WEBVTT 00:00.900 --> 00:02.480 PROFESSOR: OK. 00:02.480 --> 00:06.820 So what I want to do in the first part of this lecture is 00:06.820 --> 00:12.030 just finish our discussion of liberty from last time, 00:12.030 --> 00:16.200 beginning by saying a couple of additional clarificatory 00:16.200 --> 00:20.430 things about the particular pages from Nozick that we 00:20.430 --> 00:26.830 read, and then moving on to explaining what I think is an 00:26.830 --> 00:32.960 important way that Nozick and Rawls are confronting one of 00:32.960 --> 00:36.050 the problems that each of the thinkers that we have 00:36.050 --> 00:41.740 addressed has confronted, namely, the problem of luck in 00:41.740 --> 00:45.020 determining human experience. 00:45.020 --> 00:49.050 And when we finish that we'll move on to the two empirical 00:49.050 --> 00:51.620 readings that we did for today. 00:51.620 --> 00:56.580 So you'll recall that in the pages of Nozick that we read, 00:56.580 --> 01:01.100 Nozick is concerned, first of all, to present a general 01:01.100 --> 01:05.460 framework for thinking about political philosophy in a 01:05.455 --> 01:09.675 context which prioritizes liberty and rights. 01:09.680 --> 01:13.610 And, in particular, in the pages that we read from 01:13.610 --> 01:18.640 chapter seven, concerned with articulating a view about the 01:18.640 --> 01:24.200 legitimacy of the ownership of property that takes as its 01:24.200 --> 01:28.930 principal justification only three parts. 01:28.930 --> 01:33.460 The first, you recall, is Nozick's discussion of the 01:33.460 --> 01:36.930 notion of justice in acquisition. 01:36.930 --> 01:41.460 And we talked last time about the conditions under which 01:41.460 --> 01:44.280 Nozick thinks it's legitimate for somebody 01:44.280 --> 01:46.370 to come to own property. 01:46.370 --> 01:51.140 And the basic idea there is that it is legitimate to take 01:51.140 --> 01:57.210 something from common stock that is unowned so long as in 01:57.210 --> 02:00.390 so doing one doesn't violate what Nozick 02:00.390 --> 02:02.490 calls the Lockean Proviso. 02:02.490 --> 02:08.870 That is, so long as one leaves "as much and as good for 02:08.870 --> 02:09.720 others." 02:09.720 --> 02:13.080 And we considered two objections to that view. 02:13.080 --> 02:18.180 One, the idea that there's a kind of unzipping that occurs 02:18.180 --> 02:23.080 that makes even the first acquisition illegitimate if 02:23.080 --> 02:25.480 the property ultimately runs out. 02:25.480 --> 02:29.240 And the second based on the problem of the commons, that 02:29.240 --> 02:32.670 regardless there's going to be a time at which somebody 02:32.670 --> 02:36.840 appears to be disadvantaged by another taking ownership, and 02:36.840 --> 02:39.650 talked about Nozick's responses to them. 02:39.650 --> 02:42.500 And it's my hope that in sections this week you'll have 02:42.500 --> 02:45.570 a chance to think through whether those responses are 02:45.570 --> 02:46.730 legitimate. 02:46.730 --> 02:50.990 We looked next at Nozick's views on justice in transfer, 02:50.990 --> 02:55.020 which are basically that any transfer that two people are 02:55.020 --> 03:01.730 willing to engage in is a legitimate sort of transfer. 03:01.730 --> 03:04.570 It is an illegitimate restriction on people's 03:04.570 --> 03:08.790 freedom, on Nozick's view, to restrict what it is that you 03:08.790 --> 03:12.060 are permitted to do with your property. 03:12.060 --> 03:13.950 But Nozick recognizes-- 03:13.950 --> 03:17.740 and we didn't get to this in our lecture on Tuesday-- 03:17.740 --> 03:20.260 that in addition there's a need for a 03:20.260 --> 03:21.740 third sort of notion. 03:21.740 --> 03:24.970 And this is the idea that sometimes property is 03:24.970 --> 03:28.710 illegitimately acquired, either initially or as a 03:28.710 --> 03:31.120 result of an illegitimate transfer. 03:31.120 --> 03:37.250 And that with regard to that, one is required, on his view, 03:37.250 --> 03:42.030 to engage in some sort of rectification. 03:42.030 --> 03:49.540 And this idea gives rise to a rather striking passage at the 03:49.540 --> 03:54.690 very end of the chapter, which we read for last week. 03:54.690 --> 04:00.940 Nozick writes there that as a matter of fact there have been 04:00.940 --> 04:04.510 previously in the acquisition of property 04:04.510 --> 04:07.560 incidences of injustice. 04:07.560 --> 04:13.730 This nation, for example, was founded on black slavery. 04:13.730 --> 04:19.340 And Nozick notes that those from the least well off group 04:19.340 --> 04:24.450 in society right now have the highest probabilities of being 04:24.450 --> 04:28.900 the descendants of victims of the most serious injustice. 04:28.902 --> 04:33.662 As a consequence, he says, perhaps the following rule of 04:33.660 --> 04:37.180 thumb is a reasonable one for us to make use of. 04:37.180 --> 04:43.850 Perhaps we ought to do what Rawls suggests and organize 04:43.850 --> 04:47.570 society to benefit the least well off. 04:47.570 --> 04:53.020 Past injustices, says Nozick, may be so great as to make 04:53.020 --> 04:57.760 necessary in the short run a more extensive state than the 04:57.760 --> 05:01.050 one that Nozick has been advocating in 05:01.050 --> 05:03.540 order to rectify them. 05:03.540 --> 05:08.650 Page 231, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, telling us that 05:08.650 --> 05:12.060 perhaps a good rule of thumb is to organize society to 05:12.060 --> 05:14.810 benefit the least well off. 05:14.810 --> 05:20.090 So do Nozick and Rawls agree after all? 05:20.090 --> 05:25.730 Well notice what Nozick argued earlier. 05:25.730 --> 05:30.910 Even if we engage in this temporary act of 05:30.910 --> 05:37.120 reorganization, liberty upsets patterns. 05:37.120 --> 05:42.660 So give everybody the same sized piggy bank, give them 05:42.660 --> 05:47.890 the freedom to do what they want with their quarters, and 05:47.890 --> 05:55.030 it will inevitably become the case that some are better off 05:55.030 --> 05:57.450 than others. 05:57.450 --> 06:03.440 Moreover, as we noted at the end of our lecture last time, 06:03.440 --> 06:09.760 these distributions of wealth may end up having 06:09.760 --> 06:15.660 consequences, where deciding whether they violate at least 06:15.660 --> 06:19.750 the spirit of the Lockean Proviso becomes a rather 06:19.750 --> 06:22.270 difficult question to answer. 06:22.270 --> 06:26.380 We noted at the end of our lecture last time that there 06:26.380 --> 06:30.330 might be a society in which there's an equal distribution 06:30.330 --> 06:35.530 of wealth across individuals and a social interaction among 06:35.530 --> 06:38.780 them with regard to the institutions that prepare 06:38.780 --> 06:41.840 people to become democratic citizens. 06:41.840 --> 06:47.870 But if, as our last slide demonstrated, it is inevitable 06:47.870 --> 06:51.820 that such a structure will ultimately result in an 06:51.820 --> 06:56.870 unequal distribution of wealth, and if an unequal 06:56.870 --> 07:01.000 distribution of wealth brings with it the freedom of opting 07:01.000 --> 07:05.360 out of certain public institutions, creating private 07:05.360 --> 07:10.340 ones from which one may draw away resources that once 07:10.340 --> 07:13.700 belonged to the public institutions, then 07:13.700 --> 07:18.510 particularly in the case of things like education and 07:18.510 --> 07:22.150 health, which one might think are preconditions for 07:22.150 --> 07:28.160 participation in democracy, it becomes complicated to think 07:28.160 --> 07:34.750 through whether those sorts of distributions are justified. 07:34.750 --> 07:41.410 So the Nozick picture presents us with an idea of what sorts 07:41.410 --> 07:44.990 of actions are permitted. 07:44.990 --> 07:49.970 It seems for a moment as if Nozick agrees with Rawls that 07:49.970 --> 07:53.440 a certain kind of redistribution is permitted. 07:53.440 --> 07:57.650 But ultimately there isn't the leverage within the framework, 07:57.650 --> 08:01.200 in at least an obvious sense, to avoid 08:01.200 --> 08:04.060 situations like this one. 08:04.060 --> 08:08.590 Now it's an open question whether one takes it as a 08:08.590 --> 08:12.460 priority to avoid situations like this one. 08:12.460 --> 08:18.450 But it is a striking fact of both A Theory of Justice and 08:18.450 --> 08:24.030 Anarchy, State, and Utopia, that a look at their indexes 08:24.030 --> 08:32.220 produces no references to education, no references to 08:32.220 --> 08:38.550 childhood and only limited awareness of the topic, which 08:38.550 --> 08:41.350 will be central to our discussion today. 08:41.350 --> 08:45.190 Namely the ways in which the social structures that 08:45.190 --> 08:51.160 surround us end up affecting what sorts of preferences we 08:51.160 --> 08:56.540 have in addition to what sorts of choices we make. 08:56.540 --> 09:00.790 Now you'll remember that the fundamental question, which 09:00.790 --> 09:06.660 underlies the debate about what makes a particular 09:06.660 --> 09:10.170 structure in society legitimate is the one 09:10.170 --> 09:13.870 articulated by Rawls in the beginning of Theory of 09:13.870 --> 09:17.990 Justice, which I placed for you as the second essay topic 09:17.990 --> 09:21.200 for the final set of essays. 09:21.200 --> 09:24.580 Rawls points out that a society is "a cooperative 09:24.580 --> 09:28.650 venture for mutual advantage typically marked by conflict 09:28.650 --> 09:32.640 as well as identity of interests," and notes, 09:32.640 --> 09:35.810 following Hobbes in the social contract tradition, that 09:35.810 --> 09:37.590 there's an identity of interests in special 09:37.590 --> 09:40.240 cooperation that makes possible a better life than 09:40.240 --> 09:43.030 anybody could have without cooperation. 09:43.030 --> 09:45.930 But a conflict of interests, since people are not 09:45.930 --> 09:50.390 indifferent to how those goods are distributed. 09:50.390 --> 09:58.970 Now at some level we can conceive of one aspect of the 09:58.970 --> 10:04.480 debate between Rawls and Nozick, where Rawls says, if 10:04.480 --> 10:10.800 things come out patterned in a way that behind the veil of 10:10.800 --> 10:14.440 ignorance you wouldn't want them to, intervene and 10:14.440 --> 10:15.930 redistribute. 10:15.930 --> 10:22.190 Whereas Nozick says, if things come out as the result of free 10:22.186 --> 10:27.276 actions between free individuals, then regardless 10:27.280 --> 10:31.490 of what that pattern looks like, accept it. 10:31.490 --> 10:38.000 One can view that difference in outlook between them as a 10:38.000 --> 10:45.080 difference in outlook about how we are morally required to 10:45.080 --> 10:52.100 deal with the fact that in so far as things that affect us 10:52.100 --> 10:59.540 occur, determining what is and is not in our control, in so 10:59.540 --> 11:04.760 far as it matters for our own internal reactions to events, 11:04.760 --> 11:07.050 as Epictetus pointed out. 11:07.050 --> 11:11.510 In so far as it matters to our tendency to respond in keeping 11:11.510 --> 11:16.540 with our commitments, as Aristotle and Doris in Doris's 11:16.540 --> 11:19.620 debate with Aristotle questioned. 11:19.620 --> 11:24.560 And in so far as it covers our attribution of praise and 11:24.560 --> 11:28.780 blame in cases of unintended wrongdoing or right-doing, 11:28.780 --> 11:33.360 which the discussions of moral luck and punishment and Kant 11:33.360 --> 11:37.420 versus Mill on whether there's moral merit to saving a child. 11:37.420 --> 11:43.260 In all of these cases, the fundamental question that's 11:43.260 --> 11:49.150 being asked is this: what sort of stance is the appropriate 11:49.150 --> 11:54.280 stance for human beings to take, given that as Epictetus 11:54.280 --> 12:00.210 says, "some things are up to us and other things are not up 12:00.210 --> 12:02.180 to us?" 12:02.180 --> 12:08.830 So if we look at Rawls's Theory of Justice, we read the 12:08.830 --> 12:12.190 following striking passages. 12:12.190 --> 12:15.910 Rawls says, "The two principles mentioned," that is 12:15.910 --> 12:20.800 the first principle which says rights are untrumpable, 12:20.800 --> 12:25.580 roughly speaking, every individual is entitled to 12:25.580 --> 12:28.880 certain basic freedoms, which no amount 12:28.880 --> 12:30.820 of utility can override. 12:30.820 --> 12:34.830 And the second principle, which says, inequalities are 12:34.830 --> 12:38.580 to be distributed as the result of offices which are 12:38.580 --> 12:43.760 equally open to all and in such a way that inequalities 12:43.760 --> 12:45.710 are to the benefit of the least well off. 12:45.710 --> 12:49.240 Rawls says, "The two principles mentioned seem to 12:49.240 --> 12:53.390 be a fair agreement on the basis of which those better 12:53.390 --> 13:01.010 endowed or more fortunate in their social position neither 13:01.010 --> 13:07.030 of which we can be said to deserve, could expect the 13:07.030 --> 13:12.850 willing cooperation of others when some workable scheme is a 13:12.850 --> 13:16.930 necessary condition of the welfare of all." 13:16.930 --> 13:23.130 Or again, "once we decide to look for a conception of 13:23.130 --> 13:29.160 justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment 13:29.160 --> 13:33.250 and the contingencies of social circumstance as 13:33.250 --> 13:36.920 counters in quest for political and economic 13:36.920 --> 13:42.390 advantage, we are lead to these principles." 13:42.390 --> 13:49.110 Or again, "these principles express the result of leaving 13:49.110 --> 13:55.100 aside those aspects of more social world that seem 13:55.100 --> 14:00.540 arbitrary from a moral point of view -- 14:00.540 --> 14:05.170 things we cannot be said to deserve." 14:05.170 --> 14:07.580 Accidents of natural endowment. 14:07.580 --> 14:12.070 Contingencies of social circumstance. 14:12.070 --> 14:17.740 Aspects of social world that seem arbitrary from a moral 14:17.740 --> 14:19.730 point of view. 14:19.730 --> 14:27.260 Rawls is engaged in the ancient project of thinking 14:27.260 --> 14:32.590 about how to deal with moral luck. 14:32.590 --> 14:39.620 And because the distribution of goods and advantages-- 14:39.620 --> 14:43.620 both within the self and between selves-- 14:43.620 --> 14:52.040 is not in many ways up to us, Rawls concludes that the 14:52.040 --> 14:56.490 principles that he articulates in Theory of Justice are what 14:56.490 --> 14:59.180 justice mandates. 14:59.180 --> 15:07.280 Nozick, by contrast, is also concerned with luck. 15:07.280 --> 15:14.510 Let's look at the passages at the end of chapter seven. 15:14.510 --> 15:18.540 Here, says Nozick, talking about Rawls's writing, we have 15:18.540 --> 15:22.840 Rawls' reason for rejecting a system of natural liberty. 15:22.840 --> 15:28.360 It permits distributive shares to be improperly influenced by 15:28.360 --> 15:33.770 factors that are so arbitrary from a moral point of view. 15:33.770 --> 15:37.930 Nozick says, Rawls is trying to deal with the problem of 15:37.930 --> 15:39.570 moral luck. 15:39.570 --> 15:43.700 These factors, he says, quoting Rawls, are "prior 15:43.700 --> 15:46.970 distribution of natural talents and abilities as these 15:46.970 --> 15:50.900 have been developed over time by social circumstances and 15:50.900 --> 15:57.550 such chance contingencies as accident and good fortune." 15:57.550 --> 16:04.510 Notice, says Nozick, that Rawls is concerned with things 16:04.510 --> 16:06.390 that are not up to us. 16:06.390 --> 16:13.050 But there is, says Nozick, no mention at all of how persons 16:13.050 --> 16:17.710 have chosen to develop their own natural assets. 16:17.710 --> 16:24.520 And it's in recognition of the counterpart oh some things 16:24.520 --> 16:27.720 being not up to us-- namely the fact that some 16:27.720 --> 16:29.610 things are up to us-- 16:29.610 --> 16:35.870 that we can see Nozick's notion of legitimate dessert 16:35.870 --> 16:40.490 in light of this eternal debate. 16:40.490 --> 16:46.510 This line of argument, says Nozick in criticism of Rawls, 16:46.510 --> 16:49.510 can succeed in blocking the introduction of a person's 16:49.510 --> 16:54.820 autonomous choices and actions and their results only by 16:54.819 --> 16:59.619 attributing everything noteworthy about the person to 16:59.619 --> 17:03.209 certain kinds of external factors. 17:03.210 --> 17:08.220 But, says Nozick, if we start thinking about people as 17:08.220 --> 17:12.940 defined by their circumstances in the way that a logical 17:12.940 --> 17:18.580 extension of this view would suggest, but says Nozick, 17:18.580 --> 17:20.680 "Denigrating a person's autonomy and prime 17:20.680 --> 17:25.390 responsibility for his actions is a risky in line for a 17:25.390 --> 17:30.020 theory that otherwise wishes to buttress the dignity and 17:30.020 --> 17:34.190 self-respect of autonomous beings." 17:34.190 --> 17:38.760 We're back to our fundamental question. 17:38.760 --> 17:44.410 Given that we are beings influenced by the world around 17:44.410 --> 17:49.650 us in ways which it is extraordinarily difficult to 17:49.650 --> 17:57.530 understand, to what extent do we deserve credit for that 17:57.530 --> 18:01.930 which we perceive ourselves to have done voluntarily? 18:01.930 --> 18:09.000 And to what extent are our characters and circumstances 18:09.000 --> 18:15.600 so inextricably linked with things beyond our control that 18:15.600 --> 18:22.370 thinking from the perspective of us as willers of structure 18:22.370 --> 18:27.470 in the world is a mistake all together? 18:27.470 --> 18:31.580 So I want to point out to you that what started out as 18:31.580 --> 18:37.360 looking like a debate about the legitimacy of taxation 18:37.360 --> 18:41.560 ends up looking like one of our central 18:41.560 --> 18:44.420 philosophical debates. 18:44.420 --> 18:50.830 Again and again we're confronted with our status as 18:50.830 --> 18:54.600 beings in the world that we both affect and 18:54.600 --> 18:57.340 are affected by. 18:57.340 --> 19:03.220 So that theme in two particular empirical articles 19:03.220 --> 19:09.190 is what I want to address in the remaining thirty minutes 19:09.190 --> 19:13.890 of lecture in the context of our social structures 19:13.890 --> 19:15.500 discussion. 19:15.500 --> 19:20.110 So remember that in this political philosophy unit we 19:20.110 --> 19:24.640 began with a reading of Hobbes's Leviathan and 19:24.640 --> 19:29.390 encountered his argument that because of certain facts about 19:29.390 --> 19:33.940 human nature-- basically our desire to control goods around 19:33.940 --> 19:36.290 us and the limitation in the number of 19:36.290 --> 19:37.850 goods that there are-- 19:37.850 --> 19:41.630 we will in a state of nature be in a war 19:41.630 --> 19:43.440 of all against all. 19:43.440 --> 19:46.770 And then we looked at a mathematical representation of 19:46.770 --> 19:50.160 that in the form of Prisoners' Dilemma and then considered 19:50.160 --> 19:56.160 two particular responses in the 20th century Western 19:56.160 --> 19:58.800 Anglo-American philosophical tradition-- 19:58.800 --> 20:00.560 namely Rawls and Nozick-- 20:00.560 --> 20:05.280 to think through what a legitimate society looks like 20:05.280 --> 20:11.180 in the context of facts about human nature. 20:11.180 --> 20:16.190 What I want to do in the part of the lecture devoted to 20:16.190 --> 20:22.250 social structures is to bring out you the way in which the 20:22.250 --> 20:27.500 structures that surround us end up determining our 20:27.500 --> 20:32.520 attitudes at least as much as our attitudes end up 20:32.520 --> 20:36.750 determining the social structures around us. 20:36.750 --> 20:42.620 This is a theme that's present already in Aristotle. 20:42.620 --> 20:46.380 So in the closing pages of the Nicomachean Ethics, which we 20:46.380 --> 20:50.670 read about a month ago, Aristotle, in a chapter 20:50.670 --> 20:53.520 entitled, Transition from Morality to Political 20:53.520 --> 20:57.510 Philosophy, noted, you'll recall, that "if arguments 20:57.510 --> 21:00.300 alone were sufficient by themselves to make people 21:00.300 --> 21:03.310 decent the rewards that they would command would 21:03.310 --> 21:08.750 justifiably have been many and large." But that "it's not 21:08.750 --> 21:13.900 easy to alter by argument" what has long been absorbed as 21:13.900 --> 21:17.400 a result of one's habits. 21:17.400 --> 21:23.770 How then, asks Aristotle, might we go about changing 21:23.770 --> 21:28.310 people if argument alone is not sufficient 21:28.310 --> 21:30.380 to make people decent? 21:30.380 --> 21:35.430 Well, he points out, it's difficult for somebody to be 21:35.430 --> 21:39.530 trained correctly from his youth if he's not brought up 21:39.530 --> 21:42.810 under correct laws. 21:42.810 --> 21:46.350 For the young do not find it pleasant to live in a 21:46.350 --> 21:53.880 temperate way." That is why one of the things on this 21:53.880 --> 21:59.630 ancient picture of governance, one of the things the law must 21:59.630 --> 22:05.060 prescribe is their upbringing and practices. 22:05.060 --> 22:11.730 For if they are used to behaving in certain ways they 22:11.730 --> 22:15.620 will not find them painful. 22:15.620 --> 22:24.830 So Aristotle is talking about a function of law that will 22:24.830 --> 22:29.470 occupy us both today and Thursday -- 22:29.470 --> 22:35.460 the function of law in shaping the character of the citizens 22:35.460 --> 22:38.430 who are governed thereby. 22:38.430 --> 22:44.260 But it's not just in Aristotle that we find this theme. 22:44.260 --> 22:48.960 John Stuart Mill, author of the famous work On Liberty and 22:48.960 --> 22:54.040 also author of Utilitarianism, which we read for this class, 22:54.040 --> 22:59.060 makes much the same point as Aristotle. 22:59.060 --> 23:03.960 He writes, in talking about how to structure society 23:03.960 --> 23:09.270 appropriately, so as to maximize the amount of utility 23:09.270 --> 23:15.090 that it produces, he says "utility enjoins that first 23:15.090 --> 23:19.890 that laws and social arrangements should place the 23:19.890 --> 23:20.780 happiness-- 23:20.780 --> 23:25.080 or as speaking practically it may be called the interest-- 23:25.080 --> 23:31.040 of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with 23:31.040 --> 23:33.980 the interests of the whole." 23:33.980 --> 23:39.860 A well-structured society on Mill's view manages the 23:39.860 --> 23:43.700 relation between the individual and the community. 23:43.700 --> 23:49.890 And utility enjoins in keeping with that, says Mill, that 23:49.890 --> 23:56.000 "education and opinion, which have so vast a power over 23:56.000 --> 24:02.420 human character, should so use that power as to establish in 24:02.420 --> 24:08.300 the mind of every individual and indissoluble association 24:08.300 --> 24:13.690 between his own happiness and the good of the whole." 24:13.690 --> 24:21.020 "Education and opinion, which have so vast a power over 24:21.020 --> 24:28.030 human character." That's the theme of today's lecture. 24:28.030 --> 24:33.010 And in about four slides will have clickers because it's 24:33.010 --> 24:36.650 late in the semester and I want you guys to wake up. 24:36.650 --> 24:40.600 So if you get your clickers out I'll tell you some facts 24:40.600 --> 24:44.270 and then you can tell me some responses. 24:44.270 --> 24:45.550 All right. 24:45.550 --> 24:51.480 So the first piece that we read for today is a long 24:51.480 --> 24:56.490 survey article from the journal Behavioral and Brain 24:56.490 --> 25:04.800 Sciences, in which the authors survey a century's worth of 25:04.800 --> 25:09.350 anthropological and psychological research in an 25:09.350 --> 25:16.330 attempt to bring empirical force to the claim that Mill 25:16.330 --> 25:17.710 makes here -- 25:17.710 --> 25:23.640 that education and opinion, cultural structures, have a 25:23.640 --> 25:28.580 vast power over human character. 25:28.580 --> 25:33.920 The authors argue in this paper that subjects, whom they 25:33.920 --> 25:39.760 call WEIRD, that is Western, educated, industrialized, 25:39.760 --> 25:42.740 rich, democratic, citizens -- 25:42.740 --> 25:48.440 people who have been brought into consciousness in a 25:48.440 --> 25:52.550 society which has these five features. 25:52.550 --> 25:58.980 They argue that these subjects are atypical, that is, differ 25:58.980 --> 26:05.560 in fundamental ways in their attitude towards the world if 26:05.560 --> 26:09.880 you contrast them with subjects who come from small 26:09.880 --> 26:15.240 scale non-industrialized societies, if you contrast 26:15.240 --> 26:19.010 them with individuals who come from non-Western industrial 26:19.010 --> 26:23.190 societies, if you contrast them with individuals who come 26:23.190 --> 26:27.800 from other Western industrialized societies, and 26:27.800 --> 26:32.820 even if you contrast them with other citizens of their own 26:32.820 --> 26:38.320 nation who are not university educated. 26:38.320 --> 26:44.050 In particular, claim the authors, the domains in which 26:44.050 --> 26:46.860 we can see the weirdness-- 26:46.860 --> 26:48.740 in small letters-- 26:48.740 --> 26:50.790 of the WEIRD-- in large-- 26:50.790 --> 26:54.340 that is the atypicality of Western, educated, 26:54.340 --> 26:58.620 industrialized, rich, democratic, citizens include, 26:58.620 --> 27:02.820 they contend, perception, categorization, memory, 27:02.820 --> 27:06.510 attention, spatial cognition, self concepts, judgments of 27:06.510 --> 27:09.510 fairness, tendencies towards cooperation, tendencies 27:09.510 --> 27:13.900 towards conformity, moral judgments and so on. 27:13.900 --> 27:20.160 In a vast number of domains, you-- 27:20.160 --> 27:26.370 including those of you who are not from Western cultures-- 27:26.370 --> 27:32.340 differ from the vast majority of the 6 or 7 billion other 27:32.340 --> 27:34.080 people on Earth. 27:34.080 --> 27:38.460 And certainly from the vast majority of those who have 27:38.460 --> 27:42.130 lived on Earth throughout time. 27:42.130 --> 27:49.360 As a result of the cultural experiences you have had, your 27:49.360 --> 27:55.670 perception and apprehension and patterns of attention have 27:55.670 --> 27:58.150 been affected. 27:58.150 --> 28:04.150 So the authors wrote their article with a 28:04.150 --> 28:07.350 particular goal in mind. 28:07.350 --> 28:12.350 They wrote it in an effort to argue that psychological 28:12.350 --> 28:17.140 research of the sort which fills journals, including the 28:17.140 --> 28:22.190 one in which they published this piece, should be based on 28:22.190 --> 28:24.900 broader population samples. 28:24.900 --> 28:29.800 And they make this argument because they're concerned both 28:29.800 --> 28:35.100 with the possibility of revealing differences among 28:35.100 --> 28:41.210 human beings, ways in which people raised in one sort of 28:41.210 --> 28:45.440 circumstance differ from people raised in another. 28:45.441 --> 28:50.701 And because they are profoundly concerned with also 28:50.700 --> 28:55.950 identifying the ways in which there are commonalities. 28:55.950 --> 28:59.850 And you'll notice as you read through the article that each 28:59.850 --> 29:03.550 of the four main sections begins with a series of 29:03.550 --> 29:07.680 contrasts between WEIRD folks and whatever the contrast 29:07.680 --> 29:13.650 group is, but closes with a set of identified 29:13.650 --> 29:18.160 commonalities between the two groups, suggesting at least 29:18.160 --> 29:24.450 prima facie that there are deep-seeded similarities, 29:24.450 --> 29:28.770 presumably the result of evolutionary pressures. 29:28.772 --> 29:33.012 But this is not a course in evolutionary psychology. 29:33.010 --> 29:36.160 This isn't even specifically a course in the methodology of 29:36.160 --> 29:37.080 psychology. 29:37.080 --> 29:41.910 So why did we read this article? 29:41.910 --> 29:45.620 Four reasons that we read it. 29:45.620 --> 29:48.950 The first is that this is a course, as you know, called 29:48.950 --> 29:52.890 Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature. 29:52.890 --> 29:57.500 And this article, perhaps more densely than any article I can 29:57.500 --> 30:02.920 think of, contains a vast number of extraordinarily cool 30:02.920 --> 30:08.530 facts about ways people might be. 30:08.530 --> 30:12.530 So the first reason we read the article is just to learn 30:12.530 --> 30:18.700 some facts about human diversity and similarity. 30:18.700 --> 30:23.590 In addition, as you know, this is an "and" course. 30:23.590 --> 30:26.170 This is a course, as you will recall from the very first 30:26.170 --> 30:29.490 lecture, that's tries to bring together different 30:29.490 --> 30:32.180 perspectives on questions. 30:32.180 --> 30:35.140 And one of the things that I think this article does 30:35.140 --> 30:39.800 beautifully, in particular in conjunction with the second 30:39.800 --> 30:42.920 article that we read for today, is to give you a range 30:42.920 --> 30:46.030 of tools for thinking about central questions. 30:46.030 --> 30:49.780 One of the things that the article challenges you to do 30:49.780 --> 30:53.700 when you observe a behavior and make a generalization on 30:53.700 --> 31:01.390 its basis is to ask yourself how generalizable really is 31:01.390 --> 31:04.120 that behavior? 31:04.120 --> 31:07.080 But this is also a course, and this is the third reason we 31:07.080 --> 31:10.120 read the article, that introduces you, as you know, 31:10.120 --> 31:14.490 to a dead guy on Tuesday and CogSci on Thursday, today 31:14.490 --> 31:18.940 being an honorary Thursday. 31:18.940 --> 31:22.620 So the third thing that the article does is to make you 31:22.620 --> 31:28.420 aware of a live critique, one posed just last year -- the 31:28.420 --> 31:32.380 article was published less than 12 months ago -- 31:32.380 --> 31:37.940 to make you aware of a critique that attaches itself 31:37.940 --> 31:41.340 to part of the course's research base. 31:41.340 --> 31:44.420 One of the things that we have been doing throughout the 31:44.420 --> 31:47.420 semester, one of the things that all of you did in 31:47.420 --> 31:53.300 directed exercise five, was to take a look at some of the 31:53.300 --> 32:01.640 articles, whose limited samplings are being challenged 32:01.640 --> 32:04.420 in this piece. 32:04.420 --> 32:10.600 Finally, we're reading this piece in the context of our 32:10.600 --> 32:14.410 political philosophy section in a lecture called social 32:14.410 --> 32:19.410 structures because it seems to me crucial, if one wants to 32:19.410 --> 32:24.100 engage in serious political philosophy, to bring out the 32:24.100 --> 32:28.990 complex range of considerations that need to go 32:28.990 --> 32:32.940 into thinking about how societies ought to be 32:32.940 --> 32:34.690 structured. 32:34.690 --> 32:39.730 So what I want to do in the next part of the lecture is to 32:39.730 --> 32:45.800 run through three examples of the sorts of cases with which 32:45.800 --> 32:48.970 the WEIRD article is concerned. 32:48.970 --> 32:54.620 Three cases where a claim is made that experience has 32:54.620 --> 32:59.250 affected how it is that you perceive the world. 32:59.250 --> 33:04.120 And I start with their most dramatic. 33:04.120 --> 33:05.960 Perhaps not the most well established. 33:05.960 --> 33:07.050 We'll talk about it. 33:07.050 --> 33:11.580 But the most dramatic of their claims. So I'd like you to 33:11.580 --> 33:15.950 take out your clickers and look at these things here. 33:15.950 --> 33:20.890 And tell me, to you whether the two segments appear to be 33:20.890 --> 33:24.730 such that the top is shorter than the bottom or it could be 33:24.730 --> 33:26.720 such that they are of the same length. 33:26.720 --> 33:29.550 We're talking about just the line segments here. 33:29.550 --> 33:31.800 Or it could be such that the bottom is 33:31.800 --> 33:33.930 shorter than the top. 33:33.930 --> 33:44.220 And we'll take 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 second to see how 33:44.219 --> 33:46.329 these numbers come out. 33:46.330 --> 33:51.630 So 41% of you think it appears that the top is shorter than 33:51.630 --> 33:52.550 the bottom. 33:52.550 --> 33:55.600 46% of you, it appears that they are the same length. 33:55.600 --> 33:59.800 Whereas 14% are such that the bottom appears 33:59.800 --> 34:02.340 shorter than the top. 34:02.340 --> 34:08.610 14% percent of you, come on down, you are correct. 34:08.610 --> 34:12.120 The bottom is shorter then the top. 34:12.120 --> 34:13.370 You want to see that again? 34:17.070 --> 34:18.260 All right. 34:18.260 --> 34:20.610 So what going on here? 34:20.609 --> 34:23.129 I've got the same animation on the next slide because I 34:23.130 --> 34:26.910 wasn't sure you could animate on a slide that had graphs. 34:26.909 --> 34:28.449 But it turns out you can. 34:28.449 --> 34:30.849 OK, so again look at these. 34:30.850 --> 34:31.320 These are identical. 34:31.320 --> 34:32.430 These are duplicates. 34:32.430 --> 34:35.140 I made them, I measured them because I have a measurement 34:35.140 --> 34:36.200 program in PowerPoint. 34:36.200 --> 34:40.580 So this one is actually 3.1 and this is actually 3 inches 34:40.580 --> 34:42.260 long in the creation. 34:42.260 --> 34:45.120 So the bottom is shorter than the top. 34:45.120 --> 34:53.360 Now it has been argued that your tendency to perceive this 34:53.360 --> 34:58.700 line, when embedded within this figure, as longer than 34:58.700 --> 35:02.690 this segment when embedded in this figure, is the result of 35:02.690 --> 35:05.610 your having grown up in an environment 35:05.610 --> 35:09.400 with carpentered corners. 35:09.400 --> 35:14.910 And the claim is made on the basis of research done in the 35:14.910 --> 35:23.130 1960s in a vast number of small-scale non-urbanized 35:23.130 --> 35:28.120 communities, that the discrepancy between line 35:28.120 --> 35:32.350 lengths, segment lengths, required in order to see this 35:32.350 --> 35:38.430 one as being the same length as this one is extremely 35:38.430 --> 35:41.980 different in small-scale societies where there is 35:41.980 --> 35:46.910 roughly, according to this research, no tendency to be 35:46.910 --> 35:51.300 taken in by these extensions. 35:51.300 --> 35:52.830 To Western society-- 35:52.830 --> 35:57.320 this is Evanston, Illinois, and South Africa-- 35:57.320 --> 36:03.160 a tendency to find this illusion massively compelling. 36:03.160 --> 36:08.030 Now whether or not these data ultimately hold up, it's 36:08.030 --> 36:11.670 complicated to determine because the research was done 36:11.670 --> 36:16.570 almost 50 years ago when the tools for asking these 36:16.570 --> 36:20.620 questions held themselves to different standards than 36:20.620 --> 36:25.060 people hold themselves today, it's nonetheless not 36:25.060 --> 36:29.640 implausible to think that this might be true. 36:29.640 --> 36:34.330 Experience determines all sorts of things. 36:34.332 --> 36:37.422 And it's not unimaginable that among the things that it would 36:37.420 --> 36:44.620 determine is what sorts of perceptual features you pick 36:44.620 --> 36:49.000 up on when encountering a situation. 36:49.000 --> 36:56.070 It is, at the very least, undeniable that there are 36:56.070 --> 37:00.870 fundamental and interesting differences between the 37:00.870 --> 37:05.340 tendency of those raised in Eastern cultures and the 37:05.340 --> 37:10.390 tendency of those raised in Western cultures to avail 37:10.390 --> 37:16.360 themselves of the two kinds of fundamental reasoning 37:16.360 --> 37:21.580 processes which are available to all of us. 37:21.580 --> 37:25.630 So you know, both from your readings for today and from 37:25.630 --> 37:28.690 our readings on the dual processing tradition earlier 37:28.690 --> 37:34.440 in the semester, that human beings are capable both of 37:34.440 --> 37:36.830 what is called holistic processing. 37:36.830 --> 37:41.680 That is orienting towards an object as embedded in a 37:41.680 --> 37:45.630 context, paying attention to relationships between the 37:45.630 --> 37:50.150 focal object and the field that surrounds it and having a 37:50.150 --> 37:54.110 tendency as a result to make predictions and offer 37:54.110 --> 37:59.470 explanations on the basis of these relational properties. 37:59.470 --> 38:02.040 So that's one kind of thinking. 38:02.040 --> 38:05.330 And all of us have it available. 38:05.330 --> 38:08.800 But there is, in addition, a second kind of thinking, which 38:08.800 --> 38:12.960 every adult human being has available to him and her: 38:12.960 --> 38:17.430 analytic processing, through which, one orients towards an 38:17.430 --> 38:22.150 object as considered in isolation, pays attention 38:22.150 --> 38:25.960 primarily to the object attributes, not to features of 38:25.960 --> 38:31.250 its surround and exhibits a tendency to predict and 38:31.250 --> 38:36.520 explain events on the basis of such attributes. 38:36.520 --> 38:40.680 So you'll remember when we were reading the Doris 38:40.680 --> 38:46.430 critique of Aristotle and the suggestion was made that it's 38:46.430 --> 38:52.800 not features of the individual himself, not attributes of the 38:52.800 --> 38:56.420 object, that determine how it is that somebody will act in a 38:56.420 --> 38:58.880 potentially morally demanding situation. 38:58.880 --> 39:04.880 But rather features of his relationship to his context. 39:04.880 --> 39:07.240 Whether he's found a dime in the phone booth, 39:07.240 --> 39:09.300 whether he's in a rush. 39:09.300 --> 39:13.790 The claim that Doris makes in offering that critique of 39:13.790 --> 39:17.950 Aristotle, a version of what's called the fundamental 39:17.950 --> 39:21.940 attribution error, is that there are cases where analytic 39:21.940 --> 39:26.640 processing leads us awry and holistic processing does a 39:26.640 --> 39:29.890 better job of explaining. 39:29.890 --> 39:35.920 There are, likewise, cases where focusing our attention 39:35.920 --> 39:41.470 profoundly on the object itself and not attending to 39:41.470 --> 39:46.320 irrelevant features of the environment will leave us 39:46.320 --> 39:48.400 better off. 39:48.400 --> 39:54.730 It is striking, given that that there appear to be 39:54.730 --> 39:59.350 reliable and statistically significant differences over 39:59.350 --> 40:06.600 time in members of Western and non-Western cultures with 40:06.600 --> 40:09.700 regard to which of these attitudes they 40:09.700 --> 40:12.760 take on as a default. 40:12.760 --> 40:17.150 So in a series of articles that have been written over 40:17.150 --> 40:21.610 roughly the last decade, Richard Nisbett and a number 40:21.610 --> 40:26.660 of collaborators have presented subjects with cues 40:26.660 --> 40:28.430 like the following. 40:28.430 --> 40:32.780 They're shown a series of fish against a particular 40:32.780 --> 40:33.910 background. 40:33.910 --> 40:37.970 And then shown a series of novel fish, either with the 40:37.970 --> 40:40.530 same or different backgrounds. 40:40.530 --> 40:45.970 Or a series of polar bears or elk against a particular 40:45.970 --> 40:52.600 background and then either novel or previously seen 40:52.600 --> 40:56.540 objects against either a similar or different 40:56.540 --> 40:58.050 background. 40:58.050 --> 41:05.150 So what advantage do subjects demonstrate when they see an 41:05.150 --> 41:09.260 object that they've seen before against a familiar 41:09.260 --> 41:11.130 background? 41:11.130 --> 41:15.100 For the Japanese individuals, whom Nisbett and his 41:15.100 --> 41:20.450 collaborators tested, an object seen against its 41:20.450 --> 41:25.560 original background yields a high accuracy rate. 41:25.560 --> 41:29.580 If you show it without a background at all, there's 41:29.580 --> 41:31.340 less accuracy. 41:31.340 --> 41:35.230 And if you show it against a novel background, there's a 41:35.230 --> 41:38.480 striking decrement in performance. 41:38.480 --> 41:39.710 And again with the wolves. 41:39.710 --> 41:41.280 If you show it against the original 41:41.280 --> 41:43.650 background, high accuracy. 41:43.650 --> 41:45.900 Show it against the novel background, 41:45.900 --> 41:47.800 a significant decrement. 41:47.800 --> 41:51.470 These are clean patterns. 41:51.470 --> 41:55.010 What happens with Western subjects? 41:55.010 --> 41:57.950 Different pattern altogether. 41:57.950 --> 42:02.540 Original background doesn't help re-identification. 42:02.540 --> 42:05.690 No background helps a lot. 42:05.690 --> 42:10.950 The distraction of additional information has been removed. 42:10.950 --> 42:15.320 And a novel background doesn't leave them much worse off than 42:15.320 --> 42:16.790 the original. 42:16.790 --> 42:18.440 Ditto with the wolves. 42:18.440 --> 42:25.110 Original background produces some, but not much, advantage. 42:25.110 --> 42:28.850 I'm going to skip the next example, which suggests, and 42:28.850 --> 42:33.280 you'll be able to watch this yourselves on the slides that 42:33.280 --> 42:38.950 I post, that again there are contexts in which Westerners 42:38.950 --> 42:42.920 appear to be better at absolute tasks, non-Westerners 42:42.920 --> 42:45.070 at relative tasks. 42:45.070 --> 42:48.630 Now what sort of business do we have making these 42:48.630 --> 42:51.490 generalizations about cultures? 42:51.490 --> 42:57.110 Isn't this an outrageous sort of thing to be doing? 42:57.110 --> 43:02.860 The claim is not that culture determines everything about an 43:02.860 --> 43:04.460 individual. 43:04.460 --> 43:09.320 The claim is merely the unsurprising one that growing 43:09.320 --> 43:13.990 up in circumstances where your attention is, as a matter of 43:13.990 --> 43:20.160 course, directed in particular ways, will lead you exactly in 43:20.160 --> 43:24.930 the ways that Aristotle suggested, to find those ways 43:24.930 --> 43:29.890 of responding to be natural and habitual. 43:29.890 --> 43:33.310 So what I want to do in the closing five minutes of the 43:33.310 --> 43:39.720 lecture is to give you a final example from the WEIRD paper. 43:39.720 --> 43:46.050 To run you through some of the cases on which the claim that 43:46.050 --> 43:49.820 Americans stand out relative to other westerners on 43:49.820 --> 43:53.550 phenomena that are associated with independent self-concept 43:53.550 --> 43:56.870 and individualism is based. 43:56.870 --> 43:59.390 So these are all clicker questions. 43:59.390 --> 44:02.480 And they are a series of survey questions that, at 44:02.480 --> 44:07.130 least 15 years ago, typically produced very different 44:07.130 --> 44:13.490 responses in North American educated subjects than they 44:13.490 --> 44:18.850 did in citizens of other Western and non-Western 44:18.850 --> 44:20.640 industrialized nations. 44:20.640 --> 44:24.250 In particular, different responses among Americans than 44:24.250 --> 44:29.690 they produced among Germans or Australians or Japanese. 44:29.690 --> 44:32.150 So I'm just going to give you a series of questions. 44:32.150 --> 44:34.420 We're going to see how your numbers come out. 44:34.420 --> 44:37.570 And we'll compare them to how those data looked in the 44:37.570 --> 44:38.980 original studies. 44:38.980 --> 44:40.620 So here's your first question. 44:40.620 --> 44:43.230 "While you are talking and sharing a bottle of beer"-- 44:43.230 --> 44:45.520 I know none of you would ever do this, this is something to 44:45.520 --> 44:47.620 imagine for when you grow up-- 44:47.620 --> 44:49.970 "when you are talking and sharing a bottle of beer with 44:49.970 --> 44:52.830 a friend who is officially on duty as a safety controller in 44:52.830 --> 44:55.990 the company where you both work, an accident occurs 44:55.990 --> 44:57.950 injuring a shift worker. 44:57.950 --> 45:00.700 An investigation is launched by the national safety 45:00.700 --> 45:05.020 commission and you are asked for your evidence. 45:05.020 --> 45:07.550 There are no other witnesses. 45:07.550 --> 45:12.700 What right has your friend to expect you to protect him? 45:12.700 --> 45:15.070 A, a definite right. 45:15.070 --> 45:17.320 B, some right. 45:17.320 --> 45:21.920 D, no right." So investigating commission, do you protect 45:21.920 --> 45:23.870 your friend? 45:23.870 --> 45:27.510 Let's see how the numbers come out. 45:27.510 --> 45:32.800 8% of you think there is a definite right. 45:32.800 --> 45:36.450 48% of you think there is some right. 45:36.450 --> 45:40.840 And 44% of you think there is no right. 45:40.840 --> 45:46.810 OK let's see whether we can get these numbers up again. 45:46.810 --> 45:51.230 Gosh, OK, I was going to show you how your numbers compare 45:51.230 --> 45:54.570 to the traditional numbers that were ascertained. 45:54.570 --> 45:57.450 What I'm going to do is leave these slides up for you as 45:57.450 --> 46:00.550 always and you can go and check the comparison. 46:00.550 --> 46:05.560 The idea is that in the original studies, Americans 46:05.560 --> 46:12.250 showed, 94% of them in this column, you show 92% of you in 46:12.250 --> 46:13.320 the two of these. 46:13.320 --> 46:17.630 Whereas if you looked across other countries, people gave 46:17.630 --> 46:18.510 different answers. 46:18.505 --> 46:25.115 The claim is not that one or the other of these outlooks is 46:25.120 --> 46:26.640 a legitimate one. 46:26.640 --> 46:30.020 The claim is just to alert you to the fact that there are 46:30.020 --> 46:34.010 radical differences in how people think about the world. 46:34.010 --> 46:37.550 Let's try the next one. 46:37.550 --> 46:39.510 So I don't know why we've got the reveal here. 46:39.510 --> 46:44.800 So don't pay no attention to the numbers that appear here. 46:44.800 --> 46:48.840 Do you think "that only real goal of a company 46:48.835 --> 46:50.775 is to make a profit? 46:50.780 --> 46:54.450 Or do you think B, that a company, besides making a 46:54.450 --> 46:57.700 profit has the goal of attaining the well-being of 46:57.700 --> 47:03.400 various stakeholders such as employees, stockholders and 47:03.400 --> 47:13.220 others?" Your numbers suggest a tendency to think that it 47:13.220 --> 47:16.240 has other goals as well. 47:16.242 --> 47:19.772 But 33% of you think the only goal of a company is profit. 47:19.770 --> 47:26.580 Among Japanese citizens surveyed in 1993, only 8% sat 47:26.580 --> 47:31.500 where 33% of you sit. 47:31.500 --> 47:35.880 "If you apply for a job in a company," is your thought, 47:35.880 --> 47:38.210 "one, that you will almost certainly work there for the 47:38.210 --> 47:41.390 rest of your life?" Or is your thought that "you are almost 47:41.390 --> 47:49.840 sure that the relationship will have a limited duration?" 47:49.840 --> 47:52.050 Let's see how these look. 47:57.580 --> 47:59.950 8% of you think you will work there for the 47:59.950 --> 48:00.720 rest of your life. 48:00.720 --> 48:03.040 92% percent, limited duration. 48:03.040 --> 48:08.080 By contrast, if you look at the numbers here, you are with 48:08.080 --> 48:09.330 the Americans. 48:14.200 --> 48:18.060 60% of Japanese asked that similar question gave the 48:18.060 --> 48:20.220 answer that you did. 48:20.220 --> 48:24.190 Over and over and over again-- and I'll leave you three more 48:24.190 --> 48:26.690 examples on the slide to look at-- 48:26.690 --> 48:31.950 you see that whatever it is that you are like -- 48:31.950 --> 48:35.470 if you are like the Japanese with 41% you were different 48:35.470 --> 48:37.900 from the Americans, if you were like the Americans with 48:37.900 --> 48:41.590 99%, you were different than the Japanese -- 48:41.590 --> 48:46.340 the cultural environment in which you find yourself plays 48:46.340 --> 48:49.010 a role in determining your outlook. 48:49.010 --> 48:52.760 And we'll begin next lecture with an acceleration of a 48:52.760 --> 48:57.660 particular version of this in the context of Cass Sunstein's 48:57.660 --> 49:00.390 discussion of social norms. 49:00.390 --> 49:04.180 Let me remind you that Thursday is Bulldog day. 49:04.180 --> 49:09.080 And if possible, if as many of you as can will sit over on 49:09.080 --> 49:12.200 this side of the room to leave seats for our visiting 49:12.200 --> 49:15.310 students, that would be much appreciated.