Peter Singer in Bristol

I note that Peter Singer is visiting Bristol on the 5th May 2010 to give a talk broadly about issues surrounding Animal Welfare in the 35 years since Animal Liberation was published.  I haven’t seen notice of this anywhere else so thought I would put it out there.  I am pretty sure that it will be aimed at a public audience, but may still be of interest to some.  General details about booking etc. may be found at the following link.

Philosopher’s Public Image

A pet peeve of every philosopher and engaged philosophy student is the failure of academics in other fields, journalists, politicians and scientists to do some things which we think are important.  To structure arguments such that one may make the conclusions one wishes, to state clearly one’s conclusions, to state clearly presuppositions that are likely not to be obvious, to make every effort not to mislead. 

The reason this can irritate is that we think it isn’t anything peculiar to philosophy that demands this intellectual care.  Nor do we think that it is our philosophical mindset that brings us to expect a degree of rigour from all disciplines.  Rather—I take it to be the usual stance—it seems to us that we might extrapolate the philosopher’s norms (as above), from the everyday man-on-the-street’s notions of acceptable argument and presentation of ideas.

It has long been on my radar that philosophers’ ‘rigour’ is often not perceived to be a virtue from the outside.  I post now because Carlin Romano at The Chronicle has provided a couple of brilliant quotes regarding the interrelation of philosophy and journalism which demonstrate what I mean.  Although I have no real opinions concerning the meat of the article, I do think that Romano depicts the perception of philosophers in the eyes of outsiders in a rather remarkable fashion:

1.  “… philosophy professors [are] mannered figures, badly informed and out of touch on matters outside their academic competence, insufficiently quick-witted on their feet, irrelevant in their influence on the public, and ludicrously inefficient in their Anglophilic and pedantic diction ("I should now like to make the claim, ceteris paribus …")”

Romano also suggests that the following characterise the usual response to philosophy as a field.

2.  “the historic insularity and inflexibility of philosophy”

3.  “the field remains less diverse and intellectually adventurous than any of the other humanities”

4.  "professional philosophers, whose egos and identities are deeply connected to an image of themselves as intellectually superior to other professionals"

Meanwhile Romano caricatures the philosophers’-eye-view rather well also:

5.  “ … journalists [are] … people who have committed themselves to simplistic narratives of the world shorn of nuance and qualification, fond of every fallacy in the book”

This is all very puzzling for me.  I agree that 2-4 look rather negative, but I am willing to contest their truth.  However, whilst their presentation may be evocatively loaded I do not have any particular point of contest with the facts of 1 or 5, other than in terms of the evaluative language.  Philosophers are mannered, not always focussed on being completely up-to-date with everything outside their field preferring rather to direct their attentions in areas where they are competent, diligent, lacking the ‘relevance’ necessary to influence the public greatly, careful in speech and make use of various technical language.  We do tend to think that people who don’t do this, probably should, at least a bit.  This is very coarse treatment, but I think it captures the essence of the problem.  There is no great disagreement over what philosophers do:  they aspire to great intellectual rigour.  There is great disagreement as to whether this is something worth doing.  Various experiences suggest to me that the resounding evaluation from the outside world is that rigour does not have the value we set upon it.

Philosophers, are we really so poorly received? 

Is our intellectual being-careful really a vice, as it seems to look from the outside?  Just to throw in another strand:  Should any of this mean that we shouldn’t really be objecting to the notion that British philosophers should be ranked and funded according to ‘Impact’?

I am fairly clear that the answers to these last two questions are ‘No’ and ‘No’.  However it is clear that our work is cut out to demonstrate that the answers to these questions are so.

Look out for this

Krist Vaesen & Martin Peterson of the Eindhoven University of Technology have posted to the PHILOS-L email list a summary of findings resulting from an online survey of philosophers.

These were as follows:

• A statistically significant portion of trained philosophers intuit that one can know that p, without this being an instance of knowledge, in particular when p, although justified and true, has no (or limited)informational content
• The epistemic intuitions of trained philosophers depend significantly on their mother tongue
• These effects apply even if only philosophers with a doctoral degree are considered.

A paper is planned and will arrive at http://home.ieis.tue.nl/kvaesen/ when completed.

I am particularly interested to read about the last two claims!

X-phi survey on Normative Judgements

Please philosophers (only) follow the link through to Stephen Stich’s latest survey on normative judgements … Survey!

I remember having some sort of input to the structure of what I can only imagine was this particular survey in progress, although can’t remember exactly what.  I certainly remember some of the examples, which are unforgettable; it is worth taking part if only to experience them.

Dissertation Material 2: Pedagogical/Illustrative Thought-Experiments

[The following is a heavily edited version of a section from my MA dissertation.  It is not meant therefore to stand alone in terms of motivation or argument, but presents some interesting ideas nonetheless.  The background is that there is a potential problem raised by the persuasive power yet eminent fallibility of thought-experiments.  This section notes that this problem does not exist for one particular way of persuading through thought-experiments]

Thought-experiments are often used merely to illustrate, or to teach the inner workings of, a theory.  They provide a route into understanding otherwise opaque theory (Klassen, 2006); accordingly their place in education—science especially—has been emphasised by many.

One may not understand Utilitarianism expressed thus: to do right is to maximise pleasure and minimise pain.  A teacher may provide one with a better grasp using a thought-experiment.

Imagine it is Right to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. An old blind woman is about to step out in front of a lorry. Should you stop and help, if

Condition A: You are on your way to the shops?

Condition B: You are a fire-fighter on your way to put out a blaze in an old people’s home?

The reaction, ‘Oh I see, that’s the sort of decision I would have to make,’ allows one to better understand Utilitarianism, and in turn be more likely to be persuaded as to its merits (or indeed persuaded as to its falsity).^[1]

Teachers often use thought-experiments in this manner. Whilst they may not wish to persuade students as to the truth of some theory, it is often in their interest to portray the theory in a favourable light.  Teachers wish to encourage students to recognise that a theory is worthy of consideration, to make salient its merits.  The fact that this use of thought-experiment may aid persuasive efforts does not seem to generate a problem.

It is nonetheless noteworthy that a pedagogical or illustrative use of a thought-experiment is not necessarily an impartial presentation. Without the evenness of hand expected a teacher may raise the probability that she, to whom the illustration is addressed, will be persuaded in any one direction. Rather, an illustrative/pedagogical use of a thought-experiment is characterised by being foremost a mere demonstration of the features of theory—regardless of any bias in the presentation.  This use exists also in science. One might have difficulty understanding relativity of simultaneity, until one considers the following imaginary example.  This is based on an example in (Magueijo, 2003)

Einstein has a dream: a long line of cows is electrocuted by current passing along a single straight wire. One observer notes each cow jump back in sequence, as the current flows away from him. Another, stood at the other end of the wire, observes each cow jump back simultaneously. (The speed of light is assumed to be equal to that of the current in the wire).

The thought-experiment demonstrates that the theory has some explanatory power; that it is worthy of consideration and acceptance. It is not used to establish the conclusion per se. Rather, it is an exposition, which may contribute to some party’s persuasion.

To conclude, thought-experiments may aid in persuasion whilst used in purely pedagogical or illustrative manners.  However, beyond worries about partial presentation in situations in which impartiality is presumed, there is little motivation for worrying about thought-experiments as a methodological resource when used in this manner.  We have the resources to analyse whether something has gone wrong in the portrayal of a theory and should be able to avoid any problems.

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[1] For, better understanding of a theory may motivate its rejection. However, given one cannot accept a theory which one doesn’t think one understands, I maintain that (in a trivial sense) understanding a theory will raise the probability one will accept it. None-the-less, the motivation of rejection is still persuasion, albeit not in the direction that the persuader desired.