The role that trust plays in blockchain-based systems is understood and portrayed in various manners. The blockchain technology is said to enable and establish trust as well as to redirect it, to substitute for it, and to make it obsolete. Furthermore, there is disagreement on whom or what users have to trust when using the blockchain technology: code, math, algorithms, and machines, or still human actors. This paper hypothesizes that the divergences of the depictions largely rest on implicitly adhering to (...) different accounts of trust. Thus, the goal of this paper is to outline how the current lack of a shared understanding of the term “trust” leads to diverging interpretations of the blockchain technology’s core features. Furthermore, it shows how this lack of common understanding obstructs scholars from referring to one another meaningfully in the discourse on blockchain technology. To do so, this paper outlines the most prominent depictions of the setup of relevant trust relationships within blockchain-based systems and traces their roots to different underlying assumptions on the nature of trust. (shrink)

A critical comment on Weed‘s Looking for Beauty in the Brain from Estetika 1/2008.

Rawls''s recent modification of his theory of justice claims that political liberalism is free-standing and falls under the category of the political. It works entirely within that domain and does not rely on anything outside it In this article I pursue the metatheoretical goal of obtaining insight into the anthropological assumptions that have remained so far unacknowledged by Rawls and critics alike. My argument is that political liberalism has a dependence on comprehensive liberalism and its conception of a self-serving subjectivity (...) that is far more binding as well as undesirable than it has been so far acknowledged. I proceed with a heuristic approach that introduces us to the possibility that political liberalism presupposes tacitly the Occidental metanarrative of reason harnessing rampant self-interest and subordinating it to a higher-order interest. As the presuppositions of political liberalism emerge, I draw from the debate between Rawls and Habermas in order to illustrate my argument for the existence of a dependence on these presuppositions. I outline some implications of the anthropological basis of political liberalism and conclude by exemplifying them with reference to Rawls''s comments on the division of a cake. (shrink)

The author identifies selected implicit or not fully explicit assumptions made by Noam Chomsky in his theory of language. Through a careful examination of Chomsky's work, she aims to present the solutions this linguist proposes with respect to two fundamental questions: the question of methodology and the question of the ontological status of language. After reviewing the central theses of Chomsky's theory in the first part of the paper, she turns to the question that is mentioned in the title (...) of this paper, that is, the reservations regarding the assumptions underlying Chomsky's work. (shrink)

In this new volume in the Oxford Psychology Series, the author presents a highly readable account of the cognitive unconscious, focusing in particular on the problem of implicit learning. Implicit learning is defined as the acquisition of knowledge that takes place independently of the conscious attempts to learn and largely in the absence of explicit knowledge about what was acquired. One of the core assumptions of this argument is that implicit learning is a fundamental, "root" process, one (...) that lies at the very heart of the adaptive behavioral repertoire of every complex organism. The author's goals are to outline the essential features of implicit learning that have emerged from the many studies that have been carried out in a variety of experimental laboratories over the past several decades; to present the various alternative perspectives on this issue that have been proposed by other researchers and to try to accommodate these views with his own; to structure the literature so that it can be seen in the context of standard heuristics of evolutionary biology; to present the material within a functionalist approach and to try to show why the experimental data should be seen as entailing particular epistemological perspectives; and to present implicit processing as encompassing a general and ubiquitous set of operations that have wide currency and several possible applications. Chapter 1 begins with the core problem under consideration in this book, a characterization of "implicit learning" as it has come to be used in the literature. Reber puts this seemingly specialized topic into a general framework and suggests a theoretical model based on standard heuristics of evolutionary biology. In his account, Reber weaves a capsule history of interest in and work on the cognitive unconscious. Chapter 2 turns to a detailed overview of the experimental work on the acquisition of implicit knowledge, which currently is of great interest. Chapter 3 develops the evolutionary model within which one can see learning and cognition as richly intertwining issues and not as two distinct fields with one dominating the other. Finally, Chapter 4 explores a variety of entailments and speculations concerning implicit cognitive processes and their general role in the larger scope of human performance. (shrink)

This article aims to investigate, starting from both the analysis of Haidt’s Theory of Moral Foundations, and his Intuitionist-social Model, if there is any implicit normative assumption in the author in relation to the value assigned to moral intuitions, both in relation to to its content and possible adaptive functionality (a matter developed in the FMT), as well as to the mechanisms that trigger such intuitions (a topic addressed in the SIM). An attempt is made to unravel whether (...) the author, beyond considering emotional intuitions as the true cause of moral judgments, ascribes a positive or negative value to this situation. To this end, the motivations underlying various moral intuitions (both of biological roots, linked to various adaptive interests; and of social origin) are examined, in order to analyze Haidt’s contributions to the clarification of a problem of normative metaethics of great impact. at present: can the same normative weight be attributed to any moral foundation in force in human societies; or are only some orientations rational, and therefore morally justifiable? Do they all reveal genuine moral concerns, or do some reflect relevant but not specifically moral adaptive interests, or even selfish aspirations functional to the interests of hegemonic sectors? The implications of the FMT are analyzed as a valuable heuristic guide to interpret the moral concerns of conservatives from an evolutionary meta-ethical approach that allows to overcome the monism of the liberal ethical code, for which the spectrum of genuine moral concerns is reduced to questions of justice, rights and protection of the weakest (since only these would be rationally justifiable). The need to achieve a clearer articulation between the SIM, which puts more emphasis on the processes of acquisition of intuitions through learning and social interaction, and the FMT, that focuses on its content and its possible links with various adaptive interests. (shrink)

This article aims to investigate, starting from both the analysis of Haidt’s Theory of Moral Foundations, and his Intuitionist-social Model, if there is any implicit normative assumption in the author in relation to the value assigned to moral intuitions, both in relation to to its content and possible adaptive functionality (a matter developed in the FMT), as well as to the mechanisms that trigger such intuitions (a topic addressed in the SIM). An attempt is made to unravel whether (...) the author, beyond considering emotional intuitions as the true cause of moral judgments, ascribes a positive or negative value to this situation. To this end, the motivations underlying various moral intuitions (both of biological roots, linked to various adaptive interests; and of social origin) are examined, in order to analyze Haidt’s contributions to the clarification of a problem of normative metaethics of great impact. at present: can the same normative weight be attributed to any moral foundation in force in human societies; or are only some orientations rational, and therefore morally justifiable? Do they all reveal genuine moral concerns, or do some reflect relevant but not specifically moral adaptive interests, or even selfish aspirations functional to the interests of hegemonic sectors? The implications of the FMT are analyzed as a valuable heuristic guide to interpret the moral concerns of conservatives from an evolutionary meta-ethical approach that allows to overcome the monism of the liberal ethical code, for which the spectrum of genuine moral concerns is reduced to questions of justice, rights and protection of the weakest (since only these would be rationally justifiable). The need to achieve a clearer articulation between the SIM, which puts more emphasis on the processes of acquisition of intuitions through learning and social interaction, and the FMT, that focuses on its content and its possible links with various adaptive interests. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, “unwarranted assumption”. Unwarranted assumptions are claims or beliefs that possess little to no supporting evidence, things we might take for granted as true, or just completely false ideas we inherited without reflection. When we reason using implicit assumptions or further propositions whose truth is uncertain or implausible, we commit the fallacy of unwarranted assumption and the truth of our conclusions is grossly affected. Prejudices and stereotypes (...) are some common ways in which we make unwarranted assumptions. The key to preventing this fallacy is evidence: warranted assumptions have evidence and ways of demonstrating their truth with certainty. It is best to not hold something as true or applicable without proof that it is true and applicable. This implies that we need to assess our ways of thinking and belief formation critically. (shrink)

In their book EVALUATING CRITICAL THINKING Stephen Norris and Robert Ennis say: “Although it is tempting to think that certain [unstated] assumptions are logically necessary for an argument or position, they are not. So do not ask for them.” Numerous writers of introductory logic texts as well as various highly visible standardized tests (e.g., the LSAT and GRE) presume that the Norris/Ennis view is wrong; the presumption is that many arguments have (unstated) necessary assumptions and that readers and test takers (...) can reasonably be expected to identify such assumptions. This paper proposes and defends criteria for determining necessary assumptions of arguments. Both theoretical and empirical considerations are brought to bear. (shrink)

This argument map justifies the claim that using only deductive argument schemes in computer-supported argument visualization stimulates reflection on some of one's implicit background assumptions.

While the study of implicit learning is nothing new, the field as a whole has come to embody — over the last decade or so — ongoing questioning about three of the most fundamental debates in the cognitive sciences: The nature of consciousness, the nature of mental representation (in particular the difficult issue of abstraction), and the role of experience in shaping the cognitive system. Our main goal in this chapter is to offer a framework that attempts to integrate (...) current thinking about these three issues in a way that specifically links consciousness with adaptation and learning. Our assumptions about this relationship are rooted in further assumptions about the nature of processing and of representation in cognitive systems. When considered together, we believe that these assumptions offer a new perspective on the relationships between conscious and unconscious processing and on the function of consciousness in cognitive systems. (shrink)

A widespread assumption in recent research on attitudes is that self-reported evaluations reflect conscious attitudes, whereas indirectly assessed evaluations reflect unconscious attitudes. The present article reviews the available evidence regarding unconscious features of indirectly assessed “implicit” attitudes. Distinguishing between three different aspects of attitudes, we conclude that people sometimes lack conscious awareness of the origin of their attitudes, but that lack of source awareness is not a distinguishing feature of indirectly assessed versus self-reported attitudes, there is no evidence (...) that people lack conscious awareness of indirectly assessed attitudes per se, and there is evidence showing that, under some conditions, indirectly assessed attitudes influence other psychological processes outside of conscious awareness. Implications for the concept of “implicit attitudes” are discussed. (shrink)

Although in some contexts the notions of an ordinary argument’s presumption, assumption, and presupposition appear to merge into the one concept of an implicit premise, there are important differences between these three notions. It is argued that assumption and presupposition, but not presumption, are basic logical notions. A presupposition of an argument is best understood as pertaining to a propositional element (a premise or the conclusion) e of the argument, such that the presupposition is a necessary condition (...) for the truth of e or for a term in e to have a referent. In contrast, an assumption of an argument pertains to the argument as a whole in that it is integral to the reasoning or inferential structure of the argument. A logical assumption of an argument is essentially a proposition that must be true in order for the argument aside from that proposition to be fully cogent. Nothing that is both comparable and distinguishing can be said about presumptions of arguments. Rather, presumptions of arguments are distinctively conventional; they are introduced through conventional rules (e.g., those that concern how to treat promises). So not all assumptions and not all presuppositions of arguments are presumptions of those arguments, although all presumptions of arguments are either assumptions or presuppositions of those arguments. This account avoids making the (monological) notion of presumption vacuous and dissolving the distinction between assumption and presumption, which is a vulnerability of alternative views such as Hansen’s and Bermejo-Luque’s, as is shown. (shrink)

This paper challenges the traditional assumption that descriptive and prescriptive sciences are essentially distinct by presenting a study on the implicit normativity of the production and presentation of biomedical scientific facts within evidence-based medicine. This interdisciplinary study serves as an illustration of the potential worth of the concept of implicit normativity for bioethics in general and for integrated empirical ethics research in particular. It demonstrates how both the production and presentation of scientific information in an evidence-based decision-support (...) contain implicit presuppositions and values, which pre-structure the moral environment of the clinical process of decision-making. As a consequence, the evidence-based decision support did not only support the clinical decision-making process; it also transformed it in a morally significant way. This phenomenon undermines the assumption within much of the literature on patient autonomy that information disclosure is a conditional requirement before patient autonomy even starts; patient autonomy is already influenced during the production and presentation of information. These results imply an increased responsibility of those who produce and present evidence-based facts(i.e. scientists in general and physicians in particular). The insights of this study not only involve a different focus on both theory and practice of patient autonomy and informed consent, but they also call for a broader scope of morality than does traditional empirical research in bioethics. The concept of implicit normativity within integrated empirical ethics research calls for a strong cooperation between bioethicists and descriptive scientists, i.e., a cooperation that goes beyond the discipline-specific epistemic values and that takes place during all phases of the research process. (shrink)

This article takes the following two assumptions for granted: first, that gifts influence physicians and, second, that the influences gifts have on physicians may be harmful for patients. These assumptions are common in the applied ethics literature, and they prompt an obvious practical question, namely, what is the best way to mitigate the negative effects? We examine the negative effects of gift giving in depth, considering how the influence occurs, and we assert that the ethical debate surrounding gift-giving practices must (...) be reoriented. Our main claim is that the failure of recent policies addressing gift giving can be traced to a misunderstanding of what psychological mechanisms are most likely to underpin physicians’ biased behavior as a result of interaction with the medical industry. The problem with gift giving is largely not a matter of malicious or consciously self-interested behavior, but of well-intentioned actions on the part of physicians that are nonetheless perniciously infected by the presence of the medical industry. Substantiating this claim will involve elaboration on two points. First, we will retrace the history of policies regarding gift giving between the medical profession and the medical industry and highlight how most policies assume a rationalistic view of moral agency. Reliance on this view of agency is best illustrated by past attempts to address gift giving in terms of conflicts of interest. Second, we will introduce and motivate an alternate view of moral agency emerging from recent literature in social psychology on implicit social cognition. We will show that proper consideration of implicit social cognition paints a picture of human psychology at odds with the rationalistic model assumed in discussions of COIs. With these two pieces on the table we will be able to show that, without fully appreciating the social-psychological mechanisms of implicit cognition, policy-makers are likely to overlook significant aspects of how gifts influence doctors. (shrink)

Recent empirical work attempts to investigate how implicit biases target those facing intersectional oppression. This is welcome, since early work on implicit biases focused on single axes of discrimination, such as race, gender, or age. However, the success of such empirical work on how biases target those facing intersectional oppressions depends on adequate conceptualizations of intersectionality and empirical measures that are responsive to these conceptualizations. Surveying prominent recent empirical work, we identify failures in conceptualizations of intersectionality that inform (...) the design of empirical measures. These failures generate unsupported conclusions about the kinds of biases that those experiencing multiple oppressions face, and render proposed interventions to combat biases useless at best, harmful at worst. We also diagnose unwarranted assumptions about how stereotypes combine in complex concepts: first, that when “simple” social concepts combine the complex concepts inherit the associated stereotypes of their simpler constituent concepts; second that studies which focus on cognition about single social categories are investigating “simple” social concepts (cf. Goff and Khan 2013). We tease out recommendations to guide future investigations into biases that target those who experience multiple oppressions. (shrink)

In this new volume in the Oxford Psychology Series, the author presents a highly readable account of the cognitive unconscious, focusing in particular on the problem of implicit learning. Implicit learning is defined as the acquisition of knowledge that takes place independently of the conscious attempts to learn and largely in the absence of explicit knowledge about what was acquired. One of the core assumptions of this argument is that implicit learning is a fundamental, "root" process, one (...) that lies at the very heart of the adaptive behavioral repertoire of every complex organism. The author's goals are to outline the essential features of implicit learning that have emerged from the many studies that have been carried out in a variety of experimental laboratories over the past several decades; to present the various alternative perspectives on this issue that have been proposed by other researchers and to try to accommodate these views with his own; to structure the literature so that it can be seen in the context of standard heuristics of evolutionary biology; to present the material within a functionalist approach and to try to show why the experimental data should be seen as entailing particular epistemological perspectives; and to present implicit processing as encompassing a general and ubiquitous set of operations that have wide currency and several possible applications. Chapter 1 begins with the core problem under consideration in this book, a characterization of "implicit learning" as it has come to be used in the literature. Reber puts this seemingly specialized topic into a general framework and suggests a theoretical model based on standard heuristics of evolutionary biology. In his account, Reber weaves a capsule history of interest in and work on the cognitive unconscious. Chapter 2 turns to a detailed overview of the experimental work on the acquisition of implicit knowledge, which currently is of great interest. Chapter 3 develops the evolutionary model within which one can see learning and cognition as richly intertwining issues and not as two distinct fields with one dominating the other. Finally, Chapter 4 explores a variety of entailments and speculations concerning implicit cognitive processes and their general role in the larger scope of human performance. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the linguistic concept of implicit offensiveness. On the one hand, implicitness will be juxtaposed with indirectness as the two concepts are not conceived of here as synonymous. On the other hand, a typology of offensiveness (vs offensive language and vs offendedness) will be proposed, as well as the overarching term ‘covert meaning’ that will span figurative implicitness and non-figurative implicitness. The gradability of various forms of covert meaning and (...) its overlap with overt meaning (subsuming explicit literal meaning and implicit literal meaning) will also be discussed. In the analysis, two sample implicit concepts will be examined (irony vs sarcasm) based on corpus data (of general English and dedicated offensiveness corpus) and using non-contextual embeddings. Theory-wise, the paper demonstrates that implicitness is a complex term which is fuzzy and gradable; methodology-wise, it shows how computational tools can be used to attest theoretical assumptions related to offensive covert terms. (shrink)

Running head: Implicit sequence learning ABSTRACT Can we learn without awareness? Although this issue has been extensively explored through studies of implicit learning, there is currently no agreement about the extent to which knowledge can be acquired and projected onto performance in an unconscious way. The controversy, like that surrounding implicit memory, seems to be at least in part attributable to unquestioned acceptance of the unrealistic assumption that tasks are process-pure, that is, that a given task (...) exclusively involves either implicit or explicit knowledge. (shrink)

The present work critically examines two assumptions frequently stated by supporters of cognitive neuroenhancement. The first, explicitly methodological, assumption is the supposition of effective and side effect-free neuroenhancers. However, there is an evidence-based concern that the most promising drugs currently used for cognitive enhancement can be addictive. Furthermore, this work describes why the neuronal correlates of key cognitive concepts, such as learning and memory, are so deeply connected with mechanisms implicated in the development and maintenance of addictive behaviour so (...) that modification of these systems may inevitably run the risk of addiction to the enhancing drugs. Such a potential risk of addiction could only be falsified by in-depth empirical research. The second, implicit, assumption is that research on neuroenhancement does not pose a serious moral problem. However, the potential for addiction, along with arguments related to research ethics and the potential social impact of neuroenhancement, could invalidate this assumption. It is suggested that ethical evaluation needs to consider the empirical data as well as the question of whether and how such empirical knowledge can be obtained. (shrink)

The present paper examines the relationship between explicit and implicit memory and ultimate attainment in the native language. Two groups of native speakers of English with different levels of academic attainment (i.e., high vs. low) took part in three language tasks which assessed grammar, vocabulary and collocational knowledge, as well as phonological short-term memory (assessed using a forward digit-span task), explicit associative memory (assessed using a paired-associates task) and implicit memory (assessed using a deterministic serial reaction time task). (...) Results revealed strong relationships between phonological short-term memory and explicit associative memory on the one hand and the three language tasks on the other hand, and no relation between linguistic performance and implicit memory. Taken together, these results cast doubts on the common assumption that L1 grammar learning depends almost entirely on implicit memory and align with the claims of usage-based models of language acquisition that grammatical and lexical knowledge depend on the same cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo pretende develar los supuestos epistemológicos que se encuentran implícitos en el código deontológico del Colegio de Psicólogos de Chile. Para resolver tal problema se realiza un análisis de discurso que abarca la interpretación del contenido del documento, del contexto en el que se inserta y de los actores involucrados. El análisis sugiere que el código de ética se sustenta implícita y sustancialmente en el paradigma positivista de la ciencia, al alero de la modernidad como contexto. Finalmente, se (...) señalan algunas implicancias y reflexiones en torno a tales hallazgos.: This paper has like objective to reveal the epistemological assumptions implicit into of ethics code of the psychologists' school of Chile. To solve this problem was used an analysis of discourse on the content of the code, the context and the actors involved. The results of the analysis show that positivism is the paradigm that supports epistemologically the code, next to modernity like context. Finally, some implications and reflexions are pointed out around the findings. (shrink)

We can understand implicit bias as a person’s disposition to evaluate members of a social group in a less favorable light than members of another social group, without intending to do so. If we understand it this way, we should not presuppose a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how implicit cognitive states lead to skewed evaluations of other people. The focus of this paper is on implicit bias in considered decisions. It is argued that we have (...) good reasons to assume that imagination plays a vital role in decision making. If this assumption is correct, it offers an explanation for implicit bias in many considered decisions: Human beings who have been frequently exposed to stereotypes have stereotype-congruent expectations as part of their background knowledge. They feed into their imagination, sometimes without their awareness. This model would allow us to explain the key characteristics of implicit bias without recurring to any unconscious attitudes over and above such background knowledge. (shrink)

This paper briefly surveys previous analyses of implicitness and proposes a new, two-dimensional account. The first dimension concerns whether an assumption follows or not in terms of analytical or contextual implications or because it is a reasonable interpretation. The second dimension concerns the intentions of the author. Both dimensions are needed for identifying implicit assumptions in critical analyses of texts. A definition of clear cases of implicit assumptions is given. /// Este artículo examina brevemente análisis previos sobre (...) lo implícito y propone una nueva explicación bidimensional. La primera dimensión es sobre si se sigue o no una suposición en términos de implicaciones analíticas o contextuales, o porque la interpretación es razonable. La segunda dimensión se ocupa de las intenciones del autor. Ambas dimensiones son necesarias para identificar suposiciones implícitas en los análisis críticos de textos. Se proporciona una definición de los casos claros de supuestos implícitos. (shrink)

Cosmological speculation about the ultimate nature of the universe, being necessary for science to be possible at all, must be regarded as a part of scientific knowledge itself, however epistemologically unsound it may be in other respects. The best such speculation available is that the universe is comprehensible in some way or other and, more specifically, in the light of the immense apparent success of modern natural science, that it is physically comprehensible. But both these speculations may be false; in (...) order to take this possibility into account, we need to adopt an hierarchy of increasingly contentless cosmological conjectures until we arrive at the conjecture that the universe is such that it is possible for us to acquire some knowledge of something, a conjecture which we are justified in accepting as knowledge since doing so cannot harm the pursuit of knowledge in any circumstances whatsoever. As a result of adopting such an hierarchy of increasingly contentless cosmological conjectures in this way, we maximize our chances of adopting conjectures that promote the growth of knowledge, and minimize our chances of taking some cosmological assumption for granted that is false and impedes the growth of knowledge. The hope is that as we increase our knowledge about the world we improve (lower level) cosmological assumptions implicit in our methods, and thus in turn improve our methods. As a result of improving our knowledge we improve our knowledge about how to improve knowledge. Science adapts its own nature to what it learns about the nature of the universe, thus increasing its capacity to make progress in knowledge about the world. This aim-oriented empiricist conception of science solves outstanding problems in the philosophy of science such as the problems of induction, simplicity and verisimilitude. (shrink)

Predictive processing theories are increasingly popular in philosophy of mind; such process theories often gain support from the Free Energy Principle —a normative principle for adaptive self-organized systems. Yet there is a current and much discussed debate about conflicting philosophical interpretations of FEP, e.g., representational versus non-representational. Here we argue that these different interpretations depend on implicit assumptions about what qualifies as representational. We deploy the Free Energy Principle instrumentally to distinguish four main notions of representation, which focus on (...) organizational, structural, content-related and functional aspects, respectively. The various ways that these different aspects matter in arriving at representational or non-representational interpretations of the Free Energy Principle are discussed. We also discuss how the Free Energy Principle may be seen as a unified view where terms that traditionally belong to different ontologies—e.g., notions of model and expectation versus notions of autopoiesis and synchronization—can be harmonized. However, rather than attempting to settle the representationalist versus non-representationalist debate and reveal something about what representations are simpliciter, this paper demonstrates how the Free Energy Principle may be used to reveal something about those partaking in the debate; namely, what our hidden assumptions about what representations are—assumptions that act as sometimes antithetical starting points in this persistent philosophical debate. (shrink)

Humans are neophile, curious, and explorative animals with impressive capabilities for creative problem-solving. I discuss some of the ultimate roots behind human creativity while reviewing two books on creativity and problem-solving. To E. O. Wilson, the driv­ing force behind creativity is our instinctive love of novelty, and creativity’s ultimate goal is “self-understanding.” I elaborate on and question this assumption. The theories of inclu­sive fitness and group selection are discussed, with Wilson in favor of the latter. Finally, the theory of (...) gene-culture coevolution is introduced as fundamental to the unity of science and the humanities and to closing the gap between these two cultures. Eagleman and Brandt’s volume is more of an entertaining history of design and human inventiveness than a study in creativity as such. We hear about the three main operations of creative process: bending, blending, and breaking, and these operations are the primary means by which all ideas evolve, according to the authors. (shrink)

I argue that what speakers mean or express can be determined by their implicit or unconscious states, rather than explicit or conscious states. Further, on this basis, I show that the sincerity conditions for utterances can also be fixed by implicit states. This is a surprising result which goes against common assumptions about speech acts and sincerity. Roughly, I argue that the result is implied by two plausible and independent theories of the metaphysics of speaker meaning and, further, (...) that this is a robust basis on which to make an inference, with a fair degree of confidence, about the relationship between expression and implicit attitudes. (shrink)

Implicit theories refer to assumptions people hold about different domains, also known as mindsets. There are two implicit theories on the malleability of one’s ability: entity theory and incremental theory. They constrain and regulate people’s understanding and responses to an individual’s behavior, leading to different social cognitive patterns and behavioral responses. Resilience is a positive adaptation in highly stressful situations that represents mechanisms for coping with and transcending difficult experiences, i.e., a person’s ability to successfully adapt to change, (...) resist the adverse effects of stressors, avoid significant dysfunction, and be chronically affected by considered a protective factor for mental health. Although previous studies showed that individuals’ implicit theories are associated with resilience, this relationship has received little attention in the nursing population. It is unclear which variables may contribute to explaining the relationship between implicit theories and resilience. Therefore, the current study aims to deeply explore the relationship between implicit theories and the resilience of Chinese nurses. In addition, we also seek to demonstrate the chain mediating effects of grit and meaning in life on this relationship. We surveyed 709 Chinese nurses through online questionnaires using the self-made demographic questionnaire, the Implicit Theories Scale, the Short Grit Scale, the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, and the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. After controlling for demographic variables such as age, gender, educational background, marital status, professional title, and working years, the results reveal positive associations between Chinese nurses’ implicit theories and their resilience, and grit and meaning in life play a partial mediating role in this relationship, respectively. Furthermore, grit and meaning in life play a chain mediating role between implicit theories and resilience. These findings contribute to understanding the psychological impact mechanism of implicit theories on nurses’ resilience and provide a theoretical basis for nursing managers to formulate strategies to improve nurses’ psychological resilience. (shrink)

Even though evidence underdetermines theory, often in science one theory only is regarded as acceptable in the light of the evidence. This suggests there are additional unacknowledged assumptions which constrain what theories are to be accepted. In the case of physics, these additional assumptions are metaphysical theses concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe. Rigour demands that these implicit assumptions be made explicit within science, so that they can be critically assessed and, we may hope improved. This leads (...) to a new conception of science, one which we need to adopt in order to solve the problem of induction. (shrink)

I sketch an interpretation of Tolstoy’s implicit moral theory on the basis of his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I suggest that Tolstoy is a theistic moral realist who believes that God’s will identifies the mind-independent truths of morality. He also thinks that, roughly, it suffices to heed natural moral emotions (like love and compassion) to know the right thing to do, that is, God’s will. In appraisal of Tolstoy’s interesting and original theory that I dub ‘theistic (...) populist sentimentalism’, I argue that it prima facie runs into a string of fallacies and undertakes dubious assumptions that render it open to question. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Evaluation of Implicit AnthropologiesJochen Fahrenberg (bio) and Marcus Cheetham (bio)Keywordsmind-body, philosophical assumptions, human natureThe three commentaries and the reviewer’s notes contain valuable reflections and expand on number of important points. There is general agreement that surprisingly little is known about psychologists’, psychotherapists’, clinicians’, and other professionals’ philosophical assumptions about human nature. It is conceivable that these implicit anthropologies represent a potential source of bias in research (...) and practice and that further research is therefore justified.Doctor Walach emphasizes the pluralism of world views, which is evident in the questionnaire response patterns. The findings contradict the assumption that monism, immanence, and a scientific worldview are predominant preconceptions. Instead, psychology students mostly favor ontological or methodological dualism, and con-firm that they have spiritual beliefs or indeed some belief in paranormal phenomena. From this, Dr. Walach extends his thought-provoking perspective to folk psychology, as opposed to mainstream psychology, and reflects on the influence of individual beliefs on scientific culture. It is especially from this perspective that the investigation of certain key concepts and belief systems should be given every encouragement.Doctors Wells and Rackley were particularly interested in the implicit anthropologies of clinicians. They are inclined to attribute individual differences in understanding and interaction with patients to “psychological” traits or to momentary experience rather than to philosophical beliefs. The latter view was supported by the majority of students in our investigation. With respect to psychotherapists and clinicians, our article contained only a short reference to the interviews conducted by Wider. The majority of the forty-two professionals taking part in this pilot study assumed that there may be such differential biases in their fields, but they conceded that the momentary clinical condition and pragmatic necessities would often override such biases. An empirical investigation to differentiate psychological, pragmatic–clinical, and philosophical factors and the associated bias would be an ambitious project; very careful interviews and perhaps participant observation would be necessary. But before undertaking such a study, further descriptive studies and the development of testable hypotheses are required.Doctor Brendel referred to the intricacies of the mind–body problem. We agree that many of the recent philosophical writings show nonreductive physicalism to be among the highly favored conceptions. (We do not know whether this discourse represents the majority opinion of philosophers, psychologists, clinicians, or even neuroscientists.) [End Page 213] The inclusion of this specific conception in the multiple-choice item list would require the inclusion of a specific vocabulary and some definitions that are controversial, even among the proponents of nonreductive physicalism. We decided to restrict the wide spectrum of concepts to five categories. Doctor Brendel goes on to voice explicit support for the conceptualization proposed by Horgan, who recommended a pragmatic approach and the use of double vocabularies. He suggests that context-related features in a given instance would suffice for selecting the most appropriate explanation. It is, however, conceivable that close examination of the decision process would reveal criteria containing or stemming from philosophical assumptions.Doctor Walach makes reference to the complementarity principle, which has a certain intellectual appeal when cross-category relationships are considered, and is not restricted to the domain of physics. Compared with a double-language dualism, the complementarity principle postulates that both frames of reference are fundamentally different in categories, exhaustive within their specific explanation scheme, but are essentially incomplete if, for example, brain and consciousness are viewed as a whole.Pertinent methodological aspects were already addressed in the article and endnote. However, the appropriateness of a questionnaire with which to assess philosophical standpoints will continue to be met with concern and require careful consideration. It is clear that there is no other practical method for gathering in a population like first-year students of psychology representative data about ontological beliefs, religious attitudes, or assumptions on human nature.Doctors Wells and Rackley noted discrepancies in the response to two items relating to spiritual existence after death and the cessation of consciousness with biological death. The two statements seem to be contradictory and the observed inconsistencies point to possible misunderstandings, response tendencies, context-dependent effects, or other shortcomings well-known in research using personality questionnaires. However, the assumed postmortal existence... (shrink)

The practice of burying objects with the dead is often claimed as some of the earliest evidence for religion, on the assumption that such “grave goods” were intended for the decedents’ use in the afterlife. However, this assumption is largely speculative, as the underlying motivations for grave‐good practices across time and place remain little understood. In the present work, we asked if explicit and implicit religious beliefs (particularly those concerning the continuity of personal consciousness after death) motivate (...) contemporary grave‐good practices. Across three studies, and comparing participants from the United States and NZ, we measured grave‐good deposition at actual or hypothetical funerals, finding that jewelry, photographs, and other items with sentimental, emotional, and relationship value were common. In addition, intuitive afterlife reasoning (as measured by people's attributions of mental states to the dead) motivated grave‐good decision‐making for about half (Study 2) or more (Study 3) people, including afterlife nonbelievers (“extinctivists”), while those who held explicit (i.e., stated) afterlife beliefs were more likely to participate in the practice. The decision to leave grave goods was also associated with magical contagion beliefs and a need for personal comfort, while other motivations, such as social signaling, were less common. Our results suggest that “afterlife use” is a common motivation for grave‐good practices, and that humans possess evolutionarily early intuitions about postdeath consciousness. (shrink)

A central theme in recent research on attitudes is the distinction between deliberate, "explicit" attitudes and automatic, "implicit" attitudes. The present article provides an integrative review of the available evidence on implicit and explicit attitude change that is guided by a distinction between associative and propositional processes. Whereas associative processes are characterized by mere activation independent of subjective truth or falsity, propositional reasoning is concerned with the validation of evaluations and beliefs. The proposed associative-propositional evaluation model makes specific (...) assumptions about the mutual interplay of the 2 processes, implying several mechanisms that lead to symmetric or asymmetric changes in implicit and explicit attitudes. The model integrates a broad range of empirical evidence and implies several new predictions for implicit and explicit attitude change. (shrink)

Predictive processing theories are increasingly popular in philosophy of mind; such process theories often gain support from the Free Energy Principle (FEP)—a nor- mative principle for adaptive self-organized systems. Yet there is a current and much discussed debate about conflicting philosophical interpretations of FEP, e.g., repre- sentational versus non-representational. Here we argue that these different interpre- tations depend on implicit assumptions about what qualifies (or fails to qualify) as representational. We deploy the Free Energy Principle (FEP) instrumentally to dis- (...) tinguish four main notions of representation, which focus on organizational, struc- tural, content-related and functional aspects, respectively. The various ways that these different aspects matter in arriving at representational or non-representational interpretations of the Free Energy Principle are discussed. We also discuss how the Free Energy Principle may be seen as a unified view where terms that tradition- ally belong to different ontologies—e.g., notions of model and expectation versus notions of autopoiesis and synchronization—can be harmonized. However, rather than attempting to settle the representationalist versus non-representationalist debate and reveal something about what representations are simpliciter, this paper demon- strates how the Free Energy Principle may be used to reveal something about those partaking in the debate; namely, what our hidden assumptions about what represen- tations are—assumptions that act as sometimes antithetical starting points in this persistent philosophical debate. (shrink)

One major assumption in the climate change debate is that because respondents report positive attitudes to the environment and to low carbon lifestyles they will subsequently engage in environmentally friendly/low carbon behaviors when given the right guidance or information. Many governmental agencies have based their climate change strategy on this basic assumption, despite some anxiety about the value-action gap in psychology more generally. Here we test this assumption. We investigated the relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes (...) to carbon footprint, and both self-reports of environmental behavior and low carbon behavioral choices. We found that self-reported attitudes to carbon footprint were significantly associated only with self-reported environmental and self-reported low-carbon behaviors. They were not significantly associated with the choice of low carbon alternatives in a simulated shopping task. Given that the vast majority of studies on attitudes and behavior in the environmental domain use self-report measures of behavior, this may mean that we are generating research findings that could be making policy makers overly complacent about our readiness for actual behavior change. Implicit attitudes were not significantly associated with either measure in terms of group comparisons, but those with a strong positive implicit attitude towards low carbon did choose more low carbon items, but only under time pressure. The opposite trend was found for explicit attitudes – this increased only when participants were not under time pressure. These results suggest that Kahneman’s hypothesis about contrasting systems of human cognition might be highly relevant to the domain of climate change and behavioral adaptation. (shrink)

The moral significance of blockchain technologies is a highly debated and polarised topic, ranging from accusations that cryptocurrencies are tools serving only nefarious purposes such as cybercrime and money laundering, to the assessment of blockchain technology as an enabler for revolutionary positive social transformations of all kinds. Such technological determinism, however, hardly provides insights of sufficient depth on the moral significance of blockchain technology. This thesis argues rather, that very much like the cryptographic tools before them, blockchains develop in a (...) constant feedback loop. Blockchain applications are driven by values, normative assumptions, and personal commitments of researchers, which shape moral effects of technology. At the same time these very assumption are often embedded in preexisting moral conception and ethical theories, implicitly or explicitly accepted by blockchain developers. And just as the introduction of one flawed element in the cryptographic application can have mass scale effects, the introduction of flawed normative assumptions can have far reaching consequences in blockchain applications. This thesis argues that we should not take normative assumptions present in blockchain applications as given. Just like the open-source code is developed through the public revision and scrutiny, we should aim to make normative assumptions transparent and be ready to revise them in case we find some bugs. How can we qualify claims that blockchain technologies enable new types of institutions? Can blockchain technologies eliminate trust in complex socio-technical systems? What does individual sovereignty mean in the context of private data control and privacy? Whether property in private data enabled by blockchain applications can solve moral issues of privacy and commercial surveillance? Answers to these and other questions map some of the key normative assumptions present in the current blockchain applications and serve as a contribution to the open-source project of the future society built on the fundamental human values. (shrink)

Why is common priors are implicit or explicit in the vast majority of the differential information literature in economics and game theory? Why has the economic community been unwilling, in practice, to accept and actually use the idea of truly personal probabilities in much the same way that it did accept the idea of personal utility functions? After all, in, both the utilities and probabilities are derived separately for each decision maker. Why were the utilities accepted as personal, and (...) the probabilities not? (shrink)

Implicit and explicit memory tasks are interpreted within a traditional memory theory that distinguishes associations between different classes of memory units . Associations from specific sensory features to logogens are strengthened by perceptual experiences, leading to specific perceptual priming. Associations among concepts are strengthened by use, leading to specific conceptual priming. Activating associations from concepts to logogens leads to semantic and associative priming. Item presentation also establishes a new association from it to a representation of the personal context, comprising (...) an “episodic memory.” Such contextual associations play a major role in explicit memory tasks such as recall or recognition. A critical assumption of the theory is that presentation of a given item strengthens its sensory and contextual associations independently; this permits the theory to explain various dissociations of implicit and explicit memory measures. Furthermore, by assuming that brain-injured patients with global amnesia have a selective deficit in establishing novel associations to the context, the theory can explain their deficits in explicit memory along side their intact implicit memory. (shrink)

Holding content explicitly requires a form of self knowledge. But what does the relevant self knowledge look like? Using theory of mind as an example, this paper argues that the correct answer to this question will have to take into account the crucial role of language based deliberation, but warns against the standard assumption that explicitness is necessary for ascribing awareness. It argues in line with Bayne that intentional action is at least an equally valid criterion for awareness. This (...) leads to a distinction between different levels of implicitness. Postulating these different levels, it is argued, allows us to make better sense of the empirical literature on early false belief task abilities. (shrink)

This paper is a reflection on an experiment undertaken during a Medical Ethics lecture delivered to a group of medical students in the UK as part of a project for a programme in Higher Education Practice. The aim of the project, following Paulo Freire’s idea of ‘liberating education,’ was to identify students’ ethical assumptions and biases in relation to a problem of resource allocation in healthcare, and their role in decision-making. The experiment showed the importance placed by medical students on (...) disputed values such as free will, desert, social worth and body image, and highlighted the difficulty and importance of bringing students’ process of moral decision-making to awareness in ethics teaching, in order to a) decrease the role of implicit bias in students’ decision making and b) allow students to decide whether they in fact agree with assumed values and ethical frameworks that influence their thinking. (shrink)

This article reviews recent work aimed at developing a new framework, based on signal detection theory, for understanding the relationship between explicit (e.g., recognition) and implicit (e.g., priming) memory. Within this framework, different assumptions about sources of memorial evidence can be framed. Application to experimental results provides robust evidence for a single-system model in preference to multiple-systems models. This evidence comes from several sources including studies of the effects of amnesia and ageing on explicit and implicit memory. The (...) framework allows a range of concepts in current memory research, such as familiarity, recollection, fluency, and source memory, to be linked to implicit memory. More generally, this work emphasizes the value of modern computational modelling techniques in the study of learning and memory. (shrink)

The literature on Hinduism and the environment is vast, and growing quickly. It has benefitted greatly from the work of scholars in a wide range of disciplines, such as religious studies, Asian studies, history, anthropology, political science, and so on. At the same time, much of this work fails to define key terms and make fundamental assumptions explicit. Consequently, it is at least initially difficult to engage with it philosophically. In the first section of this paper, I clarify a central, (...) implicit assumption that many of the authors working in this area share—namely, the assumption that a plausible environmental ethic must attribute direct moral standing to individual, living, non-human entities in nature, such as animals and plants. In the second section, I offer a preliminary defense of this assumption. In the third section, I respond to objections, and conclude that the argument is at least initially convincing. (shrink)

In this article, we describe four theoretical and methodological problems that have impeded implicit attitude research and the popular understanding of its findings. The problems all revolve around assumptions made about the relationships among measures, constructs, cognitive processes, and features of processing. These assumptions have confused our understandings of exactly what we are measuring, the processes that produce implicit evaluations, the meaning of differences in implicit evaluations across people and contexts, the meaning of changes in implicit (...) evaluations in response to intervention, and how implicit evaluations predict behavior. We describe formal modeling as one means to address these problems, and provide illustrative examples. Clarifying these issues has important implications for our understanding of who has particular implicit evaluations and why, when those evaluations are likely to be particularly problematic, how we might best try to change them, and what interventions are best suited to minimize the effects of implicit evaluations on behavior. (shrink)