And about the US, I actually meant “one of the most…”. But it´s true, it´s by far not the best example for progressive values!

And, I have a question: Do you think America really is “the most liberal country”? Perhaps you meant just to say “one of the most liberal countries”, but, even so, that seems a strong claim. Obviously, the US is amongst the far more liberal countries of the world, but within that group I’d say that it’s easily the most conservative of the bunch and not really a good example of a country with widely held progressive values.

I don’t know whether economic overtones are grounds for suspicion. They would be if philosophy were an idle hobby, but in fact there are thousands of professional philosophers who are paid pretty well for their work, and in many cases these people are state employees. Given this, it seems worth asking whether the public value of pro philosophy exceeds its cost. This value could come from reaching consensus and solving problems, but it might also come from teaching students, preserving insights, asking questions… Of course, it might turn out that pro philosophy ought to be kept around even if it cannot be justified in such cost-benefit terms. But the case for pro philosophy would be more convincing to more people if this cost-benefit analysis turns out to be favorable. But then again, I believe the cost-benefit analysis is favorable to philosophy. Maybe if I thought otherwise, I’d change my tune.

The economic overtones of such language should be enough to make anyone suspicious, but I also think that the practice of philosophy can actually lead a person towards a better life, regardless of whether or not it solves perennial meta-questions.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment!

About whether the Ideal Observer is a sockpuppet:

We might just disagree about what a sockpuppet is. I would have said that X is my sockpuppet if I have (the right kind of) influence over X’s beliefs (or apparent beliefs). So, for example, a ventriloquist’s dummy is the ventriloquist’s sockpuppet because the ventriloquist can make the dummy (appear to) believe anything the ventriloquist likes. On that definition, it’s pretty clear that the Ideal Observer is not my sockpuppet. For example, the Ideal Observer would say that genocide is morally wrong, and there’s nothing I can do to make it say otherwise (although I certain can mistakenly believe it would say otherwise).

We might instead say (as you seem inclined to say) that X is my sockpuppet if my own beliefs provide my only evidence about X’s beliefs. I suspect that this is a less interesting conception of sockpuppetry. Regardless, I would argue that, even on this definition, the Ideal Observer is not my sockpuppet. It does seem to me that any evidence that I might use to form my own beliefs would be evidence that I would use to form my beliefs about the Ideal Observer’s beliefs. So, for example, genocide causes great suffering. This fact is evidence that genocide is wrong; it is also evidence that the Ideal Observer would believe that genocide is wrong. But this does not mean that my belief that genocide is wrong is evidence that the Ideal Observe would believe that genocide is wrong.

A final possibility is that X is my sockpuppet if my own beliefs line up with my beliefs about X’s beliefs. Then, yes, the Ideal Observer is my sockpuppet. But this doesn’t strike me as very interesting.

About Dr. Smith:

I don’t disagree with most of what you say here. But suppose that someone in Epley’s study said this: ““I don’t know what God thinks about affirmative action, because he hasn’t told me and I don’t know of any Bible passages that address the question, but I would guess his answer would be [x], because that’s what I think the answer is, and he wouldn’t be wrong.”

My guess is that Epley would have recorded this person’s response as another case in which the person’s beliefs line up with their beliefs about God’s beliefs. If that’s right, then Epley’s results are fully consistent with the possibility that people reason about God’s beliefs in a way that is precisely parallel with the way you say you would reason about Dr. Smith’s beliefs.

As a slightly clumsy segue, this leads to my other query, this one about Dr Smith. Why would a person answer what Dr Smith thinks about the biology of platypodes if they had never heard her pontificate on the subject? If I believed she knew everything about biology, and I believed platypodes were not mammals, I would answer the question about her views as “I don’t know, because she hasn’t told me, but I would guess her answer would be [x], because that’s what I think the answer is, and she wouldn’t be wrong”.

(Actually, I might well not add the last bit and leave it at hazarding a guess… but I wouldn’t make a certain statement about another person’s beliefs without actual – that is, non-inferential[sp?] – evidence.)

That’s what I would personally expect if your hypothesis were true. I’d expect people to answer with guesses, based on themselves, and identified as such – except where they had “sure” knowledge, based on however they believed God to “directly” communicate with them (religious texts, voices in their heads, etc).

The incredible assertion that it is or might be something less than torture flies in the face of reality. The eyes see, the ears here, perhaps the skin feels, yet there is somehow, it is claimed, a lack of sufficient knowing once the mind thinks it all over.

And it is criminal to suggest that somehow circumstances should be allowed to stand us upright as torturers…though we might “legally forgive” those guilty, this does nothing to lessen the scope of our crimes.

Myself, I say prosecute those guilty of these crimes fully, both here and abroad. Starting, of course, with George W. Bush. And while we and they are at it, prosecute as well for all those War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.