Lessons for Philosophers and Scientists from Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown
blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk
blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk
Implying that the rational character of Sherlock Holmes is morally challenged when compared with a character acting predominantly on his gut feelings is, I think, a contemptible insult to rationality and those people who choose to act rationally. A decent argument can be crafted that rational behavior is moral behavior more often than not, but I doubt that Mr. Foster, as a fan of religious apologist (i.e. "Liar for Jesus") Chesterton, could be brought to understand it.
The Father Brown stories can have some very amusing insights about human nature, though it seems that while one might be able to have a stab at employing Holmes' method one would have little chance of ever learning Brown's (which was basically to put yourself so firmly into the mind of the perpetrator as to make the solution obvious).
Holmes tends to arrive at the correct conclusion, presumably by Bayesian reasoning. If he didn't have any useful priors (i.e. an understanding of human motivation, thought, emotion and behavior) the observable evidence alone might not be enough to make any hypothesis sufficiently likely.
Where the characters supposedly inform their priors differs (if I can trust this article as representative of Father Brown since I haven't read the books). Holmes has a habit of disguising himself to infiltrate and eavesdrop on people. I posit that there is less selection bias in that process than building a theory of crime based on the confessions of english catholic church-goers. But maybe that group is a diverse enough population that the model would generalize?
I guess a 'good' character is ultimately one that serves its narrative and perhaps in that they are equal?
Sure, Marlowe is the quintessential hard-boiled private detective, but when you read the books you discover that he is largely an intuitive/emotional detective. He applies logic/reasoning and his knowledge of the world he lives in to his intuition/emotions but he's not all-knowing. Marlowe doesn't have the mystery solved on page 23 when the reader still has 174 pages left to go.
While still a fantasy, I tend to think Marlowe is a more realistic detective than Holmes ever was - or at least, one with whom I can identify more readily.
I think there is always a temptation, a danger, for those of us in STEM careers to hold our own feelings and emotions (not to mention those of others) in contempt, as if they are somehow invalid by definition.
We shouldn't do that! Instead, we should accept the emotional and intuitive aspects of ourselves and try to reason through them, understand where those feelings are coming from and make conscious decisions about how to move forward.
Sorry to preach! I just love fictional detectives and the applicability of the lessons they can teach us to the real world. :)
> Instead, we should accept the emotional and intuitive aspects of ourselves and try to reason through them, understand where those feelings are coming from and make conscious decisions about how to move forward.
I agree completely. I'm distrustful of my emotions (if I feel uncomfortable with someone, is it because of things I know, or things I assume? Both are possible), but it's a fact that I experience them, and that they affect my day to day. Reason isn't what gets me out of bed in the morning. Emotions likely evolved because they were useful for survival. They can be very useful for directing our attention, or they can mislead us. If I feel something, I try to figure out if it's based on things I know instead of things I imagine, and then I try to act.
But what would Arsène Lupin, the great romantic thief from France, teach?
Great artists steal.
The Father Brown stories are not easy to read! Chesterton's mastery of the language and turns of phrases makes it quite challenging to understand their meaning. But i believe that adds to the charm of the stories and perhaps maybe the reason why they are not as popular as the Sherlock Holmes stories.
Utilitarianism, if I've read Mill correctly, does state that minimising suffering and maximising happiness is doing good. So it has its theory of value right there, built in. Stating that "X without Y is just a Z" isn't very insightful. A brush without bristles is just a stick. Ok, So what?
Furthermore, the "and why" part of the statement implies that there exist universally acceptable reasons why anything should be worthwhile which is arguably nonsense. I'd say it is an "empty and useless game" regardless of any theory of value, but we choose to play it anyway.
Which is why "consistency is the virtue of a narrow mind". And why debugging can be so hard when the ruling paradigm of system behaviour in your head is not aligned to real system behaviour.
For some reason I could only read a chapter at a time - the stories exhausted the mind. Not sure if it was Chesterton's unique prose or the ripples of thought it set off.
What now?
I wasn't able to really make sense of that explanation at all despite often reading (and often preferring) English as much as my native language for years I think.
“Lion’s Paw” might be from the Aesop's Fable: