As one approach to examining the way ethical decisions are made, we asked experts and novices to review a set of scenarios that depict some important ethical tensions in research. The method employed was “protocol analysis,” a talk-aloud technique pioneered by cognitive scientists for the analysis of expert performance. The participants were asked to verbalize their normally unexpressed thought processes as they responded to the scenarios, and to make recommendations for courses of action. We found that experts spent more time (...) working through the decision-making process than novices and also raised substantially more concerns than novices. Differences also exist among the three groups of experts. (shrink)

As one approach to examining the way ethical decisions are made, we asked experts and novices to review a set of scenarios that depict some important ethical tensions in research. The method employed was “protocol analysis,” a talk-aloud technique pioneered by cognitive scientists for the analysis of expert performance. The participants were asked to verbalize their normally unexpressed thought processes as they responded to the scenarios, and to make recommendations for courses of action. We found that experts spent more time (...) working through the decision-making process than novices and also raised substantially more concerns than novices. Differences also exist among the three groups of experts. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The two main psychological theories of the ordinary conditional were designed to account for inferences made from assumptions, but few premises in everyday life can be simply assumed true. Useful premises usually have a probability that is less than certainty. But what is the probability of the ordinary conditional and how is it determined? We argue that people use a two stage Ramsey test that we specify to make probability judgements about indicative conditionals in natural language, and we describe experiments (...) that support this conclusion. Our account can explain why most people give the conditional probability as the probability of the conditional, but also why some give the conjunctive probability. We discuss how our psychological work is related to the analysis of ordinary indicative conditionals in philosophical logic. (shrink)

Film studies has largely avoided the biocultural turn that has swept through other areas of the humanities. This resistance may be understood in terms of the field’s recent distaste for grand theory—and in terms of the loose, social-constructionist thinking that is one residue of that distaste. Fortunately, a biocultural approach to cinema can offer film studies a necessary and defensible set of assumptions. It can also offer interpretive tools and potential ways of conceptualizing perennial concerns like authorship and genre. This (...) essay demonstrates the last two points through an evolutionary reading of Howard Hawks’s musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and through proposals for new ways of approaching auteurism and pornography. (shrink)

In the past two to three decades health behavior scientists have increasingly emphasized affect-related concepts (including, but not limited to emotion) in their attempts to understand and facilitate change in important health behaviors, such as smoking, eating, physical activity, substance abuse, and sex. This article provides a narrative review of this burgeoning literature, including relevant theory and research on affective response (e.g., hedonic response to eating and drug use), incidental affect (e.g., work-related stress as a determinant of alcohol use), affect (...) processing (e.g., anticipated regret for illicit sex or skipping an exercise session), and affectively charged motivation (e.g., cigarette craving). An integrative dual-processing framework is presented that suggests pathways through which affect-related concepts may interrelate to influence health behavior. (shrink)

Women’s preferences for several male traits, including voices, change over the menstrual cycle, but the proximate causes of these changes are unknown. This paper explores relationships between levels of estradiol, progesterone, luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, prolactin, and testosterone (estimated using menstrual cycle information) and women’s preferences for male vocal masculinity in normally cycling and hormonally contracepting heterosexual females. Preferences for vocal masculinity decreased with predicted progesterone levels and increased with predicted prolactin levels in normally cycling—but not hormonally contracepting—women. Adaptive (...) explanations for menstrual variation in women’s preferences for masculine traits are discussed and evaluated in light of these findings. (shrink)

Paradise is often conceived as a place where suffering is not possible, so much so that the possibility of suffering in paradise has been used by various philosophers as a defeater for the possibility of paradise. [1] Employing a “reverse-engineered-theodicy,” I use Eleonore Stump’s morally-sufficient-reason for why God allows suffering in this earthly world to explore one condition that must obtain for suffering to remain impossible in paradise, namely, that internal fragmentation is not possible in paradise. After developing an intellectualist (...) explanation of the primal sin, I suggest one reason to believe that the internal fragmentation of redeemed humans in paradise is not possible. However, this reason does not extend to other non-human inhabitants of paradise, and so I suggest that it remains possible that these other inhabitants might yet become internally fragmented. Given that Christ-like consensual suffering that aids a third party’s internal integration is presumably morally justifiable, I conclude by suggesting that the suffering of the redeemed in paradise is in fact possible. Therefore, even in paradise, there is a place for hope that the redeemed do not suffer, and for trust in others that they do not bring such suffering into being. [1] For one example see. (shrink)

John Broome has made major contributions to, and radical innovations in, contemporary moral philosophy. His research combines the formal method of economics with the philosophical analysis. Broome's works stretch over formal axiology, decision theory, philosophy of economics, population axiology, the value of life, the ethics of climate change, the nature of rationality, and practical and theoretical reasoning. Weighing and Reasoning brings together fifteen original essays from leading philosophers who have been influenced by the work and thought of John Broome.They explore (...) Broome's works on the theory of value, and his works on practical and theoretical reasoning. This volume also includes Broome's note on his intellectual history to date. (shrink)

What are ‘gay genes’ and are they real? This article looks at key research into these hypothesized gay genes, made possible, in part, by the Human Genome Project. I argue that the complexity of both genetics and human sexuality demands a truly critical approach: one that takes into account feminist epistemologies of science and queer approaches to the body, while putting into conversation resources from agential realism and critical realism. This approach is able to maintain the agential complexity of genetic (...) materiality, while also critically challenging the seemingly stable relationships between sex, gender and sexuality. (shrink)

Mestre, MacCann, Guil, and Roberts propose a model that suggests emotion regulation provides the mechanism through which ability emotional intelligence influences important outcomes. We argue that important nuance in our understanding of people’s choice of emotion regulation strategy can be gained by incorporating personality constructs such as trait emotional intelligence within this model.

Here we explore, through conversation, our experience, as programme coordinators, of delivering degree-level apprenticeships. Although relatively ‘young’, the Degree Apprenticeship model has grown significantly since its inception in 2015 and such programmes continue to be supported politically in a way which suggests a long-term future. However, our experience has been one where two different domains of practice have collided—that of ‘Higher Education’ and that of ‘Apprenticeship’—in a way which, for us, has not been comfortable.Our conversation explores the issues of working (...) within a triangular relationship between apprentice, employer and the university, in the context of the Apprenticeship framework in England. In addition, the idea of apprenticeship and work-based learning is considered from our direct experience as we reflect on how our current teaching practice has been informed by our early careers. Grounded by the notion of an apprenticeship ideal that is supposed to exist, we consider the apparent tensions that are inherent in offering apprenticeships within a university context. (shrink)

This Element is on new developments in the psychology of reasoning that raise or address philosophical questions. In traditional studies in the psychology of reasoning, the focus was on inference from arbitrary assumptions and not at all from beliefs, and classical binary logic was presupposed as the only standard for human reasoning. But recently a new Bayesian paradigm has emerged in the discipline. This views ordinary human reasoning as mostly inferring probabilistic conclusions from degrees of beliefs, or from hypothetical premises (...) relevant to a purpose at hand, and as often about revising or updating degrees of belief. This Element also covers new formulations of dual-process theories of the mind, stating that there are two types of mental processing, one rapid and intuitive and shared with other animals, and the other slow and reflective and more characteristic of human beings. The final topic covered is the new developments and rationality. (shrink)

This pioneering anthology of Middle English prologues and other excerpts from texts written between 1280 and 1520 is one of the largest collections of vernacular literary theory from the Middle Ages yet published and the first to focus attention on English literary theory before the sixteenth century. It edits, introduces, and glosses some sixty excerpts, all of which reflect on the problems and opportunities associated with writing in the "mother tongue" during a period of revolutionary change for the English language. (...) The excerpts fall into three groups, illustrating the strategies used by medieval writers to establish their cultural authority, the ways they constructed audiences and readerships, and the models they offered for the process of reading. Taken together, the excerpts show how vernacular texts reflected and contributed to the formation of class, gender, professional, and national identity. They open windows onto late medieval debates on women's and popular literacy, on the use of the vernacular for religious instruction or Bible translation, on the complex metaphorical associations contained within the idea of the vernacular, and on the cultural and political role of the "courtly" writing associated with Chaucer and his successors. Besides the excerpts, the book contains five essays that propose new definitions of medieval literary theory, discuss the politics of Middle English writing, the relation of medieval book production to notions of authorship, and the status of the prologue as a genre, and compare the role of the medieval vernacular to that of postcolonial literatures. The book includes a substantial glossary that constitutes the first mapping of the language and terms of Middle English literary theory. _The Idea of the Vernacular_ will be an invaluable asset not only to Middle English survey courses but to courses in English literary and cultural history and courses on the history of literary theory. (shrink)

This volume deals with the question of value-perception. It is discussed from different philosophical, psychiatric, theological, and anthropological perspectives. The leading hypothesis of all contributions is the realization that we live in a relational, dynamic world, in which we primarily percieve, and that to dissolve values from facts is fundamentally misleading, both in theory as in life."--Back cover.

“Participatory research” is an umbrella term for a wide variety of scientific research projects that include participation of members of the lay public beyond simply using humans as “subjects” of research. In this chapter, we begin by surveying the variety of participatory research approaches across fields. We examine the goals of participatory research projects, including social and scientific value. Next, we apply a theoretical framework to challenges that participatory research faces. We then survey three typologies of participatory research projects, each (...) of which can illuminate and guide decisions in project development. We end by looking at participatory research approaches in health contexts, applying the theoretical resources we introduced earlier in the chapter. (shrink)

Recent developments in quantum physics postulate the existence of some form of multiverse, often considered inimical to theism. We argue that a cosmology of many worlds is not novel either to philosophy or to theism. The multiverse is not a monolithic concept and we refer to and use the four levels of categorization proposed by Max Tegmark. We trace the idea of a multiverse back to the Milesians and Epicureans in order to initially demonstrate its use of a plenitude argument. (...) We then examine the argument for possible compatibility based on a theistic principle of plenitude in three specifically Christian theists: Origen, Thomas Aquinas, and G. W. Leibniz. We conclude that this argument is sustainable so that if any level of the multiverse actually exists then it is harmonious with theism, and we argue that its fit is most successful if a multiverse is considered as a single possible world. We call this view Thomistic modal realism. (shrink)

The informal business sector has made enormous contributions to Nigeria's economic growth and development, but this sector is not given the necessary attention to transforming these businesses toward sustainability. This study explores the depth of informal business sector practices in Nigeria. It underscores the inputs of stakeholders in the transformation of businesses in the Nigerian informal sector to increase tax remittances and employment generation for job security in the Nigerian economy. Also, it underpins value chain performances to transform the informal (...) sector and rescue it from liquidation through voluntary company arrangements, administration, merger, takeover, and acquisition schemes. The study adopts a conceptual review. The research relies on extant literature relating to the antecedence of informal business sector activities in Nigeria. It relies on reports from tertiary data sources such as academic articles, books, newspapers, the Internet, and website sources. It further explores the views of researchers, covering the informal sector development and the support of the provisions of the social services in Nigeria. There is the absence of a model for the transformation and sustainability of the informal sector enterprises in Nigeria. This study recommends a model approach to address informal sector enterprises' issues and challenges necessary to transform the businesses into a formal status while supporting their sustainability and resilience. (shrink)

In “Rethinking Norm Psychology,” Cecilia Heyes offers an insightful critique of nativist approaches to the psychology of norms and then proposes a plausible alternative model grounded in the theory of cognitive gadgets. We are broadly sympathetic to both the critique and to the cognitive-gadgets model, though our own pluralistic approach to the psychology of norms (Westra & Andrews, 2022) leads us to think that the range of psychological and ecological processes that contributes to our norm psychology is even more diverse (...) than what Heyes proposes. Here, though, we focus on Heyes’s conceptual critique of the nativist model and its explanatory target—namely, a system for representing and processing rules. Heyes’s criticism of this representational rule-based conception of the psychology of norms is quite sound. However, we will argue that Heyes’s alternative behavioral explanandum for the psychology of norms also fails to escape the gravitational pull of a rule-based approach. (shrink)

Social norms are commonly understood as rules that dictate which behaviors are appropriate, permissible, or obligatory in different situations for members of a given community. Many researchers have sought to explain the ubiquity of social norms in human life in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying their acquisition, conformity, and enforcement. Existing theories of the psychology of social norms appeal to a variety of constructs, from prediction-error minimization, to reinforcement learning, to shared intentionality, to domain-specific adaptations for norm acquisition. In (...) this paper, we propose a novel methodological and conceptual framework for the cognitive science of social norms that we call normative pluralism. We begin with an analysis of the explanatory aims of the cognitive science of social norms. From this analysis, we derive a recommendation for a reformed conception of its explanandum: a minimally psychological construct that we call normative regularities. Our central empirical proposal is that the psychological underpinnings of social norms are most likely realized by a heterogeneous set of cognitive, motivational, and ecological mechanisms that vary between norms and between individuals, rather than by a single type of process or distinctive norm system. This pluralistic approach, we suggest, offers a methodologically sound point of departure for a fruitful and rigorous science of social norms. (shrink)

This introduction to the topical collection, Folk Psychology: Pluralistic Approaches reviews the origins and basic theoretical tenets of the framework of pluralistic folk psychology. It places special emphasis on pluralism about the variety folk psychological strategies that underlie behavioral prediction and explanation beyond belief-desire attribution, and on the diverse range of social goals that folk psychological reasoning supports beyond prediction and explanation. Pluralism is not presented as a single theory or model of social cognition, but rather as a big-tent research (...) program encompassing both revisionary and more traditionally inspired approaches to folk psychology. After reviewing the origins of pluralistic folk psychology, the papers in the current issue are introduced. These papers fall into three thematic clusters: Folk-psychological strategies beyond propositional attitude attribution ; Enculturation and regulative folk psychology ; and Defenses of pluralism. (shrink)

Social norms – rules governing which behaviours are deemed appropriate or inappropriate within a given community – are typically taken to be uniquely human. Recently, this position has been challenged by a number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethologists, who have suggested that social norms may also be found in certain non-human animal communities. Such claims have elicited considerable scepticism from norm cognition researchers, who doubt that any non-human animals possess the psychological capacities necessary for normative cognition. However, there is (...) little agreement among these researchers about what these psychological prerequisites are. This makes empirical study of animal social norms difficult, since it is not clear what we are looking for and thus what should count as behavioural evidence for the presence (or absence) of social norms in animals. To break this impasse, we offer an approach that moves beyond contested psychological criteria for social norms. This approach is inspired by the animal culture research program, which has made a similar shift away from heavily psychological definitions of ‘culture’ and to become organized around a cluster of more empirically tractable concepts of culture. Here, we propose an analogous set of constructs built around the core notion of a normative regularity, which we define as a socially maintained pattern of behavioural conformity within a community. We suggest methods for studying potential normative regularities in wild and captive primates. We also discuss the broader scientific and philosophical implications of this research program with respect to questions of human uniqueness, animal welfare and conservation. (shrink)

We suggest that anecdotes have evidentiary value in interpreting nonhuman primate behavior. We also believe that any outcome from the experiments proposed by Heyes can be interpreted as a product of previous experience with trainers or as associative learning using the experimental cues. No potential outcome is clearcut evidence for or against the theory of mind proposition.

Birch sketches out an ingenious account of how the psychology of social norms emerged from individual-level norms of skill. We suggest that these individual-level norms of skill are likely to be much more widespread than Birch suggests, extending deeper into the hominid lineage, across modern great ape species, all the way to distantly related creatures like honeybees. This suggests that there would have been multiple opportunities for social norms to emerge from skill norms in human prehistory.

Human communities teem with a variety of social norms. In order to change unjust and harmful social norms, it is crucial to identify the psychological processes that give rise to them. Most researchers take it for granted that social norms are uniquely human. By contrast, we approach this matter from a comparative perspective, leveraging recent research on animal social behaviour. While there is currently only suggestive evidence for norms in nonhuman communities, we argue that human social norms are likely produced (...) by a wide range of mechanisms, many of which we share with nonhuman animals. Approaching this variability from a comparative perspective can help norm researchers expand and reframe the range of hypotheses they test when attempting to understand the causes of socially normative behaviours in humans. First, we diagnose some of the theoretical obstacles to developing a comparative science of social norms, and offer a few basic constructs and distinctions to help norm researchers overcome these obstacles. Then we develop a six-dimensional model of the psychological and social factors that contribute to variability in both human and potential nonhuman norms. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Social norm change: drivers and consequences’. (shrink)

Alexithymia is a subclinical trait involving difficulty describing and identifying emotions. It is common in a number of psychiatric conditions. Alexithymia in children is sometimes measured by parent report and sometimes by child self-report, but it is not yet known how closely related the two measures are. This is an important question both theoretically and practically, in terms of research design and clinical practice. We conducted a preliminary study to investigate this question in a sample of 6- to 11-year-old neurotypical (...) children and their parents. Parent and child reports were not correlated, and 93% of parents under-estimated their child’s level of alexithymia relative to the child’s self-report. Based on these results, we hypothesize that when asked to report on the child’s alexithymia, children and parents may not be reporting on the same phenomenon, and thus these two measures may not be interchangeable. These provocative findings, however, must be considered preliminary: our analyses were sufficiently powered to detect a strong relation between the two types of report had one existed, but our analyses were not sufficiently powered to distinguish between a small relation and no relation at all. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 2, February 2022.

This paper formalizes part of the cognitive architecture that Kant develops in the Critique of Pure Reason. The central Kantian notion that we formalize is the rule. As we interpret Kant, a rule is not a declarative conditional stating what would be true if such and such conditions hold. Rather, a Kantian rule is a general procedure, represented by a conditional imperative or permissive, indicating which acts must or may be performed, given certain acts that are already being performed. These (...) acts are not propositions; they do not have truth-values. Our formalization is related to the input/ output logics, a family of logics designed to capture relations between elements that need not have truth-values. In this paper, we introduce KL3 as a formalization of Kant’s conception of rules as conditional imperatives and permissives. We explain how it differs from standard input/output logics, geometric logic, and first-order logic, as well as how it translates natural language sentences not well captured by first-order logic. Finally, we show how the various distinctions in Kant’s much-maligned Table of Judgements emerge as the most natural way of dividing up the various types and sub-types of rule in KL3. Our analysis sheds new light on the way in which normative notions play a fundamental role in the conception of logic at the heart of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. (shrink)

Sensory substitution presents the philosopher of cognitive science with a particularly interesting case. Using prosthetics to map visual stimuli onto other modalities, such as touch or audition, otherwise blind individuals may develop perceptual capacities and behaviours commonly associated with sight. Experienced users can distinguish ‘visually’ presented objects and will even jerk back from a looming surface. Whether perception with sensory substitution devices should be classed as a type of vision, some other modality, or a new sense remains a matter of (...) debate, however. In the following, I review arguments commonly used to rebut the visual interpretation and, drawing on recent experimental studies and phenomenological self-reports, construct a novel case for treating sensory substitution as a visual process. (shrink)

How should a machine intelligence perform unsupervised structure discovery over streams of sensory input? One approach to this problem is to cast it as an apperception task [1]. Here, the task is to construct an explicit interpretable theory that both explains the sensory sequence and also satisfies a set of unity conditions, designed to ensure that the constituents of the theory are connected in a relational structure. However, the original formulation of the apperception task had one fundamental limitation: it assumed (...) the raw sensory input had already been parsed using a set of discrete categories, so that all the system had to do was receive this already-digested symbolic input, and make sense of it. But what if we don't have access to pre-parsed input? What if our sensory sequence is raw unprocessed information? The central contribution of this paper is a neuro-symbolic framework for distilling interpretable theories out of streams of raw, unprocessed sensory experience. First, we extend the definition of the apperception task to include ambiguous (but still symbolic) input: sequences of sets of disjunctions. Next, we use a neural network to map raw sensory input to disjunctive input. Our binary neural network is encoded as a logic program, so the weights of the network and the rules of the theory can be solved jointly as a single SAT problem. This way, we are able to jointly learn how to perceive (mapping raw sensory information to concepts) and apperceive (combining concepts into declarative rules). (shrink)

A growing body of literature critical of ethics review boards has drawn attention to the processes used to determine the ethical merit of research. Citing criticism on the bureaucratic nature of ethics review processes, this literature provides a useful provocation for (re)considering how the ethics review might be enacted. Much of this criticism focuses on how ethics review boards _deliberate,_ with particular attention given to the lack of transparency and opportunities for researcher recourse that characterise ethics review processes. Centered specifically (...) on the conduct of ethics review boards convened within university settings, this paper draws on these inherent criticisms to consider the ways that ethics review boards might enact more communicative and deliberative practices. Outlining a set of principles against which ethics review boards might establish strategies for engaging with researchers and research communities, this paper draws attention to how _Deliberative communication_, _Engagement with researchers_ and the _Distribution of responsibility_ for the ethics review might be enacted in the day-to-day practice of the university human ethics review board. This paper develops these themes via a conceptual lens derived from Habermas’ (The theory of communicative action. Volume 1: Reason and the rationalization of society, 1984 ) articulation of ‘communicative action’ and Fraser’s (Social Text, 25(26), 56–80, 1990 ) consideration of ‘strong publics’ to cast consideration of the role that human ethics review boards might play in supporting university research cultures. _Deliberative communication_, _Engagement with researchers_ and the _Distribution of responsibility_ provide useful conceptual prompts for considering how ethics review boards might undertake their work. (shrink)

The idea of enlightenment entails liberty, equality, rationalism, secularism, and the connection between knowledge and human well being. In spite of the setbacks of revolutionary violence, political mass murder, and two world wars, the spread of enlightenment values has become the yardstick by which moral, political, and even scientific advances are measured. Indeed, most critiques of the enlightenment ideal point to failure in implementation rather than principle. By contrast, David Stove, in On Enlightenment, attacks the intellectual roots of enlightenment (...) thought, to define the limitations of its successes and the areas of its likely failures. Stove is not insensitive to the many valuable aspects of enlightenment thought. He champions the use of reason and rationality, and recognizes the falsity of religious claims as well as the importance of individual liberty. What he rejects is the enlightenment's uncritical optimism regarding social progress and its willingness to embrace revolutionary change. What evidence is there that the elimination of superstition will lead to happiness? Or that it is possible to accept Darwinism without Social Darwinism? Or that the enlightenment's liberal, rationalistic outlook will ever lead to the kind of social progress envisioned by its advocates. Despite their best intentions, social reformers who attempt to improve the world as a whole inevitably make things worse. He advocates a conservative "go slow" approach to change, pointing out that today's social structures are so large and complex that any widespread social reform will have innumerable unforeseen consequences. For example, the welfare state may diminish individual initiative, the use of pesticides may increase the food supply while polluting the water supply, the popularizing of university education may lead to a decline in academic standards. Since government has a virtual monopoly on large-scale change, it follows, in Stove's view, that its powers must be limited in order to prevent large-scale damage. Instead, he argues that reforms, when they are to be made at all, must be realistic, local, necessary and never coercive. Writing in the conservative tradition of Edmund Burke with the same passion for clarity and intellectual honesty as George Orwell, David Stove was one of the most precise, articulate, and insightful philosophers of his day. "Never just an academic, Stove was also a prominent, often crotchety, public intellectual of a conservative and, all too often, reactionary bent, many of whose views were extremist on any account, and his targets were many.... For Stove the important question about a belief is not whether it is extreme or mainstream, but whether it is true, or probable, or has sound evidentiary and/or rational credentials. In this he was surely right." -D. D. Todd, Philosophy in Review David Stove taught philosophy at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. He is the author of Against the Idols of the Age and Scientific Irrationalism, both available from Transaction. Andrew Irvine is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Roger Kimball is managing editor of the New Criterion. (shrink)

The import of Hodgkin and Huxley’s classic model of the action potential has been hotly debated in recent years, with particular controversy surrounding claims by prominent proponents of mechanistic explanation. For these authors, the Hodgkin-Huxley model is an excellent predictive tool but ultimately lacks causal/explanatory import. What is more, they claim that this is how Hodgkin and Huxley themselves saw the model. I argue that these claims rest on a problematic reading of the work. Hodgkin and Huxley’s model is both (...) causal and, in an important sense, explanatory. (shrink)