Why philosophers should not associate with psychologists

This is taken from a 2000 paper by Jonathan Haidt, Fredrik Björklund, and Scott Murphy from the University of Virginia. I wanted to mention it here because it shows how completely out-of-whack my constant exposure to philosophy has made me.

In this experiment, they taped a bunch of college students as they attempted to respond to various dilemmas. After each decision, the experimenter would try to convince the student of the opposite. They recorded how long it took candidates to answer and whether they did any ‘nervous actions’ in the interview. Here’s the questions

1. The Heinz Dilemma

In Europe, a woman was near death from a very bad disease, a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium for which a druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So, Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife. Was there anything wrong with what he did?

What my response would have been:

Pixel: Yes, it was wrong, but necessary. It was less wrong than the alternative. A way to make this more right would be to send payment later, but I don’t imagine this occurred..

Psychologist: Are you sure, what about if—

Pixel: I’m sure. Next question please.

2. The Cannibalism Story

Jennifer works in a medical school pathology lab as a research assistant. The lab prepares human cadavers that are used to teach medical students about anatomy. The cadavers come from people who had donated their body to science for research. One night Jennifer is leaving the lab when she sees a body that is going to be discarded the next day. Jennifer was a vegetarian, for moral reasons. She thought it was wrong to kill animals for food. But then, when she saw a body about to be cremated, she thought it was irrational to waste perfectly edible meat. So she cut off a piece of flesh, and took it home and cooked it. The person had died recently of a heart attack, and she cooked the meat thoroughly, so there was no risk of disease. Is there anything wrong with what she did?

My response:

(instantly)

Pixel: Nope, she was attempting to try something new. It’s commendable, really. She made the most out of her resources… But she’s going to be feeling it later.

Interviewer: She’ll feel remorse?

Pixel: No, she’ll be in the bathroom all night.

Interviewer: But she thoroughly cooked it. There’s no risk of disease.

Pixel: Have you ever been a vegetarian? Eating meat messes you up, even if it was cooked thoroughly!

3. The Incest Story

Julie and Mark, who are brother and sister are traveling together in France. They are both on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. So what do you think about this? Was it wrong for them to have sex?

My response:

Pixel: Nope, good for them.

Interviewer: But doesn’t it violate some sorts of cultural norms? Don’t you have any aversion to that?

Pixel: Only if Julie would be willing to date me. Otherwise, it’s like that old song: live and let incest.

4. The Roach Task:

Experimenter asks: Do you like apple juice?
if “Yes”: Good.if “No” : OK, then, I have some water.
Experimenter brings the appropriate beverage, a napkin, a cup, the roach container, and the tea ball to table. OK, I have here a (can of apple juice/carton of spring water), which I’m going to pour into this glass [pour it into glass]. Would you be willing to take a sip of the juice/water? [wait for S to take sip]. OK, now I have here in this container some sterilized cockroaches. We bought some cockroaches from a laboratory supply company [show box and label]. The roaches were raised in a clean environment. But just to be certain, we sterilized the roach again in an autoclave, which heats everything so hot that no germs can survive. I’m going to dip this cockroach into the juice/water, like this. Now, would you take a sip of the juice/water?

My response:

(less immediate)

Pixel: Well, damn. Okay, fine, but if one of the feelers fell off and is floating around, I’m going to be very angry.

5. The Soul Task:

I have a piece of paper here. If you agree to sign it, I’ll give you two dollars, for real. If you sign it, you can then rip up the paper immediately, and keep the pieces yourself. So take a look at this [hand S the "contract", which says:].

I, _____________________,

hereby sell my soul, after my death,

to ______________________ for the sum of $2.

___________________
(signed)

Note: This form is part of a psychology experiment.
It is NOT a legal or binding contract, in any way.

My response:

(sign)

Pixel: Are there any more? Do you know anybody else that wants a piece of my soul?  You can have the contract.  I’ll even tear off that last little bit that says it’s part of a psychology experiment.  That seems like it defeats the whole purpose.

And that is why I should not participate in any psychological studies!

Last Year: Wow, that's like, so friggin' hilarious
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The appeal of time travel

Would you go and relive your youth if it wasn’t really going back in time?

I realized, after writing my last post, that I never wanted to go back to that time in my life again! But if someone offered me a chance to do it, I’d do it in a heart beat. Why the disjunct? Simple, I wanted to change some things about the past (not major things, but I would still want to).

In other words. It’s all fine and dandy to say you’d do things differently, but what if you went back to the same age range in a different set of circumstances? Would you do it? Would you start over right now at any particular age?

I wouldn’t. Sure, I’d be able to wipe the floor with all the other kids mentally and have them respect me. And I’d know just what to say and how to say it to woo every girl I liked, and get great grades and know what I wanted to do, but I just don’t care about that anymore. The fun was in doing it without cheating.

The sole appeal of the thought experiment is to change things in my past to appease my psychological guilt or stroke my psychological ego. Without that, to have to do it all over again, no matter how much better it would be, does not appeal to me in the slightest. How about you?
Screw that, what if they were the same circumstances, just that everyone had forgotten the previous past.

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The Meaning of Life is so Absurd

The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

— Albert Camus, in his 1942 essay of the absurd, The Myth of Sisyphus

John Cottingham says that we must act in the [[praxis]] consistent with a belief in God. Only then can our life have meaning. We cannot make a meaning out of our own lives, for that would just be arrogant. We’re born into circumstances we didn’t create and we have to find value in our current cosmos, not any we create. Thus: religion. However, since we cannot have belief before religious praxis (because belief would be a result of the praxis rather than a prerequisite), we must just go to church, meditate and be religious first. Only then will faith come. He’s a modern Blaise Pascal.

There’s probably more to his argument than that, but I’m a lazy man and the reviews on Amazon didn’t make me want to post post the book cover, let alone read the book.

I’m not going to bother replying to the claim, because it commits the naturalistic fallacy, begs the question and completely misrepresents the naturalistic life. I will add, however, that I am currently fasting for Ramadan. Not because of praxis or anything, just because it seemed like a good idea at the time (famous last words).

I do have meaning in my life. To a certain extent, I think we all do. It just so happens that what I deem meaningful is deemed meaningless by a lot of people.
Continue reading The Meaning of Life is so Absurd…

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I post because it makes me feel good, not because Officer Scott told me to

“Originally, when I saw all of the horrible things that the Nazis did to other humans without even thinking twice about it, I thought: how could I get this sort of power?”

— Pixel’s friend Frank Jagear on the Milgram experiment

Psychological Egoism: the belief that every action is fundamentally driven by egoistic motives. No act of altruism or benevolence will ever be judged as good, because on some basic mental level, we’re just doing it because we’d feel better doing it than if we didn’t.

Psychological egoism is very intuitive. People, when they hear the description, generally assume it obviously is the case. However, reading “Unto Others: the Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior” by Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson has finally settled the issue for me.

Psychological egoism is the intelligent design of psychology. The proof is in the ubiquity of its explanatory power, but the poverty of its predictive ability. Any action you can propose can be explained egoistically, yet you cannot predict a future action with psychological egoism any better than you can without it.

Since it’s not really scientific, it doesn’t make sense to seriously consider it until it can predict something. As long as there is another, equally appropriate theory, it makes no sense to discard it for this one.

That is one idea I had today. The other is that people seriously need to question authority. Check this out. It’s about the Strip Search Prank Call Scam (say that three times fast) that happened in 2004. Apparently, people will do anything when confronted by an authority figure (see Stanford prison experiment). These people, just because they thought they were talking to a cop, were willing to force an 18-year-old girl to strip and perform sexual acts on them:

The final prank call in this scheme was made to a McDonald’s restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky on April 9, 2004. According to assistant manager Donna Summers, the caller identified himself as a policeman, ‘Officer Scott’, he described an employee whom he said was suspected of stealing a customer’s purse. Summers called 18-year-old employee Louise Ogborn to her office and told her of the suspicion. Following the instructions of the caller, Summers ordered Ogborn first to empty her pockets, and finally to remove all her clothing except for an apron, in an effort to find the stolen items. Again following the caller’s instructions, Summers had another employee watch Ogborn when she had to leave the office to check the restaurant. The first employee she asked to do so refused, so she phoned her fiance Walter Nix, asking him to come in to ‘help’ with the situation.

According to Ogborn, after Summers passed off the phone to Nix, he continued to do as the caller told, even as the caller’s requests became progressively more bizarre. A security camera recorded Nix forcing Ogborn to remove her apron, the only article of clothing she was still wearing, and to assume revealing positions. As time went on, Nix, per his instructions, began to spank her and had her perform oral sex on him.

Those are my 2¢ for the day…. thanks for stopping by and sorry about making you lose faith in humanity.

…

p.s. Oh, and APixelatedMind.com redirects here now… in case it’s easier for anybody to type that in rather than what I have now.

p.p.s. I’m going to start linking all of the idioms I use to their description as I, apparently, have international fans now. Whoo!

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Debates between theists and atheists always favor atheists

Richard Dawkins refuses to debate Creationists. He says that the reason for this is advice from Stephen Jay Gould (himself famous for the “Darwin Wars” debates). Gould said that, whatever the outcome, Creationists would win, because the very fact that they could debate a well-known evolutionist gave credence to their beliefs. The strategy is specifically outlined in the Wedge Document.

The fact that this one-way credibility is true has nothing to do with the truth of either side. Whenever a fringe belief is given equal time as an established belief, it is good for the fringe belief and bad for the established belief. The establishment, in other words, has very few people it can win over and everything to lose. The fringe has everything and everyone to gain.

In much the same way as evolutionists will always lose a little to creationists in one-on-one debates, so too will theists lose out to atheists. In this situation, the tables are reversed: theism is the establishment now and atheism the fringe. Debates between theists and atheists always favor atheists.

Every public debate seems to bring up more questioning theists than questioning atheists. It’s all a numbers game… and it works for every set of opposing beliefs.

• Democrats vs. Greens
• Republicans vs. Constitutionalists
• Holocaust Survivors vs. Holocaust Deniers
• Friday vs. Wednesday
• Gorbachev vs. Khrushchev
• King Kong vs. Godzilla
• Lieutenant Ripley from Aliens vs. Major Dutch from Predator
• Apples vs. oranges

… I forgot what I was supposed to be listing… Where’s the bathroom?

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