Showing papers in "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research in 1992"

Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction

Abstract: INTRODUCTION It is part of today's conventional wisdom in philosophy of mind that psychological states are “multiply realizable”, and are in fact so realized, in a variety of structures and organisms. We are constantly reminded that any mental state, say pain, is capable of “realization”, “instantiation”, or “implementation” in widely diverse neural-biological structures in humans, felines, reptiles, mollusks, and perhaps other organisms further removed from us. Sometimes we are asked to contemplate the possibility that extraterrestrial creatures with a biochemistry radically different from the earthlings', or even electro-mechanical devices, can “realize the same psychology” that characterizes humans. This claim, to be called hereafter ‘the Multiple Realization Thesis’ (“MR”, for short), is widely accepted by philosophers, especially those who are inclined to favor the functionalist line on mentality. I will not here dispute the truth of MR, although what I will say may prompt a reassessment of the considerations that have led to its nearly universal acceptance. And there is an influential and virtually uncontested view about the philosophical significance of MR. This is the belief that MR refutes psychophysical reductionism once and for all. In particular, the classic psychoneural identity theory of Feigl and Smart, the so-called “type physicalism”, is standardly thought to have been definitively dispatched by MR to the heap of obsolete philosophical theories of mind. At any rate, it is this claim, that MR proves the physical irreducibility of the mental, that will be the starting point of my discussion.

Essays on Henry Sidgwick

Abstract: Foreword J. B. Schneewind Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Introduction: Henry Sidgwick today Bart Schultz Part I. Common-Sense Morality, Deontology, Utilitarianism: 1. Sidgwick and nineteenth-century British ethical thought Marcus G. Singer 2. Sidgwick and the Cambridge moralists J. B. Schneewind 3. Sidgwick and Whewellian intuitionism: some enigmas Alan Donagan 4. Common sense at the foundations Russell Hardin Part II. Egoism, Dualism, Identity: 5. Sidgwick's pessimism J. L. Mackie 6. Sidgwick and the history of ethical dualism William K. Frankena 7. Sidgwick and the rationale for rational egoism David O. Brink 8. Sidgwick on ethical judgment John Deigh Part III. Hedonism, Good, Perfection: 9. Sidgwick on desire, pleasure, and the good Thomas Christiano 10. Eminent Victorians and Greek ethics: Sidgwick, Green, and Aristotle T. H. Irwin 11. The attractive and the imperative: Sidgwick's view of Greek ethics Nicholas P. White Part IV. History, Politics, Pragmatism: 12. The ordinary experience of civilized life: Sidgwick's politics and the method of reflective analysis Stefan Collini 13. Rethinking tradition: Sidgwick and the philosophy of the via media James T. Kloppenberg Index.

Heidegger and Habermas on criticism and totality

Abstract: Many of the criticisms Jflrgen Habermas makes of Heidegger depend on questionable interpretations of the latter's texts. However, it would be wrong to read Habermas's criticism as simply misinterpretation, as if once the scholars straightened him out, Habermas would come to agree with Heidegger. Much of what Habermas says stems from philosophical differences that are independent of and partly responsible for the wayward readings of Heidegger's text. While Habermas pictures Heidegger as going beyond views that see the origin of meaning and validity in the operations of a transcendental ego, he argues that Heidegger does not go far enough. Heidegger modified the neoKantian and Husserlian constituting ego into the being-in-the-world of Dasein (cf. WW 434).1 Habermas regards this as a decisive achievement, but one that is marred by Heidegger's refusal to take the next step into an intersubjective notion of validity. He sees Heidegger holding too closely to an approach where projected totalities of meaning make it possible to have individual meaningful propositions. As Heidegger talks variously about a world, an understanding of being, and a sending (Geschick) of being, he is speaking, according to Habermas, of such totalities; what changes as Heidegger's thought develops is their origin, not their function. In the early thought the understandings of being, and in the later thought the sendings of being overwhelm (because they set the conditions for) any intersubjective process of validation aimed at individual propositions. This priority of the totality over the individual proposition remains, early and late, while the locus shifts from Dasein to Being as Heidegger moves from an early decisionistic to a latter submissive attitude towards totalities of meaning (cf. DM, chapter VI).2

Where's the Good in Teleology?

Abstract: Contemporary analyses of teleological explanation generally attempt to "sanitize" it, usually by trying to assimilate it to some uncontroversial descriptive form of explanation. This trend is misguided. Teleological explanations are controversial, especially when applied in biology, because value plays an essential role in them. If a reference to value is largely what makes teleological explanations problematic, then it seems only natural to try to vindicate the use of teleological explanations by eliminating or at least neutralizing this offensive reference to value. This has been the predominant trend in recent writings on teleology, in which teleology is usually given some purely descriptive form of causal analysis. Over against this, my project here is to defend a causal analysis that is value-centered.' It is crucial to distinguish different causal roles that value might play. Once these roles are clarified, it becomes clear what the quite different forms of teleology share and why biological teleology is so controversial.

Nietzsche's critique of truth

Abstract: Citations from Nietzsche's works are by section numbers with abbreviations of the relevant title prefixed. A list of these abbreviations and the editions used is given below. In the case of Ecce HIomo and Baeumler's edition of the Collected Works this method was inappropriate. For citations from Ecce Homo page numbers from the below listed translation are used. In citations from the Baeumler edition, volume and page number are cited. A The Antichrist trans. R. J. Hollingdale in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, Penguin, Middlesex, 1968. BGE Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufman, Vintage, New York, 1966. EH Ecce Ilomo, trans. W. Kaufman, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, Vintage, New York, 1969. D Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982. GM On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. W. Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, Vintage, New York, 1969. GS The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufman, Vintage, New York, 1974. HAH Iluman, All too Human, trans. M. Faber, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1984. SW Samtliche Werke in Zwolf Banden, ed. by Alfred Baeulmer, Alfred Kroner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1965. TI Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, Penguin, Middlesex, 1968. WTP The Will to Power, trans. W. Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. W. Kaufman, Vintage, New York, 1968. Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin, Middlesex, 1975. 2 This denial of the existence of truth can not be dismissed as mere hyperbole since it is repeated consistently. For instance, WTP notes 540,616,625 and 804, and EH 256.

In defense of global supervenience

Abstract: In recent years many philosophers have defended nonreductive materialism. According to this view, the special sciences are irreducible to physics even though all non-physical facts are determined by (and depend upon) physical facts. The notion of supervenience has played a prominent role in the thinking of these philosophers.' To see that this is no accident we need only consider the two main desiderata that supervenience relations are meant to capture: (i) the dependence of the supervening properties on the subvenient, or base, properties and (ii) the irreducibility of the supervening properties (and hence of the sciences that study them). In his recent Presidential Address to the APA, and elsewhere, Jaegwon Kim has argued that none of the standard supervenience relations found in the literature are capable of capturing both of these desiderata.2 A relation strong enough to ensure dependence, says Kim, will be so strong that it will jeopardize irreducibility. A relation weak enough to be compatible with irreducibility will be too weak to yield dependence. Kim's conclusion is that nonreductive materialism is not a viable option for philosophers of mind. Kim pays particular attention to the relation of global supervenience which is thought by many to be the version of supervenience that best satisfies the two desiderata and is therefore available to nonreductive materialists. He claims that, while it is weak enough not to endanger irreducibility, global supervenience is too weak to satisfy the first desideratum of dependency. We deny this claim. We will show that Kim's arguments do not establish that global supervenience is too weak to count as a respectable dependency relation. The problem with the arguments originates in his discussion of the nonequivalence of strong and global supervenience.

The Concept of the Highest Good in Kant's Moral Theory

Abstract: Kant claims that the concept of the highest good, the idea of a state or condition in which happiness is proportioned to virtue, follows as a consequence from the moral law. But it is not clear how it follows, nor indeed whether it follows at all. How, it has often been asked, can a law that requires us to act morally regardless of whether our personal happiness follows as a consequence be the source of an obligation to promote a state in which moral conduct has as its necessary consequence precisely such personal happiness?1 And on the other hand, if it can be shown that happiness does in fact belong in the highest good, why should it be limited to the virtuous? Can the moral law really oblige or even entitle us to undertake the seemingly presumptuous task of adjusting others' happiness to the degree of virtue we deem them to have? It is true that Kant often characterizes virtue as the worthiness to be happy, and it would no doubt be good if happiness were secured for those worthy of it. But of course this provides no solution to the problem, but only new terms in which it can be expressed. What needs to be explained is why virtue should be identified as the worthiness to be happy. One reason for pursuing this question is that an answer to it should help determine what place and importance, if any, the concept of the highest good

Prospects for a Common Morality

Abstract: This volume centres on debates about how far moral judgements bind across traditions and epochs. Nowadays such debates appear especially volatile, both in popular culture and intellectual discourse: although there is increasing agreement that the moral and political criteria invoked in human rights documents possess cross-cultural force, many modern and postmodern developments erode confidence in moral appeals that go beyond a local consensus or apply outside a particular community. Often the point of departure for discussion is the Enlightenment paradigm of a common morality, in which it is assumed that certain unchanging beliefs adhere to the structure of human reason. Whereas some thinkers continue to defend this paradigm, others modify it in diverse ways without abandoning entirely the attempt to address a universal audience, and still others jettison virtually all of its distinguishing features. Exhibiting a range of positions Western participants take in these debates, this volume seeks to advance the substance of the debates themselves without prejudging the outcome. Rival assessments of the Enlightenment paradigm are offered from various philosophical and theological points of view.

Lying, Liars and Language

Abstract: Lying is a form of behaviour which receives relatively little attention as a feature of linguistic interaction (other than as a moral aberration). We occasionally find suggestions that the ability to lie reflects significant capacities of linguistic and communicative subjects, but there has been little or no attempt to draw out or clarify this supposed significance. In this paper I hope to give the beginnings of such an explication. I shall begin by offering an analysis of the concept of lying, and then highlight sets of assumptions and capacities which must be present in a liar, and which must be features of linguistic subjects that are capable of lying.

The Truth Connection

Abstract: 1. When you know, there is something that provides you with knowledge. It is something that answers the question-How do you know? If your knowledge is perceptually based, it is plain that the answer to this question is something in support of the known belief to which perception contributes. In cases of learning from books, the answer plainly involves something that reading contributes in support of the known belief. In cases of mathematical knowledge, the answer plainly involves something contributed in support of the known belief by certain sorts of abstract thinking. In general, possessing factual knowledge implies having something available that shows the known proposition to be true. When you possess factual knowledge, the answer to the question-How do you know?-constitutes what is called your epistemic justification.' Epistemic justification is the sort of justification that is a necessary condition for factual knowledge. This epistemic sort of justification is closely related to the truth of what is justified. The existence of some special and intimate connection between epistemic justification and truth seems to be beyond reasonable doubt. The goal of the present work is to give an informative account of this relation (hereafter to be called "the truth connection"2). Getting a clear view of the

Beyond Optimizing: A Study of Rational Choice, by Michael Slote

Abstract: Introduction 1. Moderation and Satisficing 2. Moderation, Rationality, and Virtue 3. Rational Restrictions on Optimizing 4. Rational Restrictions Based on Past History 5. Rational Dilemmas and Rational Supererogation 6. The Rational Permissions of "Fractional Prudence" 7. Rationality-Consequentialism 8. Implications for Ethics Notes Index

Deontology, Incommensurability and the Arbitrary

Abstract: We might begin to classify the widely different sorts of concern that are commonly thought of as moral by noting a broad distinction. On the one hand, there is our concern with living a good life; that is to say: a life appropriate and satisfying to beings such as ourselves. Let us, just for the convenience of a label, call this the morality of virtue. On the other hand, we feel ourselves to be subject to certain requirements external to that concern. These requirements, in turn, themselves fall into (at least) two categories. First, there is the demand that we maximize whatever we think of value.2 But, second, there is the sense that there are certain sorts of things that we ought to do (or not do-for brevity, I shall no longer insert this qualification) just because of the sorts of things that they are, even if doing them prevents us from maximizing what is valuable. Let us, again just for a label, call both of these the morality of requirement. The foregoing is meant, obviously enough, as a gesture towards the doctrine of the virtues, consequentialism and deontology. Many moral philosophers have tried to argue that ethics can be understood adequately in terms of only one of these. My own view is that no adequate account of morality can be given which does not find some place for both the morality of virtue and the morality of requirement.3 But in this paper, I shall be concerned only with the morality of requirement, and more particularly with deontology. I shall try to show that no plausible version of deontology can capture the

Precis of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings

Abstract: All human beings ask themselves how to live, if not grandly then in detail. This, in effect, is to ask how it is rational to live. In part or in whole, the question may be moral: What kind of morality, if any, would be worth heeding -and how completely? In Wise Choices, Apt Feelings I don't take on these questions directly. Rather, I ask about them: What is at issue when we puzzle over them? What do normative terms -terms like 'rational' and 'morally wrong' mean? The book has four parts: I. Analyses of normative concepts. II. Meanings and emotions as parts of nature. III. Normative Objectivity. IV. Moral Inquiry: How moral inquiry might be conducted if the theory of the book is correct.

Skepticism and interpretation

Abstract: Donald Davidson has argued in a number of recent papers that attention to the necessarily public character of language shows that we cannot be massively mistaken about the world around us, and that consequently skeptical doubts about empirical knowledge are misplaced. The arguments Davidson advances rely on taking as the fundamental methodological standpoint for investigating meaning and related concepts the standpoint of the interpreter of another speaker, on the grounds that it is from the interpreter's standpoint that we discover what constraints are placed on meaning by the public character of language. In this paper, I argue that although Davidson's arguments reveal important conceptual connections between meaning and belief on the one hand, and truth and interpretation on the other, they do not show that it is impossible that we are massively mistaken about the external world. The essays I will be concentrating on are Davidson's "The Method of Truth in Metaphysics," and "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge."' In part I, I advance and briefly defend an account of the assumptions underlying skepticism. In parts II and III, I examine the argument for the unintelligibility of massive error Davidson advances in "The Method of Truth in Metaphysics." In parts IV and V, I examine the argument against skepticism in "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge." I conclude in part VI with a criticism of the central argument for a coherence theory of

Justification by Balance

Abstract: Nelson Goodman has proposed a provocative account of justification, which is the subject of the present inquiry. Goodman originally offered his account as an account of the justification of principles of (deductive and inductive) inference; I shall begin by considering the account in this context. However, when coupled with Goodman's treatment of credibility, the account is easily extended so as to constitute a general account of justification (i.e., one which is not restricted to the justification of principles of inference). The last part of this paper considers Goodman's proposal in this general way. I shall call Goodman's view 'justification by balance'. My aim is to determine the adequacy of Goodman's view, both as an account of the justification of principles of inference, and as a general account of epistemic justification. I shall argue that in neither context is the account of justification offered satisfactory.

Are Human Rights Based on Equal Human Worth

Abstract: The rhetoric of human rights and theories of equal human rights have experienced an exponential growth during the past thirty or forty years. From declarations of human rights, such as the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to arguments about the rights of fetuses versus the rights of women, to claims and counter claims about the rights of minorities to preferential hiring, to assertions of the rights of animals to life and wellbeing and the rights of trees to be cherished and preserved, the proliferation of rights affects every phase of our socio-political discourse. Hardly a month goes by without a new book appearing on the subject.1 As J. L. Mackie used to say, "Rights are pleasant. They allow us to make claims of others. Duties are onerous. They obligate us to others." Rights threaten to replace responsibility as the central focal point of moral theory. But this need not be the case. A rights theory balanced by a strong sense of

The Absurdity of Life

Abstract: In "The Absurd"' Nagel claims that self-conscious human beings are necessarily absurd, so that to escape absurdity while remaining human we would have to cease being self-conscious. Fifteen years later, in The View From Nowhere,2 he defends the same thesis, supplementing some of his old arguments with a battery of new ones. I want to suggest that Nagel has misdiagnosed, and exaggerated the inescapability of, our absurdity. He does so partly because the grounds on which he bases his conclusion are spurious, and partly because he does not acknowledge the extent to which we can eliminate absurdity by suitably redesigning our plans and modes of justification. Nonetheless, I do not mean to imply that we can easily eliminate absurdity from our lives. Life is not necessarily absurd, but unfortunately, in a world like ours, there are limits to what we can and should do to reduce the absurd elements of our affairs.

Direct Realism, Indirect Realism, and Epistemology

Abstract: The dispute between direct and indirect realism involves a combination of metaphysical and epistemological issues. According to indirect realism, perception is a triadic relation between a perceiver, a physical object that is perceived indirectly, and some private entity that is perceived directly. Standard objections to indirect realism derive immediately from the introduction of this third entity that supposedly stands between the perceiver and the external world. In particular, it is argued that if indirect realism were true it would be impossible for us to achieve knowledge of the physical world exactly because we are cut off from any direct perceptual access to that world. In other words, it is argued that an unacceptable epistemological consequence follows from the indirect realist's main metaphysical thesis. Direct realism eliminates this third entity and, it is widely assumed, thus leaves us in a better epistemic position than does indirect realism. In this paper I will challenge the claim that we are in a better position for learning about the physical world if direct realism is true than if indirect realism is true. It will be useful to begin by reviewing some of the central objections to indirect realism in a bit more detail. The most common forms of indirect realism hold that we directly perceive mental entities-variously referred to as 'ideas', 'sensa', or 'sense-data'-that are caused by a purely physical interaction between the perceiver and the physical world. But once such entities are introduced, the existence of illusions, hallucinations and dreams forces us to conclude that we cannot deduce the properties of physical objects-or even that physical objects exist-from the properties of the objects we perceive. At least since Locke, proponents of indirect realism have accepted this conclusion. In response, they have held that claims about the physical world must be justified by hypothetico-deductive argument and that perception

I Touch What I Saw

Abstract: Realisms about the self and about the external world entail each other. And both realisms derive support from the plain fact of perceptual reidentification of objects across times and senses. That is going to be the major contention of this paper. The Berkeleyan view that there is an abiding ego undergoing subjective states but no material objects for these states to focus on will be shown to be inconsistent. Equally incoherent, I shall argue, is the Parfitian view that there are more or less persistent material objects, e.g., buildings in Venice and hemispheres of brains, and also experiences and thoughts about them but no stable owners of those states of consciousness. A reductive anti-realism about selves will logically commit us to a similar diffusion of material bodies into their secondary qualities, and of those, in turn, to subjective

Gibbard on Normative Logic

Abstract: Evaluative judgements fit into all the classical contexts: negation and disjunction as well as conditionals, and when we consider evaluative predicates, quantification as well: Anthony did something wrong, or whenever Anthony does something wrong he also does something right. If we call the good behaviour of evaluative sentences in all these contexts the propositional surface of evaluative discourse, then the challenge for the expressivist is explaining the propositional surface, and this is one of the problems Gibbard claims to solve in Chapter 5 of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. To those impressed by the Frege-Geach problem it is as if there is an abyss between the simple states of mind the expressivist relies upon, and real judgement. Putting it this way also reveals that the problem is an example of the more general problem of understanding the relationship between judgements and simpler things like pictures or representations, such as animals may manage, but which apparently cannot be negative, or disjunctive, or quanficational. Indeed, it was negation itself that Frege used to point out the depth of the abyss. Images and other substitutes for judgements cannot be negated. They are not in the space of logic at all. The same seems to be true of the motivational states or pressures on action that expressivists wish to build upon. Like many philosophical puzzles this of indirect contexts has a tantalizing aspect. On the one hand it seems as if we habitually allow ourselves a propositional surface even when an expressivist starting point seems almost irresistible: it makes no difference whether I say "Yummy!", or "That's nice!", yet if I say the latter I can go on to disjoin, negate, hypothesize and quantify. So it can seem as if the phenomenon should be easily explicable, and that the Geach-Frege point cannot really mark an important obstacle to expressivism. On the other hand it can seem to be absolutely critical. For expressivism it seems that there is nothing-no proposition or judgementto hypothesize, or no real predicate to quantify over. When one starts off "If killing is wrong...." there is nothing being supposed to be the case; no fact imagined being put into place. To make the absence vivid, we can play it through with another example. Suppose we interpret Hume, as I think we

Truth, Activation Vectors and Possession Conditions for Concepts

Abstract: Reading these three papers devoted to my Representation and Reality, I had a very strange experience: not one of my three distinguished colleagues got me substantially wrong! In the past, whenever I have been asked to write comments on papers about my views, at least fifty percent of my effort has had to go into correcting misunderstandings. In this case, that effort can happily be saved, and I can devote myself to the much more pleasant task of taking up the arguments and the challenges of Dick Rorty, Paul Churchland and Christopher Peacocke. None of those challenges is directed against my criticisms of functionalism, which took up the major part of Representation and Reality, but they are highly important nonetheless, dealing, as they do, with the philosophical morals that I drew from the failure of functionalism; and Rorty's and Churchland's essays both deal, at least in part, with the central philosophical-logical issue of truth.

Criteria of Identity and the Individuation of Natural-Kind Events

Abstract: To answer (Q) is to solve the problem of event-individuation. Yet (Q), I must immediately note, is a broad question concealing several sub-questions corresponding to distinct conceptions as to what the problem of individuation amounts to. The delineation of some central sub-questions corresponding to diverse conceptions of individuation is the topic of section I. It will emerge that specifying criteria of event-identity is but one of the concerns of event-individuation. The proper role of criteria of event-identity in the context of individuation is taken up in section II. In section III, I depend on a central Aristotelian doctrine of individuality to sketch an account for the individuation of events. In the final section I argue that my proposal is capable of structuring answers that bridge the gap between the diverse conceptions of event-individuation. The themes of this paper are developed under two distinct constraints. The first constraint is that I adopt a "particularist" viewpoint. Event-particularism, the view that events are legitimate individuals, concrete unrepeatable particulars, has been central to Donald Davidson's theory and, more recently, to the views of such prominent event-theorists as Lawrence Lombard and Myles Brand.' Although I will not attempt to defend particularism, I will assume it to be true, and I will adopt it as my own. The second constraint is that, although I believe that most of what is defended here encompasses all events, I do not attempt to defend a general theory of events, but only a view restricted to what we may call natural-kind

Activation vectors versus propositional attitudes: How the brain represents reality

Abstract: Hilary Putnam's newest (1988) book brings several of his recent themes into an unusually clear and collective focus. It helped me to grasp certain theses I had understood only poorly before the book appeared, and to recognize several major points of agreement through the haze of our diverse concerns. Perhaps the most unexpected was the realization that I am no longer able to distinguish clearly between Putnam's newly-explained and newlynamed pragmatic realism (hitherto: internal realism) on the one hand, and the expressly anti-utopian version of scientific realism that I have been defending since 1981 on the other. That shared metaphysical/ontological position will be readdressed at the close of this essay, since it represents a direct consequence of my views on the nature of mind and knowledge, just as it does for Putnam's. This convergence of principle is intriguing since we disagree substantially, even radically, on the nature of the mind and its cognitive representations, to which matter I now turn. The bulk of Putnam's book is a defense of the integrity of the propositional attitudes, coupled with an extended argument against the idea that functionalist or other broadly "reductive" scientific stories have any realistic hope of accounting for them. Supposing that the negative second part of his position is correct, many of us would regard such a resistance to scientific explication as a sign of the poverty of the propositional attitudes, and as an indication that we should seek a new kinematics and dynamics on which to found a more adequate account of cognition. This is not Putnam's purpose, however, and his Chapter 4 is aimed at dissuading us from this alternative. Putnam's critique of the eliminativist approach has two main threads. The first is not very penetrating, but the second is. Putnam begins by misrepresenting the basic argument behind eliminative materialism.

Reply to Blackburn, Carson, Hill, and Railton

Abstract: It is marvelously gratifying for me as an author to have elicited so philosophically rich a set of responses. I'll organize my replies by topic rather than by critic. Appropriately for the book, many of the points the critics make cluster around general questions about the meanings of normative terms: How can we best elucidate them, and what problems stem from my own attempts to do so? Other points concern more specific normative concepts: rationality, moral wrongness, and intrinsic value. There is far more in these critiques than I could deal with adequately, and so I'll have to be spotty and selective.