4/26/2013 Discussion Discussion

by Nathan Turowsky

This week we will be having a retrospective (and recursive?) discussion of the discussions that the Philosophy Club has had this year. Let us try to reach some consensus perspective on things looking back, or, failing that, share our own perspectives. Sharing of what we learned and found most interesting, commentary on past leadership and advice for future action, and general reminiscence and revisiting of past conversations and debates are all welcome. There will be no official topic or presenter for this meeting but the officers will treat it as a regular formal meeting and (attempt to) moderate it.

We will also start discussing logistics for the club's customary end-of-semester celebration at India House in Northampton, and ideas for a final, informal meeting next week.

4/19/2013 Kant's Dangerous Idea

by Benny Mattis

`The search for objective truth, including the scientific enterprise, works on the assumption that nature is ultimately intelligible.  We seem to be justified in our beliefs that the world must be explainable in terms of our own logical categories (i.e., the logical form of our thought), but how can we be justified in making these assumptions?  Science can help us discover which events cause which, but how do we know that all events even have a cause to be discovered?  

In his new book, Mind and Cosmos, Thomas Nagel notes that the intelligibility of the universe is not adequately explained by either theism's claim that God made us and the world in such a way that it would be intelligible to us, or evolutionary psychology's claim that such a priori knowledge is an expected result of natural selection.  Nagel himself raises the suggestion that there are more physical laws of which we are not aware, i.e. naturally teleological laws which bias the world towards the development of rational creatures.

Immanuel Kant, in his 1787 classic Critique of Pure Reason, addresses the same problem of intelligibility, but comes to a different conclusion, and would likely not be satisfied by Nagel's answer any more than theism's or evolutionary psychology's.  Kant explains that our synthetic (non-trivial) a priori knowledge of experience is not knowledge of how objects are as considered in themselves, but only of how they are as they appear to us.  Kant explains how the a priori laws of nature, such as the forms of our logical thought and the principle of sufficient reason, must ultimately be laws prescribed to nature by our own minds insofar as it is experienced by us.

4/12/2013 Game Theory

by Brandon Taylor

          What do engagement rings, the Princess Bride, steam engines, and spider battles have in common? They can all be explained through game theory. In the second half of the twentieth century, game theory helped make breakthroughs in various disciplines, including economics, biology, computer science, and philosophy. It sheds light on such fundamental notions as morality, coordination, cooperation, signaling, and credibility.

• Intuitive strategies (coming forthwith)
• Definition of game
• Large numbers assumption
• Definition of utility (for our purposes)
• Utility models
• Self regarding vs. altruisitic
• Perfect information
• Components of a game
• Normal form games
• Dominating strategies/dominated strategies
• Strong
• Weak
• Nash equilibrium (yes, as in A Beautiful Mind)
• Examples
• Prisoner's Dilemma (Cooperation game)
• Tragedy of the fishers
• Karma
• Afterlife
• Societal punishments
• Caveman (Coordination game)
• Focal points
• New York example
• Steam engine example
• Mixed Nash equilibrium
• Soccer game
• Caveman example
• Extensive form game
• Nature's move
• Unknown move
• Backwards Induction
• Burning bridges
• Subgames
• Subgame reduction
• Subgame perfect equilibrium'
• Signaling games
• Engagement ring
• Credibility
• Changing the game: strategies for establishing credibility
• Coming forthwith
• Repeated games
• Finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma
• Infinitely repeated games
• Certain probability of ending at each round
• Decaying returns
• Tit for tat
• Public Choice Theory
• Voting
• Giving the wrong directions
• Sortition

List of Interesting Applications:
Business School

Keyboards

Steam engines vs. combustion engines

Tragedy of the fishers

Burning bridges

Alarm clock

Lemons (warranty)

Auctions

Business collusion

Biological Examples (genetic altruism)

New York example

Weight loss example

Giving/taking money (cultural relativity)*

Engagement rings

More coming forthwith

Discussion Questions:

What the disadvantages of this kind of utility model?

How can society achieve cooperation and coordination?

What are the advantages of this kind of very quantitative model of human behavior?

What are the disadvantages?

Do societies differ in their utility models? Their game strategies?

Bonus: Wikipedia to the rescue

Game theory has been put to several uses in philosophy. Responding to two papers by W.V.O. Quine (1960, 1967), Lewis (1969) used game theory to develop a philosophical account of convention. In so doing, he provided the first analysis of common knowledge and employed it in analyzing play in coordination games. In addition, he first suggested that one can understand meaning in terms of signaling games. This later suggestion has been pursued by several philosophers since Lewis (Skyrms (1996), Grim, Kokalis, and Alai-Tafti et al. (2004)). Following Lewis (1969) game-theoretic account of conventions, Edna Ullmann-Margalit (1977) and Bicchieri (2006) have developed theories of social norms that define them as Nash equilibria that result from transforming a mixed-motive game into a coordination game.[24][25]

Game theory has also challenged philosophers to think in terms of interactive epistemology: what it means for a collective to have common beliefs or knowledge, and what are the consequences of this knowledge for the social outcomes resulting from agents' interactions. Philosophers who have worked in this area include Bicchieri (1989, 1993),[26] Skyrms (1990),[27] and Stalnaker (1999).[28]

In ethics, some[who?] authors have attempted to pursue the project, begun by Thomas Hobbes, of deriving morality from self-interest. Since games like the prisoner's dilemma present an apparent conflict between morality and self-interest, explaining why cooperation is required by self-interest is an important component of this project. This general strategy is a component of the general social contract view in political philosophy (for examples, see Gauthier (1986) and Kavka (1986).[29]

Other authors have attempted to use evolutionary game theory in order to explain the emergence of human attitudes about morality and corresponding animal behaviors. These authors look at several games including the prisoner's dilemma, stag hunt, and the Nash bargaining game as providing an explanation for the emergence of attitudes about morality (see, e.g., Skyrms (1996, 2004) and Sober and Wilson (1999)).

Some assumptions used in some parts of game theory have been challenged in philosophy; for example, psychological egoism states that rationality reduces to self-interest—a claim debated among philosophers. (see Psychological egoism#Criticisms)

4/5/2013 Heaps and Links: Self and Mind in Buddhism

by Kiriell Popienko

    For centuries philosophers have pondered the mind-body problem and humanity's ontological place in the universe.  The most easily recognized of these figures is Rene Descartes who introduced Cartesian Dualism and his famous quote "I think, therefore I am".  Since then Descartes (at least for me) has been a prime example of logical fallacy in intro to philosophy courses everywhere.  When thinking about the philosophy of mind and self, most would point to western philosophers and such theories as Dualism, Idealism, Materialism, and other western theories; but seldom do people look to the east.  Do the Buddhist notions of self and mind hold up better than popular western ones? this is what we will be discussing this week.
   One of the key tenants of Buddhism is the "no-self"(anatman), the letting go of ones ego in order to achieve enlightenment, but in order to do this you must understand what that illusionary self is.  This presentation will focus on the five "heaps" (skandhas) and the twelve dependent "links" (Nidanas).  The skandhas are what comprise the self and the Nidanas are what attach us to this world (an exercise in dependent origination).  We will also briefly discuss the history of Buddhism and Buddhist Metaphysics.
   The purpose of this presentation is to inform, so that you might make your own discussion about what works and doesn't work, which in my opinion is the most important of the Buddha's teachings.  Our small discussion will be about the application of this new information to western theories.