INSTRUCTIONS
you will practice constructing good explanations of philosophical theories. Please explain two theories or arguments from some of the pragmatist philosophers we’ve read this week (you can pick two theories from the same reading). The theories/arguments must come from the Peirce, James, Medina, or Rorty readings. Your writing exercise should be 500 words total, 250 words to each explanation.
Here’s fairly standard model for a good explanation of a philosophical theory. Your explanations should follow the model, but feel free to innovate or tweak to your writing style).
-(1) Start by explaining the main point of the theory. Your explanation should be brief and informative. Aim for a 2-3 sentence paragraph.
-(2) Give an example that illustrates the main point really well. Get creative. Aim for a 3-5 sentence paragraph because you’ll want to explain the example.
-(3) Explain some of the author’s reasons for the theory. What answers the question “why does the author think their theory is true?”. One reason per paragraph. 3-5 sentence paragraphs for this exercise.
Here’s an example response for Hume’s idea that all of our interesting ideas are a posteriori or known without experience.
David Hume argues that all of our interesting thoughts are known a posteriori. Interesting thoughts are thoughts that are informative, meaning they tell us something we didn’t already know. Hume thought all of these thoughts were known on the basis of experience. Meaning that, for any thought, the reasons we think the thought is true has to do with our experience.
To illustrate, according to Hume, my interesting thoughts that ‘war is bad’ or ‘the oceans are getting warmer’ or ‘PHIL 11 students are good writers’ are all known via experience (along with all of my other interesting thoughts). The reason I think they are true has to do with experience. I experience, in one way or another, that war is bad, that the oceans are getting warmer, or that PHIL 11 students are good writers, and so believe those thoughts to be true.
One reason Hume thinks his theory is true has to do with his account of human psychology. David Hume thinks that all of our thoughts come from experience. Even our complex imaginings of things we’ve never seen just break down into amalgamations of things we’ve experienced before. It follows that all of the reasons we have for thinking a thought is true would have to do with experience or come from experience, so Hume’s theory that our interesting thoughts are a posteriori is true.
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Writing a philosophy paper involves assessing philosophical theories. But! Before you assess a philosophical theory, it’s very important to give a good explanation of the theory. It’s easy to see why!
Let’s pretend that I criticize Descartes’s ontological argumentLinks to an external site. for the existence of God because Descartes was religious. I say something like “Oh that Descartes! He just assumed God’s perfection because he was a Catholic! The argument is totally wrong.”. My criticism might point to something true about Descartes, but there’s still a major problem with it. Descartes doesn’t just assume God’s perfection because of his religious commitments; he argues for it! And so, the criticism I give of his ontological argument is a bad one. In fact, it doesn’t even target Descartes’s ontological argument since Descartes argues for God’s perfection in his actual argument. I really missed the mark!
I fell into a reasoning mistake called a fallacy, and you can fall into them too if you’re not careful about explaining a theory. Here are two you can fall into:
Straw Man Fallacy– the Straw Man Fallacy involves representing someone’s argument as weaker than it really is. To illustrate, suppose that Sam tells Ace to wear their seatbelt because it will significantly reduce the likelihood of serious injury. Now suppose that Ace responds by saying “relax Sam, just because there’s a chance I will avoid injury doesn’t mean I should wear my seatbelt”. What Ace has done is commit the Straw Man Fallacy; Ace has misrepresented Sam’s argument. Sam argued that there is a significant reduction in the likelihood of serious injury. Ace misrepresents the probabilities in his reply so that the argument is weaker than it really is.
Hollow Man Fallacy– the Hollow Man Fallacy involves responding to arguments or reasons that no one actually holds. To illustrate, suppose again that Sam tells Ace to wear their seatbelt because it will reduce the likelihood of serious injury. Ace responds by saying “the reason people wear seatbelts is so that they can feel good about enforcing other people to wear seatbelts”. Ace has, again, misrepresented Sam’s argument. In fact, Ace seems to be responding to an argument that no one actually holds!
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