[Bups-dis] RE: Metaphilosphy and Inappropriatness

[Andrew Bacon]

Hi Carl,

I'm not sure if that's quite what I was saying. Anyway, I see the force of your
point, but I'm not sure it answers the question that we *as philosophers* should
be concerned about the appropriateness of X/your friends loss/etc. It might be
the case that you *as a friend* should take appropriateness into account and as
such keep quiet about your solution to the problem of evil - but should you
refrain from, say, publishing your account to spare your friends feelings? I
think not - as a philosopher appropriateness shouldn't play an important factor
even though it may do as a friend or whatever.

Andrew


> This is really interesting stuff.
>  
> Someone (Andrew I think) implied that perhaps as philosophers we shouldn't be
concerned with the appropriateness of what we say, if it is true. Here's an
example of when we might think that was wrong - lifted largely from van
Inwagen's recent book on the Problem of Evil.
> Say that a theist has a successful solution to the problem of evil; and
suppose (for argument) that the solution is warranted. If this theist comes
across someone who has just suffered a very painful loss - i.e., has undergone
great evil - we might not think that it was appropriate to rehearse the solution
to the problem of evil at this point, even if it is true. We probably wouldn't
have thought it sensitive - after all, it's unlikely to alleviate the person's
grief - it seems unlikely that an understanding of the purpose of evil will
undermine all your grief on facing evil.
>  
> Secondly, on the Dummett/religion question. I agree that, prima facie, it just
sounds like bad philosophy to say "well, I should think that my reasoning had
gone wrong somewhere", and that it looks right to follow reason, broadly. But if
the subjective probably of his religious beliefs is greater than the subjective
probability of his beliefs about realism and anti-realism, then it seems that
he'd be justified in rejecting the latter rather than the former. We might want
to argue about this - but, at least, it's an example of a case where Dummett's
move could be justified.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Carl Baker
> devils_avocado at hotmail.com | jha4ceb at leeds.ac.uk
> http://carlonline.blogspot.com 
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-- 
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900