This video asks students consider the philosophical relationship between justified belief, faith, and obedience.
It was originally created to supplement my Introduction to Philosophy course, and touches on a number of philosophical themes and questions. Most explicitly, this is a thought experiment about faith and obedience, but it also touches on the ideas of religious pragmatism, inductive reasoning, and confirmation bias.
The structure of this thought experiment is simple.
An unknown (perhaps unknowable) entity dispenses advice.
(1) The first time, the advice comes at no cost (“burn the trash”) and yields great reward (safety from the plague).
(2) The second time, the advice comes at modest cost (“collapse the bridge”) and yields substantial reward (“the village being spared from bandits”).
(3) The third time, the advice comes at a huge cost (“boil your child”) with no apparent reward.
(4) The fourth time, the advice appears nonsensical (“chicken, rock, deodorant”), though some in the town insist there must be a hidden meaning.
(5) The fifth and last time, the advice is even less coherent (a “string of asterisks, ampersands, and random letters”).
The question posed to the listener is this:
Was obedience to the machine ever justified?
NB: It is not whether such obedience ever yields positive results (it did, at least twice), but is it justified. This is meant to serve as an intuition pump as to what does and does not count as justified trust or belief – especially in the case of a mysterious (but possibly benevolent) authority.
The story also probes our faith in inductive reasoning itself.
Does the past success of a given authority (however unaccountable and unintelligible) warrant future adherence to said authority?
Additionally, an instructor may ask their class whether obedience to a mysterious authority, however benevolent, might have corrosive effects on the obedient subject themselves? While faith and humility are often touted as social virtues, might the opposite be the case?
Possible Readings:
Baron d’Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry. Superstition in All Ages.
Plato. The Euthyphro Dialogue.
James, William. The Will to Believe.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. (esp. Book 1, part iii, section 6 – on the “problem of induction”).
This section of the Blog of APA is designed to share pedagogical approaches to using humorous video clips for teaching philosophy. Humor, when used appropriately, has empirically been shown to correlate with higher retention rates. If you are interested in contributing, please email William A. B. Parkhurst at parkhurst1@usf.edu.
Landon Frim
Dr. Landon Frim is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Florida Gulf Coast University. His research concerns the intersections of religion, ethics and politics. In particular, he specializes in the radical Enlightenment philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and its contemporary applications.
