The University of Missouri will host the Formal and Experimental Philosophy Workshop, inviting James Beebe, Justin Bruner, Kevin Dorst, Sahar Heydari Fard, Paul Henne, Josh Knobe, Kate Hazel Stanton, Jen Cole Wright, Jingyi Wu. 

RSVP by October 20 @ https://tinyurl.com/FAX2023

Schedule & Abstracts below

Schedule: Friday

10:00: Coffee and breakfast (on site)

10:30-11:30: Josh Knobe, What Comes to Mind

11:45-12:45: Paul Henne, One Concept of Causation

12:45-2:45: Lunch (downtown)

2:45-3:45: Sahar Heydari Fard, Polarization and Categorical Disadvantage

4:00-5:00: Jingyi Wu, Where Inattention Pays

Saturday

9:30: Coffee and breakfast (on site)

10:00-11:00 Kate Hazel Stanton, Fun at the Finkapalooza!

11:15-12:15: Justin Bruner, How mixed strategies make a difference in the one-shot prisoner's dilemma

12:15-2:15: Lunch (downtown)

2:15-3:15: Kevin Dorst, Bayesians Commit the Gambler's Fallacy 

3:30-4:30: James Beebe, The vice of strong intellectual individualism

4:15-5:45: Jen Cole Wright, Morality as a regulator of divergence: Why folk metaethics matters

Abstracts

What Comes to Mind, Josh Knobe

A central aspect of our predicament as finite, limited beings is that we are not able to think about everything. We have to think only about certain things and leave others unconsidered. I will be talking about a series of computational simulations and experimental studies that explore how people navigate this difficult predicament. The computational simulations reveal that, in certain circumstances, it is better to think about the things we regard as good and to leave the things we regard as bad unconsidered. The experimental studies then indicate that human beings do in fact tend to show precisely this pattern.

One Concept of Causation, Paul Henne

Causal pluralism—the idea that there are multiple concepts of causation—resolves longstanding puzzles for theories of causation. Against the current surge of pluralism, I argue that recent work on causal judgment does not support causal pluralism; instead, it suggests that there is but one concept of causation, a counterfactual concept. This new work on causal judgments and counterfactual thinking resolves these longstanding puzzles and yields novel predictions that cannot be explained by alternative accounts.

Polarization and Categorical Disadvantage, Sahar Heydari Fard

Groundbreaking work in evolutionary game theory has been instrumental in shaping our understanding of categorical disadvantages like gender or racial discrimination. However, the evolutionary models used to explore these disadvantages conceive categories as fixed entities wherein members experience consistent (dis)advantages in, for example, bargaining situations (O'Connor, Bruner, Rubin, etc.). This paper aims to reimagine these models with dynamic categories. To do so, I compare the emergence of social categories to the processes that lead to polarization within a population. I show that rethinking categories this way allows exploring three interconnected features of social categories in the real world: (1) the dynamic and gradual formation and dissolution of categories of disadvantage, (2) the shifting features that define these categories and their consequent impact on the nature of disadvantage, and (3) the varying relational distances between these fluid categories and their implications for social change.

Where Inattention Pays, Jingyi Wu (joint work with Liam Kofi Bright)

It is easier to be mediocre when you are in the mainstream. This, at least, would be true, if it were the case that mainstream academics have a preference for engaging with work from their own research traditions, while marginalized academics have to engage with mainstream work for career survival. Using computer simulations, we explore how under such attention asymmetry, mainstream work becomes over-credited, worse in quality, and over-represented, as compared to marginalized work. Along the way we present empirical evidence of this phenomenon and discuss how it relates to demographic disparities observed in the academy.

Fun at the Finkapalooza! Kate Hazel Stanton

The valence of an expression is the affective pole with which it is associated: positive or negative. Recent work in linguistics has given considerable attention to expressive lexical items; items whose valence or range of valences is fixed by the interpretation function: `crap' is negative, `hooray' is positive. But much earlier work in psychology (e.g. Osgood et al (1957, 1962)) indicated that valence associations are available more broadly across the lexicon: `hate' is (defeasibly) associated with negative valence `love' is (defeasibly) positive. This talk argues that valence associations are robustly available both at the level of word and morpheme and that they can be used to predict patterns of conversational inference. But I claim that use of valence to predict inference does not follow recognised routes in semantics and pragmatics (indeed, I will suggest that valence itself does not naturally fit in the semantic/pragmatic divide, and motivates a move to a distributional semantic model). I present evidence of what I call `valence matching', in which speakers prefer inferred content that `matches' the valence of the utterance from which they are inferring. I then situate this use of valence as a conversational implementation of the broader affect heuristic, in which decisions are influenced by affective states or affect associations with objects and events (cf. Slovic et al 2002).

How mixed strategies make a difference in the one-shot prisoner's dilemma, Justin Bruner

Mixed strategies – where one opts to randomize one’s decision – are thought to be of minimal significance in the one-shot prisoner’s dilemma. Rationality advises against mixed strategies because they are strictly dominated and mixed strategies appear to do no better in evolutionary contexts as well. We argue against this commonsense view that mixed strategies are of no significance in the one-shot prisoner’s dilemma. Mixed strategies can play a role in the emergence of cooperation, and can even stabilize some level of cooperation under conditions where cooperation was previously thought impossible.

Bayesians Commit the Gambler's Fallacy, Kevin Dorst

The gambler’s fallacy is the widely-observed tendency for people to expect random processes to switch more often than they actually do—for example, to think that after a string of tails, a heads is more likely. It’s often taken to be evidence for irrationality. It isn’t. Rather, it’s to be expected from a group of Bayesians who begin with casual uncertainty, and then observe unbiased data from an (in fact) statistically independent process. Although they’ll converge toward the truth, they’ll do so in an asymmetric way—ruling out “streaky” hypotheses more quickly than “switchy” ones. As a result, the majority (and the average) will exhibit the gambler’s fallacy. If they have limited memory, this tendency will persist even with arbitrarily large amounts of data. Indeed, such Bayesians would exhibit a variety of empirical trends found in studies of the gambler’s fallacy—for example, predicting switches after short streaks but continuations after long ones. Upshot: what’s been thought to be clear evidence for irrationality may in fact be evidence for rational responses to limited data and memory.

The vice of strong intellectual individualism, James Beebe

I report a series of empirical studies that aim to measure and shed light on the trait of intellectual individualism, which is a disposition to rely upon one’s own reasoning and beliefs as much as possible while relying upon the reasoning and beliefs of others as little as possible. It will seem obvious to many that strong forms of intellectual individualism will be problematic because they close one off from valuable opportunities to learn from the knowledge and experience of others and because they embody a failure to acknowledge and appreciate that one’s current intellectual endeavors are possible only because of past reliance upon the knowledge and experience of others. I explain the extent to which intellectual individualism is commonly associated with a derogation of the intellectual capacities, knowledge, and experience of others and – independently of this – the degree to which it is associated with intellectual pitfalls such as susceptibility to misinformation, lower levels of scientific literacy, and belief in conspiracy theories.

Morality as a regulator of divergence: Why folk metaethics matters, Jen Cole Wright

Living together cooperatively in groups requires creating and maintaining healthy normative structures that protect members of the group from harm and injustice, while also protecting the moral sovereignty of individuals to make choices and express themselves “non-normatively”. This, I have argued, is the primary function of morality – i.e., to determine when to protect the space for “non-normative” beliefs, values, behaviors, and practices to flourish, and when to shut them down. This is a delicate balance that is psychologically challenging to navigate, especially given that once people view another’s beliefs, etc. as moral transgressions, they express a high degree of attitudinal and behavioral intolerance towards them, and the people who hold and/or do them. But research suggests that people can recognize something as a moral transgression and yet continue to leave open space for choice and disagreement. One of mechanisms at work here is metaethical beliefs—that is, what people view to be the source or nature of the moral “wrongness” of the transgression. When people take a realist stance, this shuts down the space for choice and disagreement, but when they take an anti-realist stance, this holds open space for tolerating differences. This also suggests that the metaethical pluralism I and others have found may reflect the obligation to recognize the moral authority of some, but not other, transgressors.