Goodbye to Yesterday...

Your grades are now posted. Enjoy the rest of your summer, Mt. Laurel class!
So long, Willingboro!

I'll leave you with a little rant on a favorite topic of mine: intellectual honesty. A simple goal of this class was to get us all to recognize what counts as good evidence and what counts as bad evidence for a claim. I think we got pretty good at that. But it's not clear that we wound up caring about the difference once we figured it out.

Getting us to care was the real goal of this class. We should care about good evidence. We should care about it because it's what gets us closer to being correct. When we judge an argument to be overall good, THE POWER OF LOGIC COMPELS US to believe the conclusion. If we like an arg, but still stubbornly disagree with its conclusion, we are just being irrational.

This means we should be open-minded. We should be willing to let new evidence change our current beliefs. We should be open to the possibility that we might be wrong. This is how Todd Glass puts it:


Here are the first two paragraphs of a great article I read in the Fall on this:

Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. "Absolutely not," he said. "No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct."

I was floored. In his brief rebuttal, he blindly demonstrated overconfidence in his own ideas and the inability to consider how new facts might alter a presently cherished opinion. Worse, he seemed unaware of how irrational his response might appear to others. It's clear, I thought, that carefully constructed arguments and presentation of irrefutable evidence will not change this man's mind.

Ironically, having extreme confidence in oneself is often a sign of ignorance. In many cases, such stubborn certainty is unwarranted.

It Pays to Believe?

Here are some links on Pascal's Wager:

• Links to several articles on the argument.
• Here's an audio interview on the argument and Pascal's entire work Pensées.
  
• NOTHING TO LOSE? Is there really not much to lose in this wager? This cartoon thinks otherwise.
• WHICH GOD? With so many religions out there, which God should we believe in? This cartoon dinosaur has the most practical solution.
• More on decision theory, the branch of math Pascal uses to argue that belief in God is a good bet.
  
• Some related entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: evidentialism vs. nonevidentialism, religious versions of nonevidentialism (or fideism), other pragmatic arguments for believing in god, and Pascal's other contributions to philosophy.

Bad Things to Good People

Here are some links on the problem of evil.

• There is a collection of resources all about the problem of evil, including criticisms of several different responses to the problem. I mean, wow.
• I'd like to highlight one article in particular: a discussion of the "God works in mysterious ways" response: do we have enough evidence to believe that there is a reason for all the suffering in the world, but humans aren't smart enough to understand what that reason is?
• Well-known contemporary philosopher (and ordained priest) Marilyn McCord Adams offers some insights into the problem of evil in this audio interview.
• The NPR program Fresh Air has an audio interview with Bart Ehrman on the problem of suffering.
• Here's even more audio from a few philosophers on the problem of suffering.
  
  
• Thoughts on everyday evil and the Holocaust.
  
• Does everything happen for a reason? This cartoon dinosaur has an interesting take on that question. (T-Rex also occasionally wonders why bad things happen to nice people.)
• Finally, here's Stephen Colbert's take on evil:

he Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - The Unbearable Lightness of Supreme Being
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

Like A Watch, Only More So

Here are some links on the design argument for God's existence.

• Here is a nice explanation of the design argument, along with an explanation of another wacky arg for god's existence.
  
• Here is an audio interview on Hume's criticisms of the design arg.
  
• One philosophers' take on the debate between evolution and intelligent design.
• Is our universe fine-tuned for life? Maybe not.
• Wait, can science even judge religious claims, or are they talking about different things? Maybe an inference to the best explanation can help us...
  
• What about all the "design flaws" in nature? Are they evidence against a supreme designer?
  
• Well, recent research might show the appendix serves a purpose, and so wouldn't count as a design flaw.
  

I also have a little music for you. Here's the source of the "more so" phrase:

John Gorka - I'm From New Jersey
"I'm from New Jersey | It's like Ohio | But even more so | Imagine that"

Knowledge Wrap-Up

And now, some final links on knowledge.

• A new book called The Philosophical Baby by philosopher & psychologist Alison Gopnik is coming out next week. It's loaded with cool insights on the rationalism-empiricism debate. Here's an excerpt of the book, and here's a review.
• I recently interviewed a philosopher for my Owning Our Ignorance club (which anyone is welcome to join!). He's a bit of a skeptic, claiming that we should have far fewer opinions than we think. Here's the audio interview.
  
  

I'm Certain I'm Doubting

Here are some links related to our discussion of knowledge from class.

• What are the philosophical implications of the movie The Matrix?
  
• Can we be abolutely certain of math truths like 2 + 3 = 5? This cartoon dinosaur says we can't!
• Here's an audio interview about Rene Descartes's famous argument that he's certain he exists.
  
• Most people don't take skepticism seriously because skeptical scenarios seem so unlikely. They're crazy, right? But Nick Bostrom argues that the probability we're living in the Matrix may be a lot higher than we think.
• (Here's a more advanced version of Bostrom's article, along with a dinosaur comic on it.)
• Here's my favorite argument for widespread skepticism. (pdf)
• The search for truth is tough. Let's get the FBI on the case!
  
• Optical illusion time! Here is a pair of collections of Julian Beever's sidewalk art that looks three-dimensional when viewed from a certain angle. Here's one of his creations:

By the way, if you have any links you think I or others in class might find interesting, let me know. And feel free to comment on any of these posts.