FEB 3

8: FEB 3

Assigned

• Hibbing, Chapter 4: Drunk Flies and Salad Greens (89-96) (7)
• Beginner's Guide to Kant's Moral Philosophy
• Visit the shared folder "Fall 2021 SW1" and read samples from a Fall prompt (not ours). Use the file "Key.txt" to see scores. There are three 14s, an 11, a 10, and two 8s.
• Hibbing, Chapter 5: Do You See What I See? (30)

In-class content

• Small group discussion of SW1 strategies, outlines
• Philosophical Moral Theories: Duty
• Rubric Training

• Quick look at some Fall Ethics writing
• Norming scores
• Giving Peer Criticism

Rubric Training

Quick look at some previous student writing

• In the Fall of 2021 we used this prompt for SW1: Jonathan Haidt claims that the first principle of moral psychology is, "Intuitions Come First, Reasoning Second". Drawing only on the first three chapters of Haidt, but also Sapolsky 479-483, explain the meaning of this principle and how it is supported with research (about 400 words). How should we think about the relationship between intuition and reason in doing ethics? (about 200 words).
• Visit the shared folder "Fall 2021 SW1" and read samples from a Fall prompt (not ours). Use the file "Key.txt" to see scores. There are three 14s, an 11, a 10, and two 8s.

Giving Peer Criticism

• Some thoughts on helpful peer commenting:

• You are only asked to write two or three sentences of comments, so choose wisely!

• Giving criticism someone would want to consider.

• Give gentle criticisms that focus on your experience as a reader:

• "I'm having trouble understanding this sentence" vs. "This sentence makes no sense!"
• "I think more attention could have been paid to X vs. "You totally ignored the prompt!

• Wrap a criticism with an affirmation or positive comment

• "You cover the prompt pretty well, but you might have said more about x (or, I found y a bit of a digression)"
• "Some interesting discussion here, esp about x, but you didn't address the prompt very completely ...."

• General and specific -- Ok to identify general problem with the writing, but giving examples of the problem or potential solutions.

• I found some of your sentences hard to follow. E.g. "I think that the main ...." was a bit redundant.
• I thought the flow was generally good, but in paragraph 2 the second and third sentence seem to go in different directions.

Norming Scores

• We'll take a look at the numbers associated with the two rubric areas you are evaluating.

• In each rubric area, start reading the essay by thinking of a “5” as “pretty good, no obvious problems”. As you encounter difficulties in writing or content, start to lower your numeric assessment. If you start to be impressed by the writing or content, raise your estimate.

• There may not be any 1s or 2s (though it is possible - look at the semantic cues in the rubric). Maybe some 3s and definitely 4s. Likewise, 7s should be pretty scarce (let yourself be really impressed before giving a 7.

Hibbing, Chapter 4: Drunk Flies and Salad Greens (89-96)

• From Fall2020 Philosophy of food, Food News!:

• Are there Trump and Biden fridges? [1]

• Neuropolitics as focus of research [2]

• Note this "conceptual point": Point about fruit flies: taste for glycerol has biological basis, manipulable, yet we'd say the fly "likes" beer. POINT: Variation in human preferences yet also biologically instantiated. They are still your preferences even if (especially if?) biologically instantiated. Focus on this chapter: taste/prefs diffs of conservatives/liberals, their basis, connection to politics. Later, cars, stocks, etc.

• Note also that they are acknowledging great variation in preferences. Not reductive.

• Obama's arugula faux pas. Hunch.com studies (note problems): supports stereotype. 92: preferences not random in a population IPhone users and Rice Krisppie eaters.

• Hibbing et al research 93-4: favorite meal v. new dish. expanded preference research to: new experiences, humour, fiction, art, prefs in poetry, living spaces.

• Market research in politics: mentions RNC research: Conservatives favor Porsches vs. Volvos. Conservatives more brand loyal. Favor different investments.

Philosophical Moral Theories: Duty Ethics

• Basic intuition behind non-consequential duty ethics: Moral behavior sometimes "command" or absolute imperative to live up to an ideal. Versions of this include:

• An external command, as coming from a creator God, such as God's command to Abraham to kill Isaac, or
• An internal command, an internalization of Divine laws, like the 10 commandments, or
• A completely secular sense of duty to be true to an ideal or conception of ourselves.

• As rational - "I have to respect X's right to live their own lives" (also respect for autonomy)
• As deserving of basic dignity - "I don't feel morally comfortable with people making degrading choices from limited options." (Famine brides, sex trafficking, organ donation under conditions of poverty, but also humiliation, etc. from discrimination)
• As deserving of care - Human dignity also requires that I care for other's basic needs. (People living in squalor, dying for lack of health care.

• Typical formulation of "modern" duty ethics comes from Kant. He is focused on autonomy, not improving others' material circumstances.

• Kant's view:

• What does it mean to be good, for Kant? To have a good will. The will to do the right thing. Not for rewards.

• Bartender example. Self-interested motivations don’t count (fear of getting caught, losing customers, harming customers).

• What is it that Kant wants you to love and swear absolute duty to? A little background on Kant. Enlightenment figure. (This is a good time to read a bit about the European intellectual movement called "The Enlightenment". Some Enlightenment ideals: modern free will, importance of reason.

• Kant's ideal: Morality originates in my free will. The ability to make rules for ourselves. Being rational. Being bad is a failure of duty to revere this freedom in me and in others.
• This does involves a pretty radical abstraction from the promotion of happiness. For Kant, what's morally important about us has nothing to do with our well-being, contra eudaimonistic ethics.

• Categorical Imperative - Kant's phrase for the kind of motivation (maxim describing our will) that is moral, as opposed to prudential (prudence is about managing consequences).

• Formulation #1: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become universal law.” ...if it makes sense for you to will that everyone act from your maxim. This is a kind of test.

• Lying fails the test. There is a logical contradiction between the maxim of truth telling and maxim of lying. You want people to believe you after all.

• Formulation #2: Act in such a way that you treat humanity... always as an end and never simply as a means. Requires respect of others as source of rational planning.

• Are we using people only as an end when we get services from others? Not necessarily. Recall video.

• Formulation #3: Act as though through your actions you could become a legislator of universal morals. We are examples, contributing to a rational order or not. (Are you on "team Reason"? How do we integrate that with knowledge of morality as a system of evolved social behaviors?)

• Rationalism: Kant thinks we can all agree, in principle, to promote the idea of the world as a place for rational beings.

Hibbing, Chapter 5: Do You See What I See?

• Attention Studies research on Political difference:

• Rorschach tests. seem to trigger different attentional and other biases.

• Claim in this chapter: Differences in political temperament are tied to differences in a variety of perception and procession patterns prompted by stimuli. Liberals and conservatives see the world differently.

• The Eyes Have it

• Eye movement research - gaze cuing: gaze cuing test reveal sensitivity to social cues for everyone. Everyone is influenced by the gaze direction on the face. But these are averages. lots of variation.

• research question: Are liberals more susceptible to gaze cuing than conservatives? Yes. liberals slow down under miscuing, but not conservatives. liberals are more sensitive to social context, conservatives to rules. 121: not necessarily one better than the other. But, interestingly (122) conservatives and liberals prefer their own attentional biases (at least weakly)! (Speculate here.)

• Fitting Round Pigs into Square Holes 122

• Categorization as Cognitive Temperament: tests allow us to see variations in cognitive temperament. hard categorizers vs. soft. Conservatives / liberals. 124: conservatives more likely to lock onto a task and complete it in a fashion that is both definitive and consistent with instructions.

• Our Thoughts are Our Own - Or Are they?

• Cognitive Processing of + and - content. Italian researcher Luciana Carraro, why do some people tend to pay attention to negative words over positive words? Used a Stroop Task measuring delay in reporting font color of negative words. Strong correlation with political orientation. "conservatives have a strong vigilence toward negative stimuli." Wasn't so much the valuation placed on negative words, but that negative stimuli triggered more attentional resources.

• [We can also associate this result with other research suggesting conservatives have better awareness of "threat detection". Not surprisingly, our military skews conservative, while the academy skews liberal — people drawn to research may be motivated by neophilia.]

• Same researchers did a Dot Probe Test (measuring speed in identifying a gray dot on a positive or negative image. Speed increases with attentional disposition toward the stimuli). Liberals a bit quicker with positive images, conservatives with negative.

• Hibbing et. al. wanted to replicate the Italian research. Used a Flanker Task. (measuring speed in reporting a feature of an image when flanked by two images congruent or incongruent to the main image. Assumption is that the less you are slowed down by incongruence, the more attentional resources you had for the image.) Replicated typical results: we are all faster with angry faces, for example. Conservative less impacted by the angry faces. Both groups reacted the same to happy faces.

• What Are You Looking At? 129

• Eye tracking attentional studies - dwell time. Their research measured "dwell time" - time spent looking at an image. In a study, subjects are shown a group of images. General bias toward negative images. Theorized as having survival value. Conservatives spend a lot more time on negative images and quick to fix on negative images. Some weak evidence that liberals focus more on positive images, but sig. results concerned differentials.

• Perception is Reality -- But is it real? 133

• Since liberals and conservatives value positive and negative images in the same way, you might conclude that they see the same world but pay attention to parts of it with different degrees of interest or attention. But Hibbing et. al. are not so sure. In a study, they asked libs and cons to evaluate pos/negly their view of the status quo on six policy dimensions (134). They seem to assess the reality differently, they see different policies at work in the same society, not just attending more to some stimuli. Political difference might not be difference in preference, but in perception.

• They also did some research on ranking degree of negativity of images and, unlike the Italian research, conservatives did rank negative images more negatively. In another study (135-6), researchers (Vigil) found that conservatives ranked faces as more dominant and threatening than liberals. [Interesting that in both the 1918 pandemic and today's, conservatives resisted mask wearing. Nice coincidence with today's bizarre mask politics story.]

• You're full of Beans

• 'Cognitive style in exploration - BeanFest' -- a research game in which test subjects try to earn points by deciding whether to accept or reject a bean with an unknown point value. Based on personality, some subjects are more exploratory (accept more beans and get more information), while others are conservative. Political orientation also predicts strategy. Shook and Fazio see the result as indicative of differences in data acquisition strategies and learning styles. Interesting follow-up analysis based on giving test subjects a "final exam" on the bean values. Similar scores, but different patterns of classification.

• 139: good summary paragraph: "New bean? What the hell, say the liberals, let's give it a whirl" Roughly equal scores on the game and exam.

• exploratory behavior and related differences in valuing everyday ethical situations, like forgetting to return a CD. Can you think of a time you attached a judgement to a friend's behavior and then realized it was part of a larger pattern connected to their identity? Being late, tidy, calling back......

• Differing attitudes toward science and religion. No surprise that science denial comes from the right. Partial effect of our cognitive styles. note p. 140.