Experimental Philosophy Lab Meeting at NYU: Alfano and Brownstein (May 20)

Join the Metro Experimental Research Group for an experimental philosophy lab meeting on Friday, May 20th, at 4:00 pm at the NYU Philosophy Department, 2nd floor seminar room. Presentations by Mark Alfano and Michael Brownstein (titles and abstracts appear below) will be followed by informal discussion at a local pub. Please note: unlike other talks this semester, this talk will be held at NYU. 

This will also be my last meeting as director of MERG, before I move to Wisconsin this summer to take an assistant professorship at Lawrence University. So please come wish me farewell, if so inclined. 

Titles and Abstracts: 

"Is Contentment the Dual of Desire? An Experimental Investigation"

Mark Alfano, City University of New York Graduate Center  

Both conceptual analysis and experimental results point toward the conclusion that desire can be formalized as a robust modal operator whose dual is contentment.  I begin by laying out some of the key properties of duals and illustrating them with the alethic modality.  Next, I demonstrate how to formalize the ‘a desires that’ idiom, argue that ‘a would be content with’ is an adequate dual for desire, and map out the desiderative square of opposition thus generated.  I continue by presenting experimental evidence that supports this argument and attempting to defuse some potential methodological objections.  The talk concludes by pointing to some philosophically interesting applications of the logic of desire, including both a formalization of Frankfurtian definitions of free will and a constraint on practical rationality.

"Attributions of Self-Awareness in Action"

Michael Brownstein, New Jersey Institute of Technology

My aim is to identify some factors that influence ordinary attributions of “self-awareness” to others.  In particular, my interest is in explicit self-awareness in action, where one’s attention is focused on what one is doing.  In this study, I sought to uncover subjects’ willingness to attribute several descriptive terms related to self-awareness to people shown in videos typing a letter or playing basketball.  I asked subjects to rate to what extent they thought the person shown in the video “is aware,” “focuses on,” “thinks about,” “deliberates about” and “knows” what he or she is doing.  I aimed to identify six possible influences on attributions of self-awareness. Thus far, there appear to be interesting correlations between a number of these conditions and folk attributions of self-awareness to others.

Comments

[Mark Phelan]

Just a reminder: This lab will take place tomorrow at 4.