The Prisoner's Dilemma

One of the interesting aspects of social interactions is that our interests are not always aligned with those of other agents, and when the result of an interaction is a function of your choice and that of someone else whose motives may be different from your own, you face a dilemma... what to do?

Well, you kind of know what you'd like to do, but you also know what he'd like to do, and you know that he knows what you'd like to do, and so you think about what he's going to think you're going to do, so you try to anticipate that by doing something else, except that he probably realizes you're going to try to cheat him, so he's going to try to get you before you get him, lather, rinse, repeat ad infinitum and you're not one step closer to figuring out what to do.

One of the fascinating and paradoxical implications of trying to rationally maximize your own utility function is that, when confronted with certain scenarios, such as the famous prisoner's dilemma, and by virtue of pursuing your own individual interests, you end up screwing yourself more than if you simply decided to cooperate. Oh, but it's never that simple. Anyway, here's a basic introduction to the idea of the prisoner's dilemma:

Now, you may think that because you now understand how this dilemma works, you could beat it if you were to find yourself in such a scenario, but as Dilbert shows, that's not quite right (which is exactly why such scenarios are so interesting and why so many academics in all sorts of disciplines have devoted so much of their time to think about and research such cases):

In political philosophy, one of the most famous instances of a philosopher recognizing the nature of these interactions was Thomas Hobbes, who argued (a few centuries before game theory was actually invented... isn't it awesome how philosophy is so often way ahead of its time?) that the way to solve these problems is to make sure there is some sort of mechanism to enforce cooperation.

Hobbes' particular solution was that all rights should be transferred to a sovereign who would have a monopoly on power (and the violence that could be inflicted on defectors), but as the following absolutely brilliant and gripping game-show example demonstrates, there can be other ways to ensure cooperation:

Was that brilliant or what?!?

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Christopher Hitchens - Philosophy and Booze

If you're familiar with the late Christopher Hitchens, you probably know that besides being a prolific writer, social commentator, public intellectual, fierce debater and a master rhetorician, the man loved his booze and his smokes.

In the following clip, and true to form, Hitch decides to give an impromptu performance of Monty Python's famous philosophers' song, which he sings/recites by heart.

Since my own memory sucks big time, that's really impressive :)

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Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature

Having just published a voluminous book whose title was inspired by the immortal words of a guy who met his tragic end by having his brains blown out in public :), Steven Pinker argues that despite some obvious fluctuation, violence has seen an overall historical decline over the past few thousand years, and that we are living today in the least violent era our species has ever seen.

That may sound ridiculous to you, what with the world wars of the 20th century and our increasing technological capabilities to wreak havoc in scales our predecessors couldn't have dreamed of, but Pinker is no dummy who argues in lazy generalizations, and he's got plenty of corroborating evidence to make his point.

More interestingly, perhaps, is why violence has declined over time, and if you're already familiar with Pinker's work, you know things are about to get interesting when he starts invoking philosophy, history, evolutionary psychology, economics, cognitive psychology, rational-decision theory and other fascinating disciplines. And as if that weren't stimulating enough, the lecture is followed by a discussion with Matt Ridley and some Q&A.

For more, check out the Steven Pinker tag.

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The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

"Our conceptions of human nature affect every aspect of our lives, from the way we raise our children to the political movements we embrace. Yet, just as science is bringing us into a golden age of understanding human nature, many people are hostile to the idea. They fear that a biological understanding of the mind will be used to justify inequality, subvert social change, dissolve personal responsibility and strip life of meaning and purpose.

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker (bestselling author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Stuff of Thought, and The Better Angels of Our Nature) explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings.

He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmatic myths: The Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), The Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and The Ghost in the Machine (each of us has an immaterial soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.

Pinker tries to inject calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from scientific discoveries about human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.

Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hard-headed analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts."

Don't you feel just a little bit smarter now? :)

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George Carlin - Pro-Life, Abortion & the Sanctity of Life

In my cursory and anecdotal study of human nature, I've noticed that those most loud and sure about their own opinions tend to love to vilify the views of others instead of fairly assessing and evaluating alternative points of view. Aristotle once said that it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain various points of view on the same subject without necessarily accepting them, and I tend to think he was right about that.

Needless to say, many of these self-righteous and close-minded ideologues love to preach and to pontificate, and they tend to never wonder whether keeping an open mind and being critically curious might not be a better alternative to having made up one's mind before having sufficient evidence to draw a conclusion one way or the other.

And because these folks rarely question whether their strongly-held views are consistent with each other, people like comedian George Carlin (doing the modern comedic equivalent of Socrates' job as a gadfly) get to put them on the spot and make an awesome mockery of the incoherence and inconsistency of their views, as he does on this skit about abortion, animal rights, religion, and the sanctity of life... You've been warned :)

One could lead a few lectures on Nietzsche's hermeneutic circle; Hobbes' psychological egoism, contractarianism and his theory of rights; Peter Singer's views on abortion, utilitarianism, animal rights, and much more just off these 12 minutes... Thanks, George Carlin!

For more on our inevitably biased point of view, check out Douglas Adams meditate on where the concept of God comes from.

And remember, chickens are decent people, so please be kinder to them and other animals.

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Lecture 7 - Free Will, Determinism, Choice and Moral Responsibility

Ordinarily, we tend to think of our actions as freely chosen: we believe in free will. But if we get philosophical for a second, we have to start asking obvious questions, like what does that mean? What does it mean for something to be a choice? What does it mean for an action to be free? If all of nature is determined by physical law, and we are a part of nature, doesn't it follow that maybe our actions are just as determined, even though we may not always be aware of the causes antecedent to our actions? Hey, if we are indeed determined, how can the concept of moral responsibility make sense? Why praise or condemn someone for actions over which he has no real control? Can we make the choice to believe in free will?

In today's lecture, Professor Millican delves into these and other related questions, starting with the classic demarcation between libertarianism (not the political kind), determinism and compatibilism. As you'll see, the debate is just as alive, interesting and perplexing as ever...

Click here to see the course slides

My own leaning is toward the deterministic side of things (at least compatibilism and libertarianism make no sense to me at all), and even though that seems to rob us of our ability to make free choices, I think the upshot is that it also stops us from jumping to the all-quick conclusion that someone is to blame whenever things don't work out in the fashion we might have anticipated.

I find that as a determinist, I am more forgiving and empathetic than I would be if I just assumed that bad actions are always the result of someone's fault. Before pointing fingers, I think it's usually a good and healthy idea (to wonder at least) to what extent circumstances, and not a person, are to blame...

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Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan

Political philosophy is tough business. One of its aims, for instance, is to understand how to balance the interests and rights of individual citizens with those of the state of which they are a part. Another has to do with figuring out the basis for the legitimacy of the state, as well as its limits. Even if we just stopped there, I'm sure you can see how difficult such endeavors must be.

Interestingly, much of our modern way of looking at questions of rights, obligations, authority and the legitimacy of the state can be traced back to Thomas Hobbes, author of Leviathan, undoubtedly one of the greatest works on political philosophy ever written.

Part of the reason this is interesting is that Hobbes starts from a basic set of facts about human equality and competition for limited resources with which almost no one would disagree, and then draws inferences that inform a political system that, however totalitarian and outrageous you might find it to be, somehow manages to solve a great number of conceptual problems that have eluded most other ethical and political theories. And even when you think something is wrong with his point of view, it's almost impossible not to find it interesting anyway :)

Here's a quick introduction to Hobbes' Leviathan from Nigel Warburton's book Philosophy: The Classics:

And here's a Philosophy Bites episode in which Nigel Warburton discusses the importance and influence of Hobbes' philosophy with Quentin Skinner:

For a deeper analysis of Hobbes' Social Contract theory, listen to this fascinating discussion (iTunes only, sorry) with Quentin Skinner.

And this is the original cover of the Leviathan, representing "that mortal God, to which we owe... our peace and defence":



There is a youtube video of an introduction to Hobbes, from Yale University, which I have not had a chance to check out yet. If it's worth its salt, I'll be posting it soon.

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Lecture 2 - Introduction to Modern Philosophy

After a brief introduction to ancient philosophy and the intellectual revolution started by Galileo and Descartes in the 17th century, Professor Millican begins to provide a concise and fascinating summary of the intellectual developments and questions that the new science and philosophy would produce.

To begin with, we start with an account of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes is mostly famous for his political philosophy, but in the context of this course, his importance is due to his thorough commitment to a naturalistic and scientific account of everything, including minds. His materialism, as you might imagine, was immediately understood to imply atheism, which is why he received the dubious distinctions of being considered the monster of Malmesbury, as well as the cause of certain natural disasters. Pretty powerful for a guy who didn't believe in hocus-pocus :)

Being dissatisfied with the Cartesian account of matter as extended space, Robert Boyle would produce a theory of matter as being composed of tiny corpuscles. He also introduced the idea of empty space, thereby clearing the conceptual landscape for Sir Isaac Newton to come up with his universal laws of motion. Newton's predictive success was unimpeachable, but his instrumentalist introduction of the notion of a 'force' of gravity got many wondering whether we were back to postulating obscure and occult explanations a-la Aristotle or a-la Christianity. Wisely, Newton claimed not to understand the nature of such a force ("I feign no hypothesis"), only that its postulation (right or wrong) helped him describe the phenomena experienced with more accuracy than any previous thinker. David Hume would jump on this idea soon.

Finally, we move on to John Locke's empiricism, as well as to Malebranche's occasionalist attempt to explain the necessary connection behing causal inferences, and to Bishop Berkeley's idealism as a response to the skepticism that kept coming from all directions.

Click here to see the course slides.
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