Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [73]
Philosophers also sometimes use intuition as a way of probing the coherence of their ideas. In ethics, for example, even those who doubt that there are moral truths that we can know often will agree that we ought to be consistent in our moral beliefs and practices. Thus, for example, we might test a proposed general moral rule (“promises should always be kept”) by seeing whether or to what extent it coheres with our considered judgments about particular cases. For example, what if you promise to return your neighbor’s guns to him, but he goes mad in the interim? Should you keep your promise then? Or what if you promise to meet your friend for lunch, but on the way you encounter a drowning child who requires your immediate aid? Should you rescue the child even if it means breaking your promise to your friend? Similarly, we might test a proposed judgment about a particular case (“same-sex marriage should not be allowed”) by considering it in the light of general principles we endorse (“we should not cause needless suffering”). I trust it is by now clear how different this is from Colbert’s procedure when he proclaims, “If you think about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for war, but doesn’t taking Saddam out feel like the right thing right here—right here in the gut?”130
Philosophy in the Age of Truthiness
Keeping in mind the differences between the philosophical concept of intuition and Colbert’s concept of truthiness enhances the appreciation of the power of his critique. The problem is not merely that politicians and pundits base their conclusions on gut feelings and unexamined prejudices, but rather that they do so in connection with precisely the kinds of claims where inferential reasoning and an appeal to evidence are most clearly necessary. What is perhaps even more disturbing is that the rest of the culture, for the most part, lets them get away with it.
On the other hand, there are some indications that the time might be ripe for change on this front. It is now widely understood that the principal claims that the Bush administration advanced as justifications for waging war on Iraq were untrue and that the U.S. mass media did a miserable job of subjecting those claims to critical scrutiny.131 A war is hardly a trivial matter, and the carnage and economic cost of the present one has served to clarify the need for high critical standards in connection with evaluating claims relating to significant matters of public policy. Moreover, the success of The Colbert Report, in which the truthiness that got us into this mess is subjected to ridicule on a nightly basis, further indicates that this message resonates with a significant percentage of the public at the present time.
The idea that we should subject all of our fundamental beliefs to critical scrutiny lies at the heart of philosophy. Indeed, if one had to pick one historical slogan as best illustrating what philosophy is all about, it might well be Socrates’ famous dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The disasters of this most unphilosophical age—the age of truthiness—therefore may, with the help of Colbert’s satire, begin to demonstrate the value of philosophy to
THIRD SEGMENT
Better Know a Philosopher
10
Is Stephen Colbert America’s Socrates?
MARK RALKOWSKI
STEPHEN COLBERT: I want to change the world, change it a little bit every day. Not much, but give me the wheel. Give me the ball, God. I’ll run it down the line.
CHARLIE ROSE: But how can you change the world?
STEPHEN