Eliezer, in the last few posts you have proposed a method for determining whether a question is confused (namely, ask why you’re asking it), and then a method for getting over any sense of confusion which may linger even after a question is exposed as confused (“understand in detail how your brain generates the feeling of the question”). The first step is reasonable, though I’d think that part of its utility is merely that it encourages you to analyse your concepts for consistency. As for the second step, I do not recall experiencing this particular form of residual confusion; if I’m analysing a question and I still feel confused, I would think it was because I was not finished with the analysis.
So what’s my problem? The issue is whether this procedure helps in any way with the answering of philosophical or metaphysical questions. I can see the first step leading to (1) a double-check that your concepts make sense (2) attention to epistemic issues. (1) is OK. But (2) is certainly a place where presuppositions can insert themselves. Suppose I’m asking myself “Why are there no positive integers a, b, c, n, with n > 2, such that a^n + b^n = c^n?” If I go reflexive and instead ask “Why do I think there is no such set of integers?”, I might notice that this is merely an inductive generalization on my part, from the observed fact that no-one has ever found such a set of integers. And then, if I have a particular epistemology, I might say “But inductive generalizations can never be proved, and so my original question is pointless, because I will never know if there are indeed no such sets, short of being lucky enough to find a counterexample!” And maybe I’ll throw in a personal confusionectomy just to finish the job; and the result would be that I never get to discover Wiles’s proof of the theorem.
It is a somewhat silly example, but I would think that it illustrates a real hazard, namely the use of this procedure to rationalize rather than to explain.
Eliezer, in the last few posts you have proposed a method for determining whether a question is confused (namely, ask why you’re asking it), and then a method for getting over any sense of confusion which may linger even after a question is exposed as confused (“understand in detail how your brain generates the feeling of the question”). The first step is reasonable, though I’d think that part of its utility is merely that it encourages you to analyse your concepts for consistency. As for the second step, I do not recall experiencing this particular form of residual confusion; if I’m analysing a question and I still feel confused, I would think it was because I was not finished with the analysis.
So what’s my problem? The issue is whether this procedure helps in any way with the answering of philosophical or metaphysical questions. I can see the first step leading to (1) a double-check that your concepts make sense (2) attention to epistemic issues. (1) is OK. But (2) is certainly a place where presuppositions can insert themselves. Suppose I’m asking myself “Why are there no positive integers a, b, c, n, with n > 2, such that a^n + b^n = c^n?” If I go reflexive and instead ask “Why do I think there is no such set of integers?”, I might notice that this is merely an inductive generalization on my part, from the observed fact that no-one has ever found such a set of integers. And then, if I have a particular epistemology, I might say “But inductive generalizations can never be proved, and so my original question is pointless, because I will never know if there are indeed no such sets, short of being lucky enough to find a counterexample!” And maybe I’ll throw in a personal confusionectomy just to finish the job; and the result would be that I never get to discover Wiles’s proof of the theorem.
It is a somewhat silly example, but I would think that it illustrates a real hazard, namely the use of this procedure to rationalize rather than to explain.