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We Need a Shared Understanding

insert-transcript#2be6db9a-d0a1-490a-892e-36e14cd77ea2-here

1. We as researchers need a shared understanding of belief and desire.

2. There are three potential sources of shared understanding: folk psychology, philosophy and decision theory.

3. Folk psychology does not provide a shared understanding.

4. Nor does philosophy.

Therefore:

5. We need decision theory to provide a shared understanding.

1. We as researchers need a shared understanding of belief and desire.

2. There are three potential sources of shared understanding: folk psychology, philosophy and decision theory.

3. Folk psychology does not provide a shared understanding.

4. Nor does philosophy.

Therefore:

5. We need decision theory to provide a shared understanding.

philosophical story about action requires them
(this relates to the Simple Picture I started with.)
desire I fill Zak’s glass.
beliefIf I pour, I will fill Zak’s glass.
intention   I pour to fill Zak’s glass.
How, if at all, does this vindicate and extend the Simple Picture?

Simple Picture (again)

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action.

habitual process

Action occurs in the presence of Stimulus.

Outcome follows action

Agent is thereby rewarded

Stimulus-Action Link is strengthened due to reward

Given Stimulus, will Action occur? It depends on the strength of the Stimulus-Action Link.

‘goal-directed’ process

Action leads to Outcome.
 

Belief in Action-Outcome link is strengthened.

Agent has a Desire for the Outcome
 

Will Action occur? It depends on the Belief in the Action-Outcome Link and Agent’s Desire.

Repeats some of `what_are_preferences`
What are these beliefs and desires? How exactly do they lead to actions? I suggested that we can appeal to decision theory for an answer to both questions.

1. We as researchers need a shared understanding of belief and desire.

2. There are three potential sources of shared understanding: folk psychology, philosophy and decision theory.

3. Folk psychology does not provide a shared understanding.

4. Nor does philosophy.

Therefore:

5. We need decision theory to provide a shared understanding.

1. We as researchers need a shared understanding of belief and desire.

2. There are three potential sources of shared understanding: folk psychology, philosophy and decision theory.

3. Folk psychology does not provide a shared understanding.

4. Nor does philosophy.

Therefore:

5. We need decision theory to provide a shared understanding.

I am just going to take this for granted. Show me wrong by providing an additional source.
insert-transcript#39ba428b-aa9f-4270-815b-c8f47fc5eba6-here

Is

folk psychology

a source of common knowledge of principles

that implicitly define ‘intention’, ‘knowledge’, and the rest

?

Lewis (1972) vs Heider (1958)

insert-transcript#ef26bfb6-6495-4467-a407-936ec9f5d40f-here

As philosophers see
folk psychology ...

‘When someone is in so-and-so combination of mental states and receives sensory stimuli of so-and-so kind, he tends with so-and-so probability to be caused thereby to go into so-and-so mental states and produce so-and-so motor responses.’

(Lewis, 1972, p. 256)

(my|your|his|her|their) phone

is trying to (excluding ‘kill me’) [283,000]

eg ‘my phone is trying to navigate me to Alex even though he has been deleted’

wants to [278,000]

hates [147,000]

likes [86,800]

thinks (e.g. ‘My phone thinks I’m in another city’) [53,400]

is pretending [16,000]

insert-transcript#46aa38d1-e97a-4201-b547-80e8d7d0f53f-here

Is

folk psychology

a source of common knowledge of principles

that implicitly define ‘intention’, ‘knowledge’, and the rest

?

Lewis (1972) vs Heider (1958)

A problem arises from the observation that humans are notoriously free in ascribing mental states and powers. Heider & Simmel, 1944 study of people’s responses to the movements of simple geometric shapes is the canonical illustration of this: people ascribe intention and character traits to moving patches of light which, as they know, are not even physical objects let alone agents or thinkers. It is also common for people to talk about mobile phones trying to do things (most frequently, but not only, trying to kill them), as well as wanting, hating, liking, thinking and pretending.
One might aim to dismiss such cases as merely unserious extensions, comparable to talk of table legs or cabbage heads. But this invites us to ask where the line should be drawn between serious and unserious attributions of mental states. And that seems to take us in the wrong direction. We have replaced the task of drawing a line between thinkers and non-thinkers with the task of drawing a line between serious and unserious talk about thinkers. The latter problem seems no easier to solve. Worse, adult humans might benefit from over-or under-attributing mental states and powers. As long as this is possible, there can be no justification for supposing that any line demarcating serious from unserious talk will correspond to the line separating thinkers from thoughtless systems.

further obstacle: diversity, inter- and intra-personal

Expertise may differ from person to person in important ways, perhaps because we are at different points on the autistic spectrum or perhaps because of cultural differences between us (see, for example, Dixson, Komugabe-Dixson, Dixson, & Low, 2018). Relying directly on mundane expertise could not yield consensus on what systems do, think or feel; nor even on which systems are agents, persons or thinkers. This is the *Diversity Problem*: Different people have different models of minds and actions; and one person may operate with more than one model.
insert-transcript#5174858f-0728-4f2c-a01e-3357866f01af-here

1. We as researchers need a shared understanding of belief and desire.

2. There are three potential sources of shared understanding: folk psychology, philosophy and decision theory.

3. Folk psychology does not provide a shared understanding.

4. Nor does philosophy.

Therefore:

5. We need decision theory to provide a shared understanding.

insert-transcript#6a6a9ea0-1b8f-45a8-84fb-931cf86116a0-here
distinctive = has value distinct from true belief
KNOWLEDGEyesno
Is it a mental state?Williamson (2000)Hyman (1999)
Knowing entails believing?Rose & Schaffer (2013)Radford (1966)
Is it a form of belief?Sosa (2007)Williamson (2000)
Valuable for action?Plato’s MenoKaplan (1985)
Is humanly attainable?[others]Unger (1975)
Depends on context?Lewis (1996)[lots]
insert-transcript#92931867-c0ff-45d3-8e9a-2380c8310f7a-here

Which things manifest agency?

‘The paramecium’s swimming through the beating of its cilia, in a coordinated way, and perhaps its initial reversal of direction, count as agency.’

(Burge, 2009, p. 259)

‘the paramecium cannot be an agent [...]

None of its interactions with the environment [...] need involve anything like an act on the part of the paramecium.’

(Steward, 2009, p. 227)

Do these two have a shared understanding of agency?

Compatible claims about different things? Or incompatible claims about one thing?
Nearly everyone in philosophy thinks that, overall, the reasons favour one of these views. But we also know that philosophers have been disagreeing for a good 2000 years and that the trend is not towards disagreements being overcome through the use of reason.
insert-transcript#1badef49-7cdb-49d7-9435-22f473d7b3f8-here

Philosophical Folk Psychology

another obstacle ...

‘epistemic case intuitions are generated by [...] folk psychology’

Nagel (2012, p. 510)

‘some part of us finds it almost impossible not to categorise them as’ agents

Steward (2009, p. 229)

insert-transcript#70f88ab3-0290-4e88-8e7d-4c52010b2967-here

1. We as researchers need a shared understanding of belief and desire.

2. There are three potential sources of shared understanding: folk psychology, philosophy and decision theory.

3. Folk psychology does not provide a shared understanding.

4. Nor does philosophy.

Therefore:

5. We need decision theory to provide a shared understanding.

insert-transcript#3e03228c-f437-46c0-9303-97e3f397189d-here
Striking that this is how Jeffrey describes the aim of the book.

This book has ‘a philosophical end: elucidation of the notions of subjective probability and subjective desirability or utility’

(Jeffrey, 1983, p. xi)

This is very useful because we have so far assumed without explicating these notions, both in the philosophical theory and in the dual-process theory ...
Jeffrey will help us to understand Belief and Desire
This is important for linking decision theory with belief-desire. (Decision theory as a theory about the patterns humans find in behaviour (vs as a theory about the patterns that actually are in behaviour).)

‘we [...] view
subjective values and probabilities
as interrelated constructs of decision theory’

(Davidson, 1974, p. 146)