In Defense of Non-Philosophers and Women

Intuition is important

A thoughtful philosopher looks inquisitively at a woman

Bentham’s Bulldog just wrote a piece in which he contrasts the enlightened thoughts of philosophers with the pig-headed utterances of non-philosophers, who BB calls “lay people.”

You’ll, for example, lay out quite clearly the premises on which the Mary’s Room argument, or the argument for a strong obligation to give to effective charities, or for the existence of God, and they’ll respond by saying a stream of words reiterating their belief that consciousness is physical, but not addressing your actual argument. It’s like trying to deal with a greased pig—or a continental philosopher!

BB’s idea is about arguments. He thinks that philosophers pay attention to explicitly stated arguments, and if they agree with the premises, they accept the conclusion. By contrast, he thinks non-philosophers ignore arguments and focus on vibes.

A non-philosopher will often be moved by a general vibe behind an argument. For example, a non-philosopher may be moved by the core argument for dualism—that the physical world is about how stuff moves, functions, and behaves, and no matter how much movement or behavior you get, you’ll never get a sensation.

(I feel personally attacked)

Philosophers think in arguments, non-philosophers think in paragraphs.

I used to agree with BB’s argument

I consider myself a philosopher and I used to strongly agree with the argument that BB made in this piece. I thought that to be a rational person was to follow every argument to its logical end and accept the conclusion. But I have learned that there is another consideration: priors, a.k.a. intuitions.

All of us have intuitions about what is plausible and what is not. When you are given an argument that yields a surprising conclusion, it is reasonable to go back and double check the premises i.e. your intuition is perfectly valid evidence.

Here’s an example of a time when following the logic of an argument led me astray. While I was growing up, my Mom sometimes expressed belief in physiognomy, the idea that you can tell something about a person’s character by their facial structure, and not just their facial expressions. I thought she was wrong because of the following argument:

P1. The aspects of a person’s appearance that they have no control over have nothing to do with what they are like on the inside - what they are like as a person. (My Mom affirmed this principle in the abstract even though it flatly contradicts her views on physiognomy)

P2: A person’s facial structure is outside of his or her control (plastic surgery excepted).

C. A person’s facial structure has nothing to do with what that person is like on the inside.

I was more logical than my Mom about this. My Mom strongly affirmed P1 in theory even though P1 is inconsistent with her belief in physiognomy. But it turns out that physiognomy is true. It’s not a popular thing to say, but the best scientific evidence strongly demonstrates that facial structure is correlated with personality and even political opinions.

So this is a case where my Mom got it right by trusting her gut and I got it wrong by following the logic of an argument.

The Foundations of Thinking

Outside of pure mathematics and logic, there are very few things you can believe with 100% certainty. Whenever you hear an argument, you should reflect on how intuitively plausible the conclusion is, and if it sounds very implausible, you should see if you can find anything wrong with the premises. There will be some times when you can’t find anything wrong with the premises, but the conclusion sounds so intuitively implausible that you don’t know what to conclude.

Imagine that every person has a number between zero and one stamped on their foreheads. A person with a zero would never trust their intutions at all; if they ever mistakenly believed X, they would immediately accept every absurd conclusion which follows from X and never pause to wonder if they had made a mistake. A person with a one would never listen to any argument at all; they would just go with what intuitively sounded right and never update their beliefs. It’s not good to be a 1 person or a 0 person, but it’s not clear what exactly the optium number would be. It’s also plausible that there is no single optimum number. Maybe 0.6 is better in some environments and 0.4 is better in other environments.

I have heard the term “sticky priors” used to describe higher numbers.

I’ve noticed that women tend toward higher numbers (strong intuitions / sticky priors) and men tend toward lower numbers (more willing to go against intution when a strong argument is presented). Come to think of it, I have heard women describe men they knew as “very logical” and themselves as “more intuitive” and I don’t think I have ever heard a man describe another man as “very logical.” I used to think that “intuitive” people were just irrational, but now I’m not so sure. There’s a place for intuition. The right number is somewhere in between zero and one.

Yes, there are some people who are too dismissive of arguments. Most people are like that. But it’s wrong to categorically dismiss people who ‘trust their gut’ as irrational.

Key Takeaway: Your intuitions are your priors. Sometimes you need to trust your intuition, i.e. sometimes your priors are high enough to overwhelm some particular argument or piece of evidence. It’s not clear what the optimum amount of “trusting your gut” is or if there even is a single optimum amount.