Introduction: Why Investigate Philosophical Issues in Behavioural Science?

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Introduction: Why Investigate Philosophical Issues in Behavioural Science?

This course is based on a simple challenge.

challenge

Discover why people act,
individually and jointly.

We are really interested in general truths about why people act, of course. But let’s start with a concrete case.

Why are you here?

Discuss in pairs. Then pass notes forwards.

Am genuinely interested but also want to illustrate a philosophical point

In asking you this question, I was assuming you could answer it. More, I was assuming a Simple Picture of Action.

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action. make your action intelligible.

My purpose in asking you this question requires that each of these claims are true.

Of course we sometimes act out of emotions like love or jealousy where much of the point of the action is that it is not justfified in any rational sense. (Love makes you do many unreasonable things.)

So maybe we should just say that the reasons make the action intelligible in some way, even if they do not provide any kind of rational justification.

But maybe this is too quick?

Here is Medea pondering revenge on her ex husband:

(img source: Rachel Cusk's Medea publicity materials)

‘now I have a day,

and a day is long enough to make of him,

his daughter, and the one I used to love

a heap of bones.

So, friends, what method should we use?

Hard to choose.

I could torch them in their love nest or butcher them sleeping

in their fragrant bed. These require stealth,

luck more than nerve and style.

Nothing could be worse if I were caught

lurking in their house. They’d mock and laugh

at me intolerably before putting me to death.

Better to reach them directly without detection.

I’ll do what I do best. I’ll poison them’

(Euripides, 2006, p. 49)

It looks like Medea, for all that she is acting out of jealousy, is demonstrating instrumental rationality.

And look later ...

The horror of my evil overwhelms me.

Horror of what I’ll do. Angry passions

have mastered me—emotions of misrule

that destroy men.

Nothing will undo my resolve

to kill my children and escape

—but it must be quick.

If I hesitate now someone else will murder them more cruelly.

There’s no way out. They must die.

(Euripides, 2006, p. 76)

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action. make your action intelligible.

Maybe we were too quick to abandon talk of justification just on the grounds that emotions are sometimes involved.

Even someone lashing out in anger is, often enough, angling their attack in order to be maximally destructive.

So the basic picture is quite hard to challenge on narrowly intuitive grounds.

How can we turn this into a theory? Is it true?

This is the basic picture that nearly all philosophers start from in attempting to meet the challenge.

The philosophers have mostly been concerned to find the best way of turning this simple picture into a systematic theory.

It’s just here that psychology and other behavioural sciences are relevant ...

Behavioural sciences contribute two things

We can draw on them in turning the simple picture into a theory (decision theory and game theory are supposed to be elaborations of what it is to be rational).

And, more insterestingly, we can draw on them to show that the simple picture is either wrong or else only a very small part of the answer.

three illustrations

three illustrations of things we will study that create problems for the simple picture.

first illustrations of something we will study that creates problems for the simple picture.

game theory

Looking ahead with some illustrations to whet your appetite

We will explore game theory as an attempt to explains why things happen

The intresting thing about game theory is that it has such a wide variety of applications. It promises us simple principles that explain both the structure of sophisticated human interactions and the morphology of side-botched lizzards

illustration : side-botched lizzards

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action. make your action intelligible.

To the extent that your actions are organised along the same lines that characterise the sexual strategies of side-botched lizzards, can there be a big role for reasons and your knowledge of reasons?

anarchic hand syndrom from dr strangelove (Della Sala, Marchetti, & Spinnler, 1991)

anarchic hand syndrome

‘The right hand frequently carried out complex activities that were not willed by G.C.

These activities were clearly goal-directed and were well executed, but undesired by the patient, who used her left hand to try to stop them.

For example, when the patient had a steaming cup of tea in front of her, the right hand proceeded to pick it up and bring it to her mouth, even though the patient knew that it was too hot and had just said she would wait a few moments until it had cooled.

Nevertheless it needed the intervention of her left hand to replace the cup on the table.’

(Della Sala et al., 1991, p. 1114)

Believe it or not, this rare syndrom tells us something important about why all humans act. Or so I will attempt to show you (much) later in the course.

Challenges unity and therefore the idea that there is a single coherent body of reasons that are known.

If your body comprises multiple motivational systems which can work against each other, should we be confident that you have reasons for your actions?

[do not use -- only here in case someone asks]

habitual processes

As I said, the challenge is to discover why people act, individually and jointly

challenge

Discover why people act,
individually and jointly.

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action. make your action intelligible.

How can we turn this into a theory? Is it true?

To discovery why people act, we need to consider not only philosophical and psychlogical theories and evidence for them but also , formal models, nonhumans and neuropschological edge cases.

but I’m not interested in that simple picture at all

OK, here’s another way to think about it ...

challenge

Discover why people act,
individually and jointly.

There are three kinds of theory we can use to meet the challenge.

It turns out that the three kinds of theory are not obviously compatible with each other, although there is much to be said for each.

Our job is to (i) uncover the apparent inconsistencies between different disciplines’ theories, (ii) work out whether the inconsistencies are real, and (iii) if so which theory to accept and how to revise the other discipline’s theory.

And if that doesn’t interest you, you are in the wrong place. because this course is ...

Still here? That’s great. You are very welcome.

Philosophical Issues

Behavioural Science:

from Individual
to Collaborative
Action

As I said, the challenge is to discover why people act, individually and jointly

challenge

Discover why people act,
individually and jointly.

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action. make your action intelligible.

How can we turn this into a theory? Is it true?

To discovery why people act, we need to consider not only philosophical and psychlogical theories and evidence for them but also , formal models, nonhumans and neuropschological edge cases.

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Introduction: Why Investigate Philosophical Issues in Behavioural Science?

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