Considerable attention in bioethics has been devoted to moral expertise and its implications for handling applied moral problems. The existence and nature of moral expertise has been a contested topic, and particularly, whether philosophers are moral experts. In this study, we put the question of philosophers’ moral expertise in a wider context, utilizing a novel and global study among 4,087 philosophers from 96 countries. We find that despite the skepticism in recent literature, the vast majority of philosophers do believe in (...) moral expertise and in the contribution of philosophical training and experience to its acquisition. Yet, they still differ on what philosophers’ moral expertise consists of. While they widely accept that philosophers possess superior analytic abilities regarding moral matters, they diverge on whether they also possess improved ability to judge moral problems. Nonetheless, most philosophers in our sample believe that philosophers possess an improved ability to both analyze and judge moral problems and that they commonly see these two capacities as going hand in hand. We also point at significant associations between personal and professional attributes and philosophers’ beliefs, such as age, working in the field of moral philosophy, public involvement, and association with the analytic tradition. We discuss the implications of these findings for the debate about moral expertise. -/- . (shrink)

Are philosophers moral experts, and if so, what does this imply for their proper role in moral decision-making? The dominant view on this subject argues that philosophers have superior moral understanding, but they are not better judges of what is morally right. Consequently, philosophers cannot and should not have an authoritative role in moral decision-making. In this article, I challenge this view and argue that an examination of the intimate connection between two capacities – to understand and to judge – (...) reveals that it is both inconsistent and simplistic. It is inconsistent because, all things being equal, if philosophers better understand moral problems, they are also better judges of them. It is simplistic because it adopts an all-or-nothing approach to moral expertise, while expertise is in fact conditional. Inspired by the psychological literature on expertise, I claim that we should not ask whether philosophers are moral experts but rather under which conditions they successfully execute their expertise. The conclusion of the dominant view needs to be reconsidered to reflect the conditional nature of philosophers' expertise. Although more empirical research is required, I offer several hypotheses for future endeavours that demonstrate what a conditional view of philosophers' moral expertise could look like. -/- . (shrink)

Novelty is a pivotal player in cognition, and its contribution to superior memory performance is a widely accepted convention. On the other hand, mnemonic advantages for familiar information are also well documented. Here, we examine the role of experimental distinctiveness as a potential explanation for these apparently conflicting findings. Across two experiments, we demonstrate that conceptual novelty, an unfamiliar combination of familiar constituents, is sensitive to its experimental proportions: Improved memory for novelty was observed when novel stimuli were relatively rare. (...) Memory levels for familiar items, in contrast, were completely unaffected by experimental proportions, highlighting their insensitivity to list-based distinctiveness. Finally, no mnemonic advantage for conceptual novelty over familiarity was observed even when novel stimuli were extremely rare at study. Together, these results imply that novel and familiar items are processed via partially distinct mechanisms, with novelty not providing a mnemonic advantage over familiarity. (shrink)

In recent decades, the discipline of bioethics has grown rapidly, as has the practice of ethical consultation. Interestingly, this new recognition of the relevance of moral philosophy to our daily life has been accompanied by skepticism among philosophers regarding the existence of moral expertise or the benefits of philosophical training. In his recent article in Bioethics, William R. Smith suggested that this skepticism is rooted in philosophers' belief that moral expertise is inconsistent with liberal–democratic values, when in fact they are (...) compatible. In this paper, we provide a unique opportunity to empirically examine Smith's observation by utilizing and extending global data on philosophers' beliefs about moral expertise, involving 4087 philosophers from 96 countries. Our findings support Smith's theoretical observation and show that societal levels of support for liberal–democratic values are associated with greater skepticism about moral expertise. We suggest that these findings might be explained by the cognitive process of motivated reasoning and an invalid inference of “is” from “ought.” Consequently, the potential tension between moral expertise and liberal–democratic values is invalidly used for rejecting the existence of moral expertise, while its main and valid implication is for how moral expertise should be applied in liberal–democratic settings. (shrink)

Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, an array of off-label interventions has been used to treat patients, either provided as compassionate care or tested in clinical trials. There is a challenge in determining the justification for conducting randomised controlled trials over providing compassionate use in an emergency setting. A rapid and more accurate evaluation tool is needed to assess the effect of these treatments. Given the similarity to the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) pandemic in Africa in 2014, we suggest (...) using a tool designed by the WHO committee in the aftermath of the EVD pandemic: Monitored Emergency Use of Unregistered and Investigational Interventions (MEURI). Considering the uncertainty around SARS-CoV-2, we propose using an improved MEURI including the Plan–Do–Study–Act tool. This combined tool may facilitate dynamic monitoring, analysing, re-evaluating and re-authorising emergency use of unproven treatments and repeat it in cycles. It will enable adjustment and application of outcomes to clinical practice according to changing circumstances and increase the production of valuable data to promote the best standard of care and high-quality research—even during a pandemic. (shrink)

The predictive processing framework posits that people continuously use predictive principles when interacting with, learning from, and interpreting their surroundings. Here, we suggest that the same framework may help explain how people process self-relevant knowledge and maintain a stable and positive self-concept. Specifically, we recast two prominent self-relevant motivations, self-verification and self-enhancement, in predictive processing (PP) terms. We suggest that these self-relevant motivations interact with the self-concept (i.e., priors) to create strong predictions. These predictions, in turn, influence how people interpret (...) information about themselves. In particular, we argue that these strong self-relevant predictions dictate how prediction error, the deviation from the original prediction, is processed. In contrast to many implementations of the PP framework, we suggest that predictions and priors emanating from stable constructs (such as the self-concept) cultivate belief-maintaining, rather than belief-updating, dynamics. Based on recent findings, we also postulate that evidence supporting a predicted model of the self (or interpreted as such) triggers subjective reward responses, potentially reinforcing existing beliefs. Characterizing the role of rewards in self-belief maintenance and reframing self-relevant motivations and rewards in predictive processing terms offers novel insights into how the self is maintained in neurotypical adults, as well as in pathological populations, potentially pointing to therapeutic implications. (shrink)

Across species, animals have an intrinsic drive to approach appetitive stimuli and to withdraw from aversive stimuli. In affective science, influential theories of emotion link positive affect with strengthened behavioural approach and negative affect with avoidance. Based on these theories, we predicted that individuals’ positive and negative affect levels should particularly influence their behaviour when innate Pavlovian approach/avoidance tendencies conflict with learned instrumental behaviours. Here, across two experiments – exploratory Experiment 1 (N = 91) and a preregistered confirmatory Experiment 2 (...) (N = 335) – we assessed how induced positive and negative affect influenced Pavlovian-instrumental interactions in a reward/punishment Go/No-Go task. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no evidence for a main effect of positive/negative affect on either approach/avoidance behaviour or Pavlovian-instrumental interactions. However, we did find evidence that the effects of induced affect on behaviour were moderated by individual differences in self-reported behavioural inhibition and gender. Exploratory computational modelling analyses explained these demographic moderating effects as arising from positive correlations between demographic factors and individual differences in the strength of Pavlovian-instrumental interactions. These findings serve to sharpen our understanding of the effects of positive and negative affect on instrumental behaviour. (shrink)

In reinforcement learning, a decision maker searching for the most rewarding option is often faced with the question: What is the value of an option that has never been tried before? One way to frame this question is as an inductive problem: How can I generalize my previous experience with one set of options to a novel option? We show how hierarchical Bayesian inference can be used to solve this problem, and we describe an equivalence between the Bayesian model and (...) temporal difference learning algorithms that have been proposed as models of RL in humans and animals. According to our view, the search for the best option is guided by abstract knowledge about the relationships between different options in an environment, resulting in greater search efficiency compared to traditional RL algorithms previously applied to human cognition. In two behavioral experiments, we test several predictions of our model, providing evidence that humans learn and exploit structured inductive knowledge to make predictions about novel options. In light of this model, we suggest a new interpretation of dopaminergic responses to novelty. (shrink)

BackgroundThe measures taken to contain the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, such as the lockdown in Italy, do impact psychological health; yet, less is known about their effect on cognitive functioning. The transactional theory of stress predicts reciprocal influences between perceived stress and cognitive performance. However, the effects of a period of stress due to social isolation on spatial cognition and exploration have been little examined. The aim of the present study was to investigate the possible effects and impact of the (...) COVID-19 pandemic on spatial cognition tasks, particularly those concerning spatial exploration, and the physiological leftward bias known as pseudoneglect. A right-hemisphere asymmetry for spatial attention processes crucially contributes to pseudoneglect. Other evidence indicates a predominantly right-hemisphere activity in stressful situations. We also analyzed the effects of lockdown on coping strategies, which typically show an opposite pattern of hemispheric asymmetry, favoring the left hemisphere. If so, then pseudoneglect should increase during the lockdown and be negatively correlated with the efficacy of coping strategies.MethodsOne week before the start of the lockdown due to COVID-19 in Italy, we had collected data from a battery of behavioral tests including tasks of peri-personal spatial cognition. During the quarantine period, from late April to early May 2020, we repeated the testing sessions with a subgroup of the same participants. At both testing sessions, participants performed digitized neuropsychological tests, including a Cancellation task, Radial Arm Maze task, and Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices. Participants also completed a newly developed COVID-19 Student Stress Scale, based on transactional models of stress, and the Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced—New Italian Version to assess coping orientation.ResultsThe tendency to start cancelation from a left-sided item, to explore first a left-sided arm of the maze, and to choose erroneous response items on the left side of the page on Raven’s matrices increased from T1 to T2. The degree of pseudoneglect increment positively correlated with perceived stress and negatively correlated with Positive Attitude and Problem-Solving COPE-NIV subscales.ConclusionLockdown-related stress may have contributed to increase leftward bias during quarantine through a greater activation of the right hemisphere. On the other hand, pseudoneglect was decreased for better coping participants, perhaps as a consequence of a more balanced hemispheric activity in these individuals. (shrink)

This paper examines function and structure within the religious paths advocated by John of the Cross, and the Buddha, with particular reference to the jh?nas and the ar?pa states, as represented in selected suttas within the P?li texts. First, John of the Cross and the jh?na and ar?pa states are contextualised. The teaching in The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night, and the S?maññaphala Sutta, the Niv?pa Sutta and the Anupada Sutta is then summarised. The two are then (...) brought into conversation with each other to examine the extent to which the religious paths described move within the same landscape of spiritual practice. Differences in context and metaphysical underpinning are recognised. The paper argues, nevertheless, that similarities are more than evident, particularly with reference to attachment to sensory objects, discursive thought, and the idea of the self or the ‘I’. The paper demonstrates that the two speak of mystical paths, which share many of the same practices and fruits, although couched in different metaphors. (shrink)

Thomas Becket's miracles formed the chief subject of the early thirteenth-century stained glass installed in the twelve ambulatory windows surrounding Becket's magnificent shrine in the Trinity Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral. This article argues that three of the five surviving miracle stories portrayed in the glass of nlV, a well-preserved window on the north aisle, have been misread. Rather than picturing miracles of pilgrims from Oxford, Essex and Warwickshire, these panels recount the miracles experienced by people from the environs of Canterbury (...) and Dover, namely William of Dene, a paralysed knight; Goditha, a crippled laywoman of Canterbury; and Saxeva, a laywoman of Dover suffering from an abdominal complaint and pain in her arm. With these new readings in place, it is possible to see that all the surviving narratives in nIV are devoted to local miracles, a remarkable and hitherto unrecognised commemoration of Thomas Becket's Kentish cult in the cathedral's glass. The focus on local pilgrims in Canterbury's nIV is comparable to the 'trade', 'donor' or 'signature' panels in the contemporary stained glass at Chartres Cathedral. (shrink)

A biophysical and biochemical perspective of Brahmajnaana will be advanced by viewing Upanishads and related books as “Texts of Science on human mind”. A biological and cognitive science insight of Atman and Maya, the results of breathing process; constituting and responsible for human consciousness and mental functions will be developed. The Advaita and Dvaita phases of human mind, its cognitive and functional states will be discussed. These mental activities will be modeled as brain-wave modulation and demodulation processes. The energy-forms and (...) their transformations as ideas/moods/experiences/thoughts/feelings/utterances/knowing/perception/experience/mood; and a theory of human cognition and communication will be advanced. The sameness of these and processes taking place and steps involved in human language acquisition and communication processes will be highlighted taking ideas from Sabdabrahma Siddhanta and Sphota Vaada, for which the basis is Brahmajnaana only. In fine, a physiological psychological and neurological model of human consciousness and function of mind based on Indian spiritual thought will be derived and discussed using concepts from modern science and technology. The application of these derivations in the fields of physiological psychology, mind-machine modeling, natural language comprehension branch of artificial intelligence and neurology to model and imitate human mental functions will be hinted. -/- . (shrink)