this field is required

Here’s some­thing with which I’ve noticed intro to phi­los­o­phy stu­dents tend to strug­gle: the dif­fer­ence between it being pos­si­ble that a the­ory is true, and the theory’s being plau­si­ble. Example:

In the course I’m TAing this semes­ter, one of the top­ics we dis­cussed is the nature of value. In virtue of what does any­thing have value, or what is the source or cause of things being valu­able? Most of the stu­dents have never taken phi­los­o­phy before, and it seems that many are pre-theoretical sub­jec­tivists about value. Very roughly, sub­jec­tivism is the view that things get their value from peo­ple valu­ing them. The main alter­na­tive to sub­jec­tivism is objec­tivism about value. Objec­tivism, again roughly, is the view that all or some things just are valu­able, inde­pen­dent of anyone’s beliefs, atti­tudes, choices, etc.

So, in the class, we do this thought exper­i­ment where the pro­fes­sor taps stu­dents’ intu­itions by ask­ing them about the sta­tus of a beau­ti­ful planet con­tain­ing a well-functioning ecosys­tem. By stip­u­la­tion, no one knows that this planet exists. Is it bet­ter that the planet exists than if it didn’t exist? If you had the power and choice to bring such a planet into exis­tence at no cost to your­self and then would for­get about it for­ever, do you have any rea­son to choose to cre­ate the planet?

You’re sup­posed to get the intu­ition that you should cre­ate the planet. The big­ger con­clu­sion to draw is that it’s at least pos­si­ble that the planet, and maybe other things, could just be valu­able, period, regard­less of whether any­one cares or even knows about them. Whether sub­jec­tivism or objec­tivism about value is the bet­ter the­ory, all things con­sid­ered, is a sep­a­rate question.

But, when asked: “Is it pos­si­ble that some­thing could be valu­able even if no one val­ues it?,” quite a few stu­dents, pre­sup­pos­ing sub­jec­tivism, say no — it is only pos­si­ble for things to get value from peo­ple valu­ing them. This is false. What they mean is that it is only plau­si­ble to think that things get value from peo­ple valu­ing them.

To cor­rect this, you have to teach the stu­dent what “pos­si­ble” means, philo­soph­i­cally speak­ing. And before you know it, you’re talk­ing about alter­nate pos­si­ble worlds, and the laws of physics, and math­e­mat­i­cal truths, and it all goes down­hill from there. While I always do my best to help stu­dents in this sort of case, I can’t help but con­clude that the way crit­i­cal think­ing is han­dled by con­ven­tional edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions is just far too lit­tle, far too late.

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