stephanie declines the bet, because a hundred dollars is a lot to risk over a movie. James says, "See, you don't know. It was just a guess."
Stakes: X The bet has been refused, so the stakes are back to normal. Thus, IRI predicts that, by rejecting the bet, Stephanie maintains her knowledge (or regains it, if the mere offer of a bet was sufficient to raise stakes).

Epilogue to 3a or b: As it is revealed that the butler did it, Stephanie says, "I knew it."
Our intuitions about these cases should diverge for an IRI account, since in (3a) she is evaluating her self in a high stakes scenario, and in (3b) she is evaluating herself in the same stakes as the original scenario. I don't think the cases do diverge though. I think that in either case, her knowledge claim is correct.

If I wanted to make this more directly comparable to the Hannah Bank cases, James would reply with something like, "Movies do sometimes have twist endings." Which might alter my intuitions, but I also think it alters Hannah's evidence base, and thus, might be triggering the wrong sort of intuitions.

Even if people don't share my intuition about the truth of the knowledge claim, there is some data here, namely, that people are often inclined to make such an utterance as a retrospective ascription, so, even if you think its false, some story should be given as to why it is not at all rare in such cases to make the claim.

*Contextualists might fare slightly better, in that they can agree that the utterance of "I knew it" is true in that the utterance in the epilogue context expresses a relation that did obtain throughout the case. However, as I think that independent of this worry, contextualism about "knows" is not very plausible, there are many better worries about contextualism to spend time on.

Lewis Powell

I just got back into town from the Pacific APA, which was also the first APA I've attended. The talks I saw and random side conversations I had sparked my interest in a lot of things. I should probably write them down somewhere so I don't forget what they all are.

I also acquired a number of books, since you know, its not like I already have a mountain of things I need to read.

Books I now have:
Insensitive Semantics by Cappelen and Lepore (which I read about half of on the plane ride back, and am enjoying immensely)
The Oxford "Semantics vs. Pragmatics" edited by Szabó
Oxford Studies in Metaphysics edited by Dean Zimmerman
Philosophical Papers Volume 1: Metaphysics, mathematics, and meaning (Nathan Salmon)
An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic by Graham Priest
Philosophical Papers: Modality and Tense (Kit Fine)

The only complaints I had about the weekend were that a couple of talks I wanted to see conflicted with other talks I wanted to see, which is probably unavoidable, and, more importantly, some of the talks (notably the Hawthorne/McFarlane/Stalnaker Relativism session) were in much smaller rooms than audience size required. Otherwise, it was an excellent weekend.

Lewis Powell

One of my favorite passages from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" (which, I should point out, is among the many free works on Project Gutenberg), is between Alice and the white Knight, and is largely a conversation about reference.

'You are sad,' the Knight said in an anxious tone: 'let me sing you a song to comfort you.'

'Is it very long?' Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.

'It's long,' said the Knight, 'but very, VERY beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it--either it brings the TEARS into their eyes, or else--'

'Or else what?' said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden
pause.

'Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called "HADDOCKS' EYES."'

'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said, trying to feel interested.

'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking a little vexed. 'That's what the name is CALLED. The name really IS "THE AGED AGED MAN."'

'Then I ought to have said "That's what the SONG is called"?'
Alice corrected herself.

'No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The SONG is called "WAYS AND MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED, you know!'

'Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. 'The song really IS "A-SITTING ON A GATE": and the tune's my own invention.'

I started reading a paper today about titling artwork, it had a citation for an article about this very passage, which I need to find. I also need to figure out what I think about how titles for artwork relate to names for objects generally, and if there are is any interesting crossover between the two issues. I'll probably post some thoughts about that sometime soon.

Lewis Powell

Last week in Scott Soames and Jeff King's Pragmatics/Semantics course, we spent some time discussing appositives.

I am in search of things that have been written about them, but I don't know where to go for literature about them.

For those unaware, here is an example:

Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the bifocals, was the first Postmaster General of the United States.

The phrase "the inventor of the bifocals" in the above sentence is an appositive.

I'm interested, specifically, in knowing what has been said about what those clauses do to truth conditions, but really anything about them would be good.

If you have a recommendation, or a recommended method for determining a recommendation for myself, please let me know in the comments.

Lewis Powell

Heaven Tree has the new carnival

Also, the carnival always needs new hosts. So, check it out, and if you have a blog, consider hosting an upcoming carnival.

Lewis Powell

I am going to try and tackle a more central aspect of Clayton's problem with evidentialism this time around. Clayton thinks that we need a way to diagnose what is going wrong when I have an evidentially well founded but false belief.

Consider a perfect evidential reasoner, Smith Jr. He has loads of positive evidence for and no evidence against the belief that Smith Sr. is his biological father. In actuality, Smith Sr. is the identical twin of Smith Jr.'s biological father. No one knows this, not even Smith Sr. who, for whatever reason, believes himself to be the man whose place he took. There is no evidence had by Smith Jr. which could possibly lend credence the belief that Smith Sr. is not his biological father, and ample ample evidence that Smith Sr. is his biological father. However, the fact remains, the belief is false.

Is Smith Jr's false belief justified? I say yes, entirely, Clayton disagrees. Clayton is committed to saying that, in virtue of the belief being false, the belief is not justified. This strikes me as the wrong result, but I don't imagine such a case would be compelling as a counter-example to Clayton who has just such cases in mind.

Clayton can grant me that Smith Jr. formed the evidence appropriate belief. He still wants to say, however, that the belief is not justified. For Clayton, it is justified "only if it has those properties in virtue of which his intention [to show that p] could succeed. His belief is justified only if p."

I have a number of issues with this approach, but I'm going to stick with one for now.

That objection is that Clayton is wedding normative standards for beliefs too closely to what I think is, if a fact at all, a contingent one. That fact is something about the psychology of a person trying to convince another that his belief is justified. There are two issues I have with what Clayton has done here. (a) I don't know that people generally or standardly have the intent that Clayton says they do, and (b) even if they do, it still isn't clear that it should be used to ground normative evaluations in epistemology.

As for (a). Consider an atheist and a devout theist conversing. Both is aware of the other's position, and the theist wants to make sure that the atheist is reasonable in his disbelief. The theist says, "But is your belief that god does not exist justified?"

The atheist, not intending nor attempting to persuade or convince the theist in any way, proceeds to explain why he believes there is no god. His intent is to show the theist that, given his epistemic position, the most reasonable thing stance for him to take is that god does not exist. Even if the atheist is wrong about god, he may be right about his belief being justified.

At the very least, not every instance of endeavoring to justify a belief involves the intent to demonstrate the truth of the belief.

But, the more siginificant point is (b). Imagine a group of people who consider some particular book absolutely infallible. Call it the Big Book o' Truth (BBoT). When the BBoTers want to justify a belief that P, they form only the intent to demonstrate that P is in the BBoT. Clearly, this would not be a solid basis for deriving a theory of epistemic normativity. It might be a good method of determining what the BBoTers take to be the basis for epistemic normativity, but it doesn't seem like whether or not their beliefs are justified actually depends on what is written in the book. Something about the type of intent Clayton discusses should be put forward as having normative weight above and beyond merely being how we intend when we try to justify.

Lewis Powell

Clayton posts a paper called "Why I am not an Evidentialist" (presumably a reference to Russell's "Why I am not a Christian").

Clayton's core reason, it seems, is because he links the act of justifying a belief to its being justified in such a way that he says tells against internalism/evidentialism.

I think that (a) Clayton is putting too much force on the process of trying to justify a belief to another as the basis for a belief being justified, and (b) even if we grant that the act of justifying a belief to someone is the basis for justification of the belief, I think evidentialism still comes out ahead.

I'm not going to talk about (a) now, I'd rather focus on (b).

Clayton focuses on justifying beliefs that you still have, while not discussing the justification of beliefs you did have, but have no longer. In short, I think that there is a particular question that is telling about what goes on with epistemic normativity.

That quesiton is "(Well,) what was I supposed to think?"

Imagine a situation in which Smith knows that Jones is very bad at calculus, and overhears Brown offer to sell the answers to an upcoming exam to Jones, but does not hear Jones's response. Smith observes that Jones does not study at all for the exam, and is uncharacteristically unworried about it. After Jones takes the exam, Smith sees Jones take a notecard with distinctive red writing on it out of his sleeve and somwhat sneakily put it in the middle of his Calculus book. Later, Smith sees Jones get the exam back, and notes that Jones got an A. He also sees the notecard sticking out of Jones's book, and it across its top is written "Answers to the calculus exam". Smith comes to believe that Jones cheated on the exam, and his evidence strongly supports it. He confronts Jones about it.
Jones, upset at the accusation, reveals that the card's full text reads, "Answers to the calculus exam will not stump me" over and over again. He had been seeing a hypnotherapist, who had helped relieve him of his normal anxiety about calculus. One of the things he did to relieve it was to write affirmations, which he had done during the last exam.

Smith then says, "Well, what was I supposed to think? You didn't study, you weren't nervous, and somehow you got an A, all after Brown offered to help you cheat."

It seems to me that Smith has just offered a justification for having believed that P, based on his evidence, despite no longer believing P. And this isn't merely a causal account. Smith sees his false view as having been the most reasonable thing to believe at the time, though he revises it in light of the evidence.

If you accept this story as one in which a belief that p was justified despite it being the case that ~p, then, even if the act of justifying a belief to another is related to whether or not that belief is justified, I don't think we have a refutation of evidentialism from it.

As to the title of this post; imagine two scenarios. The real world and a world in which everything is the same as far as my evidence and mental states, but there are also intangible ghosts outside the realm of my sensory evidence. Maybe they're visible under infrared or something, but I don't have any evidence from that band of wavelengths. I can't get behind a theory which says that real-me and ghost-world-me would differ with respect to their justification in believing "there are no ghosts in this room". In part because, I think to myself, "well, let's say I were in ghost-world, would I have any reason to believe differently than I do now?" No, I wouldn't.

I'll wrap this all up with one of my favorite stories about Bertrand Russell, though it may be apocryphal or the quote might be wrong:

Bertrand Russell was once asked what he would say if he found himself standing in front of God. Russell immediately answered that he would assert, "You did not give us enough evidence."

Lewis Powell

At Majikthise, Lindsay Beyerstein posts the following anecdote from her childhood:

My uncle, the philosopher, used to be a heavy smoker. One day when I was about six, I said, no doubt irritatingly, "If I were you, I wouldn't smoke."

He answered, "If you were me, you'd smoke. I smoke." I thought about that for a long time.

The "If I were you" and "If you were me" uses are just about the most common uses I hear of the subjunctive conditional. Or at least, the ones that I notice the most.

The antecedent is generally regarded as impossible, taken literally. Clearly we have some correctness conditions in mind for responses though. It'd be interesting to catalogue all the types of questions the phrase is used to ask, and see what variety of meanings it has, however, the real reason for this post is to say that if I were you, I'd strongly consider donating to Lindsay during her pledge week, because her blog is both good and related to analytic philosophy.