as small as a world and as large as alone, neurodiversitysci: littlemissmutant: Quote of...

12:45pm August 28, 2014

neurodiversitysci:

littlemissmutant:

Quote of the Day: “A Richard Dawkins tweet is like a Game of Thrones episode. There are 140 characters & unimaginably awful happens.”
- Philosophy student Gary Holland joins the outcry against Dawkins’s claims that it’s “immoral” to allow Down’s syndrome babies to be born

Richard Dawkins is far from the first philosopher to argue for this, and here’s one reason why.
Philosophers have this thing where they think they’re smarter and more knowledgeable about the world if they argue against things that are intuitively obvious to everyone. “Oh, you think you have conscious experiences that are not accessible or translatable to other people and that feel like something? No. Oh, you think you have some degree of control over the decisions you make? No. Oh, you think that human life has some sort of intrinsic value that makes it worth protecting? No.“ It’s quite intoxicating to feel smarter, clearer-thinking, more insightful, than everyone else.
And yes, sometimes “everybody thinks” something that’s completely wrong, but seems right given the knowledge we have (e.g., that the earth is the center of the universe, before we had much knowledge of outer space). But sometimes, everybody believes something either because it’s just obviously true, or because believing it makes us be better, happier people living in a functioning society. And throwing these beliefs out doesn’t make you smarter than everyone else. It just makes you believe terrible things and look like a terrible person.
Like Richard Dawkins.
I wish he knew that in order to feel (and be) smart in philosophy-land, you don’t have to reject ideas like the value of a human life. You just have to make the most logical argument.

littlemissmutant:

Quote of the Day: “A Richard Dawkins tweet is like a Game of Thrones episode. There are 140 characters & unimaginably awful happens.”

- Philosophy student Gary Holland joins the outcry against Dawkins’s claims that it’s “immoral” to allow Down’s syndrome babies to be born

Richard Dawkins is far from the first philosopher to argue for this, and here’s one reason why.

Philosophers have this thing where they think they’re smarter and more knowledgeable about the world if they argue against things that are intuitively obvious to everyone. “Oh, you think you have conscious experiences that are not accessible or translatable to other people and that feel like something? No. Oh, you think you have some degree of control over the decisions you make? No. Oh, you think that human life has some sort of intrinsic value that makes it worth protecting? No.“ It’s quite intoxicating to feel smarter, clearer-thinking, more insightful, than everyone else.

And yes, sometimes “everybody thinks” something that’s completely wrong, but seems right given the knowledge we have (e.g., that the earth is the center of the universe, before we had much knowledge of outer space). But sometimes, everybody believes something either because it’s just obviously true, or because believing it makes us be better, happier people living in a functioning society. And throwing these beliefs out doesn’t make you smarter than everyone else. It just makes you believe terrible things and look like a terrible person.

Like Richard Dawkins.

I wish he knew that in order to feel (and be) smart in philosophy-land, you don’t have to reject ideas like the value of a human life. You just have to make the most logical argument.