blog.bioethics.net

Weekend reading: experimental philosophy, ordinary deaths, and The Ethical Imagination

NYT Mag: The New New Philosophy
Kwame Anthony Appiah focuses attention on the "experimental philosophy" movement, which involves -- brace for it -- data collection:

Not only are philosophers unaccustomed to gathering data; many have also come to define themselves by their disinclination to do so. The professional bailiwick we’ve staked out is the empyrean of pure thought. Colleagues in biology have P.C.R. machines to run and microscope slides to dye; political scientists have demographic trends to crunch; psychologists have their rats and mazes. We philosophers wave them on with kindly looks. We know the experimental sciences are terribly important, but the role we prefer is that of the Catholic priest presiding at a wedding, confident that his support for the practice carries all the more weight for being entirely theoretical. Philosophers don’t observe; we don’t experiment; we don’t measure; and we don’t count. We reflect. We love nothing more than our “thought experiments,” but the key word there is thought. As the president of one of philosophy’s more illustrious professional associations, the Aristotelian Society, said a few years ago, “If anything can be pursued in an armchair, philosophy can.”

But now a restive contingent of our tribe is convinced that it can shed light on traditional philosophical problems by going out and gathering information about what people actually think and say about our thought experiments.

Appiah also declares "neuro" the new "nano" and asks "Is the Knobe effect a bug or a feature?" If Appiah's take on "x-phi" gets you thinking about what methods should be applied to philosophy, maybe you should take the time to drop a few of those thoughts in a essay for The Method in Bioethics competition.

The Smart Set: What's Your Doomsday?
Jennifer Fisher Wilson has some good (or maybe bad) news for us -- we probably won't die of some cataclysmic:

So why don’t we stop worrying about death by disaster or high drama and take some control of our fate by living more healthfully? Perhaps because this would require prioritizing our future self over who we are today. It is one thing to know what is good for us, and it is quite another to live preventively every day, abstaining from many of life’s pleasures along the way. Furthermore, living healthfully is no guarantee of freedom from disease.

Or perhaps it is because we don’t actually believe in the inevitability of our own death. Just as the first few gray hairs or wrinkles are a surprise — even though we knew they would come eventually — the arrival of death, be it fast or slow, will likely surprise us, too. Both Freud and Schopenhauer noted that on a deep, personal level, people do not really believe in their own death, and Heidegger noted that the concept that all men are mortal usually involves a tacit reservation “but not I.”

Hmm. Sounds like it might be a case for an experimental philosopher.

MercatorNet: The Ethical Imagination
Michael Cook warmly review's Margaret Somerville's "The Ethical Imagination" -- and takes a few shots at a whole bunch of other people:

Unhappily, too few people acknowledge the deep moral seriousness of bioethical debates. Compared to global warming, the obesity epidemic, and Hollywood strikes, embryos and euthanasia are also-rans. Consequently, most of us go with the flow and end up supporting the whacky views of the professionals. But Somerville somehow manages to rouse people from their bioethical slumber and stirs their consciences. So her book deserves the close attention of anyone who treasures human dignity.

By the way, if you're not familiar with MercatorNet, it describes itself as a "dignitarian" publication.

-Greg Dahlmann