# Survey for study on relation between personality traits and philosophical views: **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 17, 2009, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412 "2009-04-17T13:57:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/61 "2009-04-20T14:44:14Z")
What does “course” mean, is it Brit or American? “One course”? I had to take Philosophy in 11th grade (well, 3º de BUP really) and History of Philosophy in 12th (COU), they were compulsory for everybody. Mind you, that was 23 years ago, and I have no idea what the heck 90% of the concepts mentioned in this thread are… on the other hand, if you want to see anybody who was in High School in Spain during the 80s faint, just mention “Reason vs Faith.” So I had to choose “other” although I have no formal college-level Philosophy training. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/62 "2009-04-20T14:45:30Z")
> [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](#): > > You may be right. But I may be able to change the example so that it works. Suppose I am in Nevada, and meet someone who is 6’1". I then really do know that the tallest person in Nevada is over 6’ tall, even though the person I met is in all likelihood not the tallest person in Nevada, and the actual tallest person and his actual height plays no role in the explanation of my knowledge. > [@Frylock](#): > > But **S&I** ’s point can be made in a slightly different way. I live in Texas right now. I myself am six feet and one inch tall. That means the tallest person in Texas has to be at least that tall. So I know that the tallest person in Texas is taller than six feet. But the actual tallest person’s being taller than six feet doesn’t enter into the causal explanation for my having formed the belief that the tallest person in the state is taller than six feet, so it seems there’s a counterexample to the necessary condition on knowledge that I conjectured. Oops. I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I see this – wouldn’t you still need to know that the 6’1’’ person isn’t the tallest? It’s of course _very likely_ that this is the case, but it’s also very likely that you don’t win the lottery if you play, and yet people do. However, I think maybe nonconstructive proofs provide a similar counterexample – if you assume ‘not X’, and derive a contradiction from that, you know X, given an excluded middle, but not because X. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/63 "2009-04-20T15:00:53Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I see this – wouldn’t you still need to know that the 6’1’’ person isn’t the tallest? No. By seeing Bob, who’s who’s 6’1’‘, I know that the tallest person is at least 6’1’'. This is because the tallest person is either Bob or someone taller than Bo. And if the tallest person is at least 6’1’‘, it follows logically that he’s taller than 6’0’'. Did that clear it up? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/64 "2009-04-20T15:01:33Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > I see. That sounds a lot like hairsplitting to me, though. Math and physics teachers have spent a lot of time over the years explaining to me that a correct result obtained with flawed reasoning was worthless, so whether or not you can categorize it as “knowledge” rather than “coincidental truth” or “lucky guess” seems irrelevant to me - it’s still a wrong deduction even if it happens to be right. That’s exactly the point of the Gettier Problem. It addresses the epistemological attempt to define “knowledge.” Obviously, belief alone does not equal knowledge, but it’s also intuitively pretty clear that just believing something to be true is not the same as knowing it, even if it really is true (“true belief” =/= “knowledge”) This gave rise to a 3rd criterion to meet the definition of knowledge – that the belief had to be justified by something. Gettier was showing that even this third condition was insufficient to establish knowledge. In the case of the cell phone hypothetical, the conclusion meets all three criteria of justified true belief, yet is not knowledge. The Gettier Problem caused people to scramble to find a 4th criterion. I guess the reason it’s on the test is to see whether the subject intuits the distinction or not. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/65 "2009-04-20T15:15:17Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > 1. In this case, is a person free to choose whether or not to murder someone? > > Yes of course. There’s no obstacle to making that choice. If the computer was to tell you what you were going to do in the future, you could still make the opposite choice. I think some people are misunderstanding the use of the word “predict” in the hypothetical. It doesn’t mean the computer is prophesying like a soothsayer, it means that all activity in the universe is an inexorable chain reaction from the big bang. That includes all brain activity. No truly autocratic choices are possible because the brain chemistry causing the choices is _itself_ caused by external, deterministic forces sloshing the brain chemistry around and knocking the molecules together like Newton balls. The individual has no control over what he thinks or wants. What feels like the process of “choosing” is really just waiting for the brain synapses to fire in precisely the way that external forces dictate. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/66 "2009-04-20T15:19:39Z")
> [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](#): > > Not necessarily; you could just believe it because the logical form of the sentence. “The tallest X is X” is true for any X. (ETA–Well, it’s true for any X of which “X is tall” can be truly predicated–the curse of philosophy is you can’t make any statement without immediately wanting to go back and qualify it.) The objection to my first conjecture that I had _anticipated_ had to do with knowledge like this, knowledge of logical and mathematical truths. I think I can answer that one. I believe 2+2=4 _because_ 2+2=4, in the sense that what it means that 2+2=4 has certain (for lack of better word) effects on the way things are, and these effects came together to contribute to my education into knowledge that 2+2=4. So when I said if you know X, then you believe X because X, I didn’t mean “because” necessarily to be causal, though I didn’t make that clear. What about “For all X, an X is an X”? I believe it because it’s true, in much the same way I believe 2+2=4 because it’s true. What it is about the world that makes “For all X, an X is an X” true is something about the world that I have come to be acquainted with, and it is this something which has led me to think that “For all X, an X is an X” is true. (That holds whether I learned that fact at some point, or whether it is somehow innate.) That’s how I would defend the original conjecture when it comes to some logical truths. But what about a logical truth that includes terms referring to specific objects or classes of objects, like “All humans are human”? I believe it because I believe “For all X, an X is an X,” but I guess I don’t believe it because all humans are human. Rather, all humans are human because for all X, an X is an X. So yet again it appears my revised conjecture is better. This is another case in which if I know Y, then I believe Y because of certain factors which do in fact make it the case that Y. (In other words, not “because Y” but "because of the same things that make Y true.) ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/67 "2009-04-20T15:35:37Z")
(But of course this second conjecture is far too weak to be interesting. Even in the original Gettier cases, there are _“certain”_ factors which make it the case that Y for the offending Ys, which also contribute (causally, say) to the subject’s having formed the belief that Y.) ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/68 "2009-04-20T15:42:26Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > No. By seeing Bob, who’s who’s 6’1’‘, I know that the tallest person is at least 6’1’'. This is because the tallest person is either Bob or someone taller than Bo. > > And if the tallest person is at least 6’1’‘, it follows logically that he’s taller than 6’0’'. > > Did that clear it up? In that case, though, it’s not a counterexample to your original proposition anymore – if Bob’s in fact the tallest person, you know directly that the tallest person is taller than 6’, because it’s Bob and he’s 6’1’'; and beyond that, lacking knowledge of whether or not Bob is in fact the tallest, you can’t say anything about the tallest person. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/69 "2009-04-20T15:47:37Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > and beyond that, lacking knowledge of whether or not Bob is in fact the tallest, you can’t say anything about the tallest person. Yes you can! 😛 If Bob’s not the tallest, and Bob is 6’1’‘, then the tallest person must be taller than Bob (the tallest person certainly can’t be _shorter_ than Bob!), and so must be taller than 6’1’‘, and so must be taller than 6’0’'. That follows deductively! So here’s the example again. Bob is not the tallest person. I see Bob, and note that he is 6’1’‘. On this basis, I know (_know_, by deductive reasoning) that the tallest person is (must be!) taller than 6’0’‘. So, in this case, the tallest person’s being taller than 6’0’’ doesn’t explain why I believe that the tallest person is taller than 6’0’'. That’s a counterexample to my original conjecture. ETA Hope it’s understood that the smiley is friendly laughter. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/70 "2009-04-20T16:01:49Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > In that case, though, it’s not a counterexample to your original proposition anymore – if Bob’s in fact the tallest person, you know directly that the tallest person is taller than 6’, because it’s Bob and he’s 6’1’'; and beyond that, lacking knowledge of whether or not Bob is in fact the tallest, you can’t say anything about the tallest person. All it’s saying is that you can know the tallest person has to be at least as tall as Bob. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/71 "2009-04-20T16:44:30Z")
This could probably go back and forth (and I hope it’s clear that I’m not just playing thick to get a rise out of people) forever, and I don’t want to hog the thread, but I just can’t quite convince myself that I should buy into this: > [@Frylock](#): > > Yes you can! 😛 If Bob’s not the tallest, and Bob is 6’1’‘, then the tallest person must be taller than Bob (the tallest person certainly can’t be _shorter_ than Bob!), and so must be taller than 6’1’‘, and so must be taller than 6’0’'. That follows deductively! It seems to me that this is predicated on the knowledge that Bob isn’t the tallest person; lacking this, you still know that the tallest person is taller than 6’0’’ because Bob is, and he may well be the tallest. ‘The tallest person’ becomes an envelope term for ‘Bob or anybody taller than Bob’, a group which as far as you know only has the member ‘Bob’, until you find somebody taller than him. So you know that the tallest person is taller than 6’ because the tallest person (‘Bob or somebody taller than Bob’) is taller than 6’. By the way, if, as it seems you are arguing now, derived knowledge violates your proposition – i.e. if you know X (because X), and from X follows Y, then you don’t know Y because Y – then all knowledge does, since all knowledge is derived (or as I called it earlier, known only by proxy (actually I just see I called it ‘proximate’, which may not have been the right choice of words)). You ‘know’ only your internal representation of sensory data (and even there’s debate, it seems to me), from which you infer external causes. Anyway, I’m very prepared to accept that one can have an opinion different from mine on the issue, and mine’s probably not the right one – perhaps I get my logic twisted into a pretzel somewhere along the argument. I should probably sleep on it and rethink my perspective. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/72 "2009-04-20T16:55:02Z")
No. 8, the heart/brain problem, is essentially asking, “If scientists created a unicorn, could they sprinkle it with fairy dust?” Or rather, if science does one currently impossible thing, can it do another? Nothing in the terms of the question makes it possible to answer. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/73 "2009-04-20T23:20:21Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > The individual has no control over what he thinks or wants. What feels like the process of “choosing” is really just waiting for the brain synapses to fire in precisely the way that external forces dictate. No I understand that. I just reject it as absurd. Free will vs determinism is a false dichotomy - there is no conflict between them. They are like the particle and the wave - two different facets of the same phenomenon. Proof of which is that you cannot create a situation in which they truly are in conflict. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/74 "2009-04-21T01:35:13Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > No I understand that. I just reject it as absurd. Free will vs determinism is a false dichotomy - there is no conflict between them. They are like the particle and the wave - two different facets of the same phenomenon. Proof of which is that you cannot create a situation in which they truly are in conflict. Conflict with determinism is not what makes free will logical nonsense. It’s nonsense with or without determism. What determines the will? I’m not talking about the choice (the expression of the will), but the will itself. How do you control what you want to choose. How can you control the will without needing another will to do it (and another to do that, and another to do that)? ---
**Author:** ![placebo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e274bd/32.png) [@placebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/placebo)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/75 "2009-04-21T03:50:46Z")
Computers can’t predict murders anymore than they can solve the halting problem. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/76 "2009-04-21T06:24:13Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Conflict with determinism is not what makes free will logical nonsense. It’s nonsense with or without determism. What determines the will? I’m not talking about the choice (the expression of the will), but the will itself. How do you control what you want to choose. How can you control the will without needing another will to do it (and another to do that, and another to do that)? Well yeah. I mean, clearly free will exists, as we experience the phenomenon every day in obvious ways - it just doesn’t have the magic properties ascribed to it by theologians and philosophers. It seems to boil down to the ability to disobey directive from other autonomous entities. In this sense simple computer programs can have free will too, although they haven’t mastered the self-aware/reflective quality humans add to it yet. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/77 "2009-04-21T06:37:57Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Conflict with determinism is not what makes free will logical nonsense. It’s nonsense with or without determism. What determines the will? I’m not talking about the choice (the expression of the will), but the will itself. How do you control what you want to choose. How can you control the will without needing another will to do it (and another to do that, and another to do that)? I would argue that it is precisely because determinism is true that punishment and reward make sense. They act as determinants to shape people’s behavior. You punish your child because you believe determinism is true–you believe it will contribute toward making your child’s behavior different in the future. If you didn’t, why bother? And if you think that punishment and reward should serve this purpose, then you are going to need some analog of choice, freedom, etc. Suppose that A pushes B into C, knocking C into the path of an incoming train and killing him. Now from the perspective of deterrence, it clearly makes more sense to punish A than B–after all, it was A’s volitional action that resulted in the death of C, and volitional actions are those that are subject to alteration by deterrent factors. B was an ‘instrument’, was acted upon without himself acting. Deterrence is aimed at a certain class of volitional actions, and not at non-volitional events like B’s knocking C under the train. Thus there is a sense (though not of course a libertarian sense) in which we can say A is responsible for C’s death and B is not. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/78 "2009-04-21T13:51:50Z")
I didn’t say there shouldn’t be punishment and reward. It’s not like we have any choice about that anyway. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/79 "2009-04-21T13:59:24Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I didn’t say there shouldn’t be punishment and reward. It’s not like we have any choice about that anyway. 😉 Naturally. But you aren’t going to punish everybody who is part of a causal chain resulting in a socially harmful consequence. You need to explain why, say, in the above example you would punish A and not B. So you are going to have to come up with some criterion of punish-worthiness that is IMO going to end up looking a lot like a compatibilist version of free will. Why not just call it that? A acted of his own volition; B was acted upon. Ergo, you punish A and not B. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412/80 "2009-04-21T14:22:51Z")
Philosophically speaking, there’s no such thing as truly autonomous volition. Practically speaking, we behave as though there is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-for-study-on-relation-between-personality-traits-and-philosophical-views/493412.md?page=5)