Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

There are lots of cognitive biases in the world. Here are four -- from a list I discovered in some random web surfing. But re-written in my own style.  Group Think. Also known as "communal reinforcement." Members of your echo chamber may constantly reassure one another that X is the case So of course you are certain, living in that echo chamber, that X is the case.   I believe I once in this blog told a pertinent anecdote about the Japanese decision to expand the war in 1941. All of Hirohito's advisors were of the opinion that this was the right and necessary thing to do. From the Aleutians to Hawaii to Hong Kong to the Philippines  -- go on the offensive throughout the Pacific. Hirohito  himself had his doubts, but in the end even he, quasi-god or not, thought it necessary to stifle them and accept the hive mind's view. Availability Cascade.   In science this is also called a research bubble. There has been some intriguing work done in special field X....

In a Facebook philosophy group one participant asked the others: "What are your thoughts on being a truly rational person?" I liked my own answer so much I thought I'd reproduce it here. It is direct from the Jamesian playbook. Rationality consists of two very different pulls: one toward the general and one toward the particular. We always get a sense of rationality when we learn that two different-seeming things are in some respect the same. When the orbit of the moon is explained by a law that also covers the fall of an apple, or when electricity and magnetism turn out to be the same force. The rational impulse is toward the general. On the one hand, we have a natural fear of vagueness and so of generality. We want to know the particular workings of things. "Let's be specific." That too is a rational drive.  The encyclopedia is as rational a phenomenon, even as  much an ideal of rationality, as the concise governing law.    ...

Recently  I wrote a little about ethicist Derek Parfit. I've been doing further research on him since, and will now describe his Big Picture as I've come to understand it. Parfit believes that the western world only started taking ethical philosophy seriously (as a domain separate from theology) around the time Nietzsche declared that God was dead. There are only three possibilities, in terms of the God/morality issue: 1) You believe that God exists and that His commands define morality 2) You deny that God exists and, like Nietzsche, infer from this that in the absence of commands there is no right or wrong, or 3) You deny that God exists yet persist in believing and attempting to discern right and wrong. From a certain point of view there could be a fourth category, for people who believe that God exists but that His existence is irrelevant to morality, He doesn't issue commands at all, etc.  Still, from DP's perspective that sort of God ...