Don't trust “the obvious” any further than you can throw it.

The Internet continually reminds me just how subjective “the obvious” (or “nonsense”) can be. People see such different things in the swirling, seething data storm.

In other words, hold no truths to be self-evident.

Not entirely unrelated to this little bit of meta is the discussion about the recent David Brooks column, unfortunately titled “The End of Philosophy.” Given that so many of our beliefs and so much of our behavior has a basis outside that rational, what does philosophy actually do? Hilzoy's got an answer. In part:

“It's one thing (and a very interesting thing) to ask: how, exactly, do we make moral decisions on the fly? But while that's useful to moral philosophy in a number of ways, it is not directed at the questions moral philosophy tries to answer. Those questions include: which actions should we perform? What kinds of people should we try to be? What principles should we try to live by?”

John Schwenkler has some good words:

“…our understandings of space and time, of quantity and number, of matter and color and life and death, are ultimately shaped by our more basic modes of access to the world in very similar sorts of ways, but by no means does that entail the impossibility of using science and philosophy as tools to deepen and, at times, significantly refine those understandings in precisely the sorts of ways that Socrates envisioned. Philosophy can come in toward the end even if it’s not that relevant at the beginning, and so granting the emotions the first word in the human grasp of morality doesn’t require conceding that they also have the last.”

Razib responded, and John followed up. Good times were had by all.