Academia | Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

Upon Reflection, Ep. 13: Reflection-Philosophy Order Effects and Correlations Across Samples

Suppose you glance at a clock that, unbeknownst to you, is broken, showing the same time all day. Nonetheless, you happened to look at the clock precisely when it showed the correct time. So your belief about the time is correct. My question is this: did you know what time it is?

Perhaps you think that you did. After all, you formed a belief on the basis of a device that most people trust and the belief was true! What else would it mean to know something? Well, in academic philosophy, the orthodox answer to this kind of thought experiment is “no”.

People who perform better on tests of reflective thinking tend to report philosophers’ orthodox answer to this kind of thought experiment. And, if you’ve been following my research, you know that philosophers are particularly reflective thinkers. These correlations may make you wonder about causation. Does thinking reflectively cause people to accept philosophers’ orthodoxy? Or is it the other way around: does studying thought experiments like the broken clock case somehow result in people performing better on reflection tests?

In this episode, I’ll tell you about the experiment I ran to find out. The paper is titled “Reflection-Philosophy Order Effects and Correlations Across Samples” and has been accepted for publication in Analysis. The paper will also mention a bunch of other thought experiments, tests of reflective thinking, and measures of research participants’ data quality.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:51 — 42.4MB)

Oppenheimer: ‘Philosopher-Scientist-Statesman’

J. Robert Oppenheimer “was widely known not just for his scientific success but for his remarkably wide-ranging knowledge of the humanities [,…] an extraordinary combination…”, says Ashutosh Jogalekar in his 8th and final post about Oppie over at 3 Quarks Daily (2023). Why do I start with this quote? I think it alludes to an important lesson for our time. I explain in less than 700 words below.

Here’s to the Philosopher-Scientists!

Sometimes philosophers complain that scientists do philosophy badly and that philosophers may thereby be underrated. The idea is that people could have better philosophy if they just turned to academic philosophers rather than the popular scientists that have done philosophy badly. (Perhaps analogous complaints about philosophers circulate among scientists). In this post, I want to turn our attention to scientists that do philosophy well and philosophers that do science well.

Non-Western Philosophy of Mind

I have been considering changes to my Philosophy of Mind syllabus. One kind of change would be to include non-Western philosophies and philosophers. So I did what every scholar of our era does when it’s time to venture in to new territory: I asked #PhilosophyTwitter. In this post, I’ll share the results.

How To Prepare For A Thesis Defense

I defended my doctoral dissertation in 2020—yes, remotely. I also defended a master’s thesis a few years earlier. I learned a few things and sought plenty of advice between these two defenses. In this post I will share the checklist that I used to prepare for the dissertation defense.

6 Tips For Academic Presentations

Like many academics, I’ve given dozens of academic presentations and dozens more audio and video interviews in the past few years. After a series of subpar presentations, plenty of feedback, and lots of practice, I now get remarkably positive feedback on these presentations. For example, some professors have advised their graduate students to model their job talks after some of the talks that I have given about reasoning, morality, and religion. In this post, I’ll share the best advice for academic presentations that I have received so far, focusing only on what I have found to be most helpful.

10 Steps For Organizing A Conference or Workshop

Organizing a conference or workshop is time-consuming yet important work. I have organized a handful or international conferences, in-person and online. In this post, I distill my conference organizing experience into a list of 10 steps to make your conference or workshop a success. To find out more about organizing conferences/workshops—especially online—see Online Conferences: Some history, methods & data

A Year On The Job Market With A Ph.D. – Some Data

I was on the job market in the Fall of 2019 and the Spring of 2020. I submitted over 280 job applications to universities, governments, companies, think tanks, and grant agencies. After some interviews, job talks, and a few offers, I thought that I would share my experience here (and in this video conversation). If at any point you have questions, then feel free to contact me on your platform of choice; I’ll see if I can answer your question in a future post. Today’s post visualizes data about the job market process from application submission to job offer.

Upon Reflection, Ep. 5: Reflective Reasoning For Real People (Dissertation Overview)

Welcome to Upon Reflection. In this episode, I review the major take-aways and findings from my dissertation titled, “Reflective Reasoning For Real People”. I explain what cognitive scientists mean by terms like “reflective reasoning”, how reflection is measured empirically, how reflection can either help or hinder our reasoning, how more reflective philosophers tend toward certain philosophical beliefs, and how reflection may help us retrain our implicit biases.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:53 — 29.1MB)

New paper: “Your Health vs. My Liberty”

Why did otherwise life affirming people flout public health recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Was it leaders’ messaging? For example, are “flatten the curve” graphs about statistical victims less effective than information about identifiable victims?
Was it people’s reasoning? Do some people not think carefully enough about public health? Might people who better at math better understand public health information involving concepts like exponential growth and probability?
Was it people’s philosophical preferences? Do some people just care more about preventing harm? Do others prioritize personal liberty over pubic health? Do people’s beliefs about science matter? Religion?

Michał Białek and I investigated. In short, we found that flouting public health recommendations was less about messaging or reasoning than philosophical beliefs, especially beliefs about our duties to others, liberty, and science. The paper is ~~under review~~ now published in Cognition. As always, you can find a free copy of the paper on my CV at byrdnick.com/cv. More details below.