The Whale of Ignorance
Saturday, April 30, 2005
When I teach my intro to moral philosophy course, I'm going to start with this quote:
"When you're in the public eye, it's wrong to cheat on someone, unless you're very careful. If you're normal and no one's going to know, then do it." -- Paris Hilton ¶ 8:41 PM 0 comments
"When you're in the public eye, it's wrong to cheat on someone, unless you're very careful. If you're normal and no one's going to know, then do it." -- Paris Hilton ¶ 8:41 PM 0 comments
Monday, April 25, 2005
Probably not of interest to anyone but myself, but I was at a philosophy conference this past weekend and ran into several grad students who were concerned about the role that "intuition" plays in philosophy.
Philosophers often call upon our intuitions about particular cases to provide evidence for or against a given principle. So, for example, Peter Singer thinks that our intuition about what one ought to do if given the choice between saving a child and saving one's car from an oncoming train (intuition: one ought to save the kid and sacrifice one's car) supports his claim that we ought to be giving more to charity since we face an analogous choice with regard to many children in the third world. And so it is with many of the famous thought experiments (also sometimes called, thanks to Dennett, "intuition pumps") in philosophy -- Searle's Chinese Room, the Gettier Examples or simple appeals to intuition, like "Kant says you ought never to lie, not even to a murderer looking for your friend, and that's just too counterintuitive."
So one might get to thinking, what's the status of these intuitions that are so liberally utilized in philosophy, why should we think they're reliable indicators of truth, etc.?
I think this is a mistake, and that people are simply misled by the label, "intuition", which suggests that we're calling upon some special faculty of the mind that delivers verdicts on mysterious philosophical questions. It seems rather clear to me that consulting our intutions is nothing more than finding out what we really think about an issue -- incisive thought experiments show us that we think something about a particular situation that doesn't match our theoretical commitments, so we must revise one or the other. So it's no mystery why "intuition" is as useful as it is -- it shows us what we are committed to.
Of course, there are interesting questions to be asked about our intuitions in philosophy, but they're to be asked about the source and justification of those beliefs in the particular cases, not about intuition in general, which is just a mistake (i.e. "intuition" refers to many different kinds of belief).
¶ 11:06 PM 0 comments
Philosophers often call upon our intuitions about particular cases to provide evidence for or against a given principle. So, for example, Peter Singer thinks that our intuition about what one ought to do if given the choice between saving a child and saving one's car from an oncoming train (intuition: one ought to save the kid and sacrifice one's car) supports his claim that we ought to be giving more to charity since we face an analogous choice with regard to many children in the third world. And so it is with many of the famous thought experiments (also sometimes called, thanks to Dennett, "intuition pumps") in philosophy -- Searle's Chinese Room, the Gettier Examples or simple appeals to intuition, like "Kant says you ought never to lie, not even to a murderer looking for your friend, and that's just too counterintuitive."
So one might get to thinking, what's the status of these intuitions that are so liberally utilized in philosophy, why should we think they're reliable indicators of truth, etc.?
I think this is a mistake, and that people are simply misled by the label, "intuition", which suggests that we're calling upon some special faculty of the mind that delivers verdicts on mysterious philosophical questions. It seems rather clear to me that consulting our intutions is nothing more than finding out what we really think about an issue -- incisive thought experiments show us that we think something about a particular situation that doesn't match our theoretical commitments, so we must revise one or the other. So it's no mystery why "intuition" is as useful as it is -- it shows us what we are committed to.
Of course, there are interesting questions to be asked about our intuitions in philosophy, but they're to be asked about the source and justification of those beliefs in the particular cases, not about intuition in general, which is just a mistake (i.e. "intuition" refers to many different kinds of belief).
¶ 11:06 PM 0 comments
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Played my first basketball in a few months (herniated disk) -- resolved to talk more trash. Next time I drill a jumper on someone I plan on saying,"Welcome to the ownership society."
¶ 12:47 PM 1 comments
Thursday, April 14, 2005
I was tracking the Mets' 0-0 tie through 8 last night and was tempted into buying the MLB TV All-access internet package -- which basically gives live and archived access to every game for every team for the whole year for $99. Not a good productivity move, but it'll be nice to be able to watch Pedro's starts and follow Wright and Reyes in the comfort of L.A., as well as to tune in to Ichiro's at-bats whenever I want.
They have a pretty freakin' neat searchable video feature where you can search for individual at-bats by team/individual/vs. LHP/ vs. RHP/outcome of at-bat/game situation/ballpark. It doesn't work perfectly -- when I searched for Ichiro's singles in the past ten days two of the clips didn't show the hit -- but it's still pretty neat. ¶ 11:06 AM 1 comments
They have a pretty freakin' neat searchable video feature where you can search for individual at-bats by team/individual/vs. LHP/ vs. RHP/outcome of at-bat/game situation/ballpark. It doesn't work perfectly -- when I searched for Ichiro's singles in the past ten days two of the clips didn't show the hit -- but it's still pretty neat. ¶ 11:06 AM 1 comments
