Accepting Implications

TheHedoMinimalist

In philosophy, most debates and discussions proceed with philosophers trying to suggest that certain philosophical positions have implications that are counterintuitive in the hopes of causing cognitive dissonance and disrupting the reflective equilibrium of the philosophers that accepts that position. Usually, this involves introducing a particular thought experiment. For example, The Utility Monster thought experiment which was developed by Robert Nozick was meant to show that Classical Utilitarianism is counterintuitive because it implies that we should be willing to wipe out mankind if it would maximize the happiness of the world by pleasing Utility Monsters who are capable of far greater happiness than humans. Classical Utilitarians may respond to this thought experiment by either denying that CU implies that we should please Utility Monsters or by biting the bullet and accepting this implication of CU. How can the conversation proceed if 2 philosophers agree on the implications of a particular philosophical position but one philosopher is willing to accept those implications while the other one will not?

Usually, the philosopher who refuses to accept the implication will either stop the discussion and conclude that the other philosopher cannot be reasoned with or they will try to argue that the philosopher should also refuse to accept the implication in question. Regarding the first approach, the philosopher may simply think that the other philosopher is unreasonable or they may take a softer approach of thinking that their disagreement is irreconcilable but it’s unclear who is being unreasonable.

To understand how the 2 philosophers could agree to disagree, one must distinguish between a particular position being actually true and it being plausible to a particular person under a particular circumstance. For example, we may say that the Heliocentric model of solar system is true but most ancient astronomers had more reason to believe in the geocentric model because they had more evidence for it at that time. It was just more intuitive to think that everything revolves around the Earth because the Earth appeared to be much bigger than the Sun or the stars. Nonetheless, an ancient philosopher who thought it was intuitive to think that the Sun might be much bigger than the Earth and the Earth might be orbiting around it would have more reason to believe in the heliocentric model. The 2 ancient astronomers would have reason to just agree to disagree until more evidence becomes available.

Going to back to the example of the 2 philosophers who disagree on whether they can accept a particular implication of a philosophical position, the philosopher who can’t accept the implication may offer various reasons for why the other philosopher shouldn’t accept the implication. One reason might be that most philosophers are not willing to accept that implication. For example, if 95% of moral philosophers are not willing to bite the bullet on the Utility Monster thought experiment, then it might be argued that accepting this implication is against the consensus of the vast majority of experts in the relevant field of study. It’s kind of like being a climate scientist who is a climate change denier. But, I find this “popularity among experts” approach problematic for several reasons. For one, I don’t think we should consider philosophers to be as big of experts in their field of study as scientists typically are. Philosophy is just far more speculative and complex by its nature and no one could truly call themselves an expert without a doubt. In addition, there’s also the problem of an artificial consensus where philosophers may reject a particular implication simply because they want their intuitions to match the intuitions of other philosophers because they may want to avoid being lonely in their philosophical viewpoints or avoid having a bad reputation as “the crazy philosopher who believes in wacky stuff”.

Finally, the “expert consensus” viewpoint may be self-defeating because there seems to be a consensus among philosophers that you should trust your own intuitions above the supposed intuitions of the expert consensus on a particular topic. Thus, a philosopher that usually trusts the expert consensus on the acceptability of a particular implication above his own intuition about its acceptability would be contradicting the expert consensus on how you should privilege your own intuition in comparison to the intuitions of others.

Another way that a philosopher may try to reconcile a disagreement about the acceptability of an implication is by offering a more detailed explanation of what exactly makes them reject the implication. This requires you to get really creative and try to provide more examples of where you find the implication counterintuitive. For example, you might start by asking the other philosopher what bias does he think that philosophers who reject the implication have that causes them to wrongfully reject the implication. Then they could discuss whether or not philosophers who reject the implication actually have this bias. Another way to show that an implication should be rejected is to argue that the implication is self-defeating in some manner. Unless the other philosopher doesn’t think that contradicting yourself is a logical problem, they might be willing to accept that they should reject the implication. Of course, sometimes the differences are just irreconcilable and you just have to agree to disagree. So, what is your approach towards having a discussion with a philosopher that doesn’t think the implication of his position is counterintuitive? Also, what implications are you willing to accept that most philosophers are not willing to accept? One famous implication of hedonism that I always bite the bullet on is the Experience Machine thought experiment. I never understood why people hold an intuition that a life in an experience machine would be inferior to a normal human life.

Alvin Capello

So, what is your approach towards having a discussion with a philosopher that doesn’t think the implication of his position is counterintuitive?

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↪TheHedoMinimalist

Whenever this happens, it usually seems to be because there is a more fundamental disagreement regarding principles at work here . For instance, if your opponent bites the bullet on the unintuitive utilitarian implications, then most likely the real issue here is more structural than ethical theory. So what I normally do is take a step back and try to get at the fundamental tenets of my opponents worldview.

Also, what implications are you willing to accept that most philosophers are not willing to accept?

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↪TheHedoMinimalist

I think that true statements can be made about nonexistent objects. I also believe that the naive semantic account of truth, i.e. the truth of declarative sentences is dependent upon objects having properties, is the correct view. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that nonexistent objects can really have properties (this is sometimes called "Meinongianism").

I however don't find this to be very counterintuitive, and I also think it brings forth many theoretical benefits in philosophy.

TheHedoMinimalist

Whenever this happens, it usually seems to be because there is a more fundamental disagreement regarding principles at work here . For instance, if your opponent bites the bullet on the unintuitive utilitarian implications, then most likely the real issue here is more structural than ethical theory. So what I normally do is take a step back and try to get at the fundamental tenets of my opponents worldview. — Alvin Capello

That’s a pretty good approach since you may find that your opponent holds an inconsistent epistemic criteria when he goes about judging other people’s bullet biting. For example, the utilitarian might think that the implications of utilitarianism provide no good reason to reject utilitarianism while also thinking that the implications of Kantian ethics such as the insistence that one ought to never lie even when there’s lives at stake is an undeniable refutation of Kantian ethics. You would want to ask that utilitarian why he is willing to bite the bullet on the utilitarian implications but not the Kantian ones. More educated utilitarians would probably appeal to some deeper axiological viewpoint that morally relevant value can only lie in state of affairs and that only one particular aspect of state of affairs such as valences felt by sentient beings or the facts about preferences of various value bearers and their satisfaction status is relevant to morality. Other utilitarians might not have a good reason to give for thinking that utilitarianism is more plausible than Kantian deontology.

I also believe that the naive semantic account of truth, i.e. the truth of declarative sentences is dependent upon objects having properties, is the correct view. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that nonexistent objects can really have properties — Alvin Capello

Would you mind giving me an example of a non-existent object having a property? I’m somewhat under-educated on this topic but my initial thought is that fictional entities could have properties. For example, I could make a declarative statement that “Homer Simpson has yellow skin”. Obviously, Homer Simpson doesn’t actually exist as an object but it might seem intuitive to interpret the statement as being true because the term “Homer Simpson” typically denotes the character from the cartoon and that character is portrayed with yellow skin. But, Homer Simpson seems to be a concept rather than an object. What exactly is a non-existent object then? Is there a difference between concepts and objects?

Alvin Capello

Would you mind giving me an example of a non-existent object having a property? I’m somewhat under-educated on this topic but my initial thought is that fictional entities could have properties. For example, I could make a declarative statement that “Homer Simpson has yellow skin”. Obviously, Homer Simpson doesn’t actually exist as an object but it might seem intuitive to interpret the statement as being true because the term “Homer Simpson” typically denotes the character from the cartoon and that character is portrayed with yellow skin. But, Homer Simpson seems to be a concept rather than an object. What exactly is a non-existent object then? Is there a difference between concepts and objects?

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↪TheHedoMinimalist

I would say that Homer Simpson and the concept of Homer Simpson are two very different things. For one thing, the concept of Homer Simpson does not have yellow skin, while Homer Simpson himself does have yellow skin. The difference between concepts and objects is this: all concepts are objects, but not all objects are concepts. I'm not a concept, for instance, but I am still an object.

With regard to the question of just what is a nonexistent object, the answer is that a nonexistent object is just an object that lacks the property of existence. That might not sound terribly informative, but objects play such a fundamental role in my philosophy that I'm not sure I can do much better.

That’s a pretty good approach since you may find that your opponent holds an inconsistent epistemic criteria when he goes about judging other people’s bullet biting. For example, the utilitarian might think that the implications of utilitarianism provide no good reason to reject utilitarianism while also thinking that the implications of Kantian ethics such as the insistence that one ought to never lie even when there’s lives at stake is an undeniable refutation of Kantian ethics. You would want to ask that utilitarian why he is willing to bite the bullet on the utilitarian implications but not the Kantian ones. More educated utilitarians would probably appeal to some deeper axiological viewpoint that morally relevant value can only lie in state of affairs and that only one particular aspect of state of affairs such as valences felt by sentient beings or the facts about preferences of various value bearers and their satisfaction status is relevant to morality. Other utilitarians might not have a good reason to give for thinking that utilitarianism is more plausible than Kantian deontology.

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↪TheHedoMinimalist

I agree with all of this completely. This isn't done very often, but I think philosophical discussions can proceed much more effectively if both parties begin by laying our their foundational beliefs, and the sort of logic that they use to derive conclusions from these beliefs. It seems that too often discussions turn into sterile exercises where each party is talking past one another. Not clearly laying out the underlying structures of the worldviews under discussion can only lead to misunderstandings down the road.

TheHedoMinimalist

I would say that Homer Simpson and the concept of Homer Simpson are two very different things. For one thing, the concept of Homer Simpson does not have yellow skin, while Homer Simpson himself does have yellow skin. The difference between concepts and objects is this: all concepts are objects, but not all objects are concepts. I'm not a concept, for instance, but I am still an object. — Alvin Capello

Fair enough, I suppose you could think of concepts as being a sub-type of objects. Though, I kinda figured that there were 2 sub-categories of ”things” that exist in the world namely concepts and objects. I tend to understand that the distinction between them is that objects exist in space and time while concepts are timeless and spaceless. So, I don’t think any object is a concept and vice versa. In your viewpoint, are there any problems with drawing the distinction between these 2 concepts on the criteria that only objects have a spatiotemporal dimension.

Alvin Capello

↪TheHedoMinimalist

Separating things into concepts and objects is called the Frege-Church Ontology. I don’t accept it, but it is respectable.

In your viewpoint, are there any problems with drawing the distinction between these 2 concepts on the criteria that only objects have a spatiotemporal dimension.

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↪TheHedoMinimalist

Well, my issue with drawing this distinction is that I think only some objects have a spatiotemporal dimension, many do not.

Since I tend to take an object-oriented approach in my philosophy, I consider “object” to be the most general category. Everything is an object, on my view.

TheHedoMinimalist

Well, my issue with drawing this distinction is that I think only some objects have a spatiotemporal dimension, many do not.

Since I tend to take an object-oriented approach in my philosophy, I consider “object” to be the most general category. Everything is an object, on my view. — Alvin Capello

Fair enough, I don’t really have an argument against this view.

Accepting Implications

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