Some experimental philosophy on Happiness

Hey you all,

here’s a link to a blog post of mine on the Experimental Philosophy blog that describes experiments that I think suggest that the folk concept of happiness is a normative one:

Moral Judgments and Happiness

According to the hypothesis I am testing in my experiments, if the folk thinks that somebody is living a bad life—perhaps by being a morally bad person—then they are unlikely to, or will not, attribute happiness to this person even if they believe that she is in the kinds of mental states which we usually associate with happiness.

Most psychological research on happiness uses definitions of happiness that are wholly non-evaluative. This means that, when some psychologist judges that somebody is happy, the folk might not. That, I think, is an interesting result. Why? Because it means, I think, that when we give a philosophical account of happiness, then this will be a normative project at least in the following respect: we will have to give reasons for favoring either the normative concept of happiness used by the folk or the non-normative one used by psychologists and many philosophers. (That is, if, as I think, the kinds of experiments that I’ve been running show that the folk are using a partly normative concept of happiness. Again, see the link for descriptions of these experiments.)

What’s the subject of justice? pt. 2

[Read part 1]

In my last post, I presented some concerns about the institutional/interactional distinction with regards to the subject of justice and sketched a potentially new way to distinguish between the claims labeled (1) and (2) in that post. Some further thought has led me to be less confident that the worries I presented should lead us to question the adequacy of the institutional/interactional distinction. Nevertheless, I still think there’s at least one reason to shift from an institutional/interactional distinction to a structural/interactional distinction. So this post will attempt two things. First, I’ll sketch out a reason to think that institutions and structures aren’t coextensive (by arguing that institutions are instances of structure). Second, I’ll offer a reason for thinking that the important distinction is between structuralism and interactionism rather than institutionalism and interactionism. (Note: in the last post, I suggested that we ought to dump the institutional/interactional distinction wholesale in favour of a structural/non-structural distinction. For now, I’ve changed my mind; I think we should turn in the institutional/interactional distinction for the structural/interactional distinction.)

What’s the subject of justice? pt. 1

By ’subject of justice’, I mean ‘what claims of justice are about’. So the title question, then, is: what constitutes the content of claims about justice?

Famously, Rawls (1971) answered the question as follows:

The primary subject of the principles of social justice is the basic structure of society, the arrangement of major social institutions into one scheme of cooperation. We have seen that these principles are to govern the assignment of rights and duties in these institutions and they are to determine the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social life. The principles of justice for institutions must not be confused with the principles which apply to individuals and their actions in particular circumstances. These two kinds of principles apply to different subjects and must be discussed separately. (TJ, sec. 10)

Following Rawls, a distinction has been made in the political philosophy literature between an institutional view and an interactional view. Pogge’s formulation of this distinction in ‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty’ (1992) is representative:

An institutional conception postulates certain fundamental principles of justice. These apply to institutional schemes and are thus second-order principles: standards for assessing the ground rules and practices that regulate human interactions. An interactional conception, by contrast, postulates certain fundamental principles of ethics. These principles, like institutional ground rules, are first-order in that they apply directly to the conduct of persons and groups. (p. 50)

(If you’re interested, two prominent rejections of this distinction are G.A. Cohen, ‘Where the Action Is’ (1995) and L. Murphy, ‘Institutions and the Demands of Justice’ (1998). Pogge, ‘On the Site of Distributive Justice’ (2001) responds. Strictly speaking, Pogge characterizes the interactional view as a view concerning ethics as opposed to justice. But, as I’ll try to make clear below, there could be a way in which both the interactional and institutional views are views of justice.)

To illustrate the distinction, consider the following scenario:

Recalcitrant Credences

The following principle strikes me as plausible:

If S is ideally rational, has the concept of justification, and has credence X that P,

then S believes that she is justified in having credence X that P.

In other words, ideally rational agents believe that all their credences are justified. Any thoughts? I’m sure this has been addressed in the literature, so if you know of any relevant citations, please pass them along!

Bystanders to Oppressions

I attended several interesting talks at the Central APA. This time, I tried to select more politically-oriented sessions, despite my lack of knowledge in that area. Subsequently, I was exposed to a lot of interesting issues I probably would never have thought about otherwise. One symposium that particularly got me thinking was “Responsibility for Resisting Oppression”, with Bernard Boxill, Thomas Hill, Jean Harvey, and Sarah Buss. One topic that came up was the responsibilities of “bystanders” to resisting oppressions, compared to that of the oppressed themselves.

That got me thinking: Who is a bystander? For example, are we bystanders to the Chinese government’s oppression of Tibetans? Suppose that information about this oppression were nearly impossible to get, then are we nevertheless bystanders? This hypothetical has implications for assessing our responsibilities as bystanders in everyday situations. There are many instances of systematic injustice in workplace or private homes. We might then ask: Are we bystanders to those, and if so, what are our responsibilities? Reflecting on these scenarios rather naively suggests an epistemic condition on answering the question ‘who is a bystander’: we are bystanders when we can easily obtain knowledge of the oppression.

Against Structured Propositions

Here’s a view about propositions:

A proposition P is a set of ordered pairs <A,G> where the first object is an individual and the second a property. These propositions are generally expressed by declarative statements such as my utterance of the sentence `Alvin is Green’. Call this `Structured Propositions’.

Here’s an argument against this view of propositions.

P1) If propositions are structured then one must either: a) become Meinongian, or b) accept gappy propositions.
P2) According to Russell, Meinongianism entails contradictions, so it’s unacceptable.
P3) Gappy propositions cannot explain informative speech acts where true negative existential are asserted. Such speech acts cannot express gappy propositions. So, gappy propositions are unacceptable.
P4) From P2 and P3, it follows that we should neither be Meinongian nor gappy proposition theorists.
C) Propositions are not structured.

Infallible Predictor Newcomb: An Argument

I’m working up a paper on Newcomb and am seeking feedback on an argument for one-boxing in the infallible predictor version.

The case:

You are brought into a room with two boxes sitting on a table. One box is opaque; you are informed that it contains either $1,000,000 or nothing. The other box is transparent and contains $1,000. You are invited to either take only the opaque box (i.e. “one-box”) or take both boxes (“two-box”). Any money that you collect is yours to keep.

However, prior to making your choice, you receive the following information: Before you entered the room, an infallible predictor made a complete assessment of your psychology. If she predicted that you’d one-box, she put a million dollars in the opaque box. If she predicted that you’d two-box, she put nothing in it.

If you’re greedy and you believe everything you’ve been told (e.g. that the predictor is infallible), what is the rational choice?

The argument:

1. The predictor made a true prediction.
2. If the predictor made a true prediction, then [(you will two-box iff you'll receive exactly $1,000) and (you will one-box iff you'll receive exactly $1,000,000)].
3. You will two-box iff you’ll receive exactly $1,000.
4. You will one-box iff you’ll receive exactly $1,000,000.
5. Either you’ll two-box or you’ll one-box.
6. Either you’ll receive exactly $1,000 or you’ll receive exactly $1,000,000.
7. $1,000,000 is more money than $1,000.
8. If [(you'll receive either exactly $1,000 or exactly $1,000,000) and ($1,000,000 is more money than $1,000)], then you prefer to receive exactly $1,000,000.
9. You prefer to receive exactly $1,000,000.
10. If [(you prefer to receive exactly $1,000,000) and (you will one-box iff you'll receive exactly $1,000,000)], then you ought to one-box.
11. You ought to one-box.

Thoughts? Rejectable premises?
(I don’t deny that there is also a very compelling argument for two-boxing in this case.)

Later addition (1/6/08):

Religion and Problems of Scope

Certain theistic stories seem to have some problems of scope. Melville, in his “Moby Dick” (ch.10) presents one of them.

“What is worship? –to do the will of God- that is worship. And what is the will of God? –to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me – that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator.”

Some theistic stories seem to have this problematic principle, also known as “The Golden Rule”, according to which one should do onto others what one wants them to do upon oneself. The sheer existence of different, incompatible, theistic stories, adds another problematic element: not everyone, even among theists, share the same story. But that is not all, there’s a third problematic element: theistic stories tend to be universal in scope. They intend to be true of everything everywhere.

These three elements, golden rule, incompatible theistic stories, and universality, get theists into trouble. The latter makes it so that no other, incompatible, story can be true. This, in turn, makes it desirable (when not necessary) to evangelize the mislead believers without, of course, misleading yourself. This evangelical obligation, however, conflicts with the golden rule. It seems as if it is inherent to the evangelical purposes that believers are not created equal: some are correct and some are mistaken. How can we fix these theistic stories?

What is Contagious about Imaginative Contagion?

In most cases, our pretense episodes are quarantined from reality. This is usually taken to mean that the imaginings have no effect outside of the pretense, particularly with regards to behaviors. But imaginative quarantine also fails systematically. Broadly speaking, imaginative contagion are cases where imaginings do have effects outside of the pretense, noticeably with behaviors. Tamar Gendler (2006) points to three sets of cases: visual and motor imagery, affective response, and social priming.

I think imaginative contagion is a really interesting phenomenon. There is a rich body of empirical evidence, and it seems like accounting for the phenomenon should impact our functional analysis of the mind. I am puzzled, though, about how exactly to interpret the phenomenon. What part of the mind is affected in contagion cases? Or, to put it metaphorically, what is contagious about imaginative contagion?

The Argument from Error

(surely this has already been thought by someone else, if so, excuse it)

In the Meditations Descartes says “if it were repugnant to the goodness of Deity to have created me subject to constant deception, it would seem likewise to be contrary to his goodness to allow me to be occasionally deceived; and yet it is clear that this is permitted.”

This made me think of an epistemological version of the problem of evil. I will present the argument, say some things abut it, and then wait for you to tell me whether you find it ridiculous or not. The argument goes like this.

P1 If (summing up) there is a three-O God then it cannot be that humans are constantly deceived.
P2 Humans are constantly deceived (by their senses, reasoning, intuitions, etc.)
C There is no three-O God.

If I remember properly, the usual reply to the “Problem of Evil” argument is that of Free Will. It is obvious that the same argument will not work here. The Free Will argument requires the possibility (or actual instances) of Evil, but not of error (or deception). One might be omniscient and still be free to take the dark side. So there is at least something attractive about the “Problem of Error” argument.