Topics Philosophy

Question I absolutely recognise the primacy of logic. But logic isn't always, at least obviously, the best tool with which to attack an issue. For example animal rights, and culturlal relativism. For instance, I believe it is ABSOLUTELY WRONG to cause suffering to any creature, irrespective of for what reason, or in what culture. To what extent do philosophers/does philosophy allow for instinct, or gut feelings?

Accepted:
November 29, 2009

Comments

Your question raises interesting issues about philosophical methodology and also about some specific content areas.

With respect to the methodology, yourquestion may falsely assume that using the tools of logic throughreasoning means paying no attention to your intellectual or moralintuitions and to your emotional responses to specific situations andproblems. I don't think that is the case, however, because thoseintuitions and those emotional responses can be included among thethings that you reason logically about. At least, I don't see anyreason to include them from the "deliberative mix" and I do note thatphilosophers frequently appeal to intuitions in rational argumentseven in some of the most abstruse corners of philosophy like thephilosophy of language.

With respect to the primacy of logic, itstrikes me that to affirm logic as "primary" means, in part, thatstrongly-held gut feelings are amenable to rational discussion,assessment, and, potentially, overturning. If there truly is nopossibility that reasons and argumentation could never cause you toreinterpret or reassess or even come to reject your deeply-held gutfeelings, then perhaps you do not recognize the primacy of logic afterall.

With respect to the content areas you mention, I note onlythat there is excellent, well-reasoned philosophical work in bothareas. For example, in animal rights see the excellent anthology edited by Michael Zimmerman, ed., Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (PrenticeHall, 1997) and on cultural relativism the book on ethics that Imentioned in recently in another answer on this site containsinteresting arguments about that -- see Jesse Prinz's The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford,2007). So, although both content areas are ones about which many havestrong intuitions and gut feelings, and although both content areaschallenge in some traditional philosophical perspective and practices,both areas seem perfectly amenable to reasoned debate and argumentativeanalysis.