Many hold that (1) consciousness poses a uniquely hard problem. Why is this so? Chalmers considers 12 main answers in 'The Meta-Problem of Consciousness'. This paper focuses on number 11, and is principally addressed to those who endorse (1) because they think that (2) consciousness can't possibly be physical. It argues that to hold (2) is to make the mistake of underestimating the physical, and that almost all who make this mistake do so because they think they know more about (...) the physical than they do. When we see things right, we see that there is nothing in physics nor in our everyday experience of the physical that gives us any good reason to hold (2). This leaves us free to embrace the overwhelmingly strong reasons for accepting that (3) consciousness is wholly physical. The correct general response is the same as the response to wave-particle duality: acceptance without expectation of understanding. (shrink)

Galen Strawson has contrasting attitudes to consciousness and free will. In the case of the former, he says it is a fundamental element of nature whose denial is the “greatest woo-woo of the human mind.” In the case of the latter, by contrast, he says it is not merely non-existent but “provably impossible.” Why the difference? This paper suggests this distinctive pattern of positions is generated by underestimating the world (to adapt a phrase Strawson uses himself in another context). If (...) you underestimate the world, and correlatively overestimate your level of understanding of the world, it is natural to think both that consciousness is fundamental, and that free will is non-existent. If you don’t underestimate the world, on the other hand, a more uniform and attractive treatment of these topics becomes available. (shrink)

In two studies, we explored whether susceptibility to false memories and the underestimation of prior memories tap overlapping memory phenomena. Study 1 investigated this issue by administering the Deese/Roediger–McDermott task and the forgot-it-all-along task to an undergraduate sample . It was furthermore explored how performances on these tasks correlate with clinically relevant traits such as fantasy proneness, dissociative experiences, and cognitive efficiency. Results show that FIA and DRM performances are relatively independent from each other, suggesting that these measures empirically (...) apparently refer to separate dimensions. However, they do not seem to define different profiles in terms of dissociation, fantasy proneness, and cognitive efficiency. Study 2 replicated the finding of relative independence between false memory propensity and the underestimation of prior memories in people with a history of childhood sexual abuse. (shrink)

Studying consciousness requires contrasting conscious and unconscious perception. While many studies have reported unconscious perceptual effects, recent work has questioned whether such effects are genuinely unconscious, or whether they are due to weak conscious perception. Some philosophers and psychologists have reacted by denying that there is such a thing as unconscious perception, or by holding that unconscious perception has been previously overestimated. This article has two parts. In the first part, I argue that the most significant attack on unconscious perception (...) commits the criterion content fallacy: the fallacy of interpreting evidence that observers were conscious of something as evidence that they were conscious of the task-relevant features of the stimuli. In the second part, I contend that the criterion content fallacy is prevalent in consciousness research. For this reason, I hold that if unconscious perception exists, scientists studying consciousness could routinely underestimate it. I conclude with methodological recommendations for moving the debate forward. (shrink)

Human beings are social animals. A solitary life would be horrible for most of us. What makes life worthwhile is being with others and engaging in shared projects with them. To do justice to these facts, philosophers need to pay more attention to the first-person plural, we/us, and to rethink their accounts of value and virtue.

Instead of commenting directly on Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution, I provide some remarks from an interdisciplinary view. Language theory is examined from the perspective of the theory of complex systems. The gestural-vocal dichotomy, network theory, evolutionary mechanisms/algorithms, chaos theory, and constructive approach are briefly mentioned.

Living donor kidney transplantation has increased significantly in the past 10 years. Currently it accounts for 41% of all kidney transplants in the USA.1 While the percentage is lower in the United Kingdom and other European countries, the number of living compared with cadaveric kidney donors will probably continue to increase globally. Mortality associated with surgery on live donors is low, thanks largely to the success of laparoscopic nephrectomy. Kidney transplantation from a living donor is preferable to that from a (...) cadaveric, or deceased, donor because of its superior graft and patient survival outcomes. It also preempts the need for or reduces the duration of dialysis for individuals with end-stage renal disease and therefore greatly improves their quality of life.Some who donate kidneys to anonymous recipients are motivated by altruism, with no direct benefit and only an indirect psychological benefit as a consequence of donating. Those who donate may be motivated by prudential reasons involving shared interests, or by a sense of obligation grounded in emotional relations. This includes donations between spouses, siblings, parents and children and may also include donations between intimate friends. Others may be motivated to donate by the prospect of financial gain. In a recent article on kidney markets, The Economist claimed that those who donate one of their healthy kidneys do so at “very little risk to their health”.2 Presumably, this provides support for these markets. In 2004, Zell Kravinsky, an American in his early 40s, gave away one of his healthy kidneys to a stranger as part of a utilitarian obligation to help other people and maximise the good by saving or improving the quality of their lives.3 He estimated that this entailed a statistically insignificant risk to his health. In a lecture to an ethics class at …. (shrink)

Genetic and environmental factors leading to Alzheimer's disease (AD) converge in a pathogenic pathway that leads to the accumulation of mis‐folded amyloid peptide (Aβ) in the brain. Removal of Aβ from the brain has thus been the focus of academic and industrial research in the last decade. The concept of immunization therapy could be proven in animal models mimicking amyloid pathology but a multicenter clinical trial in which AD patients were vaccinated with aggregated Aβ has resulted in somewhat unanticipated and (...) partially conflicting results. The occurrence of meningoencephalitis in 6% of vaccinated individuals forced the discontinuation of the clinical study, preventing the generation of sufficient data for an unequivocal statement about the effectiveness of such a therapy approach. This study, however, clearly showed that vaccination induced the production of antibodies against Aβ in some immunized patients. Moreover, circulating anti‐Aβ antibodies are found in healthy humans suggesting a protective role of such physiological antibodies. Nonetheless, the physiological role of the immune system in preventing AD is not fully understood. This article summarizes crucial animal and clinical data underscoring the potential of the immune system for AD treatment. BioEssays 29:927–932, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Many fields of study have shown that group discussion generally improves reasoning performance for a wide range of tasks. This article shows that most of the population, including specialists, does not expect group discussion to be as beneficial as it is. Six studies asked participants to solve a standard reasoning problem—the Wason selection task—and to estimate the performance of individuals working alone and in groups. We tested samples of U.S., Indian, and Japanese participants, European managers, and psychologists of reasoning. Every (...) sample underestimated the improvement yielded by group discussion. They did so even after they had been explained the correct answer, or after they had had to solve the problem in groups. These mistaken intuitions could prevent individuals from making the best of institutions that rely on group discussion, from collaborative learning and work teams to deliberative assemblies. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that sensory exploitation, a model from sexual selection theory, deserves more attention in evolutionary thinking about art than it has up until now. We base our argument on the observation that in the past sensory exploitation may have been underestimated in sexual selection theory but that it is now winning field. Likewise, we expect sensory exploitation can play a more substantial role in modeling the evolution of art behavior. Darwin's theory of sexual selection provides a (...) mechanistic basis to explain the evolution of male display traits. This mechanistic approach has proven useful to developing hypotheses about the evolution of human art. Both Boyd and Richerson (1985) and Miller (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001) have applied an indirect-benefit model from sexual selection to the evolution of art behavior. We argue that the mechanistic possibilities sensory exploitation has to offer as a model have remained underexplored so far, so we propose a concept based upon it. From the sensory exploitation perspective it follows that exaptive exploitation of psychosensory biases is a primary force in the evolution of art production (notice that the use of a model from sexual selection does not imply art evolved as a sexual display - we only use it for its mechanism) and that the indirect-benefit model only provides secondary forces. Thus, sensory exploitation may operate alone under some conditions but usually secondary processes as a result of indirect benefits are expected to kick in. The concept of sensory exploitation will need to play a central role in articulating all of the existing hypotheses about art. (shrink)

New technologies create new complexities. Since non-invasive prenatal tests (NIPTs) were first introduced, keeping pace with complexity constitutes an ongoing task for medical societies, politics, and practice. NIPTs analyse the chromosomes of the fetus from a small blood sample. Initially, NIPTs were targeted at detecting trisomy 21 (Down syndrome): meanwhile there are sequencing techniques capable of analysing the entire genome of the unborn child. These yield findings of unclear relevance for the child’s future life, resulting in new responsibility structures and (...) dilemmas for the parents-to-be.The industry’s marketing strategies overemphasize the benefits of the tests while disregarding their consequences. This paper chooses the opposite path: starting with the underestimated consequences, it focuses on adverse developments and downsides. Disparities, paradoxes, and risks associated with NIPTs are illustrated, ethical conflicts described. Indications that new technologies developed to solve problems create new ones are examined. In the sense of critical thinking, seemingly robust knowledge is scrutinized for uncertainties and ambiguities. It analyses how the interplay between genetic knowledge and social discourse results in new dimensions of responsibility not only for parents-to-be, but also for decision-makers, authorities, and professional societies, illustrated by a review of different national policies and implementation programmes. As shown by the new NIPT policy in Norway, the consequences can be startling. Finally, a lawsuit in the United States illustrates how an agency can risk forfeiting its legitimation in connection with the inaccuracy of NIPTs. (shrink)

This article discusses the function, development and maintenance of meaning and the importance of meaning-making from different perspectives, as it is based on a collaboration between professionals from health science and psychology. The aim is to discuss how meaning-making processes can be employed in the health context to enhance individuals’ well-being. Starting point is a description of the common basis of the understanding of meaning-making. Afterwards brief examples from the different professional areas will show how meaning-making can improve health care (...) practice. We will focus on the processual nature of meaning-making, its existential layers, as well as the ways in which meaning-making is at play in everyday activities and limit situations, such as illness or suicidality. (shrink)

“Anchoring” is a tactic used to manipulate negotiation outcomes. It exploits the fact that people base their estimates of unknown quantities on initial values. If they are given these initial values, their estimations are influened by them. We will address whether there is a rational justification for people to be manipulated by anchoring. We will also look at how to recognize in a negotiation situation whether the anchor effect is being used against you, how to use the anchor effect to (...) your benefit, or at least how to defuse it if it is being used against you. (shrink)

The problem with elaborations of attachment theory is attachment theory itself. How would a mind that works the way the theory posits have increased its owner's fitness in hunter-gatherer times? The child's mind is more capacious and discerning than attachment theorists give it credit for. Early-appearing, long-lasting personality characteristics, often mistaken for the lingering effects of early experiences, are more likely due to genetic influences on personality.

Using qualitative data, this article investigates women’s experiences in fantasy sports, a context that offers the potential for transformations in the gendered order of traditionally masculinized athletic environments by blurring the distinctions between real and virtual, combining active production and passive consumption, and allowing men and women to play side-by-side. We find, however, women often describe fantasy sports as a male/masculine space in which they are highly visible and have their ability to compete like men questioned, largely because of gendered (...) assumptions regarding sports knowledge. Women’s attitudes and behaviors frequently reproduce traditional gender dynamics, although women also engage in behaviors and assert definitions of themselves that are potentially transformative—implicitly and explicitly pushing the boundaries of what females are expected to be and accomplish in sport. Often, however, they simultaneously reproduce and resist men’s dominance and women’s marginalization, exercising “mediated agency” by using men to improve their fantasy sports experience and play or “conflicted agency” by reinforcing or accepting gender stereotypes about women while using those stereotypes to their advantage or positioning themselves as atypical women to whom the stereotypes do not apply. (shrink)

What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? It is widely accepted that there are various factors which strongly influence our moral judgments, such as the agent’s intentions, the consequences of the action, the causal involvement of the agent, and the agent’s freedom and ability to do otherwise. In this paper, we argue that this picture is incomplete: We argue that social roles are an additional key factor that is radically underestimated in the extant literature. We (...) will present an experiment to support this claim. (shrink)

Evidence from many different paradigms (e.g. change blindness, inattentional blindness, transsaccadic integration) indicate that observers are often very poor at reporting changes to their visual environment. Such evidence has been used to suggest that the spatio-temporal coherence needed to represent change can only occur in the presence of focused attention. In four experiments we use modified change blindness tasks to demonstrate (a) that sensitivity to change does occur in the absence of awareness, and (b) this sensitivity does not rely on (...) the redeploy- ment of attention. We discuss these results in relation to theories of scene percep- tion, and propose a reinterpretatio n of the role of attention in representing change. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell in his essay On Denoting [1905] presented a theory of description developed in response to the one proposed by Gottlob Frege in his paper Über Sinn und Bedeutung [1892]. The aim of our work will be to show that Russell underestimated Frege three times over in presenting the latter’s work: in relation to the Gray’s Elegy argument, to the Ferdinand argument, and to puzzles discussed by Russell. First, we will discuss two claims of Russell’s which do not do (...) justice to Frege: that we speak of a sense by means of quotation marks, and that all Frege does to cope with phrases that might denote nothing is define an arbitrary object as their reference. Second, we will show that Russell omitted the fact that Frege’s theory provided some answers for the puzzles presented by Russell in his essay. (shrink)

All fallibilist theories may appear to be defective, because they allegedly underestimate the security of at least some scientific knowledge and thereby leave science less defensible than it otherwise might be. When they call all scientific knowledge conjectural they may seem at first blush to underestimate the superiority of science vis a vis pseudo‐science. Fallibilists apparently fail to account for the fact that science turns theory into facts, because even “facts” are held only provisionally. This impression is false: the relatively (...) secure establishment of facts can be accounted for with a fallibilist view. After theories have been honed through sharp criticism, there is often no reason to doubt some aspects of them. These aspects are what we regard to be factual knowledge, even though these facts are also provisionally accepted as such. We then explain the newly won factual knowledge with deeper theories, which often correct our factual knowledge in spite of its apparent security. Theories of justification add nothing useful to the fallibilists' observation that science finds the best theories because it has the highest standards of criticism. Fallibilist theories today give the best account and defence of science. We may abandon the quest for some kind of assurance that goes beyond the determination that some theory can answer all known objections to it and take up more interesting problems, such as how we can find new objections and how criticism may be improved and made institutionally secure.1. (shrink)

Underestimated for a long time, serendipity is an increasingly recognized design principle of the infosphere. Being influenced by environmental and human factors, the experience of serendipity encompasses fundamental phases of production, distribution and consumption of information. On the one hand, design information architectures for serendipity increases the diversity of information encountered as well as users’ control over information processes. On the other hand, serendipity is a capability. It helps individuals to internalize and adopt strategies that increase the chances of experiencing (...) it. As such, the pursuit for serendipity can help to burst filter bubbles and weaken echo chambers in social media. The article reviews the literature on emerging issues surrounding serendipity in human–computer interactions. By doing so, it firstly presents the study of serendipity and the debate about its role in digital environments. Then, it introduces the main features of a preliminary architecture for serendipity. Finally, it analyzes from an interdisciplinary perspective the values that embraces and sustains. The conclusion is that serendipity can be conceived as an emerging design and ethical principle able to strengthen media pluralism and other emerging human rights in the context of online personalization. Main limitations and potential unintended consequences are also discussed. (shrink)

Underestimation of reliability is discussed from the viewpoint of deflation in estimates of reliability caused by artificial systematic technical or mechanical error in the estimates of correlation. Most traditional estimators of reliability embed product–moment correlation coefficient in the form of item–score correlation or principal component or factor loading. PMC is known to be severely affected by several sources of deflation such as the difficulty level of the item and discrepancy of the scales of the variables of interest and, hence, (...) the estimates by Rit and λi are always deflated in the settings related to estimating reliability. As a short-cut to deflation-corrected estimators of reliability, this article suggests a procedure where Rit and λi in the estimators of reliability are replaced by alternative estimators of correlation that are less deflated. These estimators are called deflation-corrected estimators of reliability. Several families of DCERs are proposed and their behavior is studied by using polychoric correlation coefficient, Goodman–Kruskal gamma, and Somers delta as examples of MEC-corrected coefficients of correlation. (shrink)