Dan Ariely - The Truth about Dishonesty

If I were to ask you if you are an honest person, chances are that you'd say yes. Yet, if we look at the details of your everyday behavior with a magnifying glass, we'd most likely discover all sorts of ways in which you lie, cheat and steal, on a regular basis! Notice the irony? In answering a question about your own honesty, you behave dishonestly! Well, it's not quite that straightforward. It's not so much that you'd be lying to me; it's more that you'd be lying to yourself, and then to the rest of us as a consequence.

Our minds have an incredible capacity for compartmentalization: we separate into distinct groups instances of what ought to be logically identical situations, such as when you create the double standard that it's okay for you to take home some office supplies from work, but that it's not okay to steal an equivalent amount of money from the petty cash box. The other thing we're really good at in this context is rationalization: when confronted with our dishonesty, we are masters at justifying our behavior and turning it around to sound heroic: "it's okay for me to illegally download music because that means I'm standing up for freedom and fighting the corruption of multi-billion dollar music label companies, so if you think about it, I'm kind of a moral hero."

Well, in the following RSA animated presentation, Dan Ariely shares some of the fascinating findings of how everyday people like you and me cheat all the time, and what might be some useful mechanisms we can use to decrease our own corruption.

If you liked that, you might also like to check our our selection of TED Talk presentations.

Read More

Propositional Logic - Using Truth Tables to Evaluate the Validity of Complex Arguments

In our previous lesson on propositional logic, we learned that we can take arguments in natural language (English, Spanish, German, whatever) and translate them into symbolic form through the use of variables to represent statements, and connectives to represent relationships between statements. This helps us set aside irrelevant considerations such as the content of an argument (what the argument is about), or the language used to express that content, and focus instead simply on its formal aspects to evaluate its validity (whether the conclusion follows necessarily from its premises).

The claim was that these basic concepts can be applied to a wide range of arguments, including indefinitely complex ones, and that logicians have developed systematic methods for evaluating the validity of such arguments in a systematic way: it's not just a matter of personal opinion or subjective point of view but of objectively demonstrative rationality.

So, let's take a look at one example of a complex argument, and go through these systematic steps to figure out whether it makes logical sense or not.

For more related posts, check out our logic tag.

Read More

Propositional Logic - Connectives and Truth Tables

The Stoic philosophers bequeathed us with an important theory of ethics and a very respectable account of the nature of the good life. What's less well known, outside of philosophical circles, is that they are also responsible for developing a theory of logic that can impressively deal with most forms of everyday reasoning. Logicians and mathematicians, especially over the pasts two hundred years, have come up with more sophisticated theories of logic, but the stoic propositional logic is good enough for most ordinary purposes.

Part of the stoic insight comes from the fact that they devised methods for organizing, systematizing, formalizing and evaluating compound statements (such as "if it's raining, then it's wet, but since it's not wet, then it can't be raining"). Sure, that one may seem obvious, but their brilliance comes from the fact that no matter how long or complex an argument is (or what the argument is about), it can be systematically broken down into simple statements, allowing us to do a thorough analysis of each of its parts, and then systematically evaluating whether the argument as a whole makes logical sense or not.

But before we learn how to do that, we need to have a little introduction to the idea of connectives and truth tables. Once you know these basic ideas, we'll start to apply them to complex arguments of the kind you are likely to come across daily.

Click here for the next lesson: using truth tables to determine the validity of complex arguments, no matter how complex they are.

If you're interested in how the stoics contributed to the study of logic, how they departed from Aristotle's logic of predication, and why this was important for their materialistic philosophy, you'll find the following audio fascinating:

And don't forget to check out all our related posts in the logic tag, especially our hilarious primer on logical fallacies.

Read More

Steven Pinker - You're Already Committed to Reason

One thing that we philosophers love is questions and spirited friendly debate. This dialectical process helps us get a better grasp on various subjects, and though we may not always reach consensus, we do gain intellectual growth.

But this kind of attitude is not ubiquitous, especially for those just getting acquainted with philosophy. On many occasions, when dealing with some elusive topic, whether in epistemology, the philosophy of religion, or ethics, and especially when their beliefs have been challenged, some students will start to complain that maybe we should just abandon reason.

My tactic at that point is to ask them why that should be the case, at which point they will begin to argue their position without realizing that any argument against reason is going to have to require that they themselves use reason, which completely defeats their arguments. And apparently I'm not alone, at least Steven Pinker seems to be on my side :)

Nice, powerful and concise!

Read More

Megyn Kelly Makes Karl Rove Her Bitch

I have an ongoing debate with a friend. We're both liberals, and I think one can theoretically separate a person's political ideology from their physical attractiveness, and not like the former while very much liking the latter, or vice versa. My friend thinks I'm full of crap: once you know what's inside a person's heart and soul, especially when they're conservative ideologues, the outside is just as hideous as the inside.

And the object of contention between us has been Megyn Kelly. I think she's totally hot, even though I disagree with most of the things she says. My friend says she makes him want to barf. Here's the awesome part: on election night she did something that should completely vindicate me in my friend's eyes: she made Karl Rove her bitch :)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I'm not big on schadenfreude, but that was awesome!

Read More

Election Results in a Beautiful Animation

I don't know if you heard, but here in the ol' U.S. of A. we just had an election this Tuesday. You know, just trying to choose who the most powerful man in the world would be...

Well, as it turned out, President Barack Obama was re-elected, beating his conservative-liberal-tea-party-ultra-conservative-liberal-conservative opponent Mitt Romney.

If you haven't been paying attention, or don't quite understand how things break down, the following animation should clarify all sorts of questions you may have about this election:

Marihuana, porn and gay marriage... wow, that's what it's come to? :)

Read More

Substance Dualism

Although most philosophers of mind are probably physicalists, there is still a live debate about the ontological status of mind: is it physical or immaterial?

On one side of the debate are those who argue that thoughts are not physical, and therefore cannot be generated by something physical. Apart from obvious religious and soteriological reasons, one of the more popular lines of argument goes roughly as follows: when we have a complete physical description of the brain (and of that which is perceived by the brain), there is still something about the qualitative nature of first-person subjective experiences (or qualia) that is not accounted for, so there must be something non-physical to explain this. In other words, the physicalist account leaves something rather important out of the picture, namely subjectivity and intentionality (or the 'aboutness' of mental experience), and that needs to be explained.

On the other side, the idea of an immaterial soul seems perhaps even more mysterious than the problems with physicalism: how can a non-physical substance interact causally with the physical body? What is it about this non-physical stuff that allows it to think and have first-person subjective experiences in the first place, without just being defined into having it? How can we possibly verify its existence (without arguing in a circle)? In fact, the evidence that we do have when we study the brain, especially when it suffers damage that affects very specific cognitive capacities, seems to indicate that even though we may not know the exact mechanism through which brain processes produce consciousness, that's nevertheless what happens.

But why listen to me when we have a beautiful and nicely organized animation that will take you through the steps to analyze this debate?

Did I say a beautiful animation? I meant two :)

Isn't it amazing how many problems fade away when you organize your thoughts? :)

Read More