The End of Philosophy?

David Brooks at the New York Times posted an op-ed article entitled “The End of Philosophy”. Unfortunately, he comes off sounding like an idiot.

His thesis, if it even exists, is confusing at best, and I have no idea what it has to do with “the end of philosophy” (cue the scary music). His thesis seems to be that human beings are instinctual and emotional instead of reasonable and rational. Is anybody surprised by this?

Apparently, there has been a radical shift in philosophical thinking from viewing morality as a matter of reason to viewing morality as a matter of instinct. One could easily call this “progress” instead of “the end of philosophy” if it wasn’t for the fact that everybody, especially philosophers, have known this for many many years.

Mr. Brooks must really be out of the loop if he is so shocked and impressed by the idea that evolution is the cause of morality. In fact, I explain it much better than he does in my post, Evolution Easily Explains Morality.

He seems to think that “reason” is out and “instinct” is in. In a phenomenal leap of stupidity, he says:

It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.

Silly me, and all this time I thought that using reason was reasonable. He also says:

Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don’t have to decide if it’s disgusting. You just know. You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know.

I guess if it happens fast enough it’s not thinking. It seems to never have occurred to Mr. Brooks that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why disgusting food is disgusting (we have evolved to enjoy food that keeps us alive). How many stupid quotes can I pull out of this guy? I don’t know, they keep coming:

Finally, it should also challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central.

Really? He has NO IDEA where the feeling of joy could possibly come from? None at all? Let me ask you this: is anybody puzzled about why sex is fun? It’s because if we didn’t have motivation to reproduce we would be extinct. It’s the same thing with life. If you’ve seen or read Invasion of the Body Snatchers then you are fully aware of how bland life would be without emotion. Joy is an integral part of keeping our species alive because without it we wouldn’t be motivated to keep going.

Again, I cannot fathom why Mr. Brooks thinks it’s a radical shift in philosophy to believe that emotions come from instinct rather than reason. Everybody knows that. Everybody has always known that. He misses the entire point: philosophers have always been trying to explain the reason behind emotions. Believe it or not, there is a chemical process inside the brain that’s going on whenever a woman gets upset because a man forgot her birthday. It’s understanding that chemical process that is the pinnacle of philosophy. Figuring out how the brain works would be a gigantic leap forward. We live in an age where scientists and philosophers work together now. Eventually, someone is going to dissect every part of the brain and figure out what everything does, and eventually some computer programmer is going to figure out how learning works, and eventually all of our questions will be answered. No thanks to David Brooks, of course.

Tags: David Brooks, emotions, evolution, morality, Philosophy, reason