[Another post I'm working on reminded me of this note from last September that I never got around to posting...]
Is philosophy itself alienating? Excessive concern to achieve the 'view from nowhere' seems like an occupational hazard. Especially if one embraces an 'ideal agent'-type metaethic, this may lead to constantly second-guessing oneself: "would others ideally endorse this?" (Would I?) Perfection is too high a standard to try to live up to. But it's kind of hard to ignore if you spend all day thinking about it!
One worry is that many of our actual sentiments might not be expected to survive the idealization process. Yet ignoring or suppressing them may not be such a good idea. Someone in class today mentioned the 'bad squash loser' case: ideally, the loser should walk over to graciously congratulate the other player. But suppose that, due to his anger, were he to try he would more likely lash out violently. So he really should just walk away and cool off. That at least shows why we can't just ignore our contingent flaws. Is there a similarly clear argument against suppressing unwelcome emotions (e.g. if the squash loser were capable of distancing himself from his anger)? It seems a non-obvious empirical question what the consequences of this are likely to be. [I made a similar point in my recent post on the question whether to attempt to reshape a non-conforming child's gender preferences.]
A second worry arises from the concern for universal convergence. Many of our tastes may be thought idiosyncratic or merely 'subjective', but it would be unfortunate to devalue them for that reason alone. Perhaps we can resolve this by taking tastes as 'given', exempt from rational criticism, and recognize as universalizable the general desire to derive enjoyment from one's tastes (whatever they may be). Or, if such subjectivism is too extreme, at least allow for a plurality of standards of good taste.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Aspiring to Objectivity
Sunday, May 04, 2008
In Defence of Impractical Philosophy
A friend passed along the link to this vituperative rant against (a certain kind of) academic philosophy:
What possible use or relevance to human life can a discussion like this have? ... What a terrible waste of brainpower... How selfish. The author apparently feels no obligation towards others on behalf of his abilities. There is a longstanding tradition in several religions and many moral systems that to whom much is given much is expected: people of ability... who nonetheless spend it playing intellectual games are depriving others of what those abilities might be able to accomplish. They are indulging their own narrow and selfish desires, and perhaps flattering their own vanity: but they are allowing their abilities to bear no fruit for others.
The blogger, 'Protagoras', elaborates in comments:
I think that one central justification for theory in the sciences is that it can--and indeed has--proved itself to bear on practical concerns at some point, even if we don't know now how that will come about. My beef with this article, as with much, though not all, of academic philosophy today is that it has no similar justification going for it.
This strikes me as incredibly misguided, for several reasons:
(1) History teaches us that it's very difficult to predict in advance which areas of theoretical inquiry will ultimately yield practical payoffs. Who would've guessed that philosophical theorizing about the limits of formal logic and mathematics would eventually bring us the personal computer? Not every academic can be an Alan Turing, admittedly, but the sophisticated consequentialist will keep in mind the big picture. We should design our academic institutions so as to have the overall effect of producing important knowledge (even if that means that many individual academics end up doing "pointless" work, considered in isolation). This is the basic argument for academic freedom: we can expect the best results if we give academics free reign to inquire as their intellectual curiosity sees fit, rather than limiting them to socially "approved" avenues of inquiry.
I trust that most academics are the best judges of what intellectual endeavours are worth their time and effort. (Cf. J.S. Mill's arguments for liberty.) But even if not, the few exceptions -- the Turings of the world, whose theoretical passions lead to invaluable insights -- are arguably so momentous as to justify the whole system that enables them.
(2) For this reason, among others, it is not generally 'selfish' or otherwise immoral to pursue your personal passions. On the contrary, I think it is to be encouraged. See my post 'Value, Alienation and Choice' for more detail.
(3) The particular article in question tackles deeply interesting issues at the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of mind, arguing that:
the best bet for defending an internalist epistemology against Williamson's attack is to take there to be a tight, intimate connection between (to take one example) our experiences and our beliefs upon reflection about the obtaining of those experiences, or between (to take another example) the rationality of our beliefs and our beliefs upon reflection about the rationality of those beliefs.
As an anonymous commenter explained, [edited lightly:] the nature of rationality and our ability to know our own minds are topics 'relevant to human life.' Indeed, they concern our basic condition as humans. One suspects that Protagoras' incredulous response to the paper ("You have to be kidding me") is simply due to his not actually understanding what it says.
(4) There's something incoherent about the crassly 'utilitarian' (in the non-philosophical sense) stance according to which things must be 'useful' to be of value. Note that useful things must be instrumental to some end or ultimate value. The ultimate ends, on the other hand, need not serve any other purpose, for they are valuable in themselves. They are that for which we do the instrumental act. But the confused instrumentalist is blind to non-instrumental values, and thus the point of the whole endeavour. He will thus criticize the direct realization of the ultimate good because it is not instrumental to something else. How backward!
Now, intellectual inquiry, truth and understanding are arguably among the intrinsic goods (i.e. the things we should value non-instrumentally). It would seem to me base and ignoble to deny this. But if this is so, it is backwards to demand that philosophy serve other purposes. (It happens that it does, as per my #1 above, but one shouldn't demand it.) To end on a provocative note: Depending on how it balances against other values, I think it entirely possible that society ought to be set up to serve philosophy!
What say you?
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Philosophical Journeys and Destinations
Andrew raised some interesting questions in this week's PhilSoc discussion: why do we care about truth? Is there a risk of 'truthaholism', taking a good thing too far (to the detriment of other values)? Is it perhaps the process of inquiry, the journey rather than the destination, that we find most valuable in philosophy?
Of course, the truth will sometimes have great instrumental importance, as in medical science. But it's less clear what really hangs on the outcome of certain abstract philosophical debates. It may be that the truth here doesn't really matter for any other purpose at all. The question then is whether it matters for its own sake.
Jack suggests a helpful thought experiment. Suppose you had a magic 8-ball that would tell you the true answer to any philosophical question. Would this be a good thing? Bracket any instrumental benefits that the truth might yield. Just so far as the intrinsic value of philosophy is concerned, would it be a good thing for philosophy to come to an end in this way? Intuitively, there seems something deeply appalling about this scenario. This suggests that it's really the process of philosophical inquiry, rather than the end-point of truth, that we most value.
But I wonder. Perhaps the thought experiment has the wrong end in mind. There does seem something cheap and superficial about the "truths" delivered by a magic 8-ball. But this is not all that we usually have at the end of inquiry. Our best philosophy does not culminate in a mere 'yes' or 'no' answer. Rather, it gives rise to a deeper level of understanding; an appreciation of why the answer is what it is. (Or perhaps not even that -- just a deeper understanding of the question, and the various possible answers, may be plenty valuable in itself.)
So suppose you could get a brain implant that would provide you with a full understanding of a philosophical topic, without the investment of time and effort that is usually required to obtain such learning. Is that a good thing?
I don't think the answer is entirely obvious. But I lean towards thinking that it would be good. I think it really is the end-point of understanding which I most value, and not the struggle of getting there. What do you think?
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Overcoming Scientism
I take 'Scientism' to be the view that empirical inquiry is the only form of rational inquiry, perhaps coupled with the even stronger claim that only "scientific"/testable claims are meaningful, or candidates for truth or falsity. In other words, it is to dismiss the entire field of philosophy (and arguably logic and mathematics too, though this is less often acknowledged). Indeed, a primary symptom of scientism is that sufferers are incapable of distinguishing philosophical arguments from religious assertions. They claim not to comprehend any non-empirical claim; it is mere 'gobbledygook' to them.
It's worth noting right away that Scientism is self-defeating, for it is not itself an empirically verifiable thesis. Insofar as its proponents have any reasons at all for advancing the view, they are engaging in (bad) philosophical, not scientific, reasoning. This is the familiar point that one cannot assess philosophy (even negatively) without thereby engaging in philosophy oneself. [For a more positive argument in support of the a priori, see my post on conditionalizing out all empirical evidence.]
This bias against philosophy is unfortunate for the obvious reason that there are a lot of interesting and important philosophical truths, which the scientismist would never think to look for. (My original 'scientism' post quoted some ignorant dismissals of Nick Bostrom's very interesting 'Simulation argument'. Not that I think his conclusion is true; but it is eye-opening just to consider.) Moreover, as I once wrote:
All your “common sense” beliefs rest on philosophical assumptions. Most people prefer not to examine them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. It just means that everything you think and do could be completely misguided and you wouldn’t even realize it.
The scientismist will no doubt have many false philosophical beliefs in addition to their scientism. (We all do.) But if they are unaware of the rational tools that allow us to identify and correct such errors, then they will be stuck with them -- not a situation that any dedicated truth-seeker would consider desirable.
I think it's especially unfortunate that most folk seem unaware that reasoned inquiry into normative questions -- e.g. ethics and political philosophy -- is possible. This is at least part of the explanation why public discourse on these matters is so impoverished and sub-rational. So I think it's very important for more people to appreciate that we can go beyond mere instrumental rationality and also assess one's ultimate ends in terms of rational coherence.
Scientism also leads to more mundane mistakes. For example, in a recent 'Overcoming Bias' thread, one commenter defended the common-sense view that different observers experience the same colour qualia (rather than my 'red' being your 'yellow'), on the grounds that the alternative claim is "purely metaphysical with no implications for reality". But that can't be the right reason, because the same could be said of the eminently reasonable -- and presumably true -- view that he was defending. Whether we experience the same qualia or different, either answer is "purely metaphysical" with no scientific implications. So the right justification for the former view must lie elsewhere (e.g. in philosophical principles of parsimony that count against drawing unmotivated ad hoc distinctions).
Fortunately, this bias is easily overcome. Accept no substitutes: Think!
[See also: The Problem with Non-Philosophers.]
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Thought Substitutes
I've recently lamented how logical formalisms and inductive meta-arguments risk being misused as substitutes for careful thought. It's also a major worry I have about (some) "experimental philosophy". Consider, for example, the following:
Does common sense morality assume objectivity? According to a recent study by Goodwin and Darley, most folk actually don't believe that their moral judgments are objectively true.
It's not clear how this fact is any response to the question. The question, recall, is not whether most folk believe in moral objectivism (which is all the survey can tell us). That's quite irrelevant. The real question is whether our moral practices rationally commit us to objectivism, and that is not a purely empirical question. It's a normative question, so there is simply no way to answer it without actually doing philosophy.
I don't mean to bash all attempts at empirically informed philosophy. If we are concerned with analyzing actual moral practices, it's an empirical question just what those are, i.e. what moralizing behaviours people in our society engage in. It's entirely appropriate to use empirical data as a starting point for philosophical inquiry, especially if that data is precisely what we're wanting to analyze. My point is simply that empirical work cannot substitute for philosophical analysis.
Further, it will rarely be worthwhile to ask folk for their theoretical opinions. Surveys like the above merely tell us what pop-philosophical theories are most prevalent in our public culture at present. Many people will profess a belief in relativism, for example, even if further probing would eventually reveal that they don't actually accept the implications of this view. As R.M. Hare once wrote:
If we want to find out what ordinary people mean, it is seldom safe just to ask them. They will come out with a variety of answers, few of which, perhaps, will withstand a philosophical scrutiny or elenchus, conducted in the light of the ordinary people's own linguistic behaviour (for example what they treat as self-contradictory).
So, next time you come across a study reporting the philosophical beliefs of non-philosophers, just remind yourself of the classic Onion study:
Monday, March 24, 2008
Arguing with Eliezer: Part II
[My promised concluding thoughts...]
Clearly our disagreements run too deep to do full justice to them in a mere blog post. But I at least hope I've succeeded in indicating where one might reasonably depart from Eliezer's reductionist line. There are also a couple of ad hominem points which struck me as noteworthy. (See my previous post for real arguments; this is mere commentary.)
One is that our beliefs are shaped in reaction to others. Intelligent non-philosophers typically only come across stupid, woolly-headed non-reductionists. The most prominent public intellectuals are typically scientists of a reductionist bent, like Dawkins, whose most prominent opposition is from anti-intellectual rubes and intellectually bankrupt religious apologists. From a purely sociological perspective, it's no surprise that intelligent people might initially be drawn to the former camp. (I know I was.) But that's no substitute for assessing the strongest arguments -- the ones you've probably never even come across unless you've spent a few years doing academic philosophy, or associate with others who have -- on their merits.
Since Eliezer's posts are mostly directed at a general audience - most of whom have not carefully reflected on their beliefs - I agree with 99% of his criticisms. Folks often commit the mind-projection fallacy, are fooled by an empty dispute that 'feels' substantive, and can be irrationally resistant to perfectly legitimate scientific reductions. These are all important insights (though hardly news to philosophers). But he overgeneralizes -- just as to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I think the core problem here is methodological. Eliezer assumes that a debunking explanation of a belief is enough to refute it. Rather than doing the hard work of philosophy -- assessing the arguments for and against P -- he shifts to cognitive science, explaining why I might offer such arguments even if P is false. But this is to commit the genetic fallacy. Any reflective non-reductionist will grant that you can explain all the physical facts (incl. their brain states and vocalizations) without reference to any non-physical facts. Of course. But that doesn't imply anything about whether their belief is justified. Explanation and justification are two completely different things.
Reductionists make this error because they assume that all that stands in need of explanation is the third-personal data of science. Hence (they assume), if you can explain all the empirical data - including the vocalizations of your critics - then there's nothing left for said critics to base their arguments on. This type of genetic fallacy is no fallacy, on this view, because a full empirical explanation exhausts all possible justification.
But this is clearly question-begging, or worse. It assumes an indefensible scientism from the start. Non-reductionists take it as given that there is more than just third-personal empirical data that calls out for explanation. There is the manifest fact of first-personal conscious experience, and the normative facts about what we ought to believe and do, etc. A debunking explanation of why we believe in these phenomena is not sufficient unless one has also successfully debunked the phenomena itself. But that requires actually engaging with non-reductionists and the arguments we offer, rather than simply psychologizing us.
Reductionists, when short on real arguments, like to appeal to meta-arguments, e.g. induction on the historical successes of science. 'There have always been nay-sayers, who questioned the ability of science to explain phenomenon X, and every time they've been proven wrong!' It's a familiar sentiment. But it's also pretty weak. If you bother to look more closely, there are principled reasons to think these cases different. All those examples they point to are instances of third-personal empirical phenomena. I grant that science is supreme in that domain. But, to turn the tables, it's never had any success outside of it. So there's no general reason to think that normativity or first-personal subjective experience are susceptible to purely scientific explanation. So, again, these simplistic meta-arguments are no substitute for the real thing.
Arguing with Eliezer: Part I
I had the pleasure yesterday of meeting Carl Shulman and Eliezer Yudkowsky (of Overcoming Bias fame) while they were in town, and hashing out some of our philosophical disagreements. It was interesting, because they're both very smart, and Eliezer's starkly materialist/reductionist ideology was shared by my past self. So I'm not entirely unsympathetic. But it was also frustrating in some respects, since he seemed to assume that any disagreement was simply due to a failure to appreciate his basic arguments, rather than a considered judgment that they aren't wholly compelling. So let me discuss a couple of issues in more detail, and attempt to lay out some of the reasons why I've shifted away from his blanket reductionism over the years.
(A) Fundamental Normativity. Eliezer holds that normative terms (e.g. 'should') are reducible to a particular framework of assessment -- roughly, the ultimate norms endorsed by the speaker. He calls this 'objective subjectivism', and it bears some similarity to the 'Objective Moral Relativism' I endorsed back in 2005.
I now find this unsatisfying, for several reasons. (1) The most obvious is that there's nothing really normative here, in the sense of an ideal that potentially outstrips any purely descriptive facts (incl. my current preferences and accepted norms). Though Eliezer wouldn't like to admit it, this is less a reduction than an elimination. Anti-realist maneuvers can save many of the appearances of normative practice, but its deepest aspirations are ultimately rejected. (2) His view implies that many normative disagreements are simply terminological; different people mean different things by the term 'ought', so they're simply talking past each other. This is a popular stance to take, especially among non-philosophers, but it is terribly superficial. See my 'Is Normativity Just Semantics?' for more detail. (3) We can go beyond the impoverished instrumental conception of rationality on which this view depends. Ultimate ends may themselves be assessed as more or less irrational. (I first realized this here.)
(B) Fundamental Mentality. My post on 'Dualist Explanations' outlines the case for property dualism, and defuses typical worries of the scientifically minded. Now, Eliezer seems to think that the causal inefficacy of non-physical phenomenal properties ("irreducible consciousness") is a knock-down argument against them. I once agreed, but again, have since changed my mind. My post, 'Why do you think you're conscious?' addresses this challenge in some detail.
There are some bullets to bite either way. I admit it's a bit odd to think that the words I type are not causally related to the facts I purport to describe. (That's an extreme way of putting it; do follow my above link to put this in perspective.) But, upon reflection, I find this commitment less absurd than denying the manifest reality of first-personal conscious experience (as reductive materialists like Dennett and Eliezer do), or engaging in the metaphysical contortions that non-reductive materialists must (see my 'dualist explanations' post).
(C) Epistemology. Eliezer writes:
When "pure thought" tells you that 1 + 1 = 2, "independently of any experience or observation", you are, in effect, observing your own brain as evidence.
I responded:
It's just fundamentally mistaken to conflate reasoning with "observing your own brain as evidence". For one thing, no amount of mere observation will suffice to bring us to a conclusion, as Lewis Carroll's tortoise taught us. Further, it mistakes content and vehicle. When I judge that p, and subsequently infer q, the basis for my inference is simply p - the proposition itself - and not the psychological fact that I judge that p. I could infer some things from the latter fact too, of course, but that's a very different matter.
In discussion, Eliezer emphasized the demands of (what I call) 'meta-coherence' between our first-order and higher-order beliefs. If you reason from p to q, but further believe that your reasoning in this instance was faulty or unreliable, then this should undermine your belief in q. I agree that reasoning presupposes that one's thought processes are reliable, and a subjectively convincing line of thought may be undermined by showing that the thinker was rationally incapacitated at the time (due to a deceptive drug, say). But presuppositions are not premises. So it simply doesn't follow that the following are equally good arguments:
(1) P, therefore Q
(2) If I were to think about it, I would conclude that Q. Therefore Q.
(Related issues are raised in my post on 'Meta-Evidence'. See also my argument for the inescapability of a priori justification.)
Concluding Remarks. Oops, this is too long already -- I've shifted my concluding thoughts to a new post.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Is Logic Overrated?
Good reasoning is invaluable; it's what philosophy is all about. But I'm more skeptical of formal logic's value. Logic is a powerful tool we can use to structure our reasoning and highlight entailment relations. But - like any tool - it can be misused. In particular, I worry that it's just too easy for the manipulation of symbols to substitute for careful thought.
Modal logic is especially susceptible to misapplication, in my experience. The most famous example would have to be the S5 modal argument for God's existence. But it's also not uncommon to come across blog posts where the employed logical apparatus merely serves to build in misunderstandings. The formal steps of the argument may be flawless, but that's all for naught if the entire argument is based on a mistake -- due to failing to understand precisely what all those formalisms really mean.
If one opts to engage in formalism, the hard (philosophical) work lies in interpretation, i.e. ensuring that the formalism adequately captures the intuitive ideas we started with. It's easy to neglect this point, and so produce a formal 'proof' that doesn't really speak to the issue at hand. That's the risk of formalism. The advantages are more well known: they force us to make explicit intermediate steps in our reasoning, and allow these to be easily checked for validity. Do the risks or benefits tend to be greater in practice, do you think?
My tentative (and admittedly under-informed) opinion is that logical formalisms are rarely indispensible, and often well dispensed with. As a rule of thumb, I'd be wary of using formalisms as the central means of making your case. Their best use may instead be to provide a bare-bones outline of the argument's structure, as a supplement to the argument given in prose. Formalism may prove helpful, but it shouldn't be considered sufficient, since there is more to good reasoning than logic alone.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Does Moral Reflection Do Any Good?
Eric Schwitzgebel raises the question. Moral philosophers are not, in general, any better behaved than "non-ethicists of similar social background." But presumably they engage in more moral reflection. Does this mean that moral reflection is behaviourally inert, a farcical waste of time? Here are a few of my favourite theories:
(1) My first thought was that this (at most) merely shows that moral reflection is inert at the margin. Other academics ("non-ethicists of similar social background") are still reflective people, and so presumably give a reasonable amount of thought to moral issues. So this common core of reflection might be very effective, compared to someone who engaged in no moral reflection whatsoever. But if moral reflection yields steeply diminishing returns, this could explain why the extra reflection of ethicists doesn't seem to have any additional effect.
(2) Roman Altshuler proposes a 'Hume-Strawson model':
Perhaps moral deliberation makes no difference to our behavior directly. But maybe it does make a difference to how we judge others. If moral reflection does structure our reactive attitudes, and the reactive attitudes of others does have some effect on our behavior, then moral deliberation is not entirely inert. It is simply that its effects on behavior occur through very indirect mechanisms.
(3) Brandon suggests something like the 'virtue theory' picture, whereby ethics is a distinctively practical skill rather than simply a matter of rational theorizing. (Cf. "the relation between physics and sports.") This would again make the effect of moral reflection very indirect. Having worked out what sort of person one ought to be, it's quite another matter to actually inculcate the right dispositions and habits, etc.
(4) Schwitzgebel's own suggestion is the 'bivalent view' that moral reflection affects our behaviour, in particular reducing conformity to prevailing social norms, but this is not always for the better (due to rationalization).
(5) Selection effects: maybe ethicists were disproportionately bad people to begin with!
Any other suggestions? Which (combination) of these do you give credence to?
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Examples of Solved Philosophy
Given my complaints about the perennial accusation that philosophy never settles anything, I figure it'd be worth offering some examples of philosophical knowledge. (Nothing is for certain, of course, but I think that the following claims are at least as well-established as most scientific results.) Feel free to add you own examples in comments.
1. Knowledge does not require certainty. But nor does justified true belief suffice.
2. Psychological egoism is false: it is possible to act from non-selfish desires, i.e. for some good other than your own welfare.
3. Rational egoism is false: we are not rationally required to always and only act in our own self-interest.
4. (E.g. Moral) Principles may take situational variables into account without thereby sacrificing their claim to objectivity.
5. The question whether God actually exists is independent of the question whether there is genuine normativity ("ought"-ness).
6. Valuing tolerance needn't lead one to moral relativism. (Quite the opposite.)
7. Red herrings may (and black ravens may not) constitute evidence that all ravens are black.
8. It's not analytic (true by definition) that cats are animals. But it is metaphysically necessary: there is no possible world containing a cat that is not an animal.
Slightly more controversial (but still extremely well-supported, IMO):
9. "Common-sense" morality, with its agent-relative ends, is self-defeating.
10. Capitalism is not intrinsically just. (Libertarianism must be defended on consequentialist grounds, if any. Those who think otherwise are confused about the nature of property and coercion.)
11. It is possible for desires (or ultimate ends) to be irrational. So there is more to rationality than just instrumental rationality.
12. One may be harmed by events that took place prior to their coming into existence.
And those are just the examples I found from a cursory glance through my archives. What else would you suggest?
Thursday, January 03, 2008
More philosophy in schools
It was once described as "a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing", yet the popularity of philosophy in Scottish schools has seen a dramatic upturn in the past five years. The number of pupils studying the subject of thought has risen by more than 41% [i.e. 300 students]...
"Interest in the subject in this country is certainly growing. Philosophy teaches a range of transferable skills in critical and analytical thinking and we are finding a great deal of enthusiasm in both teachers and students," [Dr. Lisa Jones] said.
Though I'm less encouraged by the reader responses:
You don't need Maths or Science to do it, there are no wrong answers so everyone passes, newspapers ask you for you opinion on something you know nothing about, and you get called an "expert". Two words - "Dumb" and "Dumber".
Waste of time - what use is this worthless subject in today's world?
The hard working taxpayer is footing the bill for this rubbish. We see the same at some universities eg media studies. Every brain dead student wants a qualification, even if the subject is useless.
Great thing this philosophy --no right or wrong answers so your [sic] always right by default!
*sigh* I really wish people would get over the silly misconception that philosophy is 'all just a matter of opinion'. It would also be nice if they recognized the educational value of reasoning skills (and that there are issues that warrant rational reflection -- yes, even outside of math and science).
I guess much depends on how it's taught, though. It isn't difficult to imagine a class labelled 'philosophy' that instead contains mere fluff (or, perhaps even more likely, mere history by rote). The article notes that "Because there [are] currently no secondary teaching certificates for philosophy as a specialist subject, some schools are struggling to cope with the new found demand." Might ignorant teachers do more harm than good? Would online training help?
The situation has prompted St Andrews University to offer a new online course for teachers involving elements of philosophy such as ethical issues, reasoning and knowledge, mind and reality.
What do you think is the best way to bring philosophy into schools? (Another possibility, which I'm especially interested in, is for volunteers from academia - grad students and such - to lead informal / extra-curricular tutorial sessions.)
P.S. UNESCO has released a book-length study: Philosophy: A School of Freedom. Teaching philosophy and learning to philosophize: Status and prospects [PDF]. The buzzwords in the description ("innovative publication" - *shudder*) put me off, but I imagine the contents could be of interest nonetheless. If anyone can bear to check, do let me know what you think of it.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Exclusive Philosophy
Prof. Anita Allen offers some provocative comments on the discipline:
“I have not been able to encourage other people like me to go into philosophy because I don’t think it has enough to offer them. The salaries aren’t that great, the prestige isn’t that great, the ability to interact with the world isn’t that great, the career options aren’t that great, the methodologies are narrow. Why would you do that,” she asks, “when you could be in an African American studies department, a law school, a history department, and have so many more people to interact with who are more like you, a place where so many more methods are acceptable, so many more topics are going to be written about? Why would you close yourself off in philosophy? I feel that philosophy is hoisting itself by its own petard. Its unwillingness to be more inclusive in terms of issues, methods, demographics, means that it’s losing out on a lot of vibrancy, a lot of intellectual power.”
It's hard to know what to make of this. I tend to think that almost any topic can benefit from being thought about in a philosophical way (that's why I blog!), so I'm all in favour of topical inclusivity. But philosophy is already by far the most topically diverse discipline, spanning everything from applied ethics to formal logic. Perhaps the worry is that within these subfields, there are a limited number of issues that one's academic colleagues will find interesting. But what is the complaint, exactly? Is everyone else obliged to share one's idiosyncratic interests?
I guess I'm more partial to the 'marketplace of ideas' metaphor: academics should simply pursue their personal passions, and communicate the grounds for their excitement to others, and the best will tend to rise to the top. There's no obligation to support academic work you find uninteresting or otherwise not so worthwhile. There's something to be said for quality control, after all. (One should be receptive to new work, of course, but not uncritically accepting.) The only legitimate complaint I can imagine in this vicinity would be if non-mainstream ideas were not receiving a fair hearing, as opposed to being heard and just not especially well-liked.
So much for issues. Should we be more methodologically inclusive? Well, that surely depends on what new methods are being proposed. In general, I don't see that anything is gained by taking non-philosophy and calling it "philosophy". If you want to do history, for example, there's already a place for that. I wouldn't consider it a gain for philosophy if we attracted new students precisely by changing the discipline into something it's not. (It's like curtailing civil liberties in the fight for freedom.) I certainly wouldn't want to see rational argumentation replaced by wishful thinking, or political convenience, etc., as the standard against which we assess claims. Or, for a less straw-mannish example, I have my doubts about experimental philosophy. But it really depends on the specific proposal. If, for example, there are valid inferences that philosophers traditionally haven't recognized as such, then by all means bring that to our attention.
Finally, is philosophy as a discipline really "unwilling" to be "more inclusive in terms of... demographics"? I simply can't imagine anyone in this day and age willing to sacrifice "intellectual power" for the sake of maintaining white male hegemony. I mean, that's just crazy. It's another thing to be suspicious of affirmative action, but that's precisely because it seems to be elevating concern for demographics over intellectual merit, and it's the latter we care about. So, again, I'm not quite sure what to make of the criticism.
As for her earlier remarks, I think Nick at the Feminist Philosophers blog hit the nail on the head:
This is an odd list. Consider salary and prestige. If these are reasons to avoid philosophy, they’re reasons to avoid most academic disciplines. But is this right? We should encourage black women to avoid the academy because the pay is only middle-class and the prestige is only so-so? That hardly seems right.
And who says the career options aren’t that great? They’re not that great if you don’t love philosophy. But if you do, then what career options are better? Being an investment banker? Not for me, I think (and thank God).
Can anyone else make better sense of Allen's complaints?
Friday, October 26, 2007
Experimental Philosophy
If philosophers are going to appeal to facts about what seems "intuitive", should they first do empirical work to find out whether most folk actually share their intuition? So suggest the experimental philosophers. I'm skeptical, however. The epistemic force of an intuition depends on the coherence of the conceptual scheme that generates it. Philosophers are presumably better than layfolk at thinking clearly about philosophical concepts. So I don't really see that we have much to learn from their untutored intuitions. (Some complain that our intuitions are "corrupted" by theory - but mightn't this be better described as refinement?)
Doris and Stich (2005) 'As a Matter of Fact: Empirical Perspectives on Ethics' puts forward the case for experimental philosophy. Below, I reproduce my comments from a past (off-blog) discussion.
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Insofar as philosophers are concerned with non-contingent matters, it seems that a priori analysis should suffice. Consider the internalist's question: is amoralism possible? We already have the challenge from Hume's imagined "sensible knave" -- what difference do real life psychopaths make? In either case, it seems like a question for conceptual analysis: given such and such a scenario, how are we to describe it? (Does the knave/psychopath really form moral judgments, or merely schmoral ones?)
Now, a central argument of the paper criticizes conceptual analysis on the grounds that empirical work (presumably: the "vignette" method favoured by the new "experimental philosophy" movement) is required to uncover *real* folk concepts. But this doesn't do justice to the normative element of analysis. They write:
Smith can reply that responses like those Nichols reports would not be part of the maximally consistent set of platitudes that people would endorse after due reflection. But this too is an empirical claim... (p.125)
How is this an empirical claim? What people would conclude on ideal reflection depends on what propositions are maximally coherent, etc. There's no experiment we can do to pin down what this is; any amount of actual reflection by third parties can always be rebuffed as insufficient to reach the ideal end-point -- "those participants," one may claim, "have not undergone *due* reflection." Maybe they've reasoned badly. The only way we can judge this is to engage in normative reasoning ourselves, and see whether the participants' answers correspond to what we've already determined to be true from the armchair!
Similar issues arise for the problem of persistent moral disagreement. The authors write:
the argument from disagreement cannot be evaluated by a priori philosophical means alone; what's needed, as Loeb observes, is 'a great deal of further empirical research into the circumstances and beliefs of various cultures'.
But I can't see how that would help, if in the end we can only judge others' rationality according to the substantive conclusions that they reach.
Besides, we should (in principle if not in practice) be able to tell from the armchair whether one position or another is rationally necessitated. Simply imagine all the conceivable cultural disagreements, and the difficulty of adjudicating between them. (Which ones obtain in the actual world seems quite irrelevant.) If we ultimately find a conclusion to be rationally necessitated after all, and others disagree (without providing any new reasons, since - ex hypothesi - we've already considered them all in reaching our previous conclusion), then that simply shows that they haven't engaged in fully ideal reasoning yet.
Matters are different in practice, of course, due to our own fallibility. Arguably, our credence in philosophical claims should be informed by the empirical (meta-)evidence provided by others' judgments of the issue. But can we ever hope to scientifically measure the rationality of their judgments, on purely procedural grounds (i.e. without begging the substantive question at hand)? If not, we may find that the real adjudicating work must still be done from the armchair.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Scientism
Many otherwise-intelligent people have an unfortunate tendency to dismiss entire realms of inquiry out of hand. Perhaps the most common example of this is the failure to appreciate the possibility of a priori or non-scientific rational inquiry, i.e. philosophy. The prevalence of ignorant scientism in this thread (bashing Nick Bostrom's simulation argument) is remarkable -- though sadly not atypical.
One commenter suggests that an untestable hypothesis must consequently be classified as either 'myth' or 'garbage'. (He did not tell us how to test this very suggestion. I can only assume he was storytelling.) Another calls Bostrom's argument "pseudoscience gibberish". Yet another chimes in:
This is very much like saying the earth might really be only 3000 years old and $DEVIL just made it seem like its much older to fool everyone.
IOW, it is all hocus pocus claptrap what ifs and doesn’t belong in any science discussion.
The blogger (Peter Woit) himself writes:
I don’t see what the problem is with “lumping Bostrom’s ideas in with religion”. They’re not science and have similar characteristics: grandiose speculation about the nature of the universe which some people enjoy discussing for one reason or another, but that is inherently untestable, and completely divorced from the actual very interesting things that we have learned about the universe through the scientific method.
Really, if people can't tell the difference between a reasoned philosophical argument and random "hocus pocus" or religious proposals... well, let's just say it's further evidence of the urgent need for philosophical education in schools!
If you think that Bostrom's argument is flawed, then by all means put on your philosopher's hat and expose its errors. But this requires actually engaging with the argument. To dismiss it just because it didn't involve any labwork is the worst kind of scientism.
I should add a disclaimer. Sometimes people attack "scientism" when their real target is epistemic standards in general. (See the comments here, for example.) Not me. I'm all in favour of having rationally justified beliefs. What I'm attacking here is the lazy assumption that science is the only source of rational justification. This assumption is simply false (and indeed self-defeating). This should be too obvious for words, but apparently it needs to be said: rigorous philosophical argumentation can also provide rational support for a conclusion.
Hat-tip: Robin Hanson (who offers some incisive criticism of his own).
See also: Explaining Beliefs. (It's the same core issue, really: dogmatic dismissal is no replacement for reasoned inquiry. You can't tell whether a question is answerable until you try.)
Friday, August 10, 2007
Philosophers we've never read
Times Online reviews Pierre Bayard’s How to discuss books that one hasn’t read. Quite funny:
He tells us, in his “Prologue”, that he was born into a family who read little, that he himself has almost no appetite for reading and that, anyway, he cannot find the time for it. As a (fifty-two-year-old) professor of French literature... he often finds himself obliged to comment on books he hasn’t looked at. And yet “non-reading” is a taboo subject in the circles in which he moves. He lists three constraints that we all feel as readers: “The first of these constraints could be called the obligation to read. We live in a society... in which reading still remains the object of a form of sacralization”, particularly where certain “canonical texts” are concerned: it is practically forbidden not to have read these. The second constraint “could be called the obligation to read a book in its entirety. If non-reading is frowned on, speed-reading and skimming are viewed in as poor a light”. For example, “it would be almost unthinkable for professors of literature to admit – what is after all true for most of them – that they have merely skimmed Proust’s work”. Can this really be the case? If so, it’s a dismaying thought – presumably Bayard has had some explaining to do to his colleagues since his book was published in France earlier this year. The third constraint, and the one which most of us would take as given, is the need to have read a book in order to be able to talk about it: according to Bayard, it is perfectly possible to have a fruitful discussion about a book one hasn’t read, even with someone who hasn’t read it either. These constraints lead to a lack of openness in our dealings with each other, Bayard claims, and generate unnecessary feelings of guilt.
It's true though: how many young philosophers have actually read Gettier's famous article? It's so well-known, you don't need to. (I kind of feel the same way about the history of philosophy. I've never done any officially, or even unofficially, but you can pick up a lot just through osmosis.) Of course, you need to read a work in all its minutiae to engage with it on a scholarly level. But for general purposes, this may not always be necessary. Most fun philosophical discussion isn't had in journals, after all!
So: any other examples of philosophers or works that you're happy to discuss despite never having read them?
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Advancing the Discipline
What constitutes "progress" for philosophy as an academic discipline? Where is it aiming to end up, and how can we help it get there? Jack writes:
I see philosophy as a young discipline (still young, like Elizabeth Taylor). What we need are more theories, not a verdict on which of the four that we have is superior/least inferior. This is not a call to abandon our scruples and jot down anything bordering on consistent. Theory proliferation needs to be bridled by our reflective judgments and our common sense. But in too many fields we have yet to cut the issue at the joints. In the dialectic we are far nearer to the brainstorming part than the conclusion-in-unanimity part.
At the end of the day, we presumably want knowledge and understanding of important issues. But philosophical exploration may be what we really need for now. If the existing options are inadequate, we shouldn't necessarily want everyone to converge on the "least inferior" one. This would seem to justify some degree of dogged perseverance even in the face of stronger arguments, at least if you think that further refinements to your position could prove fruitful. The risk, of course, is that becoming personally invested in a position could undermine your ability to recognize when it has turned into a dead-end.
Thoughts?
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Reckless Punditry
Alonzo Fyfe suggests that "[committing] informal fallacies in public discourse is morally contemptible... a sign of intellectual recklessness."
Right now, people throw fallacies around with reckless abandon. Once upon a time, drunk driving was, for the most part, an accepted activity. This was until enough people got fed up with the harm done by those who engage in this activity that they decided to ‘raise the consciousness’ of society to those harms. I do think that we are long past due for a concentrated effort on the part of individuals to insist that people recognize the harms that result, and the moral problems associated with using, these fallacies.
He adds, "It should be considered a minimum standard of competence for any reporter that they can demonstrate capacity to recognize informal fallacies by name," but this seems excessively schoolmarmish. What we really want to promote is the art of good reasoning -- something not readily reducible to such mechanical competencies. This presents us with something of a catch-22: it takes broad rational competency to diagnose incompetence, so when everyone is incompetent, nobody quite realizes it. (Hence the need to promote philosophical education, to break the cycle of bad reasoning!)
Those quibbles aside, I'm definitely sympathetic to Fyfe's complaint. Public discourse is often of quite poor quality, and this ought to be considered a bad thing. Fallacies are just one symptom of this; the broader problem is a lack of meta-political principles or commitment to deliberative democracy, understood as collective inquiry into normative issues.
Metapolitical principles are ethical principles, which identify the bounds of healthy political behaviour. Pundits who flout these principles are behaving unethically, and should be recognized as such. Our democracy is a moral cesspool, polluted by those who show no concern for truth, reason, or intellectual honesty. It's about time we cleaned it up.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Philosophical Paradigms
How is (some) philosophy done? What examples spring to mind as classic illustrations of philosophical methodology? To get the ball rolling...
(1) Conceptual analysis, and counterexamples "intuited" through thought-experiments. E.g. JTB analysis of knowledge, and Gettier cases.
(2) The use of formal methods ("logic and language") to resolve ambiguities, and make claims clear and precise. E.g. Russell's joke. (Any better examples?)
(3) Mapping logical space, to correct mistaken assumptions -- in particular, highlighting ignored possibilities (e.g. unchanging time, or Parfit's distinction between 'equality and priority') and unseen implications (e.g. how property entails coercion).
[I think this is what most philosophy amounts to, really - which explains how philosophical progress is possible - it's simply a matter of overcoming sloppy thinking.]
(4) Perhaps a variation on #3, is just spinning a good story, i.e. offering a coherent theory that seems plausible or intellectually appealing, for lack of any more "objective" criteria. We find this in normative philosophy, I guess, whenever it appeals to the reader's "intuitions" about what's right or good (or whatever). [What would be a good example?]
What else can we add to this list?
Friday, June 22, 2007
Coherent Persuasion
Peter argues that no-one has "ever been convinced to change their mind by a rational argument". I'm not convinced.No rational argument then can be constructed to ever change a person’s mind, because we can never get to premises that people must accept.
Even if we grant this premise (must we?), the conclusion simply doesn't follow. At most, it shows that arguments won't necessarily rationally convince everyone. It remains an open possibility that some people will indeed be rationally convinced, since they may well be more committed to the truth of the premises than to the conclusion's falsity.
Still, I think there is something artificial about an argument's directionality, as demonstrated by the adage that "one man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens." Valid arguments are easily inverted, simply by switching the conclusion with a premise and negating each. Validity is preserved; the contraposed argument is logically equivalent to the original. (This refutes the common claim that logic tells us how to reason. At most, logic can provide us with wide-scope norms against inconsistency, but it cannot tell us which of the conflicting claims to give up.)
So, philosophical debate should be thought of as producing... not "arguments" per se, but logical maps -- "inconsistent triads" and the like -- to show which claims cohere best with certain others, which ones rise and fall together, etc.
It should be quite clear that this process can be rationally persuasive. We feel rational/psychological pressure to have a coherent belief set. So if someone can show that some claim P coheres better with our other beliefs than does our present belief of not-P, this may bring us to change our minds about P. And, indeed, this happens all the time.
People often hold opinions due to conceptual misunderstandings. (Think of the popular false dilemma between relativism and dogmatism.) These are easily cleared up, and any half-rational agent will change their mind upon learning of their error. Much if not most philosophy is simply a matter of overcoming sloppy thinking -- appreciating possibilities or implications that we'd previously missed.
Peter is implicitly assuming that we already have maximally coherent belief sets, so that no argument (logical map) would have any new information to give us cause to update our beliefs. But this assumption is patently false. We can - and do - learn things from others' arguments, and change our minds accordingly.
P.S. I've previously, in response to a reader's challenge, given examples of changing my mind in response to rational arguments. The issue of normativity and ultimate ends is the big one. More recently, learning about 2-D semantics radically changed my opinion of conceivability arguments. So, those are two very fundamental changes right there. (Of course, it's open to Peter to insist that the changes had non-rational causes. But that would seem unmotivated and uncharitable. I certainly think that my views have improved with time, and didn't merely "shift" in a rationally neutral fashion.)
Question for regular readers: have any arguments on this blog ever led you to revise your beliefs?
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Opinions and Inquiry
Chris Dillow argues against opinion as "just prejudice". This is why raw 'public opinion' is not the proper foundation for democracy. It has no normative significance; the mere fact that people believe something tells us nothing about what is true or ought to be done.
Similarly, a liberal education is not just about enabling students to express themselves. (As Chris says, "Selves aren't interesting." I'd disagree, but it's true enough in these contexts, at least.) Rather, what's interesting is intellectual inquiry. Students should be encouraged to draw their own conclusions, not because any belief will be magically "validated" by the mere fact of their holding it, but because thinking for yourself is the way to develop your rational discernment. The take-home item of value here is not the 'opinion' one forms, so much as the reasons that led to it -- and, even more, the discernment that enables one to appreciate these.
If there is to be a positive case for democracy (as opposed to simply showing it to be less bad than every alternative), it cannot rest simply on 'one man, one vote'. To have all opinions count equally in the tally is a feeble sort of equality, given the general worthlessness of opinions anyway. But to be granted an equal opportunity to participate in democratic inquiry -- to seek, offer and assess reasons in deliberation about the common good -- now that's something worth getting excited about!
At least, that's my opinion.
