Arguments vs. Vibes

Why philosophers and laypeople are too reluctant to accept the bad

It’s really hard to convince lay people by philosophical argument.

Shockingly hard! You give them an argument with premises and a conclusion, with quite straightforward logic, and then they just sort of give a general soliloquy on the topic, ignoring every specific premise. You’ll, for example, lay out quite clearly the premises on which the Mary’s Room argument, or the argument for a strong obligation to give to effective charities, or for the existence of God, and they’ll respond by saying a stream of words reiterating their belief that consciousness is physical, but not addressing your actual argument. It’s like trying to deal with a greased pig—or a continental philosopher!

One of the core distinguishing features of philosophers is taking arguments seriously—and this is, in my view, one of the main benefits of philosophy. Non-philosophers are occasionally moved by arguments, but they’re not moved simply because an argument has true-seeming premises and is valid. Instead, they’re only moved by arguments that reshape how they think about the world.

A non-philosopher will often be moved by a general vibe behind an argument. For example, a non-philosopher may be moved by the core argument for dualism—that the physical world is about how stuff moves, functions, and behaves, and no matter how much movement or behavior you get, you’ll never get a sensation. Experiences and behavior are two completely different things! But non-philosophers generally aren’t moved by Mary’s room, because even though every premise seems clearly right, it’s an argument much more than a way of viewing the world.

Philosophers think in arguments, non-philosophers think in paragraphs.

There are a lot of good arguments for utilitarianism. There are a lot of non-philosopher utilitarians. Yet almost all of them seem moved by weird considerations—virtually none are ever moved by the arguments! This isn’t specific to utilitarianism; it is in fact quite general. While non-philosophers can be convinced by the sorts of information contained in a philosophy argument—perhaps even if it’s stated as a philosophy argument—they’re almost never convinced by mere philosophy arguments.

This explains one feature of cosmological arguments that puzzles even Wikipedia. Cosmological arguments are quite standard—here’s a sample one that’s representative: