In the last third of the twentieth century, humanists and social scientists argued that attention to genetics would heighten already‐existing genetic determinism, which in turn would intensify negative social outcomes, especially sexism, racism, ableism, and harshness to criminals. They assumed that laypeople are at risk of becoming genetic essentialists. I will call this the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” This model has not accurately predicted psychosocial impacts of findings from genetics research. I will be arguing that the failure (...) of the model can be traced to its inability to recognize the complexity of laypeople’s attitudes; its incorrect theory of how beliefs, attitudes, and discourse function; and its blindness to how academics’ own interests can override the available evidence. More specifically, I suggest that the substantial data about laypeople’s deployment of genetics supports what I will call the “laypeople are strategic essentialists model” better than the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” The strategic essentialists model holds that people tend to store multiple categories, including multiple causal forces, that they deploy “strategically” to serve context‐dependent goals. It will be difficult for academics to reorient ourselves to model laypeople as sophisticated strategic essentialists rather than as naïve genetic essentialists. Perhaps a little shift, however, will be of value. (shrink)

Can argumentation schemes play a part in the critical processing of argumentation by lay people? In a qualitative study, participants were invited to come up with strong and weak arguments for a given claim and were subsequently interviewed for why they thought the strong argument was stronger than the weak one. Next, they were presented with a list of arguments and asked to rank these arguments from strongest to weakest, upon which they were asked to motivate their judgments in an (...) interview. In order to assess whether lay people apply argument scheme specific criteria when performing these tasks, five different argumentation schemes were included in this study: argumentation from authority, from example, from analogy, from cause to effect, and from consequences. Laypeople’s use of criteria for argument quality was inferred from interview protocols. The results revealed that participants combined general criteria from informal logic and scheme-specific criteria. The results supported the conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical argument scheme rule in a strong sense and provided a more fine-grained view of central processing in the Elaboration Likelihood Model. (shrink)

This paper explores the public perception of energy transition pathways, that is, individual behaviors, political strategies, and technologies that aim to foster a shift towards a low-carbon and sustainable society. We employed affective image analysis, a structured method based on free associations to explore positive and negative connotations and affective meanings. Affective image analysis allows to tap into affective meanings and to compare these meanings across individuals, groups, and cultures. Data were collected among university students in Norway (n = 106) (...) and Germany (n = 125), two countries that differ with respect to their socio-political contexts and histories concerning energy and energy systems. A total of 25 energy transition pathway components were presented to the participants who generated one free association to each component by indicating the first that came to mind when thinking of the component. Participants evaluated their associations by indicating whether they considered each association to be positive, negative, or neutral. These associations were coded by two research assistants, which resulted in 2650 coded responses in the Norwegian sample and 2846 coded responses in the German sample. Results for the two samples are remarkably similar. The most frequent type of association is a general evaluation of the component, for example concerning its valence or its importance. The second most frequent types of association are requirements needed to implement the component (e.g., national policies) and consequences of the component (e.g., personal or environmental consequences). Individual behaviors (e.g., walking) elicited thoughts about consequences and requirements, but also about the prevalence of such behaviors. Associations in response to technologies (e.g., carbon capture and storage) mainly referred to some descriptive aspect of the technology. Evaluations of the free responses were predominantly positive, but some components also elicited negative associations, especially nuclear power. The free associations that people generate suggest that they have vague and unspecific knowledge about energy transition pathways, that they process them in an automatic and intuitive rather than deliberative manner, and that they have clear affective evaluations of the presented components. (shrink)

When using sample data to decide whether two populations differ, laypeople attend to the difference between group means, but largely overlook within-group variability (Obrecht, Chapman, & Gelman, 2007). We show, first, that laypeople know about and use story-implied variability when making pairwise comparisons. Then we demonstrate that participants' sensitivity to variance in a dataset is boosted when presented in a context that implies consistent variance information. Statistical data were couched in stories about electrical conductivity measurements obtained from element (...) samples (low-variability category) or body weight measurements from samples of peoples (high-variability category). We manipulated, between participants, whether the data variance matched or mismatched the story-implied variability. Participants who received data in a matching context showed high sensitivity to variance, while those in the mismatching condition did not. Laypeople use statistical data to make reasonable inferences when those data are provided in a context that makes sense. (shrink)

It is essential to engage the public in conservation measures to conserve insects. We investigate the Protection Motivation Theory, as well as knowledge, attitudes, and sociodemographic variables as predictors of willingness to donate and actual donations to insect conservation for a representative German sample. The PMT subcomponents severity, self-efficacy, and response efficacy, as well as attitudes toward insects, income, and education level, significantly predicted WTD. In contrast, severity, response barriers, age, gender, and the WTD significantly influenced actual donations. Overall, components (...) of the PMT have high predictive power for both dependent variables. Our results suggest that an intention-behavior gap exists between the intention to donate and the actual donation toward insect conservation. Measures to increase WTD and actual donations for insect conservation are discussed. (shrink)

Needs play a key role in many fields of social sciences and humanities, ranging from normative theories of distributive justice to conceptions of the welfare state. Over time, different conceptions of what counts as a need (i. e., what is considered a normatively relevant need) have been proposed. Many of them include (in one way or the other) needs for survival, decency, belonging, and autonomy. Little work has been done on how these kinds of needs are evaluated in terms of (...) their significance for distributive justice. To begin closing this gap, we investigate the role of the four aforementioned kinds of needs for impartial observers. We do so in two empirical studies. The first study asks participants to evaluate the importance of each of the four kinds of needs separately. We find that different levels of importance are attributed to the kinds of needs, which places them in a hierarchy. The second study asks participants to make distributive decisions. Results further support the hierarchy found in the first study and, additionally, reveal that participants tend to make coherent allocation decisions. (shrink)

This book is the first study to explore an ancient philosopher’s attitude towards the vast majority of society, who had no knowledge or affiliation with philosophy—namely laypeople. It reveals that Epictetus held a sophisticated viewpoint regarding laypeople and envisaged means for lay reform outside of philosophical study.

ABSTRACTIn everyday situations, people regularly receive information from large groups of people and from single experts. Although lay opinions and expert opinions have been studied extensively in isolation, the present study examined the relationship between the two by asking how many laypeople are needed to counter an expert opinion. A Bayesian formalisation allowed the prescription of this quantity. Participants were subsequently asked to assess how many laypeople are needed in different situations. The results demonstrate that people are sensitive (...) to the relevant factors identified for determining how many lay opinions are required to counteract a single expert opinion. People's assessments were fairly good in line with Bayesian predictions. (shrink)

New technologies regularly bring about profound changes in our daily lives. Romantic relationships are no exception to these transformations. Some philosophers expect the emergence in the near future of love drugs: a theoretically achievable biotechnological intervention that could be designed to strengthen and maintain love in romantic relationships. We investigated laypeople’s resistance to the use of such technologies and its sources. Across two studies (Study 1, French and Peruvian university students, N after exclusion = 186; Study 2, Amazon Mechanical (...) Turk sample, N after exclusion = 693, pre-registered), we found that the use of love drugs designed to strengthen and maintain love in romantic relationships are considered as more morally problematic than psychological therapy with the same aim. In Study 2, we show that this last effect is partially due to the fact that the love resulting from the use of love drugs is perceived as less authentic, intense, and durable. We discuss the specific role of authenticity in the relative moral disapproval of love drugs. (shrink)

The paper applies Christian Humanism to management highlighting the role of relations in business and the entrepreneurial life. The claim is that such a dimension is important for everybody even from a secular point of view regardless of one’s belief. The first part shows how Biblical tradition inspired a rereading of relation in the first Christian thinkers, who had to recognize it in God. But this made possible to perceive that the relationships can be a real source of being, as (...) the example of a family shows. The thesis proposed is that within every Gesellschaft there is a Gemeinschaft, that is constituted by its relational dimensions, connecting the common good and profit also to relational goods. The second part draws consequences for management, recognizing through the example of the Inner Game three relational dimensions relevant for management: the one interior to the person; the relationships between coworkers; the interaction with the culture of the company. All of them should be considered to improve the Gemeinschaft dimension within the Gesellschaft. The last part of the article explains how Christian Humanism helps also to avoid an idealistic reading of the proposal, which always has to take into account the demands of confrontation with the external system intrinsic to the Gesellschaft, as the very etymology of management reveals. (shrink)

Empirical surveys about medical futility are scarce relative to its theoretical assumptions. We aimed to evaluate the difference of attitudes between laypeople and physicians towards the issue. A questionnaire survey was designed. Japanese laypeople (via Internet) and physicians with various specialties (via paper-and-pencil questionnaire) were asked about whether they would provide potentially futile treatments for end-of-life patients in vignettes, important factors for judging a certain treatment futile, and threshold of quantitative futility which reflects the numerical probability that an (...) act will produce the desired physiological effect. Also, the physicians were asked about their practical frequency and important reasons for futile treatments. 1134 laypeople and 401 (80%) physicians responded. In all vignettes, the laypeople were more affirmative in providing treatments in question significantly. As the factors for judging futility, medical information and quality of life (QOL) of the patient were rather stressed by the physicians. Treatment wish of the family of the patient and psychological impact on patient side due to the treatment were rather stressed by laypeople. There were wide variations in the threshold of judging quantitative futility in both groups. 88.3% of the physicians had practical experience of providing futile treatment. Important reasons for it were communication problem with patient side and lack of systems regarding futility or foregoing such treatment. Laypeople are more supportive of providing potentially futile treatments than physicians. The difference is explained by the importance of medical information, the patient family’s influence to decision-making and QOL of the patient. The threshold of qualitative futility is suggested to be arbitrary. (shrink)

In this chapter, I survey and assess various answers to two basic questions concerning experts: (1) What is an expert?; (2) How can laypeople identify the relevant experts? These questions are not mutually independent, since the epistemology and the metaphysics of experts should go hand in hand. On the basis of our platitudes about experts, I will argue that the prevailing accounts of experts such as truth-linked, knowledge-linked, understanding-linked or service-oriented accounts are inadequate. In contrast, I will defend an (...) evidence-linked account of expertise. In the second part of the chapter, I address the question of how laypeople can identify experts in this sense. Here, I will argue that agreement among experts plays a major role. I will outline how laypeople can follow this criterion without running into circularity. (shrink)

Odor naming is enhanced in communities where communication about odors is a central part of daily life (e.g., wine experts, flavorists, and some hunter‐gatherer groups). In this study, we investigated how expert knowledge and daily experience affect the ability to name odors in a group of experts that has not previously been investigated in this context—Iranian herbalists; also called attars—as well as cooks and laypeople. We assessed naming accuracy and consistency for 16 herb and spice odors, collected judgments of (...) odor perception, and evaluated participants' odor meta‐awareness. Participants' responses were overall more consistent and accurate for more frequent and familiar odors. Moreover, attars were more accurate than both cooks and laypeople at naming odors, although cooks did not perform significantly better than laypeople. Attars' perceptual ratings of odors and their overall odor meta‐awareness suggest they are also more attuned to odors than the other two groups. To conclude, Iranian attars—but not cooks—are better odor namers than laypeople. They also have greater meta‐awareness and differential perceptual responses to odors. These findings further highlight the critical role that expertise and type of experience have on olfactory functions. (shrink)

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing has been available for several years now, with varying degrees of regulation across different countries. Despite a restrictive legal framework it is possible for consumers to order genetic tests from companies located in other countries. However, German laypeople’s awareness and perceptions of DTC GT services is still unexplored. We conducted seven focus groups with German laypeople to explore their perceptions of and attitudes towards commercial genetic testing and its ethical implications. Participants were critical towards DTC (...) GT. Criticism was directed at health-related, predictive testing, while lifestyle tests were accepted and even welcomed to some extent. Participants expressed strong reservations regarding commercial provision of genetic diagnostics and expressed a lack of trust in respective companies. They preferred non-commercial distribution within the public healthcare system. Participants also expressed high expectations of physicians’ abilities to interpret information obtained via DTC GT companies and provide counseling. Legal restrictions on commercial distribution of genetic tests were opposed, with participants arguing that it should be available to consumers. DTC GT companies are not perceived as trustworthy when compared to the public healthcare system and its professional ethical standards and practices. Laypeople rated general consumer autonomy higher than their own concerns, thus recommending against strong legal regulation. We conclude that medicine’s trustworthiness may be negatively affected if commercial provision is not visibly opposed by the medical professions, while DTC GT companies may gain in trustworthiness if they adapt to standards and practices upheld in medicine. (shrink)

This paper approaches the question of the relations between laypeople and experts by examining the relations between common sense and philosophy. The analysis of the philosophical discussions of the concept of common sense reveals how it provides democratic politics with an egalitarian foundation, but also indicates how problematic this foundation can be. The egalitarian foundation is revealed by analyzing arguments for the validity of common sense in the writings of Thomas Reid. However, a look at three modern philosophers committed (...) to the link between philosophy and common sense – Descartes, Berkeley and, again, Reid – shows that each assigns very different contents to the concept. This raises the suspicion that modern common sense is not only an egalitarian element, but also a rhetorical tool with which intellectuals attempt to shape the views of the lay masses. The last part suggests that the way out of the predicament is rejecting the supposition that common sense is a unified, homogeneous whole. An alternative is sketched through Antonio Gramsci’s concept of common sense. (shrink)

Although biologists and philosophers of science generally agree that genes cannot determine the forms of biological and psychological traits, students, journalists, politicians, and other members of the general public nonetheless continue to embrace genetic determinism. This article identifies some of the concerns typically raised by individuals when they first encounter the systems perspective that biologists and philosophers of science now favor over genetic determinism, and uses arguments informed by that perspective to address those concerns. No definitive statements can yet be (...) made about why genetic determinism has proven so resilient in the face of empirical evidence pointing up its deficiencies, but conveying the essential interdependence of 'nature' and 'nurture' to the general public will likely require deployment of the arguments that systems theorists ordinarily use to reject genetic determinism. In addition, the elaboration of new metaphors that focus attention on the dynamic nature of trait construction will likely prove valuable, because re-conceptualizing notions like 'genes' and 'nature' will probably be one of the most effective ways to help students and the general public abandon the genetic determinism that biologists now recognize as indefensible. (shrink)

This paper approaches the question of the relations between laypeople and experts by examining the relations between common sense and philosophy. The analysis of the philosophical discussions of the concept of common sense reveals how it provides democratic politics with an egalitarian foundation, but also indicates how problematic this foundation can be. The egalitarian foundation is revealed by analyzing arguments for the validity of common sense in the writings of Thomas Reid. However, a look at three modern philosophers committed (...) to the link between philosophy and common sense – Descartes, Berkeley and, again, Reid – shows that each assigns very different contents to the concept. This raises the suspicion that modern common sense is not only an egalitarian element, but also a rhetorical tool with which intellectuals attempt to shape the views of the lay masses. The last part suggests that the way out of the predicament is rejecting the supposition that common sense is a unified, homogeneous whole. An alternative is sketched through Antonio Gramsci’s concept of common sense. (shrink)

High-quality arguments have strong and lasting persuasive effects, suggesting that people can distinguish high- from low-quality arguments. However, we know little of what norms people employ to make that distinction. Some studies have shown that, in evaluating arguments from consequences, people are more sensitive to differences with respect to the desirability of these consequences than to differences in the likelihood that these consequences will occur. This raises the question of whether people lack the criteria to distinguish high-quality from low-quality arguments (...) in support of such claims. In an experiment, 196 participants without any training in argument theory rated their acceptance of 30 claims about the likelihood that a certain outcome would result from a certain action. These claims were supported by an argument from authority, or from cause to effect, or from example. Arguments were systematically manipulated to violate nine specific criteria. For seven out of the nine criteria violation decreased acceptance of the claim supported. These findings show that people can use argument type specific criteria to distinguish high- from low-quality arguments. (shrink)

The monastic and the layperson are both individuals whose individuality is empty of essential, permanent reality. To the extent that they hold to individual identity, they are deluded. To the extent that they grasp dharmas, such as, ‘I am a nun or laywoman on the Path,’ they are also deluded, but that is an attachment that can lead to non-attachment, and ultimately to enlightenment. The Buddha said.

_ Source: _Page Count 39 What is the correct epistemic stance that laypeople should take vis-a-vis epistemic authorities? The author provides an answer to this question based on a critical examination of Linda Zagzebski’s _Preemption Thesis_, according to which the fact that an authority has a belief p is a reason for a layperson to believe p that replaces her other reasons relevant to believing p and is not simply added to them. In contrast, the author argues that _epistemic (...) deference_ requires a layperson to perform a number of epistemic tasks and involves an active and critical stance that conflicts with the Preemption Thesis. (shrink)

Do laypeople and philosophers differ in their attributions of knowledge? Starmans and Friedman maintain that laypeople differ from philosophers in taking ‘authentic evidence’ Gettier cases to be cases of knowledge. Their reply helpfully clarifies the distinction between ‘authentic evidence’ and ‘apparent evidence’. Using their sharpened presentation of this distinction, we contend that the argument of our original paper still stands.

Do laypeople think that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism? Recently, philosophers and psychologists trying to answer this question have found contradictory results: while some experiments reveal people to have compatibilist intuitions, others suggest that people could in fact be incompatibilist. To account for this contradictory answers, Nichols and Knobe (2007) have advanced a ‘performance error model’ according to which people are genuine incompatibilist that are sometimes biased to give compatibilist answers by emotional reactions. To test for this hypothesis, (...) we investigated intuitions about determinism and moral responsibility in patients suffering from behavioural frontotemporal dementia. Patients suffering from bvFTD have impoverished emotional reaction. Thus, the ‘performance error model’ should predict that bvFTD patients will give less compatibilist answers. However, we found that bvFTD patients give answers quite similar to subjects in control group and were mostly compatibilist. Thus, we conclude that the ‘performance error model’ should be abandoned in favour of other available model that best fit our data. (shrink)

Putting laypeople in an active role as direct expert contributors in the design of service robots becomes more and more prominent in the research fields of human–robot interaction and social robotics. Currently, though, HRI is caught in a dilemma of how to create meaningful service robots for human social environments, combining expectations shaped by popular media with technology readiness. We recapitulate traditional stakeholder involvement, including two cases in which new intelligent robots were conceptualized and realized for close interaction with (...) humans. Thereby, we show how the robot narrative together with aspects of power balancing stakeholders, such as hardware constraints and missing perspectives beyond primary users, and the adaptivity of robots through machine learning that creates unpredictability, pose specific challenges for participatory design processes in HRI. We conclude with thoughts on a way forward for the HRI community in developing a culture of participation that considers humans when conceptualizing, building, and using robots. (shrink)

When laypeople learned what decisions physicians were making about laypeople's health they were often appalled. … They discovered that physicians … were making controversial moral moves, choices th...

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light (...) of the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)

Psychological evidence suggests that laypeople understand the world around them in terms of intuitive ontologies which describe broad categories of objects in the world, such as ‘person’, ‘artefact’ and ‘animal’. However, because intuitive ontologies are the result of natural selection, they only need to be adaptive; this does not guarantee that the knowledge they provide is a genuine reflection of causal mechanisms in the world. As a result, science has parted ways with intuitive ontologies. Nevertheless, since the brain is (...) evolved to understand objects in the world according to these categories, we can expect that they continue to play a role in scientific understanding. Taking the case of human evolution, we explore relationships between intuitive ontological and scientific understanding. We show that intuitive ontologies not only shape intuitions on human evolution, but also guide the direction and topics of interest in its research programmes. Elucidating the relationships between intuitive ontologies and science may help us gain a clearer insight into scientific understanding. (shrink)

Many philosophers and laypeople have the following two intuitions about legal punishment: the state has a pro tanto moral reason to punish all those guilty of breaking a just law and to do so in proportion to their guilt. Accepting that there can be overriding considerations not to punish all the guilty in proportion to their guilt, many philosophers still consider it a strike against any theory if it does not imply that there is always a supportive moral reason (...) to do so. In this paper, I demonstrate that censure theory accounts for these intuitions much better than any other theory, including forms of retributivism such as desert theory and fairness theory, and explain why censure theory is able to do so. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn 2009, an earthquake struck the city L’Aquila, causing more than 300 deaths and leading to a trial which lasted almost four years and – though cleared in the appeal – in which scientists...

Psychological evidence suggests that laypeople understand the world around them in terms of intuitive ontologies which describe broad categories of objects in the world, such as ‘person’, ‘artefact’ and ‘animal’. However, because intuitive ontologies are the result of natural selection, they only need to be adaptive; this does not guarantee that the knowledge they provide is a genuine reflection of causal mechanisms in the world. As a result, science has parted ways with intuitive ontologies. Nevertheless, since the brain is (...) evolved to understand objects in the world according to these categories, we can expect that they continue to play a role in scientific understanding. Taking the case of human evolution, we explore relationships between intuitive ontological and scientific understanding. We show that intuitive ontologies not only shape intuitions on human evolution, but also guide the direction and topics of interest in its research programmes. Elucidating the relationships between intuitive ontologies and science may help us gain a clearer insight into scientific understanding. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

During the past decade scientists, public policy analysts, politicians, and laypeople, have become increasingly aware of the importance of ethical conduct in scientific research. In this timely book, David B. Resnik introduces the reader to the ethical dilemmas and questions that arise in scientific research. Some of the issues addressed in the book include ethical decision-making, the goals and methods of science, and misconduct in science. The Ethics of Science also discusses significant case studies such as human and animal (...) cloning, the Challenger accident and Tobacco research. This is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the importance of ethics in science. (shrink)

How can laypeople justifiably distinguish between reliable experts and unreliable experts? This problem, usually called the 'problem of expert identification', is highly debated in recent social epistemology. A great amount of work has been undertaken in order to find satisfactory criteria for identifying experts in different branches of the empirical sciences, but hardly in the domain of moral knowledge. This asymmetry between social and moral epistemology is the motivation behind my paper. I reconsider the epistemological problem of identifying moral (...) experts by applying identification criteria developed in general social epistemology to the area of morality. As I will show, all of these criteria turn out to be inappropriate for identifying moral experts. This result seems implausible, because it conflicts with the observation that moral experts play an important role in public and scientific discourse, in ethics committees and boards. But this is not a real contradiction as I will illustrate by explaining which tasks these experts can, in my view, fulfill. (shrink)

How do laypeople sitting on a jury make determinations of expertise? How, if at all, can laypersons epistemically assess the expertise of an expert or rival experts? Given that the domains of expertise are quite technical, if laypersons are to adjudicate the various proposed and often conflicting claims of experts, they must be able to determine the reliability of the experts as well as the truth of their claims. One way to address these concems is to say that the (...) layperson needs to be in a position to make the determination herself. This view I will call individualism. Individualism maintains the burden of epistemic assessment is on the layperson, not on the expert. One such version of individualism is Jason Borenstein’s proposal as to what is needed for laypersons to make such an assessment. Borenstein’s proposal turns on the laypersons’ ability to understand the domain of expertise as well as the putative expert’s ability to satisfy a proficiency test. What I hope to show is that this proposal fails for two reasons. I argue that the nlove to proficiency tests does not warrant any layperson’s determination of truth or reliability and that given the limited epistemic abilities of laypersons they are not able to satisfy Borenstein’s proposed conditions for determination. (shrink)

How do laypeople sitting on a jury make determinations of expertise? How, if at all, can laypersons epistemically assess the expertise of an expert or rival experts? Given that the domains of expertise are quite technical, if laypersons are to adjudicate the various proposed and often conflicting claims of experts, they must be able to determine the reliability of the experts as well as the truth of their claims. One way to address these concems is to say that the (...) layperson needs to be in a position to make the determination herself. This view I will call individualism. Individualism maintains the burden of epistemic assessment is on the layperson, not on the expert. One such version of individualism is Jason Borenstein’s proposal as to what is needed for laypersons to make such an assessment. Borenstein’s proposal turns on the laypersons’ ability to understand the domain of expertise as well as the putative expert’s ability to satisfy a proficiency test. What I hope to show is that this proposal fails for two reasons. I argue that the nlove to proficiency tests does not warrant any layperson’s determination of truth or reliability and that given the limited epistemic abilities of laypersons they are not able to satisfy Borenstein’s proposed conditions for determination. (shrink)

Of this article's seven experiments, the first five demonstrate that virtually no Americans know the basic global warming mechanism. Fortunately, Experiments 2–5 found that 2–45 min of physical–chemical climate instruction durably increased such understandings. This mechanistic learning, or merely receiving seven highly germane statistical facts, also increased climate-change acceptance—across the liberal-conservative spectrum. However, Experiment 7's misleading statistics decreased such acceptance. These readily available attitudinal and conceptual changes through scientific information disconfirm what we term “stasis theory”—which some researchers and many (...) class='Hi'>laypeople varyingly maintain. Stasis theory subsumes the claim that informing people about climate science may be largely futile or even counterproductive—a view that appears historically naïve, suffers from range restrictions, and/or misinterprets some polarization and correlational data. Our studies evidenced no polarizations. Finally, we introduce HowGlobalWarmingWorks.org—a website designed to directly enhance public “climate-change cognition.”. (shrink)

Do newborns think-do they know that 'three' is greater than 'two'? Do they prefer 'right' to 'wrong'? What about emotions--do newborns recognize happiness or anger? If they do, then how are our inborn thoughts and feelings encoded in our bodies? Could they persist after we die? Going all the way back to ancient Greece, human nature and the mind-body link are the topics of age-old scholarly debates. But laypeople also have strong opinions about such matters. Most people believe, for (...) example, that newborn babies don't know the difference between right and wrong-such knowledge, they insist, can only be learned. For emotions, they presume the opposite-that our capacity to feel fear, for example, is both inborn and embodied. These beliefs are stories we tell ourselves about what we know and who we are. They reflect and influence our understanding of ourselves and others and they guide every aspect of our lives. In a twist that could have come out of a Greek tragedy, Berent proposes that our errors are our fate. These mistakes emanate from the very principles that make our minds tick: our blindness to human nature is rooted in human nature itself. An intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent's own cutting-edge research, The Blind Storyteller grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so infatuated with our brains to what happens when we die. The end result is a startling new perspective on our humanity. (shrink)

Consent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that (...) specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even when the consenter makes an irrational and inauthentic decision. Finally, Study 3 showed that the effect of autonomy on judgments of valid consent carries important downstream consequences for moral reasoning about the rights and obligations of third parties, even when the consented-to action is morally wrong. Overall, these findings suggest that laypeople embrace a normative, domain-general concept of valid consent that depends consistently on the possession of autonomous capacities, but not on the exercise of these capacities. Autonomous decisions and autonomous capacities thus play divergent roles in moral reasoning about consent interactions: while the former appears relevant for assessing the wrongfulness of consented-to acts, the latter plays a role in whether consent is regarded as authoritative and therefore as transforming moral rights. (shrink)

According to an influential Enlightenment ideal, one shouldn't rely epistemically on other people's say-so, at least not if one is in a position to evaluate the relevant evidence for oneself. However, in much recent work in social epistemology, we are urged to dispense with this ideal, which is seen as stemming from a misguided focus on isolated individuals to the exclusion of groups and communities. In this paper, I argue that that an emphasis on the social nature of inquiry should (...) not lead us to entirely abandon the Enlightenment ideal of epistemically autonomous agents. Specifically, I suggest that it is an appropriate ideal for those who serve as experts in a given epistemic community, and develop a notion of expert acceptance to make sense of this. I go on to show that, all other things being equal, this kind of epistemic autonomy among experts makes their joint testimony more reliable, which in turn brings epistemic benefits both to laypeople and to experts in other fields. (shrink)

This paper tackles the problem of defining what a cognitive expert is. Starting from a shared intuition that the definition of an expert depends upon the conceptual function of expertise, I shed light on two main approaches to the notion of an expert: according to novice-oriented accounts of expertise, experts need to provide laypeople with information they lack in some domain; whereas, according to research-oriented accounts, experts need to contribute to the epistemic progress of their discipline. In this paper, (...) I defend the thesis that cognitive experts should be identified by their ability to perform the latter function rather than the former, as novice-oriented accounts, unlike research-oriented ones, fail to comply with the rules of a functionalist approach to expertise. (shrink)

How do people decide which claims should be considered mere beliefs and which count as knowledge? Although little is known about how people attribute knowledge to others, philosophical debate about the nature of knowledge may provide a starting point. Traditionally, a belief that is both true and justified was thought to constitute knowledge. However, philosophers now agree that this account is inadequate, due largely to a class of counterexamples (termed ‘‘Gettier cases’’) in which a person’s justified belief is true, but (...) only due to luck. We report four experiments examining the effect of truth, justification, and ‘‘Gettiering’’ on people’s knowledge attributions. These experiments show that: (1) people attribute knowledge to others only when their beliefs are both true and justified; (2) in contrast to contemporary philosophers, people also attribute knowledge to others in Gettier situations; and (3) knowledge is not attributed in one class of Gettier cases, but only because the agent’s belief is based on ‘‘apparent’’ evidence. These findings suggest that the lay concept of knowledge is roughly consistent with the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief, and also point to a major difference between the epistemic intuitions of laypeople and those of philosophers. (shrink)

The desire for a meaningful life is ubiquitous, yet the ordinary concept of a meaningful life is poorly understood. Across six experiments (total N = 2,539), we investigated whether third-person attributions of meaning depend on the psychological states an agent experiences (feelings of interest, engagement, and fulfillment), or on the objective conditions of their life (e.g., their effects on others). Studies 1a–b found that laypeople think subjective and objective factors contribute independently to the meaningfulness of a person’s life. Studies (...) 2a–b found that positive mental states are thought to make a life more meaningful, even if derived from senseless activities (e.g., hand-copying the dictionary). Studies 3a–b found that agents engaged in morally bad activities are not thought to have meaningful lives, even if they feel fulfilled. In short, both an agents’ subjective mental states and objective impact on the world affect how meaningful their lives appear. (shrink)