Final Exam

Just a reminder that the final exam is on Friday, December 19th, in our normal classroom.

The exam is at our normal class period time: for the 9:00--9:50 a.m. class, it's at 9:00 a.m., and for the 10:00-10:50 a.m. class, it's at 10:00 a.m. The test will last 50 minutes.

Intellectual Honesty

Here's a little rant on a favorite topic of mine: intellectual honesty.

A simple goal of this class is to get us all to recognize what counts as good evidence and what counts as bad evidence for a claim. I think we're getting better at that. But it's not clear that we're caring about the difference once we figure it out.

Getting us to care is the real goal of this class. We should care about good evidence. We should care about it because it's what gets us closer to the truth. When we judge an argument to be overall good, THE POWER OF LOGIC COMPELS US to believe the conclusion. If we like an arg, but still go on stubbornly disagreeing with its conclusion, we are just being irrational.

This means we should be open-minded. We should be willing to let new evidence change our current beliefs. We should be open to the possibility that we might be wrong. This is how comedian Todd Glass puts it:


Admitting when we're wrong--or simply not guaranteed to be right, or not an expert--is a very important step in being intellectually honest. Here's an excerpt from a podcast I listen to called Jordan, Jesse GO! about owning our ignorance:


Here are the first two paragraphs of a great article I recently read on this:

Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. "Absolutely not," he said. "No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct."

I was floored. In his brief rebuttal, he blindly demonstrated overconfidence in his own ideas and the inability to consider how new facts might alter a presently cherished opinion. Worse, he seemed unaware of how irrational his response might appear to others. It's clear, I thought, that carefully constructed arguments and presentation of irrefutable evidence will not change this man's mind.

Ironically, having extreme confidence in oneself is often a sign of ignorance. In many cases, such stubborn certainty is unwarranted.

Moopheus

Here are some links on animal ethics:

• Vegetarians Still Love the Smell of Bacon
• David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster
• How to Cut Back on Meat Slowly
  
• Animal Research (Peter Singer's Sometimes OK with It!)
• Peter Singer on Michael Vick & Dog Fighting
  
• Audio Interview with Peter Singer
• Michael Pollan's "An Animal's Place"
• Is Worrying About the Ethics of Your Diet Elitist?
• Huge List of Resources on the Moral Status of Animals

The Meatrix