7 Things Everyone Should Know about Philosophy

Inspired by the ignorance of Bill Nye the science guy...

Some things I wish everyone know about philosophy:

(1) Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" does not imply that your existence depends upon your thinking.  It is merely intended to show that a thinker cannot coherently doubt their own existence.

Baffling Philosophy?

What positions (or whole debates) in philosophy do you find most baffling?  For each such case, how confident are you that your bafflement is warranted -- that the view or debate in question just doesn't make any damned sense -- as opposed to just being due to a lack of understanding on your part?

I'll offer a few examples that spring to my mind, and encourage others to comment with either (i) more examples of philosophy that you find baffling (and feel free to pick views of mine -- I promise not to take it personally!), or else (ii) defenses of any identified examples, to help those of us who initially find them "baffling" to better understand why they are (in your view) actually well-motivated after all.

So, to get the ball rolling...

Unreliable Philosophy?

Jason Brennan's 'Scepticism about Philosophy' raises a very interesting challenge, arguing that "[w]idespread disagreement shows that pursuing philosophy is not a reliable method of discovering true answers to philosophical questions."

I want to explore three ways of responding to the challenge (I should flag that these extend beyond the scope of Jason's paper, and so should be taken as "semi-related thoughts" rather than "objections").  We may question (1) whether there is any better alternative to doing philosophy as best we can -- however unreliable that may be; (2) the extent to which "discovering true answers" is an important goal of philosophy; and (3) whether "philosophy" in general is the relevant reference class for assessing reliability, or whether we should instead be assessing a range of more fine-grained methods.

Misleading Philosophical Jargon

Which philosophical terms do you think do more to obscure than clarify?

Some terms are ambiguous in ways that invite (unintentional) equivocation, e.g. 'autonomy' and 'intrinsic value'. While safely usable in some contexts, I think it's often preferable to replace these vague terms with whatever more precise understanding you have in mind.

(I should add: not all polysemous words are problematic. There are a bazillion different "internalisms" and "subjectivisms" in common use, but equivocation is rare enough, and -- as I note here -- there may not be any better terms available.)

Other terms are simply badly chosen, or have misleading connotations, e.g.:
(1) "Possible worlds" are really possible states of the world, or world-descriptions. Relatedly, talk of truth "at" a world might be better stated as truth "according to" a world-description.

(2) Moore's use of "naturalistic fallacy" to describe normative reductionism is, I think, a doubly intolerable usage. First, it usurps a far more intuitive alternative usage, namely, denoting the fallacious move from "X is natural" to "X is good". Second, Moore's usage isn't even sensible in its own right, since his target isn't really naturalism per se. You could just as well have a supernaturalist version of normative reductionism, as per (certain versions of) Divine Command Theory. (Besides, it's awfully tendentious to call the very statement of your opponent's position a "fallacy".)

Can you think of any further suggestions (for either list)?

The Medium of Philosophy

A couple more questions of information architecture: What are blogs good for? And what is the ideal medium for philosophical discussion? Here some form of pluralism seems plausible, since there are many different kinds of valuable philosophical discussion (from brainstorming ideas to the highest levels of rigorous critique), and people differ in whether they prefer, e.g., oral or written communication. But I think some general observations may still be possible. In particular, I want to undermine the common prejudice against taking blogging seriously as an academic medium.

On the traditional picture, philosophers may go through any or all of the following steps: (i) get together at the pub to exchange rough ideas, (ii) go home and write up a paper, (iii) pass it around their friends for comments, (iv) perhaps present it at a colloquium or conference to get a bit more feedback, before (v) submitting the final paper to a journal, where it stands as their "official" contribution to the ongoing discussion in the literature.

Blogging might be understood conservatively as an expansion of the first (brainstorming) step, though I think it also has a fair bit in common with conferencing, and - don't forget - is a form of publication in addition. This combination of features suggests some potentially radical implications. In the long run, I expect that the distinction between 'work in progress' and 'publications' will become increasingly porous, as academia slowly comes to grips with the 'publish then filter' information economy. (Dennett noticed the start of this trend over a decade ago, in employing his famous "multiple drafts" metaphor.) But I also want to say something about our more immediate circumstances.

In particular, I want to suggest that blogging, as a medium, is very well-suited for (much) philosophizing. Indeed, I personally find it to be my favourite philosophical medium, at least for many purposes. I add the proviso because my absolute best philosophical experiences have been in small, well-focused seminar classes, where everyone has done the readings and actively participates in stimulating discussions. That, I grant, is even better than blogging. But in general, I find that blog discussions are often more philosophically valuable than, say, colloquia, conference talks, and similar 'general audience' presentations.

Of course it depends on the participants (so I have in mind a good quality blog like PEA Soup). But it shouldn't be surprising that blogs, as a written medium, may be conducive to higher quality conversation -- at least when all else is equal. After all, asynchronous discussion frees interlocutors to spend as long as they need to reflect carefully and craft their responses. Competitive pressures also help: without a captive audience, "speakers" with nothing particularly worthwhile to say will soon find no-one listening to them. (If only we could leave a boring talk, or skim past an obtuse question, as easily as we can on the Internet!) Thirdly, the space of potential interlocutors is much larger, as overcoming geographic boundaries creates many new opportunities for conversing with wonderful philosophers from all over the globe. [For example, one of my favourite blog discussions (quoted here) was with Jamie Dreier (Brown) when I was at ANU, half the world away.]

So I think blogging is in principle -- and often in practice -- superior to conferencing and colloquia, as a "mid-level" philosophical medium. This claim strikes me as fairly straightforward. More controversially: I'm inclined to think that even "high-level" philosophy, i.e. journal articles, would often be better in (something like) blog format. Granted, some papers really do need all those ten thousand words to make their point. But most often, I think the core insight could be easily captured in an 800 word blog post, and the rest is just tying up loose ends, or repetitive exposition for struggling readers -- stuff that could easily be delegated to separate - hyperlinked - pages, rather than bloating the main work.

Overall, I expect that current academic practices will at least be significantly supplemented (if not supplanted) by new media. Eventually. But I hope to see these improvements implemented sooner rather than later. So helping others to see the opportunities for improvement is perhaps a first step. Your thoughts?

Philosophical Training

One of my best students recently asked how he could further improve his philosophical work. It's something I occasionally wonder for myself, too. So I thought I'd throw the question out there for the collective wisdom of the Internets to answer: how should one "train" in philosophy?

Most obviously, one can learn from expert feedback on one's written papers. One's instructor may pick up on the main flaws or possible objections that should be addressed, and suggest potential avenues for further developing and extending the core ideas of the paper, which should eventually help one to develop a "sense" of what makes for good philosophy. However, there may be only limited opportunities for obtaining such formal written feedback (since professors are likely busy with their own work, and perhaps reluctant to do anything that feels like additional "grading"), in which case more general, informal discussions -- e.g. in office hours, or by email -- may be more welcome.

More generally, simply doing philosophy -- writing, and arguing with others -- is presumably always good practice. My advice: start a philosophy blog, and use it to (i) practice clearly summarizing any interesting ideas you come across in readings and lectures; and (ii) test out some of your own arguments and ideas. (At least, I find this invaluable. YMMV.)

Then there's the method of simply exposing oneself to a lot of professional-level philosophy: read - or skim - the top journals, attend departmental talks or 'colloquia' by visiting professors, etc. See if you absorb their philosophical skills by osmosis; or, better yet, combine with the previous suggestion to actively engage with the new ideas and methodologies you encounter.

(These procedural questions aside, there's also the question of what philosophical content to focus on. I would strongly advise undergrads, especially, to obtain a broad familiarity with the various sub-fields and methodologies: from ethics to formal logic, and from armchair analyses to more empirically-minded approaches. Further, I think almost any philosopher can benefit from thinking about the connections between their field and others -- e.g. between ethical and epistemological normativity, or between meta-ethics and meta-metaphysics.)

Have I missed anything important? And how would you balance the various recommendations -- is a marginal hour better spent reading more journal articles or developing more of one's own ideas, say?

[Cf. Getting the Most Out of Grad School]

Intellectual Black Holes

The value of freedom sometimes calls for constraint: against selling oneself into slavery, for example. Is there an intellectual analogue of this? We generally value open-mindedness, and a willingness to 'follow the arguments' wherever they may lead. But what if some ideas were so corrupting that to consider them seriously would risk undermining one's future capacity for rational thought? It would then seem that there are some ideas that we must close our minds to, if we truly value open-mindedness (and not just for the present moment). This seems a curious possibility.

Such 'intellectual black holes' might fall into either of two classes:

(1) Psychological traps depend on contingent quirks of human cognitive architecture. These might (in principle) be completely arbitrary: we can imagine a creature whose head explodes if it comes to believe that cows eat grass. More realistically, it seems conceivable that some (even true) beliefs might interact to ill effect with our evolved heuristics, biases, and emotional dispositions.

(2) Rational traps, on the other hand, are general to any rational mind. This makes them more philosophically interesting, insofar as they reveal propositions that are essentially (and not merely contingently) antithetical to rational thought.

Now for the big question: are there any such 'intellectual black holes' -- ideas which, if accepted, would undermine one's rational capacities? (And if so, does that necessarily mean we are justified in believing the "trap proposition" to instead be false?)

Perhaps the most obvious example is epistemic nihilism: the view that there is no such thing as epistemic rationality -- all beliefs and arguments are equally good (or bad), and rational persuasion is impossible. Notice that if someone came to really, truly believe this, then it would be utterly impossible to reason them out of it: they would be incapable of treating anything you said as a reason worthy of consideration. Their mind could only be 'rescued' by some non-rational intervention: brain surgery, perhaps.

What other such cases can you think of?

Big Questions

Clark asks: What are the fundamental issues you are most interested in and see as very important? I've offered such a list before, but here's an updated (though no doubt similarly incomplete) list:

(1) Is value purely additive? Is the value of a whole (life, society) simply the sum of the intrinsic values of the parts (moments, individual lives), or do the relations between the parts also have non-instrumental import? See, e.g., my post distinguishing Welfare and Contributory Value. Related questions ask whether more pain is thereby worse, and whether duplication may be discounted. [Update: see here for my new paper on this topic, which should give a better sense of what these questions are getting at.]

(2) How should we understand Consciousness and Time? In particular, how radically could objective and experienced time diverge? (If we accept that the brain can represent time using something other than time itself, is there any necessary connection here at all? How exactly do temporally extended or 'smeared' representations work?)

(3) How objective is rationality? Is there any genuine sense in which one "ought" to believe as the 'equal weight' and 'automatic adjustment' views claim?

(4) Does rationality require impartiality? Are there agent-(time-)relative values/reasons?

(5) What's the relation between Rationality and Reflective Endorsement? If certain biases are good to have, is there some less-strict but still genuinely normative framework (perhaps what's "reasonable", rather than strictly "rational") for human beings to live by? How coherent will this be?

(6) Is Rational Pluralism possible, or is there one ideally rational belief (and desire?) set -- one objectively privileged 'prior'?

(7) Are there substantive facts about identities and essences, or are the 'base facts' of the world purely qualitative? (In other words: Kripke or Lewis?)

(8) What are the truth-makers for a priori philosophical truths? Is some form of meta-philosophical Constructivism defensible? Or some alternative view?

What 'big questions' most interest you, dear reader?

Psychologists Mangle Philosophy

Haidt and Bjorklund ('Social Intuitionists Answer Six Questions about Moral Psychology') suggest a model ('SIM') according to which human moral judgments typically result from gut reactions, post-hoc rationalization, and social conformity, rather than good philosophical reasoning (though the latter is also possible; just rare). No great surprise there, I should think. But at the end of the paper they grossly overreach in suggesting alleged "philosophical implications" of this psychological claim.

"1. Moral truths are anthropocentric truths":

On our account, moral facts exist, but not as objective facts which would be true for any rational creature anywhere in the universe. Moral facts are facts only with respect to a community of human beings that have created them...

Most people aren't philosophers, therefore moral realism is false? I'm not seeing the connection here. The core of the paper was talking about moral judgments or beliefs. Now they're suddenly drawing conclusions about the objects of those beliefs -- the "moral facts", not just our thoughts about them. Isn't this a whopping non-sequitur? Is it yet another instance of the lazy conflation of belief and truth (as suggested by their subsequent reference to the "moral truths held by members of [a] society") or is there some more charitable interpretation that I'm missing?

"2. The naturalistic imperative: all ought statements must be grounded, eventually, in an is statement" They offer as an example of a good is-to-ought inference:

Sheila is the mother of a 4-year-old boy, so Sheila ought to keep her guns out of his reach.

But of course even non-naturalists can endorse this (enthymatic) inference. That's because there are further moral premises implicit in the background, e.g. that mothers ought to keep their children safe from harm. This is not an example of empirical grounding of a moral claim, but of the empirical application of a more general moral principle.

This raises a more general worry I have about naturalistically inclined philosophers. When they claim that ethics must be "empirically informed", they could mean one of two things. If they simply mean that empirical contingencies affect how moral principles apply to our actual situation, then that's utterly uncontroversial. (A consequentialist will be interested to learn what would actually bring about the best consequences, for example.) But if they mean something stronger, that empirical findings should influence our first principles -- not just which conditional claims turn out to apply, but what should be conditionally claimed in the first place -- I don't see the faintest reason to believe this.

"3. Monistic theories are likely to be wrong"

If there are many independent sources of moral value [Haidt classifies humans moral intuitions under 5 categories: harm, fairness, authority, purity, and ingroup/outgroup] then moral theories that value only one source and set to zero all others are likely to produce psychologically unrealistic systems that most people will reject.

Note, again, the sloppy conflation of descriptive and normative "value" (belief and truth). Haidt likes to accuse liberals of failing to "understand" anti-gay sentiment, for denouncing it as immoral 'homophobia' rather than "appreciating" that it's a moral judgment which derives from our evolved 'purity' module. We parochial liberals limit ourselves to the first two "sources of value", and "neglect" the latter three. But here's the thing: just because there's a mental module which inclines people to judge yucky things as immoral, doesn't mean they're right. (Duh.) Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

4. Haidt and Bjorklund's fourth "implication" is that a moderate relativism is true:

If relativism is taken as the claim that no one code can be proven superior to all others, then it is correct, for given the variation in human minds and cultures, there can be no one moral code that is right for all people, places, and times.

Says who? Again, nothing in the descriptive theory of SIM implies any such thing; these guys are just making stuff up. (Aside: we should also take care to distinguish situation-sensitivity vs. relativism proper.)

They go on to reject radical relativism, understood as they claim that "no one code can be judged superior to any other code". Apparently a code that "radically violate[s] the values and wants of a large proportion of the people involved" fails to qualify as "well formed". It's nice that they don't want to endorse slavery and the like, but this ad hoc principle reinforces my sense that they're just making stuff up as they go along.

"5. The methods of philosophical inquiry may be tainted":

If the SIM is right and moral reasoning is usually post hoc rationalization, then moral philosophers who think they are reasoning their way impartially to conclusions may often be incorrect. Even if philosophers are better than most people at reasoning, a moment's reflection by practicing philosophers should bring to mind many cases where another philosopher was clearly motivated to reach a conclusion and was just being clever in making up reasons to support hear already-made-up mind... The practice of moral philosophy may be improved by an explicit acknowledgment of the difficulties and biases involved in moral reasoning. As Greene has shown, flashes of emotion followed by post hoc reasoning about rights may be the unrecognized basis of deontological approaches to moral philosophy.

This raises interesting issues about the genetic fallacy, and the extent to which explanatory reasons can debunk normative reasons. In assessing "clever" arguments, I don't usually care what "motivated" the author. Whether deontology is the most rational and systematically defensible approach to ethics seems logically independent from the question of its psychological "basis" in human proponents. I guess a spectator might draw on genetic considerations as a kind of Bayesian meta-evidence. But from within the practice of philosophy itself, I'm not sure these considerations are really all that relevant.

So, there you have it. Five alleged "philosophical implications", of which the first four are blatant non-sequiturs, and the fifth is at least dubious. Whether SIM is true or not doesn't really affect any of these questions. (Would the truth or falsity of SIM really influence your beliefs here, or even shift your credence in the slightest?) We need to do a priori philosophy to determine (1) whether there's a uniquely rational moral system, (2) which empirical contingencies have moral relevance, (3) whether disgust - as well as harm - can ground moral facts, (4) whether some moral codes are better than some or all others, and (5) in what conditions 'genetic' considerations are philosophically relevant.

Those are the fundamental philosophical questions here, and (so far as I can see) empirical psychology in general - and SIM in particular - doesn't have any implications for any of them. Certainly Haidt and Bjorklund haven't shown any. Perhaps other readers might have more luck?

Ostriches (or: implicit confusion)

After describing how moral philosophers have expended reams of paper debating trolley problems, Hallq concludes: "The confusions of the man on the street [who couldn’t give a coherent rationale for his responses] don’t seem so bad, in comparison." But that strikes me as precisely backwards, for familiar Socratic reasons. The moral thinking of the folk is so deeply and thoroughly confused that they don't even realize how confused they are. When moral philosophers start sifting through the mess, identifying and modifying points of incoherence, they are becoming less, not more, confused.

Granted, doing philosophy may (at least at first) make one feel more confused, because one's previously implicit confusions are brought to the surface and made explicit. But the confusion was there all along, even prior to your becoming aware of it.

Arguing by Degrees

Now that I think of it, a better way to make my point may be to replace talk of 'all or nothing' belief with credences or degrees of belief.

Even if you ultimately reject an argument, it may be that you were antecedently disposed to have greater credence in the premises (conjoined) than in the conclusion. Upon having this mild inconsistency pointed out to you by the valid argument, you will presumably revise your credal state by some appropriate combination of reducing your credence in the premises and raising your degree of belief in the conclusion.

If an argument can, in this way, be expected to lead many to rationally revise upwards their degree of belief in its conclusion, then it ipso facto has rational force (and is not question begging), in relation to this community of inquirers. This may be so even if their resulting credal state still falls short of full-blown belief.

I note that this approach also helps to refute a similar claim I addressed last year, namely:

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.

My earlier points refute it well enough, of course, but 'credence' talk makes it even clearer. For this reminds us that we may change a person's mind even without changing their full-blown beliefs (though we may do that too). Even if we merely sway them from thinking a view wildly implausible to instead thinking it moderately unlikely, that is clearly dialectical progress.

Aspiring to Objectivity

[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.

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?

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?

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.]

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:

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.

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.

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?

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?