Tem3

3: SEP 8

Assigned

• Hibbing, John R., Kevin Smith, and John R. Alford, Predisposed: Liberals, conservatives, and the biology of political difference, Chapter 1, "Living with the Enemy". (32)
• PBS Aristotle and Virtue Theory: Crash Course Philosophy #38
• Everyday Ethics Discussion and Short Writing Prompt #1.

In-class content

• Philosophical Theories: Virtue Ethics
• Some Preliminaries about Ethical theory and objectivity

Everyday Ethics Discussion and Short Writing Prompt #1

• Describe a situation in which you decided to trust someone and you were right (or wrong) to do so. What made you decide to trust the person? Try to identify specific behaviors. Alternately, describe things you would do if you were trying to get someone to trust you. What are the characteristic behaviors and statements of trust worthy people?
• Follow this link when you are ready to write.

Some Preliminaries about Ethical theory and objectivity

• Add in more notes from Singer Ch 1, Practical Ethics

• A Framework for thinking about moral theories.

• Where should we look for "moral goodness"?
• Intentions (Kantian), Act (Aristotle), Consequences (Mill, Singer - utilitarian)

Philosophical Moral Theories: Virtue Ethics

• PBS Aristotle and Virtue Theory: Crash Course Philosophy #38

• concepts from video...

• Virtue — general idea of being an excellent person. Also, specific lists of virtues (vary by time and culture)

• Aristotle’s theory of human nature: fixed nature, proper function, distinctive aspect of function: being rational and political.

• Virtue is natural to us. Like an acorn becoming a tree.

• Theory of the Golden Mean: Virtue as mean between extremes of emotion: Ex. Courage (story), Honesty, Generosity.

• Acquiring virtue: Experience. Practical Wisdom cultivated through habituation. Follow a moral exemplar.

• What if we don’t want to become virtuous? What is the motivation to virtue? The pursuit of a happy life that “goes well”. Eudaimonia. Human flourishing. Challenge and development of talents. Should be attractive.

• Additional points:

• centrality of virtues and practical wisdom. Is it plausible that there is a general excellence to being a person?

• historic variability and list of virtues. Curiosity was a vice in Medieval Europe. Check out virtue lists on Virtue Wiki.

• From Aristotle to Evolutionary theory. Eternality of the species. What if you drop this false belief? Human excellence may have to do with excellences needed for a particular environment.

Hibbing, et. al. Predisposed Chapter 1

• Some opening examples of the persistence of partisanship
• opening example: William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal -- meant as example of highly educated partisans who would be able to debate in a civilized way. 60's era political divisions often violent.
• also historical examples of highly partisan politics -- Hamilton & Adams, Hamilton & Burr (duelled). Jefferson's dirty tricks.

• Goal of the Book: to explain why people experience and interpret the political world so very differently. (6): list of difference that track political difference. READ

• A methodological concern
• Does it makes sense to reduce political difference to "liberal" vs. "conservative". They are in fact measuring lots of differences, but claim there is a tradition of recognizing this difference. 11: some terminological issues. Ultimately, labels for clusters of real personality and behavioral differences.

• Think Probabalistically: not biological determinists, rather real persistent differences shape and mold our ideology. Example: relation between conscientiousness and ideology 14. A number of studies replicate a positive correlation bt conscientiousness and conservatism. Lesson on 15: difference between representing data in categories vs. scatterplot. Wilson-Patterson index of conservatism. Brief lesson on correlation, 17. Correlation for conscientiousness and conservatism small r = .2

• What are predispositions?
• Predispositions - some stimuli, like a pencil, are emotionally neutral. Others not. Leibniz speculated about "appetitions" Neurscientist Eagleman: brain running alot of its own programs. Ad hoc defenses (also in Haidt) called "baloney generator" by Pinker. We may have an illusion of rationality and control. examples of self-deception like this, p. 21, also top of 22 read.

• Responses to Political stimuli emotionally salient and not always conscious: Lodge: "hot cognition" or "automaticity"

• 23: clarifying argument: not nature / nurture. predispositions are difficult to change. research on long term stability of pol. orientation. 180 degree turn is very unusual. Technical def: "Predispositions, then, can be thought of as biologically and psychologically instantiated defaults that, absent new information or conscious overriding, govern response to given stimuli."

• Our actual predispositions vary, but also the degree to which we have predispositions is variable across a group. (This is one reason researchers in the field sometimes focus on highly partisan test subjects.)

• 25: some background on theorizing about political dispositions. what is new today is better research, but also research connecting political variation with bio/cog variation.

• 27: resistance to this kind of theory in political science. Philip Converse. also, idea that politics is best understood in terms of history and culture