Goodbye to Yesterday...

Your grades are now posted. Enjoy your winter break!

I'll leave you with a little rant on that favorite topic of mine: intellectual honesty. A simple goal of this class was to get us all to recognize what counts as good evidence and what counts as bad evidence for a claim. I think we did get better at that. But this doesn't guarantee that we'll care about the difference once we figure it out.

Getting us to care was the real goal of this class. We should care about good evidence. We should care about evidence and arguments because they get us closer to the truth. When we judge an argument to be overall good, THE POWER OF LOGIC COMPELS US to believe the conclusion. If we are presented with decent evidence for some claim, but still stubbornly disagree with this claim, we are just being irrational. Worse, we're effectively saying that the truth doesn't matter to us.

Instead, we should be open-minded. We should be willing to challenge ourselves, and let new evidence change our current beliefs. We should be open to the possibility that we've currently gotten something wrong. This is how comedian Todd Glass puts it:


Here are the first two paragraphs of a great article I read last year on this:

Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. "Absolutely not," he said. "No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct."

I was floored. In his brief rebuttal, he blindly demonstrated overconfidence in his own ideas and the inability to consider how new facts might alter a presently cherished opinion. Worse, he seemed unaware of how irrational his response might appear to others. It's clear, I thought, that carefully constructed arguments and presentation of irrefutable evidence will not change this man's mind.

Ironically, having extreme confidence in oneself is often a sign of ignorance. In many cases, such stubborn certainty is unwarranted.

If any of this sounds cool to you, consider joining the "Owning Our Ignorance" club I run. (We even have a Facebook group!)

Her Stroke of Insight

This is indirectly related to what we're discussing in class. It shows the degree to which our mind actively constructs our understanding of reality around us. Here's neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk on her experience of having a stroke:


Bolte Taylor wrote a whole book on her experience. It's available in most book stores. Here's a more detailed audio interview with her.

I love TED talks. Here are some of my other favorites:

• The Story Bias by Tyler Cowen
• The Psychological Roots of Political Positions by Jonathan Haidt
  
• We Don't Know What Makes Us Happy by Dan Gilbert

Innate Ideas? I've Had a Few

Here are two articles by psychologist Steven Pinker that offer some psychological insights on the innate ideas debate we've been discussing in class:

The Brain’s Versatile Toolbox (1997)

Grammar Puss (1994)

But again, why read when you can watch a video? With that in mind, here's Pinker's appearance on The Colbert Report:


Pinker has a few books on this stuff, and a lot of other interesting articles, too. Not everyone agrees with Pinker, though. Here's an article about a South American tribe that might be a counterexample to the claim that there are innate aspects of language development.

The Interpreter
(The linguist researching the tribe explains his case more here. Steven Pinker and others respond to him here.)

One more link. Here's an advanced survey article on the rationalism/empiricism debate from my favorite free online philosophy encyclopedia:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Rationalism vs. Empiricism

Yes, there is more than one free online philosophy encyclopedia.

The Philosophical Baby

Psychologist Alison Gopnik just wrote a new book called The Philosophical Baby. It's loaded with cool insights on the rationalism-empiricism debate. Here's an interview with Gopnik about the book, and here's a review. Below is her appearance on The Colbert Report.

I'm Certain I'm Doubting

Here are some links related to our discussion of knowledge from class.

• What are the philosophical implications of the movie The Matrix?
  
• Can we be abolutely certain of math truths like 2 + 3 = 5? This cartoon dinosaur says we can't!
• Here's an audio interview about Rene Descartes's famous argument that he's certain he exists.
  
• Most people don't take skepticism seriously because skeptical scenarios seem so unlikely. They're crazy, right? But Nick Bostrom argues that the probability we're living in the Matrix may be a lot higher than we think.
• (Here's a more advanced version of Bostrom's article, along with a dinosaur comic on it.)
• Here's my favorite argument for widespread skepticism. (pdf)
• The search for truth is tough. Let's get the FBI on the case!
  
• Optical illusion time! Here is a pair of collections of Julian Beever's sidewalk art that looks three-dimensional when viewed from a certain angle. Here's one of his creations:

By the way, if you have any links you think I or others in class might find interesting, let me know. And feel free to comment on any of these posts.

Reading Response #1

Reading Response #1 is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, September 24th. In a 250- to 500-word essay response, answer the following question:

• What kinds of beliefs does Descartes say he cannot be certain of? (Hint: there are 3 kinds of beliefs he says he's not certain of.) Why does he believe he can't be certain of these?
  
• What beliefs does Descartes say he can be certain of? (Hint: there are only 1 or 2 specific beliefs he says he is certain of.) Why does he believe he can be certain of these?
  
• Evaluate his reasons: do you agree with Descartes? Why or why not?

Please paraphrase Descartes's ideas in your own words. The response is based on the Descartes reading from pages 65-71 of the textbook.