耶鲁大学公开课：人性的哲学与科学 第14集英中字幕.doc

目 录第1集 课程介绍2第2集 盖吉斯之戒：道德和伪善20第3集 灵魂各部分 I37第4集 灵魂各部分 II54第1集 课程介绍 E01 PROFESSOR: So, welcome to Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature.It's nice see so many of you here today.I hope to see more of you here again on Thursday.And my goal today is to try to give you a sense of what kind of course this is going to beso that you can make an informed decision about whether this is a course thatyou actually want to enroll in for credit.With that aim in mind, there are three things I want to do in today's lecture.In the first part of the lecture, I'm just going togive you a very broad overview of what kind of course thisis, and to say a few words about what my goals are for the course.In the bulk of the lecture, what I'm going to do is to runthrough three examples of the kinds of topics that we're going to be addressing this semester,so that you have a sense of what kind of material we're going to be talking about.And in the final section of the course, I'll say a fewthings about what it is that makes this course distinctive,and a few things about the course's requirements.So the course has this perplexing cross-listed title.It's called Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature, andit's listed both in Philosophy and in Cognitive Science, andit's a course for which you can get credit in the Psychology major.So what kind of course is this?Well, in some ways, this is a course like Directed Studies Philosophy or Philosophy 125-126.That is, we're going to be reading works by Plato, byAristotle, by Epictetus, by Boethius, by Hobbes, by Hume, and by Mill-all major philosophers from the Western philosophical tradition.We're going to be reading them roughly historically, with anattempt to get at some of the kinds of questions that onewould get at in a traditional philosophy course.In addition, you'll get some of the material that you would get in an ethics course.So one of the topics that we'll cover in Philosophy and the Science of Human Natureare the three main ethical theories in the Western philosophical tradition.We'll talk about utilitarianism, we'll talkabout deontology, and we'll talk about virtue ethics, andwe'll talk about how those relate to one another.You'll also get some of the materials that you would getif you took an introduction to political philosophy course.We'll very briefly look at the work of Thomas Hobbes on the legitimacy of the state,and then we'll read and think about the debate between John Rawls and Robert Nozick abouthow much weight should be given to the relative valuesof equality on one hand and liberty on the other.So in that regard, this is, in some ways, a standardphilosophy course in the moral and political tradition.It's not a course in metaphysics; it's not a course in epistemology;it's not a course where we're going to be talking about issues like free willor the mind-body problem,all of which could legitimately fall under the topic of philosophy of human nature.But what's distinctive about this course is that inaddition to the contributions that are made by the philosophical side of the equation,we're also going to be drawing from a number of other disciplines.So one of the main themes of the course will be to thinkabout how the questions raised by the traditional philosophers that I've mentioned alreadyare picked up in the contemporary cognitive science tradition.In particular, how they're picked up by what I see as oneof the main strands in contemporary cognitive science,the strand that looks at the relation between human beings as rational creatures,capable of a certain kind of calculated and reflective understanding of themselvesand their place in the world,and, on the other hand, humanbeings as evolved animalswho are subject to forces that lie beyond their rational control.In light of that recognition that human beings are capable of being affected in multiple ways,we'll look at a number of writings from psychology.So we'll read some Freud;we'll have a discussion of cognitive behavioral therapy;we'll talk about post-traumatic stress disorder; we'll havediscussion of happiness,using a wonderful book written by a Yale alumnus, Jonathan Haidt.We'll look at some work on self-regulation, on love and friendship,and we'll also look at empirical work on topics like moral reasoning and punishment,and social psychological work on situations and attitudes.So a lot of the material that we'll address in this course will come from psychology.But some of it will also come from the tradition of political science.So in the course of discussing the legitimacy of the state,we'll introduce ourselves to the notion of the prisoners' dilemma.We'll talk about the tragedy of the commons,and in the closing section of the course,we'll talk about the role of rhetoric and argument in political persuasion.We'll also draw from the field of behavioral economics.One of the reading assignments is to listento Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize speech, accepting the Nobel Priceon behalf of himself and his collaborator, Amos Tversky,for the extraordinary work they did founding behavioral economics.But we'll also look at some additional work in the dual processing tradition,and we have some excerpts from Dan Ariely's delightful book,public book on behavioral economics.Finally, we'll even draw a little bit from literature.We're going to read a short excerpt from the Iliad; we'regoing to read a short story by Ursula LeGuin; and in thesecond to last lecture of the course, we'll look at whatPlato has to say about the role of literature andartistic representation in affecting human self-understanding.So what I'm going to try to do in the course is to bring together these eight fieldsin a way that provides a coherentstory about what kind of things human beings are, andhow we can learn about what kind of things human beings are from these various perspectives.In slogan form, the structure of the course isdead guy on Tuesday, cog sci on Thursday.Except not all the philosophers we're reading are dead. And not all of them are guys.And not all the other fields are cog sci.And in fact, most things are going to be covered together on Tuesday and Thursday.And there are going to be sections.But other than that, the slogan works.So that's an overview of the kinds of disciplines that contribute to the course.Let me say a bit about the specific topics that I hope toaddress in the course of the semester.So the first overarching topic, and I roughly organizedthe syllabus under these three topics, but in some way,each of them will keep re-emerging throughout the semester.The first topic is the topic of happiness and flourishing.What does the ancient Western philosophical tradition sayabout what it takes for human beings to thrive in a meaningful sense,and how does that connect to work that's been done more recently in various literary andscientific traditions about what it is that enables human beings to flourish?What is it about human nature that can give us some clueabout what kind of thing authentic happiness might be?That's the first set of questions that we'll address.It turns out that the ancient philosophers' answer to that question is thathuman beings thrive when their souls are well-ordered, to use the ancient metaphor.When the parts of their souls that might pull in differentdirections are in a certain kind of harmony; and theancient picture is that when that happens, human beings behave in a moral way.And so the second part of the course will look at bothwhat it feels like from the inside to behave in ways that are conventionally considered moral,and from a higher level,what it is that we mean when we say that an act is moral or immoral.So as I mentioned, we'll look at the three main Western philosophical conceptions of morality,and we'll also look at some interesting related questions.Like, why is punishment justified when it is?And is the justification for punishment psychological or ethical?And in the final unit of the course,we'll move beyond the individual into society as a whole,and ask some questions about what it is that makes political structures legitimate,and how it is that state or civic institutions ought to be organizedin order to allow human beings to flourish.So those are the three main topics that we'll be addressing,and as you can see, on the syllabus that I've handed out,there are highlighted examples of a fewof those particular topics that we're addressing on page one of the syllabus,and a much more detailed set of questions on pages three and four.But in addition to being about the content of these questions,this is also a course that's going to encourage you tothink about the methodology of each of the disciplines from which we're drawing.So it's my goal to introduce youto a number of traditional philosophical discussions of the human being,but it's also my goal to get you to think aboutwhat these philosophical discussions have in common,and why it is that thinking about things in the way that philosophy thinks about thingscan be valuable for answering questions that we care about.And we'll do something very similar with respect to the other disciplines.We'll look at the literature from psychology and behavioraleconomics and political science and literature, andwe'll ask: what is it about this distinctive approach to answering these questions that providesus with a complementary insight on the issues that the philosophers have raised?And finally, I'm going to ask you to think not only in the context of this class,but in the context of the other classes you're takingabout the ways in which the material to which you're being exposedsheds light through multiple disciplinary perspectiveson the set of questions that we're concerned with.So that's the opening segment of the lecture.That what I had called the "overview and course topics" section of the class.And what I want to do now is to give you three examples ofthe kinds of topics that we'll be addressing this semester.So the first example I'm going to give is actually drawn fromthe readings that we'll be doing for Thursday.And it's a story from Plato's Republiccalled the story of the ring of Gyges.I'll give you a little bit more background on Thursdayabout where this story fits in the context of the book fromwhich it's drawn, but for now, all you need to know is thatthere's a character named Glaucon who's actually one ofthe brothers of Plato, the author of this dialogue.And Glaucon is in conversation with the great ancient Greek philosopher Socrates,and he's trying to convince Socrates that when people act morally,the only reason they do it is because they can't get away with it.So even if you've shopped only for today, you'll have a chance to hear some Plato.So I'm going to read aloud to you these numbers on the right.I'll explain to you next class, they're called Stephanus numbers.They enable you, whichever translation of Plato you're using to find the same passage.And what I'm reading to you from is from Stephanus pages 359 to 360.So: "There was once a shepherd named Gyges in the service of the ruler of Lydia.There was a giant thunderstorm, and an earthquake broke open the groundand created a chasm at the place where he was tending his sheep.Seeing this, he was filled with amazement and went down into it.And there he saw a hollow bronze horse.There were window-like openings in it, and peeking in,he saw a corpse wearing nothing but a gold ring on his finger.So he took the ring and came out of the chasm.""He wore the ring at his usual monthly meeting that reportedto the king on the state of the flocks.And as he was sitting among the others, he happened toturn the setting of the ring towards himself, to the inside of the hand.And when he did this, he became invisible to those sitting near him,and they went on talking as if he had gone.He wondered about this, and fingering the ring, he turnedthe setting outwards again, and became visible.So he experimented with the ring to test whether it indeed had this power, and it did.If he turned the setting inward, he became invisible,and if he turned it outward, he became visible again.""When he realized this, he arranged to become one of themessengers sent to report to the king.And when he arrived there, he seduced the king's wife, withher help, attacked and killed the king, and took over the kingdom."So that's the story of the ring of Gyges.Now why is it that Glaucon tells that story?Glaucon tells that story with the expectation that you, uponhearing this, will think that you would act as Gyges did, ifyou had the opportunity to get away with crime without being caught.Glaucon's conclusion from this story is that those who practice justice,those who act in conformity with the moral code of their society,do so because they lack the power to do injustice.They act in that way because they fear the punishment of society.They don't act in that way because it's in any way valuable to them.And the reading that we're going to do for this Thursday's classincludes both the text that surrounds the story that I just told you.So the setup wherein Glaucon raises the challenge of which this is supposed to be an example,and the conversation between Glaucon and Socratesthat follows the posing of the challenge through this story.And in addition, we're going to read some empirical psychological workon the question of what people do when they think they are unobserved.So we're going to ask the question whether, as a matter of fact, people would,and whether, as a matter of fact, people should behave as Gyges did.That's the first example of the kind of topic we're going to address in the course.A second set of topics that we'll address in the coursewill take off from a particular philosophicalexample that has become quite popular in contemporary discussions of morality,but which is actually traceable, about 40 years old,to some writings by Philippa Foot, and the philosopher Judith Thomson.And the case, with which I suspect some of you are familiar,involves a trolley which is hurtling down the track in the direction of five people,and if the trolley is not turned, it will hit this group of five.Now, the question that philosophers like to pose is the following.Suppose that there were a switch which you could usethat would divert the trolley so that instead of hitting thefive people, it would go down a branch track and hit one.When we have our course clickers, we'll be able to do this scientifically.For now, I just want a show of hands.How many p