Hi all, wanted to let you know that VBW episode 21 is now up on iTunes, Stitcher, and our website. Dave Pizarro and I talk about whether students should go into grad school with the tough job market, increased dependency on adjuncts, and the unstoppable world conquering dark arts of Michael Sandel. We also do a brief riff on the now famous sorority sister's email. (I say she's a civil right visionary. Dave disagrees.)
Other recent episodes that may be of interest to Flickerers: Episode 20 with special guest neuroscientist Molly Crockett on brain research and neurobunk. Episodes 15 and 19 where we burn bridges and reveal what bugs us most about our fields. A 2 parter on cross-cultural research in psychology (part 2 with Joe Henrich), and a episode on race relations with special guest Damani McDole. Check them out on our episode page . Hope you enjoy!
Look, my time as guest blogger is winding down, and this time of year many of us are caught up with final exams, dissertation defenses, and all that stuff. Lots of deadlines, and little time for blogging. So I thought I'd wrap up with a series of lighter observations and invitations for discusssion.
Here is one: When we all get together over a few cold beers at various APA sessions and what not, it often comes up in conversation that there is a striking sociological fact about our field: most incompatibilists currently working in our area tend to be theists. It's not also often remarked that most compatibilists tend not to be theists, but I take this to be implied. I myself, a compatibilist, am not a theist; I'm an atheist. Now of course, there are not hard categories here. But I am curious as to why this is. Is it mere sociology? Or do the arguments for compatibilism generally tend to favor a denial of theism while the arguments for incompatibilism generally tend to favor theism?
For those attending the Pacific APA, there are loads of
sessions on agency apart from the one mentioned by Joe that should be of
interest to readers of this blog. Also, apart from the main program, the Experimental Philosophy Society group session (Wednesday, 6:00-9:00) includes papers on agency and there will be a Society for Philosophy of Agency group session on Thursday evening (details
on the latter will be posted soon)
For now, Roman Altshuler was kind enough to compile a list
of sessions in the main program that deal with agency broadly (and not just the
free will debate) or include papers on agency. I have pasted the list below. (Apologies to anyone whose
session was overlooked.)
The fun commences with the session on free will Joe
mentioned and ends with a session on "Agency and Pathologies of the
Self" featuring Al Mele, Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, Jesse Summers, and David
Shoemaker.
Much of the social psychology literature has focused on the consequences of believing in free will. This line of research generally likes to show that believing in free will has all sorts of positive implications in terms of prosocial behavior (Baumeister, Masicampo, & Dewall, 2009), less cheating (Vohs & Schooler, 2008) and even better job performance (Stillman, Baumeister, Vohs, Lambert, Fincham
and Brewer, 2010). But how are those perceptions formed? are those beliefs stable? are they prone to classic social psycholog biases? are they perhaps contextually bound?
This post is a cross post of a quick summary I did titled "Free Will : Interesting Findings in Social Psychology" which includes some of the recent findings regarding the antecedents of belief in free will and the factors that influence these perceptions. I believe this line of research resembles and is linked to some of what experimental philosphers have been doing on lay beliefs of moral responsibility and intent.
Jerry Coyne has posted a criticism of Eddy's recent attempts to undermine the arguments put forward by scientific skeptics about free will like Coyne, Harris, and others. I encourage everyone to take a look and chime in. Both Tom Clark and I have added our two cents to the mix (although my comments have not yet been approved). It would be helpful if others took a few minutes to add theirs!
The New Scientist has a new piece about some recent work on Libet's earlier experiments on the readiness potential which readers of this blog should find of interest. The original article from PNAS can be found here (with subscription).
For those of you interested in the relationship between neuroscience, free will, responsibility, and the law, The Stanford Center for Law and Biosciences has posted an informative talk by Jack Gallant and commentary by Nita Farahany.
Andrea Lavazza has alerted me to what should be a great special session on free will and neuroscience coming up in Padua. It's a really nice town, if you feel like popping over... If you can't the event will be live streamed. Details below the fold.
Some folks who weren't going to be attending the Pacific APA asked me to post my SPA Meeting remarks on the future of the free will debate (thanks Andrei and Luca for organizing that session!). For those interested, here were the core of those remarks:
The past 40 years of work on free will work has been dominated by philosophers working out the consequences of a problematic given to us by the Great Trinity
We’re approaching Event Horizon for that work, i.e., the point where that work will have significantly less visible influence on subsequent generations.
What comes next is hard to see, and indeed, it is entertaining but Ultimately Fruitless to speculate about what comes next.
However, since reality is no constraint on The Provocative, I’ve made some prognostications that are at least as plausible as any random selection of theses
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