Topics Logic

Question If our brains evolved to be predisposed to logical fallacies like post hoc ergo propter hoc for beneficial reasons (for example, it has been suggested that susceptibility to post hoc ergo propter hoc aids in the learning of inferences), then might people be harmed if they are trained to overcome (even partially) these predispositions, as teaching them philosophy might do? Should tests be devised for the abilities that those logical fallacies enhance, so that there is a way to determine if training is harmful?

Accepted:
February 5, 2008

Comments

Philosophy departments like to tell themselves (and their funding bodies!) that the study of philosophy distinctively makes their students better all-round thinkers -- in the fashionable jargon, our courses deliver special "transferable skills".

Actually, that strikes me as really a rather unlikely claim (at least if it means any more than that our students grow up, get more mature, learn not to jump to conclusions, learn how to write well-presented coherently organized papers, etc., which happens with pretty much any serious academically rigorous degree course). Anyone who has sat through scores of departmental meetings, listening to various bunches of philosophers trying to muddle through organizing their affairs, often making a complete hash of it, knows perfectly well that -- outside their research work -- even the best philosophers are no better at thinking straight and keeping their eye on the ball than anyone else. (And after those departmental meetings, are the pub conversations about politics, say, noticably any sharper and more rational with philosophers than with other smart, well-informed, people? Certainly not.)

Doing a lot of philosophy sure improves your performance at philosophy, but otherwise doesn't seem to me to have especially good effects on "cognitive skills". But -- the question asks -- could it in fact have bad effects?

I remember the logician Geoffrey Hunter once telling me the following story. At the beginning of his elementary formal logic course, he'd give out a sheet of sample arguments, and ask students to tick off the ones they thought were good arguments. At the end of the course, he'd give out the same sheet. And average scores went down.

You can see why! Whereas at the beginning students had to think through the examples, doing the best they could, later they were tempted to be over-impressed with their shiny new half-understood formal tools, and apply them thoughtlessly, at least while in the logic classroom, forgetting (for example) all those warnings about translating "if" using the truth-functional horseshoe.

Does that mean introductory logic courses should come with a health warning? Well, no: for I bet the "damage" was temporary and superficial. Once outside the formal logic classroom, students quickly forget most of what we've said -- as again any philosophy teacher knows.

So I really wouldn't worry too much. I'm fairly sure that philosophy or logic courses have little distinctive impact for good or ill on general "cognitive skills" compared with other serious academic studies (which is fine by me, as the courses are, after all, supposed to be teaching philosophy). And I'm even more sure that such effects that they do have don't reach down to disturb the patterns of hard-wired quick-and-dirty cognitive processing which evolution has provided us with.

However, those are just my guesses. It would indeed be very interesting to have some careful, well-controlled, empirical research to appeal to, which tells us about the comparative impact that e.g. a couple of years as a philosophy major, has on general reasoning abilities. But I don't myself know of any work. Maybe some other panelist has some pointers?