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)

Audiovisual communication is greatly contributing to the emerging research field of affective computing. The use of audiovisual stimuli within immersive virtual reality environments is providing very intense emotional reactions, which provoke spontaneous physical and physiological changes that can be assimilated into real responses. In order to ensure high-quality recognition, the artificial intelligence system must be trained with adequate data sets, including not only those gathered by smart sensors but also the tags related to the elicited emotion. Currently, there are very (...) few techniques available for the labeling of emotions. Among them, the Self-Assessment Manikin devised by Lang is one of the most popular. This study shows experimentally that the graphic proposal for the original SAM labelling system, as devised by Lang, is not neutral to gender and contains gender biases in its design and representation. Therefore, a new graphic design has been proposed and tested according to the guidelines of expert judges. The results of the experiment show an overall improvement in the labeling of emotions in the pleasure–arousal–dominance affective space, particularly, for women. This research proves the relevance of applying the gender perspective in the validation of tools used throughout the years. (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)

Jean-Michel Roessli | : Cette brève contribution a pour but de revenir sur une question soulevée par Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, à propos de la façon dont les historiens de l’Antiquité tardive envisagent les contacts ou échanges entre Juifs, chrétiens et païens et, plus particulièrement, les phénomènes d’acculturation ou d’appropriation culturelle. Cette question est abordée à la lumière de la figure d’Orphée, dont Miguel Herrero se sert pour illustrer sa thèse dans le domaine de l’iconographie religieuse, alors qu’il recourt à (...) d’autres thèmes ou motifs pour vérifier son hypothèse dans la sphère des rites et de la poésie. La question soulevée est de savoir si l’opinio communis selon laquelle certains éléments de la culture païenne ont été « assimilés » à et par la culture chrétienne est une représentation biaisée qui se fonde sur une construction apologétique plus ou moins inconsciente ou s’il s’agit d’une réalité culturelle historiquement attestée. | : This short paper aims to respond to a question raised by Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui with respect to the way historians of Late Antiquity see contacts or exchanges between Jews, Christians and Pagans and, more specifically, the phenomenon of acculturation or cultural appropriation. This question is addressed in the light of the mythological figure of Orpheus, which Miguel Herrero uses to illustrate his thesis in the field of religious iconography, while referring to other themes or motifs to verify his hypothesis in the area of rites and poetry. The issue raised is to know whether the opinio communis according to which elements of the pagan culture were “assimilated” to and by the Christian culture is a biased representation based on a more or less unconscious apologetic construction or if it relies on a historically attested reality. (shrink)

Algorithmic biases, or algorithmic unfairness, have been a topic of public and scientific scrutiny for the past years, as increasing evidence suggests the pervasive assimilation of human cognitive biases and stereotypes in such systems. This research is specifically concerned with analyzing the presence of discursive biases in the text generated by GPT-3, an NLPM which has been praised in recent years for resembling human language so closely that it is becoming difficult to differentiate between the human and the algorithm. (...) The pertinence of this research object is substantiated by the identification of race, gender and religious biases in the model’s completions in recent research, suggesting that the model is indeed heavily influenced by human cognitive biases. To this end, this research inquires: How does the Natural Language Processing Model GPT-3 replicate existing social biases?. This question is addressed through the scrutiny of GPT-3’s completions using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a method which has been deemed as amply valuable for this research as it is aimed at uncovering power asymmetries in language. As such, the analysis is specifically centered around the analysis of gender and race biases in the model’s generated text. Research findings suggest that GPT-3’s language generation model significantly exacerbates existing social biases while replicating dangerous ideologies akin to white supremacy and hegemonic masculinity as factual knowledge. (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 alternative variants and on the initial sizes of societies that provide and receive immigrants. (shrink)

The Cambridge Platonist Henry More was fiercely averse to the Lurianic Kabbalah, with which he became acquainted through the two tomes of the Kabbala denudata. More contributed to the first tome substantially and was highly influential in shaping the reception of this work, edited by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. He denounced the incompatibility of the Christian religion with Luria's system and in his last contribution, the Fundamenta, he put forward an apagogical argument meant to show the inconsistency of Luria's teaching. (...) The article aims at exploring the nature of More's argument so as to highlight the philosophical essence of his criticism, the intention of which was to emphasize the incompatibility of the Kabbalah with any form of rational speculation. Luria's doctrine appeared to More to be a compromise between materialism and spiritualism, a sort of hybrid theory that was even worse than materialism, given its misleading theistic appearance as well as the lack of internal coherence. This compromise was also morally unacceptable, being symptomatic of weakness of the will. (shrink)

Recent mathematical results, obtained by the author, in collaboration with Alexander Stokolos, Olof Svensson, and Tomasz Weiss, in the study of harmonic functions, have prompted the following reflections, intertwined with views on some turning points in the history of mathematics and accompanied by an interpretive key that could perhaps shed some light on other aspects of (the development of) mathematics.

Central to many discussions of motivated reasoning is the idea that it runs afoul of epistemic normativity. Reasoning differently about information supporting our prior beliefs versus information contradicting those beliefs, is frequently equated with motivated irrationality. By analyzing the normative status of belief polarization, selective scrutiny, biased assimilation and the myside bias, I show this inference is often not adequately supported. Contrary to what’s often assumed, these phenomena need not indicate motivated irrationality, even though they are instances of (...) belief-consistent information processing. Second, I engage with arguments purporting to show that belief-consistent information processing does not indicate motivated irrationality because of its mere differential treatment of confirming and non-confirming evidence, but rather because it reveals the undermining presence of an irrelevant influence, such as a desire or partisan identity-driven cognition. While linking belief-consistent reasoning to a deeper source of directional motivation to make good on the claim that it indicates motivated irrationality is indeed what’s needed, two prominent such arguments fail. The non-normativity of many reasoning processes often taken to indicate motivated irrationality is not in fact well established. (shrink)

This paper discusses two conservative ways of treating evidence. (I) Closing inquiry involves discounting evidence bearing on one's belief unless it is particularly strong evidence; (II) biased assimilation involves dedicating more investigative resources to scrutinizing disconfirming evidence (than confirming evidence), thereby increasing the chances of finding reasons to dismiss it. It is natural to worry that these practices lead to irrational biases in favor of one's existing beliefs, and that they make one's epistemic condition significantly path-sensitive by giving (...) a bigger role to batches of evidence obtained earlier in the course of inquiry compared with those subsequently acquired. However, I argue that both practices are demanded by considerations of practical rationality. I also argue that, contrary to initial appearances, there is little reason to worry about the effects of these practices on the dynamics of one's beliefs. (shrink)

Introduction: Novel coronavirus is having a devastating psychological impact on patients, especially patients with cancer. This work aims to evaluate mood disorders of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy during COVID-19 in comparison with cancer patients who underwent radiation therapy in 2019.Materials and Methods: We included all the patients undergoing radiation therapy at our department in two-time points and during the COVID-19 outbreak. All the patients were asked to fulfill a validated questionnaire, the Symptom Distress thermometer, and the Beck Depression Inventory (...) v.2. We took into account the COVID-19 outbreak and also sex, age, week of radiation treatment, and disease.Results: We included 458 patients, with a median age of 64 years. STAI-Y1 median score was 40, whereas the median score of SDT was five and BDI-2 median score was 11. STAI-Y1, SDT, and BDI-2 were significantly correlated with the COVID-19 outbreak, sex, week of treatment, and disease.Conclusions: The prevalence of mood disorders in patients undergoing radiation therapy is higher than expected and even higher during the COVID-19 outbreak. These measurements could be useful as a baseline to start medical humanities programs to decrease these scores. (shrink)

Some common explanations of issue polarization and echo chambers rely on social or cognitive mechanisms of exclusion. Accordingly, suggested interventions like “be more open-minded” target these mechanisms: avoid epistemic bubbles and don’t discount contrary information. Contrary to such explanations, we show how a much weaker mechanism—the preference for belief—can produce issue polarization in epistemic communities with little to no mechanisms of exclusion. We present a network model that demonstrates how a dynamic interaction between the preference for belief and common structures (...) of epistemic communities can turn very small unequal distributions of initial beliefs into full-blown polarization. This points to a different class of explanations, one that emphasizes the importance of the initial spread of information. We also show how our model complements extant explanations by including a version of biased assimilation and motivated reasoning—cognitive mechanisms of exclusion. We find that mechanisms of exclusion can exacerbate issue polarization, but may not be the ultimate root of it. Hence, the recommended interventions suggested by extant literature is expected to be limited and the problem of issue polarization to be even more intractable. (shrink)

Psychological studies show that the beliefs of two agents in a hypothesis can diverge even if both agents receive the same evidence. This phenomenon of belief polarisation is often explained by invoking biased assimilation of evidence, where the agents’ prior views about the hypothesis affect the way they process the evidence. We suggest, using a Bayesian model, that even if such influence is excluded, belief polarisation can still arise by another mechanism. This alternative mechanism involves differential weighting of (...) the evidence arising when agents have different initial views about the reliability of their sources of evidence. We provide a systematic exploration of the conditions for belief polarisation in Bayesian models which incorporate opinions about source reliability, and we discuss some implications of our findings for the psychological literature. (shrink)

People tend to think that they know others better than others know them. This phenomenon is known as the “illusion of asymmetric insight.” While the illusion has been well documented by a series of recent experiments, less has been done to explain it. In this paper, we argue that extant explanations are inadequate because they either get the explanatory direction wrong or fail to accommodate the experimental results in a sufficiently nuanced way. Instead, we propose a new explanation that does (...) not face these problems. The explanation is based on two other well-documented psychological phenomena: the tendency to accommodate ambiguous evidence in a biased way, and the tendency to overestimate how much better we know ourselves than we know others. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the use of after-effects as a criterion for showing that we can perceive high-level properties. According to this criterion, if a high-level property is susceptible to after-effects, this suggests that the property can be perceived, rather than cognized. The defenders of the criterion claim that, since after-effects are also present for low-level, uncontroversially perceptual properties, we can safely infer that high-level after-effects are perceptual as well. The critics of the criterion, on the other hand, assimilate (...) it to superficially similar effects in cognition and argue that the after-effect criterion is a cognitive phenomenon rather than a perceptual one, and that as a result it is not a reliable guide for exploring the contents of perception. I argue against both of these views and show that high-level after-effects cannot be identified either with low-level after-effects or with cognitive biases. I suggest an intermediate position: high-level after-effects are not cognitive, but they are nonetheless not a good criterion for exploring the contents of perception. (shrink)

Psychophysical scaling models of the form R = f, with R the response and I some intensity of an attribute, all assume that people judge the amounts of an attribute. With simple biases excepted, most also assume that judgments are independent of space, time, and features of the situation other than the one being judged. Many data support these ideas: Magnitude estimations of brightness increase with luminance. Nevertheless, I argue that the general model is wrong. The stabilized retinal image literature (...) shows that nothing is seen if light does not change over time. The classification literature shows that dimensions often combine to produce emergent properties that cannot be described by the elements in the stimulus. These and other effects cannot be adjusted for by simply adding variables to the general model because some factors do not combine linearly. The proposed alternative is that people initially judge the entire stimulus – the object in terms of its environment. This agrees with the constancy literature that shows that objects and their attributes are identified through their relations to other aspects of the scene. That the environment determines judgments is masked in scaling studies where the standard procedure is to hold context constant. In a typical brightness study the essential stimulus might be the intensity of the light or a difference between the light and the background. The two are perfectly confounded. This issue is examined in the case of audition. Judgments of the loudness of a tone depend on how much that tone differs from the previous tone in both pitch and loudness. To judge loudness people first seem to process the stimulus object in terms of differences between it and other aspects in the situation; only then do they assess the feature of interest. Psychophysical judgments will therefore be better interpreted by theories of attention that are based in biology or psychology than those that are based in classical physics. (shrink)

It is commonly observed that we live in an increasingly polarised world. Strikingly, we are polarised not only about political issues, but also about scientific issues that have political implications, such as climate change. This raises two questions. First, why are we so polarised over these issues? Second, does this mean our views about these issues are all equally ir/rational? In this chapter I explore both questions. Specifically, I draw on the literature on ideologically motivated reasoning to develop an answer (...) to the first question. Put briefly, we exhibit “directional biases” in our information processing: we try to assimilate new information into our existing webs of beliefs. This means that those who are predisposed to accept the case for climate change end up accepting it, whereas those who are predisposed to reject it end up rejecting it. Based on this answer, I then address the second question. I look at some reasons for thinking that, because we all exhibit such biases in our thinking, we are all equally rational (or, as the case may be, irrational). I also suggest some ways you might try reject these reasons. (shrink)

In a recent issue of this journal, Vandermassen suggested that feminists should include sexual selection theory and evolutionary psychology in a unifying theory of human nature. In response, this article aims to offer some insight into the development of sexual selection theory, to caution against Vandermassen's unreserved assimilation and to promote the opposite ongoing integration — an inclusion of gender perspectives into evolutionary biology. In society today, opinions about maintaining traditional sex roles are often put forward on the basis (...) of what is natural and how animals behave. However, the natural sciences have proved to be pervaded by gendered values and interests; Darwin's theory of sexual selection has been criticized for being male biased, and partly due to the unwillingness of Darwin's scientific contemporaries to accept female choice, research has been overwhelmingly focused on males. More recently, theory has become less gender biased and research has come to include a large variety of issues not present in the first version of the theory. However, there is a need to increase the awareness of gender bias in order to develop a gender-neutral evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Strauss championed a philosophy of history according to which philosophers characteristically hide their actual beliefs when writing about ethics and politics. This paper begins by suggesting that an esoteric philosophy of history encourages a set of specific biases when writing histories of philosophy. Proponents of esotericism are liable to be far too ready to conclude that philosophers intended to hide their beliefs; they are likely to be insufficiently attuned to the varied contexts in which philosophers write; and they are likely (...) to be too ready to assimilate the beliefs of philosophers to a norm. Thereafter the paper considers the presence of these biases in Strauss's account of modernity. Strauss allows for waves of modernity but he defines these waves as part of a single, monolithic project that is defined in contrast to the esoteric character of ancient philosophy and that leads inexorably to nihilism. Once we correct for the biases mentioned above, however, modernity appears as a series of projects located in specific contexts and confronting particular dilemmas. Again, where Strauss presents our own era as one of crisis, this revised account of modernity suggests that we merely confront the more local issue of how to forge a community out of self-governing individuals. (shrink)

The first reactions to the encyclical Fides et Ratio ranged from cautiously positive to critical disapproval. Many observers pointed to the ambiguity which they perceive in the encyclical, probably due to the several hands which participated in its writing process. This ambiguity functions as a starting point to develop two different keys to read the text, resulting in divergent interpretations and evaluations. Inspired by the opening clause of the encyclical the first key can be represented by the image of a (...) beautiful swan, which takes off for a flight towards the ultimate horizon of truth. This key starts from the perception that the encyclical is biased by an dismissal of the modern emancipation of reason and by a subordination of all rationality to faith . Only when reason complies with the presumptions of revelation, and thus limits its autonomy, can it enter the realm of absolute. But, following the lines of this key of interpretation, precisely this results in clipping one of the wings of the swan, preventing it from taking off. By his refusal to take seriously the modern redefinition of rationality and his reintroduction of a massive, static, and propositional concept of revelation, the pope makes a thoroughly provocative and fruitful meeting of Christian faith and contemporary reason impossible. And it is only by such an engaging encounter that theology can regain its plausibility in our modern times. The other interpretative key is represented by the image of a dove coming down from heaven, seeking for a place on earth to settle down. This key takes as its primary starting point the theological status of the genre of the encyclical, and consequently links up with fragments of the text which can seem more open. First of all, an encyclical is a magisterial document. This means that from the beginning it must be situated within a faith perspective, written from standpoint of a particular tradition. Only then one can understand that in the text - internal to the discourse - truth is immediately related to revelation. Secondly, this key points to the understanding of revelation as mystery, and in this regard to the sacramental or eucharistic concept of truth: the truth of faith becomes present to us, but cannot ever be pinpointed ontologically by us. The knowledge of faith never diffuses the mystery of revelation. Therefore, faith as faith can never be founded in reason. Taking into account these two starting points, the encyclical addresses reason only in relation to faith: reason from itself does not lead to faith, but faith needs rational, philosophical knowledge for its own understanding. Following this line of thought implies that the principles of philosophy as ‘praeparation fidei’ and as ‘ancilla theologiae’ have to be reconsidered. Moreover this perspective results in a more open reading of many other passages . Both readings imply a selective reading of the text. The more observatorial reading, according to the key of the swan, interprets the whole text from its more antimodern closed passages. The intra-theological reading with the key of the dove reinterprets many of the seemingly closed passages but nevertheless is confronted by fragments which hardly fit its reading. Neither key neutralizes the ambiguity, but confronts it. The perspective of the dove could be the more theologically successful way in doing this. However, even here a theological assimilation of a profound analysis of the contemporary philosophical situation would have enriched the encyclical extensively. For theology as ‘fides quaerens intellectum’, relevant today, must relate to the contextual critical consciousness as expressed in contemporary modern philosophy.The first reactions to the encyclical Fides et Ratio ranged from cautiously positive to critical disapproval. Many observers pointed to the ambiguity which they perceive in the encyclical, probably due to the several hands which participated in its writing process. This ambiguity functions as a starting point to develop two different keys to read the text, resulting in divergent interpretations and evaluations. Inspired by the opening clause of the encyclical the first key can be represented by the image of a beautiful swan, which takes off for a flight towards the ultimate horizon of truth. This key starts from the perception that the encyclical is biased by an dismissal of the modern emancipation of reason and by a subordination of all rationality to faith . Only when reason complies with the presumptions of revelation, and thus limits its autonomy, can it enter the realm of absolute. But, following the lines of this key of interpretation, precisely this results in clipping one of the wings of the swan, preventing it from taking off. By his refusal to take seriously the modern redefinition of rationality and his reintroduction of a massive, static, and propositional concept of revelation, the pope makes a thoroughly provocative and fruitful meeting of Christian faith and contemporary reason impossible. And it is only by such an engaging encounter that theology can regain its plausibility in our modern times. The other interpretative key is represented by the image of a dove coming down from heaven, seeking for a place on earth to settle down. This key takes as its primary starting point the theological status of the genre of the encyclical, and consequently links up with fragments of the text which can seem more open. First of all, an encyclical is a magisterial document. This means that from the beginning it must be situated within a faith perspective, written from standpoint of a particular tradition. Only then one can understand that in the text - internal to the discourse - truth is immediately related to revelation. Secondly, this key points to the understanding of revelation as mystery, and in this regard to the sacramental or eucharistic concept of truth: the truth of faith becomes present to us, but cannot ever be pinpointed ontologically by us. The knowledge of faith never diffuses the mystery of revelation. Therefore, faith as faith can never be founded in reason. Taking into account these two starting points, the encyclical addresses reason only in relation to faith: reason from itself does not lead to faith, but faith needs rational, philosophical knowledge for its own understanding. Following this line of thought implies that the principles of philosophy as ‘praeparation fidei’ and as ‘ancilla theologiae’ have to be reconsidered. Moreover this perspective results in a more open reading of many other passages . Both readings imply a selective reading of the text. The more observatorial reading, according to the key of the swan, interprets the whole text from its more antimodern closed passages. The intra-theological reading with the key of the dove reinterprets many of the seemingly closed passages but nevertheless is confronted by fragments which hardly fit its reading. Neither key neutralizes the ambiguity, but confronts it. The perspective of the dove could be the more theologically successful way in doing this. However, even here a theological assimilation of a profound analysis of the contemporary philosophical situation would have enriched the encyclical extensively. For theology as ‘fides quaerens intellectum’, relevant today, must relate to the contextual critical consciousness as expressed in contemporary modern philosophy. (shrink)

Because psychological studies of attention and cognition are most commonly performed within the strict confines of the laboratory or take cognitively impaired patients as subjects, it is difficult to be sure that resultant models of attention adequately account for the phenomenon of effortless attention. The problem is not only that effortless attention is resistant to laboratory study. A further issue is that because the laboratory is the most common way to approach attention, models resulting from such studies are naturally the (...) most widely propagated, these models naturally tend to be biased toward features of attention most amenable to laboratory study, and these models by their implications set the agenda for future study that leads back to the laboratory. In this self-reinforcing system, features of attention not amenable to laboratory study are naturally neglected by researchers. In this chapter, I suggest an alternative model of attention as a heuristic for opening paths to further profitable research. The features of attention emphasized in this model are not new, but the synthesis is novel and sheds some light on issues relevant to the topic of effortless attention. I begin with the five following observations: -/- 1. One naturally pays attention to a task of current interest. 2. There are (at least) two distinct modes of attention—selective and diffuse. 3. Attention is a constantly shifting avenue for the assimilation of information. 4. Information is not forced in from outside but is captured through internal sensitization. 5. Human information processing is fundamentally syntactic. -/- Combining these five observations yields an explanatory model of attention that is not only consistent with the data from the many studies on attention in recent decades but also allows us to investigate the neglected phenomenon of effortless attention. The model relies on the notions of apertures, draw, and syntax and is explicated by addressing each of the above observations in turn. In the final part of the chapter, I explore how the model expands our understanding of effortless attention. (shrink)

The first reactions to the encyclical Fides et Ratio ranged from cautiously positive to critical disapproval. Many observers pointed to the ambiguity which they perceive in the encyclical, probably due to the several hands which participated in its writing process. This ambiguity functions as a starting point to develop two different keys to read the text, resulting in divergent interpretations and evaluations. Inspired by the opening clause of the encyclical the first key can be represented by the image of a (...) beautiful swan, which takes off for a flight towards the ultimate horizon of truth. This key starts from the perception that the encyclical is biased by an dismissal of the modern emancipation of reason and by a subordination of all rationality to faith . Only when reason complies with the presumptions of revelation, and thus limits its autonomy, can it enter the realm of absolute. But, following the lines of this key of interpretation, precisely this results in clipping one of the wings of the swan, preventing it from taking off. By his refusal to take seriously the modern redefinition of rationality and his reintroduction of a massive, static, and propositional concept of revelation, the pope makes a thoroughly provocative and fruitful meeting of Christian faith and contemporary reason impossible. And it is only by such an engaging encounter that theology can regain its plausibility in our modern times. The other interpretative key is represented by the image of a dove coming down from heaven, seeking for a place on earth to settle down. This key takes as its primary starting point the theological status of the genre of the encyclical, and consequently links up with fragments of the text which can seem more open. First of all, an encyclical is a magisterial document. This means that from the beginning it must be situated within a faith perspective, written from standpoint of a particular tradition. Only then one can understand that in the text - internal to the discourse - truth is immediately related to revelation. Secondly, this key points to the understanding of revelation as mystery, and in this regard to the sacramental or eucharistic concept of truth: the truth of faith becomes present to us, but cannot ever be pinpointed ontologically by us. The knowledge of faith never diffuses the mystery of revelation. Therefore, faith as faith can never be founded in reason. Taking into account these two starting points, the encyclical addresses reason only in relation to faith: reason from itself does not lead to faith, but faith needs rational, philosophical knowledge for its own understanding. Following this line of thought implies that the principles of philosophy as ‘praeparation fidei’ and as ‘ancilla theologiae’ have to be reconsidered. Moreover this perspective results in a more open reading of many other passages . Both readings imply a selective reading of the text. The more observatorial reading, according to the key of the swan, interprets the whole text from its more antimodern closed passages. The intra-theological reading with the key of the dove reinterprets many of the seemingly closed passages but nevertheless is confronted by fragments which hardly fit its reading. Neither key neutralizes the ambiguity, but confronts it. The perspective of the dove could be the more theologically successful way in doing this. However, even here a theological assimilation of a profound analysis of the contemporary philosophical situation would have enriched the encyclical extensively. For theology as ‘fides quaerens intellectum’, relevant today, must relate to the contextual critical consciousness as expressed in contemporary modern philosophy.The first reactions to the encyclical Fides et Ratio ranged from cautiously positive to critical disapproval. Many observers pointed to the ambiguity which they perceive in the encyclical, probably due to the several hands which participated in its writing process. This ambiguity functions as a starting point to develop two different keys to read the text, resulting in divergent interpretations and evaluations. Inspired by the opening clause of the encyclical the first key can be represented by the image of a beautiful swan, which takes off for a flight towards the ultimate horizon of truth. This key starts from the perception that the encyclical is biased by an dismissal of the modern emancipation of reason and by a subordination of all rationality to faith . Only when reason complies with the presumptions of revelation, and thus limits its autonomy, can it enter the realm of absolute. But, following the lines of this key of interpretation, precisely this results in clipping one of the wings of the swan, preventing it from taking off. By his refusal to take seriously the modern redefinition of rationality and his reintroduction of a massive, static, and propositional concept of revelation, the pope makes a thoroughly provocative and fruitful meeting of Christian faith and contemporary reason impossible. And it is only by such an engaging encounter that theology can regain its plausibility in our modern times. The other interpretative key is represented by the image of a dove coming down from heaven, seeking for a place on earth to settle down. This key takes as its primary starting point the theological status of the genre of the encyclical, and consequently links up with fragments of the text which can seem more open. First of all, an encyclical is a magisterial document. This means that from the beginning it must be situated within a faith perspective, written from standpoint of a particular tradition. Only then one can understand that in the text - internal to the discourse - truth is immediately related to revelation. Secondly, this key points to the understanding of revelation as mystery, and in this regard to the sacramental or eucharistic concept of truth: the truth of faith becomes present to us, but cannot ever be pinpointed ontologically by us. The knowledge of faith never diffuses the mystery of revelation. Therefore, faith as faith can never be founded in reason. Taking into account these two starting points, the encyclical addresses reason only in relation to faith: reason from itself does not lead to faith, but faith needs rational, philosophical knowledge for its own understanding. Following this line of thought implies that the principles of philosophy as ‘praeparation fidei’ and as ‘ancilla theologiae’ have to be reconsidered. Moreover this perspective results in a more open reading of many other passages . Both readings imply a selective reading of the text. The more observatorial reading, according to the key of the swan, interprets the whole text from its more antimodern closed passages. The intra-theological reading with the key of the dove reinterprets many of the seemingly closed passages but nevertheless is confronted by fragments which hardly fit its reading. Neither key neutralizes the ambiguity, but confronts it. The perspective of the dove could be the more theologically successful way in doing this. However, even here a theological assimilation of a profound analysis of the contemporary philosophical situation would have enriched the encyclical extensively. For theology as ‘fides quaerens intellectum’, relevant today, must relate to the contextual critical consciousness as expressed in contemporary modern philosophy. (shrink)

The article examines the problems of philosophy development in Ukraine during the thirty years of independence; an attempt is made to periodize this development. It is shown that the independence of Ukraine, in addition to the state, political and economic dimensions, also contains a spiritual component associated with religious, cultural, linguistic, and ideological independence. The key here was independence from the Moscow Church and creating an autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Nevertheless, since, according to the Constitution of Ukraine, no ideology (...) can be recognized by the state as mandatory, spiritual independence is also a secular category and presupposes worldview and philosophical independence. The article highlights several stages of the creation of philosophical independence. First, the first stage required overcoming the ideologically biased philosophy of Russian Marxism, that is, Marxism-Leninism. The second stage is the involvement of Ukrainian philosophy in the models of modern world philosophy, the assimilation of its leading trends and paradigmatic complexes. The role of translations of philosophical classics and modern philosophical literature in entering philosophy into world philosophical thought in Ukraine is also shown. Finally, the third stage is related to solving the critical problems of our time, related to globalization, ecological crisis, universalism and particularism in ethics, ethical reclamation of modern society, etc. The article also deals with the role of philosophy and philosophical education in substantiating the value orientations of the development of Ukrainian society, the formation of communicative, moral, professional competencies of citizens as a factor in the civilizational choice of Ukraine. (shrink)

Illuminated Mirrors and “No Rights” concerns the peregrinations of El Greco, from Crete to Spain, and various influences acquired along the way. The primary argument is that El Greco suffered a double exile: 1/ voluntary exile from Crete; and 2/ involuntary exile from Renaissance art and its humanist biases. As such, much of the art-historical record is a confused and often-doctored record of El Greco’s manufactured persona—i.e., he is not assimilable to the usual categories of art and art history.

Many actors use the norm of climate justice to fight climate change and to struggle against global inequities internationally and domestically. Despite the enormous diversity of ways in which actors have deployed ideas of climate justice, many of the policies framed within this norm sustain oppressive, silencing, and/or assimilating tendencies. Hence, this paper looks at the biases that were introduced from ideas of “sustainable development” into the discourse of climate justice. Through the cases of India and Oceania, the paper illustrates (...) the ways in which colonial legacies of single-axis thinking and development emphasize a particular struggle at the expense of other experiences and ways of life. (shrink)

There is a large literature on social epistemology, some of which is concerned with expert knowledge. Formal representations of the aggregation of decisions, estimates, and the like play a larger role in these discussions. Yet these discussions are neither sufficiently social nor epistemic. The assumptions minimize the role of knowledge, and often assume independence between observers. This paper presents a more naturalistic approach, which appeals to a model of epistemic gain from others, as mutual consilience—a genuinely social notion of epistemology. (...) Using the example of Michael Polanyi’s account of science as an illustration, it introduces the notion of double heuristics: that individuals, each with their own heuristics, each with cognitive biases and limitations, are aggregated by a decision procedure, like voting, and this second order procedure produces its own heuristic, with its own cognitive biases and limitations. An example might be the limited ability of democracies to assimilate expert knowledge. (shrink)

Mealey distinguishes two types of sociopathy: (1) or obligate, and (2) or facultative. Either sociopathy evolved twice, or one form is derived from the other, e.g., through: (1) genetic assimilation generating polymorphism in the relative strength of biases favoring the development of otherwise facultative strategies, or (2) independently heritable but strategically relevant characteristics biasing the optimal selection of facultative strategies.

Should you care less about your distant future? What about events in your life that have already happened? How should the passage of time affect your planning and assessment of your life? Most of us think it is irrational to ignore the future but harmless to dismiss the past. But this book argues that rationality requires temporal neutrality.

This paper examines distinctive discourse properties of preposed negative 'yes/no' questions (NPQs), such as 'Isn’t Jane coming too?'. Unlike with other 'yes/no' questions, using an NPQ '∼p?' invariably conveys a bias toward a particular answer, where the polarity of the bias is opposite of the polarity of the question: using the negative question '∼p?' invariably expresses that the speaker previously expected the positive answer p to be correct. A prominent approach—what I call the context-management approach, developed most extensively by Romero (...) and Han (2004)—attempts to capture speaker expectation biases by treating NPQs fundamentally as epistemic questions about the proper discourse status of a proposition. I raise challenges for existing context-managing accounts to provide more adequate formalizations of the posited context-managing content, its implementation in the compositional semantics and discourse dynamics, and its role in generating the observed biases. New data regarding discourse differences between NPQs and associated epistemic modal questions are introduced. I argue that we can capture the roles of NPQs in expressing speakers’ states of mind and managing the discourse common ground without positing special context-managing operators or treating NPQs as questions directly about the context. I suggest that we treat the operator introduced with preposed negation as having an ordinary semantics of epistemic necessity, though lexically associated with a general kind of endorsing use observed with modal expressions. The expressive and context-managing roles of NPQs are explained in terms of a general kind of discourse-oriented use of context-sensitive language. The distinctive expectation biases and discourse properties observed with NPQs are derived from the proposed semantics and a general principle of Discourse Relevance. (shrink)

Research suggests that interventions involving extensive training or counterconditioning can reduce implicit prejudice and stereotyping, and even susceptibility to stereotype threat. This research is widely cited as providing an “existence proof” that certain entrenched social attitudes are capable of change, but is summarily dismissed—by philosophers, psychologists, and activists alike—as lacking direct, practical import for the broader struggle against prejudice, discrimination, and inequality. Criticisms of these “debiasing” procedures fall into three categories: concerns about empirical efficacy, about practical feasibility, and about the (...) failure to appreciate the underlying structural-institutional nature of discrimination. I reply to these criticisms of debiasing, and argue that a comprehensive strategy for combating prejudice and discrimination should include a central role for training our biases away. (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.

Cognitive biases that affect decision making may affect the decisions of citizens that influence public policy. To the extent that decisions follow principles other than maximizing utility for all, it is less likely that utility will be maximized, and the citizens will ultimately suffer the results. Here I outline some basic arguments concerning decisions by citizens, using voting as an example. I describe two types of values that may lead to sub-optimal consequences when these values influence political behavior: moralistic values (...) (which people are willing to impose on others regardless of the consequences) and protected values (PVs, values protected from trade-offs). I present evidence against the idea that voting is expressive, i.e., that voters aim to express their moral views rather than to have an effect on outcomes. I show experimentally that PVs are often moralistic. Finally, I present some data that citizens’ think of their duty in a parochial way, neglecting out-groups. I conclude that moral judgments are important determinants of citizen behavior, that these judgments are subject to biases and based on moralistic values, and that, therefore, outcomes are probably less good than they could be. (shrink)

The study aimed to investigate the impact of behavioral biases on herding for Islamic financial products with the mediation of shariah literacy. An adopted questionnaire from several published studies was used to collect data. The data were collected from 410 respondents and were analyzed with SmartPLS. The results for the direct impact showed that self-attribution, illusion of control, and information availability have a positive and significant impact on herding for Islamic financial products while shariah literacy showed an insignificant impact on (...) herding. The results for mediation showed that previously significant and positive impact turned to insignificant when shariah literacy was introduced as mediating variable between the illusion of control, self-attribution, information availability, and herding. From a theoretical perspective, this study would contribute to the existing body of knowledge of financial decision making from shariah literacy point-out. On the other hand, the findings of this study may be useful for investors to avoid herding in the Islamic financial markets. The authors synthesize the contribution made by behavioral finance studies in extending the knowledge of herding behavior in Islamic financial products with a mediating role of shariah literacy. The key limitation of the study includes data that were collected from three districts of Punjab, Pakistan. (shrink)

Niche construction theory highlights the active role of organisms in modifying their environment. A subset of these modifications is the developmental niche, which concerns ecological, epistemic, social and symbolic legacies inherited by organisms as resources that scaffold their developmental processes. Since in this theory development is a situated process that takes place in a culturally structured environment, we may reasonably ask if implicit cultural biases may, in some cases, be responsible for maladaptive developmental niches. In this paper we wish to (...) argue for an affirmative answer. In order to do so, we first propose to conceptualize implicit bias as embodied perceptual habits, and then proceed to show that these habits are at least partially responsible for maladaptive developmental niches of children with Down syndrome and autism. With this framework we thus hope to bring together two fields of research that haven’t been explicitly connected: implicit bias and niche construction theory. Linking these two theories may bring benefits both to implicit bias researchers, who can extend this concept to characterize other sets of processes as biased, as well as to niche construction theorists, who will have a useful theoretical tool to diagnose maladaptive features of niches brought about by sociocultural biases. (shrink)

The Assimilation Argument purports to show that libertarians cannot plausibly distinguish supposed exercises of free will from random outcomes that nobody would count as exercises of free will. If this argument is sound, libertarians should either abandon their position or else concede that free will is a mystery. Drawing on a parallel with the Manipulation Argument against compatibilism, Christopher Franklin has recently contended that the Assimilation Argument is unsound. Here I defend the Assimilation Argument and the Rollback (...) Argument, a second challenge to libertarianism that Franklin rejects. My aim in doing so is to underscore the force of these challenges, and thereby to resist what appears to be an emerging trend in the literature. By not coming to grips with the kind of power that libertarians must secure, many writers have recently downplayed or dismissed the pressing worry for libertarianism. (shrink)