Take the ‘Happiness Experiment’

in Philosophy, Psychology | August 1st, 2012

Hap­pi­ness is a state of mind. We all know that. But when it comes to decid­ing whether anoth­er per­son is tru­ly hap­py, our per­cep­tions are col­ored by our own states of mind–in par­tic­u­lar, by our  val­ue judg­ments. A per­son can have all the men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics of a hap­py per­son, but if he or she is liv­ing what we con­sid­er a “bad life,” we are far less like­ly to judge that they are hap­py. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the same moral eval­u­a­tions do not seem to enter into our con­cept of unhap­pi­ness.

These are the find­ings of a trio of researchers at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty: Jonathan Phillips, Luke Mis­en­heimer and Joshua Knobe. You can read about the study in their paper, “The Ordi­nary Con­cept of Hap­pi­ness (And Oth­ers Like It),” pub­lished in the July, 2011 Emo­tion Review. The study is part of a new move­ment called Exper­i­men­tal Phi­los­o­phy (or “x‑phi”), which goes beyond the philoso­pher’s tra­di­tion­al method of test­ing intuitions–a pri­ori con­cep­tu­al analysis–to use of the tools of cog­ni­tive sci­ence. You can learn more at the Yale Exper­i­men­tal Phi­los­o­phy Web site, and take the enter­tain­ing video test above to get a taste of some of the coun­ter­in­tu­itive find­ings of x‑phi.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yale Intro­duces Anoth­er Sev­en Free Online Cours­es, Bring­ing Total to 42

Yale’s Open Cours­es Inspire a New Series of Old-Fash­ioned Books

Psy­chol­o­gy: Free Cours­es

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Great Moments with Bertrand Russell: The Philosopher on Love, Smoking and The Afterlife

in Philosophy | July 25th, 2012

In 1959, Bertrand Rus­sell, the Nobel Prize-win­ning philoso­pher, math­e­mati­cian and peace activist was just short of his 87th birth­day, when he gave wide-rang­ing inter­views to the BBC and the CBC. Age had­n’t dimin­ished Rus­sell in the slight­est. Quite the con­trary, he remained wit­ty and wise in equal parts. Today, we’re high­light­ing key moments from those inter­views. They’ve been indi­vid­u­al­ly fea­tured here before, but nev­er brought togeth­er in such a way that you can appre­ci­ate the per­son­al­i­ty that was Rus­sel­l’s.

We start above with Rus­sell giv­ing life lessons — lessons about crit­i­cal think­ing, love and tol­er­ance — to a gen­er­a­tion liv­ing 1,000 years in the future. Then we segue to Rus­sell con­tem­plat­ing God and the after­life, some­thing that might well pre­oc­cu­py a man approach­ing life’s end. (He died anoth­er 11 years lat­er, it’s worth not­ing.) Final­ly, we arrive at Rus­sel­l’s great anec­dote where he explains how smok­ing saved his life on one ill-fat­ed day in 1948. It’s quite the tale.

God and the After­life

How Smok­ing Saved Rus­sel­l’s Life

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell & Oth­er Big Thinkers in BBC Lec­ture Series (Free)

How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned The Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War

Bertrand Russell’s ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: The Clas­sic Intro­duc­tion to Ein­stein (Free Audio)

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Does God Exist? Christopher Hitchens Debates Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig (2009)

in Philosophy, Religion | July 12th, 2012

When we talk about reli­gion around here, we often end up talk­ing about some­thing that falls between agnos­ti­cism and athe­ism. That’s because pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als who com­ment on reli­gion fre­quent­ly fall into those camps. Here and there, the­ists polite­ly call us on it. They ask us to con­sid­er show­ing The Four Horse­men (Hitchens/Dawkins/Dennett/Harris) in mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with reli­gious thinkers. It would be a step toward cre­at­ing some bal­ance, they say. We’ve done some of that before. But it has been a while. So we’re bring­ing you today the 2009 debate between Hitchens and William Lane Craig, a Chris­t­ian philoso­pher. It was held at Bio­la Col­lege, a school that offers a “Bib­li­cal­ly Cen­tered Edu­ca­tion,” which puts Craig on the home court.

The basic ques­tion fram­ing the debate is “Does God Exist?,” and the answers are all ground­ed in phi­los­o­phy, though that did­n’t stop the con­ver­sa­tion from veer­ing into biol­o­gy, physics, cos­mol­o­gy, and moral the­o­ry. You might be sur­prised that Hitchens does­n’t take the stri­dent athe­ist posi­tion that would have let more sparks fly. No, he ends up in a more agnos­tic place, and there’s a kind of a humil­i­ty to his posi­tion, an accep­tance that we just can’t know the answers to the big ques­tions, at least not yet. That speaks to me intel­lec­tu­al­ly. But I’m sure oth­ers will see things dif­fer­ent­ly.

If you’re hun­ger­ing for more, you can watch Craig debate Sam Har­ris here. We thank Tay­lor for send­ing these videos along.

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The History of Philosophy Visualized

in Philosophy | July 2nd, 2012

Simon Rap­er at Drunks & Lamp­posts has com­posed a data visu­al­iza­tion of the rela­tions of influ­ence among philoso­phers. This was put togeth­er to demon­strate Rap­er’s data extrac­tion algo­rithm; he col­lect­ed the con­tents of all the “influ­enced by” fields on Wikipedia, dis­play­ing each philoso­pher as a node con­nect­ed to all oth­er philoso­phers that he or she influ­enced. The more con­nec­tions, the big­ger the node. The result is visu­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and an inter­est­ing touch­stone for phi­los­o­phy fans.

Who was more impor­tant, Edmund Husserl or Jean-Paul Sartre? Well, you may not have heard of Husserl, but the size of his node is a bit big­ger than Sartre’s, so accord­ing to the graph, he’s had more of an influ­ence on the pro­fes­sion. The fact that Husser­l’s hey­day was thir­ty years ear­li­er than Sartre’s may explain that fact, but as Mark De Sil­va at the New York Times Opin­ion­ater points out, it’s also unclear how well these “influ­enced by” rela­tions in Wikipedia cor­re­late with real influ­ences in the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy. Rap­er’s graph seems to pro­vide an excel­lent start for pon­der­ing the ques­tion. More graphs by his­tor­i­cal peri­od can be found here.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er appears on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, offer­ing live­ly, in-depth intro­duc­tions to Husserl, Sartre, and many oth­er fig­ures in phi­los­o­phy.

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The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps — Peter Adamson’s Podcast Still Going Strong

in Philosophy, Podcasts | June 19th, 2012

Last August, we fea­tured Peter Adam­son’s pod­cast The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site), a chrono­log­i­cal­ly unin­ter­rupt­ed “look at the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers (even­tu­al­ly cov­er­ing in detail such giants as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.” Con­tin­u­ing at the rate of one episode a week, Adam­son and his guest philo­soph­i­cal experts have since cov­ered names like Lucretius, Seneca, and Plutarch. They’ve most recent­ly reached Alexan­der of Aphro­disias, an espe­cial­ly astute ancient com­men­ta­tor on Aris­to­tle and oppo­nent of Sto­ic atti­tudes toward fate; Quin­til­ian, Lucian, Themistius, and the inter­play between rhetoric and phi­los­o­phy in the Roman Empire; and the emer­gence of astron­o­my, ush­ered in by Ptole­my dur­ing a time when observers still had much to say about astrol­o­gy.

Don’t miss the episodes where Adam­son brings in spe­cial­ists on the par­tic­u­lar philoso­pher, philo­soph­i­cal sub­field, or quirk in philo­soph­i­cal his­to­ry to which his pod­cast­ing jour­ney brings him. Since our last post on the show, we’ve heard Richard Sorab­ji talk about time and eter­ni­ty in Aris­to­tle, James War­ren on Epi­cure­anism, and Raphael Wolf on Cicero, to name but a few. Such is Adamson’s atten­tion to detail — and ded­i­ca­tion to the Zeno’s Para­dox-rem­i­nis­cent cause of pure con­ti­nu­ity — that, after putting out 85 episodes, he remains in the ancient world. Imag­ine the boun­ty of dis­cus­sion when he reach­es, say, the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, let alone the twen­ti­eth. To pre­pare your­self for that, you’d bet­ter start lis­ten­ing now; a show express­ly cre­at­ed with­out gaps must, it seems only nat­ur­al, be expe­ri­enced with­out them.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Breaking News: Socrates Tried Again in Athens and Acquitted!

in History, Philosophy | May 29th, 2012



Note: the action starts at about the two minute mark, and the video is accom­pa­nied by an Eng­lish trans­la­tion.

The tri­al and exe­cu­tion of Socrates at Athens in 399 B.C.E. has come down to us as the arche­type of intel­lec­tu­al mar­tyr­dom. But the facts of the case, as fil­tered through the writ­ings of Socrates’ stu­dents Xenophon and Pla­to, are sketchy.  “Why,” asks Dou­glas Lin­der on the Famous Tri­als Web site, “in a soci­ety enjoy­ing more free­dom and democ­ra­cy than any the world had ever seen, would a sev­en­ty-year-old philoso­pher be put to death for what he was teach­ing?”

Last Fri­day the Onas­sis Cul­tur­al Cen­tre in Athens gave Socrates a new tri­al, assem­bling a pan­el of dis­tin­guished jurists from Europe and Amer­i­ca to reopen the case. As the Onas­sis Cen­tre’s Web site explains, the event was “not a re-enact­ment but a mod­ern per­spec­tive based on cur­rent legal frame­work sup­ple­ment­ed with ancient Greek ele­ments and com­i­cal the­atrics.” This time the ver­dict was different–but just bare­ly. The vote by the jury was a 5–5 tie, which meant Socrates was acquit­ted. The audi­ence’s vote was more deci­sive: 5 to con­vict, 584 to acquit. Of course, it was a lit­tle late for Socrates.

You can down­load The Apol­o­gy of Socrates from our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

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The Ideas of Noam Chomsky: An Introduction to His Theories on Language & Knowledge (1977)

in Philosophy, Television | May 29th, 2012

We’ve fea­tured the lin­guist and polemi­cist Noam Chom­sky here before, and not two weeks ago we post­ed about philoso­pher-broad­cast­er Bryan Magee. The Ideas of Noam Chom­sky brings the two men togeth­er for a chat about lin­guis­tics, the phi­los­o­phy of lan­guage, human cog­ni­tive pro­gram­ming, and the phi­los­o­phy of sci­ence. Though Magee intro­duces Chom­sky, a high­ly non­tra­di­tion­al intel­lec­tu­al to his adher­ents and detrac­tors alike, as “some­thing of a jok­er in the pack, as far as phi­los­o­phy is con­cerned,” he inter­views him with all the atten­tive­ness and respect he brings to dis­cus­sions with pure­ly philo­soph­i­cal lumi­nar­ies. Clear­ly, Magee wants to know more about Chom­sky’s the­o­ries of lan­guage, and espe­cial­ly about their impli­ca­tions for what he calls the dom­i­nant philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem: “that of the rela­tion­ship between lan­guage and the world.”

Rarely ques­tioned along these lines in the media, Chom­sky responds thought­ful­ly and in detail. This ulti­mate­ly leads to a con­ver­sa­tion about the divide between where mean­ing­ful sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries can devel­op, and where our cog­ni­tive lim­i­ta­tions might pre­vent them from devel­op­ing. You’ll notice that none of this has to do with pol­i­tics, and polit­i­cal guid­ance is what most of Chom­sky’s fans have expect­ed from him over the decades. While even Chom­sky him­self has admit­ted to see­ing no con­nec­tion between his aca­d­e­m­ic and activist careers, Magee pur­sues a line of inquiry late in the broad­cast meant to tie them togeth­er. Magee asks astute ques­tions and Chom­sky pro­vides hon­est answers, but find­ing a com­mon root between ideas like deep gram­mar and anar­chist social­ism per­haps remains an intel­lec­tu­al stunt best not tried at home.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

Bryan Magee’s In-Depth, Uncut TV Con­ver­sa­tions With Famous Philoso­phers (1978–87)

Ali G and Noam Chom­sky Talk Lin­guis­tics

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Daniel Dennett (a la Jeff Foxworthy) Does the Routine, “You Might be an Atheist If…”

in Philosophy, Religion | May 28th, 2012

The Amer­i­can come­di­an Jeff Fox­wor­thy has a well known com­e­dy rou­tine called “You Might be a Red­neck If,” where he lists the self-mock­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties that answer the ques­tion. For exam­ple: You Might be a Red­neck If …

  1. Your wife has ever said, “Come move this trans­mis­sion so I can take a bath.”
  2. You own a home­made fur coat.
  3. You think a sub­di­vi­sion is part of a math prob­lem.
  4. You’ve ever financed a tat­too.
  5. You have ever used lard in bed.

The philoso­pher and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist Daniel Den­nett picked up on this schtick when speak­ing at the Glob­al Athe­ist Con­ven­tion in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. And he asked a series of ques­tions meant to show that peo­ple might be a lit­tle less reli­gious, or a bit more athe­ist, than they might care to admit. So here it goes: You Might be an Athe­ist If…

  1. You don’t believe that Jesus is lit­er­al­ly the son of God.
  2. You don’t believe God actu­al­ly lis­tens to each and every­one’s prayers.
  3. You don’t think God picks sides when coun­tries go to war (or when foot­ball teams play each oth­er).
  4. Or, to put things dif­fer­ent­ly, If you believe God isn’t a per­son­al God, but rather is a benign force, a con­cept that enrich­es peo­ple’s lives.

You get the gist. By the time you’re done with the 45 minute talk, you’ll know whether you’re indeed a the­ist, or per­haps an athe­ist after all. It’s a real­i­ty check either way.

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