Philosophy Now Forum

So you have found yourself at Stalingrad when the Nazis are bombing and invading the city. The morning has been mostly quiet, until a large explosion suddenly goes off nearby. The lieutenant in your company grabs your shirt by the collar and yells into your face: "They are hitting us with artillery! GET BEHIND THAT WALL OR YOU WILL BE TORN TO SHREDS!"

Fortunately, you are a philosopher. Your education affords you many options here that are not available to most people.

What would you do next?
Take cover behind the concrete wall.
Declare that your body is not composed of mere molecules, and that anyone who claims that is just engaging in silly "Reductivist Scientism".
Remind the Lieutenant that he "cannot explain quantum mechanics". Then stand there with a smug smile on your face.
Say that David Chalmers showed that your consciousness cannot be reduced to mere brain functions. Then question the Lieutenant's education level.

tell your lieutenant that a philosopher that isn't going to be born for another 20+ years made an argument...

-Imp

alidayvn wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:08 am So you have found yourself at Stalingrad when the Nazis are bombing and invading the city. The morning has been mostly quiet, until a large explosion suddenly goes off nearby. The lieutenant in your company grabs your shirt by the collar and yells into your face: "They are hitting us with artillery! GET BEHIND THAT WALL OR YOU WILL BE TORN TO SHREDS!"

Fortunately, you are a philosopher. Your education affords you many options here that are not available to most people.

What would you do next?
Take cover behind the concrete wall.
Declare that your body is not composed of mere molecules, and that anyone who claims that is just engaging in silly "Reductivist Scientism".
Remind the Lieutenant that he "cannot explain quantum mechanics". Then stand there with a smug smile on your face.
Say that David Chalmers showed that your consciousness cannot be reduced to mere brain functions. Then question the Lieutenant's education level.

Maybe number 3: Remind the Lieutenant that he "cannot explain quantum mechanics".

Philosophers know that there is always a chance that all the artillery fire will just quantum tunnel through them without hitting them. So they can just stand there with a smug face, demonstrating their intellectual superiority and physical invincibility, until they blow up.

alidayvn wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:08 am So you have found yourself at Stalingrad when the Nazis are bombing and invading the city. The morning has been mostly quiet, until a large explosion suddenly goes off nearby. The lieutenant in your company grabs your shirt by the collar and yells into your face: "They are hitting us with artillery! GET BEHIND THAT WALL OR YOU WILL BE TORN TO SHREDS!"

Fortunately, you are a philosopher. Your education affords you many options here that are not available to most people.

What would you do next?
Take cover behind the concrete wall.
Declare that your body is not composed of mere molecules, and that anyone who claims that is just engaging in silly "Reductivist Scientism".
Remind the Lieutenant that he "cannot explain quantum mechanics". Then stand there with a smug smile on your face.
Say that David Chalmers showed that your consciousness cannot be reduced to mere brain functions. Then question the Lieutenant's education level.

So the question really is, "How much to you believe that reductional, anti-materialist explanations of material phenomena are credible, given that practically anybody will instinctively act as if they're not."

Good question.

Assume his potential death.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 5:47 pm So the question really is, "How much to you believe that reductional, anti-materialist explanations of material phenomena are credible, given that practically anybody will instinctively act as if they're not."

Good question.

Yes, it is. Another question is: shouldn’t your thinking support your action?

To be sure, your thinking is deliberate, while your action, in this scenario, is automatic. Still, shouldn’t your involuntary act guide your deliberations?

Isn’t this the case: “I take cover; therefore artillery projectiles and I are material.” Or, perhaps more to the point, “I take cover; therefore I think that artillery projectiles and I are material.”

Should it always be the case that our instincts guide our beliefs as well as our acts? If someone held a gun to your head and demanded that you must either defend or deny dualism, wouldn’t the circumstances direct your reply?

In the well-known conundrum of the train hurtling down the track, wouldn’t any sort of immaterialist response be dismissed out of hand by any rational being?

If philosophy is in any way supposed to help us understand our world, shouldn’t the instinctual inform the intellectual?

(btw, the shells are extracted from the artillery piece after each round is fired, rather than flying to the target.)

commonsense wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:17 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 5:47 pm So the question really is, "How much to you believe that reductional, anti-materialist explanations of material phenomena are credible, given that practically anybody will instinctively act as if they're not."

Good question.

Yes, it is. Another question is: shouldn’t your thinking support your action?

I would put it another way. "If you thinking is not supported by your action, how much do you really believe what you think you believe?"

To be sure, your thinking is deliberate, while your action, in this scenario, is automatic. Still, shouldn’t your involuntary act guide your deliberations?

Well, an involuntary action is more likely to reflect what you actually believe.

It's like the woman who says, "My husband may have hit me, but he's sorry, and I'm sure he'll never do it again," but when he comes home and slams the door, she jumps anyway. What she says she knows is not what she really knows. And her instinct shows what she knows most deeply.

Should it always be the case that our instincts guide our beliefs as well as our acts?

No, because we do have good and bad instincts. Instinct can reveal what we DO believe; it cannot always tell us what we SHOULD believe.

But you're quite right that our instinctual reaction is more likely to reveal what we deeply believe than the stuff we say is.

That's different than saying instinct should dictate action, however.

If someone held a gun to your head and demanded that you must either defend or deny dualism, wouldn’t the circumstances direct your reply?

Sure. But that would be a coerced situation. The great thing about an instinctive reaction is it's not coerced: you can react any way your instinct inclines you.

If philosophy is in any way supposed to help us understand our world, shouldn’t the instinctual inform the intellectual?

Perhaps. But we ought to be circumspect about how it should "inform" the intellectual. It can be revealing of what we are actually believing at the moment; but instincts can't be guaranteed to be right, because deep beliefs can't be guaranteed to be right either, and instincts are, as we said, only revelations of those deepest beliefs.

"Revelations" but not "justifications." Again, I would say instinct tells us what we DO happen to believe at a given time, not always what we OUGHT TO believe. People can be wrong, even instinctively.

commonsense wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:24 pm (btw, the shells are extracted from the artillery piece after each round is fired, rather than flying to the target.)

Indeed so...unless you're firing rockets.

Inform the unwoke lieutenant that the real existential threat is climate change.

Like anyone: duck & cover, run like hell, bend over & kiss keister 'bye-bye', cry, shake a fist at Crom, etc.

alidayvn wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:08 am So you have found yourself at Stalingrad when the Nazis are bombing and invading the city. The morning has been mostly quiet, until a large explosion suddenly goes off nearby. The lieutenant in your company grabs your shirt by the collar and yells into your face: "They are hitting us with artillery! GET BEHIND THAT WALL OR YOU WILL BE TORN TO SHREDS!"

Fortunately, you are a philosopher. Your education affords you many options here that are not available to most people.

What would you do next?
Take cover behind the concrete wall. ...

Er!? No, as a philosopher I'd get into a hole or trench that I'd dug or found earlier and hug the ground. Then, if I've survived, I'd see if the lieutenant survived the flying bits of concrete.

alidayvn wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:08 am So you have found yourself at Stalingrad when the Nazis are bombing and invading the city. The morning has been mostly quiet, until a large explosion suddenly goes off nearby. The lieutenant in your company grabs your shirt by the collar and yells into your face: "They are hitting us with artillery! GET BEHIND THAT WALL OR YOU WILL BE TORN TO SHREDS!"

Fortunately, you are a philosopher. Your education affords you many options here that are not available to most people.

What would you do next?
Take cover behind the concrete wall.

- you headbut the Lieutenant and knock him unconscious.
- then you drag him behind the wall and use him as a sandbag.
- if you both survive you tell him how brave you were to protect him after he was knocked out.

Philosophy should not be confined to theory and knowledge but effective to the practical, i.e. wisdom which its etymological origin.

If I am that philosopher who is caught in the midst of artillery shelling and potential capture, I would be in a state of equanimity as cultivated from my application of philosophical principles especially from Eastern Philosophy, e.g. Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc, even Stoicism, and others.

• Equanimity (Latin: æquanimitas, having an even mind; aequus even; animus mind/soul) is a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind.
  -wiki

With the underlying state of equanimity, I will take the optimal path till being saved from danger, bombed to death or captured by enemies.

There will be no consideration of reductional, anti-materialist explanations of material phenomena from me in such a situation.

It is said, there are no [a]theists in foxholes or artillery shelters in this case, but my state of equanimity will ensure I remain a non-theist.

Bone spurs should keep you safe.