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“The epistemology of evolutionary debunking”, Koon 2021

2021-koon.pdf: “The epistemology of evolutionary debunking”⁠, Justis Koon (2021-08-16):

15 years ago, Sharon Street and Richard Joyce advanced evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism, which purported to show that the evolutionary history of our moral beliefs makes moral realism untenable. These arguments have since given rise to a flurry of objections; the epistemic principles Street and Joyce relied upon, in particular, have come in for a number of serious challenges. My goal in this paper is to develop a new account of evolutionary debunking which avoids the pitfalls Street and Joyce encountered and responds to the most pressing objections they faced. I begin by presenting a striking thought experiment to serve as an analogy for the evolution of morality; I then show why calibrationist views of higher-order evidence are crucial to the evolutionary debunking project; I outline a new rationale for why finding out that morality was selected to promote cooperation suggests that our moral judgments are unreliable; and I explain why evolutionary debunking arguments do not depend on our having a dedicated faculty for moral cognition. All things considered, I argue, evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism are on relatively secure footing—provided, at least, that we accept a calibrationist account of higher-order evidence. [Keywords: evolutionary debunking, moral realism, meta-ethics, evolution of morality, higher-order evidence, calibrationism]

…Sharon Street (2006, 2015) and Richard Joyce (2006, 2013, 2016) have both advanced evolutionary debunking arguments which purport to show that, if moral realism is true, our moral beliefs are systematically unjustified. These arguments are motivated by recent empirical work on the evolution of morality, work which suggests that the human moral sense was selected chiefly to promote cooperation among small tribes of hunter-gatherers in our distant evolutionary past. If, however, our moral sense evolved due to the positive contribution that cooperation made to our ancestors’ reproductive fitness, it becomes something of a mystery how it could also succeed in tapping into a well of mind-independent moral truths. It seems like it would be an extraordinary coincidence—in Street’s words, nothing short of a miracle—if evolutionary forces indifferent to the moral truth somehow shaped our faculties to be appropriately sensitive to it.

…This concludes my case for the thesis that evolutionary debunking arguments, properly formulated, present a powerful challenge to moral realism. I have said little, however, about how I think we should conceive of morality, if it is not to be construed realistically. Although I do not have space to discuss my own views at any length here, I suggest we should take seriously the proposal that morality is an adaptive illusion, one built into our minds by natural selection in order to facilitate cooperation among our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Thus, the metaphysics of morality is the metaphysics of illusions, the epistemology of morality is the epistemology of illusions, and the semantics of morality is the semantics of illusions. I do not believe morality is unique in this respect—I follow Daniel Dennett (1991, 2013, 2016, 2017) in thinking that much of our conscious interface with the world, what he calls the manifest image, is an illusion created by selection to aid us in navigating our physical and social environment. It takes only a little reflection on the aim and workings of natural selection to convince yourself that this might be so. Selection’s focus on survival and reproduction is single-minded and absolute; it has no special love for truth, and it will eagerly pack our minds with illusions, other evolutionary constraints permitting, whenever doing so contributes to our reproductive fitness. It should come as no surprise, then, if the moral sense, which presents itself as a window onto a mind-independent domain of morals, instead turns out to be a sham mirror pointed squarely back into our evolutionary past.

“Anthropocentric biases in teleological thinking: How nature seems designed for humans”, Preston & Shin 2021

2021-preston.pdf: “Anthropocentric biases in teleological thinking: How nature seems designed for humans”⁠, Jesse L. Preston, Faith Shin (2021):

People frequently see design in nature that reflects intuitive teleological thinking—that is, the order in nature that supports life suggests it was designed for that purpose. This research proposes that inferences are stronger when nature supports human life specifically.

Five studies (n = 1,788) examine evidence for an anthro-teleological bias. People agreed more with design statements framed to aid humans (e.g., “Trees produce oxygen so that humans can breathe”) than the same statements framed to aid other targets (e.g., “Trees produce oxygen so that leopards can breathe”).

The bias was greatest when advantages for humans were well-known and salient (e.g., the ozone layer) and decreased when advantages for other targets were made explicit. The bias was not eliminated by highlighting the benefits for other species, however, and emerged spontaneously for novel phenomena (“Jupiter’s gravity protects Earth from asteroids”).

We conclude that anthropocentric biases enhance existing teleological biases to see stronger design in phenomena where it enables human survival.

[Keywords: teleological thinking, anthropocentrism, intelligent design, egocentrism, explanation]

“Fuck Nuance”, Healy 2017

2017-healy.pdf: “Fuck Nuance”⁠, Kieran Healy (2017-06-26; backlinks):

Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Although often demanded and superficially attractive, nuance inhibits the abstraction on which good theory depends. I describe three “nuance traps” common in sociology and show why they should be avoided on grounds of principle, aesthetics, and strategy. The argument is made without prejudice to the substantive heterogeneity of the discipline.

“Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing, Appendix: A Chronological Compilation of Testimonial Evidence for Esotericism”, Melzer 2014

2014-melzer-appendix.pdf: “Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing, Appendix: A Chronological Compilation of Testimonial Evidence for Esotericism”⁠, Arthur M. Melzer (2014-09-09; backlinks):

Beginning with Homer and ending with Wittgenstein⁠, I present here in chronological order all the major, explicit testimony concerning philosophical esotericism that I have found to date. It includes all the quotations of this kind used in the book as well as many others that were not used. Still, it is far from exhaustive. Readers with suggestions for additions can send them to philosophybetweenthelines@outlook.com.

The compilation includes statements of several different kinds. First, declarations by an author of his own esotericism; second, other remarks concerning the phenomenon of esotericism in general; third, the author’s claim that some other writer wrote esoterically; and fourth, some other writer’s claim that the author wrote esoterically.

Testimony about Ancient Philosophy as a Whole

Homer

Hesiod

Aesop of Samos

Anacharsis

Pythagoras

Simonides of Ceos

Heraclitus

Protagoras

Thucydides

Isocrates

…

Sigmund Freud

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Ludwig Wittgenstein

[110 pages]

“Cognitive Enhancement in Courts”, Sandberg et al 2011

2011-sandberg.pdf: “Cognitive Enhancement in Courts”⁠, Anders Sandberg, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Julian Savulescu (2011-04-01):

Human cognitive performance has crucial importance for legal process, often creating the difference between fair and unfair imprisonment. Lawyers, judges, and jurors need to follow long and complex arguments. They need to understand technical language. Jurors need to remember what happens during a long trial. The demands imposed on jurors in particular are sizeable and the cognitive challenges are discussed in this chapter. Jurors are often subjected to both tremendous decision complexity and tremendous evidence complexity. Some of these problems could be ameliorated if we can somehow enhance the cognitive capacities, including attention and memory, of various players in trials. There are multiple ways in which cognition can be improved either by external tools or by an increasing number of biomedical interventions that act directly on the brain. The article surveys a range of beneficial and detrimental effects that substances can have on cognition.

[Keywords: cognitive performance, cognitive challenges, jurors, decision complexity, external tools]

“The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation”, Shwed & Bearman 2010

2010-shwed.pdf: “The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation”⁠, Uri Shwed, Peter S. Bearman (2010-12-13):

This article engages with problems that are usually opaque: What trajectories do scientific debates assume, when does a scientific community consider a proposition to be a fact, and how can we know that?

We develop a strategy for evaluating the state of scientific contestation on issues. The analysis builds from Latour’s black box imagery, which we observe in scientific citation networks. We show that as consensus forms, the importance of internal divisions to the overall network structure declines. We consider substantive cases that are now considered facts, such as the carcinogenicity of smoking and the non-carcinogenicity of coffee. We then employ the same analysis to currently contested cases: the suspected carcinogenicity of cellular phones, and the relationship between vaccines and autism.

Extracting meaning from the internal structure of scientific knowledge carves a niche for renewed sociological commentary on science, revealing a typology of trajectories that scientific propositions may experience en route to consensus.

[Keywords: sociology of science, consensus, black boxing, network analysis, citations]

“Inverse Law of Scientific Nomenclature”, Alexander 2010

2010-yvain-inverselawofscientificnomenclature.html: “Inverse Law of Scientific Nomenclature”⁠, Scott Alexander (2010-10-23; backlinks):

It is, of course, a notable prediction of this theory that the least scientific idea possible would end up called “Scientology”.

Or so I thought! Last night, I discovered there was a movement called “Factology”. Obviously this requires further investigation!

…But surely they don’t just randomly draw crazy conclusions based on a few words that sound the same, do they? Well, here’s a quote from their Wikipedia article, about “examples of movies with encoded content about the reality of aliens among us”:

Yoda…is short for Judah. Freemasons are inspired by one entity and that is a grey, by the name of Yoda. Yoda guides Freemasonry back to Judah, with the ancient Israel masonry. The British “Covenant Of Man” symbolizes the empire striking back. America is the empire fighting to overthrow Europe…The word Yoda is not an English word as you have been led to believe. Its root word yawdaw appears 111 times in the Old Testament, means “to give thanks or praise, throw down, cast, shoot.” The word Yadah meaning, to “to praise, give thanks” stems from the root word Yawdaw and appears only two times in the Old Testament (Daniel 2:23, Daniel 6:10). Not to mention the fact Yoda played in [the film] Return of the Jedi, and the word jedi is the same as yeti, it’s just a matter of a letter, it’s really the same word. Yeti is the name of Sasquatch (Bigfoot), also called Seti which is equivalent to the Extraterrestrials called the Seirians.

…Okay, so Uncle Sam is a gnostic demon, as revealed by Dr. Seuss who is secretly the king of the pagan gods. But can they get even crazier?:

White people were bred to be food, and the ‘rapture’ expected by Christians is really the return of the ‘raptors’ who will dine on the now-ripe delicious white flesh.

“Are philosophers expert intuiters?”, Weinberg et al 2010

2010-weinberg.pdf: “Are philosophers expert intuiters?”⁠, Jonathan M. Weinberg, Chad Gonnerman, Cameron Buckner, Joshua Alexander (2010-06-24):

Recent experimental philosophy arguments have raised trouble for philosophers’ reliance on armchair intuitions.

One popular line of response has been the expertise defense: philosophers are highly-trained experts, whereas the subjects in the experimental philosophy studies have generally been ordinary undergraduates, and so there’s no reason to think philosophers will make the same mistakes. But this deploys a substantive empirical claim, that philosophers’ training indeed inculcates sufficient protection from such mistakes.

We canvass the psychological literature on expertise, which indicates that people are not generally very good at reckoning who will develop expertise under what circumstances. We consider 3 promising hypotheses concerning what philosophical expertise might consist in:

better conceptual schemata;

mastery of entrenched theories; and

general practical know-how with the entertaining of hypotheticals.

On inspection, none seem to provide us with good reason to endorse this key empirical premise of the expertise defense.

[Keywords: armchair philosophy, conceptual schemata, configural rules, experimental philosophy, expertise, intuitions, restrictionist challenge]

“Trust in Testimony: How Children Learn About Science and Religion”, Harris & Koenig 2006

2006-harris.pdf: “Trust in Testimony: How Children Learn About Science and Religion”⁠, Paul L. Harris, Melissa A. Koenig (2006-05-09):

Many adult beliefs are based on the testimony provided by other people rather than on firsthand observation. Children also learn from other people’s testimony. For example, they learn that mental processes depend on the brain, that the earth is spherical, and that hidden bodily organs constrain life and death. Such learning might indicate that other people’s testimony simply amplifies children’s access to empirical data. However, children’s understanding of God’s special powers and the afterlife shows that their acceptance of others’ testimony extends beyond the empirical domain. Thus, children appear to conceptualize unobservable scientific and religious entities similarly. Nevertheless, some children distinguish between the 2 domains, arguably because a different pattern of discourse surrounds scientific as compared to religious entities.

“Is Critical Thinking Epistemically Responsible?”, Huemer 2005

2005-huemer.pdf: “Is Critical Thinking Epistemically Responsible?”⁠, Michael Huemer (2005-07-06):

There are at least three strategies we might take in approaching controversial issues: (1) we might accept the conclusions of experts on their authority, (2) we might evaluate the relevant evidence and arguments for ourselves, or (3) we might give up on finding the answers. Students of “critical thinking” are regularly advised to follow strategy (2). But strategies (1) and (3) are usually superior to (2), from the standpoint of the goal of gaining true beliefs and avoiding false ones.

“Tacit Knowledge, Trust and the Q of Sapphire”, Collins 2001

2001-collins.pdf: “Tacit Knowledge, Trust and the Q of Sapphire”⁠, H. M. Collins (2001-01-01):

Russian measurements of the quality factor (Q) of sapphire, made 20 years ago, have only just been repeated in the West. Shortfalls in tacit knowledge have been partly responsible for this delay. The idea of ` tacit knowledge’, first put forward by the physical chemist Michael Polanyi, has been studied and analysed over the last two decades. A new classification of tacit knowledge (broadly construed) is offered here and applied to the case of sapphire. The importance of personal contact between scientists is brought out and the sources of trust described. It is suggested that the reproduction of scientific findings could be aided by a small addition to the information contained in experimental reports. The analysis is done in the context of fieldwork conducted in the USA and observations of experimental work at Glasgow University.