I got interested in philosophy in part through The Atheist Experience (TAE). It’s an interesting show that asks people to call into the show and to explain what they believe and why they believe it. Matt Dillahunty is the most well-known host on the show, and he’s an extremely good speaker who’s fun to listen to.
My guess is that many teenagers—and many young teenagers—get introduced to philosophy through online “atheist” content like TAE. Religious claims are very prominent in our society, and you get right into the domain of epistemology when you try to explain why you don’t accept such claims. Religious apologetics also asks how nonbelievers can believe that X is morally wrong, which gets you right into the domain of moral philosophy.
I have various questions about TAE on the topics of “infotainment”, debate, hostility, and academic philosophy. Dillahunty has probably already answered these questions before, but I haven’t found his detailed thoughts on these topics. I hope to get Dillahunty’s answers to these questions one day.
“Infotainment”
I would refer to online “atheist” content as “infotainment”, since there’s information mixed in with entertainment.
What is the ratio of “info”-to-“tainment” in online “atheist” content? Last Week Tonight is a good example of “infotainment”—there are jokes sprinkled into the analysis—but I’m not sure what the “info”-to-“tainment” ratio in Last Week Tonight is.
Is the only issue how high-quality the “info” is? You might say that if Last Week Tonight has great analysis then it can’t possibly matter that there are jokes thrown in.
To what extent should it bother us that we need to entice viewers with “tainment” in order to expose them to the “info”? It’s almost like you have to give a kid a piece of candy after every bite of broccoli they eat in order to induce them to eat the broccoli—or maybe after every three bites of broccoli, depending on the “info”-to-“tainment” ratio. The whole concept of “infotainment” reminds me of this Family Guy clip.
Debate
Debate is a subset of “infotainment”.
To what extent—if at all—does the “info”-to-“tainment” ratio drop in debate (relative to other forms of “infotainment”)?
To what extent is the whole structure of debate irrational? Consider a graduate seminar in the sciences—it’s a rational interchange among rational adults in which people will interchange, propose things, discuss things, pursue others’ ideas when those ideas seem reasonable, and so on. But debates are the polar opposite of rationality because debaters actually lose points if they change their mind.
Hostility
To what extent is it beneficial/smart/strategic to be at all hostile toward religious believers?
If shows like TAE are ever hostile toward religious believers, then to what extent is it fair to say that this hostility is ineffective in terms of opening religious believers’ minds and effective in terms of providing entertainment to the nonbelievers who are watching and who want to see religious believers get “dunked on”?
Academic Philosophy
To what extent does online “atheist” content run the risk of spreading bad philosophy if trained academic philosophers aren’t regularly consulted to vet the philosophy being put forward to the audience? I’m not trained in academic philosophy, but it seems crucial to bring trained academic philosophers on TAE—and on any other show—in order to vet things. If you were doing a show about biology, then it would be common sense to bring professionals on the show on a regular basis—the same holds for philosophy.
I’ll paraphrase below some comments from people who apparently have some training in academic philosophy, with the massive caveats that (1) these people may have no idea what they’re talking about and (2) these are only potential criticisms that a trained academic philosopher might raise if invited on TAE—or on any other show—to talk about philosophy:
some scientific theories are widely acknowledged to be useful/predictive, even though they’re not falsifiable/testable
falsifiability hasn’t been very relevant in philosophy of science for a while now
there’s no single “scientific method”—see Feyerabend’s work on this—and so it’s misleading to ever refer to the “scientific method”
there’s some fairly new philosophy-of-science literature that’s important to read and some of this literature puts forward the idea that replicability is “overrated”
the last paragraph here gives important sources on replicability
Dillahunty makes a logical error here because he presents the argument “P1: X cares about objective logic, P2: X does not care about Y, C: Y is not included in objective logic”, but imagine the argument “P3: Lois Lane believes Superman can fly, P4: Lois Lane does not believe Clark Kent can fly, C: Clark Kent is not Superman”—the issue is that maybe Y really is part of objective logic but X doesn’t know it
it’s incorrect to say that no method other than science can distinguish winners and losers among various competing contradictory claims, since logic can in some areas and math can in other areas
science relies on various methods—see Henk de Regt’s important work on how scientific understanding grows based on pragmatic (not just empirical) factors
what Dillahunty says is designed to “own the believers”—it’s not designed to be somehow rigorous
according to a comment here, Dillahunty was wrong about logic: “So, here’s some context: Matt Dillahunty sometimes talks about how Aristotle and his buddies sat down 2000 years ago and discovered all the valid syllogisms. That’s all of them and if your argument doesn’t take one of those forms, it’s invalid or something like that. Alex Malpass is trying to communicate to him that there are a lot of other formal logical systems that cover things that Aristotle’s logic doesn’t (I think he mentions modal logic as an example a bit before the start of the clip). In this clip specifically, Alex tells Matt that in classical logic for all x Px doesn’t imply exists x Px (which is correct) to which Matt pushes back.”
Just to be extremely clear, all of these things could be 100% invalid criticisms—I’m not trained in academic philosophy, so I can’t judge. I just think that these are the kinds of criticisms that might potentially be made if shows like TAE ever collided with academic philosophy.