A recent critique of hierarchical Bayesian models of delusion argues that, contrary to a key assumption of these models, belief formation in the healthy (i.e., neurotypical) mind is manifestly non-Bayesian. Here we provide a deeper examination of the empirical evidence underlying this critique. We argue that this evidence does not convincingly refute the assumption that belief formation in the neurotypical mind approximates Bayesian inference. Our argument rests on two key points. First, evidence that purports to reveal the most damning violation (...) of Bayesian updating in human belief formation is counterweighted by substantial evidence that indicates such violations are the rare exception—not a common occurrence. Second, the remaining evidence does not demonstrate convincing violations of Bayesian inference in human belief updating; primarily because this evidence derives from study designs that produce results that are not obviously inconsistent with Bayesian principles. (shrink)

Learning by doing, a change in beliefs due to experience, is crucial to the adaptive behaviours of organizations as well as the individuals that inhabit them. In this review paper, we summarise different pathologies of learning noted in past literature using a common underlying mechanism based on self-confirming biased beliefs. These are inaccurate beliefs about the environment that are self-confirming because acting upon these beliefs prevents their falsification. We provide a formal definition for self-confirming (...) class='Hi'>biased beliefs as an attractor that can lock learning by doing systems into suboptimal actions and provide illustrations based on simulations. We then compare and distinguish self-confirming biased beliefs from other related theoretical constructs, including confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophecies, and sticking points, and underscore that self-confirming biased beliefs underlie inefficient self-confirming equilibria and hot-stove effects. Lastly, we highlight two fundamental ways to escape self-confirming biased beliefs: taking actions inconsistent with beliefs and getting information on unchosen actions. (shrink)

It has been proposed that, whilst implicit attitudes, alike beliefs, are propositionally structured, 629–658, 2016), the former respond to evidence and modulate other attitudes in a fragmented manner, and so constitute a sui generis class, the “patchy endorsements”, 800–823, 2015). In the following, I demonstrate that the patchy endorsements theorist is committed to the truth of two claims: no implicit attitude is responsive to content to the same extent as any belief; and there is a significant gap between the (...) most responsive implicit attitude and the least responsive belief. I argue that both and fail to hold. Many implicit attitudes respond to evidence and modulate other attitudes. Meanwhile, at least some ordinary beliefs exhibit lower evidence-responsiveness and inferential efficacy than at least some implicit attitudes, defeating and. A better interpretation is that attitudes may be ordered along a continuum according to their responsiveness to content. At one extreme end, we find attitudes usually identified as implicit, and at the other, attitudes usually identified as beliefs, but in the middle, there is an area of overlap. I consider the consequences of the continuum view for existing folk psychological concepts. (shrink)

Philosophers are divided over whether implicit biases are beliefs. Critics of the belief model of implicit bias argue that empirical data show that implicit biases are habitual but unstable and not sensitive to evidence. They are not rational or consistently action-guiding like beliefs are supposed to be. In contrast, proponents of the belief model of implicit bias argue that they are stable enough, sensitive to some evidence, and do guide our actions, albeit haphazardly sometimes. With the help of (...) revisionary notions of belief, such as fragmented, Spinozan, and dispositional belief, these theorists argue that implicit biases are beliefs. I argue that both the critiques and defenses of belief models of implicit bias are problematic. This methodological critique suggests that debates about nature of the implicit bias ought to shift away from the belief question and toward more fundamental questions about stability and evidential sensitivity of implicit biases. I chart the path forward for this prescribed shift in the debate. (shrink)

This essay presents an argument, which it calls the Bias Argument, with the dismaying conclusion that (almost) everyone should significantly reduce her confidence in (too many) philosophical beliefs. More precisely, the argument attempts to show that the most precious philosophical beliefs are biased, as the pervasive and permanent disagreement among the leading experts in philosophy cannot be explained by the differences between their evidence bases and competences. After a short introduction, the premises of the Bias Argument are (...) spelled out in the first part. The second part explains why the objections to the Bias Argument are not compelling. Even though the essay does not adopt the conclusion of the Bias Argument, partly because it seems to be self-defeating, the authors know no plausible way to refute its premises. Thus, the primary aim of the essay is to clarify why the aporetic situation of the Bias Argument arises. (shrink)

A range of formal models of human reasoning have been proposed in a number of fields such as philosophy, logic, artificial intelligence, computer science, psychology, cognitive science, etc.: various logics, probabilistic systems, belief revision systems, neural networks, among others. Now, it seems reasonable to require that formal models of human reasoning be empirically adequate if they are to be viewed as models of the phenomena in question. How are formal models of human reasoning typically put to empirical test? One way (...) to do so is to isolate a number of key principles of the system, and design experiments to gauge the extent to which participants do or do not follow them in reasoning tasks. Another way is to take relevant existing results and check whether a particular formal model predicts these results. The present investigation provides an illustration of the second kind of empirical testing by comparing two formal models for reasoning – namely the non-monotonic logic known as preferential logic; and a particular version of belief revision theories, screened belief revision – against the reasoning phenomenon known as belief bias in the psychology of reasoning literature: human reasoners typically seek to maintain the beliefs they already hold, and conversely to reject contradicting incoming information. The conclusion of our analysis will be that screened belief revision is more empirically adequate with respect to belief bias than preferential logic and non-monotonic logics in general, as what participants seem to be doing is above all a form of belief management on the basis of background knowledge. The upshot is thus that, while it may offer valuable insights into the nature of human reasoning, preferential logic is ultimately inadequate as a formal model of the phenomena in question. (shrink)

A range of formal models of human reasoning have been proposed in a number of fields such as philosophy, logic, artificial intelligence, computer science, psychology, cognitive science, etc.: various logics, probabilistic systems, belief revision systems, neural networks, among others. Now, it seems reasonable to require that formal models of human reasoning be empirically adequate if they are to be viewed as models of the phenomena in question. How are formal models of human reasoning typically put to empirical test? One way (...) to do so is to isolate a number of key principles of the system, and design experiments to gauge the extent to which participants do or do not follow them in reasoning tasks. Another way is to take relevant existing results and check whether a particular formal model predicts these results. The present investigation provides an illustration of the second kind of empirical testing by comparing two formal models for reasoning – namely the non-monotonic logic known as preferential logic; and a particular version of belief revision theories, screened belief revision – against the reasoning phenomenon known as belief bias in the psychology of reasoning literature: human reasoners typically seek to maintain the beliefs they already hold, and conversely to reject contradicting incoming information. The conclusion of our analysis will be that screened belief revision is more empirically adequate with respect to belief bias than preferential logic and non-monotonic logics in general, as what participants seem to be doing is above all a form of belief management on the basis of background knowledge. The upshot is thus that, while it may offer valuable insights into the nature of human reasoning, preferential logic is ultimately inadequate as a formal model of the phenomena in question. (shrink)

The cognitive science of religion is an emerging field of cognitive science that gathers insights from different disciplines to explain how humans acquire and transmit religious beliefs. For the CSR scholars, the human mental tools have specific biases that make them susceptible to acceptance and transmission of religious beliefs. This article examines the characteristics of these biases and how they work, and shows that although our innate cognitive tendencies make our minds generally receptive to religion, they do not (...) explain the emergence and endurance of specific religious beliefs in a particular culture. We will also show that although advocates of CSR study religion as a 'natural' phenomenon, and seek to discover the natural causes of the formation, acceptance, transmission and prevalence of religious beliefs, their efforts do not lead to decrease the validity of religious beliefs and rejection of 'non-natural' explanations of religious beliefs. (shrink)

The endorsement of epistemically suspect (i.e., paranormal, conspiracy, and pseudoscientific) beliefs is widespread and has negative consequences. Therefore, it is important to understand the reasoning processes – such as lower analytic thinking and susceptibility to cognitive biases – that might lead to the adoption of such beliefs. In two studies, I constructed and tested a novel questionnaire on epistemically suspect beliefs (Study 1, N = 263), and used it to examine probabilistic reasoning biases and belief bias in (...) syllogistic reasoning as predictors of the endorsement of those beliefs, while accounting for analytic thinking and worldview variables (Study 2, N = 397). Probabilistic reasoning biases, analytic thinking, religious faith, and political liberalism consistently predicted various epistemically suspect beliefs, whereas the effect of syllogistic belief bias was largely restricted to pseudoscientific beliefs. Further research will be needed to examine the role the biased evaluation of evidence plays in the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs. (shrink)

The endorsement of epistemically suspect (i.e., paranormal, conspiracy, and pseudoscientific) beliefs is widespread and has negative consequences. Therefore, it is important to understand the reasoning processes – such as lower analytic thinking and susceptibility to cognitive biases – that might lead to the adoption of such beliefs. In two studies, I constructed and tested a novel questionnaire on epistemically suspect beliefs (Study 1, N = 263), and used it to examine probabilistic reasoning biases and belief bias in (...) syllogistic reasoning as predictors of the endorsement of those beliefs, while accounting for analytic thinking and worldview variables (Study 2, N = 397). Probabilistic reasoning biases, analytic thinking, religious faith, and political liberalism consistently predicted various epistemically suspect beliefs, whereas the effect of syllogistic belief bias was largely restricted to pseudoscientific beliefs. Further research will be needed to examine the role the biased evaluation of evidence plays in the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs. (shrink)

Our ability for scientific reasoning is a byproduct of cognitive faculties that evolved in response to problems related to survival and reproduction. Does this observation increase the epistemic standing of science, or should we treat scientific knowledge with suspicion? The conclusions one draws from applying evolutionary theory to scientific beliefs depend to an important extent on the validity of evolutionary arguments (EAs) or evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs). In this paper we show through an analytical model that cultural transmission of (...) scientific knowledge can lead toward representations that are more truth-approximating or more efficient at solving science-related problems under a broad range of circumstances, even under conditions where human cognitive faculties would be further off the mark than they actually are. (shrink)

Our ability for scientific reasoning is a byproduct of cognitive faculties that evolved in response to problems related to survival and reproduction. Does this observation increase the epistemic standing of science, or should we treat scientific knowledge with suspicion? The conclusions one draws from applying evolutionary theory to scientific beliefs depend to an important extent on the validity of evolutionary arguments (EAs) or evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs). In this paper we show through an analytical model that cultural transmission of (...) scientific knowledge can lead toward representations that are more truth-approximating or more efficient at solving science-related problems under a broad range of circumstances, even under conditions where human cognitive faculties would be further off the mark than they actually are. (shrink)

The current scientific discourse offers two opposing viewpoints about the roots of implicit biases: are they belief states or subdoxastic attitudes? The goal of this paper is to show that belief accounts of implicit biases are too demanding and lack a satisfying reasoning theory. Firstly, I will outline the concept of attitude and its relation to implicit biases. Next, I will briefly outline Mendelbaum’s view, who gives a paradigmatic example of a belief account of implicit biases. Afterward, I will concern (...) two flaws and discuss them in more detail. This shows that all current belief accounts of implicit biases do not emphasize these critical points enough, which makes them unsatisfying. (shrink)

Belief bias is the tendency for prior beliefs to influence people's deductive reasoning in two ways: through the application of a simple belief-heuristic and through the application of more effortful reasoning for unbelievable conclusions. Previous research indicates that cognitive ability is the primary determinant of the effect of beliefs on accuracy. In the current study, we show that the mere tendency to engage analytic reasoning is responsible for the effect of cognitive ability on motivated reasoning. The implications of (...) this finding for our understanding of the impact of individual differences on belief bias are discussed. (shrink)

Where Taber and Lodge view belief polarization to indicate a “partisan motivation,” Lord et al. (1979) believed it to be consistent with a desire for accuracy: A “weak” study articulating an opposing viewpoint might simply sharpen participants' initial belief of the wisdom of their prior beliefs. This polarization, Taber and Lodge show, correlates with political sophistication: The more partisan a participant, the more time spent reading the opinions of the other side—in order to critically refute them. Taber and Lodge (...) attribute such findings to people's personal identification with their beliefs. However, participants may have spent so much time reading opinions of the other side because the arguments are unfamiliar. Further, Lord et al. (1984) were able to induce people to act with “skepticism” toward their own views by simply suggesting that they “consider the other side.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article raises three concerns about Buchanan's argument related to the individualist description of ideology and psychological description of the obstacles to justice, as well as the way in which he separates empirical and normative beliefs, which, the article argues, are much more closely connected in all the examples that he raises. In the end, however, it agrees with Buchanan's central contention concerning the cognitive biases that interfere with progress towards justice, but, it argues, these operate at a (...) more sub‐conscious level than described by Buchanan. (shrink)

This treatise covers the history, now more than 170 years long, of researches and debates concerning the biblical city of Ai. This archetypical chapter in the evolution of biblical archaeology and historiography was never presented in full. I use the historical data as a case study to explore a number of epistemological issues, such as the creation and revision of scientific knowledge, the formation and change of consensus, the Kuhnian model of paradigm shift, several models of discrimination between hypotheses about (...) the past, the interplay between scientists' values and their epistemic beliefs, and the truth-bearing of historiographic reconstruction. I show, in particular, that when scientists share common epistemic values they can modify their beliefs even when such changes go against deeply entrenched biases and preconceptions. Considerations of coherence usually constrain such modifications, and when sufficient data is available the result can be a profound change of beliefs. Several episodes of the "Ai debates" demonstrate, however, that similar change of beliefs will not occur when non-epistemic values take precedence. (shrink)

In Bias: A Philosophical Study, Thomas Kelly offers a response to epistemological skepticism grounded in his account of bias. According to Kelly, the classic argument for skepticism is best understood as an attempt to show that our commonsense beliefs are biased against the skeptic. Kelly grants that this is true but argues that biased beliefs can still be knowledge. I offer two objections. First, if we are applying Kelly’s theory of bias to skepticism, it is best (...) to think of the skeptic’s challenge to be that our anti-skeptical beliefs are based on what we know to be biased reasons. Kelly has not shown that this sort of bias is compatible with knowledge. Second, Kelly’s approach to the problem of skepticism is an example of what I have called “unambitious epistemology.” And, for that reason, it is not a satisfactory answer to skepticism. (shrink)

I investigate the complementarity of behavioral biases in a simple investment problem. The agent has incomplete knowledge about the correlation between fitness and the decision environment. Nature endows the agent with a decision procedure so that the induced action can reflect this correlation. I show that the agent with this decision procedure always exhibits (i) present biased time preference, (ii) distorted beliefs, and (iii) cognitive dissonance. The three biases are complements and the absence of one of them destroys (...) the value of the other two. The decision procedure also provides insights into the non-fungibility of savings. (shrink)

Can the existence of motivationally biased beliefs plausibly be explained without appealing to actions that are aimed at producing or protecting these beliefs? Drawing upon some recent work on everyday hypothesis testing, I argue for an affirmative answer. Some theorists have been too quick to insist that motivated belief must involve, or typically does involve, our trying to bring it about that we acquire or retain the belief, or our trying to make it easier for ourselves to (...) believe a preferred proposition—and too quick to conclude that such exercises of agency are involved in specific instances of the phenomenon. There are alternative ways to accommodate the data, and it is far from clear that the “agency view” accommodates them better. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Most of what we believe comes to us from the word of others, but we do not always believe what we are told. We often reject thinkers' reports by attributing biases to them. We may call this debunking. In this essay, I consider how debunking might work and then examine whether, and how often, it can help to preserve rational belief in the face of disagreement.

I propose a new model of implicit bias, according to which implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings. I begin by endorsing a principle of parsimony when confronted with unfamiliar phenomena. I introduce implicit bias in terms congenial to what most philosophers and psychologists have said about their nature in the literature so far, before moving to a discussion of the doxastic model of implicit bias and objections to it. I then introduce unconscious imagination and argue that appeal to it (...) does not represent a departure from a standard view of imagination, before outlining my model and showing how it accommodates characteristic features of implicit bias. I argue for its advantages over the doxastic model: it does not violate the parsimony principle, it does not face any of the objections so far raised to doxasticism, and it can accommodate the heterogeneity in the category of implicit bias. Finally, I address whether my view limits our ability to hold people accountable for their biases (it does not), and whether it is consistent with what we know about intervention strategies (it is). I conclude that implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings. (shrink)

People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered Internet ‎sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing ‎subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users’ reliance on ‎Internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about ‎the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns ‎within standard theories of (...) knowledge and justification. To shed light on the problem, we introduce a ‎novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, ‎action, and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to ‎certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject’s particular decision-taking circumstances, ‎and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which ‎the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by ‎the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject’s beliefs that are ‎formed based on Internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how ‎filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic ‎responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.‎. (shrink)

Drawing on work in cognitive and social psychology, this chapter explains the bearing of motivationally biased beliefs on the project of producing an account of motivational explanation. It is argued that the core of ordinary motivational explanations is the following compound feature: motivation‐constituting items make a causal contribution to the explanandum that helps to explain the explanandum at least partly by revealing an agreeable feature, from the perspective of the agent's desires, either of the explanandum itself or of (...) its object and is of such a kind that our learning of contributions of that kind tends to improve our folk‐psychological understanding – that is, the understanding we have in, roughly, commonsense psychological terms – of why the explanandum came to be. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis (...) according to which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

Beliefs serve at least two broad functions. First, they help us navigate the world. Second, they serve as signals to manipulate others. Philosophers and psychologists have focused on the first function while largely overlooking the second. This article advances a conception of signals and makes a prima facie case for a social signaling function for at least some beliefs. Truth and rational support are often irrelevant to the signaling function. If some beliefs evolved for a signaling function, (...) then we should expect various biases that aid in the manipulation of others. (shrink)

In this article, we show that behavioral features can be obtained at a group level even if they do not appear at the individual level. Starting from a standard model of Pareto optimal allocations, with expected utility maximizers but allowing for heterogeneity among individual beliefs, we show in particular that the representative agent has an inverse S-shaped probability distortion function as in Cumulative prospect theory.

People consistently act in ways that harm the environment, even when believing their actions are environmentally friendly. A case in point is a biased judgment termed the negative footprint illusion, which arises when people believe that the addition of “eco-friendly” items to conventional items, reduces the total carbon footprint of the whole item-set, whereas the carbon footprint is, in fact, increased because eco-friendly items still contribute to the overall carbon footprint. Previous research suggests this illusion is the manifestation of (...) an “averaging-bias.” We present two studies that explore whether people’s susceptibility to the negative footprint illusion is associated with individual differences in: environment-specific reasoning dispositions measured in terms of compensatory green beliefs and environmental concerns; or general analytic reasoning dispositions measured in terms of actively open-minded thinking, avoidance of impulsivity and reflective reasoning. A negative footprint illusion was demonstrated when participants rated the carbon footprint of conventional buildings combined with eco-friendly buildings and conventional cars combined with eco-friendly cars. However, the illusion was not identified in participants’ ratings of the carbon footprint of apples. In Studies 1 and 2, environment-specific dispositions were found to be unrelated to the negative footprint illusion. Regarding reflective thinking dispositions, reduced susceptibility to the negative footprint illusion was only associated with actively open-minded thinking measured on a 7-item scale and 17-item scale. Our findings provide partial support for the existence of a negative footprint illusion and reveal a role of individual variation in reflective reasoning dispositions in accounting for a limited element of differential susceptibility to this illusion. (shrink)

People are biased toward beliefs that are welcomed by their in-group. Some beliefs produced by these biases—such as climate change denial and religious belief—can be fruitfully modeled by signaling theory. The idea is that the beliefs function so as to be detected by others and manipulate their behavior, primarily for the benefits that accrue from favorable tribal self-presentation. Signaling theory can explain the etiology, distinctive form, proper function, and alterability of these beliefs.

An empirically sensitive formulation of the norms of transformative criticism must recognize that even public and shared standards of evaluation can be implemented in ways that unintentionally perpetuate and reproduce forms of social bias that are epistemically detrimental. Helen Longino’s theory can explain and redress such social bias by treating peer evaluations as hypotheses based on data and by requiring a kind of perspectival diversity that bears, not on the content of the community’s knowledge claims, but on the beliefs (...) and norms of the culture of the knowledge community itself. To illustrate how socializing cognition can bias evaluations, we focus on peer-review practices, with some discussion of peer-review practices in philosophy. Data include responses to surveys by editors from general philosophy journals, as well as analyses of reviews and editorial decisions for the 2007 Cognitive Science Society Conference. (shrink)

When individuals display cognitive biases, they are prone to developing systematically false beliefs. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that rather than being a flaw in human cognition, biases may actually be design features. In my paper, I assess the claim that unrealistic optimism is such a design feature because it is a form of error management. Proponents of this theory say that when individuals make decisions under uncertainty, it can be advantageous to err on the side of overconfidence if the (...) potential gains through success are high and the costs of failure are low. I argue that there are a number of conceptual problems in matching the theory with the existing data. I also show that there is empirical evidence against the error management hypothesis. (shrink)

To make behavioral choices that are in line with our goals and our moral beliefs, we need to gather and consider information about our current situation. Most information present in our environment is not relevant to the choices we need or would want to make and thus could interfere with our ability to behave in ways that reflect our underlying values. Certain sources of information could even lead us to make choices we later regret, and thus it would be (...) beneficial to be able to ignore that information. Our ability to exert successful self-governance depends on our ability to attend to sources of information that we deem important to our decision-making processes. We generally assume that, at any moment, we have the ability to choose what we pay attention to. However, recent research indicates that what we pay attention to is influenced by our prior experiences, including reward history and past successes and failures, even when we are not aware of this history. Even momentary distractions can cause us to miss or discount information that should have a greater influence on our decisions given our values. Such biases in attention thus raise questions about the degree to which the choices that we make may be poorly informed and not truly reflect our ability to otherwise exert self-governance. (shrink)

A comparison of Neyman's theory of interval estimation with the corresponding subjective Bayesian theory of credible intervals shows that the Bayesian approach to the estimation of statistical parameters allows experimental procedures which, from the orthodox objective viewpoint, are clearly biased and clearly inadmissible. This demonstrated methodological difference focuses attention on the key difference in the two general theories, namely, that the orthodox theory is supposed to provide a known average frequency of successful estimates, whereas the Bayesian account provides only (...) a coherent ordering of degrees of belief and a subsequent maximization of subjective expected utilities. To rebut the charge of allowing biased procedures, the Bayesian must attack the foundations of orthodox, objectivist methods. Two apparently popular avenues of attack are briefly considered and found wanting. The first is that orthodox methods fail to apply to the single case. The second is that orthodox methods are subject to a typical Humean regress. The conclusion is that orthodox objectivist methods remain viable in the face of the subjective Bayesian alternative — at least with respect to the problem of statistical estimation. (shrink)

Although the extent to which motivational factors are involved in the production and sustaining of biased or 'irrational' beliefs continues to be a controversial issue in social psychology, even those who urge that such beliefs are often explained by non-motivational tendencies admit that biased beliefs sometimes have motivational sources. Sometimes toe are influenced by motivational pressures in ways proscribed by principles that we accept for belief-acquisition or belief-revision ('doxastic' principles). Many garden-variety instances of self-deception are (...) cases in point. We are not always helpless victims of those pressures, however. This paper examines the nature of doxastic self-control (roughly, a capacity to counteract motivational pressures that incline us to acquire or retain beliefs that would violate our doxastic principles) and explores our prospects for avoiding motivationally biased believing by exercising self-control. (shrink)

A growing number of philosophers are concerned with the epistemic status of culturally nurtured beliefs, beliefs found especially in domains of morals, politics, philosophy, and religion. Plausibly, worries about the deep impact of cultural contingencies on beliefs in these domains of controversial views is a question about well-foundedness: Does it defeat well-foundedness if the agent is rationally convinced that she would take her own reasons for belief as insufficiently well-founded, or would take her own belief as (...) class='Hi'>biased, had she been nurtured in a different psychographic community? This chapter will examine the proper scope and force of this epistemic location problem. It sketches an account of well and ill-founded nurtured belief based upon the many markers of doxastic strategies exhibiting low to high degrees of inductive risk: the moral and epistemic risk of ‘getting it wrong’ in an inductive context of inquiry. (shrink)

The domain of “folk-economics” consists in explicit beliefs about the economy held by laypeople, untrained in economics, about such topics as, for example, the causes of the wealth of nations, the benefits or drawbacks of markets and international trade, the effects of regulation, the origins of inequality, the connection between work and wages, the economic consequences of immigration, or the possible causes of unemployment. These beliefs are crucial in forming people's political beliefs and in shaping their reception (...) of different policies. Yet, they often conflict with elementary principles of economic theory and are often described as the consequences of ignorance, irrationality, or specific biases. As we will argue, these past perspectives fail to predict the particular contents of popular folk-economic beliefs and, as a result, there is no systematic study of the cognitive factors involved in their emergence and cultural success. Here we propose that the cultural success of particular beliefs about the economy is predictable if we consider the influence of specialized, largely automatic inference systems that evolved as adaptations to ancestral human small-scale sociality. These systems, for which there is independent evidence, include free-rider detection, fairness-based partner choice, ownership intuitions, coalitional psychology, and more. Information about modern mass-market conditions activates these specific inference systems, resulting in particular intuitions, for example, that impersonal transactions are dangerous or that international trade is a zero-sum game. These intuitions in turn make specific policy proposals more likely than others to become intuitively compelling, and, as a consequence, exert a crucial influence on political choices. (shrink)

Human migration is nonrandom. In small scale societies of the past, and in the modern world, people tend to move to wealthier, safer, and more just societies from poorer, more violent, less just societies. If immigrants are assimilated, such nonrandom migration can increase the occurrence of culturally transmitted beliefs, values, and institutions that cause societies to be attractive to immigrants. Here we describe and analyze a simple model of this process. This model suggests that long run outcomes depend on (...) the relative strength of migration and local adaptation. When local adaption is strong enough to preserve cultural variation among groups, cultural variants that make societies attractive always predominate, but never drive alternative variants to extinction. When migration predominates, outcomes depend both on the relative attractiveness of alError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapternative variants and on the initial sizes of societies that provide and receive immigrants. (shrink)

This fourth volume of the Middle Way Philosophy series uses cognitive psychology and balanced sceptical philosophy to explain both how we get stuck in dogmas, and how provisionality is possible. It is argued that we can make progress both in avoiding delusions and developing wisdom not by finding ‘truth’ or employing ‘rationality’, but rather through awareness of our assumptions. We need not ultimately true beliefs (as is often assumed), but judgements that are more adequate to each new set of (...) conditions. The book includes a wide survey of the cognitive biases identified by psychology, with an argument that the practically important aspect of each is an absolutising assumption that we could potentially avoid through awareness. (shrink)

Multiple authors in cognitive science of religion (CSR) argue that there is something about the human mind that disposes it to form religious beliefs. The dispositions would result from the internal architecture of the mind. In this article, I will argue that this disposition can be explained by various forms of (cultural) learning and not by the internal architecture of the mind. For my argument, I draw on new developments in predictive processing. I argue that CSR theories argue for (...) the naturalness of religious belief in at least three ways; religious beliefs are adaptive; religious beliefs are the product of cognitive biases; and religious beliefs are the product of content biases. I argue that all three ideas can be integrated in a predictive coding framework where religious belief is learned and hence not caused by the internal architecture of the mind. I argue that the framework makes it doubtful that there are modular cognitive mechanisms for religious beliefs and that the human mind has a fixed proneness for religious belief. I also argue that a predictive coding framework can incorporate a larger role for cultural processes and allows for more flexibility. (shrink)

I argue that racially biased perception can be incompetent in a way that undermines perceptual warrant. This can occur even when the subject is unaware of the influence of the bias upon their beliefs or when they possess no defeating evidence that makes it rational for them to doubt the accuracy of their perceptual experiences. When a subject’s racial bias causes their perceptual system to encode inaccurate information about their environment, or to process information in an epistemically incompetent (...) manner, this can reduce their perceptual competence, and thus their perceptual warrant. I discuss a series of cases that illustrate how my proposals treat various instances of racially biased perception. I then distinguish my view from a competing proposal from Jessie Munton (2019) which claims that racially biased priors are epistemically incompetent because they are gerrymandered. A gerrymandered prior is one whose accuracy depends on ongoing manipulations of the environment. I argue that the kinds of manipulations that Munton cites do not necessarily impact perceptual competence and that my account better explains how racist institutions and societal structures can impact the epistemic competence of perceivers. (shrink)

A number of studies have investigated how immersion in a virtual reality environment can affect participants’ implicit biases. These studies presume associationism about implicit bias. Recently philosophers have argued that associationism is inadequate and have made a case for understanding implicit biases propositionally. However, no propositionalist has considered the empirical work on virtual reality and how to integrate it into their theories. I examine this work against a propositionalist background, in particular, looking at the belief and patchy endorsement models. I (...) argue that the results therein can only be accommodated by a model which recognizes structural heterogeneity, that is, one which allows for implicit biases being both associatively and non-associatively structured. My preferred view – that implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings – allows for this, as well as for heterogeneity at the level of content (propositional and imagistic), a feature which also earn its explanatory keep in this context. I conclude that empirical work on virtual reality and implicit bias gives us a reason to prefer a pluralist model of bias, and that my unconscious imagination model, in its recognizing wide-ranging heterogeneity, is uniquely placed to accommodate the results of work on virtual reality and bias mitigation. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that there is a way to make sense of blameworthiness for morally problematic actions even when there is no bad will behind such actions. I am particularly interested in cases where an agent acts in a biased way, and the explanation is socialization and false belief rather than bad will on the part of the agent. In such cases, I submit, we are pulled in two directions: on the one hand non-culpable ignorance is usually (...) an excuse, but in the case of acting in a biased way we feel some pull to find the agent blameworthy. I argue that agents are sometimes blameworthy, (where I really mean that they are blameworthy, and not just that it is permissible to reproach them), even if they do not have any bad will. I argue that although the paradigmatic account of blameworthiness is based on quality of will, we can and should be willing to allow that there are non-paradigmatic cases. I argue that the zone of responsibility can be extended to include acts that we are not fully in control of, and acts whose moral status we are non-culpably ignorant about at the time of acting. This extension of responsibility happens through a voluntary taking of responsibility. I argue that there are certain conditions under which we should take responsibility, and that when we do so, we genuinely are responsible. (shrink)

In bargaining environments with uncertain disagreement or “impasse” outcomes (e.g., litigation or labor strike outcomes), there is an identification problem that confounds data interpretation. Specifically, the minimally acceptable settlement value from a risk-averse (risk-loving) but unbiased-belief bargainer is empirically indistinguishable from what one could get with risk-neutrality and pessimistically (optimistically) biased beliefs. This article reports results from a controlled bargaining experiment where data on both risk attitude and beliefs under uncertainty are generated in order to assess their (...) relative importance in bargaining experiment outcomes. The average lab subject is risk-averse, yet optimistic with respect to uncertainty, which is consistent with existing studies that examine each in isolation. I also find that the effects of optimism dominate those of risk-aversion. Optimistic bargainers are significantly more likely to dispute and have aggressive final bargaining positions. Dispute rates are not statistically affected by risk attitude, but there is some evidence that risk aversion leads to a weakened bargaining position. Though additional research is needed to understand the limits of extending these results, a key implication follows. In uncertainty environments where optimism dominates, increased settlement rates are more likely achieved by minimizing impasse uncertainty (to limit the potential for optimism) rather than maximizing uncertainty (to weaken the reservation point of risk-averse bargainers), as has been argued in the dispute resolution literature. (shrink)

Circumscribed delusional beliefs can follow brain injury. We suggest that these involve anomalous perceptual experiences created by a deficit to the person's perceptual system, and misinterpretation of these experiences due to biased reasoning. We use the Capgras delusion (the claim that one or more of one's close relatives has been replaced by an exact replica or impostor) to illustrate this argument. Our account maintains that people voicing this delusion suffer an impairment that leads to faces being perceived as (...) drained of their normal affective significance, and an additional reasoning bias that leads them to put greater weight on forming beliefs that are observationally adequate rather than beliefs that are a conservative extension of their existing stock. We show how this position can integrate issues involved in the philosophy and psychology of belief, and examine the scope for mutually beneficial interaction. (shrink)

Motivated reasoning occurs when we reason differently about evidence that supports our prior beliefs than when it contradicts those beliefs. Adult participants (N = 377) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) system completed written responses critically evaluating strengths and weaknesses in a vignette on the topic of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). The vignette had two fictional scientists present prototypical arguments for and against anthropogenic climate change that were constructed with equally flawed and conflicting reasoning. The current study tested and (...) found support for three main hypotheses: cognitive style, personality, and ideology would predict both motivated reasoning and endorsement of human caused climate change; those who accept human-caused climate change will be less likely to engage in biased reasoning and more likely to engage in objective reasoning about climate change than those who deny human activity as a cause of climate change. (144 words). (shrink)