Many neo-Darwinists treat natural selection of genes and individual organisms as broadly equivalent. This enables Wilson & Sober (W&S) to propose a multilevel group selection model by drawing parallels between individuals and groups. The notion of gene/individual equivalence is a profound misconception. Its elimination negates W&S's current approach but offers the best way forward for both life and behavioural sciences.

What are the types of action at issue in the free will and moral responsibility debate? Are the neuroscientists who make claims about free will and moral responsibility studying those types of action? If not, can the existing paradigm in the field be modified to study those types of action? This paper outlines some claims made by neuroscientists about the inefficacy of conscious intentions and the implications of this inefficacy for the existence of free will. It argues that, typically, the (...) types of actions at issue in the philosophical literature require proximal or distal conscious decisions and have the right kind of connection to reasons. It points out that neuroscientists are not studying this class of actions, as their studies focus on simple commanded actions (e.g., finger flex) and simple Buridan choices (e.g., push the left or right button). Finally, it argues that neuroscience already has the resources to study the types of action relevant for free will and moral responsibility and outlines two experiments which focus on skilled actions and moral choices that could be run using the available technology. (shrink)

Part of understanding the meaning and power of algorithms means asking what new demands they might make of ethical frameworks, and how they might be held accountable to ethical standards. I develop a definition of networked information algorithms as assemblages of institutionally situated code, practices, and norms with the power to create, sustain, and signify relationships among people and data through minimally observable, semiautonomous action. Starting from Merrill’s prompt to see ethics as the study of “what we ought to do,” (...) I examine ethical dimensions of contemporary NIAs. Specifically, in an effort to sketch an empirically grounded, pragmatic ethics of algorithms, I trace an algorithmic assemblage’s power to convene constituents, suggest actions based on perceived similarity and probability, and govern the timing and timeframes of ethical action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.2 (2004) 125-128 [Access article in PDF] Comparing Psychoanalytic and Cognitive-Behavioral Perspectives on Control Bruce N. Waller Keywords freedom, locus of control, psychoanalysis, self-efficacy, volition Cognitive behavioral research on locus of control and self-efficacy has produced an extensive body of empirical results that might prove useful to psychoanalytic researchers endeavoring to strengthen the empirical foundation of psychoanalytic therapy. Cognitive-behaviorists and psychoanalysts share a common (...) interest in the importance of perspectives and belief systems and their impact on individual freedom, and comparative research on therapeutic effectiveness could yield benefits for both therapeutic approaches.Locus of control and self-efficacy are central elements in cognitive-behavioral psychology, and they play an important role in cognitive-behavioral therapy. Although the psychoanalytic approach does not explicitly employ those concepts, psychoanalytic therapists are obviously concerned with problems of effective action and internal obstacles to action. Attention to these two perspectives and their overlapping interests offers potential benefits for both the cognitive-behavioral and the psychodynamic approaches to psychological research and therapy.One potential benefit is the development of useful tools for advancing empirically based research on psychoanalysis. As Lehrer (1999) states, it is advantageous to ground psychoanalysis in "firm empirical evidence whenever possible." Although there have obviously been significant positive steps in that direction (Singer 2003; Weiss 1995, 1988; Weiss and Sampson 1986), psychoanalytic researchers have recognized that one source of difficulty is in finding clearly measurable research objectives and hypotheses (Burgin 2002). Cognitive-behavioral research on locus of control and self-efficacy has produced an extensive body of research using clear measurement standards that could prove useful in the empiricist approach to psychodynamic theories. In particular, those cognitive-behavioral research findings might offer a means of extending empirical investigation of psychodynamic theory in a direction usually regarded as difficult to test empirically: the study of psychoanalytic effectiveness to "change your way of seeing" (Lieberman 1999). Shifting locus of control or efficacy expectations in specific domains (Bandura 1997) [End Page 125] would empirically confirm the effectiveness of psychoanalytic techniques. It might well be that some efficacy expectations are enhanced more effectively by psychodynamic processes than by cognitive-behavioral therapy, or that psychoanalysis is effective in enhancing some specific efficacy expectations but not others. This could potentially extend the empirical examination of psychoanalytic theory as well as provide a base of comparison with cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques.Although self-efficacy enhancement might be a fruitful empirical test for psychodynamic therapy, therapeutic intervention to modify locus of control potentially could be even more productive. Current research indicates that one's orientation toward locus of control is a relatively stable characteristic, although it can be modified (Holyrod et al. 1984; Rotter 1979; Sadow and Hopkins 1993). One reason for locus of control stability may be that the locus of control imposes a perspective on the conceptualization of all one's experiences: from a strong internal locus of control perspective I view failures and successes as largely my own doing, whereas from an external locus perspective even my most effective efforts are seen as events that were outside my control: "I guess it was just my time to do well on a math exam," rather than "My hard work for that exam really paid off." (Lieberman makes this phenomenon quite clear in his excellent discussion of transparency.) Although locus of control is not easily modified, it is important to find effective means of helping subjects to achieve such changes, because research shows that a strong internal locus of control is positively correlated with success in work, sports, studies, marriage, and psychological adjustment (Lefcourt 1981, 1992), as well as with better health care behavior and better health (Bandura 1977; Schorr and Rodin 1982; Schulz 1976; Schulz and Hanusa 1978; Wallston 1993). Those deeply enmeshed in an external locus of control enjoy less real freedom and suffer severe disadvantages.How does one effect a shift in such a basic orientation? Not easily. From a psychoanalytic approach, the key will lie in recognizing and reconceptualizing the beliefs that impede effective action. Cognitive-behaviorists are more likely to... (shrink)

The patient's right to informed consent is grudgingly acknowledged by medical professionals, firmly established in law, and brandished as a shibboleth by most bioethicists. But questions remain concerning genuine patient autonomy, and the doctrine of informed consent offers inadequate answers. In addition to the continuing controversy over what counts as “informed,” the passive acquiescence implied by “consent” seems a pale shadow of genuine autonomy.

The forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China's dictatorship, writes Waller R. Newell in this engaging exposé of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny is a permanent threat by following its strange career from Homeric Bronze Age warriors, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome, to the medieval struggle between the City of God and the City of (...) Man, leading to the state-building despots of the Modern Age including the Tudors and 'enlightened despots' such as Peter the Great. The book explores the psychology of tyranny from Nero to Gaddafi, and how it changes with the Jacobin Terror into millenarian revolution. Stimulating and enlightening, Tyrants: Power, Injustice, and Terror will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today's world. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of Molyneux's problem within contemporary philosophy of mind tend to characterize the problem as primarily concerned with the role innately known principles, amodal spatial concepts, and rational cognitive faculties play in our perceptual lives. Indeed, for broadly similar reasons, rationalists have generally advocated an affirmative answer, while empiricists have generally advocated a negative one, to the question Molyneux posed after presenting his famous thought experiment. This historical characterization of the dialectic, however, somewhat obscures the role Molyneux's problem has (...) played in spawning debates within the empiricist tradition. Fortunately, the differences between various empiricist accounts have been widely recognized and discussed among historians of philosophy working on the topic. The focus of the present essay is to develop an interpretation of John Locke's views on Molyneux's problem that best coheres with his other views on human understanding as well as with the predominant scientific opinion about the nature of perception during the period in which he lived. (shrink)

The paper aims to show that, if S5 is the logic of metaphysical necessity, then no state of affairs in any possible world constitutes any non-trivial evidence for or against the existence of the traditional God. There might well be states of affairs in some worlds describing extraordinary goods and extraordinary evils, but it is false that these states of affairs constitute any (non-trivial) evidence for or against the existence of God. The epistemological and metaphysical consequences for philosophical theology of (...) assuming that S4 or Kσρ is the logic of metaphysical necessity are equally untenable. S4 guarantees that God does not exist if there is the slightest evidence against the existence of God. And Kσρ guarantees that God might survive the loss or acquisition of any essential property at all. (shrink)

In this article the author makes the case for a hybrid sourcehood–leeway compatibilist account of free will. To do so, she draws upon Lehrer’s writing on free will, including his preference-based compatibilist account and Frankfurt-style cases from the perspective of the cognizant agent. The author explores what distinguishes kinds of intentional influence in manipulation cases and applies this distinction to a new perspectival variant of Frankfurt cases, those from the perspective of the counterfactual intervenor. She argues that it matters what (...) kind of intentional influence is at issue in the counterfactual intervention and, further, that our judgments about desert of praise are affected by occupying the POV of the counterfactual intervenor. The author concludes that such attention to perspectival variants of Frankfurt cases supports the view that compatibilist sourcehood accounts of moral responsibility require an additional compatibilist could-have-done-otherwise condition to capture a more robust sense of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The central aim of this book is to understand modules and the categories they form through associated structures and dimensions, which reflect the complexity of these, and similar, categories.

Autonomy is good for you. A strong sense of competent self-control and effective choice-making promotes both physical and psychological well-being. Loss of autonomous control—and a sense of helplessness—causes depression, increased sensitivity to pain, greater vulnerability to disease, and death. Well established by a wide range of psychological and physiological studies, the positive effects of patient autonomy are well known to competent physicians, nurses, and therapists. Conscientious caregivers are thus moving beyond grudging acceptance of informed consent toward clinical respect for patient (...) autonomy. (shrink)

In this paper I begin by arguing that there are significant intellectual and normative continuities between pre-Victorian hereditarianism and later Victorian eugenical ideologies. Notions of mental heredity and of the dangers of transmitting hereditary ‘taints’ were already serious concerns among medical practitioners and laymen in the early nineteenth century. I then show how the Victorian period witnessed an increasing tendency for these traditional concerns about hereditary transmission and the integrity of bloodlines to be projected onto the level of national health. (...) Tracing the gradual emergence of eugenical thought, I also highlight some of the more fundamental social, political and intellectual factors that promoted this predilection for extrapolating from the individual lineage to the nation and race. In doing so I argue that fully fledged eugenical thought was always unlikely to emerge prior to the early Victorian period. However, I am also able to show that Francis Galton's 1865 eugenical proposals were far from innovative and that identifying him as the ‘father’ of the eugenics movement is highly misleading. (shrink)

Perhaps the greatest impediment to a viable libertarianism is the provision of a satisfactory explanation of how actions that are undetermined by an agent's character can still be under the control of, or ‘up to’, the agent. The ‘luck problem’ has been most assiduously examined by Robert Kane who supplies a detailed account of how this problem can be resolved. Although Kane's theory is innovative, insightful, and more resourceful than most of his critics believe, it ultimately cannot account for the (...) type of control that moral responsibility and (ultimate) agency legitimately require. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists have long worried that the human tendency to anthropomorphize leads us to err in our understanding of nonhuman minds. This tendency, which I call intuitive anthropomorphism, is a heuristic used by our unconscious folk psychology to understand nonhuman animals. The dominant understanding of intuitive anthropomorphism underestimates its complexity. If we want to understand and control intuitive anthropomorphism, we must treat it as a cognitive bias and look to the empirical evidence. This evidence suggests that the most common (...) control for intuitive anthropomorphism, Morgan’s Canon, should be rejected, while others are incomplete. It also suggests new approaches. (shrink)

Rebecca Lloyd Waller defends a temporal dualist interpretation of Descartes’ account of time to directly engage and address common interpretive puzzles. Descartes' Temporal Dualism offers a significant contribution to the understanding of an important, but frequently neglected component of Descartes’ ontology.

Philosophers and psychologists make many different, seemingly incompatible parsimony claims in support of competing models of cognition in nonhuman animals. This variety of parsimony claims is problematic. Firstly, it is difficult to justify each specific variety. This problem is especially salient for Morgan's Canon, perhaps the most important variety of parsimony claimed. Secondly, there is no systematic way of adjudicating between particular claims when they conflict. I argue for a view of parsimony in comparative psychology that solves these problems, based (...) on Sober's view that parsimony claims are claims that one model is more plausible given background theory. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive exploration of ancient and modern tyranny in the history of political thought. Waller R. Newell argues that modern tyranny and statecraft differ fundamentally from the classical understanding. Newell demonstrates a historical shift in emphasis from the classical thinkers' stress on the virtuous character of rulers and the need for civic education to the modern emphasis on impersonal institutions and cold-blooded political method. By diagnosing the varieties of tyranny from erotic voluptuaries like Nero, the steely (...) determination of reforming conquerors like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and modernizing despots such as Napoleon and Ataturk to the collectivist revolutions of the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Nazis and Khmer Rouge, Newell shows how tyranny is every bit as dangerous to free democratic societies today as it was in the past. (shrink)

I challenge the dominant understanding of what it means to say two thoughts are associated. The two views that dominate the current literature treat association as a kind of mechanism that drives sequences of thought. The first, which I call reductive associationism, treats association as a kind of neural mechanism. The second treats association as a feature of the kind of psychological mechanism associative processing. Both of these views are inadequate. I argue that association should instead be seen as a (...) highly abstract filler term, standing in for causal relations between representational states in a system. Associations, so viewed, could be implemented by many different mechanisms. I outline the role that this view gives associative models as part of a top-down characterization of psychological processes of any kind and of any complexity. (shrink)

The middle-market tabloid newspapers in Britain help to shape a perception of teachers and state schools that is mostly negative and derisory. This article provides examples of this bias in newspaper reportage based on a case study of an annual teacher union conference and journalists' different interpretations of events generally.

Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought and has been at the heart of psychology and philosophy for millennia. This book provides a radical and controversial reappraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning, proposing that the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. It argues that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in terms of logic, the calculus (...) of certain reasoning. (shrink)

In response to calls for greater interdisciplinary involvement from the social sciences and humanities in the development, governance, and study of artificial intelligence systems, this paper presents one sociologist’s view on the problem of algorithmic bias and the reproduction of societal bias. Discussions of bias in AI cover much of the same conceptual terrain that sociologists studying inequality have long understood using more specific terms and theories. Concerns over reproducing societal bias should be informed by an understanding of the ways (...) that inequality is continually reproduced in society—processes that AI systems are either complicit in, or can be designed to disrupt and counter. The contrast presented here is between conservative and radical approaches to AI, with conservatism referring to dominant tendencies that reproduce and strengthen the status quo, while radical approaches work to disrupt systemic forms of inequality. The limitations of a conservative approach to racial bias are discussed through the specific example of biased criminal risk assessments and Indigenous overrepresentation in Canada’s criminal justice system. This illustrates the dangers of treating racial bias as a generalizable problem and equality as a generalizable solution, emphasizing the importance of considering inequality in context. Societal issues can no longer be out of scope for AI and machine learning, given the impact of these systems on human lives. This requires engagement with a growing body of critical AI scholarship that goes beyond biased data to analyze structured ways of perpetuating inequality, opening up the possibility for interdisciplinary engagement and radical alternatives. (shrink)

This paper explores the distinctive features of the critical agenda associated with the ‘Social Life of Methods’. I argue that although this perspective can be associated with the increasing interest, often associated with scholars in Science and Technology Studies, to reflect on how methods can become objects of inquiry, it also needs to be rooted in the current crisis of positivist methods. I identify the challenge for positivism in terms of the decreasing ability of its procedures to effectively organize increasingly (...) ‘lively’ sources of standardized data, which can now be assembled using aesthetic registers. In developing this argument, I dispute the idea that this development is due to historical shifts linked to the way that methodological devices are playing an increasingly significant role in contemporary social life, which might be argued by writers such as Thrift or Castells. I also argue that by opening up issues of method to the aesthetic, we also recast the relationship between theory and method, pointing to the exhaustion of a certain kind of cultural theory within the social sciences. I contextualize these issues by considering how methods are implicated in the intellectual differentiation between scientific and humanities expertise. Rather than conceiving the ‘Social Life of Methods’ in terms of the rise of instrumentalist modes of governance, it is preferable to place it within the dialectic of transparency and the relationship between the implicit and explicit. These issues are addressed through introducing the papers in the special issue. (shrink)

A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential unfairness, (3) (...) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault. (shrink)

This paper employs ethnographic research methods to study a Buddhist meditation practice that takes the walking body as its object. The mundane act of walking is transformed into a meditative object for the purpose of refining states of embodied consciousness. This meditation practice offers a glimpse of the relationship of body to mind, a fundamental concern within the philosophy of mind. The analytic focus of this paper is the practical nature of meditation work. Aspects of Buddhist Philosophy are explored and (...) compared to analytic themes within Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology. (shrink)

Over the last decade, fully distributed models have become dominant in connectionist psychological modelling, whereas the virtues of localist models have been underestimated. This target article illustrates some of the benefits of localist modelling. Localist models are characterized by the presence of localist representations rather than the absence of distributed representations. A generalized localist model is proposed that exhibits many of the properties of fully distributed models. It can be applied to a number of problems that are difficult for fully (...) distributed models, and its applicability can be extended through comparisons with a number of classic mathematical models of behaviour. There are reasons why localist models have been underused, though these often misconstrue the localist position. In particular, many conclusions about connectionist representation, based on neuroscientific observation, can be called into question. There are still some problems inherent in the application of fully distributed systems and some inadequacies in proposed solutions to these problems. In the domain of psychological modelling, localist modelling is to be preferred. Key Words: choice; competition; connectionist modelling; consolidation; distributed; localist; neural networks; reaction-time. (shrink)

There are two roles that association played in 18th–19th century associationism. The first dominates modern understanding of the history of the concept: association is a causal link posited to explain why ideas come in the sequence they do. The second has been ignored: association is merely regularity in the trains of thought, and the target of explanation. The view of association as regularity arose in several forms throughout the tradition, but Thomas Brown (1778–1820) makes the distinction explicit. He argues that (...) there is no associative link, and association is mere sequence. I trace this view of association through the tradition, and consider its implications: Brown's views, in particular, motivate a rethinking of the associationist tradition in psychology. Associationism was a project united by a shared explanandum phenomenon, rather than a theory united by a shared theoretical posit. (shrink)

Ruling Passion is the only book-length study of tyranny, statesmanship, and civic virtue in three major Platonic dialogues, the Georgias, the Symposium, and the Republic. It is also the first extended interpretation of eros as the key to Plato's understanding of both the depths of human vice and the heights of human aspirations for virtue and happiness. Through his detailed commentary and eloquent insights on the three dialogues, Waller Newell demonstrates how, for Plato, tyranny is a misguided longing for (...) erotic satisfaction that can be corrected by the education of eros toward the proper objects of its pleasure: civic virtue and philosophy. (shrink)

Many philosophers of science believe that empirical psychology can contribute little to the philosophical investigation of explanations. They take this to be shown by the fact that certain explanations fail to elicit any relevant psychological events (e.g., familiarity, insight, intelligibility, etc.). We report results from a study suggesting that, at least among those with extensive science training, a capacity to render an event intelligible is considered a requirement for explanation. We also investigate for whom explanations must be capable of rendering (...) events intelligible and whether or not accuracy is also viewed as a requirement. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Despite its long period of dominance, the details of associationism as developed by the British Empiricists in the 18th and 19th centuries are often ignored or forgotten today. Perhaps as a result, modern understandings of Empiricist associationism are often oversimplified. In fact, there is no single core view that can be viewed as definitional, or even weaker, as characteristic, of the tradition. The actual views of associationists in this tradition are much more diverse than any such view would allow, even (...) on fundamental aspects of the concept of association. This paper presents some of the most striking theoretical diversity and most significant discussions within the Empiricist associationist tradition. Recognizing this diversity, Empiricist associationism is best viewed as a project with shared questions and methods rather than a shared substantive theory of mind. This discussion can inform our understanding of the historical tradition, and also inform our current use of association and associationism. The concept of association is more flexible than it is often treated, and even its basic nature and function remain up for debate. (shrink)

Disagreement holds the key: the possibility of agreeing or disagreeing with a state of mind makes that state of mind act logically like accepting a claim. Charles Stevenson was quite right to begin his presentation of emotivism with disagreement.—Allan Gibbard.