Cushman argues that “rationalization is rational.” We show that there is reasonable empirical clinical and forensic psychological evidence to support viewing rationalization as a quite suboptimal defense mechanism. Rationalization has been found to be associated not only with poorer emotional development, but also with a broad range of antisocial behavior, including not only shoplifting, but also pedophilia and murder.

When parties attempt to persuade their opponents of the tenability of a certain standpoint using reasons, they will often find that the circumstances of the dialogue hinder their chances of resolution. Power imbalances, cognitive biases, lack of time or hidden interests are some of the circumstances they need to face. I will label these circumstances as _suboptimal settings for argumentation_. According to the pragma-dialectical tradition, higher-order conditions for critical discussion are unfulfilled in these cases (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jacobs, & Jackson, (...) 1993). The main question of this paper is the following: what is the normative standard that parties in a discussion need to follow to arrive at a resolution within such circumstances? I will defend a middle-ground solution between two extreme ones. The first extreme position, the _anything-goes policy_, claims that, given that the conditions for a reasonable exchange of reasons are not satisfied, the dialogue stands outside the domain of reason, so anything goes for the parties. The second extreme position, the _business as usual policy_, claims that, since critical discussion is a normative model, the same rules should apply in suboptimal settings. Finally, the _supernormal policy_ that I defend claims that we need a more general and comprehensive norm that I refer to as a _supernorm_ to evaluate these cases. The supernormal policy divides argumentation into two stages: preparation and resolution. In the preparation stage, the parties attempt to restore or compensate for the suboptimality of the setting, while in the resolution stage, they attempt to resolve their disagreement. I contend that the moves of the preparation stage should be evaluated by using the supernorm instead of by the rules for critical discussion (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004 ). At this point, the paper considers theoretical insights from Gilbert ( 1995, 1997, 2002 ) and Jacobs ( 2000, 2006 ) to understand what this entails. (shrink)

The fate of optimality modeling is typically linked to that of adaptationism: the two are thought to stand or fall together (Gould and Lewontin, Proc Relig Soc Lond 205:581–598, 1979; Orzack and Sober, Am Nat 143(3):361–380, 1994). I argue here that this is mistaken. The debate over adaptationism has tended to focus on one particular use of optimality models, which I refer to here as their strong use. The strong use of an optimality model involves the claim that selection is (...) the only important influence on the evolutionary outcome in question and is thus linked to adaptationism. However, biologists seldom intend this strong use of optimality models. One common alternative that I term the weak use simply involves the claim that an optimality model accurately represents the role of selection in bringing about the outcome. This and other weaker uses of optimality models insulate the optimality approach from criticisms of adaptationism, and they account for the prominence of optimality modeling (broadly construed) in population biology. The centrality of these uses of optimality models ensures a continuing role for the optimality approach, regardless of the fate of adaptationism. (shrink)

We propose that a direct analogy can be made between optimal behaviour in animals and rational behaviour in humans, and that lessons learned by the study of the former can be applied to the latter. Furthermore, we suggest that, to understand human decisions, rationality must be considered within an evolutionary framework.

Critics have persistently charged that indirect consequentialism, despite the best efforts of its defenders, ultimately fails to appropriately account for friendship in the face of the alienation generated by the harsh demands of consequentialism. Robert F. Card has recently alleged that the dispositional emphasis of indirect consequentialism renders its defender incapable of rejecting problematic friendships that are seriously suboptimal. I argue that Card's criticism not only fails to undermine indirect consequentialism, but in fact provides considerations that both help us to (...) better understand the theory and ultimately weigh in favor of it over Card's own brand of sophisticated consequentialism. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of social categories on the perceived trade-off between a relatively bad but equal distribution of resources between two parties and a profit maximizing yet unequal one. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people prefer to maximize profits when interacting within their social category, but chose not to maximize individual and joint profits when interacting across social categories. Study 3 demonstrated that outside observers, who were not members of the focal social categories, also were less likely (...) to maximize profits when resources were distributed across social category lines. Study 4 showed that the transaction utility of maximizing profits required greater compensation when resources were distributed across, in contrast to within social categories. We discuss the ethical implications of these decision making biases in the context of organizations. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of social categories on the perceived trade-off between a relatively bad but equal distribution of resources between two parties and a profit maximizing yet unequal one. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people prefer to maximize profits when interacting within their social category, but chose not to maximize individual and joint profits when interacting across social categories. Study 3 demonstrated that outside observers, who were not members of the focal social categories, also were less likely (...) to maximize profits when resources were distributed across social category lines. Study 4 showed that the transaction utility of maximizing profits required greater compensation when resources were distributed across, in contrast to within social categories. We discuss the ethical implications of these decision making biases in the context of organizations. (shrink)

The referral is the key source of information that enables radiologists and radiographers to provide quality services. However, the frequency of suboptimal referrals is widely reported. This research reviews the literature to illuminate the challenges suboptimal referrals present to the delivery of care in radiology departments. The concept of suboptimal referral includes information, that is; missing, insufficient, inconsistent, misleading, hard to interpret or wrong. The research uses the four ethical principles ofnon-maleficence, beneficence, AutonomyandJusticeas an analytic framework.Suboptimal referrals can causeharmby hindering (...) safe contrast-media administration, proper radiation protection by justification of procedures, and compassionate patient care. Suboptimal referrals also hinder promoting patientbenefitsfrom the correct choice of imaging modality and protocol, an optimal performed examination, and an accurate radiology report. Additionally, patientautonomyis compromised from the lack of information needed to facilitate benefit–risk communication. Finally, suboptimal referrals challengejusticebased on lack of reasonable patient prioritising and the unfairness caused by unnecessary examinations.These findings illuminate how suboptimal referrals can inhibit good health and well-being for patients in relation to safety, missed opportunities, patient anxiety and dissatisfaction. The ethical challenges identified calls for solutions. Referral-decision support tools and artificial intelligence may improve referral quality, when implemented. Strategies addressing efforts of radiology professionals are inevitable, including gatekeeping, shared decision-making and inter-professional communication; thereby raising awareness of the importance of good referral quality and promoting commitment to ethical professional conduct. (shrink)

Background Doctors sometimes encounter parents who object to prescribed treatment for their children, and request suboptimal substitutes be administered instead. Previous studies have focused on parental refusal of treatment and when this should be permitted, but the ethics of requests for suboptimal treatment has not been explored. Methods The paper consists of two parts: an empirical analysis and an ethical analysis. We performed an online survey with a sample of the general public to assess respondents’ thresholds for acceptable harm and (...) expense resulting from parental choice, and the role that religion played in their judgement. We also identified and applied existing ethical frameworks to the case described in the survey to compare theoretical and empirical results. Results Two hundred and forty-two Mechanical Turk workers took our survey and there were 178 valid responses. Respondents’ agreement to provide treatment decreased as the risk or cost of the requested substitute increased. More than 50% of participants were prepared to provide treatment that would involve a small absolute increased risk of death for the child and a cost increase of US$<500, respectively. Religiously motivated requests were significantly more likely to be allowed. Existing ethical frameworks largely yielded ambiguous results for the case. There were clear inconsistencies between the theoretical and empirical results. Conclusion Drawing on both survey results and ethical analysis, we propose a potential model and thresholds for deciding about the permissibility of suboptimal treatment requests. (shrink)

Framing effects attributed to “quasi-cyclical” irrational complex human preferences are ubiquitous biases resulting from simpler mechanisms that can be found in other animals. Examples of such framing effects vary from simple learning contexts, to an analog of human gambling behavior, to the value added to a reinforcer by the effort that went into obtaining it.

Several states, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and France, have recently engaged in the high-profile supporting of foreign rebel fighters, providing them with training, weapons, and financial resources. Justifications for providing this assistance usually invoke, at least in part, our obligations to prevent harm to the citizens of oppressive and violent regimes. Providing such assistance is often presented as a morally safe ‘middle ground’ between doing nothing and putting one’s own troops at risk. Yet this assistance typically enables (...) rebels to cause unjust harms, since armed uprisings almost invariably cause harm to innocent people. I argue that enabling these unjust harms can render the provision of assistance unjustified. When a state could prevent at least as much harm by using its resources in other ways, such as preventing disease, without thereby causing comparable unjust harm and without incurring a (significantly greater) supererogatory cost, the state acts unjustifiably if it nonetheless funds the rebellion. When assistors unjustifiably enable unjust harms, they are morally liable to bear costs for the sake of people who suffer those harms. This is true even if the rebels act justifiably in directly inflicting those harms. (shrink)

This paper brings the intellectual tools of cognitive science to bear on resolving the “paradox of the active user” [Interfacing Thought: Cognitive Aspects of Human–Computer Interaction, Cambridge, MIT Press, MA, USA]—the persistent use of inefficient procedures in interactive tasks by experienced or even expert users when demonstrably more efficient procedures exist. The goal of this paper is to understand the roots of this paradox by finding regularities in these inefficient procedures. We examine three very different data sets. For each data (...) set, we first satisfy ourselves that the preferred procedures used by some subjects are indeed less efficient than the recommended procedures. We then amass evidence, for each set, and conclude that when a preferred procedure is used instead of a more efficient, recommended procedure, the preferred procedure tends to have two major characteristics: (1) the preferred procedure is a well‐practiced, generic procedure that is applicable either within the same task environment in different contexts or across different task environments, and (2) the preferred procedure is composed of interactive components that bring fast, incremental feedback on the external problem states. The support amassed for these characteristics leads to a new understanding of the paradox. In interactive tasks, people are biased towards the use of general procedures that start with interactive actions. These actions require much less cognitive effort as each action results in an immediate change to the external display that, in turn, cues the next action. Unfortunately for the users, the bias to use interactive unit tasks leads to a path that requires more effort in the long run. Our data suggest that interactive behavior is composed of a series of distributed choices; that is, people seldom make a once‐and‐for‐all decision on procedures. This series of biased selection of interactive unit tasks often leads to a stable suboptimal level of performance. (shrink)

This paper seeks to demonstrate why the existence of suboptimal design in biology does not offer a reason for Christians to reject the biological case for Intelligent Design. In it, I argue that Christians who critique ID based upon alleged deficiencies within biology fail to imagine the various ways in which a divine designer might bring about certain biological effects. That is, such critics presumably envision a simplistic notion of divine causation—where God either directly brings about every biological effect, or (...) is not involved in any biological effect. Such either or thinking, I maintain, is theologically unnecessary. (shrink)

Vaccination policy is an ethically challenging domain of public policy. It is a matter of collective importance that reaches into the most private sphere of citizens and unavoidably conflicts with individual-based ethics. Policy makers need to walk a tight rope in order to complement utilitarian public health values with individual autonomy rights, protection of privacy, non-discrimination and protection of the worst-off. Whether vaccination is voluntary or compulsory, universal or targeted, every option faces complex ethical hurdles because of the interdependence of (...) humans in infectious disease matters. In this article, we explore the following three policy questions. (i) Ethically, which policy measures should be addressed when vaccination coverage is insufficient in a population? Information campaigns, legal compulsion, or the use of financial incentives can all be effective, but also controversial policy options. (ii) Is it ethical to target vaccination programs at certain risk-groups? If such measures are necessary, we argue that policymakers will often have to decide which is more important to uphold: non-discrimination or the protection of privacy. And (iii), what is the ethical significance of adverse herd immunity effects? Some vaccination programs will improve average population health, but will at the same time increase the risk of severe morbidity and mortality for individuals in the worst-off groups of society. (shrink)

Patient-reported outcomes are frequently used for medical decision making, at the levels of both individual patient care and healthcare policy. Evidence increasingly shows that PROs may be influenced by patients’ response shifts and dispositions. We identify how response shifts and dispositions may influence medical decisions on both the levels of individual patient care and health policy. We provide examples of these influences and analyse the consequences from the perspectives of ethical principles and theories of just distribution. If influences of response (...) shift and disposition on PROs and consequently medical decision making are not considered, patients may not receive optimal treatment and health insurance packages may include treatments that are not the most effective or cost-effective. We call on healthcare practitioners, researchers, policy makers, health insurers, and other stakeholders to critically reflect on why and how such patient reports are used. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 9, Page 6-7, September 2012.

Children acquiring languages with noun classes have ample statistical information available that characterizes the distribution of nouns into these classes, but their use of this information to classify novel nouns differs from the predictions made by an optimal Bayesian classifier. We use rational analysis to investigate the hypothesis that children are classifying nouns optimally with respect to a distribution that does not match the surface distribution of statistical features in their input. We propose three ways in which children's apparent statistical (...) insensitivity might arise, and find that all three provide ways to account for the difference between children's behavior and the optimal classifier. A fourth model combines two of these proposals and finds that children's insensitivity is best modeled as a bias to ignore certain features during classification, rather than an inability to encode those features during learning. These results provide insight into children's developing knowledge of noun classes and highlight the complex ways in which statistical information from the input interacts with children's learning processes. (shrink)

Previous research showed that animals adopt different foraging strategies in different environment settings. However, research on whether humans adapt their foraging strategies to the foraging environment has shown little evidence of a change in strategies. This study aims to investigate whether humans will adapt their foraging strategies when performance differences between strategies are large and why participants may fixate on a single strategy. We conducted two foraging experiments and identified the strategies used by the participants. Most participants used the Give-Up (...) Time (GUT) strategy regardless of the environment they encountered. GUT was used even in environments where other strategies such as the Fixed-Time strategy or the Fixed-Number strategy performed better. Using computer simulations, we further examined the conditions under which the GUT strategy will perform well compared to the other strategies. We found that even though the GUT strategy is not always the best strategy, it performs consistently on a satisfactory level and had an advantage when variance in the quality of patches was introduced. The consistently good performance of the GUT strategy could thus explain participants’ lack of strategy switching. (shrink)

A remarkable but little studied aspect of current evolutionary theory is the use by many biologists and philosophers of theological arguments for evolution. These can be classed under two heads: imperfection arguments, in which some organic design is held to be inconsistent with God's perfection and wisdom, and homology arguments, in which some pattern of similarity is held to be inconsistent with God's freedom as an artificer. Evolutionists have long contended that the organic world falls short of what one might (...) expect from an omnipotent and benevolent creator. Yet many of the same scientists who argue theologically for evolution are committed to the philosophical doctrine of methodological naturalism, which maintains that theology has no place in science. Furthermore, the arguments themselves are problematical, employing concepts that cannot perform the work required of them, or resting on unsupported conjectures about suboptimality. Evolutionary theorists should reconsider both the arguments and the influence of Darwinian theological metaphysics on their understanding of evolution. (shrink)

A general practice of precedent is one that can plausibly apply to any well-functioning legal system. This practice, which can be grounded in the Rule of Law, needs to make it the case that courts always have a legal reason for following relevant precedent – even if the precedent is morally suboptimal, so long as it is not evil. Without this reason, a precedent may be treated as having no legal influence for the later court (‘the Null Model’), and this (...) runs counter to the Rule of Law. On top of this reason, courts may have a general legal obligation to follow precedent – stare decisis – but this risks entrenching morally bad decisions in the law. We need, therefore, a type of reason that lies in between the Null Model and stare decisis as a necessary step for any future justification of stare decisis. But how can courts have a legal reason for following morally suboptimal precedent? They can have that reason, I argue, in virtue of a specific judicial duty, positively laid down in a legal source, which aims to advance the Rule of Law in an institutionalised way. In this article, I aim to explain and justify that judicial duty. (shrink)

Suboptimality of decision making needs no explanation. High level accounts of suboptimality in diverse tasks cannot add up to a mechanistic theory of perceptual decision making. Mental processes operate on the contents of information brought by the experimenter and the participant to the task, not on the amount of information in the stimuli without regard to physical and social context.

Resource rationality may explain suboptimal patterns of reasoning; but what of “anti-Bayesian” effects where the mind updates in a direction opposite the one it should? We present two phenomena — belief polarization and the size-weight illusion — that are not obviously explained by performance- or resource-based constraints, nor by the authors’ brief discussion of reference repulsion. Can resource rationality accommodate them?