This paper examines three ancient traits of religion whose origins likely date back to the Upper Paleolithic: ancestor worship, shamanism, and the belief in natural and animal spirits. Evidence for the emergence of these traits coincides with evidence for a dramatic advance in human social cooperation. It is argued that these traits played a role in the evolution of human cooperation through the mechanism of social scrutiny. Social scrutiny is an effective means of reducing individualism and enhancing prosocial behavior. Religion’s (...) most ancient traits represent an extension of the human social world into the supernatural, thus reinforcing within-group cooperation by means of ever-vigilant spiritual monitors. Believing that the spirits were always watching may have helped reduce the number of non-cooperators within a group while reinforcing group behavioral norms, thus allowing humanlike levels of cooperation to emerge. (shrink)

This commentary argues that theories of cognitive control risk being incomplete unless they incorporate social/emotional factors. Social factors very likely played a critical role in the evolution of human cognitive control abilities, and emotional states are the primary regulatory mechanisms of cognitive control.

Future developments in artificial intelligence (AI) will likely allow for a greater degree of human‐machine convergence, with machines becoming more humanlike and intelligent machinery becoming more integrated into human brain function. This will pose many ethical challenges, and the necessity for a moral framework for evaluating these challenges will grow. This paper argues that community concern constitutes a central factor in both the evolution of religion and the human brain, and as such it should be used as the organizing principle (...) for moral evaluations of AI technologies. (shrink)

This article argues that social selection pressures in recent human evolution were primarily responsible for the emergence of modern cognition. These selection pressures took three specific forms: Increased security and stability, which reduced allostatic load on developing children, facilitating expanded working memory development; increased opportunities for mother-infant joint engagement, which created positive selection for more sophisticated forms of cognition; and increased pressure on ritualized behavior associated with both mother-infant joint engagement and the construction and maintenance of an unprecedentedly complex adult (...) social world. These pressures directly affected the development of the behavioral trait of effortful control in children. Effortful control is closely linked with executive functions, including working memory. Effortful control also shows characteristics that make it a prime candidate for rapidly spreading, culturally driven changes that were prevalent late in human evolution. (shrink)

Psychology and Cognitive Archaeology demonstrates the potential of using cognitive archaeology framing to explore key issues in contemporary psychology and other behavioral sciences. This edited volume features psychologists exploring archaeological data concerning specific themes such as: the use of tools, our child-rearing practices, our expressions of gender and sexuality, our sleep patterns, the nature of warfare, cultural practices, and the origins of religion. Other chapters touch on cognitive archaeological methods, the history of evolutionary approaches in psychology, and relevant philosophical considerations (...) to further illustrate the interdisciplinary potential between archaeology and psychology. As a complementary counterpoint, the book also includes an archaeologist's perspective on these same topical matters, as well as robust introductory and concluding thoughts by the editors. This book will be an illuminating read for students and scholars of psychology, as well as philosophy, archaeology, and anthropology. (shrink)

This article critically examines the practice of unnamed sourcing in journalism. A literature review highlights arguments in favor of and against their use. The authors examine some common examples of anonymous sourcing using the lens of utilitarianism, the ethical model commonly used to justify the practice. We find that few uses of unnamed sourcing can be justified when weighed against diminished credibility and threats to fair, transparent reporting. The authors suggest specific guidelines for journalists that, if followed, would curb many (...) of the pedestrian uses of unnamed sourcing but still allow for the practice in specific circumstances. (shrink)

This study focused on the influence of American and Chinese cultures on consequentialism orientation in decision-making within the broader context of psychologists’ academic roles and responsibilities. In addition, this study hypothesized that educational level would affect culturally influenced ethical decision making in both cultures. Based on the American Psychological Association Ethics Code, 20 ethical scenarios in 5 domains in psychology were created and used to examine the influence of culturally ethical beliefs on psychologists’ decision making among 181 participants. The results (...) indicated that significant cultural differences in consequentialism orientation differentiated Chinese and American participants and influenced their resolution of ethical issues. (shrink)

We argue that probability effects on P300 amplitude are the product of an automatic frequency detector not subject to voluntary control and relatively inaccessible to consciousness. related to P300 therefore appear to be passive, perceptual ones. If probability-based expectancies do become conscious, they are inversely related to P300, supporting the view of Donchin & Coles (1988).

The history of the emotions first developed as a field of inquiry in Europe. It took root in the United States only in the 1980s. Today, the field has expanded dramatically. Historians of the emotions share the conviction that culture gives some shape to emotional life and that consequently, feelings vary across time and culture. Working on that assumption, recent historical works have investigated the changing role of emotions in politics, economics, and private life. There are a number of contentious (...) issues within the field, including the much debated relationship between words and feelings, the pace and direction of change in emotional culture, and the question of the continuity of emotional experience and categories over centuries. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The ACL2 System A Modeling Problem Case Studies.

Drawing from existing theory and empirical evidence on mindfulness, we posit that trait mindfulness is associated with less accurate memories of immoral conduct. We report three studies that provide evidence of this argument. One significant implication of this finding is that it provides a more balanced and complete view of mindfulness. Specifically, while mindfulness is widely promoted for its positive effects for employee well‐being, mindfulness may inadvertently promote a biased moral self‐perception based on inaccurate memories of one's past immoral conduct. (...) In a fourth study, we explore this implication and demonstrate that memory mediates the negative relationship between trait mindfulness and self‐reported immoral conduct. This research contributes to literatures on mindfulness, memory, morality, and to the growing body of work assessing the importance of mindfulness. (shrink)

It is an unresolved question in quantum mechanics whether quantum states apply to individual quantum systems, or to ensembles of quantum systems. We show by way of a thought experiment that quantum states apply only to ensembles of quantum systems. A further unresolved question is whether quantum systems possess ontic states. If a quantum state is the state of an ensemble, as we claim, the answer to this question is that quantum states are not ontic. However, a notable recent result (...) in quantum foundations shows that if there are any ontic states at all, then the quantum state must be ontic. Collectively, these two results imply that there are no ontic states. We examine the assumptions required for these results, and suggest that the retrospective effect on state preparations by entangling measurements provides good reason for relaxing the assumption of preparation independence at the ontic level. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A robust literature indicates that when people feel that they are expressing and aware of their true selves, they show enhanced psychological health and well-being. This feeling, commonly referred to as authenticity, is therefore a consequential experience. In this paper, we review a program of research focused on the relevance of authenticity for civic engagement. We describe how a virtuous orientation to civic engagement might make civic actions feel more authentic and how the experience of authenticity might help sustain (...) civic behavior. We then discuss the role that education might play in fostering a deeper connection between civic engagement and the subjective experience of authenticity. (shrink)

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches (...) that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists. (shrink)

The potential to instrumentalize drug use based upon the detection of very many different drug states undoubtedly exists, and such states may play a role in psychiatric and many other drug uses. Nevertheless, nonaddictive drug use is potentially more parsimoniously explained in terms of sensation seeking/impulsivity and drug expectations. Cultural factors also play a major role in nonaddictive drug use.

In this paper, we argue that Richard Foley’s account of rational belief faces an as yet undefeated objection, then try to repair one of Foley’s two failed replies to that objection. In §§I-III, we explain Foley’s accounts of all-things-considered rational belief and responsible belief, along with his replies to two pressing objections to those accounts—what we call the Irrelevance Objection(to Foley’s account of rational belief) and the Insufficiency Objection (to his account of responsible belief). In §IV, we argue that both (...) of Foley’s replies to the Irrelevance Objection fail as currently developed, and raise the question whether either of his replies can be salvaged. In §V, we invoke cases involving religious beliefs (broadly construed) to show that one of Foley’s failed replies to the Irrelevance Objection conflicts with his reply to the Insufficiency Objection; and we provide reason to think Foley should resolve this conflict in the latter’s favor. We conclude in §VI by suggesting a way to repair Foley’s other failed reply to the Irrelevance Objection, yielding an improved overall defense of Foley’s accounts of rational and responsible belief. We look forward to discussing the important question to what extent this improved overall defense succeeds. (shrink)

Depuis la Grèce, en dépit des rêves d'une langue bien faite, les philosophes s'expriment dans des langues qui sont le partage de peuples différents. Or, peut-on inscrire le discours de l'universel dans le champ limité d'une langue particulière? Le français fait sa joie des analyses sèches, comme l'on parle d'une pointe sèche qui grave le cuivre nu. Celui qui saurait le conduire vers la synthèse, pourtant, aurait reconnu, selon le mot de von Humboldt, " l'énigme de cette langue ". Le (...) colloque de Nice, " Philosopher en français ", a tenté d'approcher une telle énigme. Trente-deux chercheurs internationaux ont croisé leurs exposés selon quatre thèmes : la philosophie française au XXe siècle ; la philosophie française et les courants internationaux ; l'histoire française de la philosophie ; le philosophe français et le style. Tous mettent l'accent sur l'approche " à la française ", comme disait Montaigne, des grandes questions théoriques et cherchent à définir ce qu'il en est du style français en philosophie. J.-F. M. (shrink)

Today, DIY -- do-it-yourself -- describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways and to repurpose corporate content in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and "critical making" that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting (...) and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on "doing" and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. _Contributors_Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN). This is paired with insights from 21 network members on aspects that have allowed STSFAN to (...) thrive, even amid a global pandemic. Our hope is that these insights will encourage others to cultivate their own intellectual communities, where they too can receive the support they need to deepen their scholarship and strengthen their intellectual relationships. (shrink)

One of the key learning objectives in any health professional course is to develop ethical and judicious practice. Therefore, it is important to address how medical and pharmacy students respond to, and deal with, ethical dilemmas in their clinical environments. In this paper, we examined how students communicated their resolution of ethical dilemmas and the alignment between these communications and the four principles developed by Beauchamp and Childress. Three hundred and fifty-seven pharmacy and medical students (overall response rate=63%) completed a (...) questionnaire containing four clinical case scenarios with an ethical dilemma. Data were analysed using multiple methods. The findings revealed that 73% of the qualitative responses could be exclusively coded to one of the ‘four principles’ determined by the Beauchamp and Childress' framework. Additionally, 14% of responses overlapped between the four principles (multiple codes) and 13% of responses could not be coded using the framework. The subsequent subgroup analysis revealed different response patterns depending on the case being reviewed. The findings showed that when students are faced with challenging ethical dilemmas their responses can be aligned with the Beauchamp and Childress framework, although more contentious dilemmas involving issues of law are less easily categorised. The differences between year and discipline groups show students are developing ethical frames of reference that may be linked with their teaching environments and their levels of understanding. Analysis of these response patterns provides insight into the way students will likely respond in ‘real’ settings and this information may help educators prepare students for these clinical ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Unprecedented levels of access to adolescents' time and attention provide opportunities to convert traditional character and socioemotional competencies interventions into behavioral intervention technologies. However, these new tools must be evaluated rather than assuming previously validated activities will be efficacious when converted to a mobile platform. Thus, we sought to design and provide initial data on the effectiveness of the CharacterMe smartphone app to build self-control and patience, which are built on underlying social-emotional regulation competencies, in a sample of 618 adolescents. (...) We also sought to examine whether framing the app activities as having a transcendent rather than instrumental purpose would increase engagement and change in self-control, patience, and emotion regulation. Finally, we tested the impact of framing activities as building strengths vs. fixing weaknesses. Results highlight the difficulty of translating psychological interventions to behavioral intervention technologies. Overall, the CharacterMe smartphone app was unsuccessful in increasing self-control, patience, or emotion regulation in adolescents, with analyses showing no significant mean changes over time. Framing conditions and user engagement were largely not significant predictors of change in self-control, patience, and emotion regulation. (shrink)

Objectives“Attachment difficulties” is an umbrella term often used to describe various forms of non-secure attachment. Differentiating “attachment difficulties” from autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has been characterized as challenging. Few studies have explored how this happens in practice, from the perspective of professionals.DesignQualitative study.MethodsWe conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals from five NHS Foundation Trusts in the United Kingdom. Participants were recruited using a combination of snowballing, convenience and purposive sampling. Data were analyzed using a thematic (...) approach.ResultsWe identified six interrelated themes that might reflect difficulties with differential conceptualization. These include: a clinical lexicon of attachment; approaching attachment with caution; contextual factors; perceived characteristic behaviors; assessing attachment and adjacent supports; spotlighting intervention and dual conceptualization.ConclusionOur results indicate some of the ways suspicions around attachment are raised in practice. We advocate for more dialogue between research and practice communities on issues of differential conceptualization. We call for collaboration between a panel of experts consisting of attachment and neurodevelopmental orientated practitioners and researchers, to clarify issues around differentiating between attachment difficulties, ASD, and ADHD. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The Cambridge Handbook of Violent Behavior and Aggression presents the current state of knowledge related to the study of violent behaviors and aggression. An important extension of the first Handbook published ten years ago, the second edition maintains a distinctly cross-disciplinary focus by representing the newest scholarship and insights from behavior genetics, cross-cultural comparative psychology/criminology, evolutionary psychology, criminal justice, criminology, human development, molecular genetics, neurosciences, psychology, prevention and intervention sciences, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, public health, and sociology. The Handbook is divided into (...) introductory and overview chapters on the study of violent behavior and aggression, followed by chapters on biosocial bases, individual and interpersonal factors, contextual factors, and prevention and intervention work and policy implications. It is an essential resource for researchers, scholars, and graduate students across social and behavioral science disciplines interested in the etiology, intervention, and prevention of violent behavior and aggression. (shrink)

Central to the apocalyptic imaginary is the notion that history has some sort of purpose, or that it provides a perspective from which we can authenticate or redeem our human activities. As such, one might reasonably expect that realists would view such apocalypticism as precisely the sort of moralisation that they urge us to be deeply suspicious of. Yet in Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times Alison McQueen argues not only that the relationship between realism and apocalyptic visions is much more (...) complex and nuanced than we might initially suspect, by exploring how it played out in the work of canonical figures in the realist tradition, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and Hans J Morgenthau, but also that, at a time when we live in the shadow of several possible global disasters, realist thought might offer us something in the way of instruction ‘in living through an age of catastrophe’. While McQueen is admirably honest as to the limitations of the realist approaches in the thinkers she focuses on, this review suggests that there may be good reason to be even less enthusiastic about their prospects. (shrink)

In the wake of much previous work on Gilles Deleuze's relations to other thinkers (including Bergson, Spinoza and Leibniz), his relation to Kant is now of great and active interest and a thriving area of research. In the context of the wider debate between 'naturalism' and 'transcendental philosophy', the implicit dispute between Deleuze's 'transcendental empiricism' and Kant's 'transcendental idealism' is of prime philosophical concern. -/- Bringing together the work of international experts from both Deleuze scholarship and Kant scholarship, Thinking Between (...) Deleuze and Kant addresses explicitly the varied and various connections between these two great European philosophers, providing key material for understanding the central philosophical problems in the wider 'naturalism/ transcendental philosophy' debate. The book reflects an area of great current interest in Deleuze Studies and initiates an ongoing interest in Deleuze within Kant scholarship. The contributors are Mick Bowles, Levi R. Bryant, Patricia Farrell, Christian Kerslake, Matt Lee, Michael J. Olson, Henry Somers-Hall and Edward Willatt. (shrink)

Given a model \ of set theory, and a nontrivial automorphism j of \, let \\) be the submodel of \ whose universe consists of elements m of \ such that \=x\) for every x in the transitive closure of m ). Here we study the class \ of structures of the form \\), where the ambient model \ satisfies a frugal yet robust fragment of \ known as \, and \=m\) whenever m is a finite ordinal in the sense (...) of \ Our main achievement is the calculation of the theory of \ as precisely \-\. The following theorems encapsulate our principal results:Theorem A. Every structure in \ satisfies \-\.Theorem B. Each of the following three conditions is sufficient for a countable structure \ to be in \: \ is a transitive model of \-\. \ is a recursively saturated model of \-\. \ is a model of \.Theorem C. Suppose \ is a countable recursively saturated model of \ and I is a proper initial segment of \ that is closed under exponentiation and contains \. There is a group embedding \ from \\) into \\) such that I is the longest initial segment of \ that is pointwise fixed by \ for every nontrivial \.\)In Theorem C, \\) is the group of automorphisms of the structure X, and \ is the ordered set of rationals. (shrink)