It's always been the case that most of the people doing real philosophy are relatively privileged people. Practically speaking, I don't see how it could be any other way. That doesn't mean that the philosophy doesn't need doing. We would hope that the most well-intentioned people with the best ideas have the most success in propagating them, privilege notwithstanding.
The very real-world philosophy of ethics, politics, science, and tech that gets discussed here matters to the long-term well-being of humanity, and I don't have a lot of patience for dismissing those discussions as preoccupation with "boring first-world problems".
To be clear, I don't have any problem with someone interested in rationalist takes on more "down-to-earth" topics. That's fine. But just don't denigrate the more abstract "boring" stuff.
tcl33
2yr ago
This is bizarre to me. To whom do you think your bear the responsibility of providing progeny that are better than average? The first responsibility you have is to yourself, then your family, then your neighbors, and so on in expanding concentric rings.
What are these "responsibilities" you speak of, and from where do we get them?
If literal welfare queens feel no guilt at providing for their children by extracting wealth from the productive, an average man should surely not feel guilt in creating more average kids that will go on to do average, productive things.
Again, from where does this "should surely not feel guilt" come from?
While it may be unusual for someone to care a lot about the world that will be left behind after they and their children have passed, I don't understand what is particularly bizarre about it. And people who do aren't necessarily even thinking about it in your terms of "responsibility". It may just boil down to their personal values—what they subjectively want, i.e., it's important to them to help build a better world for future generations.
Lots of people have voluntarily given their lives in war for this very reason, even if it amounted to a dismissal of their more immediate "responsibilities"(i.e., their family) per your ethical logic. They're trying to build and leave behind a better world. This is completely understandable and not at all bizarre.
If you're sincerely concerned about the potential for the world to decay into a dystopian idiocracy, there is nothing bizarre about thinking about how we as individuals may contribute to it, and prioritizing that concern over these proximate concentric circles of so called "responsibility".
tcl33
3yr ago
The article seems to undermine itself. The only way the author can comment on the utility of believing untrue things is by providing examples of untruths the author knows are untrue and are only believed to be true by others. In other words, in every provided example, the author is apparently an exception to his own rule because he is capable of apprehending these benefits without actually believing untrue things.
Which leads me to think that this enlightened state of knowing what we need to do to create a better is possible without believing untrue things in the first place. And if we can get there, it seems like we should.
And if your retort is that some/many people are not capable of that enlightenment, then just be honest about what you're really doing here: you're promoting the noble lie for the rubes.
Question for academics.
FIRE and Heterodox Academy call for campus "viewpoint diversity" as sort of the implementation of Mill's marketplace of ideas. The president of FIRE says:
I'm not in academia and haven't spent much time on campus since I graduated 20 years ago. So everything I hear is secondhand. The message is always that there is a problem, but it's mostly isolated to the "usual suspect" departments: anthropology, sociology, literature, and The Studies.
Much of the "viewpoint diversity" discourse has dealt with which guest speakers and student protests are and aren't allowed. Those seem to me like sideshows. It seems the main problem is students in these usual suspect programs graduating without ever having been exposed to perspectives opposed to progressive orthodoxy. These students go out into the world not having any idea that the Overton window is much wider than they've been told. They don't realize there are sophisticated rejoinders to the claims they're hearing, and those rejoinders aren't all from right-wingers—many of them are from tenured experts on their own campus, most of whom stand politically left-of-center.
On many (most?) campuses do we need more Milo on campus to inject "viewpoint diversity" into the system? Or do universities just need to exploit the expertise that already exists on campus from faculty in other buildings? Implement a "dueling lecturer" class. So have your gender studies class, but bring in an evolutionary psychologist (and perhaps a biologist or an MD?) to lecture on the biological retorts to social constructionist claims. Have an economist to your sociology class to explain scarcity, and market forces driving meritocracy. Bring an analytic philosopher to Theory of Literature to show that words actually can mean things. And make the content of these "opposition lecturers" a real part of the coursework. To pass, you have to steel-man both sides of the argument to the satisfaction of both lecturers.
The point is to ensure students know that there are opposing viewpoints, and that they are mainstream and not "alt-right propaganda". And to do that, the university should break through its own departmental balkanization.
Again, I know little about university politics and the feasibility of this approach. But I've never heard it suggested, and I thought maybe someone here in the know could tell me why this would or wouldn't work/help.
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