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The Starting Point - Coggle Diagram

- - - - A Feminist Theme (Women take over a Labor Strike when the men cant)
      - Men realise the important of the problems in the lives of women when they have to take over
      - Banned for being funded by "Communists"
      - Feminism is intricately tied in with other ideas such as class and race
      - Racial Discimination and Class Discriminations lead to strike
      - Women emerge victorious
  - - - Since Intersex was considered a rarity, there people belived that SEX is biological fact
      - Often in medical terminology, biological variation is patholioised
      - Medical/Scientific terminology might categorize the normal, and the boundaries are arbitrary
    - - Variation is common and fundamental in living organism
      - Differences in Deisgn are Benign
      - Social Institutions assign meaning to the variation
      - Prejudice transforms benign diferences into inequalities
    - - Nature vs Nurture Debate of Gender: What makes us masculine or feminine?
      - Biological Essentialists believe that nature is the greatest predictor of gender
      - Social Constructionist beileve communities produce and reproduce ideas about gender which influences the life trajectories and behaviors
      - The Woman Question? Women Suffurage
        
        Vote rightights? Ediuation? military service? coach men;s sport teams? wear pants? ride horses? haev right to birth control
      - Social Constructionists challenged the idea that biology is destiny
      - Feminist Psychonanalysis built a framework for the developement of gender identity
      - There is also Gender Role Theory: Roles are assigned to gender
      - Candace west and don zimmerman - Gender is a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interactions
      - Trans experience is often used as contrast to normal experience and creates a minority view of gender
      - If you believe in Biological Variation, trans experiences are not special, we all lie somewhere on the spectrum
      - Judith Bulter (Gender Trouble) argues for the Gender Performance Theory that gender is universal performance, a set of acts that solidifies into a coherent identity (all of us are in drag)
      - If all of us are copies then in no way one is more real than the other
    - - Kimberly Krenshaw
      - How different identities such as gender, race, and ethnicity overlap and shape our experiences, our life outcomes, and our views of the world. White Masculinity vs Black Masulinity
      - Women's Rights have overlapped with white privilege and white interests (to increase white numbers)
      - Legalization of Contraception was dont under the idea of eugenics
      - Overlap of Oppression is a key factor
      - The idea of Gender expression say masculinity is a whole picture not just the gender expression, but race and other factors
      - Homophobia can be considered a gendered oppression
      - Simple needs are still challenges: Glass Escalator (male influx to female roles eased) and glass ceilings (female influx to male roles is supressed)
    - - Addresses the Idea of the Man Box: the set of characteristics a man should have otherwise they will be punished via discrimination
    - - Historical Context: White Men held all of the jobs until growth forced the need of more labor and led to a power differential until the black civil rights movement and the womens rights fought for equality and freedom from discrimination
    - - Context frames how the discussion in framed, who is the source of information
      - We recieve ideas about sex from school, peers, family, doctors etc.
      - Biological Essentialism
        
        Assumes people are born this way (gay, straight)
        
        A dominant theory
        
        Very little room for varation
        
        Assumed to be fixed as a virtue of biology
      - Old Theorists (Sexologists)
        
        Predominantly Essentialists
        
        Richard von Kraft Ebing
        
        Havelock Ellis
        
        Mangus Hirshfeld
        
        Alfred Kinsey
        
        William Masters
        
        Virgina Johnson
        
        Sex instinct is biological and reproductive, based on science and methodical
        
        Unknowlingly facilitated discourse on sex especially on sex and helped decriminalization by pathologizing it
      - Essentialism is misguided
        
        Nature has wide variation, and non procreative sex
        
        Rossalino "Green Porno"
        
        Excluded "Non-natural" sexual behavior
      - Freud was an essentialist and heteronormative but he look at sexuality as naturally pleasure seeking rather than reproductive and his focus on the psychology that helped in the development of mind theories of sexuality rather than body
      - If Heterosexual behavior was so natural, there would be no need for regulation
      - Social Constructionist (late 20th Century)
        
        Sexuality as a learned behavior
        
        Cultrual patterns in sexual behavior and their transmission
        
        Marxism related Sexuality to Society creating a sexual landscape. Feminism related it to gender in society
      - Gay Rights Activists
        
        Have relied on Essentialist "Born this Way" narrative
      - Queer Theorists focus on what counts as "normal" sexuality and argue that social factors guide this and the abstract idea represented by the terms are not stable but socially developed
    - - The terms are very new and the language can be very central. The practice of self identification is less than 200 yrs old and revealing it is even younger
      - Michael Foucalt "The History of Sexuality"
        
        Looks at what we considered sexuality itself and how it developed
        
        Noted the difference of Sexual Acts and Sexual Identities over time and when we embrace them it provides a newer depth of discourse
        
        Sexuality as Hidden Truth - Confession is Cathartic, but is given for analysis to an expert
        
        Essentialist ideas are still common for social movements as these words and the absolute basis helps justify action
    - - Historical Cross Cultural Studies are needed
      - Crossdressing has been there for a long time. Shakespeare, Archaeological evidence and are evidence of gender transgressions
      - The terminology did not exists becuase of thich its hard to identify them as such
      - Universal vs Marginalizing Definitions exist
        
        Universal definitions make it clear how often all are gender atypical
        
        Marginalized defintion limit the idea to complete dissonance with self with body
- - - - Materialism
        
        Francis Crick's Astonishing Hypothesis: everything about us is material and born from the brain
        
        While it is kinda mechanical, humility is important cuz we really don't know how a lot of things happen
      - Dualism
        
        Rene Descartes: Materialism in correct about non humans but not human
        
        We have a dual nature
        
        Material
        
        Spiritual
        
        1.Humans can do unique stuff
        
        The mind seems reals, we can doubt everything but the existence of our consciousness
        
        Dualism just feels right: easy to think of transformation, body switching, rebirth, minds without bodies ie gods
        
        Fake news: we know better now, doesn't help understand anything (like panspermia), brain research explains shit
      - Phineas Gage: The Man Transformed by Brain Injury
    - - Sigmund Freud and the Psychoanalytic method
        
        Unconscious Dynamics
        
        Inner conflict of the unconscious
        
        Unconscious Motivation/Reason
        
        We don't know how our mind works, what is say might not be the true reason
        
        Remembered/hated for the wacky ideas: penis envy, Electra complex, Oedipus complex
        
        The Psychological divisions of the Mind
        
        Id: the animalistic desires for satisfaction based on our human evolutionary history
        
        Ego: the understanding of the logic and reality of the world, a mediator, the true sense of self
        
        Super-ego: our internalization of social constructs and morals
        
        Essentially, mind is always at conflict, but the dynamics are often hidden. Developmentally: Id-Ego-Superego
        
        The states of development
        
        Fixation, if this phase of pleasure not properly completed, individual get stuck in that phase
        
        Oral (1yr): the mouth -> breast feeding -> if not weaned well obsession tobacco gum
        
        Anal (1-3yr): the poop -> toilet training -> if done incorrectly, person becomes 'anal'
        
        Phallic (3-5yr): the penis -> Oedipus complex, love mom kill dad, fear fail, become like dad
        
        Latency (5-puberty): repressed sexuality, focus on relationship friendship school etc
        
        Adulthood: normal sense of sexual and emotional needs
        
        Defense Mechanisms: To protect ego from the Id-Superego coflict
        
        Displacement: shift conflict to some other object/targets
        
        Sublimation: redirect conflict to other valuable activities
        
        Projection: transfer inner conflict by attributing to an outer person/object
        
        Rationalization: reasoning out the conflict
        
        Regression: avoid conflict by going back stages
        
        Reaction formation: reassigning reaction to hide / mask the conflict, lie to oneself
        
        Hysteria and Catharsis
        
        When Id overruns the Super-ego : hysteria, people do things but subconsciously erase them or shock them away
        
        To face and reveal the truth, an explosive release is Catharsis
        
        Freud explored free association and hypnosis to facilitate catharsis
        
        Not Studied Anymore, cuz not falsifiable
      - B.F.Skinner and Behaviorism
        
        Late player, but formalized a body of work (like John Watson's) and created a theory of the mind
        
        No human nature: the human mind is infinitely malleable and learning is everything
        
        No mentalism: focus on what can be seen and observed, follow the scientific method
        
        All species are same: we evolved from the same point so there is no difference between how we work
        
        The 3 principles of Behaviorism
        
        Habituation; getting used to previous experiences and attention towards novelty
        
        Classical Conditioning: Makes associations with unrelated objects
        
        Instrumental Conditioning: association of actions and Reward/Punishment
        
        The Law of Effect
        
        Actions that have rewards become more.probable in the same state
        
        The Law of Partial reinforcement
        
        Intermittent but repeated rewards makes behavior last
        
        Tolman and Latent Learning
        
        The idea of mental maps, path integration and learning of indirect associations
        
        Noam Chomsky and Criticism of the Behaviorist
        
        While it explains animal, for humans, its outright wrong, or just boring and unfalsifiable or just boring
        
        While Skinner's Behaviorism does provide a meticulous scientific explaination of some human behaviors, it lacks the ability to explain a lot of what makes human behavior more than just learning and conditioning
      - Positive Psychology
        
        Bible of Positive Psychology - Martin Seligman
        
        The Happiness Hypothesis - Jonathan Haidt
        
        Happiness - Daniel Nettle
        
        What is happiness? Not very easily self assesed - easily affected by short term or context
        
        Evolutionary Psychologist - Evolutionary needs satisfied but not so simple
        
        Set point 1
        
        Happiness doesnt Change
        
        Happiness is genetically determined and has a genticall determined range
        
        People dont understand the irrelevance of life events as happiness is set point
        
        Humans can adapt to situations thus happiness resets
        
        Psychological Immune system (Gilbert) behavior changes to help adapt and so does perception
        
        Set point 2
        
        Happiness is influence by context and is relative
        
        Social impact of happiness (Better or Worse than Others)
        
        Set point 3
        
        Danny Kahneman - Judgement about past events are skewed
        
        Endings can affect overall perception and previous perception is skewed
        
        Humility and optimism
        
        We still dont know a lot of these things and still so much we have to do
        
        We have a lot to look forward to and its a beautiful journey ahead, be positive
      - Social Psychology
        
        Social Priming - cross sensory influence can influence perception
        
        Implicit Biases
        
        Self
        
        The Spotlight Effect: we think we are under the spotlight, but actually no. no one is looking everyone focused on themselves
        
        Lake Wobegon Effect: we consider ourselves better
        
        Self Serving Bias: Positives ours, but Negatives are Externalities
        
        Cognitive Dissonace: Unpleasant and we try to reduce it. Like avoid inconsistent information (confirmation bias), Insufficient justification (to justify dissonance, we percieve differently)
        
        Attribution Theory
        
        We try to claim causes for actions, Person Bias/Fundamental attribution error (incorrect association to personality)
        
        "Professors are Smart because they seem knowledgeable about something"
        
        We forcefully attribute actions to personality and define them by that
        
        Liking
        
        Familiarty
        
        Similarity
        
        Attractiveness (Physical) - Bias (Matthew Effect)
        
        First Impression effect (Kelley Guest Speaker) and easy to make judgement (this slices)
        
        Self fullfilling perception (perceptions lead to changes; Spurters Test)
        
        Pymalion Effect (Treatment of People influences how they behave towards you)
        
        Group Psychology
        
        Inner Tendency to Generalize (even oneshot) not always a bad thing
        
        Stereotypes, Prejudice, Racism
        
        Stereotypes can be Positive, can be accurate
        
        But not always: confirmation bias, stereotypes are not unbiased, the sources are biased
        
        We naturally trust groups, people favor their groups, even when arbitrary
        
        We tend to break to world to us vs them
        
        Moral Problems
        
        We think "people should be judged as individuals not as group members"
        
        Public Stereotypes vs Private Stereotypes vs Implicit Stereotypes
        
        Google searches reveal private stereotypes
        
        IAT Harvard test for Implicit Biases
        
        We are at wars with ourselves, we learn to override biases using intelligent
      - Clinical psychology
        
        Where does illness end? An important question, affects social response and medical response
        
        Old hypothesis: Demonic Possession, Social Deviance
        
        Mood Disorders
        
        Major Depressive Disorder
        
        No reasonable cause
        
        Females more than males (maybe be due to reporting bias, physiology, or coping mechanisms)
        
        Min 2 weeks to avg 12 weeks episodes
        
        Heritable, neurotransmitter serotonin nonepinephrine
        
        Psychologically: negative pattern of thought
        
        Bipolar Disorder
        
        Highly heritable
        
        Mania + Depression
        
        Associated with creativity
        
        Schizophrenia
        
        1% of population
        
        Delusion (Paranoia)
        
        Hallucination sensory
        
        Disorganised speech and behavior
        
        Absence of normal cognition
        
        Paranoid
        
        Catatonic
        
        Disorganised
        
        Undifferentiated
        
        Inability to sequence and coordinate thoughts
        
        Neural: maybe structural or dopamine related, early life stress may impact
        
        Anxiety disorders
        
        Generalized Anxiety Symptoms
        
        Hereditary
        
        Childhood trauma
        
        Traumatic experiences lead to hyper vigilance
        
        Lead to even physical symptoms due to stress
        
        Phobias
        
        Continuous irrational fears
        
        Maybe evolutionary preparedness
        
        Obsessive compulsive disorder
        
        Inability to inhibit actions leading to compulsions
        
        Serotonin linked and hereditary
        
        Dissociative Disorders
        
        Dis-association of information in the brain, identity or memories may be affected
        
        Dissociative/Psychogenic Amnesia
        
        Memory loss
        
        Mostly selective but can be global
        
        May driven by tragic events or drugs/alcohol
        
        Dissociative Identity Disorder/ Multiple Personality Disorder
        
        Starts pre age 10
        
        More women than men
        
        Maybe driven by trauma
        
        Many psychologists don't believe it
        
        Maybe an extreme version of normal psychological personalities in different contexts
        
        Dissociative/Psychogenic Fugue
        
        Global memory loss with identity replacement: a fugue state
        
        Personality Disorder
        
        Paranoid
        
        Narcissistic
        
        Histrionic
        
        Borderline
        
        Dependent
        
        Are these really disorders or extreme personality, maybe untreatable cuz not disorders
        
        Antisocial personality Disorder/ sociopathy/psychopathy
        
        Male, amoral, seeking satisfaction with no regard for others
        
        Therapy
        
        Psychodynamic Therapy (Freudian)
        
        Free Association, Dream Analysis
        
        Long term, multiple sessions a week
        
        Problems are symptoms
        
        Behavior Therapy (Skinner)
        
        Token economies in Psychiatric hospitals, reward conditioning for good behavior, punishment for bad
        
        Phobia treatment by dis-association or re-association, despite failure to explain phobias, this method can treat effectively
        
        Cognitive Therapy
        
        Identify and correct distorted feelings
        
        A good mix is CBT
        
        Medical Intervention
        
        Anti-psychotic, Anti-anxiety, Anti-depressants
        
        Electroconvulsive Therapy: despite reputation good for depression
        
        Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
        
        Non-specific factors in Effectivity
        
        Support
        
        Hope
    - - Development
        
        Big Questions
        
        Continuity
        
        How we go from children to adults, how much translates
        
        Knowledge
        
        What we know and what we learn?
        
        Empiricism- everything is learnt
        
        Nativism - children know it all
        
        Constructivism - nothing is real but mental models
        
        Morality
        
        Jean Jacques Rousseau - we are inherently good but society shapes up to immorality
        
        Are we inherently good or bad; moral or immoral or amoral
        
        Jean Piaget
        
        Theory of Cognitive Development - children think in a different way and that recapitulates phylogeny this human history
        
        Stage theory
        
        Stage 1 Sensorimotor - object permanence
        
        Stage 2. Preoperational - egocentrism, lack of conversation
        
        Stage 3 concrete operational - not fully capable of abstract reasoning but less ego centric
        
        Stage 4 Concrete operational - abstract and scientific reasoning
        
        Falsifiable Testable and often worked within a rich theoretical framework
        
        Too theoretical, sensitive to methodology, did not explain inner working
        
        Schema/schematas - frameworks of organizing knowledge
        
        Assimilation - fiting to experience to schema
        
        Accomodation - modify or create new schema to explain experience
        
        How we study kids now?
        
        Brain Scans and ethology (sucking or looking behavior; moral preference and response tricks)
        
        What explains development?
        
        Large Scale Changes (Piaget, Freud, Susan Carrey) - perception is fundamentally different across developement
        
        Developmental Modules - different modules related to different kinds of tasks develop individually and independently
        
        Neurobiological: Pruning, Myelination, Inhibitory Development
      - Language
        
        Language is Universal, human have some tendency to speak
        
        Pidgin (a makeshift communication) -> converted to creole a structured language (Creolization)
        
        Language Comprehension is NOT rote learning it has a system of abstract reasoning and unconscious rules
        
        Structure of Language
        
        Phoneme - A single smallest unit of sound/speech
        
        Morpheme - the smallest unit associated with an abstract unit ('arbitrariness of the sign')
        
        Syntax - recursion and rules to construct meaningful information ('infinte use of abstract media')
        
        Language Acquisition
        
        Noam Chomsky - Language is innate, much like a bodily organ (Nativism)
        
        Humans have innate language ability but structure is learnt (brain regions associated with language modules)
        
        Language Development
        
        Stage 1: Sensitivity to phonemes and self language
        
        Stage 2: Babbling, Basic Words, Objects
        
        Stege 3: Telegraphic speech
        
        Stage 4: Functional morphemes and full sentences
      - Perception
        
        Perception is a complex problem
        
        Backward Inference/Inverse Problem, multiple hypothesis can explain the data
        
        Brightness: we percieve contrast not absolute brightness (same color in light and dark)
        
        Object Segmentation: Gestalt Psychologists
        
        Segmentation by Proximity (clustering)
        
        Segmentation by Similarity (Texture similarity)
        
        Closure (Mind fillind to complete shapes)
        
        Simplest continuation
        
        Common Motion
        
        Good Form (Symmetry and natural shapes)
        
        Depth Perception
        
        Size and Blocking
        
        Mueller Lyer or Ponzo Illusion: Perception of Depth and Size affect each other
        
        Attention
        
        Sensory-> Working (ST) Memory
        
        Sometimes its effortless (Parallel)
        
        Sometimes it need effort (Serial)
        
        Often Involuntary
        
        Stroop Effect
      - Memory
        
        Distinctions
        
        Implicit (unconscious) vs Explicit (conscious)
        
        Semantic (fact) vs Episodic (Experience)
        
        Encoding, Storage, Retrieval
        
        Recall (Remember) vs Recognition (MCQ)
        
        Sensory, Short Term, Long Term
        
        Sensory memory (Immediate; lost soon)
        
        Short Term Memory (Unrehearsed lost) from attention
        
        Long Term Memory (Virtually Infinite) from Rehersal/Encoding
        
        Depth of Processing - more connections strengthen memory
        
        Mnemonics (tricks to make connections)
        
        Understanding (relations strengthen memory)
        
        Chunk Storage can help maximize short term memory (store information as bigger, but smaller number of chunks)- Improves with experience
        
        Remembering
        
        Retrieval Cues
        
        Compatibility Principle (context compatibility)
        
        Searching Strategies, multiple related information can help remember
        
        Failures of Memory
        
        Decay, Memories Decay
        
        Interference (similar things overlay)
        
        Context changes affecting retrieval cues
        
        Brain Damage
        
        Retrograde (pre)
        
        Anterograde (post)
        
        False Memories
        
        Memory distortion
        
        Expectation
        
        Leading Question
        
        Hypnosis (only creates cooperative)
        
        Flashbulb memories
      - Emotions
        
        Evolution
        
        The Astonishing Hypothesis - Francis Crick (Physicalism)
        
        Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Daniel Dennett (Natural Selection)
        
        Creationalism fails: pushes back the question, counter evidence from evolution, Occasion poor design against optimal creationist, Non Falsifiable
        
        Argument from Design -> Creationists and Intelligent Design
        
        Evolution explains better -> random variation-> differences in survuval and reproduction -> heritability
        
        Evolution of the Mind
        
        Mental Life product of Brain -> Brain a product of evolution -> mental life a product of evolution
        
        distinction of proximate and ultimate, even if evolved for ultimate cause, the proximal systems are unaware of the evolution, thus not fully explained by ultimate evolutionary desires
        
        Not everything is adaptive, variability is essential
        
        Adaptation vs Accidents: the path of evolution
        
        Some things that seem natural, why does it feels so why do we percieve it so?
        
        Emotions are important and essential and possibly a product of adaptive evolution
        
        Facial Expression
        
        Face is an essential evolutionary signal, of a social nature, consistent across cultures
        
        Smile
        
        Happiness Smile (Duchenne Smiles)
        
        Greeting Smile (social cue, below nose)
        
        Coy Smile (nervous reactive smile)
        
        Fear
        
        Phobia, despite no experience, No Phobia, despite experience
        
        A primal, evolutionary emotion
        
        Kinship
        
        Kindness and Morality, how to explain with evolution
        
        Free Riders beat indiscriminate altruists, but kinship can explain (selfish gene hypothesis)
        
        Kin altruists can explain somewhat how selfishness can lead to unselfishness
        
        Attachment: We have evolved to be nice to kins, due to our long developments and parental care
        
        Adaptations to lead to psychology of attachment
        
        Child to Parent
        
        Cup board theory (Skinner) conditioning and rewards
        
        Innate Attachment (Bowlby): +ve comfort,-ve fear of strangers
        
        Parent to Child
        
        Innate Cuteness and helplessness of babies, crying distress
        
        Non-Kin Kindness
        
        Reciprocal Altrusim
        
        Cooperative Games, Free Rider Punishments (Prisoner's Dilemma)
        
        Repeated Games-> Tit for Tat
        
        Our mind, is tuned to prisoners dilemma solution: Guilt, Liking, Anger, Disaffection
        
        Irrationality can be an advantage, rational individuals can be exploited, irrationality can punish, Cultures of Honor - induced fear maintains powe, cultures can modulate emotions
    - - Variation in peoples mental identity, gender, personality happiness
      - Personality
        
        Testing: Reliability and validity
        
        Style of dealing with world and others
        
        Rorshcach Test (Not Valid)
        
        2 factor personality Ising, 16 factor personality Catell; finally a balance is the the Big Five (OCEAN) - Stable, Agreeable, Predictive
      - Intelligence
        
        Abstract reasoning, knowledge, creativity
        
        Spearman general intelligence vs specific ability, g - score across tests
        
        IQ tests do quantify, but are they valid
        
        Susceptible to Self fulfilling prophesies
      - Net Trait Variance = Heredity+Shared Environment+Non-shared environment (Behavioural Genetics, Twin studies)
        
        Observations: high heredity within groups, almost no influence of shared environment
        
        Finding: Judith Harris - parents have no effect
        
        Children more likely to affect parents - Child Effects
        
        Cause Vs Effect hard to seperate
- - - - General understanding of Economic Terms
      - Figure out how understanding of economics helps people earn money
      - Understanding the Economics of Welfare (Poverty, Development, Pollution)
      - How does the Finance Minister make decisions? Whats is the rationale behind economic policy decisions and what are the implication of politics?
    - - Scarcity
        
        Historically it was not important, it was linked with political economy until adam smith institutionalized the study of economics
        
        Limited resources are where we need Economics. Abundance doesn't create conflict.
      - Choice
        
        Economics is useful when choices are available for the interacting agents
        
        Economics can help people understand the results of choices
      - Competition
        
        Ideally in the perfect world there is perfect competition between firms
        
        In the real world we deviate from free market behavior in the form of monopolies, government intervention
    - - Optimizing choices under constraints
      - Rational actors: acts to maximize gain and minimize losses (Not always the case in reality)
      - Efficiency: Prefer the maximum utility/resource often at the cost of fairness (Utilitarian View) Maximize without making others worse off (Pareto/Welfare view)
    - - Institutions: Formal or Informal systems that organise social, political and economic relations,are reproduced through routine actions, and shape behaviour thus affecting developmental outcomes.
      - Power and Control: Institutions can exercise power over groups leading to deviation from rationality and efficiency
    - - Understanding Supply, Demand, Markets, Market Failures
      - Understanding different streams of thoughts: Keynesianism (Role of the State) Neoclassicalism (What we typically study) etc.
      - Economics v. Political economy
        
        Political Economy (pre Adam Smith) politics and economy was completely intertwined in studies
        
        Economics: Shifted focus to purely the economic systems and theorize about that
      - Macro vs micro Economics
        
        Micro: Looks at a smaller scale - Households, Firms, Local Markets, etc
        
        Marco: Looks at a larger scale - Global Economics, State Economics
        
        In practice, the interactions have to be considered for a good study as the separation is artificial
      - Opportunity Costs
        
        Opportunity cost is the benefit that one forgoes by making a choice
      - Equilibirum is the best case when there is perfect competition
      - Circular Flow of Interactions descibe the flow of resources
      - Model are also used to analyse, establish causality etc
    - - Hockey Stick Diagram
        
        Different rate of growth, increasing with time
        
        Time vs GDP based growth per capita
      - Inequality of Growth
        
        Growth Pattern across different people have been observed
        
        Capitalism as a driver for inequality
        
        The Skyscraper Diagram
        
        Average Income Distribution in PPP$ (a measure of how much money you make) in the population (y, z axis) vs country (x axis)
        
        PPP$ is a theoretical exchange rate based on the cost of a comparable basket of goods
        
        Width = population
        
        Rich Poor Ratio as a measure of Inequality
        
        1000 years ago, things were uniform. Even in 1980s skyscrapers were not abrubt as the rich poor disparity was less
        
        Private market influences inequality
        
        Migration Distress and Trends in Covid 19 Crisis: Increasing Inequality in India, Richer People spend a lot more for essentials and non essentials
        
        Countries that took off earlier have reached a rich but inequal distribution while younger developing countries are still at low flatlands
        
        Income Measures
        
        GDP = Total sum of goods and services produced in the country and measured per unit population but is not a good measure of wellbeing
        
        PPP$ is a uniform fiscal value system
        
        Noth
      - Economic Growth
        
        No uniform in nature, Britain was early 1650s. India and China had its burst in growth in the late 20 century
        
        Improvement in lifequality did not happen until independence
        
        Measures of Growth
        
        %GDP growth rate, YoY/MoM percentage change over a unit period
        
        Compounded Annual Growth Rate is used when there are large variation over longer periods (used mainly for sectors not overall)
        
        Growth is often done on log scale to clarity in representation of exponential growth
    - - Attributes of the revolution
        
        Impact on Technology: Agents/Firms have an incentive to innovate and develop new technologies
        
        Specialization: Division of Labor and assembly lines increase productivity (Adam Smiths Pin Factory)
      - Did Capitalism cause the hockey stick curve?
        
        Natural experiments to investigate causality
        
        Division of East and West Germany: Two economic systems in a similar environments has different growth capitalist>socialist
        
        Newer experiments try to incorporate Randomized Controlled Trials
        
        not all capitalists have been successful
        
        Different conditions are required for capitalistic dynamism that leads to growth
        
        Economic Conditions
        
        Secure private property
        
        Competitive markets
        
        Meritocratic evironment
        
        Political Conditions
        
        Government provides infrastructure, education, healthcare, defense
        
        Supporting Laws and Regulation
        
        Taxation and other interventions
        
        Needs
        
        Private incentives for cost reducing innnovations
        
        Public Policy that supports the condition
        
        Public policy to provide essential goods and services
      - Capitalism and Democracy
        
        Democracy gives equal power to all people
        
        Advent of democracy reduced inequality by reducing share of top 1%
      - Capitalism and Environment
        
        The poriuction has local (local habitat destruction, pollution) and global impacts (global warming)
        
        Previously rediced to negative externalities but is changing
        
        Updated Circular Flow model takes the role of the Bioshphere into context
        
        Sustainability is needed to be taken into account
        
        Technological advances to reduce cost driven by internalization of previous negative externatilies can help the environment
      - Democracy and Environment
        
        Democracy may not been effective tools for sustainability
        
        National focus can undervalue the global picture (Australia is not involved in global movement while doing good internally)
        
        Democratic Citizens can choose to make decision in favor of future generations
    - - Economics happens in a socio-political context of institutions and needs to be studied accordingly
      - It it embedded in the biosphere and interacts with it
      - Depleting GW levels in villages near Bengaluru
        
        GW is a common good and is non excudable but if you can overuse and reduce the amount available to others
        
        It is succeptible to the Tragedy of Commons, can drive overconsumption harming everyone
        
        Observed in the villages in Arkavathy Basin
        
        77% of borewells have failed, depspite higher dependency on borewells. Self interest at the cost of public interest
      - Context
        
        Insititutions play a key role in determining economic outcomes
        
        Self-interest can bring good (innovation)
        
        External effects arise when one's action affect others
      - Social Dilemma
        
        Self-interested actions lead to sub-optimal outcomes
        
        Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin) = cost is shared so the net short term cost to the agent is small driving exploitation
        
        Free-riding utlizing public resources without cost/contribution
      - Solving Social Dilemmas
        
        Social Preference: To care about the community consequences of actions (eg. support duing wars/ disasters)
        
        Government Public Policies (Quotas for Fishing, Water Tarrif, Pollution Permits)
        
        Local Institutions: Community creates institutions to regulate behavior (Village stand pipe over private pipes, Cauvery Family by Farmers)
      - Game Theory
        
        Cost Benefit Analysis in case of interations between multiple agents
        
        Social Interaction: A situation where action of one affect own and others outcomes
        
        Strategic Interaction: A social Interaction where agents are aware of how the actiosn effect others
        
        Strategy: Actions taken with the awarenedd og the mutual dependence of outcomes
        
        Components of a Game
        
        Players
        
        Feasible Strategies
        
        Information
        
        Payoffs
        
        Dominant Strategy
        
        Action that yield maximum payoff for a player irrespective of what others do
        
        Domainant Strategey Equilibrium where al players play the dominant hand
        
        When self interest guides to the pareto optimal solution, its the invisible hand effect
        
        Nash Equilibirum: Optimal strategy given the strategy of the other players
    - - Prisoners Dilemma: Independent Dominant Strategy (Nash) Equilibrium is different from pareto optimal
      - Farmer Example: Integrated Pest Control (Environment Friendly, best if both use) Terminator (Use of One will affect other badly, If both use it has externalities)
      - A Game where domaninat strategy equiloibtium is lower for each player and lower in total
      - Assumptions and Solution
        
        Player only care about their own payoffs: Introduce social prefences
        
        No consequences of actions: repeated games, social norms, peer punishment (Tit for Tat)
        
        No Coordination (Introduce Insitutions and Policies)
      - Public Goods Game
        
        Public Goods (non-rival and non-excludable)
        
        Multiple players
        
        Explains free-riding (the dominant strategy is not to contribute)
      - Repeated Games can solve problems
        
        Social Norms, Reciprocity, Consequences of Selfishness in future, Peer Punishments
      - Social Preferences
        
        People are concerned with what is happening to others place values on how out actions affect other people as well
        
        Data collection
        
        Survey Questions (subjective answers)
        
        Statistical Studies of economic behavior (cannot control the environment)
        
        Lab experiments: Control Treatment and compare, also replicable
        
        Field Experiments: Realistic and more contextual
        
        How social preferences affect games
        
        Altruism: Willingness to help others
        
        Reciprocity: Desire to help those tho helped you and harm others
        
        Inequality Aversion: Disliking outcomes which are inequal
      - Negotiation
        
        Coordination Game: Multiple nash equilibria (where cooperation is better, when you know what the other is doing) (Can promote negotiation)
        
        Bargaining
        
        When there are multiple nash equilibria but are not equally rewarding for the players there is a conflict of interest
        
        Solfware Engineer Game: Coordination to use the same software is good, but one nash eq. is better for one
        
        Other factors will affects the game: power dynamics and history
    - - Business and Usual (BUA) vs Restriction (Aim to reach Restrict/Restrict)
      - Essentially a Hawk Dove game (Both want the other to restrict)
      - Negotiations are complex
      - Public Policy to change the game
        
        Sustainable consumer lifestyles
        
        Governement Stimulation for innovations and clean tech (can promote increase in demand: Jevon's Paradox)
        
        Change in Norms
        
        Even Cost Sharing of externalities
    - - Public Policy
        
        Allocation: outcome of economic interactions
        
        Policy aims to ensure efficiency and fairness
        
        Example: Solving Tragedy of the commons
        Make cows common property? (Who takes cares - free rider)
        Enclosure to create private property (unfair)
      - Economics has a different idea of efficiency and fairness and there are pluralitistic approaches to these. Equity != equality
      - Ultimatum Game
        
        Sequential Game the split can be accepted or rejected
        
        Self referential playes accept all offers (some thing is better than nothing)
        
        Other referential players reject the offer when it violates their norm of fairness
        
        Trade-off of efficiency and fairness (rejection is inefficient, accepting is unfair)
      - The Pareto Criterion
        
        Condition is pareto efficent if there is mutually benefit where no alternative has a better condition for one without a worse condition for others
        
        Fairness is an subjective evaluation and conception of justice
        
        Criterion: an allocation be pareto efficient
        
        Pareto Dominant:No one prefers strategy over other, and atleast one strictly prefers it
        
        Pareto Efficient: no improvement for one without worse for other
        
        Pareto indominant: There is a policy that is preferred and increses for atleast one without affecting others
        
        Compensation through public policy can affect the pareto efficiency
      - Defining Fairness
        
        Allocations can be unjust based on:
        
        Substantive judgement of fairness (the nature of the distribution itself)
        
        procedural judgement of fairness (by the nature of the origin of the inequality and the morality of the process)
        
        Outcomes of Public Policy
        
        Its the result of the interaction of government actions and privately chosen actions of individuals
        
        Policies can influence outcomes through:
        
        Prohibitions and directive (mandatory enforced rules)
        
        Incentives (Voluntary choices to inprove payoff)
        
        Information provisions
        
        Nash equilibrium != Pareto Optimal
        
        Solve tragedy of commons using overgrazing tax: the nash equilbrium at (!restrict,!restrict) is shifted to (restrict, restrict) due to reduced payoff
        
        Tax avoidance game
        
        Government: High Tax, Low Tax
        
        Firm: Pay tax, Tax Evation through loopholes
        
        Nash Equilibrium is (HIgh Tax, Loopholes)
        
        Policy shouldnt change prefernece in unintended ways and the final outcome is a nash equilibrium
    - - What makes a model good
        
        Clear
        
        Identifies important relationships
        
        Predicts Accurately
        
        Useful
        
        Improves communication
        
        Ceteris paribus: Holds other factors constant
      - Opportunity Costs
        
        Economic Cost:
        Monetary Cost +
        Subjective Costs
        
        Decision is based on Economic Cost which includes bost opportunity cost and out-of -pocket cost
        
        Accountant Profit is limiting for the decision making as it doesnt
        
        Questionnaires can be used estimate costs of opportunities
        
        Opportunity Cost: Net Benefit of the next best alternative
      - Production function
        
        We need to factor in different conditions to understand the output for a better perspective
        
        Production Function: How inputs translate into outputs holding all other factors constant
        
        Example: Production Q(Labor L, Capital K)
        In the kitchen, K = Stoves, L = Staff
        
        Differences in Short Run (K is constant) and Long Run (K is variable)
        
        Rate of Production (Slope) increase with input = marginal
        
        Diminishing Returns: Reducing Marginal product with increase in input
        
        Eg: One stove many cooks, Small farm more workers
      - Feasible Set
        
        Opposite of Production function
        
        Production possibility frontier, with the same conditions whats the maximum we can produce (Free time vs grade)
        
        Anything within the feasibility frontier is possible anything beyond it is not practical (Essentialy describes a tradeoff)
        
        On the boundary the conditions are pareto efficient
        
        Slope of the feasiblity frontier (Marginal rate of transformation) represents the tradeoff (opportunity costs faced)
      - Preferences
        
        Utility is a measure of satisfaction
        
        Indifference curves shows differrent amount of different commodities that the agent is indifferent between (no preference)
        
        Slope of indifference curve (marginal rate of substitution) represents tradeoffs the individual is willing to make
        
        Properties
        
        Slope Downward (Tradeoff)
        
        Higher Indiffernce curve= higher utility
        
        Smoothness
        
        Non-intersecting
        
        diminishing MRS
      - Optimization
        
        Budget constaints: Sum_i(P_i * Q_i) = Budget
        
        Can intersect with indifference curve
        
        Tangential Indifference cuve is optimal
        
        For two products, slope of constraint = -Px/Py, MRS is given by Sum(del_Utility) = 0 => MU_xQ_x + MU_yQ*y=> MRS = --MU_x/MU_y
        
        At optimal, MU_y/MU_x = P_y/P_x
      - Progress
        
        Can change the production function therefore chaning the feasibility frontier
        
        Same production with more free time (eg tractors usage imporves production)
        
        Two fold effect in case of normal goods
        
        Income effect: More Income= Quality of life better => more free tie and consumption
        
        Substitution efffect: Opportinty cost of free time increases
        
        The net effect depends on relative strength according to individual preference
    - - Jason Hickel (People believe we need growth because they start from the assumption of scarcity. There is no scarcity, there is inequality)
      - Decline in real wages over time while labor productivity has increased. A marxist observation. Rishing Labor exploitation
      - Function and personal distribution of income
        
        Factor payments/income method: GDP = Sum of factor payments by all firms = wages+interest+rent+profit = total income
        
        Gini Index in increasing, Wages is decreasing but Correlation is not causation. What are the confounders? Through regresion analysis, the paper by Francese and Mulas-Granados attributes it to wage dispersion (rich get more percent not the absolute value) not falling ware share
        
        When we measure income, theoretically we want to study the functional distribution (among factors of production) but we end up looking at the personal distribution when looking at inequality.
        
        Draw from constraint optimization to analyse how settings can influence decisions along the fraction of independence
        
        Reservation options: A fallback option, what alternative available to you
      - Factors to consider
        
        Constraints
        
        Biological Constraints: Minimum utility required for required for survival (such as food/wage)
        
        Technological Constraints: Feasibliity frontiers
        
        Institutions: the (formal and informal) laws and social customs governing the way people interact in society. (Role of Power in economics)
        
        Rules of the Game: determine the ability of the players to obtain a high payoff i.e. their bargaining power. Master has control over slaves, dictator over public etc. as opposed to independent free trade.
        
        Bargaining power = extent of a person’s advantage in securing a larger share of the economic rents made possible by an interaction. (Eg. Ultimatum Game: Proposer has more bargaining power)
        
        Farmers production function: grain producted per unit time use, Feasibility Grain consumed per unit free time
      - Real life example: Pre 1973 West Bengal, high income inequality. Operation Barga by Left Front: protection from eviction as long as rent is paid and 3/4 of the crop can be kept. Not Pareto efficient but decreased inequality and farm productivity.
      - The Conceptual Models: Angela and Bruno (Two farmer with different relations) and the gradient of the bargaining power
        
        Angela as an independent farmer (Independent farmers witj access to land)
        
        Same as constrained choice, maximizes utility when MRS=MRT Indifference and feasibility frontier tangentially intersect
        
        Rule of Force: Bruno does not farm but takes some of Angelas harvest by force (Slavery and coerced Labor)
        
        The lowest possible indifference curve is Biological constraint for Angela, Feasibility Frontier is combined for Angela and Bruno. There is a technical feasible set between biological and technological constraint, the optimal solution will be again when MRT joint = MRS for Angela any movement reduced the amount that Bruno gets.
        
        Property Rights and Rule of Law: Laws protect Angela from coercion but bruno own the land (sharecropping, employed workers)
        
        Legal system protect angela but no ownership.Reservation indifference curve. When there is reservaton option, Angela can just opt for that. But there is an indifference curve that has the same amount of utility as the reservation option.. The new region is the economically feasible set. (Bruno has no reservation option)
        
        Why care about pareto efficiency? A economic framework. At MRS= MRT, all things are optimal. all movement at this point is efficient. Room for negotiation
        
        Economic rent: All benefits recieved aboce the the reservation option
        
        Property rights, rule of law and voting rights (20th century capitalist democracy)
        
        Union and Lobbing as option. More representative of the current scenario. Bargaining changes the indifferece curve to higher utilities (same pay for less work) but such a movement is harmful to Bruno. Bruno will bargain to raise work to bring new curves to MRS MRT
        
        Biology+Tech=>Technically Feasible Outcome(+Preferences+Reservation Option)=>Economically Feasible Option(+Bargaining Power+Preferences)=>Allocation Outcome
      - Other Factors at Play: Endowments
        
        The facts about an individual that may affect his or her income. This includes physical wealth (land, housing, or stocks) and human capital (level and quality of schooling, special training, work experience).
        
        Differences in endowments, as well as institutions, may in turn affect bargaining power – for example by producing different reservation options.
        
        How did Bruno get the land? Why was brune able to overpower Angela
      - Measures of Inequality
        
        Gini Coefficient
        
        Better than Rich/Poor Ratio
        
        0.5*Average pairwise differences/Average Income
        
        Typically used on the basis of income but can be on the basis of welface or wealth
        
        Loretz Curve
        
        Axis ordered from poorest to richest (Cumulative Share of Capital vs Cumulative Share of population) y=x is perfect equality. The gini coefficient can be calculated Area of Triangle/Area of whole half
        
        Barga reduced Gini and shifted triangel towards center
      - Redistributive Policies
        
        Market Income-Taxes+Support for Poor = Disposable Income
        
        These policies if progressive can reduce Gini coeffcient (Gini based on market Income and disposable income can be compared)
    - - Important Concepts
        
        Surplus = Willingness to pay - Actual paid (can be monetized)
        
        Economies of Scale
        
        Output scales faster than Input
        
        Large industries are more efficient and profitable
        
        Firm is a business organization that
        1) Employs people
        2) Purchase inputs to produce market goods and services
        3) Set prices greater than cost of production
        
        Cost function
        
        Total cost of production as a function of quantity produced Q = Fixed cost+Variable cost(Q)
        
        Average cost = Production cost per unit quantity = slope from origin to cost function
        
        Marginal Cost: Cost of producinng another unit of product slope
        
        AC and MC meet at AC minimum (Always true, mathematically proven) Intersection of C(Q)/Q and dC(Q)/dQ is at x where d(C(Q)/Q)/dQ=0
        
        Demand Curve
        
        Quantity bought at each price through market review data or willingness to pay surveys
        
        Economic Profit
        
        Total Revenue - Total Cost (including opportunity cost)
        
        Profit = PQ - C(Q) = Q(P-AC)
        
        Isoprofit Curve
        
        Price vs Quantity curves that give the same amount of profit
        
        Zero economic profit = Breakeven (Not accounting loss)
        
        As profit increases, minimum cost to sustain that increases
        
        MC line intersects at minimum
        
        Profit Maximization
        
        Firm's feasibility Frontier = Demand Curve MRT
        
        Indifference Curve = Isoprofit Curve MRS
        
        MRT = MRS
        
        Marginal Revenue: change in revenue per unit added (decreases prince but increasing quantity)
        
        Maximization at MR=MC. MC,MR vs Q curve looks like Demand Supply curve and intersection is teh maximum profit point
      - Accounting and Opportunity costs are taken together in economics
      - Division of Labor in Capitalistic system
        
        Power is decetralized in markets (autonomous and voluntary)
        
        Economic power in the had of owners and managers
      - Firms producing differentiated products
      - Gains from Trade
        
        Consumer Surplus = willingness to pay - paid
        
        Producer Surplus = Revenue - marginal cost
        
        Total Surplus = the area on the left betwee intersected lines
        
        Considering only firm, and MRT of Isoprofit curve = MRS of demand curve gives is not pareto efficient in terms of surplus. MR=MC gives a pareto efficient outcome that maximizes total surplus
        
        Differentiated products lead to loyalty. Bargaining edge can be used to upsell price.
        
        Deadweight Loss = Loss of total surplus relative to a pareto efficient outcome (unexploited gains from trade)
      - Price Elasticity of Demand
        
        Responsiveness to quantity demanded
        
        Elasticity = %change Q/% change in P
        
        |x|<1 = inelastic x=1 = unitary |x|>1 = elastic
        
        Related to MR, Elastic = High MR, Inelastic = low or -ve MR
        
        markup: profit margin as proportion of price, inversely proportional to elasticity of demand (More Inelastic, more profit margin)
        
        Taxation
        
        Tax on goods, reduces demand (like tax on unhealthy foods)
        
        Taxation on inelastic goods leads to more tax revenue
        
        Market power
        
        Few substitutes = inelastic demand
        
        High market power, ability to set prices, inelastic demand
        
        Limits on market power (competition policies) prevent collusion to raise prices
        
        Gain monopoly rent by raising prices and cause deadweight loss
        
        natural monopoliess establish via cheaper than other firms
      - Shifting Demand Curve
        
        innovation, prevent competition through patents
        
        Advertising: creating brand loyalty
      - Perfect Competition (Firms as price makers not price taker)
        
        Price Setting in a competition
        
        Has a lot of social and political history: Free markets and Lassiez Faire economics eg. Power of market by Milton Friedman
        
        "faith" in the market:
        
        Classical (Adam Smith)
        
        Neo Classical (Alfred Marshall)
        
        Criticism (Karl Marx)
        
        Role of State (John Maynard Keynes)-repuditates Say's Law (Supply creates its own demand)
        
        Impersonal Economies that believe in the power of free market and pareto efficiency
        
        Post 1950: economies are State+Market+Community
        
        Competitive Equilibirum:
        
        Demand Curve: measure of willingess to pay
        
        Supply Curve: Willingness to accept the price
        
        Equilibirum Price: Intersection of Supply and Demand assumes no intervention and no market power (no price setter)
        
        Price Taking firms: Demand Curve is flat at price. Thus profit can only be maximized at MC = P (MR) when slope of isoprofit = 0 Surpply curve becomes the MC curve
        
        Sum of all firm supply curve is the the market supply curve = marginal cost curve
        
        All are price taker (buyers and sellers) Fraction of surplus depends on the elasticity of the goods.All contracts are complere and no externalities.
        
        There is no deadweight loss, all gains from trade are exploited.
        
        Caveats: Fairness is not necessasry suplus is not equal. Elasticity determines outcome.
        
        Changes in the curve
        
        Exogenous shocks: Technology/popularity
        
        Market entry: If existing firms are earning economic rent and costs of entry are not too high
        
        Taxes: Government Interventions (Distortion of free market), shift depending on who is taxed and a reduction in surplus is seen. Supply curve shifts left, Less for the same price, surplus reduces and some goes to govt Less elastic groud pays the tax burden
      - Failure of Markets
        
        Importance of Price
        
        Faith in the Market: Price captures true value of interactions between economic agents. Gains of trade and welfare can be captured by price
        
        It is hard to assign economic costs to everything. Price needs to be put for transactions. Policy decision need analysis of costs and benfits.
        
        Market Failure: In reality, resource allocation might be pareto inefficient
        
        Market Failures
        
        Collective Welfare: Total Welfare of the community firms+consumers
        
        Pollution externalities: Firm might be operating at MR=MC but produces waste that reduces the welfare for consumers through pollution. Need additional incentive to invest in reducing externalities. Eg. Downstream use by farmer could lead to +ve: less fertilizer needed and -ve: health issue
        
        Conditions for proper market functioning (if missing, markets fail)
        
        Private property: rights to the thing to be bought and sold
        
        Intitutions such a s Givt to enforece the rights
        
        Social norms that respect property rights
        
        Ability to write complete and enforcable contract that can be evealuted lawfully
        
        Causes of Failure
        
        External Effects
        
        an effect of an economic acction taht is not specified as a benefit or liability in the contract
        
        Marginal private Cost (MPC) = MC to decition maker
        
        Marginal External Cost (MEC) = cost imposed on the society
        
        Marginal Social Cost (MSC) = MPC+MSC (total cost to society)
        
        MPC=price: Pareto Inefficient
        MSC = Price: Pareto Efficient
        
        Bargaining, and transactions between agents can be solve this. Bargain a reduction in pollution by offering compensation
        
        Bargaining
        
        legally assign rights to externality eg. right to clean air
        
        Private bargaining (Coasean Bargaining) can be done to reach pareto efficient outcome if there are no transation cost
        
        Better than govt intervention beacuse of complete information
        
        But transaction costs can be obstable in reality
        
        For Firm, Minimum Acceptable offer = Lost Profit, For Society, Maximum compensation is the reservation option = Gross Social Gain. Final compensation is decided though the relative bargaining power
        
        Limits
        
        4 more items...
        
        Government Intervention
        
        Cap on Production at Socially optimal amount (Hard to determine and enforce)
        
        Pigouvuan Tax (Tax/subsidy on firms generating externalities to correct for inefficiency) Taxes reduce the effective price to the socially optimal quantity
        
        Enforcing compensation
        
        2 more items...
        
        Limits:
        
        3 more items...
        
        Assymmetric information (Lack of or non verifiable information can lead to enefficient allocations)
        
        Incomplete contracts (Main cause of externalities, not all important factors are written into the contract in an enforceable way)
        
        Solution
        
        Private bargaining
        
        Government policies
        
        Should all goods be allocated by markets
        
        Some goods are not something that should be left to the markets
        
        Repugnant Markets: Markets for Goods and Services that violate ethical/social norms like slavery
        
        Modified Markets can be created: Kidney Matching
        
        Merit Goods: Goods that should be provided to all irrespective of price such as education
        
        Categories of market failure
        
        Public Goods (Markets fail to distribute)
        
        Free Riding is a problem
        
        Pricing doesnt work: MC = 0
        
        Externalities even under exclusion
        
        Asymmetric Transaction
        
        Landlord (knows the house) vs Tenant (does not know the house)
        Landlord (does not knows the tenant quality) vs Tenant (knows themselves)
        
        Hidden Action -> Leads to Moral Hazard
        
        Moral Hazard: One party does something that affects the other party but the other party cant control it thriugh the contract due to lack of information (Employer doesnt know if the laborers are being fully efficient)
        
        Car insurance: Insurance might lead to more risk and not all risks are contractable eg. driving speed. Leads to principar agent problem. In principal agent problem one party (the principal) would like another party (the agent) to act in some way, or have some attribute that is in the interest of the principal, and that cannot be enforced or guaranteed in a binding contract.
        
        Banks: Credit market failures due to poorborrowers being credit constraints. Also banks go bankrupt becuase of govt intervention that incentivised risk taking.
        
        Hidden Attributes -> Adverse Selection
        
        Adverse Selection: problem faces by parties to an exchange in which the terms offered by one party will cause some exchange partners to drop out Eg. Second Hand Cars, attributes are not fully known leads to incorrect pricing
        
        Example health insurance: More unhealthy people (preexisting conditions) tend to buy insurance (adverse selection), but this raises prices. thus excluding healthier individuals who would buy the insurance. India middle class exception: awareness has led to more insurance buys but leads to moral hazard due to private costs for a unlikely scenario
        
        Royalty to Paddy farmers
        
        Paddy farmers have no profit for paddy farming and so incentives are provided to star in paddy farming. There is an economic cost and benefit to the farmer but there is a social benefit (food deficits). There is no commisar, and is left to the markets but incentives are provided.
        
        Ecological significance is also there. Similar to Downstream users pay for protecting forests upstream. The idea is that is payment for ecological services. These needs to be considered to consider the feasibility
        
        Payment for ecosystem services (PES) is a method to change the livelihood for people to improve environment through pareto efficient transactions.
        
        A large number of people woul benefit from paddy ecosystems they pay the paddy farmers through the govt
- - - - Philosophy as an Activity rather than Subject
        
        Working out the best way to think about things
        
        Theories in Physics vs thinking about how we develop and refute theories in physics
        
        How we treat dieases and thinking about how we revise our methods of treatement
        
        Introspection or External Evidence help us develop our notions
        
        The distinction between philosophy and other subjects is between thinking a correct way and think about the way of thinking
        
        Consequences of the definition
        
        Philosophical problems can arise anywhere
        
        We can always as for justification, presupposition and evidence for the assumption
        
        Philosphopher is somewhat like a child continuously asking "Why?"
        
        It a fundamental subject: Never too far away
        
        Phisopher also tries to answer the question "Why?"
        
        The continous skepticism makes it a hard subject
        
        Philosphical question are not necessarily important
        
        But questioning is important because it discussed things we take for granted
        
        It is important for progress (eg. medieval -> modern medicine) to realize errors (eg. racism and genocide)
      - How we do Philosophy?
        
        Look for evidence-> Think about what evidence suggest->Come to a conclusion (Eg. going to cinema)
        
        Arguments in Philosophy are evidence/premises and chains of reasoning
        
        All arguments can be questioned
        
        "If premises are true, then the conclusion has to be true"
        means the Argument is Valid
        
        The questions of the premises can be questioned
        
        If the argument is valid and the premises are true, the argument is Sound.
        
        Often in real life to create clearly stated premises and argument because reality is complex
        
        Its a good thing to be clear in the arguments but its also important to keep a look at the big picture or 'vision' (Hilary Putnam)
      - Is there a 'right way' to think about things?
        
        Can we even figure this our through philosophy?
        
        David Hume
        
        Believed that Skeptical Attitude was appropriate and it is important to staying true to our experience of the world
        
        We can't know causation to be an element of the world but it might be something our mind is prone to add
        
        a 'Self' connects our experiences thoughts and beliefs and that is all we experience
        
        By philosophy we can only identify and understand our habits of making conclusion and not any actual fundamental truth about the world
        
        Immanuel Kant
        
        "Critique of Pure Reason" - inspired by Hume. He had assumed philosophy could put us in touch with the world and the fabric of reality and tried to prove it as we cant just assume it
        
        The idea of a world that doesnt correspond to the rules of our mind is just non-sensical
        
        Kant also believes that the understanding is not just about how out minds work but about how the world must work
        
        If we try and imagine a world that doesnt have this features then we cant imagine what it would mean to not have them
    - - Questioning the status of moral judgements made in everyday life
        
        What are we doing when we make such judgements?
        
        Are we representing objective facts of matter? Or are we describing our personal or cultural practices?
        
        Are we depicting some element of the universe out there? The moral facts. Are we expressing our emotions toward things?
      - Streams of Morality
        
        Relativism (describing some kind of cultural or personal relative practices )
        
        moral judgements can be true or false, but they're only true or false relative to something that varies from person to person or culture to culture.
        
        Not objective but true or false nonetheless
        
        Extreme Relativism: Subjectivism
        
        our moral judgments are indeed true or false relative to the subjective feelings of the person who makes them.
        
        our moral judgments are intimately tied up with how we are motivated to act. (explains morality and motivation)
        
        Cant explain disagreement
        
        Less Extreme: Cultural relativism
        
        moral judgments are indeed true or false, relative to the culture of the person who makes them.
        
        disapproved of or forbidden by my culture/ accepted or normal in my culture
        
        Emotivism (expressing our emotions towards the world)
        
        moral judgments are not the source of things that can be true or false
        
        direct expression of our emotive reactions to the world.
        
        Yay-Boo Theory of Morality
        
        Explain motivation well and no factual disagreement but there could be disagreement in attitudes.
        
        Truth or false is loose measure of relative agreement
        
        Objectivism (representing objective facts)
        
        moral judgments are true or false
        
        generally independent of who we are or what cultural groups we belong to
        
        Moral Judgements are as objective as natural facts
        
        Cultural variations oppose objectivism (cultural chauvinism)
        
        Moral Judgements are right or wrong irrespective of what they say
        
        Meta-ethics
        
        Which of these views is right?
        
        Objectivism: There is a method ot verify empricically the truth, but moral objectivism cannot be verified (no method)
        
        Response: There can be measures like utility. What about math? Unchallengable Axioms can bring us to empricial facts about morality
        
        Relativism: Hard to make sense of moral progress (Slave vs no slavery)
        
        Response: Its an overlap of cultures with moral disgreement leading to assimilation
        
        Emotivism moral arguments not reasoned responses to questions about morality. but reasoned examples cannot be explained by them
        
        Respone: Emotions can be rational, preferences have transitivity and be in the sphere of reason. emotions can be reasoned and modified through learning and introspections
        
        Meta rules can blur the borders of objectivism and relativism: Universal rules that base on context
        
        In Morality, Objective can be either "Fact" or "Universal (Apply to all)"
        
        Unified Morality
        
        Agent Neutrality: Universal given the circumstances
        
        Supremity: Moral reasons are overriding
      - Judgements
        
        Empirical Judgements (Eg. Scientific Discoveries, Facts) that are verifiable by empiral evidence
        
        Moral Judgements (Eg. charity is good, Cain killing Abel out of Jealousy)
        
        Positive Judegements
        
        Negative Judgements
        
        Questions to Ask
        
        if they are true, are they objectively true?
        
        What makes them true or false?
        
        are moral judgements the sorts of thing that can be true or false?
    - - The Basic Consituents of Knowledge
        
        Propositional Knowledge (knowledge that something is the case.)
        
        Expressed by a declarative sentence
        
        Can be true and false
        
        Ability knowledge (know how)
        
        Manifestation of ability or skill
        
        Basic constituents of propositional knowledge
        
        Truth: if you are to know that proposition, then the world must really be the way that proposition says it is. We cant know falsehoods
        
        Belief: if you know a proposition, then you must at least believe that proposition.
        
        Infallibilty is NOT needed
        
        knowledge is not probably or like (we know) unless uncertainty is expliticty mentioned
        
        Knowledge requires more than mere true belief, more than just getting it right
        
        Intuitions of Knowledge
        
        Anti-Luck Intuition: your true belief isn't just a matter of luck. The truth is a matter of luck
        
        Ability Intuition: belief is down the exercise of onescognitive abilities and are relevant to the formation of true beliefs
      - The Classical Account of Knowledge
        
        One can "know" a proposition is true iff (Plato)
        
        Proposition is true
        
        One believes the proposition
        
        One's belief is justified (Good Reason that seems in line with intuitions)
        
        Tripartite analysis of Knowledge
        
        Edmund Gettier (Gettier Counterexamples that satisfy but one cant know)
        
        Stopclock case (Bertrand Russell) if you see stopped cloack at the right time, its true, you believe it (clock has been reliable), and you can reason it. But but its a matter of luck
        
        A field of Sheep (Roderick Chisholm): Farmer sees a sheep like object on a field that has a sheep (which the farmer cant see) and thinks there is a sheep on the field (justified true believe but still a matter of luck)
        
        Can easily be countered by reframing the knowlege (the clock says its x o'clock; that is a sheep)
        
        But a new gettier problem can easily be created by making a justifiable believeable falsehood and make it true by a measure not involving the justification given
        
        Needs a Systematic solution but it was not straightforward
        
        Keith Lehrer: Belief is not based on false assumptions ('lemma') but defining assumptions is hard (too specific: excludes claer knowledge, too flexible missed gettier counters)
        
        Are justifications even needed? how do eliminate knowledge under luck
      - Radical Skepticism
        
        Knowledge is Impossible
        
        "Skeptical Hypothesis" (Descartes) - situations one cant know anything to be true
        
        Brains in a Vat: Do we know we are not brains in a vat? We cant! if you dont know if you're brain in a vat how do you know you have hands? or anything at that? We dont know anything to be true to false so how can we know anything?
        
        There is no solution. But typically we act on assumptions which as true to us and our localized knowledge can guide us. So big picture we might not know anything
    - - The Problem of Politcal Oblication
        
        Grounds of Political Obligation?
        
        Fairness
        
        it's inapplicable in the case of states, because of the lack of a choice
        
        we don't have an obligation to obey corrupt or unjust states, even if such states happened to benefit us, if they are not fair
        
        fairness theory only applies to benefits that are delivered through mutually beneficial cooperative schemes.
        
        Citizens are a part of cooperative enterprises that are mutually beneficial and fair. Because they're part of such schemes, such enterprises, they have an obligation to obey the rules of those schemes or enterprises.
        
        Consent
        
        Expressed consent and tacit consent
        
        But issues: low voter turnout, unavoidable use of public services like roads, no effective alternative to remaining within their state.
        
        we need to know how tacit consent might be given to states. What might constitute tacit consent to the state? So far, we've considered participation in elections, using public services, or remaining within the state
        
        tacit consent is given by doing something else within a context where it's understood that that constitutes giving consent.
        
        Expressed consent is given openly and directly by explicitly saying that one consents to something.
        
        If consent is the ground of political obligation and we can revoke or withhold consent, then it seems very easy to escape or avoid the obligation to obey the law by simply refusing consent or by withdrawing it.
        
        It seems to be a restriction on consent that it only generates obligation if one is able to withhold consent. Where there's no possibility of withholding consent, there is no effective consent.
        
        Insufficient people have given consent. Plausibly, only those who join a state through immigration as adults have actively consented to being bound by a state's laws.
        
        even if there are limits, consent can generate obligations in many cases.
        
        we have an obligation to obey the state because we've consented to the state and to having such obligations to it.
        
        Gratitude and Benefit
        
        does being benefited by something generate obligations for you to obey the benefactor?
        
        does being benefited always generate obligations?
        
        Second, that because they are benefited by the state they acquire the obligation to obey it.
        
        First, the citizens are benefited by the state.
        
        Socrates:we're obliged to obey the state because of the great benefits of the state has bestowed upon us
        
        Even if we have an obligation to obey the law, that doesn't mean that the obligation is necessarily decisive. It doesn't mean that it's necessarily what we must do.
        
        If you have an obligation to do something because of some facts, then that fact is the ground for that obligation.
        
        The facts that give citizens the obligation to obey the law.
        
        What Does Obey mean?
        
        Problematic States: Obligation to comply, but no legitimate reason to obey it.
        
        We have obligations to comply with the law because of the effects of breaking those laws.
        
        Acting in accordance with the law is sufficient to comply with the law. By contrast to obey the law, you must act in accordance with it because it is the law.
        
        Obeying the law is not the same as complying with the law.
        
        Do citizens have an obligation to obey the state and to obey its laws?
        
        What if the Problem cant be Solved?
        
        if the problem of political obligation can't be solved, then philosophical anarchism is true.
        
        philosophical anarchist simply hold that we don't have an obligation to obey the law.
        
        Is it merely truest things currently are that we have no obligation to obey the law, or could we never have an obligation to obey the law under any circumstances?
    - - Intellectual autonomy
        
        David Hume
        
        completely naturalistic philosophical system, spirited critiques of religion
        
        "essay on miracles"- An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding1748
        
        you should never believe that a miracle has occurred on the basis of testimony.
        
        What does he mean by testimony?
        
        any situation in which you believe something, on the basis of what someone else asserts, either verbally or in writing.
        
        a ton of what we believe is based on the testimony of other people.
        
        there's no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men.
        
        Hume assumes, to believe testimony, you have to have evidence that the person who's speaking, or writing, is likely to be right and reliable. (evidentialism. A wise man, proportions his belief to the evidence.)
        
        The credit that we give testimony admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual
        
        What does he mean by a miracle?
        
        a violation of the laws of nature, it's something that's never happened in what he calls the common course of nature.
        
        no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.
        
        A miracle is an exception to a previously exceptionless regularity.
        
        people are often wrong when they testify, people often assert falsehoods.
        
        Thus dont believe miracles about testimony
        
        Thomas Reid
        
        Minister in the Church of Scotland and a professor at the University of Aberdeen in Glasgow.
        
        Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764)
        
        Reid's argument against Hume
        
        But, we don't have any kind of good evidence that our senses are likely to be right. We don't trust our senses on the basis of evidence that they're likely to be right.
        
        Both Hume and Reid thought that we were hard wired to think in certain ways such as believe what we see before our eyes
        
        innate principle of credulity - a disposition to confide in the veracity of others and to believe what they tell us. (we're hard wired to trust testimony)
        
        Analogy between perception and the credit we give human testimony. To believing something on the basis of what someone else says is just like believing something on the basis of seeing it with your own eyes
        
        Reid's argument from children
        
        If credulity were the effect of reasoning and experience it must grow up and gather strength, in the same proportion as reason and experience do. But, if it's the gift of nature, it will be strongest in children, and limited and restrained by experience
        
        the principle of credulity is strongest in children who have no experience at all of the reliability of other people. They're the most trusting, whereas adults are more skeptical and less trusting.
        
        principle of credulity is strongest in small children. They're very much disposed to trust the testimony of other people
        
        A Problem with Reid
        
        Hume argues what men ought to do while Reid argues what men do
        
        Reid claims, if we did abide by Hume's principles, then he says, no proposition that is uttered in discourse would be believed and such distrust and incredulity would deprive us of the greatest benefits of society and place us in a worse condition than that of the savages.
        
        Principle of veracity
        
        A propensity to speak the truth so as to convey our real sentiments.
        
        Lying is doing violence to our nature.
        
        Hume's likely challenge to claim (Essay on Miracles)
        
        People often have a motive to lie when they have an interest in what they affirm, because there are advantages to starting an imposture among an ignorant people.
        
        human beings are prone to believe the tales of travellers because human beings generally find the feelings of surprise and wonder agreeable.
        
        Hume says that human beings are prone to testify, to assert things, regardless of whether they have good evidence for what they're saying, because of the pleasure of telling a piece of news so interesting, of propagating it, and of being the first reporters of it.
      - whether and in what circumstances you can believe what other people tell you?
      - Immaneul Kant on Enlightenment
        
        On answering the question: What is Enlightenment? (1784)
        
        Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. The motto of the enlightenment is therefore, sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding.
        
        Kant is talking about extent to which we trust the testimony of other people
        
        To trust someone else's testimony on some matter is to allow your own understanding to be guided by that other person.
        
        Kant thinks that not being guided by another person, that was not trusting other people's testimony, is in some sense a virtue.
        
        This requires or at least involves in many cases not trusting other people's testimony.
        
        Not forming your beliefs because of what other people say, but forming them on your own.
        
        Intellectual autonomy involves not believing things just because religious and political authorities tell you to believe them.
        
        Kant says you should obey what the authorities tell you to do. You shouldn't obey what they tell you to think.
        
        Don't trust other people's testimony unless you have evidence that they're likely to be right
        
        Hume and Kant (Intellectual Autonomy: Humans as Individuals) Reid (Intellectual Autonomy: Humans as Social Creatures)
      - Why Intellectual Autonomy?
        
        sapere aude - dare to be wise
        
        The person whose beliefs and opinions are based on testimony doesn't really have knowledge.
        
        Ability to explain or situate the knowledge in some broader body of information which cannot be done from testimony (Plato)
        
        People have a tendency to let their opinions be shaped. we tend to inherit our religious and our political and our moral views.
        
        The rejection of autonomy is in part a rejection of liberalism and is conservative
    - - What makes us different from a dog?
        
        We want similar things - food warmth shelter
        
        But we can think about our thoughts
        
        We can imagine abstract things that dont exist or soething we havent experienced
        
        Awareness about out thoughts as distinct from reality
      - Rene Descartes
        
        Two substances (Cartesian Dualism)
        
        Material: A physical substance that can be studies (Matter)
        
        ImmaterialL A abstract substance that exists but does not have a material form (Mind)
        
        Causation
        
        it's a fundamental feature of thoughts that the can cause our bodies to move. if thoughts are made out of a immaterial substance, then that substance isn't physical.how can we then interact with the physical body so as to affect changes in the world?
        
        if we have this immaterial substance, then how doesn't it, how does it affect changes in the physical body? (Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia)
        
        How does immaterial substance 'cause' a movement in a physical substance
      - Physicalism
        
        Mind and Matter are all material
        
        Logical Behaviorism
        
        Identity Theory
        
        Identity theory says that thoughts are identical with a particular physical state of my body and brain.
        
        Mental states just are physical states. If two things are physically indiscernible, then they're going to be psychologically indiscernible.
        
        Type Relation (Species) vs Token Relation (Individual)
        
        Token Identirty: for every psychological state that a human being is in, there is a corresponding physical state for it.
        
        Type Identity:particular types of physcological states, say pains, are identitical with particular types of physical states. (Stronger)
        
        Functionalism
        
        Hilary Putnam
        
        Pain might represent a type of phycial state for one but may not be for another (say an octopus or an alien or even some other person)
        
        The Identity theory then fails to account for variablity and if extended becomes a weak theory (issue of multiple realisability)
        
        maybe we're looking in the wrong place. Maybe what we shouldn't be thinking about is what psychological states are made of. Mental States are abstract functionality that exists independent of physical substance. we should think about what they do and not what they're made of.
        
        Functionalism: particular psychological state, like pain, can have different physical realisers, can be made of different physical stuff dependent on your physical form
        
        Criticises identity theory as too chauvnistic and limiting
        
        We should tell mental states apart and think about mental states, not by what they are made of, but by what they do.
        
        Psychological states can cause and be caused by other psychological states
        
        Actions are influenced by the psychological states and beliefs and so we dont need to find the physical construction of the mental state but only the functionality to understand it
      - The link to computers
        
        Under Functionalism: An information processing machine is what it is, in virtue of how it processes of information, not by what it's made of.
        
        To have a mind is to have a certain level of functional complexity
        
        Alan Turing (Tests of Intelligence)
        
        When can a machine be mistaken for a real thinking person?
        
        Turing Test: Can you distinguish between a human and computer?
        
        Problems with the Test
        
        it's language based, so all the testing is for an intelligence that can communicate via language.
        
        it's too anthropocentric. we're testing for human intelligence not fundamental intelligence
        
        A computational machine vs a information retieval system: if it were possible to build a machine that could pass Turing's test just using a file system we might not have a thought processes.
        
        Such a machine would be impractical
        
        But irrespective of that, if a machine passes the turing test, its interesting to see the structure of such a system to give us insight about what is required for a human mentality
        
        John Searle
        
        imagine that we did build a computer that could pass the Turing test. Would this properly count as having a mind?
        
        A machine like a computer that used a rule system to converse in a language, the computer does on under stand the language and only simulates a thinker
        
        computers only work on syntactic properties of symbols not the semantic properties
        
        Computers are syntactic and thus can never under the meaning
        
        The syntactic properties of a symbol pertain to its form whereas the semantic properties of a symbol pertain to its meaning or content.
      - Problems with the computational view of the mind
        
        Aboutness of the mind
        
        When we want to give an account of what human minds are like, we want to give an account of how thoughts can be about things, how thoughts can have meaning.This problem is not addressed
        
        consciousness
        
        Hard problem of consciousness: What makes this particular lump (brain) and mixture of chemicals and hormones conscious, and another lump not.
        
        So although we can give an analysis in terms of inputs and outputs, we haven't really gotten any closer to the question of analyzing the awareness or the sense of experience that we have.
        
        Metaphor of computation
        
        philosophers thoughts have been shaped by the movements of the times, particularly technology and is thus limiting
    - - The Debate of Scientific Realism and Anti-Realism (What is the aim of Science?)
      - Two Views on the Aims of Science
        
        Science aims to be accurately provide us with a good description and analysis of the available experimental evidence. "Save the phenomenon"
        
        Science aims to provide us with a true story about these phenomena, how they came about, what sort of mechanism were involved in their production. "Finding the Truth"
      - Saving the Phenomenon
        
        Ptolemy - Explained the retrograde motion of planets through epicycles.
        
        Neither Ptolemy nor Ptolemic astronomers believed that epicycles and defference were necessarily a true description of planetary motion. They barely saved the phenomenon
        
        "To Save the Phenomena" - Pierre Duhem: Simplicius’s commentary to Aristotle’s De Caelo "the aim of ancient astronomy, was not really to tell us a true story about planetary motion, but to provide us with a system of hypotheses that could save the appearances. "
        
        Even Copernicus (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, 1543) presented his hypotheses as just another hypothesis that could save the appearances (but more promising)
        
        Preface to Copernicus (Andreas Osiande) : "It is not necessary that these hypotheses be true. They need not even be likely. This one thing suffices that the calculations to which they lead agree with the result of observation."
      - Determining the Truth
        
        Galileo embraced copernicanism not just as a hypothesis that could save the phenomena, but as a physical truth
        
        Galileo defended what Pierre Duhem calls the method of the physicist against the method of the astronomers.
        
        Scientific Realism: the aim of science is to provide us with theories which literally construed we believe to be true.
        
        Semantic aspect: should take the language of science at face value. (Language represent real objects)
        
        Epistemic Aspect: whenever we accept a scientific theory, we believe that the theory is true or at least approximately true. (Theories are description of facts)
        
        Hillary Putnam "No Miracles Argument" - scientific realism is the only philosophy that does not make the success of science a miracle.
        
        if those objects described in science don't exist, if our theories were not really true or at least approximately true of the same objects, then it would be just a miracle that we have a theory. (If no curve spacetime einsteins theory would be a miracle)
      - Scientific Anti-Realism
        
        “Constructive empiricism" - Bas van Fraassen
        
        It agrees with scientific realism about the semantic aspect. But the constructive empiricist would claim that we don't need to believe theories to be true for them to be good.
        
        Constructive: element of construction that goes on in scientific activity, especially in the way we build scientific models.
        
        Empiricism: our knowledge should be confined to the available experimental evidence, as opposed to going beyond and claiming to discover truth about the unobservable.
        
        We construct models that save the phenomenom to explain the observable, but they dont deliver the truth but are empirically adequate (empirical adequacy)
        
        Difference from Saving the Phenomenon
        
        the aim is not truth but empirical adequacy, has nothing to do with distinction between human knowledge and divine knowledge.
        
        all to do with the metaphysical commitment that theorists bring along with them and the idealized and abstract nature of the scientific models that we build.
        
        you don’t need to believe that theory is true to explain why we have such a successful science, one can just say that the success of our present theories is the result of a struggle for survival across centuries.
        
        Scientific realism is too metaphycially comitted to the existence of its unobservable which more often than not are idealized models
      - Realist Rejoinder
        
        First Argument
        
        One thing is to explain why only successful theory survives, another thing is to explain what makes a theory successful
        
        What makes the theory successful is that the theories that survive are successful because they are true, because the entities that they postulated are real, and because what the theory says about those entities is true or approximately true, failed theories are false
        
        The notion of empirical adequacy doesn't really do when it comes to explaining the success of science and van Fraassen‘s Darwinian reformulation of the no miracles argument doesn't really cut any ice.
        
        Second argument
        
        Attacks van Fraassen’s distinction between the observable phenomena and the unobservable entities.
        
        Philosophers are concerned about the way in which this distinction is drawn or can be drawn. Why should we trust our naked eye more than our scientific instruments?
        
        Philip Kitcher and Peter Lipton (“inference to the best explanation”)
        
        We are justified to believe in unobservable entities because the inferential path that leads us to such unobservable entities is one and the same inferential path that leads us to unobserved observables.
        
        Perfectly observable objects may go unobserved. (Dinosaurs)
        
        we infer the hypothesis which would, if true, provide the best explanation of the available evidence.
        
        the scientific hypothesis that we choose and we are willing to believe tend to be those that would provide a deeper understanding, the best explanation of our evidence, and this is what we tend to do every day in life.
    - - Determinism
        
        Things can be random from our PoV but not from the universes PoV
        
        Metaphysical uncertainty: uncertainty that's in some way in the fabric of the universe, a genuine chanciness or randomness that's in the world, not just in the lack of knowledge of the world.
        
        Determinism/Mechanism: Everything that happens is determined fixed completely by the physical conditions that preceded it.
        
        Determinists claim there is no metaphysical uncertainty
        
        There's always an explanation for why things happen in the physical world, including human actions
        
        Humans are not a free agent, We're not making my own decisions.
        
        Not Fatalism
        
        Fate commands one unavoidable outcome
        
        But this idea is compatible with being free in other ways making his own decision in other ways
        
        Determinism says every thing is fixed.
        
        Fate is usually thought of as being brought about by a conscious agent, determinism is just the blind forces of nature.
        
        Fate seems to be able to happen in different ways, determinism is absolute.
      - Responses to Determinism
        
        Libertarianism
        
        Illusion of Free Will: we feel that our actions are consequences of our own choice. But we feel as if we're free isn't a good argument that we are free.
        
        Quantum Stochasticity: Consequences at the quantum scale are not determined accurately by the causes, but determinsm doesnt claim accuracy, it only questions our autonomy thriugh the universality of 'mechanism'
        
        Liberatarians claim that we really are free, that we really do have free will. We are causes outside of the usual causal chain.
        
        Agents are capable of agent causation. A special kind of causation that's free, that originates in the agent.(one religious view is that god gave free will)
        
        Problems
        
        Offers no explanations on how that might work or how it's compatible with the natural world.
        
        The Problem of Evil: If a deity who's omniscient and omnipotent gave us free will, then that deity knew what we were going to do, and had control over it. And so, in the end, the deity's responsible for everything that we do, including the bad things.
        
        Very hard to reconcile with the natural world. if we're not operating like natural causes then what are we? Kant: phenomenal selves (physical self) and noumenal selves (thinking self)
        
        Quite hard to make sense of acting for reasons on this picture. We have reasons for our actions but if actions arise within us they should not have external deterministic causes. Reson forces a cause for the act. Robert Kane: at moments where the reasons aren't clear, we're capable of totally free action (self-forming actions) and even if it is self forming the action taken is a matter of chance/luck and not autonomous.
        
        Compatibilism
        
        Compatibilism is the view that although we don't have metaphysical free will, we are determined. It doesn't matter. We nonetheless have moral responsibility.
        
        Hume: distinction between being free and being constrained.
        
        we shouldn't contrast being free with being determined, we should contrast being free with being prevented from doing the things we want to do.
        
        There might be a sense of freedom that's opposed to determinism, but that isn't the interesting sense. The sense of freedom that we should be interested in is just the totally ordinary sense
        
        what matters is that we decide what to do, that we are the ones making decisions about our actions.
        
        Harry Frankfurt "Freedom and the Concept of a Person" published in 1971
        
        Imagine that Neera is about to vote in an election. If she votes for candidate A, the neuroscientist will intervene and ensure that she chooses to vote for B. But if she chooses to vote for B on her own, the neuroscientist won't intervene. So let's imagine that Neera does decide to vote for B. She makes the decision on her own, that's what she does, the neuroscientist doesn't intervene.
        
        it doesn't matter that she didn't have any alternate possibilities. It didn't matter that that's the only thing that she could do.
        
        making your own mind up because of your own reasons is what makes you responsible.
        
        Peter Strawson
        
        As we go about the world engaging in ordinary interpersonal relationships, we react to people on the basis of what we perceive to be their motivations.
        
        it doesn't matter if those motivations are determined. What matters is that we think people have those motivations and that we continue to react to them (reactive attitudes)
        
        The thing that really matters is the actual quality of our motivations, not where they come from.
        
        Objection
        
        Isn't this just changing the subject? We started looking for free will, and now, you're giving us something a little bit different.
        
        it doesn't go deep enough
        
        Hard Determinism
        
        Determinism is true, so we don't have metaphysical free will and we don't have moral responsibility.
        
        Galen Strawson (Son of Peter Strawson): we would only be responsible for our acts if we had chosen them freely. Our acts come from our character. So, we'd only be responsible for our acts if we'd chosen our character freely.
        
        Peter Strawson: we should just think about our practical aims, our practical existence.Galen Strawson: no, we should stick to the difficult question about metaphysical free will.
        
        Hard determinists don't usually make clear how practical they intend the theory to be. what is the point of this? Why are they insisting on hard determinism? The hard determinist hasn't really advanced the debate by insisting on that point.
    - - David Lewis( 1941-2001) "The Paradoxes of Time Travel. "
        
        Types of time
        
        external time: time as it's registered by the world at large.
        
        Personal time: time as it's registered by a particular person or a particular traveling object.
        
        In time travel they diverge.
        
        In case there's a forward time travel, personal time and external time share the same direction, but they have different measures of duration.
        
        So in backward time travel, personal time and external time diverge, but they diverge in direction.
        
        Forward time travel is very deeply embedded in Einstein's special theory of relativity.
        
        Kurt Godel describes a relativistic possible universe where it's possible to jump these into the local future that can visit any point in the external past.
        
        General Theory of Relativity seems to predict that under certain circumstances, given an enormous amount of mass, or an enormous density of mass, or enormously rapid movement of mass, it's possible to create circumstances where personal time and external time diverge not only in duration, but in direction
      - Grandfather Paradoxes
        
        If it was possible to travel in time, it would be possible to create contradictions. It's not possible to create contradictions, therefore, it's not possible to travel backwards in time.
        
        Lewis accepts some of that argument. He accepts that it's not possible to create a contradiction. But interpreted properly, backward time travel can be internally consistent.
        
        Actions in the past seem to be restricted, but that's not the same as saying they're impossible.
        
        Notion of compossible
        
        compossibility means possible relative to a set of facts or certain states of affairs.
        
        ackward time travel can be logically consistent, provided you bear in mind that what's possible relative to one set of facts may not be possible relative to another set of facts.
        
        travel into the past is logically possible provided that what the traveler does in the past is consistent with the history whence the traveler comes.
      - Can the agent influence the past?
        
        Types of Changes
        
        replacement change and counterfactual change
        
        traveler in the past cannot effect replacement changes, but can effect counterfactual changes.
        
        replacement changes, can happen to concrete objects, but not to times.
        
        counterfactual change is the impact that you have, assessed in terms of what would have happened, counterfactually, if you hadn't been present
        
        But agent can cause a counterfactual change,in case their presense itself has played a role in their history (say hilter survives in 1908 because of the time travelers presence)
        
        Agent can change hostory but not its own history
      - Causal Loops
        
        A causal loop is a chain of events that loops back in time, so that an event turns out to be among its own causes.
        
        Shakepeare with a copy of his won works: who wrote the plays?
        
        Theres no paradox but wheres the entry oint for the information.
        
        All causation in the world suffers from infinite regress, and the problem of a finite cyclic causal loop is no worse than infintie linear causal chain
        
        Causality can appear from nowhere (Big Bang) and in causal loops in each case there maybe a good explanation why each event occurred, but there's no explanation for the chain of events as a whole.