Joshua Knobe: Indie Rock Virtues

3ammagazine has an interesting interview with Joshua Knobe. Knobe wrote the Experimental Philosophy Manifesto with Saun Nichols. As an "indie philosopher who breaks with academic style" Knobe has very interesting ideas about how one does philosophy.

Josh Knobe has already got a philosophical idea named after him, ‘The Knobe Effect’. This is the idea that corrodes the idea that we add moral judgments to preconceived non-moral facts about the world. The Knobe Effect suggests that that picture gets the flow of judgments the wrong way round. So Josh Knobe is now a very famous philosopher. Josh Knobe thinks about stuff like, do babies have morals? Are we born believing in God? Do we have free will? Do we think what we think we think? What do drunk people calculate? Where does greed come from? Why do we think God is to blame for bad weather? Why do conspiracy theories have sinister plots? Do we justify our own oppression? Why don’t political activists fit their stereotypes? Why can Google plan but not feel? Why the chair of the board will be held responsible for the bad he does but not the good? Can a lobster feel sad? How being yourself makes a punk band singer and a corporate businessman disagree? Why college students turn into Raskolnikov without regressing? Why Nietzsche is better than Aristotle and Kant at describing moral agency? Is being happy the opposite of being unhappy ? What is the role of disgust? Are infants little scientists?

3:AM Magazine » Indie Rock Virtues: "