A philosophical theory of explanation should provide solutions to a series of problems, both descriptive and normative. The aim of this essay is to establish the claim that this can be best done if one theorizes in terms of explanatory games rather than focusing on the explication of the concept of explanation. The position that is adopted is that of an explanatory pluralism and it is elaborated in terms of the rules that incorporate the normative standards that guide the processes (...) of discovery and justification of explanations as well as the modes of their communication, dissemination, and adoption. They constitute the rules of the explanatory game that the participants are playing. The philosophical project consists in describing and normatively appraising the rules that constitute these games. (shrink)

In this article, we provide a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems, and institutions, and how they affect economic performance. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions’ emergence, their working properties, and their effect on economic and political outcomes should begin from an analysis of cognitive processes. We explore the nature of individual and collective learning, stressing that the issue is not whether agents are perfectly or boundedly rational, but rather how human beings actually reason and (...) choose, individually and in collective settings. We then tie the processes of learning to institutional analysis, providing arguments in favor of what can be characterized as “cognitive institutionalism.” Besides, we show that a full treatment of the phenomenon of path dependence should start at the cognitive level, proceed at the institutional level, and culminate at the economic level. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends three interconnected claims: first, that the debate on the role of values for science misses a crucial dimension, the institutional one; second, that institutions occupy the intermediate level between scientific activities and values and that they are to be systematically integrated into the analysis; third, that the appraisal of the institutions of science with respect to values should be undertaken within the premises of a comparative approach rather than an ideal approach. Hence, I defend the (...) view that the issue be framed in reference to the following question: "What kind of institutional rules should be in place in order for the scientific process to unfold in such a way that the values that we deem more important come to the fore?" Addressing this concern is equivalent to conducting a debate on institutions and their role for science. (shrink)

In this dialogue the view of Paul Hoyningen-Huene as defended in Systematicity. The Nature of Science is presented and criticized. The approach is developed dialectically by the two interlocutors, a series of critical points are debated and an alternative view is introduced. The dialogical form is intended to honor the general philosophical approach of the author summarized in the last sentence of the book, where he states that he sees philosophy as an ongoing, open-ended dialogue.

The aim of this paper is to show that intersubjective intelligibility, testability with the use of evidence, rational argumentation and objectivity are possible in the case of text interpretation. As far as one is willing to accept that the application of such standards make up science as a rational enterprise, one should also accept text interpretation as a rational enterprise and should be willing to qualify hermeneutics as a rational methodology of interpretation.

Scientific progress has many facets and can be conceptualized in different ways, for example in terms of problem-solving, of truthlikeness or of growth of knowledge. The main claim of the paper is that the most important prerequisite of scientific progress is the institutionalization of competition and criticism. An institutional framework appropriately channeling competition and criticism is the crucial factor determining the direction and rate of scientific progress, independently on how one might wish to conceptualize scientific progress itself. The main intention (...) is to narrow the divide between traditional philosophy of science and the sociological, economic and political outlook at science that emphasizes the private interests motivating scientists and the subsequent contingent nature of the enterprise. The aim is to show that although science is a social enterprise taking place in historical time and thus is of a contingent nature, it can and in fact does lead to genuine scientific progress - contrary to the claims of certain sociologists of science and other relativists who standardly stress its social nature, but deny its progressive character. I will first deal with the factual issue by way of introducing the main concepts and mechanisms of modern institutional theory and by applying them to the analysis of the cultural phenomenon that we call modern science. I will then turn to the normative issue: what is the appropriate content of the institutional framework, for scientific progress to emerge and be sustained at which level should it be set and by whom? Addressing this problematic is equivalent to conducting a constitutional debate leading to a Constitution of Science. (shrink)

Le cercle herméneutique a été utilisé par tous ceux qui ont défendu la thèse de l’autonomie méthodologique des sciences humaines par rapport aux sciences naturelles. Il est généralement perçu comme un problème ontologique ou logique par les Herméneutistes. Le but de cet article est de montrer que le cercle herméneutique n’est ni l’un ni l’autre. Tout indique, plutôt, qu’il fait référence à un phénomène empirique, qui peut être étudié dans le cadre de la psycholinguistique et d’autres disciplines empiriques. Il ne (...) peut pas, par conséquent, être utilisé comme argument pour légitimer la séparation entre les sciences naturelles et les sciences humaines, et ne peut donc pas contribuer à soutenir la thèse de l’autonomie des sciences humaines. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between federalism and individual liberty. It is shown that a complete treatment of the relationship between federalism and individual liberty should consider two countervailing effects. On the one hand, a federalist structure enhances individual liberty by enlarging the choice set of the citizens. On the other hand, however, a federalist system leads to institutional diversity, a fact that per se leads to higher exit costs, which a citizen must bear if he or she decides to (...) change jurisdictions. This effect on individual liberty is a negative one, since a consequence of every increase in the exit costs is a decrease of individual liberty. The optimum range of diversity of jurisdictions is shown to lie where the two effects counterbalance each other. (shrink)

The hermeneutic circle serves as a standard argument for all those who raise a claim to the autonomy of the human sciences. The proponents of an alternative methodology for the human sciences present the hermeneutic circle either as an ontological problem or as a specific methodological problem in the social sciences and the humanities. In this paper I would like to check the soundness of this argument. I will start with listing and shortly sketching out three variations of the problem. (...) I will then critically discuss these and appeal to alternative solutions and I will close with a short conclusion. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to provide an alternative antitrust model to the mainstream model that is used in competition policy. I call it the InstitutionalEvolutionary Antitrust Model. In order to construct an antitrust model one needs both empirical knowledge and considerations of how to adequately deal with norms. The analysis of competition as an evolutionary process that unfolds within legal rules provides the empirical foundation for the model. The development of the normative dimension involves the elaboration of a (...) comparative approach. Building on those foundations the main features of the Institutional-Evolutionary Model are sketched out and it is shown that its use leads to systematically different outcomes and conclusions than the dominant antitrust ideals. (shrink)

The hermeneutic circle serves as a standard argument for all those who raise a claim to the autonomy of the human sciences. The proponents of an alternative methodology for the human sciences present the hermeneutic circle either as an ontological problem or as a specific methodological problem in the social sciences and the humanities. This paper checks the soundness of the argument by sketching out three variations of the problem and critically discussing them.

In this dialogue the position of Pragmatic Naturalism as defended in Philip Kitcher’s The Ethical Project is presented and criticized. The approach is developed dialectically by the two interlocutors and a series of critical points are debated. The dialogical form is intended to honor the main objective in The Ethical Project: to establish an ongoing conversation on ways to improve moral conceptions and processes, which grow naturally out of the very conditions of human life.

This paper written as a dialogue between two interlocutors, Julie and a Student, deals with Understanding and its role in the social sciences. The fictional dialogue takes place in Hannover, Germany, and the interlocutors are exchanging arguments about Verstehen and how it should be conceptualized in the philosophy of the social sciences. A range of different approaches is discussed and a naturalistic strategy emerges as a defensible alternative.

In diesem Aufsatz wird ein Wettbewerbsleitbild vorgeschlagen, das auf den Ergebnissen der Neuen Institutionenökonomik und der Evolutorischen Ökonomik aufbaut. Um ein Leitbild zu gewinnen, braucht man zweierlei, d.h. erfahrungswissenschaftliche Grundlagen und Überlegungen zur Behandlung von Normen. Es werden zunächst die erfahrungswissenschaftlichen Grundlagen erläutert und es stellt sich heraus, dass der Wettbewerb als ein evolutionärer Prozess zu analysieren ist, der innerhalb von Regeln abläuft. Danach wird die Frage nach der zweckmäßigen Behandlung von Normen behandelt und die Schwächen der gängigen normativen Konzeptionen (...) innerhalb der Volkswirtschaftslehre, d.h. der Wohlfahrtsökonomie und der Konstitutioneökonomie, aufgezeigt und stattdessen die Anwendung des Prinzips der kritischen Prüfung vorgeschlagen. Darauf aufbauend wird das institutionenökonomisch-evolutionäre Wettbewerbsleitbild in seinen Grundzügen skizziert und für eine regelgeleitete Wettbewerbspolitik, die sich hauptsächlich auf per se Verbote stützt, plädiert. (shrink)

Dieter Schmidtchen hat mein institutionenökonomisch-evolutionäres Wettbewerbsleitbild einer kritischen Würdigung unterzogen. In dieser Replik werden drei Arten von Argumenten zugunsten meines Wettbewerbsleitbildes vorgetragen. Zunächst wird mit Hilfe von wissenschaftstheoretischen Argumenten gezeigt, dass die Konkurrenz von Erkenntnisprogrammen auch im Fall der Wettbewerbstheorie durchaus wünscheswert ist. Dann werden die normativen Grundlagen des Leitbildes erläutert und gezeigt, wie das Prinzip der kritischen Prüfung zum Tragen kommt. Schließlich wird für eine regelgeleitete Wettbewerbspolitik plädiert, die den Schutz des Wettbewerbs als minimalistisches Ziel anstrebt.

Dans cet article, nous offrons un large aperçu des interactions entre cognition, systèmes de croyances et institutions, et comment elles affectent la performance économique. Nous estimons qu'une meilleure compréhension de l’émergence des institutions, de leurs propriétés de fonctionnement et de leurs effets sur les résultats politiques et économiques doit commencer par une analyse des processus cognitifs. Nous explorons la nature de l'apprentissage individuel et collectif, en soulignant que la question n'est pas de savoir si les agents ont une rationalité parfaite (...) ou limitée, mais plutôt de savoir comment les êtres humains raisonnent ou choisissent réellement, individuellement et collectivement. Nous avons ensuite lié les processus d'apprentissage à l'analyse institutionnelle, fournissant des arguments en faveur de ce qui peut être qualifiée d’« institutionnalisme cognitif ». En outre, nous montrons qu’un traitement complet du phénomène de sentier de dépendance devrait commencer au niveau cognitif, se poursuivre au niveau institutionnel, et aboutir au niveau économique. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that social scientists who are interested in the study of institutions should not conduct fights about the meaning of the terms "institution", "organization" and the other terms that are used in the theory of institutions. They should instead concentrate on constructing theories in order to explain the phenomena they are interested in. Defining the terms that one wants to use is a legitimate part of the theoretical endeavor, but it is by no means as important (...) as most institutional theorists tend to think. The paper argues in favor of this claim by drawing on a relevant discussion in the philosophy of science which deals with the role of definitions in the process of constructing a theoretical system. (shrink)

Das Werk Erich Hoppmanns wird durch drei Ideen geleitet. Erstens, eine Idee ontologischer Natur, dass der Markt ein komplexes Phänomen ist. Zweitens, eine Idee methodologischer Natur, dass der Markt mittels einer Systembetrachtung analysiert werden soll und nur Erklärungen des Prinzips möglich sind. Drittens, eine Idee normativer Natur, dass die Steuerung des Marktes mittels Regeln erfolgen soll, die gemäß dem regulativen Ideal der Freiheit konzipiert werden müssen.

The article provides an overview of the basic concepts and principles of the theory of institutions as well as of the mechanisms of emergence and evolution of social institutions. It introduces a distinction between formal and informal institutions based on the the criterion of the enforcement agency of institutions. Finally it discusses the problem of path dependence.

After providing a brief overview of the economic theory of judicial decisions this paper presents an argument for why not only the economic theory of judicial decisions, but also the rational approach in general, most often fails in explaining decision-making. Work done within the research program of New Institutionalism is presented as a possible alternative. Within this research program judicial activity is conceptualized as the activity of "interpreting the rules of the game", i.e. the institutions that frame the economic and (...) political interaction in a society. Such a conceptualization of judicial interpretation and judicial decision-making would have to depart from rational choice modes of reasoning, and should instead focus on how human beings actually reason, learn and choose drawing from research in cognitive science. (shrink)

This article provides a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems and institutions, fleshing out a position best characterized as 'cognitive institutionalism'. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions, emergence, their working properties and their effect on economic performance should start with the analysis of cognitive processes. Exploring the nature of individual and collective learning the article suggests that the issue is not whether agents are perfectly or boundedly rational, but rather how human beings actually reason and (...) choose. We also show how a full treatment of the phenomenon of path dependence should look like; there is a path dependence at the cognitive level, at the institutional level and at the economic level and there are links among them. (shrink)

Dieser Aufsatz untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen Föderalismus und individueller Freiheit. Es wird gezeigt, dass eine vollständige Analyse des Verhältnisses zwischen Föderalismus und individueller Freiheit zwei entgegengesetzte Effekte mitberücksichtigen muss. Auf der einen Seite verstärken föderalistische Strukturen die individuelle Freiheit indem sie die Auswahlmöglichkeiten der Bürger erweitern. Auf der anderen Seite führt jedoch ein föderalistisches System zur institutionellen Vielfalt, ein Faktum, das per se zu höheren Abwanderungskosten führt, die ein Bürger tragen muss, wenn er oder sie entscheidet, die Jurisdiktion zu wechseln. (...) Dieser Effekt auf die individuelle Freiheit ist ein negativer, da jede Erhöhung der Abwanderungskosten die Minderung der individuellen Freiheit zur Konsequenz hat. Der optimale Grad der Vielfalt der Jurisdiktionen befindet sich dort, wo die beiden Effekte sich gegenseitig ausgleichen. (shrink)

Two interlocutors, Philip Pettit and a student, are exchanging views on liberal political and economic philosophy during lunch at Prospect House, the faculty club of Princeton. The dialogue begins with clarifications of the notion of liberty, and, against objections of the student, Pettit introduces and defends his own conception of freedom as non-domination rather than as non-interference. It proceeds with an exchange of arguments regarding the different kinds of institutional settings that entrench liberty and all the other things valued by (...) humans. The interlocutors reach a preliminary consensus that in order to substantiate the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination in concrete institutional realities, two things are required: the establishment of a mixed constitution – so that no single, unconstrained body can exercise lawmaking and other government functions – as well as eternal vigilance on the part of the citizens. The second part of the dialogue deals with a major challenge to the republican political philosophy expressed by the student: the issue of non-domination in markets, which is diagnosed as an important lacuna in republican thought. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend teleological theories of belief against the exclusivity objection. I argue that despite the exclusive influence of truth in doxastic deliberation, multiple epistemic aims interact when we consider what to believe. This is apparent when we focus on the processes involved in specific instances (or concrete cases) of doxastic deliberation, such that the propositions under consideration are specified. First, I out- line a general schema for weighing aims. Second, I discuss recent attempts to defend the teleological (...) position in relation to this schema. And third, I develop and defend my proposal that multiple epistemic aims interact in doxastic deliberation—a possibility which, as of yet, has received no serious attention in the literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss whether different interpretations of the ‘aim’ of belief—both the teleological and normative interpretations—have the resources to explain certain descriptive and normative features of suspended belief (suspension). I argue that, despite the recent efforts of theorists to extend these theories to account for suspension, they ultimately fail. The implication is that we must either develop alternative theories of belief that can account for suspension, or we must abandon the assumption that these theories ought to be able (...) to account for suspension. To close, I briefly consider some of the reasons we have in favour of pursing each of these options, and I suggest that it is worth exploring the possibility that suspension is best understood as its own attitude, independently of theories of belief’s ‘aim’. (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

Games have a complex, and seemingly paradoxical structure: they are both competitive and cooperative, and the competitive element is required for the cooperative element to work out. They are mechanisms for transforming competition into cooperation. Several contemporary philosophers of sport have located the primary mechanism of conversion in the mental attitudes of the players. I argue that these views cannot capture the phenomenological complexity of game-play, nor the difficulty and moral complexity of achieving cooperation through game-play. In this paper, I (...) present a different account of the relationship between competition and cooperation. My view is a distributed view of the conversion: success depends on a large number of features. First, the players must achieve the right motivational state: playing for the sake of the struggle, rather than to win. Second, successful transformation depends on a large number of extra-mental features, including good game design, and social and institutional features. (shrink)

The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on cases of doxastic repetition — where, when an agent, on receiving aesthetic testimony that p, acquires the belief that p without qualification. I suggest that we broaden the set of cases under consideration. I consider a number of cases of action from testimony, including reconsidering a disliked album based on testimony, and choosing an artistic educational institution from testimony. But this cannot simply be explained by supposing that testimony is usable for (...) action, but unusable for doxastic repetition. I consider a new asymmetry in the usability aesthetic testimony. Consider the following cases: we seem unwilling to accept somebody hanging a painting in their bedroom based merely on testimony, but entirely willing to accept hanging a painting in a museum based merely on testimony. The switch in intuitive acceptability seems to track, in some complicated way, the line between public life and private life. These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I suggest that we look further afield, and that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit for our intuitions for the usability of aesthetic testimony. I propose the following explanation for the new asymmetry: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long-term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art’s powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In (...) particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified. (shrink)

Background If trials of therapeutic interventions are to serve society's interests, they must be of high methodological quality and must satisfy moral commitments to human subjects. The authors set out to develop a clinical - trials compendium in which standards for the ethical treatment of human subjects are integrated with standards for research methods. Methods The authors rank-ordered the world's nations and chose the 31 with >700 active trials as of 24 July 2008. Governmental and other authoritative entities of the (...) 31 countries were searched, and 1004 English-language documents containing ethical and/or methodological standards for clinical trials were identified. The authors extracted standards from 144 of those: 50 designated as ‘core’, 39 addressing trials of invasive procedures and a 5% sample of the remainder. As the integrating framework for the standards we developed a coherent taxonomy encompassing all elements of a trial's stages. Findings Review of the 144 documents yielded nearly 15 000 discrete standards. After duplicates were removed, 5903 substantive standards remained, distributed in the taxonomy as follows: initiation, 1401 standards, 8 divisions; design, 1869 standards, 16 divisions; conduct, 1473 standards, 8 divisions; analysing and reporting results, 997 standards, four divisions; and post-trial standards, 168 standards, 5 divisions. Conclusions The overwhelming number of source documents and standards uncovered in this study was not anticipated beforehand and confirms the extraordinary complexity of the clinical trials enterprise. This taxonomy of multinational ethical and methodological standards may help trialists and overseers improve the quality of clinical trials, particularly given the globalisation of clinical research. (shrink)

Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us vivid and quantified feedback, via Likes, Retweets, and Follower counts. But this gamification doesn’t just increase our motivation to communicate; it changes the very nature of the activity. Games are more satisfying than ordinary life precisely because game-goals are simpler, cleaner, and easier to apply. Twitter is thrilling precisely because its goals have been artificially clarified and narrowed. When we buy into Twitter’s gamification, then our values (...) shift from the complex and pluralistic values of communication, to the narrower quest for popularity and virality. Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with the phenomena of echo chambers and moral outrage porn. In all these phenomena, we are instrumentalizing our ends for hedonistic reasons. We have shifted our aims in an activity, not because the new aims are more valuable, but in exchange for extra pleasure. (shrink)

This paper focuses on invasive therapeutic procedures, defined as procedures requiring the introduction of hands, instruments, or devices into the body via incisions or punctures of the skin or mucous membranes performed with the intent of changing the natural history of a human disease or condition for the better. Ethical and methodological concerns have been expressed about studies designed to evaluate the effects of invasive therapeutic procedures. Can such studies meet the same standards demanded of those, for example, evaluating pharmaceutical (...) agents? This paper describes a research project aimed at examining the interplay and sometimes apparent conflict between ethical standards for human research and standards for methodological rigor in trials of invasive procedures. The paper discusses how the authors plan to develop a set of consensus standards that, if met, would result in substantial and much-needed improvements in the methodological and ethical quality of such trials. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...) can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early — before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let’s first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its disparate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)