Miracles

Apparently 79% of Americans believe in miracles.  This isn't anything new.  In fact the number itself is staggeringly persistent.  Be it 2010, or 1990 its usually around 80-90 percent. 

I think there is something wrong here.  I think the problem, isn't with the belief itself, because if you talked to the average American about this particular belief, you'll quickly find that miracles turn out to be rather mundane things.  People surviving a hurricane or an earthquake is a miracle.  Someone gets a kidney transplant, its a miracle.  Someone wins the lottery, its a miracle.  Someone finds a parking space in San Francisco, its a miracle.

The concept of the miraculous itself has degraded from something that circumvents the very laws of nature and logic (Jesus walking on water, resurrecting from the dead, pulling an infinite amount of food from a finite basket, etc.) to something that is improbable.... 

And sometimes not even to that degree.  Its not improbable to die in an earthquake.  The reverse is true.  It's highly improbable that ANYONE will die in an earthquake.  Move to California, the probability will no doubt increase.  But the last big earthquake, Loma Prieta, caused 58 people to die, in an area where there was approx 2 million people (estimating here... San Jose has a pop of about a million now, and SF the same).  58 out 2 million isn't exactly highly probable. 

So whats the point?  The point is that when we adopt the use of a term, in a figurative sense, like miracle, to every day occurrences, we start changing the way we perceive the world.  No longer is it figurative after a while.  It really is a miracle when I find a parking space,  God guided my steering wheel towards the area of the park where I would find a vacant parking space, which then reinforces my idea of God.

"Miracle" isn't the only term that this is happening to.  "Hero," especially after 9/11 is being degraded into something below what was or is heroic.  "Evil" is another term I think that is being thrown around without much attention.  But both of these, I think don't have the same ramifications as miracle does, since it directly reinforces a questionable ontological belief.

Reason vs intuition

I get a lot of puzzled looks from students in my classes.  Sometimes its because I'm just weird.  Others times is because I present them something that is perfectly rational, but wildly non-intuitive.  So because its non-intuitive, the reasoning must be wrong.  They'll throw up objections and try to refute the argument, and I respond successfully, but they'll still reject the argument. 

Sometimes they'll just throw out reason.  The arguments are dumb!  Apparently dumb arguments are any argument whose conclusion are non-intuitive.  Why is it so difficult to accept that our intuitions can be wrong?  Its not a new experience that our intuitions are wrong.  I would venture to argue that all of our intuitions have been wrong several times in our lives.  Unfortunately, in those times when we've been wrong, often an experience refutes the intuition, instead of reason/argumentation.  In philosophy, we often can't just appeal to experience, in part because sometimes the experience itself is what is in question.

But I am comforted that philosophy isn't the only discipline to suffer from this problem.  Mathematics has its share of non-intuitive conclusions, that are firmly backed by reason.  For example: .999999999999...(an infinite string of 9s) is equal to 1.

Now intuition might tell us that it's not equal to 1, but only really close to one.  But in fact, 1 and .9999999999... are the same number, just two different ways of writing it.  2/2 is 1, 4/4 is 1 and .999999999... is 1. 

A simple proof can be done of this:
1/3 = .33333333333333333...
2/3= .66666666666666666...

1/3 + 2/3= 3/3 =1
.33333333333...+ .66666666666...=.99999999999...

By the rule of transitivity of identity, 1 =.999999999999...

Now if you're acquainted with who I am, you'll know I'm terrible at math, so maybe I'm making a mistake....  But I'm not mistaken.  I refer you to this blog post which has two follow up posts linked on the original post that explicates the proof in great detail. And the blogger has to deal with the same intuitive vs rational argument that I deal with on a regular basis in my courses.  So why is there such a resistance to give up our intuitions, and is there a better way to get people to give up their intuitions when dealing with something that can't be experienced?

The gettier Problem

So I promised I'd put up a blog post about the Gettier Problem in my Ancient philosophy class.  So here it is.

The gist of the problem, is that Justified True Belief does seem necessary for knowledge (you need all three), but it isn't sufficient for knowledge (you can still not know something even if you have all three). 

I think the easiest example of the Gettier problem to wrap people's mind around it, is the one I used in class.  You walk into a room, and you see someone who looks like your friend Bob.  You form the belief, "Bob is in the room."  Its true.  You believe it, and you're justified in believing it because you see someone who resembles Bob in the room.  But who you see is not Bob, but Steve, Bob's twin brother.  Bob is hiding under the bed.

Now the common objection is that my justification is based on something untrue....  But everything I've said is true...  I've seen someone who looked like Bob.

In class I replaced Steve with a mirrored reflection of Bob.  I see someone who looks like Bob, (but I'm not actually seeing Bob) etc. etc.  In that circumstance lots of people want to say I have knowledge.  But if thats the case, how is that meaningfully any different than the Steve case?  In both cases I'm looking at something that resembles Bob, but is not actually Bob.

The wikipedia entry on the Gettier problem is pretty good, and covers most of the other common objections, and some of the less common attempts to solve the problem.    Here you can read is actual paper.  Again, I can only wish I could write such a short paper, and change philosophy so significantly.

Meta-philosophy: What is philosophy?

So the semester is begining and in most of my classes I start off with the standard question of "What is philosophy?"  My standard answer is "The discipline that studies and examines assumptions."  This is a pretty wide net, but it has to be, since philosophy is a very wide discpline.  It does the job of including everything that is philosophy, and excludes everything that isn't.

But inevitably people still mistake philosophy with other things.  Religion is philosophy.  Poetry is philosophy.  Novels are philosophy.  So why aren't these things philosophy?

The most accurate answer would be that some of these things are philosophy, sometimes.  Religion, poetry, novels, etc are philosophy when they question the fundamental assumptions that we make.  But questioning is only the first step in philosophy, otherwise everyone would be a philosopher.  If everyone is a philosopher, then that means everyone does philosophy.  But I'm pretty sure everyone doesn't do philosophy, or at the very least, everyone doesn't do good philosophy.

Science begins with a hypothesis, but making up hypotheses doesn't make someone a scientist.  So what comes after questioning?  An attempt to answer the questions that we've raised using good reasoning.  This is the philosophical equivalent of experimentation. 

Now I get friends telling me all the time that my definition of philosophy is too narrow, or elitist.  Only good reasoning = philosophy.  But I think its reasonable to make a distinction between good reasoning and correct conclusions.  People can have good reasoning and be lead to incorrect conclusions.... I think.  And even if not, I think we can make a distinction of the quality of reasoning that philosophers engage in, versus non-philosophers.  Non-philosophers usually crutch on relativism or subjectivism to attack arguments.  Philosophers will usually look past such strategies. 

But I'm open to finding a better definition of philosophy....  I have a nagging feeling that my definition of philosophy casts its net too wide, including things that shouldn't be philosophy.