Promising Against the Evidence #3 - Ethics | PHILOSOPHY

[Music] hi I'm Betty submerge and I go by Barry I'm a philosophy professor at Brandeis University today I'm going to continue talking about the problem of promising against the evidence in this episode I'll explain what I think is the best response to the problem let me again remind you of the problem it is this can we responsibly promise to do something when we have evidence that we might not follow through with their promise it seems that the answer must be no that is because if we believe as our evidence suggests that we might not follow through with our promise we seem to be insincere in making it but if we believe that we will follow through we seem to be irrational precisely because our evidence suggests that we might not yet whether we are in sincere or irrational we are liable to mislead the person we are making our promise to therefore it seems we cannot responsibly promise against the evidence when we make such promises all the time what then shall we say about such promises my preferred response takes inspiration from constant that we act under the idea of freedom I interpret the significance of their dictum like this our evidence doesn't determine what it is rational for us to believe about matters that are up to us when considering matters that are up to us we should look to our practical reasons not to our evidence to determine what we will do for example when considering whether to order an espresso at a coffee shop you should think about what you want to drink not about the fact that you almost always get an espresso and when considering whether to spend the rest of your life with someone you should consider your love for the other and the nature of your relationship rather than evidence about what is likely to happen in general when something is up to us we should decide what to do not seek to predict what we will do and it may be rational for us to decide to do something even though we are not in a position to predict that we will do it if we decided to do it for example it may be rational to decide to quit smoking or to spend the rest of our life with the person we dearly love even though we retain evidence that we might fail we can then imagine a bookie who is selling bets and what we will do and if we imagined a bookie to be rational we might realize that the Betsi cells will reflect a non-negligible chance that we will fail nonetheless since we are agents we have a different view of what will happen insofar as what happens is up to us precisely because it's up to us because we are agents but this is only half of the response more needs to be said because even though as agents we should decide what to do rather than predict what we will do we should also not ignore the evidence if we made decisions while ignoring all information about the likelihood of succeeding we would be well stupid the hard question is how to consider evidence in our decision-making without taking it as grounds for prediction especially if what makes something a prediction is the fact that it is based on evidence the answer to this hard question is that there are two different ways in which we can take into account evidence about what we are likely to do we can take it into account as the basis for prediction or we can take it into account as considerations of how difficult it will be to do what we are deciding to do let me illustrate the point with an example suppose there's a 10 kilometer road race with a limited number of spots the spots are assigned through a lottery you would like to impress someone and you could do that by running the 10k race in under 60 minutes now suppose that consideration of likelihoods reveals the following your chance of getting a spot in the race is pretty good say 80% your chance of running the race in under 60 minutes if you actually get a spot in it it is also pretty good see also 80% this means that your chance of finishing the race in under 60 minutes and impressing the person you want to impress is 64% but notice that there are as we supposed to factors of uncertainty here whether you will get a spot in the race and whether you will run the 10k in under 60 minutes whether you get a spot in the race is not up to you and so you can't decide to get a spot in the race you have to make your decision conditional on winning a spot in the lottery and conditional on things working out in your favor but whether you run 10k in under 60 minutes is we may suppose entirely up to you let us ignore the possibility of getting injured or hit by a car or by a meteorite those worries could be factored in with the lottery but if it is entirely up to you whether you run 10k in under 60 minutes then you can and shouldn't decide whether to do so in light of your reasons for doing it you cannot make your decision to run the race in under 60 minutes conditional on your running the race in under 60 minutes however you cannot make a good decision if you ignore the difficulty for you of running the race in under 60 minutes you should be aware that this will require some resolve and persistence so if you make a good decision you will take into account the difficulty you will refrain from eating junk food or drinking beer before the race you will train in advance of the race and you will be mindful of the need for resolve during the race in this way you will not ignore the evidence of difficulty but you will also not use it as the basis for prediction the important point to realize here is that taking into account the difficulty of the task in making a decision or a promise does not mean turning the task into an easy one so that you could predict success after all the point is rather that just as there is a distinct view of what we will do that we enjoy as agents insofar as matters are up to us there is a distinct view of work we will likely do that we enjoy as agents as well what the bookie will see as a chance of failure we will see as posing a difficulty this is something we must prepare for and be mindful of but it does not show that to make a good decision we must be able to predict success after all a consequence of my preferred response the problem of promising against the evidence is that as agents we can sometimes rationally believe against the evidence we can rationally believe against the evidence that we will do something if it is up to us to do it and it is sufficiently important for us to do it that is because we can view our future in surprise it is up to us as agents in light of our practical reasons in we want value or are obliged to do indeed we make a mistake of sorts if we view our future in light of evidence as a bookie would in that case we treat something that we will do as something that will merely happen of course what we do does happen but insofar as we view it as something that merely happens we ignore our agency we fail to act under the idea of freedom you

Channel: Wireless Philosophy

Views: 9,284

Keywords: Khan Academy, Philosophy, Wireless Philosophy, Wiphi, video, lecture, course, Brandeis University, Berislav Marusic, Promising against the evidence, promising, evidence, ethics, marriage, smoking, Kant, wireless philosophy

Id: 4Wo_PcRbx_E

Length: 7min 29sec (449 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 18 2018