Category: Actual philosophical discussion!

Moral psychology and religion

This is an interesting essay by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist, examining the natural (psychological, biological) foundations for morality, and the differences we find among “conservatives,” “liberals,” and the “religious.” He himself is a liberal atheist, but he ends up arguing that religious conservatives have something going on that leads to a broader view of morality, something that liberal atheists should explore and understand.

Overall, I find his general view compelling. In another article, in the NYT, he describes his view of morality as being like a rider on an elephant. The elephant represents a long history of evolved, nonsystematic moral intuitions, and the rider represents our systematic thought about morality. The rider has some control over the beast, but it’s far from complete. So we find ourselves with a mass of moral sentiments and intuitions that often cannot be straightened out into a set of moral principles. Moreover, of course, our sentiments differ from individual to individual. Some of us are drawn more to the sentiment that “each to his own, so long as no harm is being done” while others are drawn to sentiments encouraging order and uniformity. And, Haidt suggests, we need this plurality for a stable society.

Argument for dualism

In PHIL 4410 yesterday, I offered Descartes’s argument for dualism:

1. Anything that we can legitimately conceive is logically possible.
2. We can legitimately conceive being conscious without having a brain that’s doing anything. (We can imagine being a disembodied consciousness.)
3. So, it is logically possible to be conscious without having a brain that is doing anything.
4. For any X and Y, if X can exist without Y, then X is not identical with Y.
5. Therefore, consciousness is not identical with having a brain that is doing anything.

It’s an interesting argument, since the premises look pretty plausible. Any thoughts? Where does the argument go wrong?

Here’s another item to consider. Can the same argument be used to show that, say, a computer operating system like Windows is not identical with a computer doing anything? Can we legitimately conceive Windows existing in a world devoid of computers? Or is consciousness seemingly different from a computer operating system in this regard?

(I raise this last point because I often like to compare human consciousness to an operating system: the mind is the software, and the brain is the hardware, and the software is somehow present in the organization and functioning of the hardware, and can’t exist without it. I’m wondering whether this argument points out an important flaw in my comparison.)

Radical Honesty?

Mike sent me a link to this article about “Radical Honesty,” a budding movement which urges its practitioners to tell the truth — bluntly, and in any circumstance. (Warning: there are naughty words in the article.)

I’d like to think that such radical honesty could be tempered by concern for others’ feelings — that we can still tell the truth, but in friendlier ways, with less of the blunt violence displayed in the article. But am I just being a wimp?

Good vs. bad mysteries

Kleiner and I were wondering today whether there is any way to sort out good philosophical mysteries from bad ones. Here’s an example to show what we mean.

Suppose you believe that the world is created by a divine being with a concern for the plight of human beings. Several objections can be raised — like, “How does a divine being create a world out of nothing?” and “How come there seems to be so much needless suffering?”. And you can offer some initial answers to these questions, perhaps with some interesting details, but in the end you will probably have to shrug and say, “It’s a mystery to me.”

Now contrast that case with this one. Suppose I say that the world is a pebble washed up upon the shores of eternity, and our obligation is to make everything in the world as shiny as possible. (And suppose that, no, I mean none of this merely metaphorically; I think it is literally true.) You press me for details — “Why think the world is a pebble? Why think eternity is a thing with shores?” — and though I might make a few remarks in reply, ultimately I have to shrug and say, “It’s a mystery to me.”

It seems like the first mystery is an “okay” one to have, and the second one is just silly. Is that right? If it is, then how can anyone sort out the good mysteries from the bad ones?