Philosophy and Psychology

I'm not sure exactly where I acquired my deep suspicion of philosophers and their product, but it might have been in my first undergraduate Philosophy of Science course. Maybe it was the professor's attitude toward my arguments. Or maybe it was just the fact that my friend the philosophy major not only got the cutest (and smartest) girl in the class but could also routinely beat me at chess.

In any case, I have a antipathy to the notion that thought can get you very far without experiment. Gary Gutting, a philosophy prof at Notre Dame, has a critique of Jonathan Haidt's recent book The Righteous Mind in the NYT. His core argument is that Haidt is too dismissive of Plato's analysis of morality, but an obvious subtext is that philosophy is not irrelevant even in the modern age.

Now it is possible that Haidt, himself a disillusioned former philosophy major, underestimated the subtlety of Plato's argument, but I think his core critique of philosophy is right on: 2000 years of discussion may have produced some insight but no firm conclusions. Haidt, instead, pursues the experimental method, examining how people actually make moral decisions instead of just speculating about how they should.

If you want to tell people how they ought to act, it's useful to first check how they actually do act.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more