When there's a view that David K. Lewis held that seems wrong to me, I always feel a little uncomfortable. In the past I've said that this is because he was much smarter than I am, so that it always seems more likely that I'm missing something than that he missed something. But there must be more to it than that. Even as arrogant as I am, and reluctant as I am to admit it, I recognize that there have been and continue to be plenty of other people smarter than me.
Of course, for distant past examples, it's easy to diagnose their mistakes as being a result of their not knowing things which have been discovered since their time. I have little hesitation ascribing errors to Plato, or even relatively more recent figures like Hume. But there are more recent very smart figures that I still don't think about the way I think about Lewis. I have various excuses for why I shouldn't believe what they say, even if they were smarter than me. They have various biases, it seems clear that they would be willing to exaggerate or understate some things in order to push agendas they think are important. I'm pretty sure they'd lie to themselves in service of their agendas, as so many people do, and indeed there's plenty of research suggesting that one of the things being smarter especially consistently makes people better at is rationalization. So while I obviously recognize that there's a danger that I'm rationalizing myself when I dismiss smart people who disagree with me, the fact is that these reasons to be skeptical are often true. So while of course I always try to be aware that I could be wrong about any number of things, one smart person disagreeing with me, even one person I admit is probably smarter than me, doesn't really count for all that much.
But Lewis wasn't just known for his vast intelligence and philosophical talent. It's perhaps less well known, but still an established and well-deserved aspect of his reputation that he was honest to an extraordinary degree. I'm sure a student of his I knew was exaggerating when he described Lewis as literally incapable of lying, but my personal experience with him and every other aspect of his professional reputation that I'm aware of suggest that if this was an exaggeration, it was a very small one. And this means many of my excuses don't work. I don't think Lewis would deliberately lie or shade the truth to his readers because he thought it would be more beneficial to some cause he believed in. I mostly don't think he would even do it accidentally, because he was lying to himself; I can't imagine that there is anyone who never lies to themselves, but Lewis also seems to be someone who did that far less than is normal. So when Lewis said or wrote something, most of my usual excuses sound hollow; someone who is smarter than me and understands philosophical issues better than me, who seems to even be less easily confused or misled by bias than me, has come to this conclusion, and so if it seems wrong to me, the most likely explanation in the Lewis cases still kind of seems to be that I'm the one who's missing something.
Of course, I usually don't disagree with Lewis, so it's not as if this is something that's causing me constant anxiety or anything. I suppose I thought this was worth posting, because while of course plenty have argued for the value of honesty, I have some inclination to think that it is more often underestimated than overestimated. So I thought I would mention my theory about the role it played in making someone my top choice for greatest philosopher of the late 20th century.
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