Because I got angry with a representative of CFI for spending her every interaction with me throwing jabs at philosophy, I got this incoherent accusation from Chuck Lynn accusing me of a shallow profit motive: I know circle myself back to Dan here, was just wondering if you were so upset at girl not liking Philosophy because you are selling something on FB. Just curious, also go ahead block me and no answer my question. I noticed you offer sessions with you for $$$$$$$. That is laughable at best, come on man why pay for something that is easily googled lol just saying. Block me and put me on blast you will be put on blast with 22,000 of my followers in my group Girl? Shes the Center for Inquirys director of marketing and former director of outreach. The Center for Inquiry is one of the most established and important institutions for the advancement of atheism, humanism, secularism, rationalism, and skepticism in America. Those are all philosophical positions. Those causes are all undergirded by a commitment to rationally scrupulous thinking that is scientifically AND philosophically informed and careful. Just a week ago I was irate on my wall over someone attacking the value of science. Why? Because Im a defender of reason by profession and by lifes passion. An organization like CFI is supposed to be WITH ME in defending reason. It should not be about stoking anti-intellectual hostility towards philosophy any more than it should be spreading such things towards science. Engaging in philosophy-bashing is no better than engaging in science bashing. To attack and disparage philosophy is to promote ignorance, uncritical thinking, shallowness, and a malleable, manipulable populace. Had a CFI representative contemptuously bashed science to me every time I talked with her, Id be just as angry and bemused. The major political and social and religious and ethical debates of our time are the way they are because of philosophical ignorance and incompetence among the public as much as anything. Science is doing swimmingly. Its philosophical errors among the populace in epistemology, in political theory, in ethics, in metaphysics, that make people think that religious authorities can trump scientific ones, that make uninformed laypeople think they can pronounce upon scientific questions better than scientists can. Our problem in this culture is not a failure to do good science, its a failure of the populace to understand philosophy so that it knows what to make of what science is telling it. Our populace does not know how to contextualize science within a theory of knowledge and reality that is coherent. For all our scientific understanding, people still believe, in parallel, in superstitions of immaterial souls and faith-based epistemology, and outdated metaphysical dogmas that good philosophy refutes. Our fights over LGBT rights or womens rights or how to ethically structure our relationships between men and women beyond merely legal issues? These are all fundamentally philosophical problems. So are questions of how or whether to replace religious institutions in peoples lives with sufficient secular alternatives. Our problems about the numerous social science issues have (so far) intractable philosophical issues involved. How to demarcate what is a mental illness? What is racism? How does morality work? These and numerous other huge problems in psychology and sociology have major philosophical dimensions to them that are not merely empirical. Are you disproving the existence of God, atheists? Well then, youre not merely publishing findings in science journals at that point. Youre extrapolating FROM the science TO all sorts of further metaphysical and epistemological conclusions about the plausibility of naturalism, the limits of needs for causal explanations, the nature of knowledge about questions that are not strictly settleable with concepts that reduce to mathematical formulas. If as humanists youre going to respond to peoples desires for a coherent rationality based ethics for approaching the world (or to theists barbs accusing such a thing of being impossible), youre going to be engaged in philosophy. If youre going to puzzle out the nature and limits of free speech, separation of church and state, or other rights, you are going to be engaging with difficult philosophical problems. If you are going to puzzle out the nature of objective discourse itself or who can provide insight into what questions and why or whether some questions are too dangerous to ask or whether everything must be questioned, youre going to be engaged in philosophy. If youre going to have a thoughtful and careful grasp of when war is justified or why, youre going to be engaged in philosophy. If youre going to try to figure out how to crack the nut of whether or to what extent we paradoxically must tolerate the intolerant, youre going to be doing philosophy. When youre faced with excruciating end of life decisions related to active or passive euthanasia, youre going to be doing philosophy. When youre trying to build AI as a computer scientist, youre going to have to solve an immense amount of philosophical problems or the AI will be everything science fiction nightmares are made of. If you are going to have to figure out how to understand the role of your emotions in your life, the challenge to rank priorities in life, the ways to assess competing values of urgent existential import in your life---you are going to be doing philosophy. I did not get into philosophy in order to make a fortune. I am bleeding money. And getting into a fight with a representative of a major atheist movement organization over the validity of philosophy in public is not the way to rustle up business. Its a risk of dividing people against me or making myself look like a petty jerk. So, NO, it was not a business calculation. This is a matter of advancing the same cause I ALWAYS defend, the consequences be damned: the cause of defending reason against those anti-intellectual or theological assailants that actively discourage peoples enthusiasm for reason, encourage their intellectual laziness, and allow them to be unethically sloppy in their thinking. There are plenty of constructive debates to be had about exactly how to do philosophy appropriately, how to improve our methods, how to situate its role within the larger project of knowledge development. But its a dangerous world where people are philosophically incompetent. And Im disgusted and disappointed by my supposed fellow defenders of reason when they short-sightedly and ignorantly turn on philosophy and, to my mind, betray the very cause we were supposed to be allied together in. And merely on a personal level, I can take good natured ribbing. I am regularly self-deprecating and plenty of my Facebook friends tease me and philosophy and MY doing philosophy. Thats different than a one on one dynamic where every time someone engages with me, a representative of an organization that should be supporting me and seeking my support as a fairly well read philosopher in the movement, with relentless snide anti-philosophical remarks. I dont feel like shes my friend when she does that. People who cannot put their contempt for what you do aside when talking to you but always find a way to work in a passive aggressive dig are not your friends. This was just about making clear that Im not taking that crap from anyone, least of all someone who is supposed to be advancing the cause of philosophical education, rather than trying to make a philosopher who devotes the bulk of his energies to this movement rather than to his own career advancement, feel unwelcome. And finally, I WISH philosophical training was easily googled (and that everyone actually googled it!). Sadly, its not, no more than any other serious education is. I am a professional at what I do. I have 18 years of study and 11 years classroom experience. Talking to me for a measly $16/hour is as efficient and cost effective a way as I know of for you to take your own nascent philosophical ideas and inklings and have them assessed and critically developed as you are going to find. I can help you both improve or replace all your thinking and take it to fundamentally more complex, comprehensive, consistent, and perspective altering places than most people you will every talk to in your life. If thats not for you, thats fine. But I am not ashamed to charge for my services. I have gone deep into debt, spending a lifetime devoted to developing my knowledge base and my skills as a teacher. I deserve compensation for my time. I deserve to eat. I dont compromise one bit of my principles for money. And I take no shame in trying to earn a professionals salary in exchange for my time and my expertise.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:27:51 +0000
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