Mathematical expressions for the entropyS, the average information gained per trial (Ī) from information theory, and the de Broglie cyclical action integralA from his reinterpretation of wave mechanics are shown to be similar. The importance of this observation in our understanding ofS andĪ is considered. Furthermore, the similarity in the mathematical form of these functions indicates a possible route to further interpretation of de Broglie'sA and the nature of his “hidden thermostat.”.

We aim to do two things in this article. On the positive end, our goal is to explain how some seemingly incompatible aspects of belief live together, by presenting distinct mechanistic explanations of each of them: in particular we want to show how belief can be discerning, credulous, rational, and irrational. After clarifying our positive view, we take aim at some competitor views in the second half of the paper, particularly offering critiques of epistemic vigilance and social marketplace accounts of (...) belief. We conclude by inviting proponents to provide an architecture for belief that can be tested against existing models. (shrink)

What makes humans moral beings? This question can be understood either as a proximate question or as an ultimate question. The question is about the mental and social mechanisms that produce moral judgments and interactions, and has been investigated by psychologists and social scientists. The question is about the fitness consequences that explain why humans have morality, and has been discussed by evolutionary biologists in the context of the evolution of cooperation. Our goal here is to contribute to a fruitful (...) articulation of such proximate and ultimate explanations of human morality. We develop an approach to morality as an adaptation to an environment in which individuals were in competition to be chosen and recruited in mutually advantageous cooperative interactions. In this environment, the best strategy is to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation equally. Those who offer less than others will be left out of cooperation; conversely, those who offer more will be exploited by their partners. In line with this mutualistic approach, the study of a range of economic games involving property rights, collective actions, mutual help and punishment shows that participants' distributions aim at sharing the costs and benefits of interactions in an impartial way. In particular, the distribution of resources is influenced by effort and talent, and the perception of each participant's rights on the resources to be distributed. (shrink)

The sense of self has always been a topic of high interest in both psychoanalysis and most recently in neuroscience. Nowadays, there is an agreement in psychoanalysis that the self emerges from the relationship with the other (e.g., the caregiver) in terms of his/her capacity to attune, regulate, and synchronize with the emergent self of the infant. The outcome of this relational/intersubjective synchronization is the development of the sense of self and its regulatory processes both in dynamic psychology and neuroscience. (...) In this work, we propose that synchrony is a fundamental biobehavioral factor in these dialectical processes between self and others which shapes the brain–body–mind system of the individuals, including their sense of self. Recently in neuroscience, it has been proposed by the research group around Northoff that the self is constituted by a brain-based nested hierarchical three-layer structure, including interoceptive, proprio-exteroceptive, and mental layers of self. This may be disrupted, though, when traumatic experiences occur. Following the three levels of trauma theorized by Mucci, we here suggest how different levels of traumatic experiences might have an enduring effect in yielding a trauma-based topographic and dynamic re-organization of the nested model of self featured by dissociation. In conclusion, we propose that different levels and degrees of traumatic experience are related to corresponding disruptions in the topography and dynamic of the brain-based three-layer hierarchical structure of the self. (shrink)

This article defends a relational account of personhood. I argue that the structure of personhood consists of dyadic relations between persons who can wrong or be wronged by one another, even if some of them lack moral competence. I draw on recent work on directed duties to outline the structure of moral communities of persons. The upshot is that we can construct an inclusive theory of personhood that can accommodate nonhuman persons based on shared community membership. I argue that, once (...) we unpack the internal relation between directed duties, moral status, and flourishing, relations can ground personhood and include nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Most people believe that suffering is intrinsically bad. In conjunction with facts about our world and plausible moral principles, this yields a pro tanto obligation to reduce suffering. This is the intuitive starting point for the moral argument in favor of interventions to prevent wild animal suffering. If we accept the moral principle that we ought, pro tanto, to reduce the suffering of all sentient creatures, and we recognize the prevalence of suffering in the wild, then we seem committed to (...) the existence of such a pro tanto obligation. Of course, competing values such as the aesthetic, scientific or moral values of species, biodiversity, naturalness or wildness, might be relevant to the all-things-considered case for or against intervention. Still, many argue that, even if we were to give some weight to such values, no plausible theory could resist the conclusion that WAS is overridingly important. This article is concerned with large-scale interventions to prevent WAS and their tractability and the deep epistemic problem they raise. We concede that suffering gives us a reason to prevent it where it occurs, but we argue that the nature of ecosystems leaves us with no reason to predict that interventions would reduce, rather than exacerbate, suffering. We consider two interventions, based on gene editing technology, proposed as holding promise to prevent WAS; raise epistemic concerns about them; discuss their potential moral costs; and conclude by proposing a way forward: to justify interventions to prevent WAS, we need to develop models that predict the effects of interventions on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and animals’ well-being. (shrink)

F. Enriques and G. de Santillana have begun in collaboration the composition of a general history of scientific thought. The first volume of this work, which has been recently published, is concerned with the science of antiquity,1 and to a large extent covers the same ground as the history of ancient philosophy, as the frontiers of philosophy and natural science, at any rate until the time of Aristotle, were not yet clearly differentiated. But the two historians are interested in bringing (...) into prominence a great many problems and personalities that the history of philosophy generally leaves on one side, although they help to complete and vivify the picture of the mentality of the ancients. Mathematics, medicine, geography, astronomy, applied mechanics, and physics, in short all the particular scientific studies that were just beginning to detach themselves from the parent trunk of general philosophy are studied by the authors in their individual developments and through the personalities of their cultivators. The explanations are clear and simple and can be followed even by readers unversed in science; the information is at first hand and is supplemented by a careful discussion of sources. The scientific questions are not isolated from the historical setting of the civilization of antiquity, but are shown in relation to matters of philosophy, religion, art, and moral and political life. The bibliography, intended for the more purely scientific and technical departments of philosophy, forms a very useful and timely completion of the bibliography of philosophic thought in general. (shrink)

About a year ago some important philosophical works were published in Italy which, both in the agreement and in the divergence of the trends they indicate, may be useful for characterizing the present situation of Italian philosophy. I think it opportune, therefore, for the information of the English reader, to give a fuller notice of these books than usual. One of them is by Ugo Spirito, La vita come amore , with the subtitle “The downfall of Christian civilization ”. Ugo (...) Spirito, who was one of the most intelligent and restless pupils of Giovanni Gentile, announced his secession from idealism in 1937.In that year he published a book entitled La vita come ricerca , in which, as sole alternative to idealistic philosophy, henceforth considered untenable, he pointed to a philosophy of never concluded enquiry, which, while positing numerous problems, never solves them. The intention of the book was to conclude in the impossibility of philosophy as “system” or as “metaphysics”, on the supposition that all the possibilities of metaphysics had been exhausted in the course of its historical development, culminating in Gentile. In a certain sense this presupposition remains in the book now under examination; but here it is a question of defining positively the way that philosophy, and with it human life, ought to take, which is, according to Spirito, the way of love. (shrink)

About a year ago some important philosophical works were published in Italy which, both in the agreement and in the divergence of the trends they indicate, may be useful for characterizing the present situation of Italian philosophy. I think it opportune, therefore, for the information of the English reader, to give a fuller notice of these books than usual. One of them is by Ugo Spirito, La vita come amore, with the subtitle “The downfall of Christian civilization ”. Ugo Spirito, (...) who was one of the most intelligent and restless pupils of Giovanni Gentile, announced his secession from idealism in 1937.In that year he published a book entitled La vita come ricerca, in which, as sole alternative to idealistic philosophy, henceforth considered untenable, he pointed to a philosophy of never concluded enquiry, which, while positing numerous problems, never solves them. The intention of the book was to conclude in the impossibility of philosophy as “system” or as “metaphysics”, on the supposition that all the possibilities of metaphysics had been exhausted in the course of its historical development, culminating in Gentile. In a certain sense this presupposition remains in the book now under examination; but here it is a question of defining positively the way that philosophy, and with it human life, ought to take, which is, according to Spirito, the way of love. (shrink)

In the series Collezione di Filosofia published by Taylor of Turin since 1947, some of the most significant works on Italian existentialism have appeared. The series was inaugurated by two books by the writer of this article: Introduzione all esistenzialismo, second edition, 1947 ; and Filosofia religione scienza, 1947. These were followed by Pietro Chiodi, L'esistenzialismo di Heidegger, 1947; Armando Vedaldi, Essere gli altri, 1948; Uberto Scarpelli, Esistenzialismo e marxismo, 1949; Enzo Paci, II nulla e il problema dell'uomo, 1950; Luigi (...) Pareyson, Esistenza e persona, 1950; and Armando Vedaldi, Struttura della proprietà, 1951. (shrink)

L'ŒIL, Observatoire d'Ethique Interculturelle de Lyon, a pour objectif de préserver la dimension éthique de notre société démocratique et pluraliste dans son approche de l'homme. De nouveaux savoirs et techniques, le dynamisme de la recherche scientifique, les forces du marché, le souci de juste allocation des ressources, ainsi que les demandes de la société, mettent les acteurs des systèmes de santé dans des situations confuses. Cet ouvrage est le premier témoignage des rencontres et des recherches décidées par ces auteurs venus (...) d'horizons divers, engagés dans l'ensemble du monde francophone à partir de Lyon où se sont tenues les Premières Journées internationales francophones d'Ethique interculturelle, en 2004. Pour les auteurs de cet ouvrage, l'humanité peut mieux se constituer en s'ouvrant sur le différent, sur le multiple. Par regards croisés, ils questionnent la place relative du progrès, abandonnant le mythe simpliste selon lequel seul le progrès techno-économique entraîne les progrès sociaux, politiques et moraux... Au contraire, ils adoptent les principes d'incertitude et de complexité. Ils s'interrogent sur l'éthique interculturelle résultant d'une interaction à géométrie variable entre nos appartenances à différents groupes humains - culturels, sociaux, professionnels... sur le bon usage de la vie qui peut présupposer d'avoir en tête un archétype de la vie humaine, une vie exprimée dans sa plénitude. Certaines cultures ont exalté le héros, le chevalier ou le saint, avant de mettre en avant l'homme engagé ou l'entrepreneur accompli. Ils partagent la conviction que l'univers, la vie en général et la vie humaine en particulier ne sont pas des réalités monolithiques, mais résultent de l'interaction entre des polarités apparemment opposées, mais complémentaires. En effet, chaque être humain résulte des relations tissées avec l'Autre, s'enrichissant personnellement à travers chacune d'entre elles, s'ouvrant ainsi progressivement à toute l'humanité dans sa diversité. Nous construisons notre singularité en fonction de notre ouverture sur l'universel. Ce livre multidisciplinaire intéressera médecins et autres soignants, philosophes, spécialistes des sciences humaines et de l'éducation, des sciences exactes, voire responsables politiques. (shrink)

In this article we argue that the social value of health research should be conceptualized as a function of both the expected benefits of the research and the priority that the beneficiaries deserve. People deserve greater priority the worse off they are. This conception of social value can be applied for at least two important purposes: in health research priority setting when research funders, policy-makers, or researchers decide between alternative research projects; and in evaluating the ethics of proposed research proposals (...) when research ethics committees assess whether the social value of the research is sufficient to justify the risks and burdens to research participants and others. In assessing how far a proposed research project will advance the interests of people who are more disadvantaged, research priority setters and RECs should examine the diseases that the research targets and the type of research. Just as certain diseases impose a greater burden on people who are more disadvantaged, so certain types of intervention and forms of research are more likely to benefit people who are more disadvantaged. We outline which populations are likely to be representative of the global worst off and identify what types of health research, and which disease categories, are priorities for these populations. (shrink)

In order to describe the logic of morality, "contractualist" philosophers have studied how individuals behave when they choose to follow their moral intuitions. These individuals, contractualists note, often act as if they have bargained and thus reached an agreement with others about how to distribute the benefits and burdens of mutual cooperation. Using this observation, such philosophers argue that the purpose of morality is to maximize the benefits of human interaction. The resulting "contract" analogy is both insightful and puzzling. On (...) one hand, it captures the pattern of moral intuitions, thus answering questions about human cooperation: why do humans cooperate? Why should the distribution of benefits be proportionate to each person's contribution? Why should the punishment be proportionate to the crime? Why should the rights be proportionate to the duties? On the other hand, the analogy provides a mere as-if explanation for human cooperation, saying that cooperation is "as if" people have passed a contract-but since they didn't, why should it be so? To evolutionary thinkers, the puzzle of the missing contract is immediately reminiscent of the puzzle of the missing "designer" of life-forms, a puzzle that Darwin's theory of natural selection essentially resolved. Evolutionary and contractualist theory originally intersected at the work of philosophers John Rawls and David Gauthier, who argued that moral judgments are based on a sense of fairness that has been naturally selected. In this book, Nicolas Baumard further explores the theory that morality was originally an adaptation to the biological market of cooperation, an arena in which individuals competed to be selected for cooperative interactions. In this environment, Baumard suggests, the best strategy was to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation in a fair way, so that those who offered less than others were left out of cooperation while those who offered more were exploited by their partners. It is with this evolutionary approach that Baumard ultimately accounts for the specific structure of human morality. (shrink)

La philosophie hegelienne de la nature est le lieu singulier ou convergent la conscience scientifique moderne et la metaphysique pour fusionner en un moment inedit dans l'histoire de la pensee. Car nous opposons toujours d'une certaine maniere "theorie scientifique" et "discours philosophique", il nous est impossible de saisir la nature de la pensee de Hegel. L'auteur nous livre une interpretation de la mecanique de l'Encyclopedie des sciences philosophiques (1830) qui degage la pensee de Hegel des reductions kantienne et romantique. L'enracinement (...) du discours hegelien dans la conscience scientifique moderne est a la mesure des tensions qu'il entretient avec la science des modernes. La critique qu'opere Hegel de celle-ci n'est comprehensible qu'au regard de sa lecture de la Physique d'Aristote comme modele accompli du rapport entre philosophie et science empirique. Loin de se contenter d'une critique des sciences de son temps, Hegel nous engage dans la voie d'une theorie explicative du mouvement. (shrink)

Urban animals can benefit from living in cities, but this also makes them vulnerable as they increasingly depend on the advantages of urban life. This article has two aims. First, I provide a detailed analysis of the concept of captivity and explain why it matters to nonhuman animals—because and insofar as many of them have a (non-substitutable) interest in freedom. Second, I defend a surprising implication of the account—pushing the boundaries of the concept while the boundaries of cities and human (...) activities expand. I argue for the existence of the neglected problem of pervasive captivity, of which urban wildlife is an illustration. Many urban animals are confined, controlled and dependent, therefore often captive of expanding urban areas. While I argue that captivity per se is value-neutral, I draw the ethical and policy implications of harmful pervasive captivity. (shrink)

Can animals be agents? Do they want to be free? Can they have meaningful lives? If so, should we change the way we treat them? This paper offers an account of animal agency and of two continuums: between human and nonhuman agency, and between wildness and captivity. It describes how a wide range of human activities impede on animals’ freedom and argues that, in doing so, we deprive a wide range of animals of opportunities to exercise their agency in ways (...) that can give meaning to their lives. (shrink)

The empirical study of belief is emerging at a rapid clip, uniting work from all corners of cognitive science. Reliance on belief in understanding and predicting behavior is widespread. Examples can be found, inter alia, in the placebo, attribution theory, theory of mind, and comparative psychological literatures. Research on belief also provides evidence for robust generalizations, including about how we fix, store, and change our beliefs. Evidence supports the existence of a Spinozan system of belief fixation: one that is automatic (...) and independent of belief rejection. Independent research supports the existence of a system of fragmented belief storage: one that relies on large numbers of causally isolated, context-sensitive stores of belief in memory. Finally, empirical and observational data support at least two systems of belief change. One system adheres, mostly, to epistemological norms of updating; the other, the psychological immune system, functions to guard our most centrally held beliefs from potential inconsistency with newly formed beliefs. Refining our under- standing of these systems can shed light on pressing real-world issues, such as how fake news, propaganda, and brainwashing exploit our psychology of belief, and how best to construct our modern informational world. (shrink)

The contemporary discussion of modesty has focused on whether or not modest people are accurate about their own good qualities. This essay argues that this way of framing the debate is unhelpful and offers examples to show that neither ignorance nor accuracy about the good qualities related to oneself is necessary for modesty. It then offers an attention-based account, claiming that what is necessary for modesty is to direct one’s attention in certain ways. By analyzing modesty in this way, we (...) can best explain the distinct features of modesty, keep much of what is intuitive in contemporary accounts, and better understand why modesty is a virtue at all. (shrink)

What does it mean to be a morally good person? It can be tempting to think that it is simply a matter of performing certain actions and avoiding others. And yet there is much more to moral character than our outward actions. We expect a good person to not only behave in certain ways but also to experience the world in certain ways within.

In recent years much research has been undertaken regarding the feasibility of the human uterine transplant as a treatment for absolute uterine factor infertility. Should it reach clinical application this procedure would allow such individuals what is often a much-desired opportunity to become not only social mothers, or genetic and social mothers but mothers in a social, genetic and gestational sense. Like many experimental transplantation procedures such as face, hand, corneal and larynx transplants, UTx as a therapeutic option falls firmly (...) into the camp of the quality of life transplant, undertaken with the aim, not to save a life, but to enrich one. However, unlike most of these novel procedures – where one would be unlikely to find a willing living donor or an ethics committee that would sanction such a donation – the organs to be transplanted in UTx are potentially available from both living and deceased donors. In this article, in the light of the recent nine-case research trial in Sweden which used uteri obtained from living donors, and the assertions on the part of a number of other research teams currently preparing trials that they will only be using deceased donors, I explore the question of whether, in the case of UTx, there exist compelling moral reasons to prefer the use of deceased donors despite the benefits that may be associated with the use of organs obtained from the living. (shrink)

Punitive behaviours are often assumed to be the result of an instinct for punishment. This instinct would have evolved to punish wrongdoers and it would be the evidence that cooperation has evolved by group selection. Here, I propose an alternative theory according to which punishment is a not an adaptation and that there was no specific selective pressure to inflict costs on wrongdoers in the ancestral environment. In this theory, cooperation evolved through partner choice for mutual advantage. In the ancestral (...) environment, individuals were in competition to be recruited in cooperative ventures and it was vital to share the benefits of cooperation in a mutually advantageous manner. If individuals took a bigger share of the benefits, their partners would leave them for more interesting partners. If they took a smaller share, they would be exploited by their partners who would receive more than what they had contributed to produce. This competition led to the selection of a sense of fairness, a cognitive adaptation aiming to share equally the benefits of cooperation in order to attract partners. In this theory, punishment is not necessary for the evolution of cooperation. Punitive behaviours are only a way to restore fairness by compensating the victim or penalizing the culprit. Drawing on behavioural economics, legal anthropology, and cognitive psychology, I show that empirical data fit better with this framework than with the theory of group selection. When people punish, they do so to restore fairness rather than to help the group. (shrink)

To become more broadly applicable, positions on AI ethics require perspectives from non-Western regions and cultures such as China and Japan. In this paper, we propose that the addition of the concept of harmony to the discussion on ethical AI would be highly beneficial due to its centrality in East Asian cultures and its applicability to the challenge of designing AI for social good. We first present a synopsis of different definitions of harmony in multiple contexts, such as music and (...) society, which reveals that the concept is, at its core, about well-balanced relationships and appropriate actions which give rise to order, balance, and aesthetically pleasing phenomena. The mediator for these well-balanced relationships isTaktwhich is an ability to act thoughtfully and sensibly according to the specific situation and to put things into proportion and order. We propose that the central challenge of building harmonizing AI is to make intelligent systems tactful and also to design and use them tactfully. For an AI system to become tactful, it needs to be able to have an advanced sensitivity to the specific contexts which it is in and their social and ethical implications and have the capability of approximately inferring the emotional and cognitive states of people with whom it is interacting. (shrink)

Has the time come to put to bed the concept of a harm threshold when discussing the ethics of reproductive decision making and the legal limits that should be placed upon it? In this commentary, we defend the claim that there exist good moral reasons, despite the conclusions of the non-identity problem, based on the interests of those we might create, to refrain from bringing to birth individuals whose lives are often described in the philosophical literature as ‘less than worth (...) living’. (shrink)

This paper develops a new argument against free will, understood as the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP). This principle has been central in debates around free will and moral responsibility; however, it is almost always stated in terms of bodily rather than mental action, and it is therefore mainly understood as the possibility to physically act differently, rather than to think differently. The argument presented here is aimed at the latter, which is termed the possibility of alternative thought (PAT). It (...) argues on psychological grounds that it is impossible for a subject to think differently than it does in a given situation. First, I make the possibility of alternative thought explicit, explain what it means for a self to entertain a thought (or conscious content), and I define a notion of conscious control that is required for the argument. I then offer a taxonomy of content types, based on how they are being controlled. In the third section, I analyse the scenarios of content generation for each type of content, to determine whether they can satisfy the PAT. It will be shown that this cannot be the case. (shrink)

The capacity to attribute beliefs to others in order to understand action is one of the mainstays of human cognition. Yet it is debatable whether children attribute beliefs in the same way to all agents. In this paper, we present the results of a false-belief task concerning humans and God run with a sample of Maya children aged 4–7, and place them in the context of several psychological theories of cognitive development. Children were found to attribute beliefs in different ways (...) to humans and God. The evidence also speaks to the debate concerning the universality and uniformity of the development of folk-psychological reasoning. (shrink)

This book is the first extensive treatment of Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness. Nicolas de Warren uses detailed analysis of texts by Husserl, some only recently published in German, to examine Husserl's treatment of time-consciousness and its significance for his conception of subjectivity. He traces the development of Husserl's thinking on the problem of time from Franz Brentano's descriptive psychology, and situates it in the framework of his transcendental project as a whole. Particular discussions include the significance of time-consciousness for other (...) phenomenological themes: perceptual experience, the imagination, remembrance, self-consciousness, embodiment, and the consciousness of others. The result is an illuminating exploration of how and why Husserl considered the question of time-consciousness to be the most difficult, yet also the most central, of all the challenges facing his unique philosophical enterprise"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was born in Yorkshire in 1907 to second generation Jewish immigrants. Having won a scholarship to Oxford University, he went on to become the most famous legal philosopher of the twentieth century. From 1932-40 H.L.A Hart practised as a barrister in London. He was pronounced physically unfit for military service in 1940, and was recruited by MI5, where he worked until 1945. During his time at the Bar he had continued to study philosophy and at M15 (...) his interest was further stimulated by his philosopher colleagues in M16, Stuart Hampshire and Gilbert Ryle. After the war, Hart returned to Oxford to take up a philosophy fellowship, later to become Professor of Jurisprudence. H.L.A Hart single-handedly reinvented the philosophy of law and influenced the nation's thinking in the 1960s on abortion, the legalization of homosexuality, and on capital punishment. Hart's approach to legal philosophy was at once disarmingly simple and breathtakingly ambitious, combining as it did the insights of Austin and Bentham and the new linguistic philosophy of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He sought to elucidate a concept of law which would be of relevance to all forms of law, wherever or whenever they arose: his bestselling book, The Concept of Law, has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide. In 1941, he married Jenifer Williams (a high-ranking civil servant, later an Oxford academic) with whom he had four children. Their relationship was an enduring if unconventional one. In the early 1950s, Jenifer was rumoured to be having a long-standing affair with Isaiah Berlin, one of Hart's closest friends. She was also, falsely, accused by the Sunday Times of having been a Russian spy, an allegation which was all the more scandalous given Hart's position at MI5 during the War. Nicola Lacey draws on Hart's previously unpublished diaries and letters to reveal a complex inner life. Outwardly successful, Hart was in fact tormented by doubts about his intellectual abilities, his sexual identity and his capacity to form close relationships. Her biography also sheds fascinating light on the origins of his ideas, and assesses his overall contribution. Above all, it chronicles of a life which had a depth ands impact far greater than many of Hart's readers have realized. (shrink)

Ackrill’s Problem is a tension between Aristotle’s alleged view that the matter of a living being is a body that is essentially ensouled, and his view that the matter of a substance preexists its generation. Most interpreters solve the tension by claiming that the subject of substantial generation is not the organic body of the living being, but its non-organic matter. I defend a different solution by showing that the embryological theory ofOn the Generation of Animalsimplies that the organic body (...) of a living being already exists before acquiring the soul in actuality. (shrink)

This paper intends to bring Austinian themes into methodological discussion about models. Using Austinian conceptual vocabulary, I argue that models perform actions in and outside of the academic field. This multiplicity of fields induces a variety of felicity conditions and types of performed actions. If for example, an inference from a model is judged according to some epistemological criteria in the scientific field, the representation of the world which the model carries will not be judged by the same criteria outside (...) the scientific field. A model can be considered as a standard in a strict scientific framework, while not being used as part of public policies, or vice versa. However, we focus on the dynamics between different fields. (shrink)

Since the Industrial Revolution, human societies have experienced high and sustained rates of economic growth. Recent explanations of this sudden and massive change in economic history have held that modern growth results from an acceleration of innovation. But it is unclear why the rate of innovation drastically accelerated in England in the eighteenth century. An important factor might be the alteration of individual preferences with regard to innovation resulting from the unprecedented living standards of the English during that period, for (...) two reasons. First, recent developments in economic history challenge the standard Malthusian view according to which living standards were stagnant until the Industrial Revolution. Pre-industrial England enjoyed a level of affluence that was unprecedented in history. Second, behavioral sciences have demonstrated that the human brain is designed to respond adaptively to variations in resources in the local environment. In particular, Life History Theory, a branch of evolutionary biology, suggests that a more favorable environment should trigger the expression of future-oriented preferences. In this paper, I argue that some of these psychological traits – a lower level of time discounting, a higher level of optimism, decreased materialistic orientation, and a higher level of trust in others – are likely to increase the rate of innovation. I review the evidence regarding the impact of affluence on preferences in contemporary as well as past populations, and conclude that the impact of affluence on neurocognitive systems may partly explain the modern acceleration of technological innovations and the associated economic growth. (shrink)