The Colbert Report, May 27, 2008.20 20 My examples here are all applying American moral intuitions to practices outside of its boarders. That is because I am writing to Americans. I do not mean to imply that American moral values are somehow superior to the rest of the world. We do plenty of things wrong. For example, my guess is, in the near future, the American banning of gay marriage will be used as an example of something that was clearly morally wrong despite the majority consensus.
21 21 The Colbert Report, February 12, 2009.
22 22 The Colbert Report, July 31, 2006.
23 23 To be fair, there are non‐naive versions of relativism out there defended by very smart people – Gilbert Harman of Princeton, for one. For example, see Harman, G. (1975). Moral relativism defended. The Philosophical Review 84: 3–22.
24 24 Locke, J. (1978). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , 291. New York: Dutton.
25 25 The Colbert Report, October 17, 2005.
26 26 CBS News. (2006). The Word of the Year: Truthiness. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the‐word‐of‐the‐year‐truthiness (December 6, 2006).
27 27 Locke, 291.
28 28 The Colbert Report, March 20, 2007.
29 29 Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink . New York: Little, Brown and Company.
30 30 See Abbott, A. (2015). Unconscious Thought Not So Smart After All. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unconscious‐thought‐not‐so‐smart‐after‐all1 (January 28, 2015). See also Clancy, K. and Kreig, P. (2007). Your Gut is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head: How Disciplined, Fact‐Based Marketing Can Drive Extraordinary Growth and Profits . Hoboken: Wiley.
31 31 Peirlott, M. (2009). Truth, truthiness, and bullshit for the American voter. In: Stephen Colbert and Philosophy (ed. A. Schiller ), 77–94. Chicago: Open Court.
32 32 Peirlott, 83.
33 33 Peirlott, 91.
34 34 Colbert called them out on this, The Colbert Report, March 3, 2009.
35 35 This is Ethan Mills' conclusion in (2009). Truthiness and the appearances. In: Stephen Colbert and Philosophy (ed. A. Schiller ), 95–114. Open Court.
36 36 For a readable debunking of this myth, see Lanese, N. (2020). Why vitamin C won't “boost” your immune system against the coronavirus. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus‐vitamin‐c‐myth.html (March 10, 2020).
37 37 Do moral rights always create moral duties? There are those who contest the issue. See Feinberg, J. (1973). Social Philosophy , 61–64. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‐Hall, Inc. .
38 38 The Colbert Report, April 8, 2009.
39 39 Whyte, J. (2004). Crimes Against Logic , 1–10. New York: McGraw‐Hill.
40 40 Which he did in The Colbert Report, June 8–11, 2009.
41 41 Whyte, 9.
42 42 Colbert, S. (2006). White House Correspondents Dinner. (29 April 2006).
43 43 Colbert (2007), 120, 122.
44 44 The Colbert Report, October 17, 2005.
45 45 Colbert (2007), 126.
46 46 Rabin, N. (2006). [An Interview with] Stephen Colbert. A.V. Club. http://www.avclub.com/articles/stephen‐colbert,13970 (January 25, 2006).
Part II
Epistemology
Introduction
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Is it even possible to acquire knowledge? If so, how does one acquire it? How should one acquire it? If knowledge really is justified, true belief – which has been contested – what is truth anyway? These are the questions an epistemologist asks.
In Chapter 4, Henry Jacoby takes us to South Park to teach us about the ethics of belief. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) suggests that belief in God can be rational because, even though it lacks evidence, it is the better bet. In contrast, William Clifford (1845–1879) argues that it is always morally wrong to believe without evidence. Stan Marsh of South Park, Colorado agrees with William Clifford. Stan is critical of belief without (and contrary to) evidence, like Kyle's mom's beliefs in holistic healing, the Mormon belief that the first man and woman lived in Missouri, and John Edward's claims that he can communicate with the dead. Examples from South Park demonstrate the dangers of belief without evidence, such as blindly following David Blaine into a mass suicide, and a mental laziness that, Stan tells John Edward, is “slowing down the progress of all mankind.”
In The Matrix Trilogy, it is revealed that the everyday world humans experience is actually a computer simulation designed to keep humans under control while an artificially intelligent civilization harvests our energy. In Chapter 5, Matt Lawrence uses the predicament in which humanity finds itself in The Matrix to explain what philosophers call “The Skeptical Problem” and Descartes's (1959–1650) solution to it. How can we be sure we're not being deceived on a grand scale like the prisoners of the Matrix?
In Battlestar Galactica,
