Question A long time ago - Jan 2006 if I'm not mistaken - Alan Soble wrote (http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/875): "Finally, the heart and soul of philosophy is argument, providing reasons for claims, including claims about morality and duties. In the answer to the question above, I cannot find a shred of argument. We should also avoid, that is, pastoral or friendly counseling. Without rigor, philosophy is nothing." That was back in the days when there was routinely more than 1 response to a question. Today's responses seem more and more to be becoming "pastoral or friendly counseling" without rigor. The panelists do not argue with each other - the responses are just accepted. Here's an example: Peter Smith wrote very recently (http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/2823): "For irrationally formed beliefs are not likely to lead to actions which get any of us what we want -- including a decent life, lived well in the knowledge of our all-too-explicable mortality." This statement - simply put out there, with no argument behind it - seems utterly preposterous. Beliefs will make us happy or not based on their content - not how they are formed. In fact, I might even choose to believe something JUST BECAUSE it will make me happy. They say the truth is often ugly and hard to take. Surely not the sort of thing that will make me happy. Of course it depends on what we mean by "happy". But Professor Smith doesn't think it's important to point this out in his friendly and pastoral and dogmatic response. Neither do any of the other panelists. Has the site lost some of its rigor?

Accepted:
August 30, 2009

Comments

Your comment on Peter Smith's claim, "utterly preposterous," doesn't sound like rigorous argument to me, but more like contemptuous dismissal. I'm glad panelists aren't displaying more of your style of rigor!

The consideration you do offer seems to misunderstand Smith's claim. What you quote him as saying is that if our actions are guided by beliefs that have been irrationally formed, it's likely that those actions will not promote our ends. I can see why he says this: if you think (1) that irrationally formed beliefs are as likely as not to be false and (2) that actions guided by false beliefs are not likely to get us what we want, his claim follows. Your observation – that we sometimes take pleasure in beliefs even if they have been irrationally arrived at – seems correct but beside the point: it speaks neither to the truth of (1) nor to that of (2).

I agree with your observation that (at least for the most part) beliefs will make us happy on account of their content, not on accout of how they are formed -- rationally versus irrationally. And unlike Alexander George, I think that this observation presents a significant challenge to Peter Smith's claim that irrational beliefs are not likely to lead to actions that get us what we want -- since actions that result from false but happy-making beliefs may often create more happiness than actions that result from true but sad-making beliefs. A simple, and common, example is the case where a seriously ill person's false and irrational belief that they are now out of danger actually helps them to recover. Another common example is that of the person whose overconfidence actually improves their likelihood of success.

Jennifer Church points out a couple of types of a case where irrationally formed beliefs (or degrees of belief, in the over-confidence case) can promote our welfare. Sure there are such cases.

But that doesn't affect the original point at stake. There being a few cases doesn't undermine the point that in general false beliefs (because of their content!) are unlikely to lead to successful action,* and so irrationally formed beliefs -- being likely to be false -- are not in general likely to lead to actions which get us what we want. And that is enough to explain why we should in generalcare a lot about forming our beliefs in a rational way. Which in turnis enough to counter the original questioner's worry that philosophy"uses as its main tool a mechanism [rational thought] that is theopposite of what is most important to us": in general,rational belief-formation matters for getting whatever is important tous.

*Indeed, some attractive views about ascribing content to belief-states, such as Ramsey's success semantics, make that point pivotal to the theory of content.

There does seem to be an important class of exceptions to the generalization that true belief and rational belief formation help us get what we want. It seems that forming beliefs about oneself in certain irrational ways typically leads to greater happiness. An article summarizing the evidence for that is here.

I don't agree with Soble's claim that "without rigor, philosophy is nothing." Philosophy can be a source of insight, a glimpse into a completely different way of thinking about things, a moment of doubt, an invitation to reflection, the introduction of a new concept, and much more. All this can happen without argument and without "rigor," whatever that is supposed to be. And disagreement, although valuable, is not necessary for good philosophy. An over-emphasis on "rigor" can shut down genuine inquiry and leave us with sterile platitudes, and agonistic debate is only one model for gaining knowledge. "Rigorous" philosophy, full of argument, and undertaken in a spirit of debate can be fantastic, but philosophy is also so much more than this!