26 episodes

Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature pairs central texts from Western philosophical tradition (including works by Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Rawls and Nozick) with recent findings in cognitive science and related fields. The course is structured around three intertwined sets of topics: Happiness and Flourishing; Morality and Justice; and Political Legitimacy and Social Structures.

Philosophy and Science of Human Nature Tamar Gendler

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.1 • 53 Ratings

Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature pairs central texts from Western philosophical tradition (including works by Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Rawls and Nozick) with recent findings in cognitive science and related fields. The course is structured around three intertwined sets of topics: Happiness and Flourishing; Morality and Justice; and Political Legitimacy and Social Structures.

    25. Tying up Loose Ends

    25. Tying up Loose Ends

    Professor Gendler begins with brief introductory remarks about the course’s methodology, explaining the approach that was taken to reading and presenting various articles. She continues with a discussion of Cass Sunstein’s work on social norms, looking particularly at his account of the willingness to pay/willingness to accept distinction. The lecture continues with a consideration of how this distinction-–and the heuristic reasoning that gives rise to it–-might be used to explain our responses to the trolley problem. In the final segment of the lecture, Professor Gendler offers a way of thinking systematically about relations among the political philosophical views of Thomas Hobbes, John Rawls and Robert Nozick.

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    2. The Ring of Gyges: Morality and Hypocrisy

    2. The Ring of Gyges: Morality and Hypocrisy

    After introducing Plato's Republic, Professor Gendler turns to the discussion of Glaucon's challenge in Book II. Glaucon challenges Socrates to defend his claim that acting justly (morally) is valuable in itself, not merely as a means to some other end (in this case, the reputation one gets from seeming just). To bolster the opposing position--that acting justly is only valuable as a means to attaining a good reputation--Glaucon sketches the thought experiment of the Ring of Gyges. In the second half of the lecture, Professor Gendler discusses the experimental results of Daniel Batson, which suggest that, at least in certain controlled laboratory settings, people appear to care more about seeming moral than about actually acting fairly. These experimental results appear to support Glaucon's hypothesis in the Ring of Gyges thought experiment.

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    1. Course Introduction

    1. Course Introduction

    Professor Gendler explains the interdisciplinary nature of the course: work from philosophy, psychology, behavioral economics, and literature will be brought to bear on the topic of human nature. The three main topics of the course are introduced--happiness and flourishing, morality, and political philosophy--and examples of some of the course’s future topics are discussed.

    Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://oyc.yale.edu

    This course was recorded in Spring 2011.

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    24. Censorship

    24. Censorship

    Professor Gendler explores some aspects of the question of what sorts of non-rational persuasion are legitimate for a government to engage in. She begins with two modern examples that illustrate Plato’s view on state censorship. She next turns to the text itself and outlines in detail Plato’s argument that since we are vulnerable to non-rational persuasion, and since a powerful source of such persuasion is imitative poetry, such poetry must be censored by the state. Drawing on a number of earlier themes from the course, she then discusses several implications of the fact our limited ability to rationally regulate our non-rational responses to representations makes fiction both potentially powerful, and potentially dangerous.

    Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://oyc.yale.edu

    This course was recorded in Spring 2011.

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    26. Concluding Lecture

    26. Concluding Lecture

    In this concluding lecture, Professor Gendler charts four paths through the course. The first path traces how the course’s three main goals were realized: the goals of introducing students to the discipline of Philosophy though a number of central texts; of considering certain central questions raised by those philosophical texts in light of alternative approaches from related disciplines; and of considering more generally the how various disciplines might provide complementary perspectives on important questions. The second path traces how students’ understanding of the main course topics-–happiness and flourishing; morality; and political legitimacy and social structures--might have changed over the course of the semester. The third path traces the course’s main topics in light of three themes that unify the material-–the multi-part soul; luck and control; and the relation between the individual and society. And the fourth path looks at the course in light of three three central quotations, from Plato, Aristotle and Epictetus.

    Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://oyc.yale.edu

    This course was recorded in Spring 2011.

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    23. Social Structures

    23. Social Structures

    Professor Gendler begins by recapping the topic of state legitimacy and then offers a way of understanding the disagreement between Rawls and Nozick as one over what states ought to do given the phenomena of moral luck. She then turns to a discussion of how social and cultural structures influence both our characters and our perception of the world. She begins by discussing ways in which this theme plays a role in the work of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill. She then discusses recent empirical work on this question, including a body of anthropological and psychological literature that suggests that individuals raised in societies that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic have highly atypical responses in a wide range of cases.

    Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://oyc.yale.edu

    This course was recorded in Spring 2011.

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Customer Reviews

4.1 out of 5
53 Ratings

53 Ratings

Orbit308 ,

Great class

The audio is only messed up in the intro. Skip to the next lecture. She has a unique voice, it kinda sticks in your head..easy to follow and entertaining class.

Hrrjordan ,

Loved these lectures

I’ve already listened to these lectures twice. Fascinating material and well taught. I learned so much.

erikj09 ,

interesting course marred by frequent audio problems and missing/duplicated lectures

Tamar Gendler is a great lecturer, but the audio files for this course have been sloppily handled. The audio for Lecture 1 skips and has parts of Lecture 2 spliced into it by mistake. More than once a lecture is missing because of accidental duplication of files. The audio files for Lectures 8 and 9 are exactly the same, and I know they are not supposed to be because as a result references in later lectures back to Epictetus and Boethius are confusing. The files for Lectures 13 and 14 are also exactly the same, so that the difference between utilitarianism and deontology isn't fully explained. I haven't finished listening yet, so there may be more such problems.

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