Studying folk morality: philosophy, psychology, or what?

by Massimo Pigliucci

My colleague Joshua Knobe at Yale University recently published an intriguing article in The Philosopher’s Magazine about the experimental philosophy of moral decision making. Joshua and I have had a nice chat during a recent Rationally Speaking podcast dedicated to experimental philosophy, but I’m still not convinced about the whole enterprise.

There is no doubt in my mind that what Knobe and his colleagues are doing is valuable, but I wonder in what sense. For instance, in the magazine article Joshua mentions several studies of “folk morality,” i.e. of how ordinary people think about moral problems. The results are fascinating. It turns out that people’s views are correlated with personality traits, with subjects who score high on “openness to experience” being reliably more relativists than objectivists about morality (I am not using the latter term in the infamous Randyan meaning here, but as Knobe does, to indicate the idea that morality has objective bases).

Other studies show that people who are capable of considering multiple options in solving mathematical puzzles also tend to be moral relativists, and — in a study co-authored by Knobe himself — the very same situation (infanticide) was judged along a sliding scale from objectivism to relativism depending on whether the hypothetical scenario involved a fellow American (presumably sharing our same general moral values), the member of an imaginary Amazonian tribe (for which infanticide was acceptable), and an alien from the planet Pentar (belonging to a race whose only goal in life is to turn everything into equilateral pentagons, and killing individuals that might get in the way of that lofty objective is a duty). Oh, and related research also shows that young children tend to be objectivists, while young adults are usually relativists — but that later in life one’s primordial objectivism apparently experiences a comeback.

This is all very interesting social science, but is it philosophy? Granted, the differences between various disciplines are often not clear cut, and of course whenever people engage in truly inter-disciplinary work we should simply applaud the effort and encourage further work. But I do wonder in what sense, if any, the kinds of results that Joshua and his colleagues find have much to do with moral philosophy.

First off, there seems to me the potential danger of confusing various categories of moral discourse. For instance, are the “folks” studied in these cases actually relativist, or perhaps adherents to one of several versions of moral anti-realism? The two are definitely not the same, but I doubt that the subjects in question could tell the difference (and I wouldn’t expect them to, after all they are not philosophers).

Secondly, and more to the point, why do we expect philosophers to learn from “folk morality” when we do not expect, say, physicists to learn from folk physics (which tends to be Aristotelian in nature), or statisticians from people’s understanding of probability theory (which is generally remarkably poor, as casino owners know very well)? Or even, while I’m at it, why not ask literary critics to discuss Shakespeare in light of what common folks think about the bard (making sure, perhaps, that they have at least read his works, and not just watched the movies)?

Joshua himself doesn’t seem to be quite so sure of where this is going. He starts out the article by quoting a couple of philosophers who mention the alleged folk endorsement of objectivism as playing some part in their (the philosophers’) thinking, but if you actually read much of the primary literature in moral philosophy it is hard to imagine what exactly this part might be. At the end of the piece, Joshua concludes with a most unhelpful “how can we then use this information to address the deeper philosophical issues about the true nature of morality? The answer here is in one way very complex and in another very simple,” neglecting to give us even a hint of what that answer might turn out to be.

But, you might reasonably counter, surely Massimo isn’t arguing that moral philosophy is like physics? No, I’m not (though if you are Sam Harris, you would be arguing precisely that.) Hence, my other examples of stat (i.e., math) and literary criticism. I conceive of philosophy in general, and moral philosophy in particular, as more akin to a (science-informed, to be sure) mix between logic and criticism. Some moral philosophy consists in engaging an “if ... then” sort of scenario, akin to logical-mathematical thinking, where one begins with certain axioms and attempts to derive the consequences of such axioms. In other respects, moral philosophers exercise reflective criticism concerning those consequences as they might be relevant to practical problems.

For instance, we may write philosophically about abortion, and begin our discussion from a comparison of different conceptions of “person.” We might conclude that “if” one adopts conception X of what a person is, “then” abortion is justifiable under such and such conditions; while “if” one adopts conception Y of a person, “then” abortion is justifiable under a different set of conditions, or not justifiable at all. We could, of course, back up even further and engage in a discussion of what “personhood” is, thus moving from moral philosophy to metaphysics.

Nowhere in the above are we going to ask “folks” what they think a person is, or how they think their implicit conception of personhood informs their views on abortion. Of course people’s actual views on abortion are crucial — especially for public policy — and they are intrinsically interesting to social scientists. But they don’t seem to me to make much more contact with philosophy than the above mentioned popular opinions on Shakespeare make contact with serious literary criticism. And please, let’s not play the cheap card of “elitism,” unless we are willing to apply the label to just about any intellectual endeavor, in any discipline.

There is one area in which experimental philosophy can potentially contribute to philosophy proper (as opposed to social science). Once we have a more empirically grounded understanding of what people’s moral reasoning actually is, then we can analyze the likely consequences of that reasoning for a variety of societal issues. But now we would be doing something more akin to political than moral philosophy.

Michael’s Picks

by Michael De Dora

* Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to defund Planned Parenthood, which has one writer asking, “is this what pro-life means?”

* New rules issued by President Obama on contraception have stirred a debate over the so-called “conscience clause.” More on the new rules here. 

* Can skeptics judge religious claims without having a background in theology? You bet they can. 

* The Rev. Barry Lynn argues that the public should not pay for upkeep on churches. 

* Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad things are when a conservative group criticizes Texas for its education standards. 

* South Dakota lawmakers proposed, but have now shelved, a bill to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to include killing someone in the defense of an unborn child.

* Minnesota State Rep. Mike Beard says we shouldn’t fear running out of natural resources because God wouldn’t allow such a thing. 

* The walls of the Board of Supervisors chamber for Kern County, California, will apparently soon be adorned with “In God We Trust.”

Massimo’s Picks

by Massimo Pigliucci

* The North East Conference on Science and Skepticism is coming up! Great line up of speakers, tickets on sale now...

* The insanity in Texas continues. Then again, it's Texas.

* The new Rationally Speaking podcast is out: live with Julia and Massimo, part I!

* The Daily Show demonstrates how to make Muslims acceptable to Americans.

* New book about Socrates and his time. Page turner, despite some historical inaccuracies.

* Darwin Day panel discussion on consciousness: Ned Block, Jacqueline Gottlieb and Massimo Pigliucci.

* The Templeton Foundation: good, bad, or who cares?

* Are modern ethical theories (but not virtue ethics) "schizophrenic"?

* Announcing the Dionysus Awards: best films that make you think!

* PZ Myers calls Ray Kurzweil a crackpot. I'm afraid PZ is right on target this time.

* One of the few sensible things I've read recently about the big scary internet...

Welcome to Rationally Speaking's newest contributor: Lena Groeger!

by Massimo Pigliucci

The Rationally Speaking family is welcoming our newest member, Lena Groeger!

Lena studied biology and philosophy (my favorite combination of subjects!) at Brown University while taking classes next door at the Rhode Island School of Design. Ever since then, she has been trying to find ways to combine science and philosophy (what a coincidence!).

After graduating, Lena worked as a designer for Brown Health Education, where her job was to take scientific ideas and turn them into posters (or brochures, or t-shirts). Later she was a research associate at Oxford University's Practical Ethics Centre, where she wrote about issues in bioethics and the science of moral judgment.

Lena is now a graduate student at New York University, pursuing a degree in science journalism, and she is excited to write about the many interdisciplinary questions raised by the intersection of science and ethics for the general public.

While waiting for Lena’s first post on Rationally Speaking, you may want to peruse some of her recent writings on, for instance, happiness, the relationship between language and thought, why the popular notion of genetics is off the mark, the science of willpower, and the brain in the voting booth, to mention but a few.

What do you mean when you say “rational”?

by Michael De Dora

A couple of days ago I was perusing the Wikiquote page for my favorite philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and came across the following remark: “Man is a rational animal — so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.” I’d seen this quote before, but this time it got me thinking about rationality more in-depth than I had before. Russell, from what I gather, was lamenting the fact that most human beings believe in seemingly false claims, and commit unjustifiable and horrible acts. I am with him on that. But I have also said in public exchanges about religion that many of those beliefs and actions are what we might consider rational given the requisite assumptions. This raises a question over which I have been stewing since re-reading the quote: what does it really mean to act rationally?

I believe this question is best answered by making a distinction between two different conceptions of rationality, which I will call interior and exterior (or rational and Rational). This is the difference between acting a certain way given a starting point or context (interior or rational), and acting a certain way because it is right or true (exterior or Rational).

Interior rationality looks something like this. People have beliefs. Upon those beliefs, they base other beliefs. For a mental image, this view of beliefs wouldn’t look like a neatly stacked block of wood, but instead a jagged pile of rocks, or an intertwined mess of tree branches. The point being, beliefs are dependent on other beliefs, and together they give rise to certain behaviors, outside of what is true or not. Whether a person’s belief is true or not when he or she starts the reasoning process, it might still be rational to engage in certain acts given that belief. In short, a person can be rational within an irrational system. This is interior rationality: acting while maintaining as much coherence as possible with your beliefs and values.

For example, say I cheat on my girlfriend or wife by having sexual relations with another woman. That would be an awful thing to do. But, if I believe I am a rational and nice person, then I might seek to justify my behavior. As Carol Tavris and Elliott Aronson point out in the book Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): “Because we are not irrational and mean-spirited, any negative feelings we have about another group are justified; our dislikes are rational and well-founded.” In my example, I might wonder how a rational and nice person like me could act so irrationally and meanly. Aha! It must be someone else’s fault (i.e., mistakes were made, but not by me). So I might think things like “well, our relationship was really on the rocks anyway,” or “I think she cheated on me once, so I’m excused.” Of course these “reasons” may simply be invented: was the relationship really on the rocks? Did I ever really suspect her of cheating? Again, the point is that it all makes sense if I also believe that I am a rational and nice young man.

Yet, even as these beliefs and behaviors are rational given my assumptions about my niceness and reasonableness, they are not rational in the exterior sense. Exterior rationality does not mean acting in accordance with a given set of beliefs, but in accordance with our best assumptions as to what is right or true. Acting rationally in this sense would have me pondering whether I am really a nice and reasonable young man. If reason and evidence tell me it is not so, I’d have to adjust.

When compared to exterior rationality, interior rationality is often dismissed as necessarily irrational. However, this need not be the case. Interior rationality is prone to mistakes, but we can use exterior rationality to keep it in line. Indeed, I think both of these rationalities are worth striving for, as they mean we are acting according to what we have decided is right or true within our system of thought, and in our somewhat objective study of it. The key is to closely monitor the reasons why we are assuming we are rational. It is vital to dig through our beliefs until we get to the roots – to the basic assumptions that make us decide our behaviors are rational. The accuracy of our beliefs is a good clue into whether we’re really acting rationally. And this is critically important, because from my vantage point, while man might have impressively honed interior rationality, he has a long way to go before achieving rationality in the exterior sense proposed here.

Podcast Teaser: Cordelia Fine on Delusions of Gender

by Massimo Pigliucci

The next guest on the Rationally Speaking podcast will be Cordelia Fine, author of Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences. Fine is an academic psychologist, and previously author of A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives, and she will be joining us from her base in Melbourne, Australia.

Delusions of Gender is a vehement attack on what Fine considers pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory, yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. That’s the reason, we’re told, that there are so few women in science and engineering and so few men in the laundry room — different brains are just better suited to different things. 

Drawing on the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, Fine sets out to rebut these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, are helping to perpetuate the sexist status quo.

One of our previous podcast guests, Carol Tavris, had this to say about the book: "a witty and meticulously researched exposé of the sloppy studies that pass for scientific evidence in so many of today’s bestselling books on sex differences. ... Anyone who would like to know what today’s best science reveals about gender differences — and similarities — could not do better than read this book."

Naturally, this is going to be a rather controversial topic, and we welcome readers’ comments and questions for Dr. Fine. Post away!

Genuinely puzzled: what exactly is Blackford saying about Harris?

by Massimo Pigliucci

Ever since my (frankly, negative) review of Sam Harris’ book, The Moral Landscape came out, staunch Harris supporters have told me that I really ought (is that a value or a fact, I wonder?) to check out what Russell Blackford has to say about the book. I respect Blackford, regardless of our disagreements on the epistemic limits of science, and even despite the fact that Jerry Coyne has come to refer to him as “Brother Russell” (Brother, really?). So I checked what Blackford has to say about Harris. It’s a long review, well worth the read, but it left me seriously puzzled, primarily because in a follow-up post, Blackford himself says that he pretty much agrees with my criticisms of Harris.

Blackford starts out with high praise for the book: “[harris] presents an eloquent, passionate, but scholarly defense of his particular take on the phenomenon of morality,” which led me to think he must have actually read a somewhat different book. I remembered the passion, but certainly not the scholarship. Blackford goes on: “In that sense, I need go no further. Is this book worth obtaining and reading? Emphatically yes.” But in fact he does go further, for quite a long while, essentially dismantling every single piece of Harris’ “scholarly” arguments. Don’t take my word for it, what follows is a series of extracts from Blackford’s own review. See if you get to the end and don’t feel as puzzled as I did when I finished reading it (the italics and parenthetical statements are mine).

Concerning Harris’ take on moral relativism and ethics: “Unfortunately, Harris sees it as necessary to defend a naïve metaethical position; and, although the defense itself is conducted with considerable sophistication, he does not seem to understand the more sophisticated theories ... Harris reaches these conclusions only by offering what strikes me as a highly implausible and ultimately unsustainable account of the phenomenon of morality ... Harris is impatient with all this, and often resorts to outright scorn in rejecting considerations that don’t fit with his position.”

On values as scientific “facts”: “Harris overreaches when he claims that science can determine human values. Indeed, it’s not clear how much the book really argues such a thing, despite its provocative subtitle [seems to me that’s what the book is all about, but okay] ... Harris is not thereby giving an account of how science can determine our most fundamental values or the totality of our values ... He is, however, no more successful in deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’ than anyone else has ever been [this was another central part of Harris’ project]. The whole intellectual system of The Moral Landscape depends on an “ought” being built into its foundations.”

On “well-being”: “Unfortunately, [the idea that the point of moral systems is to promote well-being] would not assist Harris in insisting that moral questions have determinate, objectively correct answers ... There could end up being legitimate disagreement on what is to be done, with no answer that is objectively binding on all the disagreeing parties ... Harris, however, appears committed to the view that there are determinate and objectively correct answers to all moral questions, even if we cannot discover them in practice ... [but] I doubt that there really is a metric that we can use to gain fully determinate answers to questions of what will maximize well-being.”

On the objectivity of moral judgments: “‘How am I to act?’ and ‘How am I to live?’ It’s these questions that really matter, if we’re looking for guidance for our actions. Harris never provides a satisfactory response to this line of thought, and I doubt that one is possible ... Harris seems to think that the course of conduct which maximizes global well-being is the morally right one because ‘morally right’ just means something like ‘such as to maximize global well-being.’ But this won’t do ... Harris toys with the rather desperate idea that even the word ‘should,’ or the expression ‘ought to,’ can be translated along the lines that ‘You should do X,’ or ‘You ought to do X’ means ‘X will maximize global well-being.’ Apart from the inherent implausibility of this for any competent speaker of the English language, it misses the point ... Harris does not seem to understand this idea ... Leaving aside Harris’ habitual over-reliance on the words ‘clear’ and ‘clearly,’ often to support assertions that are not clear at all, Mackie [whom Harris dismisses for engaging in naïve philosophy] makes no such error.”

Now, given all the above, I understand why Blackford agrees with my criticism of Harris. The only thing he seems to complain about concerning my review is that I claim that Harris is affected by the common malady of scientism. But even there, Blackford writes: “In the end, the problems with The Moral Landscape aren't so much about thinking that all problems can be solved by science. Even if Harris may sometimes seem to think that, the real problems are elsewhere.” Well, yes, there are plenty of other problems elsewhere in the book, as Blackford’s own damning (though superficially positive) review clearly shows. But I do think that a major problem with the whole project is precisely the stubborn attempt to overextend the reach of science which is properly labeled as scientism. And Blackford implicitly agrees that Harris can fairly be accused of such, he just doesn’t agree that that is the major problem with the book.

What I don’t understand is why — given all the above — Blackford concludes that Harris’ book makes a valuable contribution. Apparently, such contribution is to be found not in Harris’ idea that science can derive an ought from an is, but simply in Harris’ criticism of moral relativism, a criticism that Blackford himself labels as rather naïve in the middle of his review. So, I wish to thank “Brother Russell” for doing a masterful job at showing why Harris gets the most important parts of his project completely wrong. And to people who really wish to learn something about ethics and how moral judgment works, please do yourself a favor and read Michael Sandel’s wonderful Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? instead. You’ll thank me for that.

Response to Jonathan Haidt’s response, on the academy’s liberal bias

by Massimo Pigliucci

Dear Prof. Haidt,

You understandably got upset by my harsh criticism of your recent claims about the mechanisms behind the alleged anti-conservative bias that apparently so permeates the modern academy. I find it amusing that you simply assumed I had not looked at your talk and was therefore speaking without reason. Yet, I have indeed looked at it (it is currently published at Edge, a non-peer reviewed webzine), and found that it simply doesn’t add much to the substance (such as it is) of Tierney’s summary.

Yes, you do acknowledge that there may be multiple reasons for the imbalance between the number of conservative and liberal leaning academics, but then you go on to characterize the academy, at least in your field, as a tribe having a serious identity issue, with no data whatsoever to back up your preferred subset of causal explanations for the purported problem.

Indeed, your talk is simply an extended op-ed piece, which starts out with a summary of your findings about the different moral outlooks of conservatives and liberals (which I have criticized elsewhere on this blog), and then proceeds to build a flimsy case based on a couple of anecdotes and some badly flawed data.

For instance, slide 23 shows a Google search for “liberal social psychologist,” highlighting the fact that one gets a whopping 2,740 results (which, actually, by Google standards is puny; a search under my own name yields 145,000, and I ain’t no Lady Gaga). You then compared this search to one for “conservative social psychologist” and get only three entries. Voilà, case closed, bias demonstrated!

Really? First of all, if Google searches are the main tool of social psychology these days, I fear for the entire field. Second, I actually re-did your searches — at the prompting of one of my readers — and came up with quite different results. As the photo here shows, if you actually bother to scroll through the initial Google search for “liberal social psychologist” you will find that there are in fact only 24 results, to be compared to 10 (not 3) if you search for “conservative social psychologist.” Oops. From this scant data I would simply conclude that political orientation isn’t a big deal in social psychology.

Your talk continues with some pretty vigorous hand-waving: “We rely on our peers to find flaws in our arguments, but when there is essentially nobody out there to challenge liberal assumptions and interpretations of experimental findings, the peer review process breaks down, at least for work that is related to those sacred values.” Right, except that I would like to see a systematic survey of exactly how the lack of conservative peer review has affected the quality of academic publications. Oh, wait, it hasn’t, at least according to what you yourself say in the next sentence: “The great majority of work in social psychology is excellent, and is unaffected by these problems.” I wonder how you know this, and why — if true — you then think that there is a problem. Philosophers call this an inherent contradiction, it’s a common example of bad argument.

Finally, let me get to your outrage at the fact that I have allegedly accused you of academic misconduct and lying. I have done no such thing, and you really ought (in the ethical sense) to be careful when throwing those words around. I have simply raised the logical possibility that you (and Tierney) have an agenda, a possibility based on reading several of the things both you and Tierney have written of late. As a psychologist, I’m sure you are aware that biases can be unconscious, and therefore need not imply that the person in question is lying or engaging in any form of purposeful misconduct. Or were you implying in your own talk that your colleagues’ bias was conscious? Because if so, you have just accused an entire profession of misconduct.

Michael’s Picks

by Michael De Dora

* I’ve been poring over everything relating to Christopher Hitchens in preparation for my upcoming sit-down with the author. Here is the latest interview with Hitchens, an hour-long conversation about his illness and views with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN.

* The New York Times’ Magazine ran an incredibly interesting essay last weekend that discussed the scientific and legal issues surrounding shaken-baby syndrome.

* President Obama’s speech at the recent National Prayer Breakfast gives us a rare look into his religious beliefs. Susan Jacoby is not happy.

* Could religion be the downfall of the Tea Party? Amy Gardner of The Washington Post reports on a divide between Tea Partiers.

* The New Yorker has published an expose of Scientology. At 25,000 words, it just might be the longest article in the history of mankind, but it’s worth a read (though here’s a summary if you disagree with me).

* Jonah Lehrer writes on Wired.com about the neuroscience of music.

* A new bill proposed by Republicans would allow hospitals to turn away a pregnant woman who needs an abortion to save her life.

* Republicans also recently voted to repeal an Obama-backed bill that would destroy an asteroid headed for Earth. Just kidding, of course, though the gist of this story is summed up by a quote that strikes me as applicable elsewhere: “We believe that the decisions of how to deal with the massive asteroid are best left to the individual.”

Does the Academy discriminate against conservatives?

by Massimo Pigliucci

The latest from University of Virginia cognitive scientist Jonathan Haidt is that people holding to conservative values may be discriminated against in academia. The New York Times’ John Tierney — who is usually a bit more discriminating in his columns than this — reports of a talk that Haidt had given at the conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (this is the same Society whose journal recently published a new study “demonstrating” people’s clairvoyance when it comes to erotic images, so there). Haidt polled his audience and discovered the absolutely unastounding fact that 80% were liberal, with only a scatter of centrists and libertarians, and very, very few conservatives.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” said Haidt, noting that according to polls, 40% of Americans are conservative and only 20% liberal. He then went on to make the (truly astounding) suggestion that this is just the same as discrimination against women or minorities, and that the poor conservative academics are forced to live in closets just like gays “used to” in the 1980s (because as we all know, that problem has been solved since).

I have criticized Haidt before for his contention that progressives and conservatives have a different set of moral criteria, implying that because progressives don’t include criteria of “purity,” in-group loyalty and respect for authority, their moral spectrum is more limited than that of conservatives. My point there was that Haidt simply confuses character traits (respect for authority) with moral values (fairness, or avoidance of harm).

As far as this new controversy goes, there are so many ways to make fun of it that I’m having a hard time not indulging in a Jon Stewart moment about it. I will refrain from taking that easy route, but suppose that — as I think is highly probable — the overwhelming majority of people with high positions in Wall Street hold to libertarian or conservative views. Would Haidt therefore claim that liberals are being discriminated against in the financial sector? I think not, because the obvious and far more more parsimonious explanation is that if your politics are really to the left of the spectrum, the last thing you want to do is work for Wall Street in helping make the few outrageously rich at the expense of the many.

Similarly, I suspect the obvious reason for the “imbalance” of political views in academia is that the low pay, long time before one gets to tenure (if ever), frequent rejection rates from journals and funding agencies, and the necessity to constantly engage one’s critical thinking skills naturally select against conservatives. (Okay, the last bit about critical thinking was a conscious slip that got in there just for fun.)

I have spent decades (gulp!) in academia, and I have rarely seen open discussions of political views over lunch, and never (I repeat, never) in faculty meetings or during hiring interviews. I have never (I repeat, never), either in the sciences or in the humanities, seen a candidate’s political views come into into consideration for hiring, and in fact I have never known anyone of my new colleagues’ views on politics until much later, if we became friendly enough to discuss them over a beer (and let me tell you, my experience is that biologists and philosophers rarely talk about anything other than biology and philosophy with colleagues anyway).

What about Haidt’s claim that “anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation”? I’d say that if that is the only reason their minds jump then they don’t know how to do their work (hmm, perhaps that explains the publication of articles on ESP in their leading journal...). But I seriously doubt that is what’s going on, and I suspect that Haidt is either an incompetent psychologist (not likely) or is disingenuously saying the sort of things controversial enough to get him in the New York Times (more likely).

A serious social scientist doesn’t go around crying out discrimination just on the basis of unequal numbers. If that were the case, the NBA would be sued for discriminating against short people, dance companies against people without spatial coordination, and newspapers against dyslexics. Claims of discrimination are sensibly made only if one has a reasonable and detailed understanding of the causal factors behind the numbers. We claim that women and minorities are discriminated against in their access to certain jobs because we can investigate and demonstrate the discriminating practices that result in those numbers. Haidt hasn’t done any such thing. He simply got numbers and then ran wild with speculation about closeted libertarians. It was pretty silly of him, and down right irresponsible of Tierney to republish that garbage without critical comment. Then again, the New York Times is a known bastion of liberal journalism...

In Egypt, accepting democracy despite its risks

by Michael De Dora

A recent political cartoon presumes to depict the current situation in Egypt as a potential transition from an autocracy – the 30-year rule by President Hosni Mubarak appears to be coming to a close – to either a theocracy or a democracy. It illustrates the question that many are currently asking: in which direction will this important Middle Eastern country swing?

As it turns out, Egypt already has slivers of both theocracy and democracy. Its Constitution is rather Islamic (though it does not require all laws to perfectly conform to Sharia), but its penal system is secular, and the people have some power (hopefully, more when Mubarak leaves). What many people fear is that under new democratic reforms, the Muslim Brotherhood will gain power and move Egypt toward a stronger Islamic orientation, resembling a theocracy (1, 2). This has even led several people to question whether we should really want Mubarak out of power.

Yet while this concern is understandable, it should not be used as an argument against the full embrace of democracy in Egypt. Yes, the process through which Islam might take a stronger hold over Egyptian law would be democratic. But the fact that the Brotherhood might take more control – or more generally, that religion might influence law – is not a problem with democracy. It is a problem with religious belief. At the same time, some religious influence is not enough to turn a country into a theocracy. Consider the U.S.: we have our fair share of religiously based laws, but we are not a theocracy. In the same way, an increased role for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt wouldn’t necessarily make for a theocracy either.

Let me be clear: I reject religious belief as a basis for public policy (or anything else for that matter). It is unsupported by reason and evidence. Furthermore, in a pluralistic society, its precepts cannot be forced on people who are non-religious or of a different religious persuasion. I believe that only a secular governmental foundation can securely provide natural human rights and freedoms everyone can accept and support, and I think that our discourse and policies should reflect this secular orientation.

But I also recognize that democracy does not guarantee a secular society or politics. Democracy only guarantees people the right to speak and act their minds, and the power to create, revise, update, and change the laws as they wish. Thus, whatever social dynamics are at play will alter the foundations of government. The legal and political landscape will look different depending on what the citizens believe. If the people are religious, the laws will reflect that.

Fortunately, there are two constraints on this dynamic. One essential constraint is provided by a Constitution (or other founding document). The U.S. has a firm secular grounding that makes theocracy near impossible. Unfortunately, Egypt does not, and this should be of concern. The other constraint is we the people. We are bound to disagree with attempted or actual changes to our society and laws, but we need not sit back and accept the changes we dislike. In a democracy we all have the opportunity to state our case in the public square, and to have a say in the makeup of our government. This is both our right and our duty.

So the real problems in Egypt are not the possibilities opened up by democratic change, but its Constitution, and the beliefs that help underwrite its support. We should not lament the freedom to believe and act and influence our (or any) government. We should not be overly cautious about democracy because of the consequences that may follow from its exercise. Instead, we ought to work to preserve or foster a secular foundation, and fight pernicious ideas that may undermine democracy at their roots. Through this process, back and forth – and hopefully forward – our social, political, and moral compasses change. But there is no guarantee things will go our way, as an unknown future is a cost of an open society. I happen to think liberty is worth it.

Massimo’s Picks

by Massimo Pigliucci

* Yet another thing that is profoundly and disturbingly wrong with Texas.

* Republicans redefine rape, making a distinction between normal rape and forcible rape. Classy.

* Play the to lie or not to lie game, and find out which ethical philosophy fits you.

* Josh Rosenau's more in-depth take on Harris (and Coyne). A scientific worldview is not the same as doing science.

* My review of Harris' book, The Moral Landscape, is out in eSkeptic (and soon in Skeptic magazine).

* Abortion does not increase mental health risk, but having babies does. So mental health is not a good argument for either.

* Sarah Palin is really a Russian spy. Here is proof.

* Philosophy to help shape a cast of ethical warriors? Sounds like Plato is back...

* One more analysis of Olbermann's departure, and it is pretty much on target, I think.

* My Amazon review of Cordelia Fine's "Delusions of Gender." A must read for those interested in nature-nurture. Stay tuned, she will soon be a guest on the Rationally Speaking podcast.

* Should victims have a say in sentencing criminals? An Aristotelian approach.

* Science magazine's Hall of Fame chart topped by a philosopher: Bertrand Russell!

* Five Ayn Rand fans on a train... (Remember to rollover with the cursor.)

* Many atheists are in love with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Should they be?

* The new Rationally Speaking podcast is out! Historian Tim Alborn on the meaning of anniversaries.

Michael’s Picks

by Michael De Dora

* Steven Hurst of the Associated Press provides some background on the moral conundrum the U.S. has faced in Egypt.

* Helene Cooper argues (poorly, I think) in the New York Times that American political rhetoric towards Egypt might not have helped.

* The Times details the process by which Obama urged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to declare he would not run for re-election in September.

* Just how large is the religious right in Egypt? Two political scientists give their answer.

* Shadi Hamid clears up some misconceptions of the Muslim Brotherhood, and discusses how the U.S. can handle the Brotherhood's potentially increased role in a democracy in Egypt.

* Reza Aslan reflects on hypocritical remarks of religious American politicians regarding the Brotherhood, and discusses Egyptian democracy.

* Mike Huckabee and other friendly faces at FOX News are questioning whether Obama acted hastily.

* And many Israelis are angered by Obama's handling of the situation.

* Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that Mubarak is "immensely courageous, and a force for good," and that the West should support him.

Philosophical intuitions, a response to Julia

by Massimo Pigliucci

Julia, ah, I love it that you started your essay with “some of my best friends are philosophers...” ;-)

Seriously, though, when you claim that most philosophical discussions get off the ground on the basis of intuitions I think you are widely off the mark. That is a skewed reading of the literature, based on a few prominent but certainly not representative examples (like the infamous zombies concocted by Chalmers). More importantly, I think the entire premise of this discussion is off base. Intuitions — in philosophy like in science, and in fact as in everyday life — are not and cannot be “evidence.” They are better thought of as embryonic hypotheses to be further tested (in the case of science) or analyzed (in the case of philosophy).

Moreover, some instances of so-called intuitions — like those underlying the trolley dilemmas, for instance — are not really intuitions at all. They are thought experiments, meant to bring out explicitly certain implicit assumptions about, for instance, ethics, or philosophy of mind, so that such assumptions are clearly out there for everyone to see and discuss (and accept or reject).

Searle’s Chinese room, for instance, is really a thought experiment, not an appeal to intuition. Searle is correct in putting the question: if the Chinese room cannot in any sense be said to “know” Chinese (and it really would be difficult to argue that it does), then there is something missing from a straightforward computational theory of mind. The thought experiment is meant to highlight this point and to pose a challenge. We are not meant simply to believe Searle’s intuition and be done with it, but to try to figure out where the analogy between a computing mind and a computing Chinese room went wrong — if anywhere.

Back to ethics, you are confusing two different approaches when you go from intuitionism (which really is a doctrine based on the significance of ethical intuitions, and which I don't buy) to the criticisms of utilitarianism based on hypothetical situations. The latter are perfectly legitimate, rational (i.e., non intuitive) critiques. As you know, I actually think that ethics is pretty much all about “what if ... then ... why” sort of issues: IF you are a utilitarian, and IF you face a situation in which you can kill one person in order to save five, what would you THEN do, and WHY? And the utilitarian has to meet the challenge, again not by appealing to inscrutable intuitions, but on the basis of reasons. And of course many sophisticated utilitarians, like Peter Singer, have.

Of course, there are examples that do make your case. I think G.E. Moore was simply wrong about his reasoning concerning a beautiful vs. ugly — but inaccessible — world, where the beautiful would in any meaningful sense be “better.” But I know of very few philosophers who have been moved by Moore’s so-called reasoning. So, your rejection of Moore puts you in excellent company! Indeed, your objections to Moore (please define what you mean by better, worse, beautiful and ugly) are standard, and show how easily one can reject a too cavalier use of intuition in philosophy.

Your point that different philosophers have different intuitions, and that somehow this should make us feel uncomfortable seems a bit strange to me. Do you feel uncomfortable because different scientists have different hunches about, say, the value of string theory? And while it is possible (though entirely unsubstantiated) that “having the ‘right’ intuitions is the entry ticket to various subareas of philosophy” this is certainly the case in science. According to Lee Smolin, for a long time it was next to impossible to find a job in fundamental physics, or get a grant funded, unless you shared the community’s intuition that string theory is the only game in town when it comes to unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. I’ve had for years the same experience in certain domains of evolutionary biology, when I was a practicing scientist.

You then proceed to make the valid point that we know of all sorts of other intuitions that seem reasonable to most people but are in fact wrong. Your example is the intuition that there must be more rational numbers than positive integers. But that’s an intuition shared by laypeople, not mathematicians. Mathematicians, however, feel comfortable with their intuition (because there is no proof yet) that Goldbach's conjecture is true. At the moment, that’s all it is, an intuition. But since it is an intuition shared by a group of people with a lot of expertise in math in general and with Goldbach’s conjecture in particular, I think it’s a good bet that they are probably right, or that there is at least good reason to consider the notion seriously. The same argument applies to your (again, valid) criticism of folk understanding of physics. But you are probably not going to argue that professional physicists share that sort of naive intuition. Indeed, that particular intuition was initially put in doubt by a thought experiment concocted by Galileo (who, contrary to popular lore, never actually conducted the physical experiment to test his intuition).

Your quote of Harman is a non sequitur: “Considering the inadequacies of ordinary physical intuitions, it is natural to wonder whether ordinary moral intuitions might be similarly inadequate.” Right, the problem is that moral philosophers are people who constantly think about ethics, so their intuitions in that regard are anything but the equivalent of “ordinary physical intuitions,” just like Galileo did not rely on ordinary intuitions about physics.

I’m not sure why you then bring up our Pleistocene ancestry. Certainly whatever “intuitive” thinking may have evolved in us about quantum mechanics shouldn’t be trusted, but this isn’t the sort of intuition we are talking about. Intuition in the sense discussed here is not the same as instinctive behavior. Indeed, there is a large literature on the cognitive science of intuitions (I've been reading about it in preparation for a chapter of my new book), which basically suggests that: a) intuition is the result of sub-conscious processing of information by the brain; b) that it is domain-specific (so, for instance, chess masters have excellent intuitions about chess, but not about anything else); and c) that it can be effectively used either heuristically (when one doesn't have time to further analyze things), or as a preliminary hypothesis on the basis of which to conduct further inquiries.

I am a bit baffled by your citing of Jonathan Haidt and his argument about incest. Yes, a large number of people have a “yuck” reaction to incest precisely for the evolutionary reasons you mention, and it certainly is interesting to study the neural underpinning of such reactions, like Haidt does. But what does that have to do with the ethical issues posed by incest in a modern context? Do you really think that most ethicists would support a “yuck” type of reaction and therefore agree with the lay person that incest is wrong under all circumstances? In the same paragraph you also mix categories of explanation inappropriately. Let’s say that a particular lay intuition (about probability, instead of ethics) can be shown to be the result of evolution. Would you then ask, as you do in the case of ethics, “since that [evolutionary] fact alone suffices to explain the (widespread) presence of the X intuition, why should we take that intuition as evidence that X is true?” The answer is because something that evolution favored may or may not be true, but we could take it’s (alleged) evolutionary origin as provisional evidence that it may be true, or at least useful, and go from there. Again, the idea is to treat intuitions as preliminary hypotheses to be further investigated.

Finally, the question with which you conclude your post seems to me a bit too grandiose: “Can analytic philosophy survive without intuition?” Of course it can, since a lot of analytic philosophy simply does not depend on intuition, and nowhere in analytic philosophy is intuition considered the final arbiter of truth. And of course, it is somewhat ironic that you quote several papers by analytic philosophers, discussing — analytically — the role of intuitions in philosophy. Analysis, not intuition, is what analytic philosophy is all about.


UPDATE: Spurred by a lively discussion on Julia's Facebook page about this, I actually finally got raw quantitative data (as opposed to "my reading of the literature is..." or "I talked to a philosopher who told me that...") pertinent to the issue at hand.


According to the Philosopher's Index, the most comprehensive database of philosophical entries (covering 1940-2010), 2052 articles published in English over the past 70 years include the word "intuition" in the abstract. This, arguably, is an overestimate as far as this discussion is concerned, since not all these papers actually deploy philosophical intuitions as a major part of their arguments.


Still, this is out of a total of 234,018 papers, which means 0.88%. I think that any claim to the effect that intuition plays a "major" role in the philosophical literature runs into trouble, given these statistics.


Out of further curiosity, I inquired about the possible differential frequency of the use of the term intuition in abstracts taken from different sub-fields of philosophy. Here is the breakdown (the total doesn't add up to 2052 because there is a fairly significant "miscellaneous" category):

461 in ethics
417 in epistemology
385 in metaphysics
276 in logic
190 in philosophy of science
100 in semantics
46 in political philosophy