The Disparity
The Disparity
Key aspects of the disparity between homo sapiens and homo philosophicus are identified and discussed. These include ‘fast thinking’ in Kahneman’s sense, belief-perseverance, attitude-recalcitrance, self-ignorance, and a bias to believe. Belief-perseverance and attitude-recalcitrance are easily confused but are different phenomena. Recalcitrance is a form of irrationality in Scanlon’s sense but belief-perseverance as such isn’t irrational. Subjects whose reasoning is impeccable can still be open to rational criticism in cases where their attitudes have an undermining non-epistemic explanation in terms of character traits such as gullibility. Such undermining non-epistemic explanations of a subject’s beliefs are unacceptable to the believer. In such cases of self-ignorance the subject knows what he believes but lacks a proper understanding of why he believes what he believes.
Keywords: homo philosophicus, homo sapiens, Disparity, Daniel Kahneman, fast thinking, belief-perseverance, attitude-recalcitrance, self-ignorance, T. M. Scanlon, non-epistemic explanation
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