If Kant claims you should never ever lie, all you need to refute him is one counterexample, and it’s okay if it’s a little extreme. But just because you can refute wrong things with high-energy thought experiments doesn’t mean they’re going to help you find the right thing.
I don’t see why not. If virtue theory, deontology and consequenitalism all, separately, go wrong under some circumstances, then you probably need an ethics that combines the strengths of all three.
I am not clear how you are defining HEphil: do you mean (1) that any quest for the ontologically basic is HEphil, or (2) treating mental properties as physical is the only thing that is HEphil ?
Neither of those things is quite what I meant—sorry if I was unclear. The quest for the ontologically basic is what I call “thinking you’re like a particle physicist,” (not inherently bad, but I make the claim that when done to mental objects it’s pretty reliably bad). This is distinct from “high energy philosophy,” which I’m trying to use in a similar way to Scott.
High Energy Philosophy is the idea that extreme thought experiments help illuminate what we “really think” about things—that our ordinary low-energy thoughts are too cluttered and dull, but that we can draw out our intuitions with the right thought experiment.
I argue that this is a dangerous line of thought because it’s assuming that there exists some “what we really think” that we are uncovering. But what if we’re thinking using an approximation that doesn’t extend to all possible situations? Then asking what we really think about extreme situations is a wrong question.
[Even worse is when people ignore the fact that the concept is a human invention at all, and try to understand “the true nature of belief” (not just what we think about belief) by conceptual analysis.]
So, now, back the the question of “the correct ethical theory.” What, one might ask, is the correct ethical theory that captures what we really value in all possible physical situations (i.e. “extends to high energy”)?
Well, one can ask that, but maybe it doesn’t have an answer. Maybe, in fact, there is no such object as “what we really value in all possible physical situations”—it might be convenient to pretend there is in order to predict humans using a simple model, but we shouldn’t try to push that model too far.
(EDIT: Thanks for asking me these questions / pressing me on these points, by the way.)
I argue that this is a dangerous line of thought because it’s assuming that there exists some “what we really think” that we are uncovering. But what if we’re thinking using an approximation that doesn’t extend to all possible situations?
Then the thought experiment is a useful negative result telling us we need something more comprehensive.
[Even worse is when people ignore the fact that the concept is a human invention at all, and try to understand “the true nature of belief” (not just what we think about belief) by conceptual analysis
What’s the problem? Even if all concepts are human-made, that doesn’t mean we have perfect reflective access to them for free. Thought experiments can be seen as a way of informing the conscious mind what the unconscious mind is doing.
Well, one can ask that, but maybe it doesn’t have an answer.
Or maybe it does. Negative results are still information, so it is hard to see how we can solve problems better by avoiding thought experiments.
Then the thought experiment is a useful negative result telling us we need something more comprehensive.
Paradigms also outline which negative results are merely noise :P I know it’s not nice to pick on people, but look at the negative utilitarians. They’re perfectly nice people, they just kept looking for The Answer until they found something they could see no refutation of, and look where that got them.
I’m not absolutely against thought experiments, but I think that high-energy philosophy as a research methodology is deeply flawed.
I don’t see why not. If virtue theory, deontology and consequenitalism all, separately, go wrong under some circumstances, then you probably need an ethics that combines the strengths of all three.
Also replying to:
Neither of those things is quite what I meant—sorry if I was unclear. The quest for the ontologically basic is what I call “thinking you’re like a particle physicist,” (not inherently bad, but I make the claim that when done to mental objects it’s pretty reliably bad). This is distinct from “high energy philosophy,” which I’m trying to use in a similar way to Scott.
High Energy Philosophy is the idea that extreme thought experiments help illuminate what we “really think” about things—that our ordinary low-energy thoughts are too cluttered and dull, but that we can draw out our intuitions with the right thought experiment.
I argue that this is a dangerous line of thought because it’s assuming that there exists some “what we really think” that we are uncovering. But what if we’re thinking using an approximation that doesn’t extend to all possible situations? Then asking what we really think about extreme situations is a wrong question.
[Even worse is when people ignore the fact that the concept is a human invention at all, and try to understand “the true nature of belief” (not just what we think about belief) by conceptual analysis.]
So, now, back the the question of “the correct ethical theory.” What, one might ask, is the correct ethical theory that captures what we really value in all possible physical situations (i.e. “extends to high energy”)?
Well, one can ask that, but maybe it doesn’t have an answer. Maybe, in fact, there is no such object as “what we really value in all possible physical situations”—it might be convenient to pretend there is in order to predict humans using a simple model, but we shouldn’t try to push that model too far.
(EDIT: Thanks for asking me these questions / pressing me on these points, by the way.)
Then the thought experiment is a useful negative result telling us we need something more comprehensive.
What’s the problem? Even if all concepts are human-made, that doesn’t mean we have perfect reflective access to them for free. Thought experiments can be seen as a way of informing the conscious mind what the unconscious mind is doing.
Or maybe it does. Negative results are still information, so it is hard to see how we can solve problems better by avoiding thought experiments.
Paradigms also outline which negative results are merely noise :P I know it’s not nice to pick on people, but look at the negative utilitarians. They’re perfectly nice people, they just kept looking for The Answer until they found something they could see no refutation of, and look where that got them.
I’m not absolutely against thought experiments, but I think that high-energy philosophy as a research methodology is deeply flawed.