so welcome to philosophy and the science

of human nature it's nice to 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 could 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 courses 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 and 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 in 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 the
ontology
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
material that you would get if you took
an introduction to political philosophy
course will 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 the 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 another 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 is 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 in 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 tape above
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 a discussion of
happiness using a wonderful book written
by a Yale alumnus Jonathan Hite 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
prisoner's 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 will 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 Prize on the
behalf on behalf of himself and his
collaborator in mr. ski for the
extraordinary work they did founding
behavioral economics we'll also look at
some additional work in the dual
processing tradition and read some
excerpts from dan Ariely stew site
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 Guin 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 humans 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 thing 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
he's dead guy on Tuesday Kansai on three
except not all the philosophers were
reading or dead and not all of them are
guys and not all the other fields are
Kansai 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
works 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've roughly
organized the syllabus under these three
topics but in some ways each of them
will keep reading 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 being
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 it's 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 states 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 the particular
topics we're addressing on page one of
the syllabus and a much more detailed
set of questions on pages 3 & 4 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 condition 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
complimentary 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 were concerned
with so that's the opening segment of
the lecture that's 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
reading that we'll be doing for Thursday
and it's a story from Plato's Republic
called the story of the Ring of guide
geez I'll give you a 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 shocked 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 are called stephanas 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 stefanos pages 359 to 360 so
there was once a shepherd named guy
geese 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 peeping 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 flux and as who
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 Kings wife
with her help attack then killed the
king and took over the kingdom so that's
the story of the Ring of guide geez now
why is it that Glaucon tells that story
Glaucon tells that story with the
expectation that you upon hearing it
will think that you would act as guy
geez did if you had the opportunity to
get away with crimes 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 the
as its 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 weary and
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
guy Jesus did so that's the first
example of the kind of topic we're going
to address in the course a second set of
topics that we'll address in the course
we'll 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 Thompson 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 will be
able to do this scientifically for now I
just want to 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
a way that it hits the one person rather
than the five how many of you think it's
either permitted or required to switch
the trolley so that one person dies
rather than five okay 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 okay
so as I said we don't have the clickers
but a vast majority of the class believe
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 track
there is rather a bridge that rests over
the trolley track 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 and how many of
you think it is morally prohibited i
hands up
again 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 that 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 I
won't sit with you in the hospital
waiting room that was three head how
many of you think it is morally
prohibited all right suppose there is a
bear running towards you you're standing
in a 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 Bears way if the bear is running
toward you okay now when that happens
the Bears gonna eat the guy who was
right behind you okay 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 them in front of you to
shield you from the bear very different
distribution of hands okay
what's going on here in the original
switch case where we turn the trolley
one person is 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 if we bring
him into the hospital and cut him up one
person is going to die and five people
are gonna live in the bear case when you
dock 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 them in front of you and lose
use them 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
hits somebody else instead and shielding
so that a harm that is heading towards
you he 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 of a
topic that we'll be addressing third set
of examples imagine some of you are
familiar with the following situation
you go to the library intending
sincerely to read the playdough that has
been assigned to you for the next
lecture and you find yourself instead
answering email or you set for yourself
a dietary regimen according to which you
will eat large amounts of fruits 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 prospect of March
Break in Jamaica with your roommates 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
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 it's a very very brief chapter
from Dan Ariely 'he'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 have set for yourself
to conform to you may find yourself
conforming to that standard I'm 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 calls the ice 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 automatize
the behavior that you wish to encourage
so if I set up a system on my credit
card where every time I spend
ten dollars an additional ten dollars
goes into my savings account it will
turn out that rather than spending my
money on that which I require I will
save the money for that
- which uncommitted 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 plans 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 well the basic answer is that
there's 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 email 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 accessible so that's
the third example of the kind of topic
that we'll be talking about this
semester so what I want to do in the
final few minutes of the course it's 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 has 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
underlie
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
conf
of class to think about cases and
examples and in doing that it's been
found that making use of clickers is
enormous ly 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 bast
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
okay 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 the most recent
- 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 4 and
5 of the syllabus you'll see that there
are five kinds of requirements for the
course the first name perhaps the most
important requirement of the course are
this
that 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 purchase new at full
price they add up to $80 so some of the
assignments come either from the three
classical works that will be reading
Plato Aristotle and Epictetus the two
contemporary works that we're looking at
Jonathan heights happiness hypothesis
and a book by Jonathan che called
Achilles in Vietnam and finally I've
asked you to purchase a small 15 dollar
philosophy dictionary which is enormous
ly 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 accessible 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 in a 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 cuz where else
when I post the slides 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 11:00 20 which
is of course when the lecture meets
obviously that's a typographical error
and we'll be adding additional section
time 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 grade there are two short
essays there will be three assigned and
you can choose which two of those you
write and finally there will be a final
exam where in keep
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 the 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
yes 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
nope 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
a.m. 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 yep
when acceptance going to start sections
will begin the third week of the
semester yep
yes so if you look at the sample
directed exercise which I gave you which
is on the backside of the blue sheet so
the question is it says that directed
exercises are 1 to 7% each will I tell
you how much it directed exercise it's
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 1.2 tell me whether you're gonna
turn off your internet and why three
points 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 pasted your
questions extraordinarily well I look
forward to seeing you next class