target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_5a4bbb66-f86c-5877-8c8e-6f0f6802090d">25 Thanks to our humble correspondent, “truthiness” is now an official English word; in fact it was Merriam‐Webster's Word of the Year in 2006.26 Something has truthiness if your gut tells you it's true. To think with the gut is to accept something's truthiness as evidence that, in fact, it is true. On his show, Colbert constantly professed to be a gut thinker. But we know he cannot have been serious because gut thinking is ridiculous.
Locke (1632–1704) called gut thinkers, “enthusiastic.” The problem with gut thinking is that it provides insufficient evidence. People's intuitions vary widely and no one has reason to think their gut gets things right more often than anyone else's. Locke points out that gut thinkers are essentially arguing in a circle. “This is the way of talking of these men: they are sure because they are sure, and their persuasions are right only because they are strong in them.”27 In other words, they trust what comes from their gut because they think it gives them the truth, but they think it is true because it comes from their gut. This is like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps – it does not work.
Locke argues that, if something is really true, it can stand up to rational inquiry and should be subjected to it. So one's gut should be tested. If it happens to get things right, it will be proven and then can be justifiably believed. If it gets things wrong, it should be abandoned. Locke points out that even the prophets of the Old Testament knew this, for when they received a revelation from God, they did not merely trust their gut instinct that it was God, but asked for signs to verify the revelation's source. For example, Gideon in Judges 6 asks a voice to prevent a fleece from getting wet in the morning dew to verify that it is God's voice. God sometimes even provided the sign without asking, like with Moses and the burning bush. You may not be like Report‐Colbert, who thought science should aim to make the world more like the Old Testament (by strapping rockets onto the Sun to make it orbit the Earth)28 – but the lesson remains the same; gut feeling is not good enough to justify beliefs on its own.
Thinking from the gut should not be confused with “appealing to intuition.” Philosophers will sometimes use their own intuition as a litmus test; if an argument or position is contrary to their intuition, then the argument or position is thought to be faulty. But the intuitions in these cases are almost universally accepted and thus are thought to point to facts. For example, a philosopher might argue, “Jimmy's (Colbert's director's) ethical theory can't be right because if it is, that would mean that it can be acceptable to torture babies just for fun – and that can't be right.”
If the intuition is not as universally accepted as “baby torture = wrong,” the philosopher will not think the theory is refuted, but merely point out the theory's cost. “Esteban Colberto's (Colbert's Cuban alter ego's) ethical theory implies that discrimination can be okay; so if you accept that theory you will have to abandon your intuition that discrimination is always wrong.” (This might be said in a debate about affirmative action – which, of course, Colbert would never have taken part in since he said he was colorblind and literally unable to tell the difference between the colors black and white – although he did still discriminate against bears.) Philosophers will sometimes defend gut feelings with an argument. But good philosophers will never let their gut be the last word. If their argument fails and their gut is disproven, they reject what it says in favor of the truth.
In his bestseller Blink, Malcolm Gladwell argued that when it comes to recognizing danger and “reading people,” our gut is actually more trustworthy than our intellect.29 However, Blink's thesis has been largely discredited,30 and Colbert was suggesting that gut thinking can justify beliefs about issues as cerebral as politics and philosophy. So, Gladwell cannot be used to defend Colbert's suggestion.
I was surprised to discover, though, that some philosophers think that gut thinking can be acceptable, even in politics and philosophy. In “Truth, Truthiness, and Bullshit for the American Voter,”31 Matthew Peirlott argues that, even when it comes to important political and philosophical issues, one can be allowed to think with one's gut to draw a conclusion. Regarding major political matters, there is a large amount of information one has to process and verify before one comes to a truly informed decision. Peirlott argues, because so many different people are giving us this information, and it's hard to determine “which facts are facts,”32 we are allowed to choose who to listen to with our gut.
It's not that we ignore facts; it's that we select which “facts” presented to us we will accept as facts … we follow our guts and trust the people whose hearts we think we know … When there are too many “facts” to be accessed, and the situation is too complicated for an individual to understand fully without dedicating his whole waking life to that issue, truthiness seems to be the only thing we have to go on.33
He does have a point about conflicting “facts” and the difficulty of determining the truth, but I do not think “I'll just trust my gut to tell me who to believe” is the correct response to this difficulty. If it was, the guy who only relies on Fox and Friends for his “facts” because he likes what his gut says about them would be justified in believing all the stories they report, including that beer pong causes herpes – a hoax news story they reported as genuine without checking it.34 Instead, one should try to determine which facts to believe despite the difficulty. It may take a little time, but if the issue is important the time is worth it.
But what if one simply does not have the time to do the proper research, as Peirlott suggests? Regardless of why one has not done the research, if one has not done it, one should not pretend one has. Instead, one should admit that one does not know what facts to accept. A better response to the difficulty is agnosticism – the suspension of belief and admission of ignorance.35 If you do not know, admit it.
By admitting our ignorance we emulate Socrates (469–399 BCE). The Oracle at Delphi said “no one is wiser” than Socrates, but not because he knew everything – it was because he was the only one to admit he knew nothing. Socrates spent his entire life trying to find someone who had knowledge – because he knew he lacked it – but only found supposed “experts” who professed to have knowledge, but in fact had none. Not only does Socrates give us a good belief‐forming model, but he also gives us good reason not to trust who we would like to think are “experts” simply because our gut tells us to. Very often, those who claim to be experts aren't, and they do not know what they think they know.
Indeed, their expertise in one thing can make them think they are qualified to talk about something else, when it does not. Take Linus Pauling, for example, the famous Nobel Prize‐winning chemist, who fathered the idea that Vitamin C can boosts your immune system. This idea is still around today, but its utterly false.36 Pauling fooled even himself because he thought his knowledge of chemistry qualified him to draw a conclusion about the immune system. But chemistry is not immunology.
So, again, the principle of charity dictates that Report‐Colbert cannot have been serious – the real Colbert cannot really be a gut thinker. But that is not the only way that Report‐Colbert defended his positions.
A Right to Your
