April 23, 2008

May 12th we fly out of NYC to Beijing. May 8th, I think, I'm driving with Melissa to Philly, where I'll hang out for a day or two before visiting my brother in NYC. This is an exciting plan, no?

In the mean time, there's too much to do. Or at least there's enough to do that it cuts into my "reading comic books, playing bassoon, and writing bad prose" time. Next week I'm going to the dentist. Tomorrow I'm getting my pack for the summer. Today I'm packing, cleaning, and sorting my life into three categories: What I Need This Summer, What I Need Next Fall, What I Don't Need. The last is the biggest.

Getting ready for this trip has mostly made me realize that I don't need so much of the stuff I have and I don't have the things I actually need (pants that fit, for example.) When you're getting ready to live for three months out of a large backpack, you begin to reevaluate your needs hierarchy. Or at least I do.

I've decided which books I'm taking this summer. I'll be writing about them in A to Z soon and then editing the literature review after I get back.

Intuitions in a Cross-Cultural Context

Intuitions differ cross-culturally, and this summer I will be gathering data on intuitions concerning causality, morality, and natural and personal identity in Central Asia. Much attention has been paid to intuitions in Western Europe and America, and recently work has been done in East Asia, but no one has done any studies in Central Asia before. I study both philosophy of science and Asian studies, and this is an opportunity for me to combine my academic interests and contribute to my chosen fields. After I graduate, I'll build on this work and attend a graduate school for philosophy of science, with research focusing on philosophy in a cross-cultural context.

For this project, my advisor, Dr. Edouard Machery, and I have constructed a series of thought experiments designed to test different intuitions. The probes will be accompanied by a sheet for demographics, but I am not planning on focusing on a specific group within Mongolia. I hope to administer as many of these surveys as possible in order to construct a statistically relevant profile on intuitions in Central Asia. Out of fourteen probes, each set will contain ten, broken down as four on morals, three on identity, and three on causation. Variations between surveys will occur in one of the moral probes and all three on identity. After I return to America, the experiment will also be conducted in Pittsburgh in the fall for purposes of cross-cultural analysis.