The 2015 William and Julia Edwards Lecture in Philosophy and Religion was held in Founder’s Hall on Thursday, Oct. 29.
The lecture was given by Peter Railton, Gregory S. Kavka Distinguished University professor and John Stephenson Perrin professor of philosophy at University of Michigan.
The Edwards Lecture is a “forum where recognized scholars in religion and philosophy are invited to share their work with the campus community.”
Railton contributed to this forum by speaking on “’Homo Prospectus’ Toward a New Synthesis in Thinking About the Mind and Brain.”
“What’s wrong with the term ‘homo sapiens?’” Railton said to begin his presentation.
Homo sapiens translates into “wise person.” Railton pointed out that translations of earlier names for humans like homo erectus described a capacity of action a human had.
“A better word for humans would be homo prospectus with ‘pro’ meaning forward and ‘spectus’ meaning vision,” Railton said.
First, Railton specified that all animals use prospection thinking.
“The surprising fact about humans is the scale at which we use prospection,” Railton said.
His ideas were presented using philosophical evidence, evidence from animal’s brains, and motor control and machine learning evidence.
“Prospection is simulation of future possibilities and evaluations of those assessments,” Railton said. “Through this we learn and detect patterns.”
This can be found by looking at risk analysis in animals like rats as they go through a maze. A rat’s brain will map out a maze to find food and then locate the food based on the map in their brain.
Patterns are also seen in optimization problems in machines and robots. Railton touched briefly on a robot’s ability to walk, and the functions that have to be programmed into it.
“They get optimum motor control by giving them a flexible capacity and a function for learning,” Railton said.
Next, Railton looked at forward thinking by considering the memory, perception, motivation, empathy, and morality.
“Memory is not perfect recall, but rather giving bits of information that we can put together in new ways and update for the future,” Railton said.
Railton spent a large portion of his lecture discussing the idea of morality when it comes to prospection.
He posed a few different versions of the “Trolley Problem.” In short, the simple form of the “Trolley Problem” is deciding whether to flip a switch to save five people from an oncoming trolley, by sacrificing one person, or letting the five people get hit in order to save one person.
Survey results of posing the “Trolley Problem” lead Railton to believe that moral judgment is prospective.
“My thinking is first and last and always for my doing,” Railton said in closing his lecture, using a quote from William James.
“He could have ‘and my doing stretches forward, not backward in time,’” Railton continued. “Thinking is for doing, and what that means is prospective.”
