Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature

PHIL 181 - Lecture 1 - Introduction

Chapter 1. Introduction and Course Overview [00:00:00]

Professor Tamar Gendler: So, welcome to Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature. It's nice see so many of you here today. I hope to see more of you here again on Thursday. And my goal today is to try to give you a sense of what kind of course this is going to be so that you can make an informed decision about whether this is a course that you actually want to enroll in for credit.

With that aim in mind, there are three things I want to do in today's lecture. In the first part of the lecture, I'm just going to give you a very broad overview of what kind of course this is, and to say a few words about what my goals are for the course. In the bulk of the lecture, what I'm going to do is to run through three examples of the kinds of topics that we're going to be addressing this semester, so that you have a sense of what kind of material we're going to be talking about. And in the final section of the course, I'll say a few things about what it is that makes this course distinctive, and a few things about the course's requirements.

So the course has this perplexing cross-listed title. It's called Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature, and it's listed both in Philosophy and in Cognitive Science, and it's a course for which you can get credit in the Psychology major. So what kind of course is this? Well, in some ways, this is a course like Directed Studies Philosophy or Philosophy 125-126. That is, we're going to be reading works by Plato, by Aristotle, by Epictetus, by Boethius, by Hobbes, by Hume, and by Mill--all major philosophers from the Western philosophical tradition. We're going to be reading them roughly historically, with an attempt to get at some of the kinds of questions that one would get at in a traditional philosophy course.

In addition, you'll get some of the material that you would get in an ethics course. So one of the topics that we'll cover in Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature are the three main ethical theories in the Western philosophical tradition. We'll talk about utilitarianism, we'll talk about deontology, and we'll talk about virtue ethics, and we'll talk about how those relate to one another.

You'll also get some of the materials that you would get if you took an introduction to political philosophy course. We'll very briefly look at the work of Thomas Hobbes on the legitimacy of the state, and then we'll read and think about the debate between John Rawls and Robert Nozick about how much weight should be given to the relative values of equality on one hand and liberty on the other.

So in that regard, this is, in some ways, a standard philosophy course in the moral and political tradition. It's not a course in metaphysics; it's not a course in epistemology; it's not a course where we're going to be talking about issues like free will or the mind-body problem, all of which could legitimately fall under the topic of philosophy of human nature.

But what's distinctive about this course is that in addition to the contributions that are made by the philosophical side of the equation, we're also going to be drawing from a number of other disciplines. So one of the main themes of the course will be to think about how the questions raised by the traditional philosophers that I've mentioned already are picked up in the contemporary cognitive science tradition.

In particular, how they're picked up by what I see as one of the main strands in contemporary cognitive science, the strand that looks at the relation between human beings as rational creatures, capable of a certain kind of calculated and reflective understanding of themselves and their place in the world, and, on the other hand, human beings as evolved animals who are subject to forces that lie beyond their rational control.

In light of that recognition that human beings are capable of being affected in multiple ways, we'll look at a number of writings from psychology. So we'll read some Freud; we'll have a discussion of cognitive behavioral therapy; we'll talk about post-traumatic stress disorder; we'll have discussion of happiness, using a wonderful book written by a Yale alumnus, Jonathan Haidt. We'll look at some work on self-regulation, on love and friendship, and we'll also look at empirical work on topics like moral reasoning and punishment, and social psychological work on situations and attitudes.

So a lot of the material that we'll address in this course will come from psychology. But some of it will also come from the tradition of political science. So in the course of discussing the legitimacy of the state, we'll introduce ourselves to the notion of the prisoners' dilemma. We'll talk about the tragedy of the commons, and in the closing section of the course, we'll talk about the role of rhetoric and argument in political persuasion.

We'll also draw from the field of behavioral economics. One of the reading assignments is to listen to Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize speech, accepting the Nobel Price on behalf of himself and his collaborator, Amos Tversky, for the extraordinary work they did founding behavioral economics. But we'll also look at some additional work in the dual processing tradition, and we have some excerpts from Dan Ariely's delightful book, public book on behavioral economics.

Finally, we'll even draw a little bit from literature. We're going to read a short excerpt from the Iliad; we're going to read a short story by Ursula LeGuin; and in the second to last lecture of the course, we'll look at what Plato has to say about the role of literature and artistic representation in affecting human self-understanding.

So what I'm going to try to do in the course is to bring together these eight fields in a way that provides a coherent story about what kind of things human beings are, and how we can learn about what kind of things human beings are from these various perspectives.

In slogan form, the structure of the course is dead guy on Tuesday, cog sci on Thursday. Except not all the philosophers we're reading are dead. And not all of them are guys. And not all the other fields are cog sci. And in fact, most things are going to be covered together on Tuesday and Thursday. And there are going to be sections. But other than that, the slogan.

So that's an overview of the kinds of disciplines that contribute to the course. Let me say a bit about the specific topics that I hope to address in the course of the semester.

So the first overarching topic, and I roughly organized the syllabus under these three topics, but in some way, each of them will keep re-emerging throughout the semester. The first topic is the topic of happiness and flourishing. What does the ancient Western philosophical tradition say about what it takes for human beings to thrive in a meaningful sense, and how does that connect to work that's been done more recently in various literary and scientific traditions about what it is that enables human beings to flourish? What is it about human nature that can give us some clue about what kind of thing authentic happiness might be? That's the first set of questions that we'll address.

It turns out that the ancient philosophers' answer to that question is that human beings thrive when their souls are well-ordered, to use the ancient metaphor. When the parts of their souls that might pull in different directions are in a certain kind of harmony; and the ancient picture is that when that happens, human beings behave in a moral way.

And so the second part of the course will look at both what it feels like from the inside to behave in ways that are conventionally considered moral, and from a higher level, what it is that we mean when we say that an act is moral or immoral.

So as I mentioned, we'll look at the three main Western philosophical conceptions of morality, and we'll also look at some interesting related questions. Like, why is punishment justified when it is? And is the justification for punishment psychological or ethical?

And in the final unit of the course, we'll move beyond the individual into society as a whole, and ask some questions about what it is that makes political structures legitimate, and how it is that state or civic institutions ought to be organized in order to allow human beings to flourish.

So those are the three main topics that we'll be addressing, and as you can see, on the syllabus that I've handed out, there are highlighted examples of a few of those particular topics that we're addressing on page one of the syllabus, and a much more detailed set of questions on pages three and four.

But in addition to being about the content of these questions, this is also a course that's going to encourage you to think about the methodology of each of the disciplines from which we're drawing. So it's my goal to introduce you to a number of traditional philosophical discussions of the human being, but it's also my goal to get you to think about what these philosophical discussions have in common, and why it is that thinking about things in the way that philosophy thinks about things can be valuable for answering questions that we care about.

And we'll do something very similar with respect to the other disciplines. We'll look at the literature from psychology and behavioral economics and political science and literature, and we'll ask: what is it about this distinctive approach to answering these questions that provides us with a complementary insight on the issues that the philosophers have raised?

And finally, I'm going to ask you to think not only in the context of this class, but in the context of the other classes you're taking about the ways in which the material to which you're being exposed sheds light through multiple disciplinary perspectives on the set of questions that we're concerned with.

Chapter 2. First Example of Course Topics: the Ring of Gyges [00:11:30]

So that's the opening segment of the lecture. That what I had called the “overview and course topics” section of the class. And what I want to do now is to give you three examples of the kinds of topics that we'll be addressing this semester.

So the first example I'm going to give is actually drawn from the readings that we'll be doing for Thursday. And it's a story from Plato's Republic called the story of the ring of Gyges.

I'll give you a little bit more background on Thursday about where this story fits in the context of the book from which it's drawn, but for now, all you need to know is that there's a character named Glaucon who's actually one of the brothers of Plato, the author of this dialogue. And Glaucon is in conversation with the great ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, and he's trying to convince Socrates that when people act morally, the only reason they do it is because they can't get away with it.

So even if you've shopped only for today, you'll have a chance to hear some Plato. So I'm going to read aloud to you these numbers on the right. I'll explain to you next class, they're called Stephanus numbers. They enable you, whichever translation of Plato you're using to find the same passage. And what I'm reading to you from is from Stephanus pages 359 to 360. So:

 "There was once a shepherd named Gyges in the service of the ruler of Lydia. There was a giant thunderstorm, and an earthquake broke open the ground and created a chasm at the place where he was tending his sheep. Seeing this, he was filled with amazement and went down into it. And there he saw a hollow bronze horse. There were window-like openings in it, and peeking in, he saw a corpse wearing nothing but a gold ring on his finger. So he took the ring and came out of the chasm.”

"He wore the ring at his usual monthly meeting that reported to the king on the state of the flocks. And as he was sitting among the others, he happened to turn the setting of the ring towards himself, to the inside of the hand. And when he did this, he became invisible to those sitting near him, and they went on talking as if he had gone. He wondered about this, and fingering the ring, he turned the setting outwards again, and became visible. So he experimented with the ring to test whether it indeed had this power, and it did. If he turned the setting inward, he became invisible, and if he turned it outward, he became visible again.”

"When he realized this, he arranged to become one of the messengers sent to report to the king. And when he arrived there, he seduced the king's wife, with her help, attacked and killed the king, and took over the kingdom."

So that's the story of the ring of Gyges. Now why is it that Glaucon tells that story? Glaucon tells that story with the expectation that you, upon hearing this, will think that you would act as Gyges did, if you had the opportunity to get away with crime without being caught.

Glaucon's conclusion from this story is that those who practice justice, those who act in conformity with the moral code of their society, do so because they lack the power to do injustice. They act in that way because they fear the punishment of society. They don't act in that way because it's in any way valuable to them.

And the reading that we're going to do for this Thursday's class includes [both] the text that surrounds the story that I just told you. So the setup wherein Glaucon raises the challenge of which [this] is supposed to be an example, and the conversation between Glaucon and Socrates that follows the posing of the challenge through this story. And in addition, we're going to read some empirical psychological work on the question of what people do when they think they are unobserved.

So we're going to ask the question whether, as a matter of fact, people would, and whether, as a matter of fact, people should behave as Gyges did. That's the first example of the kind of topic we're going to address in the course.

Chapter 3. Second Example of Course Topics: Trolley problems [00:16:29]

A second set of topics that we'll address in the course will take off from a particular philosophical example that has become quite popular in contemporary discussions of morality, but which is actually traceable, about 40 years old, to some writings by Philippa Foot, and the philosopher Judith Thomson. And the case, with which I suspect some of you are familiar, involves a trolley, which is hurtling down the track in the direction of five people, and if the trolley is not turned, it will hit this group of five.

Now, the question that philosophers like to pose is the following. Suppose that there were a switch, which you could use that would divert the trolley so that instead of hitting the five people, it would go down a branch track and hit one. When we have our course clickers, we'll be able to do this scientifically. For now, I just want a show of hands. How many people think it is either morally permitted or morally required, that is, either permitted or required, not forbidden, to switch the trolley in such a way that it hits the one person, rather than the five? How many think it's either permitted or required to switch the trolley so that one person dies rather than five? [pause] OK. And how many of you think it's morally forbidden to turn the trolley so that it kills one person rather than five? How many of you think it's morally forbidden, prohibited? [pause] OK. So as I said, we don't have the clickers, but a vast majority of the class believes that it's either permitted or required to divert the trolley.

Now, suppose we had a slightly different situation. Instead of the one person being on the tracks, there is, rather, a bridge that rests over the trolley tracks. And atop the bridge, a large gentleman of ample girth such that were you to dislodge him from his present location using the same switch that you used in the last case, he would be sufficiently weighty to prevent the trolley from hitting the five.

How many of you think it is morally required or morally permitted to push the fat man off the bridge to prevent the trolley from hitting the five? [pause] And how many of you think it is morally prohibited? Hands up again? [pause] All right. We have a very, very different spread this time.

Now suppose we end up at the hospital, and the five who were lying on the track when the trolley didn't hit them are terribly injured in such a way that one needs a heart, one needs a lung, one needs a leg, one needs an arm, one needs an eye. And in walks a healthy gentleman with exactly the organs required to save the five. How many of you think it is morally required or morally permitted to cut up the one to save the five? [pause] I won't sit with you in the hospital waiting room. That was three hands. How many of you think it is morally prohibited? [pause] All right.

Suppose there is a bear running towards you. You're standing in line of people, and there's a bear running towards you. How many of you think it's morally permitted to move out of the bear's way if the bear is running towards you? [pause] OK. Now when that happens, the bear's going to eat the guy who is right behind you. OK. Case number two: Suppose there's a bear running towards you. How many of you think it's morally permitted to reach behind you, and take that guy and put him in front of you to shield you from the bear? [pause] Very different distribution of hands.

OK. What's going on here? In the original switch case where we turn the trolley, one person's going to die if we turn the trolley, and five are going to live. In the push the fat man case, if we push the fat man, one person's going to die, and five people are going to live. In the patient in the hospital case, we bring him into the hospital and cut him up. One person's going to die, and five people are going to live. In the bear case, when you duck, and he gets the guy behind you, the guy behind you dies, and you live. In the bear case, where you take the guy behind you, put him in front of you, and use him as a shield, the guy behind you dies and you live.

So the second set of topics that I want to let you know we'll be talking about is the following: What is it that explains the differences in our reactions to these cases? Is there genuinely a morally relevant difference between diverting the trolley so that it kills the one rather than the five, and pushing the fat man, so the trolley kills the one rather than the five? Or is the difference in our reaction to those two cases merely psychological? Is there really a moral difference between ducking in such a way that a harm that was heading towards you hit somebody else instead, and shields you, so that a harm that is heading towards you is visited upon someone else instead? What is it that explains the differences in our reactions in these cases? What moral implications does that have, and what psychological implications does that have? So that's the second set of examples that I want to give you, a topic that we'll be addressing.

Chapter 4. Third Example of Course Topics: Procrastination [00:23:07]

Third set of examples. I imagine some of you are familiar with the following situation. You go to the library intending sincerely to read the Plato that has been assigned to you for the next lecture, and you find yourself, instead, answering e-mails. Or you set for yourself a dietary regimen, according to which you will eat large amounts of fruit and vegetables, and instead you find yourself tempted by cake. Or you commit yourself to saving up money for some sort of long-term goal, and instead, find yourself distracted by the prospects of March break in Jamaica with your roommate, or an iPod touch, or a new PlayStation 2 device that you can use to distract yourself from your reading. So what is it about human beings that we can form these sorts of plans, and then not act on them? And what is it that we can do to make ourselves stick to commitments that we've made in moments of reflection?

So the reading that I assigned to you for today is a very, very brief chapter from Dan Ariely's popular book. It's a chapter on procrastination. And in it, he describes a number of strategies that we can use to help ourselves stick to long-term commitments.

So, for example, one of the things that people do if they want to get themselves to read is that they go to the library, and they surround themselves by other people who are reading. If you are in a social setting where other people are conforming to a standard that you had set for yourself to conform to, you may find yourself conforming to that standard, and not doing that which you will ultimately regret. If you find yourself incredibly tempted by food that you have prohibited to yourself, it may be helpful to limit your access to it.

In the chapter that we read, Dan Ariely describes an example of what he called the iced credit card solution, where, if you have a tendency to make impulse purchases on the Internet, you take your credit card, and you put it in a glass of water, which you put into the freezer. And then, if you want to buy something, you remove the credit card from the freezer, and if, when the water has melted, you still want to buy it, then go ahead. So restricting our immediate access to items that are tempting is a way of getting around the problem.

A third way of getting around these sorts of problems involves automatizing the behavior that you wish to encourage. So if I set up a system on my credit card where every time I spend $10 an additional $10 goes into my savings account, it will turn out that rather than spending my money on that which I will buy, I will save the money for that to which I am committed.

So the philosophical and psychological question that this part of the course raises is the following: What sort of beings are there that are capable, simultaneously, of planning reflectively and of not acting on the basis of their plan? It looks an awful lot like exactly the sort of people that we were getting information about in our previous two examples. They're the kind of beings who have a reflective self, which is capable of reason and commitment, and also aspects of their selves that respond non-reflectively to features in the environment.

So given that, what sorts of strategies are available to help these kinds of beings stick to their reflectively endorsed plans? The basic answer is that there are two kinds of strategies. One kind of strategy involves increasing the relative utility of the reflective commitment, that is, making it more salient to you in whatever kind of way. That reading and broccoli and piggy banks are valuable. And the other sort of strategy involves reducing the appeal of the temporarily tempting strategy: reducing access to e-mail, reducing access to the food, making it harder to take the trip.

So one of the things that we'll talk about in the context of the course, both in small ways and in large ways, is this fulcrum point of procrastination as a way of understanding a large number of social structures: laws, moral codes, punishments, strategies for self-regulation. All of these are aspects of society that play off of the two fundamental strategies just described. They play off of how it is that either we make certain things that we reflectively endorse more valuable, or how we make certain things that we wish not to pursue less acceptable. So that's the third example of the kind of topic that we'll be talking about this semester.

Chapter 5. What is Distinctive About this Course [00:29:45]

So what I want to do in the final few minutes of the course is to say a little bit about some distinctive features of the class. So the first thing, as some of you may have noticed, is that very inconspicuously, in the back of our room, is a videographer. And the videographer in the back of our room is here because this class is being videotaped for the Open Yale Courses network. That means that there is a chance that your voice will be captured on audiotape. And if that happens, we'll need to obtain your permission to reproduce your voice on the iTunes University version of this class. But it's also your chance for fame and fortune, dudes.

It's my hope that the fact that this course is with Open Yale Courses will be as unobtrusive as possible, but if any of you have any concerns about it, please feel free to be in touch.

The second, and I think more important thing, that's distinctive about this course, is that this course is, in some ways, about itself. The pedagogical features of this course are designed with the fundamental insight that underlies all of the readings in mind. What I am assuming is that on reflection, all of you are committed to reading, and learning, and engaging with the material. And my goal is to make that as easy, and exciting, and interesting for you as possible.

So as you've noticed from the syllabus, those of you who have had a chance to look at it, there are almost weekly assignments in this class. But the weekly assignments are designed to make you want to engage with the material. So, for example, the very first assignment for this course, which is described on the back page of the blue handout, asks you to think about whether you want to commit yourself, voluntarily, to not having Internet access during this class, and then to explain your decision, making reference to the work on procrastination that we read for this week.

Throughout the semester, my goal will be to make exercises that engage you in that way. One of the exercises involves writing a review of a short story that we read from the perspective of one of the two philosophers that we've read. One of the assignments involves designing a week of a future version of this course. So though there are ten weekly assignments, it's my hope that engaging in those assignments will keep you connected to the course. In fact, a number of the readings on the syllabus that appears before you were suggestions made by students who took the seminar version of this course in previous years.

In addition, as you saw from the trolley cases, I'm going to be asking you, in the context of class, to think about cases and examples. And in doing that, it's been found that making use of clickers is enormously helpful to keep students engaged. So you'll notice that the second part of next week's assignment asks you, if you're enrolled in the course for credit, to pick up a clicker at the Bass Library, and to register its number on the course website. So once the course gets going, starting in the middle of the second week, we'll be making use of clickers.

Finally, one of the things that makes this course distinctive is that I actually spent last year, as the Yale Daily News reports, as a full-time student. I had a grant from the Mellon Foundation that allowed me to take classes, and so I spent most of last year sitting in the back row of classrooms like this one, listening to lectures like this one. Which is how I got the idea about the turning off the Internet thing. Ahem.

But it also helped me realize that the rhythm of the semester is a complicated one. So as you'll see, the second sentence of the Yale Daily News article notes, "Her grades lately have been sliding a little--from an ‘excellent’ on the first two assignments to only a ‘checkmark’ for completion on the most recent two."

I promise I will not post your grades in the Yale Daily News. But I promise that I am, as a result of that experience, profoundly aware of the ways in which structuring assignments with enough advance notice is crucial for allowing students to succeed in the class.

So I've tried to be incredibly explicit on the syllabus. And if you look at pages four and five of the syllabus, you'll see that there are five kinds of requirements for the course. The first and perhaps the most important requirement of the course are the set of readings that I have assigned you. And these readings come in two forms. Roughly half of them come from the six books which I have ordered on your behalf from Labyrinth Books. All of the books are low-priced student editions. All of them are easily available in used form. And together, even purchased new at full price, they add up to $80.

So some of the assignments come either from the three classical works that we'll be reading, Plato, Aristotle, and Epictetus, the two contemporary works that we're looking at, Jonathan Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis, and a book by Jonathan Shea called Achilles in Vietnam, and finally, I've asked you to purchase a small $15 philosophy dictionary, which is enormously useful for looking up terms and concepts with which you might be unfamiliar.

I realize, however, that some of you aren't going to have decided whether you're taking the course before this Thursday. And so even though half of Thursday's reading comes from this book, I have put up the relevant pages on our Classes*v2 server. So you can do the reading for Thursday, even if you haven't purchased the book. So roughly half the readings come from those books. Roughly half the readings come from articles, and all of those readings are available on the *v2 server for next class.

But in addition to choosing books that I think are acceptable and interesting, I've also made an effort to provide you with reading guides to the books in a way that will orient you in them. So if you look at the first three pages of the blue handout, you will see an example of a reading guide, and not just an example of a reading guide, it's the reading guide for the reading on Thursday.

And you'll see that it does three things. The first thing that it does, is it gives you a bit of background about the author that we're reading, and the text from which we're doing the reading. The second thing that it does, is that it highlights the terms and concepts which I'm hoping that you will get out of the material. Notions and terms that will enable you to express thoughts that you might have had, and the vocabulary that will let you be in conversation with others.

And the final thing that the reading guide has are a set of questions to focus your attention as you do the reading. There's no requirement that you write out answers to these. You can use them to make notes for yourselves; you can use them in conversation with your classmates. But you will have, for every one of the required readings, this amount of guidance, and for each of the recommended and optional readings, information about the author.

Second important thing about the course is lecture and sections. I really like seeing all these faces, and I really would love to see them all semester long. I promise to give you at least one fun slide, and probably more, per lecture. So I really hope you'll come [to lecture], ‘cause when I post the slides [on the course website], you can't see the animation of the nice shepherd. So I will try to make lectures as engaging as possible, and likewise with sections. We will make an effort to make these settings where you can genuinely engage with the material and with one another.

It has been pointed out to me that one of the section times available is Thursdays from 10:30 to 11:20, which is, of course, when the lecture meets. Obviously that's a typographical error, and we'll be adding additional section times to make up for that. Section registration happens in the usual way.

There will, in addition, be ten brief directed exercises. I've already said a bit to you about them, and there's information on the syllabus about what point values those have in determining your final grades. There are two short essays. There will be three assigned, and you can choose which two of those you like. And finally, there will be a final exam where, in keeping with the theory of the course, I will distribute every single one of the questions that may appear on the exam in advance. I will encourage you to learn that material in a focused and structured way. And the exam will consist of a proper subset of those questions, which you have been given to prepare in advance.

So that's an overview of what I plan to do this semester, first of what kind of course this is, second, three examples of topics that we're going to address, third, some of the things that are distinctive about the course and some of its requirements. So what questions do you have? Yeah?

Student: [inaudible]

Professor Tamar Gendler: So the question is, are the videos for the lectures going to be posted? And the answer is, the videos for the lectures take time to be edited and processed, so they will be posted, but they won't be posted during the class. I will post the slides after each lecture, but as you saw today, the slides don't give you that much information. Yes?

Student: [inaudible]

Professor Tamar Gendler: No. Everything in the course is done electronically; so all assignments for the course are to be submitted on the Classes*v2 server under assignments. And the deadline for the first written exercise is actually next Tuesday at 10 AM, but because that's still during shopping period, that exercise will be accepted without penalty until Friday. But everything for the class, in terms of submission and return of exercises, will be done online on our v2 site. Yeah?

Student: When are sections going to start?

Professor Tamar Gendler: When are sections going to start? Sections will begin the third week of the semester. Yeah?

Student: [inaudible]

Professor Tamar Gendler: Yes. So if you look at the sample directed exercise which I gave you, which is on the back side of the blue sheet. So the question is, it says that directed exercises are 1% to 7% each; will I tell you how much a directed exercise is worth? Answer, yes. So if you turn over the blue sheet on the back, you'll see that the directed exercise for next week has two parts. One, take out a clicker; that's worth one point. Two, tell me whether you're going to turn off your Internet and why. Briefly. So the directed exercise will always say: here's the question, here's the point value for the question. Anything else?

We're actually at the end of time! So you all have paced your questions extraordinarily well, and I look forward to seeing you next class.

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