This paper proposes two interrelated arguments: first, it is argued that agro-commodity traders are uniquely placed at the crossroads of agricultural trade to benefit from agricultural commodity speculation; and second, that the networks constituting their operations are central to their hedging activities. The case of Cargill—the largest privately owned company in the United States and one of the largest agricultural traders in the world—is used to support this argument by unpacking its operations, structure, and hedging strategies. In order to connect (...) the operations of Cargill to its speculating strategies, this paper first traces how agriculture and finance have become increasingly intertwined leading to heightened agricultural commodity speculation. Second, Cargill will be positioned within this process by analyzing how it has financialized its own strategies and its Corporate Platform. Third, Black River Asset Management, Cargill’s private equity arm, will be analyzed to show how it uses the information moving through Cargill’s Platform to engage in hedging and/or speculation. (shrink)

In “Reliabilism Leveled” Jonathan Vogel (2000) provides a strong case against epistemic theories that stress the importance of tracking/sensitivity conditions. A tracking/sensitivity condition is to be understood as some version of the following counterfactual: (T) ~p oÆ ~Bp (T) says that s would not believe p, if p were false. Among other things, tracking is supposed to express the external relation that explains why some justified true beliefs are not knowledge. Champions of the condition include Robert Nozick (1981) and, more (...) recently, Keith DeRose (1995). To my knowledge, the earliest formulation of the counterfactual condition is found in Fred Dretske’s conclusive reasons condition (1971), which says, s would not have had the reason that she does for believing p, if p were false. Vogel contends that any such counterfactual condition on knowledge will render the theory of knowledge too strong. He believes that there is at least some possible reflective knowledge that cannot satisfy the counterfactual--viz., the possible knowledge that one does not believe falsely that p. The alleged impossibility of such reflective knowledge is taken by Vogel to be a decisive objection to the tracking theories advocated by Dretske, Nozick, DeRose1 and others. The criticism finds its roots in Vogel’s earlier work (1987), and recurs in papers by Ernest Sosa (2002, 1996). Sosa suggests that the externalist idea behind tracking is on target, but that Nozick’s counterfactual is a misbegotten regimentation of the idea. In its place Sosa offers his own counterfactual “safety” condition, which he feels properly captures the externalist idea. Sosa’s counterfactual is not the topic of this paper. I mention it only to point out that the criticism that constitutes the subject of my investigation is meant to do a lot of work. In Sosa’s 1 case the criticism is meant to motivate his own counterfactual analysis, and in Vogel’s case the criticism promises to be a silver bullet against a theory that has recently found renewed life in the work of Keith DeRose.. (shrink)

Ageing is associated with declines in several cognitive abilities including working memory. The goal of the present study was to assess whether emotional information could reduce the age gap in the quantity and quality of representations in visual WM. Young and older adults completed a serial image recognition task and a colour-image binding task. Results of the SIR task showed worse performance for negative than neutral and positive images within the older group, hence enlarging the age gap in WM. In (...) the CIB task, recall precision was lower in the old than young adults, showing an ageing decline in the quality of WM representations. Positive images tended to improve precision, but this boost was similar for both age groups. In sum, emotional content did not reduce the age gap in visual WM. (shrink)

Since the publication of David Lewis’ Counterfactuals, the standard line on subjunctive conditionals with impossible antecedents (or counterpossibles) has been that they are vacuously true. That is, a conditional of the form ‘If p were the case, q would be the case’ is trivially true whenever the antecedent, p, is impossible. The primary justification is that Lewis’ semantics best approximates the English subjunctive conditional, and that a vacuous treatment of counterpossibles is a consequence of that very elegant theory. Another justification (...) derives from the classical lore than if an impossibility were true, then anything goes. In this paper we defend non-vacuism, the view that counterpossibles are sometimes non-vacuously true and sometimes non-vacuously false. We do so while retaining a Lewisian semantics, which is to say, the approach we favor does not require us to abandon classical logic or a similarity semantics. It does however require us to countenance impossible worlds. An impossible worlds treatment of counterpossibles is suggested (but not defended) by Lewis (Counterfactuals. Blackwell, Oxford, 1973), and developed by Nolan (Notre Dame J Formal Logic 38:325–527, 1997), Kment (Mind 115:261–310, 2006a: Philos Perspect 20:237–302, 2006b), and Vander Laan (In: Jackson F, Priest G (eds) Lewisian themes. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004). We follow this tradition, and develop an account of comparative similarity for impossible worlds. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that contraposition, strengthening the antecedent and hypothetical syllogism fail for subjunctive conditionals. The following putative counter-examples are frequently cited, respectively.

Mental simulation — such as imagining tilting a glass to figure out the angle at which water would spill — can be a way of coming to know the answer to an internally or externally posed query. Is this form of learning a species of inference or a form of observation? We argue that it is neither: learning through simulation is a genuinely distinct form of learning. On our account, simulation can provide knowledge of the answer to a query even (...) when the basis for that answer is opaque to the learner. Moreover, through repeated simulation, the learner can reduce this opacity, supporting self-training and the acquisition of more accurate models of the world. Simulation is thus an essential part of the story of how creatures like us become effective learners and knowers. (shrink)

We explore how principles predicting the success of a medical information commons advantaged or disadvantaged three MIC initiatives in three Canadian provinces. Our MIC case examples demonstrate that practices and policies to promote access to and use of health information can help improve individual healthcare and inform a learning health system. MICs were constrained by heterogenous health information protection laws across jurisdictions and risk-averse institutional cultures. A networked approach to MICs would unlock even more potential for national and international data (...) collaborations to improve health and healthcare. (shrink)

The paradox of knowability is a logical result suggesting that, necessarily, if all truths are knowable in principle then all truths are in fact known. The contrapositive of the result says, necessarily, if in fact there is an unknown truth, then there is a truth that couldn't possibly be known. More specifically, if p is a truth that is never known then it is unknowable that p is a truth that is never known. The proof has been used to argue (...) against versions of anti-realism committed to the thesis that all truths are knowable. For clearly there are unknown truths; individually and collectively we are non-omniscient. So, by the main result, it is false that all truths are knowable. The result has also been used to draw more general lessons about the limits of human knowledge. Still others have taken the proof to be fallacious, since it collapses an apparently moderate brand of anti-realism into an obviously implausible and naive idealism. (shrink)

Both philosophers and psychologists have argued for the existence of distinct kinds of explanations, including teleological explanations that cite functions or goals, and mechanistic explanations that cite causal mechanisms. Theories of causation, in contrast, have generally been unitary, with dominant theories focusing either on counterfactual dependence or on physical connections. This paper argues that both approaches to causation are psychologically real, with different modes of explanation promoting judgments more or less consistent with each approach. Two sets of experiments isolate the (...) contributions of counterfactual dependence and physical connections in causal ascriptions involving events with people, artifacts, or biological traits, and manipulate whether the events are construed teleologically or mechanistically. The findings suggest that when events are construed teleologically, causal ascriptions are sensitive to counterfactual dependence and relatively insensitive to the presence of physical connections, but when events are construed mechanistically, causal ascriptions are sensitive to both counterfactual dependence and physical connections. The conclusion introduces an account of causation, an "exportable dependence theory," that provides a way to understand the contributions of physical connections and teleology in terms of the functions of causal ascriptions. (shrink)

Educational policy and social sciences researchers have been studying dishonest behaviors among students for a long time. In this bibliometric study we examine the extant literature on academic dishonesty until 2017. We also analyze the specific case of the literature on plagiarism since it is arguably one of the most common academic dishonest behavior. We aim at identifying the intellectual structure of the field of academic dishonesty and plagiarism. Results show that Donald L. McCabe and Richard L. Marsh appear as (...) the most productive authors. Furthermore, Whitley, 235–274, 1998) “Factors associated with cheating among college students: A review”, and Pennycook, 201–230, 1996), entitled “Borrowing others’ words: Text, ownership, memory, and plagiarism” are the most cited publications on academic dishonesty and on plagiarism, respectively. Additionally, a strong connection between the McCabe and Treviño articles emerged from the co-citation analysis on academic dishonesty, and also a strong relationship between Pennycook, 201–230, 1996) and Pecorari, 317–345, 2003), suggesting that these articles are strongly connected. Results suggest that these are the most influential authors and articles of the field. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe understanding of a wide array of practices related to fraud, bribery, corruption, and more widely, illicit practices have been capturing the attention of practitioners and management researchers worldwide. A substantial portion of the extant research has used university students to measure their actual or intended cheating behaviours and often studies have tested for variations across countries and cultures. We highlight some major concerns in this stream of inquiry and discuss both the definition and some inconclusive results in prior studies, (...) namely those deriving from differences in cheating behaviour across different cultural contexts. We suggest the need to examine intentionality, and further advance that intentionality may assume a reactive or a proactive essence. Depending on the social and formal contexts of different countries, both reactive and proactive intentions lead to distinct moral concerns, which we name in this work omorality or immorality. (shrink)

Le terme ktitor accompagne souvent la représentation d'un acte de don dans la peinture murale byzantines et post-byzantines. Même si le terme "ktitor" a été traduit le plus souvent par "fondateur", sémantiquement et historiquement, on retrouve dans le mot le sens de possession. Les ktitores - des propriétaires modaux, offrent leurs dons, dont le destinataire final est Dieu. Les panneaux votifs de Théodore Métochite , du sebastokrator Kalojan , de Stefan Uroš III , de Mircea l'Ancien témoignent des droits, des (...) intentions et de la foi du ktitor. Avec le christianisme, le sens du don s'est inversé et out don humain n'est qu'un contre-don à Dieu pour son sacrifice premier. (shrink)

This study sought to assess barriers and enhance readiness to consent to home and Planned Parenthood HIV testing among 60 out-patients from a mental health and substance abuse clinic in rural Appalachia. Testing barriers included not knowing where to get tested, lack of confidentiality, and loss of partners if one tested sero-positive. The intervention yielded lowered HIV stigma, increase in HIV knowledge, and agreement to take the HIV home test. These results are encouraging because they suggest that a brief educational (...) intervention is a critical pathway to the success of the National Institutes on Drug Abuse’s Seek, Test, Treat, and Retain initiative in poor rural counties. (shrink)

Assisted suicide, many argue, honors self‐determination in returning control of their dying to patients themselves. But physician assistance and measures proposed to safeguard patients from coercion in fact return ultimate authority over this “private and deeply personal” decision to medicine and society.

The issue of how to incorporate the individual's first‐hand experience of illness into broader medical understanding is a major question in medical theory and practice. In a philosophical context, phenomenology, with its emphasis on the subject's perception of phenomena as the basis for knowledge and its questioning of naturalism, seems an obvious candidate for addressing these issues. This is a review of current phenomenological approaches to medicine, looking at what has motivated this philosophical approach, the main problems it faces and (...) suggesting how it might become a useful philosophical tool within medicine, with its own individual, but interrelated, contribution to make to current medical debates. After the general background, there is a brief summary of phenomenological ideas and their current usage in a medical context. Next is a critique of four key claims within current phenomenological medical works, concerning both the role phenomenology plays and the supposedly clear divide between phenomenology and other approaches. There are significant problems within these claims, largely because they overlook the complexity of the questions they consider. Finally, there is some more in‐depth examination of phenomenology itself and the true complexity of phenomenological debate concerning subjectivity. The aim is to show that it will be both more productive and truer to phenomenology itself, if we use phenomenology as a philosophical method for explicating and gaining deeper understanding of complex and fundamental problems, which are central to medicine, rather than as providing simple, but flawed solutions. (shrink)

Recent expansions of federal and state law enforcement databanks to include DNA samples and profiles of innocent persons threaten individual privacy, impose unjustifiable costs on society, and may undermine our pursuit of justice. The move to permanently retain DNA from arrestees and proposals for a universal database should be vigorously opposed on matters of principle, legality, and practicality.

This collection assembles Church's referee reports, Fitch's 1963 paper, and nineteen new papers on the knowability paradox.

On November 2, 2004, California voters elected to radically expand their state criminal DNA database through the passage of Proposition 69. The approved ballot initiative authorized DNA collection and retention from all felons, any individuals with past felony convictions – including juveniles – and, beginning in 2009, all adults arrested for any felony offense. This dramatic database expansion threatens civil liberties and establishes a dangerous precedent for U.S. criminal databases.

Teleological explanations (TEs) account for the existence or properties of an entity in terms of a function: we have hearts because they pump blood, and telephones for communication. While many teleological explanations seem appropriate, others are clearly not warranted-for example, that rain exists for plants to grow. Five experiments explore the theoretical commitments that underlie teleological explanations. With the analysis of [Wright, L. (1976). Teleological Explanations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press] from philosophy as a point of departure, we examine (...) in Experiment 1 whether teleological explanations are interpreted causally, and confirm that TEs are only accepted when the function invoked in the explanation played a causal role in bringing about what is being explained. However, we also find that playing a causal role is not sufficient for all participants to accept TEs. Experiment 2 shows that this is not because participants fail to appreciate the causal structure of the scenarios used as stimuli. In Experiments 3-5 we show that the additional requirement for TE acceptance is that the process by which the function played a causal role must be general in the sense of conforming to a predictable pattern. These findings motivate a proposal, Explanation for Export, which suggests that a psychological function of explanation is to highlight information likely to subserve future prediction and intervention. We relate our proposal to normative accounts of explanation from philosophy of science, as well as to claims from psychology and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Recent expansions of federal and state law enforcement databanks to include DNA samples and profiles of innocent persons threaten individual privacy, impose unjustifiable costs on society, and may undermine our pursuit of justice. The move to permanently retain DNA from arrestees and proposals for a universal database should be vigorously opposed on matters of principle, legality, and practicality.

Traditional approaches to moral psychology assumed that moral judgments resulted from the application of explicit commitments, such as those embodied in consequentialist or deontological philosophies. In contrast, recent work suggests that moral judgments often result from unconscious or emotional processes, with explicit commitments generated post hoc. This paper explores the intermediate position that moral commitments mediate moral judgments, but not through their explicit and consistent application in the course of judgment. An experiment with 336 participants finds that individuals vary in (...) the extent to which their moral commitments are consequentialist or deontological, and that this variation is systematically but imperfectly related to the moral judgments elicited by trolley car problems. Consequentialist participants find action in trolley car scenarios more permissible than do deontologists, and only consequentialists moderate their judgments when scenarios that typically elicit different intuitions are presented side by side. The findings emphasize the need for a theory of moral reasoning that can accommodate both the associations and dissociations between moral commitments and moral judgments. (shrink)

Lewis/Stalnaker semantics has it that all counterpossibles (i.e., counterfactual conditionals with impossible antecedents) are vacuously true. Non-vacuism, by contrast, says the truth-values of counterpossibles are affected by the truth-values of the consequents. Some counterpossibles are true, some false. Williamson objects to non-vacuism. He asks us to consider someone who answered ‘11’ to ‘What is 5 + 7?’ but who mistakenly believes that he answered ‘13’. For the non-vacuist, (1) is false, (2) true: (1) If 5 + 7 were 13, x (...) would have got that sum right (2) If 5 + 7 were 13, x would have got that sum wrong Williamson is not persuaded by the initial intuitiveness of such examples: ... they tend to fall apart when thought through. For example, if 5 + 7 were 13 then 5 + 6 would be 12, and so (by another eleven steps) 0 would be 1, so if the number of right answers I gave were 0, the number of right answers I gave would be 1. (2006) That’s the whole argument—much of it implicit. Alan Baker’s critique (2007) of Brogaard and Salerno (2007) prompts us to say something less abbreviated about a less abbreviated form of Wiliamson’s argument. Then we further develop our (2007) counterfactual analysis of essense. (shrink)

Kit Fine (1994. “Essence and Modality”, Philosophical Perspectives 8: 1-16) argues that the standard modal account of essence as de re modality is ‘fundamentally misguided’ (p. 3). We agree with his critique and suggest an alternative counterfactual analysis of essence. As a corollary, our counterfactual account lends support to non-vacuism the thesis that counterpossibles (i.e., counterfactual conditionals with impossible antecedents) are not always vacuously true.

I. Non-Trivial Counterpossibles On Lewis’ account, a subjunctive of the form ‘if it were the case that p, it would be the case that q’ (represented as ‘p → q’) is to be given the following rough meta-linguistic truth-conditions1.

Food Services generate solid waste from the production process and distribution of meal. The raw material, after a rational flow, is transformed into meals for consumption generating solid waste of variable composition and quantity. Waste recovery actions in the recycling and selective collection in these services act as inhibitors of the inadequate disposal of these wastes in the environment, contributing to environmental sustainability. The objective of this study is to analyze the generation and viability of commercialization of recyclable solid waste (...) in Food Services of companies located in Cuiabá and Várzea Grande, Mato Grosso – Brazil. This is a cross-sectional exploratory study with a convenience sample. The analysis of the generation of residues was carried out using the weighing method and generation indices using descriptive statistics. In order to verify the economic potential of recyclable waste, the value of intermediate consumption was used and sales price data were obtained by means of the publication "Compromisso Empresarial para Reciclagem" CEMPRE. It was found that in six services the largest part of waste was made of plastic, and in two services it was paper and cardboard. The generation of aluminum was more significant in one service, being the residue that added more economic value in the commercialization. The generation of glass and tetra pack packaging were not significant, and the recycling of both is not of interest to the scavengers. The results indicate that the commercialization of recyclable solid waste is viable. (shrink)

. On June 13, 2013, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, holding that a naturally occurring DNA segment that has merely been “isolated” is not patent eligible, and effectively overturning a longstanding policy that had allowed for patents to be issued on thousands of human genes. Drawing largely on the expert testimony and arguments presented during the court proceedings, this paper provides an overview of the discovery and patenting of the BRCA1 (...) and BRCA2 genes at issue in the case, the impacts of gene patents on biomedical research and innovation and clinical practice, and the legal analysis presented by the plaintiffs throughout the case for how patents issued on genes violate the Patent Act and the U.S. Constitution. Finally, it discusses how the Court’s decision in this case marked an extraordinary victory not only for the plaintiffs directly involved, but more generally for women, patients, researchers, civil liberties, and the future of medicine. (shrink)

In the name of Husserl: nursing in pursuit of the things‐in‐themselves A perceived contradiction between the tenets of humanism and positivism secures phenomenology’s endorsement in nursing as an alternative methodology to the natural sciences. Nursing’s humanistic doctrine of valuing the individual is aligned with phenomenology in the belief that both projects investigate the subjective experiences of others. However, the belief that phenomenology opposes objectifying methods does not account for the different understandings of subjectivity that underpin various philosophic positions, such as (...) humanism, phenomenology, hermeneutics and positivism. What is not recognised in nursing inquiry is that the same characteristics which belong to humanism and are subsequently attributed as belonging to phenomenology are grounded, philosophically, in a view that separates the person from her world. But rather than examining the premises on which phenomenology and humanism are based, nurse‐phenomenologists have simply yoked them together in a mutual alliance against a common enemy — Cartesian dualism. This paper focuses on Husserl and argues that the conceptual link between nursing as a humanistic discipline and Husserlian phenomenology cannot be sustained on philosophic and methodologic grounds. Far from being mutual allies, the philosophic underpinnings of humanism and Husserlian phenomenology offer two incommensurable views on the nature of subjectivity. (shrink)

On November 2, 2004, California voters approved Proposition 69, “The DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime, and Innocence Protection Act” by a margin of approximately 60 to 40 percent. Given the limited amount of information provided to voters during the initiative process, it is unclear how many of the yea-sayers were apprised of the full implications of this measure. Indeed, by voting “yes” on Proposition 69, California has elected to house the most radical and costly state criminal DNA database in the country. (...) This dangerous expansion of California's database poses tremendous threats to civil liberties and social justice while offering little, if anything, by way of increasing the safety of its citizens.Prior to November 2, California law required the permanent retention of DNA samples from felons convicted of serious, violent crimes. The new law expands the database to include DNA samples from all felons and individuals with past felony convictions - including juveniles - and, beginning in five years, all adults arrested for any felony offense. (shrink)

Scientific and ‘intuitive’ or ‘folk’ theories are typically characterized as serving three critical functions: prediction, explanation, and control. While prediction and control have clear instrumental value, the value of explanation is less transparent. This paper reviews an emerging body of research from the cognitive sciences suggesting that the process of seeking, generating, and evaluating explanations in fact contributes to future prediction and control, albeit indirectly by facilitating the discovery and confirmation of instrumentally valuable theories. Theoretical and empirical considerations also suggest (...) why explanations may nonetheless feel intrinsically valuable. The paper concludes by considering some implications of the psychology of explanation for a naturalized philosophy of explanation. (shrink)

Summary Background Self-binding directives instruct clinicians to overrule treatment refusal during future severe episodes of illness. These directives are promoted as having potential to increase autonomy for individuals with severe episodic mental illness. Although lived experience is central to their creation, service users’ views on self-binding directives have not been investigated substantially. This study aimed to explore whether reasons for endorsement, ambivalence, or rejection given by service users with bipolar disorder can address concerns regarding self-binding directives, decision-making capacity, and human (...) rights. Methods This study used qualitative data from an internet-based survey distributed to the mailing list of the UK charity Bipolar UK, which contained multiple closed and open questions on advance decision-making in bipolar disorder. Quantitative analysis of a closed question about self-binding directives had already demonstrated endorsement amongst a very high proportion of participants with bipolar disorder who completed the survey. We conducted thematic analysis of responses from those participants who answered a subsequent open question about reasons for their view. Research was co-produced within a multi-disciplinary team, with clinical, legal, and ethical expertise, and lived experience of bipolar disorder. Ideas and methodologies associated with all these areas of expertise were used in the analysis of these reasons and to gain insight into the thoughts of individuals with bipolar disorder about self-binding directives and associated issues. Findings Between Oct 23 and Dec 5, 2017, 932 individuals with a self-reported clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder completed the internet survey, with 565 (154 men; 400 women; 11 transgender or other) providing free text answers to the open question. A large majority of respondents endorsed self-binding directives, nearly all describing a determinate shift to types of distorted thinking and decision-making when unwell as their key justification. Responses indicating ambivalence were dominated by logistical concerns about the drafting and implementation of self-binding directives, while those who rejected self-binding directives also cited logistical concerns, validity of their thinking when unwell, and potential contravention of human rights. Interpretation This study is, to our knowledge, the first large study of reasons why mental health service users might endorse or reject the use of self-binding directives. The findings provide empirical support for introducing self-binding directives into mental health advance decision-making practice and policy and may help to address enduring ethical concerns surrounding possible implementation of the directive while a person retains decision-making capacity. The opinions expressed here in responses given by multiple service users with bipolar disorder challenge a prominent view within international disability rights debates that involuntary treatment and recognition of impaired mental capacity constitute inherent human rights violations. Funding The Wellcome Trust . (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo principal presentar y discutir el concepto de las hiperescrituras del yo como prácticas de producción de memorias. A partir de estas escrituras, practicadas y compartidas en la pandemia, se pretende pensar la ficción como táctica de (re)existencia. Finalmente se presenta una experiencia en la plataforma Moodle, diseñada con estudiantes durante el 2020, que tuvo la ficción como punto de partida de la propuesta didáctica.

Religious systems are organised semiotic structures providing people with values and rules, identities, regularity, and meaning. Consequently, a person moving out of a religious system might be exposed to meaning-ruptures. The paper presents the situation of young people who have been in Yeshiva, a rabbinic high-school, and who have to join secular university life. It analyses the changes to which they are exposed. On the bases of this case study, the paper examines the following questions: can the religious symbolic system (...) internalised by a person in a religious sphere of experience be mobilised as a symbolic resource once the person moves to a secular environment? If yes, how do religious symbolic resources facilitate the transition to a secular life? And if not, what other symbolic and social resources might facilitate such transitions? (shrink)

Recent imaging results suggest that individuals automatically share the emotions of others when exposed to their emotions. We question the assumption of the automaticity and propose a contextual approach, suggesting several modulatory factors that might influence empathic brain responses. Contextual appraisal could occur early in emotional cue evaluation, which then might or might not lead to an empathic brain response, or not until after an empathic brain response is automatically elicited. We propose two major roles for empathy; its epistemological role (...) is to provide information about the future actions of other people, and important environmental properties. Its social role is to serve as the origin of the motivation for cooperative and prosocial behavior, as well as help for effective social communication. (shrink)

When faced with a dilemma between believing what is supported by an impartial assessment of the evidence (e.g., that one's friend is guilty of a crime) and believing what would better fulfill a moral obligation (e.g., that the friend is innocent), people often believe in line with the latter. But is this how people think beliefs ought to be formed? We addressed this question across three studies and found that, across a diverse set of everyday situations, people treat moral considerations (...) as legitimate grounds for believing propositions that are unsupported by objective, evidence-based reasoning. We further document two ways in which moral considerations affect how people evaluate others' beliefs. First, the moral value of a belief affects the evidential threshold required to believe, such that morally beneficial beliefs demand less evidence than morally risky beliefs. Second, people sometimes treat the moral value of a belief as an independent justification for belief, and on that basis, sometimes prescribe evidentially poor beliefs to others. Together these results show that, in the folk ethics of belief, morality can justify and demand motivated reasoning. (shrink)

People often answer why-questions with what we call experiential explanations: narratives or stories with temporal structure and concrete details. In contrast, on most theories of the epistemic function of explanation, explanations should be abstractive: structured by general relationships and lacking extraneous details. We suggest that abstractive and experiential explanations differ not only in level of abstraction, but also in structure, and that each form of explanation contributes to the epistemic goals of individual learners and of science. In particular, experiential explanations (...) support mental simulation and survive transitions across background theories; as a result, they support learning and help us translate between competing frameworks. Experiential explanations play an irreducible role in human cognition – and perhaps in science. (shrink)

Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that explanation and categorization are intimately related. This paper explores the hypothesis that explanations can help structure conceptual representations, and thereby influence the relative importance of features in categorization decisions. In particular, features may be differentially important depending on the role they play in explaining other features or aspects of category membership. Two experiments manipulate whether a feature is explained mechanistically, by appeal to proximate causes, or functionally, by appeal to a function or goal. (...) Explanation type has a significant impact on the relative importance of features in subsequent categorization judgments, with functional explanations reversing previously documented effects of [”]causal status’. The findings suggest that a feature’s explanatory importance can impact categorization, and that explanatory relationships, in addition to causal relationships, are critical to understanding conceptual representation. (shrink)

Les recherches scientifiques sur la COVID-19 sont à la fois menées et diffusées à une cadence effrénée. Bien qu’il soit inspirant de voir la communauté de la recherche répondre avec autant de vigueur à la crise causée par la pandémie, toute cette activité a par ailleurs engendré un chaos de mauvaises données, de résultats contradictoires et de manchettes exagérées. Alors que la polarisation, la déformation et la médiatisation des résultats scientifiques s’intensifient chaque jour, les inquiétudes se font de plus en (...) plus sentir quant à la perspective que la science pertinente soit présentée au public d’une manière qui puisse causer de la confusion, créer de fausses attentes et éroder la confiance du public. Dans cette note, nous explorons les principaux enjeux associés à la présentation de la science dans le contexte de la pandémie de la COVID-19. Plusieurs de ces enjeux ne sont pas nouveaux. Mais la pandémie de la COVID-19 a braqué les projecteurs sur le processus de la recherche biomédicale et a amplifié les ramifications néfastes des problèmes de communication publique. Nous devons faire mieux. À ce titre, nous conclurons ce rapport en formulant dix recommandations qui s’adressent aux acteurs clés qui interviennent dans la communication de la science sur la COVID-19, notamment les gouvernements, les bailleurs de fonds, les universités, les éditeurs, les médias et les communautés de recherche. (shrink)

COVID science is being both done and circulated at a furious pace. While it is inspiring to see the research community responding so vigorously to the pandemic crisis, all this activity has also created a churning sea of bad data, conflicting results, and exaggerated headlines. With representations of science becoming increasingly polarized, twisted and hyped, there is growing concern that the relevant science is being represented to the public in a manner that may cause confusion, inappropriate expectations, and the erosion (...) of public trust. Here we explore some of the key issues associated with the representations of science in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these issues are not new. But the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a spotlight on the biomedical research process and amplified the adverse ramifications of poor public communication. We need to do better. As such, we conclude with ten recommendations aimed at key actors involved in the communication of COVID-19 science, including government, funders, universities, publishers, media and the research communities. (shrink)

Research in education and cognitive development suggests that explaining plays a key role in learning and generalization: When learners provide explanations—even to themselves—they learn more effectively and generalize more readily to novel situations. This paper proposes and tests a subsumptive constraints account of this effect. Motivated by philosophical theories of explanation, this account predicts that explaining guides learners to interpret what they are learning in terms of unifying patterns or regularities, which promotes the discovery of broad generalizations. Three experiments provide (...) evidence for the subsumptive constraints account: prompting participants to explain while learning artificial categories promotes the induction of a broad generalization underlying category membership, relative to describing items (Exp. 1), thinking aloud (Exp. 2), or free study (Exp. 3). Although explaining facilitates discovery, Experiment 1 finds that description is more beneficial for learning item details. Experiment 2 additionally suggests that explaining anomalous observations may play a special role in belief revision. The findings provide insight into explanation’s role in discovery and generalization. (shrink)

The ability to generalize from the known to the unknown is central to learning and inference. Two experiments explore the relationship between how a property is explained and how that property is generalized to novel species and artifacts. The experiments contrast the consequences of explaining a property mechanistically, by appeal to parts and processes, with the consequences of explaining the property functionally, by appeal to functions and goals. The findings suggest that properties that are explained functionally are more likely to (...) be generalized on the basis of shared functions, with a weaker relationship between mechanistic explanations and generalization on the basis of shared parts and processes. The influence of explanation type on generalization holds even though all participants are provided with the same mechanistic and functional information, and whether an explanation type is freely generated (Experiment 1), experimentally provided (Experiment 2), or experimentally induced (Experiment 2). The experiments also demonstrate that explanations and generalizations of a particular type (mechanistic or functional) can be experimentally induced by providing sample explanations of that type, with a comparable effect when the sample explanations come from the same domain or from a different domains. These results suggest that explanations serve as a guide to generalization, and contribute to a growing body of work supporting the value of distinguishing mechanistic and functional explanations. (shrink)