Responses 004 (2011-2012)
I have an intuitive fondness for Question 4 in the list: "When should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing?"
The obvious answer is, "When they turn out to be wrong."
However, if they are intuitively appealing, they are appealing to our intuitions — and our intuitions are the incomplete, spontaneous and emotively compelling subconscious reasoning patterns of our minds. The veiled question is, "When should we listen to our intuitions?" and it is a question that is impossible to answer, since it varies according to the level of incompleteness in our intuitions.
So how can this be spun out into a 1600-word essay?
That's an easy one. My intuition tells me that seven words (as in my 'obvious' answer above) is way too short for a good grade. Actually, the rubric says so too. So I would begin with asking, "Why should we discard explanations at all, and in particular, explanations which we haven't definitively proven to be wrong?"
You see, if an explanation is definitely wrong, we would discard it and not need to think too much about it. So we must be talking about explanations that are not definitely wrong and which are appealing to our 'snap judgements' or 'gut instincts'. And that must certainly be a discussion which demands that we think about what constitutes a good explanation and what constitutes a bad one.
After all, many explanations are not definitively complete. Yet we would waste time on many such explanations just because they were plausible and attractive. Consider the difference between astronomy and astrology, or computer science and political science. In each pair, the first discipline is easier to put to the test, while the second is harder — and fairly often impossible — to test.
Should we then discard astrology or political science as wasteful of human resources? We could do the same thing to literature and the arts, since explanations are hardly ever final when seeking meaning and definition in those disciplines.
So, when should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing? How early, how often, and why?
The obvious answer is, "When they turn out to be wrong."
However, if they are intuitively appealing, they are appealing to our intuitions — and our intuitions are the incomplete, spontaneous and emotively compelling subconscious reasoning patterns of our minds. The veiled question is, "When should we listen to our intuitions?" and it is a question that is impossible to answer, since it varies according to the level of incompleteness in our intuitions.
So how can this be spun out into a 1600-word essay?
That's an easy one. My intuition tells me that seven words (as in my 'obvious' answer above) is way too short for a good grade. Actually, the rubric says so too. So I would begin with asking, "Why should we discard explanations at all, and in particular, explanations which we haven't definitively proven to be wrong?"
You see, if an explanation is definitely wrong, we would discard it and not need to think too much about it. So we must be talking about explanations that are not definitely wrong and which are appealing to our 'snap judgements' or 'gut instincts'. And that must certainly be a discussion which demands that we think about what constitutes a good explanation and what constitutes a bad one.
After all, many explanations are not definitively complete. Yet we would waste time on many such explanations just because they were plausible and attractive. Consider the difference between astronomy and astrology, or computer science and political science. In each pair, the first discipline is easier to put to the test, while the second is harder — and fairly often impossible — to test.
Should we then discard astrology or political science as wasteful of human resources? We could do the same thing to literature and the arts, since explanations are hardly ever final when seeking meaning and definition in those disciplines.
So, when should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing? How early, how often, and why?
Labels: Epistemology, Explanation, Intuition
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