So you’re saying we should be cold and calculating” moral robots, motivated solely by extremely abstract considerations like simplicity, who insist that we should maximize happiness (perhaps by throwing people into experience machines against their will) since at least that’s an end that we can quantify and measure.
Probably the most well-known philosophical argument that has a completely decisive refutation, but for which the refutation is not that well known is the Laplace's Demon argument. Specifically, the argument that determinism entails that it is in principle possible to know in advance what actions you will take by calculating them from the physical laws and initial conditions, and that having this knowledge in advance means you can't choose freely. The refutation I know of comes from a paper by Richard Holton called "From Determinism to Resignation, and How to Stop It," though it's possible someone else has made a similar refutation before this.
Basically, it turns out that the first premise that determinism entails the possibility of foreknowledge of your own actions is just false. The problem is that, although determinism does entail that any of your actions could in principle be calculated from the initial conditions and physical laws (well, assuming that the laws of physics are computable anyway), it does not entail that it's possible for that calculation to be done and for its result to be revealed to you before you perform the action, and this latter possibility is what's required for the argument against free will to go through. In fact, even in fairly simple deterministic systems that we can build in real life, this assumption is demonstrably false. Holton gives the example of a machine consisting a light bulb connected to a light sensor, which will turn the bulb off at noon if it detects light before then and on if it doesn't. Your goal is to predict whether the light bulb will be turned on or off at noon in advance, and reveal your prediction to the machine by presenting it with your own light if you predict it will turn its bulb on, and no light if you predict it will turn its bulb off. Since the machine always does the opposite of what you predict, it does not matter how much computing power you have or how precise your knowledge is of the initial conditions and laws of nature - you will never be able to predict what the machine will do and reveal the prediction to the machine beforehand, even though everything in the scenario is deterministic. This is because the revelation itself has an effect on the machine, and determinism does not stop it from acting as a prediction fruatrator that will always just do the opposite of what anyone predicts it will do (after all, being a prediction frustrator is a perfectly deterministic process).
Of course, the same is true of human actions - predictions of what we will do can affect what we end up doing, and we sometimes decide to do the opposite of whatever is predicted of us. Determinism does not magically make this impossible. It turns out that what's actually impossible is to perform the calculation and reveal the result to someone determined to frustrate your prediction - the mechanistic reason is that, in order to predict a frustrator's actions, you would need to first calculate all the things that causally affect their actions, but one of those is the outcome of the prediction itself, so any attempt to perform the calculation is going to get stuck in an infinite loop.
So based on the above, I consider Laplace's Demon to be a "zombie argument" against compatibilism in the way you used the phrase here. There's also a misconception that compatibilism is redefining free will when in fact most compatibilists hold themselves to be talking about the same concept as incompatibilists, and that incompatibilists are just wrong when they say this concept is incompatible with determinism. So any argument that treats compatibilism as if it's just a redefinition rather than a substantive thesis is similarly a zombie argument.
Misconceptions about utilitarianism are a big pet peeve for me as well, though of course, you already mentioned those. In particular, the idea that utilitarians value the abstract utility function itself, rather than concrete individuals and instances of wellbeing, and the idea that utilitarians treat individuals as "mere means" when the entire theory is based on the idea that everyone should be treated as an equally important end in themselves. I think both of these should be considered philosophical myths, since they're based on misunderstandings of the view, and yet they persist as prominent objections. I would also add epistemic arguments against utilitarianism here, since they tend to completely ignore the concept of expected value and decision theory, making them dead on arrival despite being constantly brought up.
The good news is, there are some arguments that really have been decisively refuted in a way that philosophers have become aware of and agree on, so it's not inevitable that historically important arguments will always continue to amble on despite refutation. Arguments for fatalism that rely on the modal fallacy are the case that comes to mind for me.
Arguments against various forms of reductionism that conflate, "X can be fully described in terms of Ys," with, "X is just Y," where the latter is meant to imply a lack of the higher-level properties associated with X, are a borderline case: You still hear such arguments all the time, but it seems they're generally recognized by philosophers as being fallacious.
I think there is a lot of value in your post, but while I’m not a professional philosopher in my experience, often when a philosopher claims that some particular objection to their view can be addressed their response to the objection is frequently something that their opposition does not find convincing on the merits. I don’t mean to imply that no response to a canonical objection can be valid, but I think philosophers who reject these responses often do have a genuinely fleshed out view and are correctly pattern matching to the fact that most often, even if you have a response, they will not be satisfied with it and can predict this with high accuracy, even before reading your response. Note, as somebody who has seen this in cases where I in fact, thought that the response to the objection was valid. I do think that these philosophers can often be mistaken, but they’re not mistaken in their opinion that they would not find the response satisfactory. It’s just that I think they are mistaken in believing that it is unsatisfactory. The problem is with their on the merits judgement, not in their instinct, which is generally correct about how they’ll respond to the objection to the objection. To be clear, my sample is much smaller than yours and I imagine there are plenty of cases where you analysis is correct, but I’m pointing out a relevant dynamic that I think I have observed in my own sample of philosophy. For example, I think that plenty of people who object to your version of consequentialism will not be persuaded buy your arguments that your view is not cold and unfeeling because it still has all the properties that they consider cold and un feeling in the original view. I don’t think these people would be correct, but I don’t think their objection has been dealt in a way they would find satisfactory if they read your arguments. To be clear the way in which the dynamic I have identified is different from the dynamic. You mention is that even if philosophers are mistaken on the merits, they are not behaving in a way different from how I behave when I’m reading the opposition. When I read a philosophy paper advocating view, I oppose, I am unlikely to change my mind not because I’m not open minded but because in my experience, I generally just find the responses to the common objections unsatisfactory. It’s just that different people find different positions, appealing, so somebody with an opposite view to mine would find my responses to common objections to my view to be unsatisfactory. The basic problem is that what appears like philosophical progress to one person may very well appear like unsatisfactory responses to a different person. Basically, I think generally the judgement of philosophers regarding the accuracy of responses to common objections is no worse than their judgement on other philosophical matters, and while they’re often mistaken, that’s because most people are often mistaken. To be clear, I would not suggest changing your view too much in response to this comment. Because as I mentioned my sample is much smaller than yours. I’m just highlighting a different dynamic. I have noticed, but given my smaller sample you should probably not put too much weight on my observations.
Yeah, I agree that people often correctly anticipate that *they will remain unconvinced* by a response. This ties in with the section where I suggested that "the original claim may still *feel true* to them". But the challenge is whether they can adequately *explain* why the response fails. I think a willingness to undertake that argumentative burden is essential for philosophical progress. Otherwise we just get folks saying, "Nah, seems wrong to me," back and forth, which doesn't seem very intellectually valuable.
(Like, there are loads of deontological moves that I'm thoroughly unconvinced by. But I'm willing to write papers and blog posts explaining, in some detail, what I find unconvincing about them! I'm suggesting that more non-consequentialists ought to take up their corresponding argumentative burden. There's a job to do here, and—sad to say—I don't think the profession is currently doing a very good job of it.)
Okay, in that case we don’t actually disagree much, although I still think that in many of these cases, people would in fact be able to articulate their objection to the objection to the objection to suitably high analytical standards of rigger, but I could be wrong about that, although it has in fact proved generally true in my admittedly limited experience.
Fair enough. I think you are correct and I’ve come around to your viewpoint that you should make sure it’s public knowledge why you think a particular response to a common objection does not work and not doing this is a problem with current philosophy, even if it’s understandable why individual philosophers do it. It also makes sense as a story based on incentives because an individual philosopher will not get much out of reading a response to a common objection. If they’re not going to be persuaded much less writing up a response, but it’s good for the discipline and humanity as a whole, when they do write such a response to a response to a common objection so we should expect individual philosophers to under produce this in the absence of social norms to deal with the problem.
This debate exposes a deeper structural issue than pattern-matching at the cognitive level.
Canonical objections persist not because people believe them strongly, but because no one is structurally positioned to withdraw them. Refutations can be read, even appreciated, without triggering any downstream obligation to update stance, teaching, citation practice, or review behavior.
Engagement survives at the level of commentary, while agency over the state of the dialectic dissolves.
If that diagnosis holds, better mapping tools can help — but only up to the point where someone still has standing to say “this objection is no longer live,” and have that actually bind future discourse.
Just seconding that “Value Receptacles” is criminally underrated. It’s one of my very favorite papers in value theory from the last 25 years!
Thanks! :-)
So you’re saying we should be cold and calculating” moral robots, motivated solely by extremely abstract considerations like simplicity, who insist that we should maximize happiness (perhaps by throwing people into experience machines against their will) since at least that’s an end that we can quantify and measure.
Probably the most well-known philosophical argument that has a completely decisive refutation, but for which the refutation is not that well known is the Laplace's Demon argument. Specifically, the argument that determinism entails that it is in principle possible to know in advance what actions you will take by calculating them from the physical laws and initial conditions, and that having this knowledge in advance means you can't choose freely. The refutation I know of comes from a paper by Richard Holton called "From Determinism to Resignation, and How to Stop It," though it's possible someone else has made a similar refutation before this.
Basically, it turns out that the first premise that determinism entails the possibility of foreknowledge of your own actions is just false. The problem is that, although determinism does entail that any of your actions could in principle be calculated from the initial conditions and physical laws (well, assuming that the laws of physics are computable anyway), it does not entail that it's possible for that calculation to be done and for its result to be revealed to you before you perform the action, and this latter possibility is what's required for the argument against free will to go through. In fact, even in fairly simple deterministic systems that we can build in real life, this assumption is demonstrably false. Holton gives the example of a machine consisting a light bulb connected to a light sensor, which will turn the bulb off at noon if it detects light before then and on if it doesn't. Your goal is to predict whether the light bulb will be turned on or off at noon in advance, and reveal your prediction to the machine by presenting it with your own light if you predict it will turn its bulb on, and no light if you predict it will turn its bulb off. Since the machine always does the opposite of what you predict, it does not matter how much computing power you have or how precise your knowledge is of the initial conditions and laws of nature - you will never be able to predict what the machine will do and reveal the prediction to the machine beforehand, even though everything in the scenario is deterministic. This is because the revelation itself has an effect on the machine, and determinism does not stop it from acting as a prediction fruatrator that will always just do the opposite of what anyone predicts it will do (after all, being a prediction frustrator is a perfectly deterministic process).
Of course, the same is true of human actions - predictions of what we will do can affect what we end up doing, and we sometimes decide to do the opposite of whatever is predicted of us. Determinism does not magically make this impossible. It turns out that what's actually impossible is to perform the calculation and reveal the result to someone determined to frustrate your prediction - the mechanistic reason is that, in order to predict a frustrator's actions, you would need to first calculate all the things that causally affect their actions, but one of those is the outcome of the prediction itself, so any attempt to perform the calculation is going to get stuck in an infinite loop.
So based on the above, I consider Laplace's Demon to be a "zombie argument" against compatibilism in the way you used the phrase here. There's also a misconception that compatibilism is redefining free will when in fact most compatibilists hold themselves to be talking about the same concept as incompatibilists, and that incompatibilists are just wrong when they say this concept is incompatible with determinism. So any argument that treats compatibilism as if it's just a redefinition rather than a substantive thesis is similarly a zombie argument.
Misconceptions about utilitarianism are a big pet peeve for me as well, though of course, you already mentioned those. In particular, the idea that utilitarians value the abstract utility function itself, rather than concrete individuals and instances of wellbeing, and the idea that utilitarians treat individuals as "mere means" when the entire theory is based on the idea that everyone should be treated as an equally important end in themselves. I think both of these should be considered philosophical myths, since they're based on misunderstandings of the view, and yet they persist as prominent objections. I would also add epistemic arguments against utilitarianism here, since they tend to completely ignore the concept of expected value and decision theory, making them dead on arrival despite being constantly brought up.
The good news is, there are some arguments that really have been decisively refuted in a way that philosophers have become aware of and agree on, so it's not inevitable that historically important arguments will always continue to amble on despite refutation. Arguments for fatalism that rely on the modal fallacy are the case that comes to mind for me.
Arguments against various forms of reductionism that conflate, "X can be fully described in terms of Ys," with, "X is just Y," where the latter is meant to imply a lack of the higher-level properties associated with X, are a borderline case: You still hear such arguments all the time, but it seems they're generally recognized by philosophers as being fallacious.
I think there is a lot of value in your post, but while I’m not a professional philosopher in my experience, often when a philosopher claims that some particular objection to their view can be addressed their response to the objection is frequently something that their opposition does not find convincing on the merits. I don’t mean to imply that no response to a canonical objection can be valid, but I think philosophers who reject these responses often do have a genuinely fleshed out view and are correctly pattern matching to the fact that most often, even if you have a response, they will not be satisfied with it and can predict this with high accuracy, even before reading your response. Note, as somebody who has seen this in cases where I in fact, thought that the response to the objection was valid. I do think that these philosophers can often be mistaken, but they’re not mistaken in their opinion that they would not find the response satisfactory. It’s just that I think they are mistaken in believing that it is unsatisfactory. The problem is with their on the merits judgement, not in their instinct, which is generally correct about how they’ll respond to the objection to the objection. To be clear, my sample is much smaller than yours and I imagine there are plenty of cases where you analysis is correct, but I’m pointing out a relevant dynamic that I think I have observed in my own sample of philosophy. For example, I think that plenty of people who object to your version of consequentialism will not be persuaded buy your arguments that your view is not cold and unfeeling because it still has all the properties that they consider cold and un feeling in the original view. I don’t think these people would be correct, but I don’t think their objection has been dealt in a way they would find satisfactory if they read your arguments. To be clear the way in which the dynamic I have identified is different from the dynamic. You mention is that even if philosophers are mistaken on the merits, they are not behaving in a way different from how I behave when I’m reading the opposition. When I read a philosophy paper advocating view, I oppose, I am unlikely to change my mind not because I’m not open minded but because in my experience, I generally just find the responses to the common objections unsatisfactory. It’s just that different people find different positions, appealing, so somebody with an opposite view to mine would find my responses to common objections to my view to be unsatisfactory. The basic problem is that what appears like philosophical progress to one person may very well appear like unsatisfactory responses to a different person. Basically, I think generally the judgement of philosophers regarding the accuracy of responses to common objections is no worse than their judgement on other philosophical matters, and while they’re often mistaken, that’s because most people are often mistaken. To be clear, I would not suggest changing your view too much in response to this comment. Because as I mentioned my sample is much smaller than yours. I’m just highlighting a different dynamic. I have noticed, but given my smaller sample you should probably not put too much weight on my observations.
Yeah, I agree that people often correctly anticipate that *they will remain unconvinced* by a response. This ties in with the section where I suggested that "the original claim may still *feel true* to them". But the challenge is whether they can adequately *explain* why the response fails. I think a willingness to undertake that argumentative burden is essential for philosophical progress. Otherwise we just get folks saying, "Nah, seems wrong to me," back and forth, which doesn't seem very intellectually valuable.
(Like, there are loads of deontological moves that I'm thoroughly unconvinced by. But I'm willing to write papers and blog posts explaining, in some detail, what I find unconvincing about them! I'm suggesting that more non-consequentialists ought to take up their corresponding argumentative burden. There's a job to do here, and—sad to say—I don't think the profession is currently doing a very good job of it.)
Okay, in that case we don’t actually disagree much, although I still think that in many of these cases, people would in fact be able to articulate their objection to the objection to the objection to suitably high analytical standards of rigger, but I could be wrong about that, although it has in fact proved generally true in my admittedly limited experience.
Possibly! One can't know until they actually try.
Fair enough. I think you are correct and I’ve come around to your viewpoint that you should make sure it’s public knowledge why you think a particular response to a common objection does not work and not doing this is a problem with current philosophy, even if it’s understandable why individual philosophers do it. It also makes sense as a story based on incentives because an individual philosopher will not get much out of reading a response to a common objection. If they’re not going to be persuaded much less writing up a response, but it’s good for the discipline and humanity as a whole, when they do write such a response to a response to a common objection so we should expect individual philosophers to under produce this in the absence of social norms to deal with the problem.
Hey Richard, I believe that this paper of yours so far has been the best - https://philpapers.org/rec/CHAPAP-23
Do you know some more new, latest papers regarding deontology... and also some looking at virtue ethics that you like?
This debate exposes a deeper structural issue than pattern-matching at the cognitive level.
Canonical objections persist not because people believe them strongly, but because no one is structurally positioned to withdraw them. Refutations can be read, even appreciated, without triggering any downstream obligation to update stance, teaching, citation practice, or review behavior.
Engagement survives at the level of commentary, while agency over the state of the dialectic dissolves.
If that diagnosis holds, better mapping tools can help — but only up to the point where someone still has standing to say “this objection is no longer live,” and have that actually bind future discourse.
Hello there Richard, I hope you’re having a good week.
I’ve been seeing your notes for a while now, you have a unique perspective, thank you for sharing.
I thought you may enjoy the approach I take to history, grounded in historic literature:
https://substack.com/@jordannuttall/note/p-182017962?r=4f55i2&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action