By way of introduction to this question: There is a whole website made up of engineers and computer programmers who do internet-based philosophy. As far as I can tell, they are lead by a fellow who assigns them research-projects and publishes the results on the website. It is hard to tell most of these writers apart, as they are, to a man, rationalist-utilitarians who claim to have solved just about every problem of philosophy via the application of probability-theory or deductive logic. This is about the most charitable description I can give of the "method" employed by the persons in question.
The modern thinker loves to pay lip service to facts, to submit himself to the results of various popular research programmes, to use the word "science" as a kind of career-building incantation. Yet, there is one set of facts that is forever beyond his purview: facts about himself. When was the last time you picked up a book of philosophy and found the author giving an honest, formative account of their beliefs and values, a description of how they have been produced and where they fit into the world, socially, historically and otherwise?
Reflection on where our convictions come from can be unsettling to those very convictions. An honest confrontation with the ways in which our purportedly objective convictions can be seen as mere chapters in an autobiography; that's not a popular or desirable confrontation for most of us. Yet, this aversion betrays us: we are not really interested in all of the facts. Only the comforting ones.
"Wait a minute, guys... could it be that, as computer programmers and engineers, we are deeply attracted to algorithmic solutions to problems, and that's why we're so enamoured with utilitarianism and deductive logic? Could these facts be related? Might we just be projecting our own orientation into the world, rather than discovering independent facts about what is correct?"
That statement, I can assure you, will never be written. In order to write it, the person in question would have to become aware of the sprawling diversity of human types across history, of the myriad ways in which culture and context can inform our basic orientations, and of the contingent developmental history that lead to their own particular life within this ocean of possible meaning and purpose. However, in becoming so aware, it's quite probable that this person's faith in the power of the algorithm might be severely reduced, as they would have to see that very faith as a product of non-rational forces. For a rationalist, this eminently scientific thought is not a happy thought.
I cannot resist noting the structural similarity to these thoughts: "The bible was written by people, the dogmas of my church were simply political decisions, there is no record of my religion before 120 A.D., portions of the bible are plagarized from older mythologies, if I had been raised in India I would believe in Hinduism..." Fascinating that these historical-developmental facts are forced on the modern Christian by this rationalist-utilitarian type, yet, that same type is consistently unwilling to confront the historical-developmental facts that might undermine their faith in their own principles.
It seems clear that some possible worldviews are stable under this kind of factual reflection. Imagine an ancient tribe of humans, threatened by external invaders, who are saved, in a moment of profound courage and strength, by one heroic member of the tribe. This hero is lauded and glorified, such that when he dies, the traits he displayed in life are translated into a kind of ethical code. The memory of these events might fade over generations, and the hero's name might simply become a blessing, a word signifying goodness or excellence. However, if a curious person searches through the tribe's records and finds the description of the events that lead to the formation of the ethical code, his faith in it can only be strengthened: he will discover that his own way of life was saved by the hero, and that this hero became a rightful ethical examplar for him. The inquirer's subjective worldview survives an honest confrontation with the forces that have produced it.
This, (regrettably?), is not any of us. So, we have a choice: we can simply charge ahead, ignoring history, ignoring sociology and ignoring developmental psychology, remaining unknown to ourselves, asserting confidently that our deepest convictions are objective facts that we have intuited, deduced, or arrived at via some pure rational process. Or, we can submit ourselves to all of the facts, and hope that whatever confidence we have in our convictions will survive this process. Perhaps those who refuse to stare into this abyss are prudent to do so, but in this case, prudence firmly links arms with ignorance.
