What ideas are contained within ‘Reason and Persons’ that I should care about and that cannot be found elsewhere?

Caledonian: “People keep saying that I don’t appreciate what they do, but they never offer an example of something I should be appreciative of.”

I retract my recommendation; books are only helpful to those who can read.

That assumption might be flawed. There wasn’t any color TV in the 40s and it wasn’t common in the 50s. Perhaps exposure to color TV changed the way people considered their dreams or actually dreamed. In which case maybe the contents of their dreams did change over that period of time.

I mention this because a few people I know say their dreams are more “vivid” and their appreciation for visual detail more refined after getting HD TVs. Could be the brain improving its ability to filter certain types of signals.

/random_speculation_off

People keep saying that I don’t appreciate what they do, but they never offer an example of something I should be appreciative of. It sounds an awful like I’m not actually familiar with the elegant design and esoteric materials used to make the Emperor’s flashy new wardrobe.

Because what I actually see, when I read philosophers’ books and read people claiming philosophical expertise, is that they’re dressing up nonsense with a new hat.

***

“I’d be better off querying those involuntarily committed to institutions – there would be a greater chance of finding sanity there.” Caledonian, I think Richard had you pegged with this: “It certainly appears from your above comment that you’re not actually familiar with the work of professional philosophers.” Perhaps we can add the work of professional legal scholars to the list?

Also possibly add legal scholars, judges, politicians, etc.

Why in the world would I do that? Like the Bene Gesserit, those groups believe that the purpose of debate is to change or redefine the nature of truth.

I’d be better off querying those involuntarily committed to institutions – there would be a greater chance of finding sanity there.

Richard: Good posts! Thanks for reminding me that I wasn’t an idiot to think that you were actually good at philosophical thinking! I certainly do think that physicists seem to be better than philosophers at doing philosophy and I have a reason, namely that the relatively impartial nature of judgment in their domain both inculcates practice in intellectual honesty and better selects for talent in doing physics, which is more strongly correlated with philosophical ability than is the ability to gain recognition in academic philosophy. I’m pretty confident that academic philosophy does actually attract people with talent and inclination for doing philosophy well, but also that it selects poorly among them and that it actively teaches bad habits of thought as well as good ones so that the optimum exposure to it is only high if one gives little credence to the whole enterprise. Economics, as a field that inculcates practice in denying credence to respectable enterprises, is thus a necessary complement for any serious student of philosophy. Alternatively, substitute continental philosophy for economics.

Caledonian: Good response to Richard. Maybe add game theorists to your list, though they haven’t made much interesting progress lately. Also possibly add legal scholars, judges, politicians, etc.

Robin: I second Douglas Knight’s request that we establish the existence of the effect before the sign.

All: Let’s try to distinguish between quality of ethical judgments, where I expect ethical philosophers to far exceed the general population and to modestly but impactfully exceed a socio-economically similar population a-priori, and effort exerted in conforming to some ethical standard, where I wouldn’t expect that a-priori. Ideally, lets also distinguish between effort dedicated to conforming to ethical standards that are supported by social pressure and effort dedicated to conforming to ethical standards opposed to social pressure. Arguably, only the latter is relevant to examination of this question.

I could also point out the following. Why isn’t the title of the paper ‘Do Ethicists Lose More Books?’. There is equal evidence for both hypotheses and presumably they are not both bizarrely correlated with being an ethicist, so there is no reason (apart from pre-existing beliefs/prejudices about ethicists) to assume the books are being stolen rather than being lost. There are many other hypotheses like these which would explain the one odd result. These studies just aren’t enough to tip our pre-existing beliefs on this matter more than 1%.

I don’t think Robin’s comment avoids the problem of dismissing evidence simply because he disagrees with them (of course I’m not 100% sure that they are more likely to be vegetarian, but I’m pretty confident that’ll hold up).