Ethan Landes joined the team in September 2024 as a post-doctoral research associate. With a background in philosophy, Ethan considers himself to be something of a psychosopher (or maybe philschologist?) and is interested in developing new empirical methods to answer questions that philosophers might not realise can be answered with science. I caught up with Ethan to find out more.
What made you choose to study philosophy?
I studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Lawrence University in America. The reason why I chose philosophy is pretty silly: I took a number of classes in different departments in my first year, and I thought they were all too easy. The philosophy class I took with Dr John Dreher was the most mind-bending and difficult course I took that year. John Dreher (as he insisted we call him) has been my philosophical spirit animal ever since. He didn’t see philosophy as a stodgy discipline meant to be stuck in the armchair worrying too much about Ultimate Truths. John Dreher saw philosophy as an interdisciplinary way of approaching the world and its myriad puzzles and problems.
When I did my PhD at St Andrews in philosophy, I learned most philosophers disagree with this multifaceted, world-facing vision of philosophy, although my dissertation tried in vain to convince them otherwise. Not surprisingly, empirical science has slowly drawn me in. My previous postdoc was in experimental philosophy, which differs from research psychology only in the sorts of questions it tries to ask and answer. I now consider myself something of a psychosopher (or maybe philschologist?) and am always looking for ways to use cool new empirical methods to answer questions that philosophers might not realise can be answered with science.
What are you looking forward to about this project?
I am looking forward to working with colleagues at Kent to use empirical methods to try to answer some fundamental questions about our relationship with AI. For instance: Do people listen to LLM moral advice? How do they listen to LLM moral advice? Can we properly be said to trust them, or is the attitude we take when relying on them something else entirely? Does the rise of AI mean we need new language to describe our relationship with them?
This last question is particularly interesting to me moving forward because I have spent the last few years working on the methodological basis of conceptual engineering – a recent movement in philosophy to revise and change people’s conceptual schema and language. ChatGPT was so shocking when it went public in late 2022 because it challenged our understanding of cognition and agency. Here is something — based entirely in silicon and living in our computer browser — that can produce something that we thought was uniquely human. I don’t think our language or conceptual repertoire has caught up to this new technological reality, and I’d like to try to fix that.
How do you unwind from the pressures of a research career?
To unwind, I road cycle, boulder, go hiking on hills with my wirehaired dachshund named Fergus, and play video games. Currently I’m playing Cyberpunk 2077 and Noita, and next in my videogame queue is Sable and XCOM 2.
What one piece of advice would you give to a new student about to study psychology?
My advice to new psychology students is to read philosophy of mind. Philosophers and psychologists have opposite weaknesses: Philosophers tend to focus on theory while ignoring data, and psychologists tend to focus on data while ignoring theory. The questions philosophers and psychologists are interested in are really not that different from each other, and philosophy’s perspective will help you as a psychologist see the bigger picture. Patricia Churchland’s and Daniel Dennett’s books are a great entryway into philosophy for psychologists (Churchland’s now-dated Neurophilosophy will forever be a favourite of mine), and those looking for a conceptual and philosophical challenge should check out David Chalmers’ work on panpsychism and David Parfit’s work on personal identity. Another good place to start is to look through the papers here: https://diversityreadinglist.org/category/2-metaphysics/mind/philosophy-of-mind/