Will Wilkinson, Massimo Pigliucci, and Mark Liberman have all been beating up on David Brooks’ recent column on philosophy and moral psychology. Will’s post, especially, is great, because it nabs the general formula Brooks’ columns seem to be taking, but all the posts miss the biggest flaw in Brooks’ argument. See how he opens it:

Socrates talked. The assumption behind his approach to philosophy, and the approaches of millions of people since, is that moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation…

Brooks tells us that–surprise!–psychologists have discovered that most people don’t think that way. But Socrates would agree. If there’s one big moral from the Socratic dialogs, it’s that most of what passes for wisdom is really false wisdom; the situation is so bad that most of this pseudo-philosophy can be debunked by a bum asking a few obvious questions. Philosophy is not about describing what everybody does, but improving upon it. Knowing that most people do not think about morality rationally doesn’t undermine the goal of improving our moral thinking, rather, it’s the basis for it.