TILPS

This research seminar is a forum for all members of TiLPS with research interests in epistemology or philosophy of science to present and discuss their work. Sometimes we also have a guest speaker or discuss a recently published article. Master students and Research Master students may take this research seminar for credit. Please contact Stephan Hartmann for more information. The seminars are held on Wednesdays from 16:45 to 18:30. Papers for discussion and some background reading will be available from this website at least one week in advance.

Program

17 January (12:00-12:45, Room TZ 6)
Jan Sprenger
Judgement and Behaviour in the Prisoner's Dilemma: The Impact of Moral and Strategic Considerations

17 January (13:00-13:45, Room TZ 6)
Katinka Quintelier
Folk Moral Relativism. Agent Relativism, Appraiser Relativism, or Evil Relativism?

8 February (16:45-18:30, Room D 119)
Welcome Meeting

15 February (16:45-18:30, Room DZ 6)
Juan M. Durán
Explaining Computer Simulation Results

7 March (16:45-18:30, Room TZ 3)
Christopher French
Constructing Empiricism

28 March (16:45-18:30, Room DZ 6)
Rogier de Langhe
A General Model of the Division and Distribution of Cognitive Labor

4 April (16:45-18:30, Room DZ 5)
Soroush Rafiee Rad
Updating On Conditionals

18 April (16:45-18:30, Room DZ 5)
Giulia Andrigehtto
The Normative Power of Sanction and its Effect in Sustaining Cooperation

Abstracts

The Normative Power of Sanction and its Effect in Sustaining Cooperation
Giulia Andrigehtto, European University Institute and TiLPS

Punishment is widely considered as a viable tool for sustaining cooperation, but experimental evidence is still controversial. With few exceptions, punishment is experimentally implemented as the imposition of a material economic cost on the recipient. In this talk, I claim that looking at punishment only as the imposition of a cost is an incomplete view and argue that a more insightful understanding of this practice is available once its norm-communicative nature is identified and properly exploited. I use the term sanction to indicate the practice that combines norm-based communication and the imposition of a material incentive and I suggest that it boosts cooperation more than material punishment because it promotes norm-salience. I present data from agent-based simulations and laboratory experiments that seem to confirm this hypothesis.

Explaining Computer Simulation Results
Juan M. Durán, Universität Stuttgart and TiLPS

My presentation focuses on the problem of explaining computer simulations results. I divide the presentation into three major sections: firstly I narrow down the class of simulations of interest; then I try an ontological conceptualization of computer simulations. These two 'introductory' sections are meant to set some conceptual grounds for the discussion on explanation; it is also meant to shed some light on unclear terms used in current literature. The last one is dedicated to briefly discussing different models of scientific explanation with a special emphasis on Kitcher's unification account. I finally claim that Kitcher's is the best model for explaining computer simulation results.

Constructing Empiricism
Christopher French, University of British Columbia and TiLPS

W.V.O. Quine and Richard C. Jeffrey both understood Rudolf Carnap as trying to rationally reconstruct, as a sort of foundationalist epistemology, either scientific concept formation or scientific inference. Quine eschewed such constructions in favor of a Naturalized epistemology. However, although Jeffrey also eschewed Carnap’s inductive logic in favor in of his probability kinematics, Jeffrey also rejected the naturalization project. In my talk I highlight the similarities between Carnap’s answer to Quine -- located in both his radical re-conceptualization of philosophy as language planning and the project of explication – and Jeffrey’s “radical probabalism”. Both Carnap and Jeffrey provided a pragmatic framework from which formal characterizations of (scientific) induction could be constructed, not as a way to justify particular epistemological theories, but to guide agents in particular decision contexts. Instead of a naturalized epistemology, both Carnap and Jeffrey provide a framework for a sort of "pragmatic" empiricism.

A General Model of the Division and Distribution of Cognitive Labor
Rogier de Langhe, TiLPS

Any division and distribution of labor consists of a solution to an allocation problem and a coordination problem. Yet rival approaches to the division and distribution of cognitive labor have either framed the problem as an allocation problem and focused on competion, or as a coordination problem with a focus on coordination. A unified model of the organization of cognitive labor is proposed which integrates coordination but retains competition-based models as a limiting case.

Updating On Conditionals
Soroush Rafiee Rad, TiLPS

Updating probabilistic belief on the basis of learning some conditional statement has been a major challenge for Bayesians. In a recent paper Igor Douven proposed a set of scenarios in which learning a conditional will result in raising, lowering or leaving unchanged the belief in the antecedent of the conditional. He proposed that any process of updating on conditionals should be able to account for the different outcomes that we intuitively expect in these cases. We will examine the scenarios proposed by Igor Douven and argue that the well known updating process based on the cross entropy measure, when applied in the context of causal networks, can be considered as a suitable candidate and does indeed account for what we intuitively expect for the antecedent of the conditional.

Judgement and Behaviour in the Prisoner's Dilemma: The Impact of Moral and Strategic Considerations
Jan Sprenger, TiLPS

How do people perceive a social dilemma such as the Prisoner's Dilemma if the problem is framed focusing entirely on monetary incentives -- as is commonly done in laboratory experiments? Focusing on the involved conflict between strategic and moral incentives, we designed a two-stage experiment to analyse the subjects' judgement and behaviour in such a situation. We first elicited the subjects' preferences over the different outcomes in the Prisoner's Dilemma from three different perspectives (moral, strategic, combined) and then, some month later, let them decide on actions in the respective context. The data shows that: (a) subjects can differentiate between moral and strategic incentives; (b) general evaluations are a combination of moral and strategic preferences; (c) actual behaviour in the lab is primarily determined by the subjects' first order beliefs; (d) there are significant differences between the responses of the same participants across the two stages. The analysis suggests that while subjects have a complex and socially minded view on the incentive structure of the Prisoner's Dilemma, the common focus on monetary incentives and anonymity in economic lab experiments directs behaviour into a special and not necessarily realistic direction.

This paper is a joint work with Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, Markku Versakalu, Gari Walkowitz and Philipp Wichardt.

Folk Moral Relativism. Agent Relativism, Appraiser Relativism, or Evil Relativism?
Katinka Quintelier, Ghent University

Certain philosophers and psychologists argue that relativizing our moral judgments is dangerous, inconsistent or not feasible. Therefore, we should think of moral judgments as non-relative. In this talk, I present results from a recent study on folk moral relativism. In line with previous studies, our study confirms that some participants relativize their judgments about particular moral issues. We also find that different people consistently adhere to different kinds of moral relativism. I present designs for follow-up studies that broaden the set of moral issues and further reduce potential confounds. Finally, I discuss our findings in relation to the broader aim of these studies, which is to shed light on the desirability of endorsing a relativist view towards moral judgments.