John Martin Fischer - How Does a Belief in Immortality Affect the Way We Live Now?

Immortality seems to me to be morally indefensible. The Earth is right now at 7 billion people, so let's say we develop immortality in 10-15 years, when the population will be at 8 billion or more. So none of those people die, and yet people keep reproducing, forever. Imagine the Earth with 15 billion people, or 25 billion. We have already overpopulated the planet. How would we feed these people, where would we get fresh water (as of now, 780 million people lack clean drinking water and 2.3 billion lack basic sanitation), and what about the lack of natural resources for homes, and so on.

Personally, the idea of immortality is abhorrent. Where and how would we find purpose in life if we never die? Boredom would eventually set in, so the only choice would be suicide. Even in the modern vampire stories, creatures who are immortal, many of the oldest vampires express their sense of exhaustion with existence, their "living" malaise. The fact that this idea turns up even in our myths suggests that it is a commonly held belief.

Anyway - this article sets out a philosophical argument for how the idea of immortality might affect how we live our lives today.

How Does a Belief in Immortality Affect the Way We Live Now?

By John Martin Fischer
July 8, 2014

image: Getty

I was asked to address the question,” "How does a belief in immortality affect the way we live now?" I am going to break this into two separate questions that are related to (if not identical to) it. The first question is, “How would the recognition of extreme longevity or even living forever change the way we would behave (or should behave)?” Then I’ll turn to how a belief in an afterlife would (or should) affect our behavior.

First: imagine that you knew that you would live for a very, very long time. We can simplify and imagine that you know that you will live forever. How would or should this hypothetical supposition affect your behavior? Well, it depends! It depends at least on certain background assumptions about the conditions of your envisaged life. Let’s make the “rosy” assumptions that you are in good health, that your body is not deteriorating, that you are comfortable financially, that you have friends and loved ones who are also immortal (in the sense of living forever). These are, of course, big assumptions; but to ask a really big question, sometimes we have to make big assumptions.

Some would say that, even under these very optimistic assumptions, our lives would be totally different—and unpleasant or even unrecognizable as choiceworthy human lives. Various reasons for this curmudgeonly conclusion have been offered, and we’ll consider just a few. First, some have argued that life under such circumstances would be intolerably and relentlessly boring. The idea is that what keeps us from being bored are our “projects”, and eventually we would run out of projects in an indefinitely long (or even just a very long) life.

I just don’t think this is true. That is, I don’t accept the conclusion that we would run out of projects in a very long (even an infinitely long life). Just consider, for starters, all of the scientific problems that remain to be solved. Focus, as a concrete starting point, on all of the diseases that plague human beings. The project of curing all the currently existing diseases would take a very, very long time. And, even assuming we can (given enough time), cure all existing diseases, by that time many new diseases will have popped up, offering new challenges. I just don’t think that it is obvious that we will ever get to the point where we will have cured all diseases (and palliated all human pain, suffering, and distress—both physical and mental). Simply having lots of time—even infinite time—doesn’t seem to imply that all of these challenges will successfully be met.

And we have just focused on a relatively tiny portion of all of the human challenges—the health challenges. How about all of the other scientific and technological challenges? How long will it take to answer certain fundamental questions of physics and cosmology? Even when they have been answered, if they ever are, there would remain the problems of connecting the abstract theories with all manner of practical problems.

Think, just for another set of concrete examples, of all of the challenges we face in preserving our planet from further environmental degradation. These are multifaceted and daunting. They will keep us busy for a long, long time (if we have that long). They could keep us going for a very long time in an infinitely long life.

So far we have considered just a few (admittedly central and important) scientific challenges that would generate projects in an immortal life. There are more where they came from. And think of all of the other kinds of projects: athletic, artistic, social. Consider the projects of writing poetry or novels or creating lovely paintings or sculptures. Or reading and appreciating novels. Why suppose that these projects would run out? Even if you had an infinite amount of time, why suppose that you would exhaust all of the novels worth reading? Suppose you were to read all of the novels currently worth reading. That would take a very, very long time. But (as with the diseases above) by the time you were finished, there would certainly be a new set of novels worth reading (novels that had been written during your very long process of reading). And why suppose that you could not find challenge and engagement in writing novels, even after a million or a billion years? (Of course, all of one’s projects would have to be distributed appropriately—reading or writing or anything can be boring if pursued without a break!).

The challenges and associated projects discussed above might be called “other-directed” projects. But there are also “self-directed” projects, such as eating delicious food, drinking fine wines, listening to music, enjoying art and natural beauty, sex, prayer, and meditation. These are “self-directed” projects in the sense that they aim at or crucially involve pleasant or agreeable mental states of the individual whose project it is. Again, you would have to distribute these projects properly in a very long or even infinitely long life. But why would a life that contained at least some of these projects necessarily be boring? Why couldn’t these activities be part of an overall life that is engaging and worthwhile?

Assuming that we would still have projects—other-directed and/or self-directed—in a very long or infinitely long life, would we have any motivation to pursue the projects? Some have thought that, given an infinite amount of time, all our activities and projects would lack “urgency”. They have even suggested that we would not have any motivation to do anything insofar as “there would always be time”. This is kind of a procrastinator’s nightmare (or perhaps dream!).

But I don’t have much sympathy for the contention that we would have no motivation in an immortal life. Consider, for example, the motivation to avoid pain—that would still exist in an immortal life. Similarly for the motivation to address other forms of limitation or impairment. We care about how we feel now; if we are now in pain or impaired, we will want to address those issues in a timely way. If I am in significant pain now, it is hardly comforting to know that I have forever to live and so eventually my pain will subside.

Similarly with loneliness. If am separated from someone I love or care about, or if I am just lonely now, I have reason to seek to reunite with the person or to find friendship, love, and companionship. The mere fact that I know that I have forever does not alleviate the suffering of loneliness now.

The curmudgeons about projects in an immortal life are too pessimistic. They are spoil-sports. They greatly underestimate the prospects for human engagement and fulfillment. They look at our projects as like books in a library; with infinite time, we can read all of the books. They forget that there will always be new books to read and even new perspectives to bring to the old books.

What about the second way of understanding our basic question? That is, what if we were to come to believe in immortality in an afterlife? How would (or should) this affect our behavior? Well, again, it depends. First, it depends on what conception of immortality we work with—a Buddhist or Hindu view of reincarnation? A Judeo-Christian conception of the afterlife in heaven or hell?

But let’s abstract away from details. In all plausible religious views, what matters crucially for your prospects after you die—your next life in the wheel of reincarnation or your place in heaven, hell, or perhaps purgatory—is the moral quality of your life here and now. That is, your prospects are enhanced by right action for the right reasons in this life. You need actually to care not just about yourself, but about others—you need to love others and to care about justice. If your actions manifest love of others and a dominant concern for justice, then you will be rewarded in the afterlife. It is key that you must act for the right reasons. And here it is important that the reason for your behavior must not be that it will enhance your prospects in the afterlife. You may of course understand and anticipate this fact. But it cannot be your reason for action. If it were, then your action would be motivated by self-interest and not morality. You would not be doing the right thing for the right reason. So there is a sense in which your behavior now should be focused on this world and the needs and interests of others here and now, even if one were to believe in an afterlife.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you agree that you would not necessarily run out of other-directed projects in a very long life? An infinitely long life?

2. Do you agree that you could still have self-directed projects in a very long or infinitely long life? Or would such a life necessarily be boring?

3. Do you agree that, even if you believe in an afterlife, you should be concerned about your behavior and motivations here and now. Or do you thank that you should focus more on the life to come?

Related Questions  

• How Do We Find Purpose in Life?  
• What Does Our Understanding of Time Suggest About the Nature of Reality? 

Many Individuals, and Even Entire Cultures, Fear Happiness

The quest for happiness has become a nearly archetypal feature of Western culture, not to mention a nation such as Bhutan, where happiness is a department in the government's social policy planning (Gross National Happiness Commission).

New cross-cultural research published in the Journal of Happiness Studies suggests that humans actually have an aversion to happiness. Looking into the reasons for happiness aversion, the authors, Joshanloo and Weijers, identify four beliefs:

1. Believing that being happy will provoke bad things to happen
2. Believing that happiness will make you a worse person
3. Believing that expressing happiness is bad for you and others
4. Believing that pursuing happiness is bad for you and others

This is an interesting study. Fortunately, BPS Research Digest offers a nice review of it - the original article is paywalled - but I am including the abstract at the bottom of this post.

It's time for Western psychology to recognise that many individuals, and even entire cultures, fear happiness

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Monday, July 21, 2014

It's become a mantra of the modern Western world that the ultimate aim of life is to achieve happiness. Self-help blog posts on how to be happy are almost guaranteed popularity (the Digest has its own!). Pro-happiness organisations have appeared, such as Action for Happiness, which aims to "create a happier society for everyone." Topping it all, an increasing number of governments, including in the UK, have started measuring national well-being (seen as a proxy for "happiness") - the argument being that this a potentially more important policy outcome than economic prosperity.

But hang on a minute, say Moshen Joshanloo and Dan Weijers writing in the Journal of Happiness Studies - not everyone wants to be happy. In fact, they point out that many people, including in Western cultures, deliberately dampen their positive moods. Moreover, in many nations, including Iran and New Zealand, many people are actually fearful of happiness, tending to agree with questionnaire items like "I prefer not to be too joyful, because usually joy is followed by sadness".

Looking into the reasons for happiness aversion, Joshanloo and Weijers identify four: believing that being happy will provoke bad things to happen; that happiness will make you a worse person; that expressing happiness is bad for you and others; and that pursuing happiness is bad for you and others. Let's touch on each of these.

Fear that happiness leads to bad outcomes is perhaps most strong in East Asian cultures influenced by Taoism, which posits that "things tend to revert to their opposite". A 2001 study asked participants to choose from a range of life-course graphs and found that Chinese people were more likely than Americans to choose graphs that showed periods of sadness following periods of joy. Other cultures, such as Japan and Iran, believe that happiness can bring misfortune as it causes inattentiveness. Similar fears are sometimes found in the West as reflected in adages such as "what goes up must come down."

Belief that being happy makes you a worse person is rooted in some interpretations of Islam, the reasoning being that it distracts you from God. Joshanloo and Weijers quote the Prophet Muhammad: "were you to know what I know, you would laugh little and weep much" and "avoid much laughter, for much laughter deadens the heart." Another relevant belief here is the idea that being unhappy makes people more creative. Consider this quote from Edward Munch: "They [emotional sufferings] are part of me and my art. They are indistinguishable from me ... I want to keep those sufferings."

In relation to the overt expression of happiness, a 2009 study found that Japanese participants frequently mentioned that doing so can harm others, for example by making them envious; Americans rarely held such concerns. In Ifaluk culture in Micronesia, meanwhile, Joshanloo and Weijers note that expressing happiness is "associated with showing off, overexcitement, and failure at doing one's duties."

Finally, the pursuit of happiness is believed by many cultures and philosophies to be harmful to the self and others. Take as an example this passage of Buddhist text: "And with every desire for happiness, out of delusion they destroy their own well-being as if it were their enemy." In Western thought, as far back as Epicurus, warnings are given that the direct pursuit of happiness can backfire on the self, and harm others through excessive self-interest. Also, it's been argued that joy can make the oppressed weak and less likely to fight injustice.

There's a contemporary fixation with happiness in the much of the Western world. Joshanloo and Weijers' counterpoint is that, for various reasons, not everyone wants to happy. From a practical perspective, they say this could seriously skew cross-cultural comparisons of subjective well-being. "It stands to reason," they write, "that a person with an aversion to expressing happiness ... may report lower subjective wellbeing than they would do otherwise." But their concerns go deeper: "There are risks for happiness studies in exporting Western psychology to non-Western cultures without undertaking indigenous analyses, including making invalid cross-cultural comparisons and imposing Western cultural assumptions on other cultures."
_________________________________

Joshanloo, M., & Weijers, D. (2013). Aversion to Happiness Across Cultures: A Review of Where and Why People are Averse to Happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies, 15 (3), 717-735 DOI: 10.1007/s10902-013-9489-9

Further Reading

• What's the difference between a happy life and a meaningful one?
• Other people may experience more misery than you realise

* * * * *

Aversion to Happiness Across Cultures: A Review of Where and Why People are Averse to Happiness

Mohsen Joshanloo, Dan Weijers
 

Abstract

A common view in contemporary Western culture is that personal happiness is one of the most important values in life. For example, in American culture it is believed that failing to appear happy is cause for concern. These cultural notions are also echoed in contemporary Western psychology (including positive psychology and much of the research on subjective well-being). However, some important (often culturally-based) facts about happiness have tended to be overlooked in the psychological research on the topic. One of these cultural phenomena is that, for some individuals, happiness is not a supreme value. In fact, some individuals across cultures are averse to various kinds of happiness for several different reasons. This article presents the first review of the concept of aversion to happiness. Implications of the outcomes are discussed, as are directions for further research.

The Limits of Logic: Simon Blackburn, Beatrix Campbell, and Iain McGilchrist

 

In this thought-provoking conversation (debate?) from iai.tv [Institute of Art and Ideas], Shahidha Bari asks Cambridge philosopher and author of Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, Simon Blackburn, psychiatrist and author of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Iain McGilchrist [also author of The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning, a $0.99 Kindle only essay companion to the book], and radical journalist Beatrix Campbell, whether we should embrace the irrational.

I'm not sure I agree with the premise, which would be that we are or we want to be rational beings. Mostly, we are irrational (emotional) beings who create elaborate rationalizations for our irrational beliefs and/or behaviors.

If that is the premise, I am not sure that we should so much embrace the irrational as we should seek to bring into the light of rational thought the non-rational/irrational beliefs that inform, influence, and motivate our behaviors.

Still, these are always interesting discussions.

The Limits of Logic

Simon Blackburn, Beatrix Campbell, Iain McGilchrist. Hosted by Shahidha Bari.

Watch more videos on iai.tv

Logicians don't rule the world or get the most done. Could it be that a consistent world view is neither desirable nor achievable? If we abandon the straightjacket of rationality might this lead to a more powerful and exciting future, or is it a heresy that leads to madness?

The Panel: Shahidha Bari asks Cambridge philosopher and author of Think, Simon Blackburn, psychiatrist and author of The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist, and radical journalist Beatrix Campbell, whether we should embrace the irrational.

In association with:

Shankar Vedantam - Do We Know What We're Thinking? The Science Behind Our Behavior

NPR Science Correspondent, author of The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives (2010), and prize-winning writer on the effects of the unconscious mind on human behavior, Shankar Vedantam will share fascinating insights about how our actions and opinions may not always jibe with what we consciously think.

This presentation was part of the Big Change Baltimore: A Forum of Ideas that are Reshaping Our Future sponsored by the Open Society Foundations.

Do We Know What We're Thinking? The Science Behind Our Behavior

Do We Know What We're Thinking? The Science Behind Our Behavior from Open Society Foundations on FORA.tv

O'Connor and Gabora premise their model for the development of pathological belief systems on the understand that "the web of understandings a human mind weaves about the world is not just complex, dynamic, self-organizing (Orsucci, 2002) but also self-regenerating, self-perpetuating, and thereby ‘alive’, and evolving not just at the biological organismic level but at a second, cultural level (Gabora, 1998, 2004, 2008)." Our ability to create an internal model of the world is founded in our capacity for a "self-triggered stream of thought," which allows to follow the freight-train of thoughts (monkey mind, in Buddhist lingo), and then to also manipulate the sensory experiences we have of the external world.

These manipulations (mental operations) allow us to structure sensations and impressions into a somewhat coherent "web of understanding" of the external world, a talent that also allows us to plan, prioritize, create analogies, adapt our behavior according to the situation, and so on. This is not without its issues, however, in that "the proclivity to mentally operate on impressions also provides for the possibility that they become increasingly distorted, particularly if the developing worldview that shapes this assimilation process is becoming a biased model of the external world."

This is an excellent and interesting paper using dynamical systems and complexity theory to make sense of how the human mind creates pathological belief systems in the context of mental illness.

Full Citation:
O'Connor, B, and Gabora, L. (2009, ). Applying complexity theory to a dynamical process
model of the development of pathological belief systems. Chaos and Complexity Letters, 4(3), 75-96.

This version:  arXiv:1309.5670 [nlin.AO], submitted Sep 23, 2013.

Applying complexity theory to a dynamical process model of the development of pathological belief systems

Brian P. O’Connor and Liane Gabora

Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, CANADA

ABSTRACT

A general dynamical process model of psychiatric disorders is proposed that specifies the basic cognitive processes involved in the transition from beliefs about self, others and world that are normal and adaptive, to beliefs that are rigid, extreme, and maladaptive. The relevant thought trajectories are self-confirming, and are considered to underlie the corresponding trajectories in symptoms. In contrast with previous work, the model focuses on underlying mechanisms, and it provides an evolutionary basis for the widespread susceptibility to psychiatric symptoms and disorders without the problematic claim that such disorders were selected by evolutionary forces. The model thereby incorporates both normality and abnormality in the same framework.

INTRODUCTION

Humans are susceptible to a wide variety of mental disorders that, despite their substantial differences, are all characterized by distinctive, rigid, extreme beliefs about themselves and others, and maladaptive ways of acting in the world. Examples of such beliefs include “I am a failure,” “I am incapable of having positive interactions with others,” and “I am overweight and cannot believe those who tell me I am dangerously thin.” The maladaptive beliefs associated with psychiatric disorders are evident and challenging to anyone who interacts with the individuals on a regular basis, including family members and mental health professionals. Yet most people were not born with such peculiar beliefs, and their family members can recall times when the client did not have such problematic views or any other psychiatric symptoms. How did they come about?

We propose that they are side-effects of the fact that the web of understandings a human mind weaves about the world is not just complex, dynamic, self-organizing (Orsucci, 2002) but also self-regenerating, self-perpetuating, and thereby ‘alive’, and evolving not just at the biological organismic level but at a second, cultural level (Gabora, 1998, 2004, 2008). The ability to weave an internal model of the world, or worldview, stems from the specifically human capacity for a self-triggered stream of thought, in which one thought triggers another, which triggers another, and so forth; our daily experience is formed not just by sensory impressions but also by mental operations on these impressions. These mental operations have the desirable effect of structuring impressions into a more-or-less coherent web of understanding, the integrated nature of which enables us to plan and prioritize, draw analogies, adapt behavior to the specifics of situations, and so forth. However, the proclivity to mentally operate on impressions also provides for the possibility that they become increasingly distorted, particularly if the developing worldview that shapes this assimilation process is becoming a biased model of the external world.

The goal of this chapter is to unpack this argument and propose a tentative, general model of the process by which once-normal individuals develop deep, maladaptive convictions that are seemingly impervious to refuting evidence and that are closely intertwined with other symptoms. Although the contents of beliefs vary across disorders, it is proposed that the basic cognitive processes involved are essentially the same across disorders. The model incorporates the possible influences of affective and biological factors on the trajectories of belief systems. The focus is on cognition, but there is no claim that cognitive factors are always primary or causal. Distinct belief systems are nevertheless almost always present in psychiatric disorders, and we are simply proposing a general model of how they develop. A proper understanding of how such belief systems develop will presumably be important to understanding how rigid belief systems can change for the better.

The chapter begins with descriptions of the particular beliefs that are commonly involved in a variety of Axis I and Axis II disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, APA, 2000). In the second section, we provide an outline of relevant concepts from dynamical systems and complexity theory. Distinctions are made between how the present model differs from previous applications of these concepts to psychopathology. We also describe research on memory and thought processes, and on interpersonal processes, that are involved in the trajectories of belief systems. The fourth section describes the implications of our model and  the corresponding answers to a number of perennial questions in the literature.

The Mind Report - Jonathan Phillips (Yale University) and Eric Mandelbaum (Baruch College)

On this week's episode of The Mind Report (bloggingheads.tv), Jonathan Phillips (left) and Eric Mandelbaum (right) discuss beliefs, truth, psychological health, racism, identity, implicit bias, the Colin McGinn case, and how Fox News "distracts" its viewers "to distort" the news, among other things.

If the video chooses to escape your viewing, please follow the title link to the bloggingheads.tv site to watch the video there (there embedding has been buggy lately).

THE MIND REPORT

Jonathan Phillips (Yale University) and Eric Mandelbaum (Baruch College)

What is a belief, exactly? 6:36

Truth vs. our psychological health 4:34

How Fox News distracts to distort 3:47

Why it's so hard to change beliefs 9:20

The philosophical way to combat racism 15:53

When identity and action violently clash 11:04

PLAY ENTIRE VIDEO 

FOLLOW: Jonathan Phillips 

Recorded: Jul 12 Posted: Jul 14, 2013
Download: wmv | mp4 | mp3 | fast mp3 

LINKS MENTIONED

• Eric's website
• Implicit association test
• Leiter Reports on the Colin McGinn case
• Tamar Gendler's paper, "On the epistemic costs of implicit bias"
• Sechrist, G. and Stengor, C., "Perceived Consensus Influences Intergroup Behavior and Stereotype Accessibility"
• Jonathan St B Evans and Bob Stanovich, "Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing the Debate"
• Daniel Gilbert's website

Via Open Culture, the curators of cool on the internets, comes this interesting and enlightening post on a survey created by David Chalmers and David Bourget. They decided to find out where nearly 3,000 professors, graduate students, and independent thinkers stand on 30 different philosophical issues by constructing a rigorous survey - "most of the respondents were affiliated with prestigious philosophy departments in the English-speaking world, though several continental European departments are also represented."

Below the article is the Introduction to the article on this project by Chalmers and Bourget.

What Do Most Philosophers Believe? A Wide-Ranging Survey Project Gives Us Some Idea

June 26th, 2013

What do most philosophers believe? The question may only interest other philosophers—and when it comes to such esoteric concerns as the “analytic synthetic distinction,” this is probably true. But when it comes to the big issues that have given every thoughtful person at least one sleepless night, or the questions regularly explored by speculative fictions like Star Trek or zombie movies, the rest of us might sit up and take notice.

Two contemporary philosophers, David Chalmers and David Bourget, decided to find out where their colleagues stood on 30 different philosophical issues by constructing a rigorous survey that ended up accounting for the views of over 3,000 professors, graduate students, and independent thinkers. Most of the respondents were affiliated with prestigious philosophy departments in the English-speaking world, though several continental European departments are also represented.

Some semi-famous names come up in a perusal of the list of public respondents, like A.C. Grayling and Massimo Pigliucci. For the most part, however, the survey group represents the rank-and-file, toiling away as teachers, thinkers, writers, and researchers at colleges across the Western world. You survey geeks out there can dig deeply into Chalmers and Bourget’s detailed accounting of their methodology here. But for a quick and dirty summary, let’s take a couple of general categories and look at the results.

Metaphysics:

The issues that fall under this heading broadly involve questions about what exists, and why and how it does. Here’s a breakdown of some of the biggies:

God: atheism 72.8%; theism 14.6%; other 12.6%

Granted, this is an oversimplification. Popular notions of these categories don’t necessarily correspond to more subtle distinctions among philosophers, who may be strong or weak atheists (or theists), or hold some version of deism, agnosticism, or none of the above.

Free will: compatibilism 59.1%; libertarianism 13.7%; no free will 12.2%; other 14.9%

Compatibilism, the majority view here, is the theory that we can choose our actions to some degree, and to some degree they are determined by prior events. Libertarianism (related to, but not synonymous with, the political philosophy) claims that all of our actions are freely chosen.

Metaphilosophy: naturalism 49.8%; non-naturalism 25.9%; other 24.3%

Naturalism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “the idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world,” or “the belief that nothing exists beyond the natural world.” Note that metaphysical naturalism needs to be distinguished from methodological naturalism, which nearly all scholars and scientists embrace.

Abstract objects: Platonism 39.3%; nominalism 37.7%; other 23.0%

This distinction gets at whether abstractions like geometry or the laws of logic exist in some immutable form “out there” in the universe (as Platonic ideas) or whether they are “nominal,” no more than convenient formulas we create and apply to our observations. It’s a debate at least as old as the ancient Greeks.

Personal Identity:

In this general category, we deal with questions about what it means to be a person and how we can exist as seemingly coherent individuals over time in a world in constant flux. Let’s take two fun examples that deal with these quandaries, shall we?

Teletransporter: survival 36.2%; death 31.1%; other 32.7%

Here, we’re dealing with a thought experiment proposed by Derek Parfit (one of the participants in the survey) that pretty much takes the Star Trek transporter technology (or the horror version in The Fly) and asks whether the transported individual—completely disintegrated and reconstituted somewhere else—is the same person as the original. In other words, can a “person” survive this process or does the individual die and a new one take its place? The question hinges on ideas about a “soul” or “spirit” that exists apart from the material body and asks whether or not we are nothing more than very specific arrangements of matter and energy.

Zombies: conceivable but not metaphysically possible 35.6%; metaphysically possible 23.3%; inconceivable 16.0%; other 25.1%

Zombies are everywhere. Try to escape them! You can’t. Their prevalence in popular culture is mirrored in the philosophy world, where zombies have long served as metaphors for the possibility of a pure (and ravenous) bodily existence, devoid of conscious self-awareness. The prospect may be as frightening as the zombies of the Walking Dead, but is it a real possibility? A significant number of philosophers seem to think so.

As I said, these are just a few of the issues Chalmers and Bourget’s survey queries. Physicist Sean Carroll has a quick summary of all of the results on his blog, and Chalmers and Bourget have made all of their data and analysis very transparent and freely available at their Philpapers site. David Chalmers, who specializes in philosophy of mind and looks like one of Spinal Tap’s doomed drummers, spills the beans on his ideas of consciousness in the video at the top.

Related Content:

• Do Physicists Believe in God?
• 50 Famous Academics & Scientists Talk About God
• Daniel Dennett and Cornel West Decode the Philosophy of The Matrix in 2004 Film
• Download 90 Free Philosophy Courses and Start Living the Examined Life

~ Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him at @jdmagness

Here is the beginning of the paper on this survey - the whole article is available for free online.

What Do Philosophers Believe?

David Bourget and David J. Chalmers

May 15, 2013

Abstract

What are the philosophical views of contemporary professional philosophers? We surveyed many professional philosophers in order to help determine their views on thirty central philosophical issues. This article documents the results. It also reveals correlations among philosophical views and between these views and factors such as age, gender, and nationality. A factor analysis suggests that an individual’s views on these issues factor into a few underlying components that predict much of the variation in those views. The results of a metasurvey also suggest that many of the results of the survey are surprising: philosophers as a whole have quite inaccurate beliefs about the distribution of philosophical views in the profession.

1 Introduction

What are the philosophical views of contemporary professional philosophers? Are more philosophers theists or atheists? Physicalists or non-physicalists? Deontologists, consequentialists, or  virtue ethicists? We surveyed many professional philosophers in order to help determine the answers to these and other questions. This article documents the results.

Why should the answers to these sociological questions be of interest to philosophers or to anyone else? First, they have obvious sociological and historical interest. Philosophy as practiced is a human activity, and philosophers have a strong interest in the character of this human activity, past and present. Historians of philosophy are interested in the dominant philosophical views of various eras, and in how these views changed over time. Contemporary philosophy can be seen as the leading edge of the history of philosophy, and a proper understanding of today’s philosophical views can feed into an understanding of historical trends. Furthermore, today’s sociology is tomorrow’s history, and one can reasonably hope that answers to these sociological questions will be of some use to the historians of the future.

Second, one could argue that these sociological facts can play an evidential role in answering philosophical questions. On this view, the prevalence of views among philosophers can serve as a guide to their truth. After all, philosophers had had the benefit of years of reflection on these questions and might be taken as experts on them. In science, we often take the prevalence of scientific views among experts as strong evidence about which views are correct (consider questions about evolution or climate change, for example). It could be suggested that expert views should play a similar role with respect to philosophical questions. Many will be skeptical about this analogy, however. It is arguable that there is less convergence over time in philosophy than in science, for example. So we do not make the evidential claim here.

Third, it is clear that sociological views play a methodological role within the practice of philosophy. In philosophical discussion it is inevitable that some views are presupposed, other views are the focus of attention and argument, while still others are ignored. At a given time in a given community, some views have the status of “received wisdom”. These views are often used as premises of arguments, and if they are rejected, it is usually acknowledged that doing so requires argument. Other views are often ignored or set aside without argument. When they are acknowledged, they are rarely used as premises of arguments. To assert them requires considerable  justification.

One might suggest that the received wisdom within a given community is determined by what most people in the community believe: views that are widely accepted require less argument than views that are widely rejected. A moment’s reflection, however, suggests that received wisdom is more likely to be determined by what most people believe most people believe. If most members of a community mistakenly believe that most members believe p, then it is more likely that assertions of p rather than assertions of :p will receive default status. If most philosophers believe that most philosophers are  physicalists when in fact most philosophers are dualists, for example, then the norms of the community will typically require that asserting dualism requires more argument than asserting physicalism.

Insofar as sociological beliefs play this role within philosophy, it is better for them to be accurate. For example: suppose that a philosopher accepts the analytic-synthetic distinction and thinks the arguments against it fail. Suppose that she is writing an article in which she thinks that (sociology aside) an appeal to the distinction would strengthen the article. Suppose that she nevertheless does not appeal to the distinction in the article, solely on the grounds that she thinks a large majority of philosophers reject the distinction. Suppose that in fact, a large majority of philosophers accept the distinction. Then her decision will have been grounded in a false sociological belief, and the article will be weaker by her own lights as a result. True sociological beliefs would put her in a position to write a better article by her own lights.

Spurred by this sociological, historical, and methodological interest, we conducted a survey of the views of professional philosophers in late 2009. The PhilPapers Survey surveyed professional philosophers worldwide about their views on thirty key philosophical questions. We also surveyed them on demographic questions concerning gender, age, nationality, and areas of specialization. This allows more reliable answers than previously available about the views of professional philosophers and about how they vary with the various demographic factors, yielding a richer picture of the philosophical character of the contemporary philosophical community.

We simultaneously conducted the PhilPapers Metasurvey, asking philosophers for their predictions about the distribution of answers to the PhilPapers Survey. This metasurvey allowed us to measure the accuracy of philosophers’ sociological beliefs about views within the field. It also provides a measure of just how surprising or unsurprising are the results of the PhilPapers Survey. To foreshadow the results that follow, we found that many of the results are quite surprising, both on an individual and a community level. The sociological beliefs of individual philosophers are typically quite inaccurate, and the community as a whole substantially overestimates or underestimates the popularity of a number of important philosophical positions. By rectifying these inaccurate sociological beliefs, the PhilPapers Survey provides a useful corrective to those aspects of the practice of philosophy that are grounded in them.

It should be noted that this study is not a work of philosophy. For the most part, we are not putting forward philosophical theses or arguing for them. It is also not a work of science. We are not putting forward scientific hypotheses or testing them. Instead it is a data-gathering exercise in the sociology of philosophy. We do not exclude the possibility, however, that the sociological data we have gathered might be used as inputs to philosophical or to scientific work in the future.

Read the whole article.

Alva Noë - Who Defines Who We Are?

From NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog, Alva Noë riffs on culture and norms and how they can influence our identities. Interesting . . . .

Who Defines Who We Are?

by ALVA NOË
May 24, 2013 

Istanbul Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images

In The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond offers a clever — if speculative — theory of the origins of race. After first dismissing the idea that racial differences are functional adaptations to different climates, he proposes that the tendency for certain people to look alike in respect of facial features, skin color, body type, etc., is a consequence of the fact that people mostly choose to reproduce with people like themselves. He points to studies suggesting contemporary couples tend statistically to be like each other in respect of finger size and the distance between the eyes. This is a kind of sexual selection. To understand the origin of traits, you need, in effect, to look at how we think and feel about the traits we have. What we are is fixed, in part, by us.

I thought of this last night when I arrived, for the first time, in Istanbul.

Although it was after midnight, traffic was heavy as my taxi worked its way along the water into the heart of the city. Booming Turkish hip-hop-like music bounced out of the car next to us. But the music sounded Eastern. At the heart of the song was a horn riff that sounded like something you'd expect on the soundtrack to an old Abbott and Costello movie set in the Middle East. The melodic twirl spoke loud: this is a Turkish sound!

I wondered: is this just what people here know and like, or do they know and like it because, after all, it is a tune that they think goes with being them? Is this like race — at least according to Diamond's hypothesis — something that defines us but only because, somehow, maybe unconsciously, we believe it should?

You can see evidence of this kind of downward looping everywhere. Cops in Law and Order-type TV shows affect working class accents. But maybe working-class people retain working-class accents because they believe, on some level, that this is how they should sound.

Could it be that speaking in broad dialect — like the man who served me a bratwurst in Dresden, Germany a few nights ago — is actually a kind of sophistication? A kind of universal irony that defines us all the way down?

This would explain the persistence of regional variation and dialect in the face of state-run education and the media.

Another example: The taxi driver on the way into town last night offered me a cigarette. Is smoking still normal here? Was this a simple act of politeness?

Back at the hotel, the clerk mentioned there were cups in the room that could be used as an ashtray. Ashtrays themselves, he noted, are forbidden. Ah, so the move to prohibit smoking in public places is known here in Istanbul, too.

So maybe the taxi driver wasn't just being polite. Maybe he was expressing an attitude towards smoking. Maybe he wasn't so much backward, an unreconstructed smoker, as he was, well, subversive?

I found myself wishing I smoked. It would have been nice to accept the smoke and, in doing so, be like the man who had offered it.


You can keep up with more of what Alva Noë is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe

The Science Delusion: Rupert Sheldrake at TEDxWhitechapel

Rupert Sheldrake talks about his newest book, Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery (or the UK version, The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Inquiry, which is where the title of the TEDx talk comes from), at TEDxWhitechapel.

The Science Delusion: Rupert Sheldrake at TEDxWhitechapel

Published on Feb 12, 2013

The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality, in principle. The fundamental questions are answered, leaving only the details to be filled in. The impressive achievements of science seemed to support this confident attitude. But recent research has revealed unexpected problems at the heart of physics, cosmology, biology, medicine and psychology. Dr Rupert Sheldrake shows how the sciences are being constricted by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. Should science be a belief-system, or a realm of inquiry? Sheldrake argues that science would be better off without its dogmas: freer, more interesting and more fun.

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including The Science Delusion. He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, Principal Plant Physiologist at ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in Hyderabad, India, and from 2005-2010 the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California, and a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut. His website is www.sheldrake.org.

The Psych Files Podcast - Can We Teach Critical Thinking?

Image from Critical Thinking.org

This is a cool discussion on critical thinking that revolves around the decision of the Texas GOP to oppose the teaching of critical thinking in the schools. This is big enough news that even
Stephen Colbert had his entertaining take on this issue (click here).

This what their 2012 platform says:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

"I done wan nobody makin my kids think. Hell, I tell em wha they belief."

Here are a couple of other sections from their education platform:

Religious Freedom in Public Schools – We urge school administrators and officials to inform Texas school students specifically of their First Amendment rights to pray and engage in religious speech, individually or in groups, on school property without government interference. We urge the Legislature to end censorship of discussion of religion in our founding documents and encourage discussing those documents.

And this . . .

Controversial Theories – We support objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories. We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind.

Oy Vey! I guess they think that if they can make the population dumb enough and incapable of questioning what they are told, then they can do whatever they want. It has worked so far.

But this is the state that gave us Governor and then President Bush, not to mention that strangely incoherent man who ran for the GOP nomination this year, Governor Rick Perry.

By the way, cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham (University of Virginia), and author of Cognition: The Thinking Animal, argues that it cannot be taught in this 2007 article. Willingham defines critical thinking first, a defintion that feels hard to argue with, but must feel scary to the Texas GOP:

Critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth. Then too, there are specific types of critical thinking that are characteristic of different subject matter: That’s what we mean when we refer to “thinking like a scientist” or “thinking like a historian.”

He then suggests that all the research to date says that we can't teach critical thinking:

After more than 20 years of lamentation, exhortation, and little improvement, maybe it’s time to ask a fundamental question: Can critical thinking actually be taught? Decades of cognitive research point to a disappointing answer: not really. People who have sought to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once you learn it, you can apply it in any situation. Research from cognitive science shows that thinking is not that sort of skill.

Finally, here is an expanded definition of critical thinking that helps set the stage for this discussion (and I highly recommend the paper these quotes come from, Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach? From American Educator, Summer 2007).

Critical reasoning, decision making, and problem solving—which, for brevity’s sake, I will refer to as critical thinking—have three key features: effectiveness, novelty, and self-direction. Critical thinking is effective in that it avoids common pitfalls, such as seeing only one side of an issue, discounting new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning from passion rather than logic, failing to support statements with evidence, and so on. Critical thinking is novel in that you don’t simply remember a solution or a situation that is similar enough to guide you. For example, solving a complex but familiar physics problem by applying a multi-step algorithm isn’t critical thinking because you are really drawing on memory to solve the problem. But devising a new algorithm is critical thinking. Critical thinking is self-directed in that the thinker must be calling the shots: We wouldn’t give a student much credit for critical thinking if the teacher were prompting each step he took.

And now, your podcast.

The Psych Files Podcast, Ep 183: Critical Thinking – Important? Yes. But Can We Teach It? Well….

Podcast: Download

Why does it concern psychologists that the Texas GOP platform recently opposed the teaching of critical thinking? Most of us have been told since we were very young that critical thinking is very important. Psychologists certainly agree and a lot of time spent in most psychology classes is spent learning how to think critically. Why is it such a central part of our classes? And here’s a kicker: it might be a lot harder to teach it than we had hoped. Find out why critical thinking is so central to psychology. Sounds kinda dry? I think you’ll find this a lot of fun (in a mental kind of way…).

Resources on Critical Thinking

• Daniel Willingham’s article, Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?
• The concept map I created as notes for this episode can be viewed by clicking on the image below
  

  Click the image to view the map.
• Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really.
• The full platform of the Texas Republican Party can be found here.

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. – 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas

School Health Care – We urge legislators to prohibit reproductive health care services, including counseling, referrals, and distribution of condoms and contraception through public schools. We support the parents’ right to choose, without penalty, which medications are administered to their minor children. We oppose medical clinics on school property except higher education and health care for students without parental consent. — 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas

Tami Simon Speaks with Mario Martinez - Empowerment and ‘Navigating the Drift’

Sounds True founder and leader Tami Simon speaks with clinical neuropsychologist Mario Martinez about his research into how our cultural beliefs affect our health and longevity. Great stuff.

Empowerment and ‘Navigating the Drift’

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Tami Simon speaks with Mario Martinez, a clinical neuropsychologist whose breakthrough research examines how cultural beliefs affect our health and longevity. Mario is the founder of biocognitive science, a new paradigm that examines the dynamic relationship between thoughts, culture, and the body. With Sounds True, he has recorded an audio learning course called The Mind Body Code: How the Mind Wounds and Heals the Brain. In this episode, Tami speaks with Mario about the idea that culture creates biology; how we can access the antidote to shame, abandonment, and betrayal through healing fields in the body; and the concept of “the drift”—how we can navigate chaos with uncertainty as our guide. (68 minutes)

more from Mario Martinez »

Michael Dowd - The New Theism: Shedding Beliefs, Celebrating Knowledge

Metanexus is one of the really interesting online magazines - for lack of a better word, they seem to be approaching and highlighting a more integral approach to understanding the world, through a variety of lenses. They believe that Big Questions and Big Problems require a perspective from Big History.

They offer the following description of their project: "Metanexus fosters a growing international network of individuals and groups exploring the dynamic interface between cosmos, nature and culture. Membership is open to all. Join Now!"

This article examines the emergence of a new form of theism that requires evidence, which means science, for making meaning in the world, to "grow in right relationship to reality" as a spiritual path.

The New Theism: Shedding Beliefs, Celebrating Knowledge

May 30, 2012

By Michael Dowd

Since April 2002, my science-writer wife Connie Barlow and I have traveled North America virtually nonstop. We have addressed more than 1,600 secular and religious groups of all kinds. Our goal is to communicate the inspiring and empowering side of science to as many people as possible.

Whether addressing evangelicals, atheists, UUs, or gurus, our message is always the same: We show how a deeply meaningful and fully evidence-based view of big history, human nature, and death can inspire people of all backgrounds and beliefs to live in integrity and cooperate in service of a just and thriving future for all.

Over the course of the last decade, in addition to talking with folks after our programs, Connie and I have lived with hundreds of people in their homes. We’ve thus been privileged to have intellectually rich and heartful conversations with countless kindred spirits—those, like us, whose passion lies at the intersection of science, inspiration, and sustainability.

The manifesto below reflects the thinking and work of many individuals, all of whom agree that traditional labels are no longer adequate. Please consider the following but a rough first draft. Feedback is welcome. Please email me your questions, comments, criticisms, and especially your suggestions for improvement at Michael@ThankGodforEvolution.com.

A Manifesto for the New Theism
A new breed of theist is emerging in nearly every denomination and religion across the globe, and many of us are grateful to the New Atheists for calling us out of the closet.

New Theists are not believers; we’re evidentialists. We value scientific, historic, and cross-cultural evidence over ancient texts, religious dogma, or ecclesiastical authority. We also value how an evidential worldview enriches and deepens our communion with God (Reality/Ultimate Wholeness/The Great Mystery).

New Theists are not supernaturalists; we’re naturalists. We are inspired and motivated more by this world and this life than by promises of a future otherworld or afterlife. This does not, however, mean that we diss uplifting or transcendent experiences, or disvalue mystery. We don’t. But neither do we see the mystical as divorced from the natural.

As secular Jews differ from fundamentalist Jews, New Theists differ from traditional theists. While most of us value traditional religious language and rituals, and we certainly value community, we no longer interpret literally any of the otherworldly or supernatural-sounding language in our scriptures, creeds, and doctrines. Indeed, we interpret all mythic “night language” as one would interpret a dream: metaphorically, symbolically.

New Theists practice what might be called a “practical spirituality.” Indeed, spirituality for us mostly means the mindset, heart-space, and tools that assist us in growing in right relationship to reality and supporting others in doing the same.

New Theists are legion; we are diverse. Many of us continue to call ourselves Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Hindu. We may also self-identify as emergentist, evidentialist, freethinker, neo-humanist, pantheist, panentheist, or some other label.

New Theists don’t believe in God. We know that throughout human history, the word “God” has always and everywhere been a meaning-filled interpretation, a mythic and inspiring personification of forces and realities incomprehensible in a prescientific age. We also know that interpretations and personifications don’t exist or fail to exist. Rather, they are more or less helpful, more or less meaningful, more or less inspiring.

New Theists view religion and religious language through an empirical, evidential, evolutionary lens, rather than through a theological or philosophical one. Indeed, an ability to distinguish subjective and objective reality—practical truth (that which reliably produces personal wholeness and social coherence) from factual truth (that which is measurably real)—is one of the defining characteristics of New Theists.

New Theists do not have a creed (we’re not that organized). But if we did, it might simply be this:

Reality is our God, evidence is our scripture, integrity is our religion, and ensuring a healthy future for the entire body of life is our mission.

By “reality is our God” we mean that honoring and working with what is real, as evidentially and collectively discerned, and creatively imagining what could be in light of this, is our ultimate concern and commitment.

By “evidence is our scripture” we mean that scientific, historic, and cross-cultural evidence provide a better understanding and a more authoritative map of how things are and which things matter (or what’s real and what’s important) than do ancient mythic writings or handed-down wisdom.

By “integrity is our religion” we mean that living in right relationship to reality and helping others and our species do the same is our great responsibility and joy.

By “ensuring a healthy future for the entire body of life is our mission” we mean that working with people of all backgrounds and beliefs in service of a vibrant future for planet Earth and all its gloriously diverse species (including us) is our divine calling and privilege.

Why call ourselves “theists” at all if we’re not supernatural, otherworldly believers? Simply this:

All theological “isms” (e.g., theism, deism, pantheism, atheism) came into being long before we had an evolutionary understanding of emergence. Therefore, all such concepts are outdated, misleading, and unnecessarily divisive if they are not redefined and reinterpreted in an evolutionary context. Other terms that have been offered in addition to “New Theist” include “evolutionary theist,” “evolutionary humanist,” “post-theist,” “mytheist,” and “creatheist” (pronounced variously, and humorously, as “crea-theist” or “cree-atheist”).

Labels are far less important to us than celebrating the fact that we are naturalists who wish to be counted among the religious of the world—no less than all others who are devoted to something sacred and larger than themselves.

Whatever our differences, we are evidentialists, committed to living upstanding moral lives in service of a just and thriving future for humanity and the larger body of life.

We see this as Religion 2.0.

Originally published on The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity: Conversations at the Leading Edge of Faith.