Genome Canada has funded a research project to evaluate the usefulness of different forms of ethical analysis for assessing the moral weight of public opinion in the governance of genomics. This paper will describe a role of public consultation for ethical analysis and a contribution of ethical analysis to public consultation and the governance of genomics/biotechnology. Public consultation increases the robustness of ethical analysis with a more diverse and rich accounts experiences. Consultation must be carefully and respectfully designed to generate (...) sufficiently diverse and rich accounts of moral experiences. Since dominant groupstend to define ethical or policy issues in a manner that excludes some interests or perspectives, it is important to identify the range of interests that diverse publics hold before defining the issue and scope of a consultation. Similarly, a heavy policy focus and pressures to commercialize products risk oversimplification of the discussion and the premature foreclosure of ethical dialogue. Consequently, a significant contribution of ethical dialogue strengthened by social analysis is to consider the context and non-policy use of power to govern genomics and to sustain social debate on enduring ethical issues. (shrink)

Stigma has become an important concept in public health law. It is widely accepted that certain diseases are disfavored in society, leading to discrimination against people identified with them, which in turn has the tendency to drive an epidemic underground—i.e., to make it more difficult for voluntary public health programs to reach and succeed among populations bent on concealing their disease or risk status. The need to reduce stigma and its effects has been used to justify the passage of privacy (...) and antidiscrimination law to protect people with HIV. More recently, stigma has been part of the arsenal of justification for special genetic antidiscrimination and privacy law. Despite its importance, however, there is no single widely accepted definition of stigma in social science, and its relationship to law has been generally under-theorized and unsupported by data, reducing our ability to effectively deploy law and other tools in the anti-stigma cause. (shrink)

Stigma has become an important concept in public health law. It is widely accepted that certain diseases are disfavored in society, leading to discrimination against people identified with them, which in turn has the tendency to drive an epidemic underground—i.e., to make it more difficult for voluntary public health programs to reach and succeed among populations bent on concealing their disease or risk status. The need to reduce stigma and its effects has been used to justify the passage of privacy (...) and antidiscrimination law to protect people with HIV. More recently, stigma has been part of the arsenal of justification for special genetic antidiscrimination and privacy law. Despite its importance, however, there is no single widely accepted definition of stigma in social science, and its relationship to law has been generally under-theorized and unsupported by data, reducing our ability to effectively deploy law and other tools in the anti-stigma cause. (shrink)

A working assumption that processes of natural and cultural evolution have tailored the mind to fit the demands and structure of its environment begs the question: how are we to characterize the structure of cognitive environments? Decision problems faced by real organisms are not like simple multiple-choice examination papers. For example, some individual problems may occur much more frequently than others, whilst some may carry much more weight than others. Such considerations are not taken into account when (i) the performance (...) of candidate cognitive mechanisms is assessed by employing a simple accuracy metric that is insensitive to the structure of the decision-maker's environment, and (ii) reason is defined as the adherence to internalist prescriptions of classical rationality. Here we explore the impact of frequency and significance structure on the performance of a range of candidate decision-making mechanisms. We show that the character of this impact is complex, since structured environments demand that decision-makers trade off general performance against performance on important subsets of test items. As a result, environment structure obviates internalist criteria of rationality. Failing to appreciate the role of environment structure in shaping cognition can lead to mischaracterising adaptive behavior as irrational. (shrink)

This individual differences study examined the relationships between three executive functions (updating, shifting, and inhibition), measured as latent variables, and performance on two cognitively demanding subtests of the Adult Decision Making Competence battery: Applying Decision Rules and Consistency in Risk Perception. Structural equation modelling showed that executive functions contribute differentially to performance in these two tasks, with Applying Decision Rules being mainly related to inhibition and Consistency in Risk Perception mainly associated to shifting. The results suggest that the successful application (...) of decision rules requires the capacity to selectively focus attention and inhibit irrelevant (or no more relevant) stimuli. They also suggest that consistency in risk perception depends on the ability to shift between judgement contexts. (shrink)

The computational approach to psychiatric disorders, including delusions, promises explanation and treatment. Here, we argue that an information processing approach might be misleading to understand psychopathology and requires further refinement. We explore the claim of computational psychiatry being a bridge between phenomenology and physiology while focussing on the ontological commitments and corresponding methodology computational psychiatry is based on. Interconnecting ontological claims and methodological practices, the paper illustrates the structure of theory-building and testing in computational psychiatry.First, we will explain the ontological (...) commitments computational psychiatry is grounded in, theBayesian Brain hypothesis(BBH) of unconscious inference, paired with normative deontic approaches applied to gauge psychopathology. We then turn to the steps taken in empirical paradigms, from definitions, which are used as starting points, to the operationalisation and isolation of cognitive processes and hypothesis testing based on algorithmic models, to consecutive interpretations regarding the aetiology of psychiatric disorders. We outline how experimental paradigms in computational psychiatry are specifically designed to confirm aberrations in assumed inferential processes, which are thought of as being the underlyingcore invariant features.We will illustrate a gap between the ontological commitments of computational psychiatry and the operationalisation and testing of the cognition assumed to be relevant for psychopathology. This conceptual gap is of utmost importance when designing computational paradigms and may impede a crisp understanding of the approach. Lastly, in evaluating the conceptual gap, it becomes apparent that the information processing formalism used in computational psychiatry is still grounded in rational cognitive psychology. (shrink)

As it happens, we are quite well aware of the origin of a group belief. For instance, the history of baseball in the USA is a kind of contemporary myth whose origin, however, is not mysterious. In the US there is a place called the Hall of Fame dedicated to the great figures in baseball history. The spot can be found in Cooperstown, a small American town in the middle of New York state, that is otherwise totally unremarkable. Why was (...) a building put up there to celebrate the sport that is so emblematic of the United States? Simply because the famous baseball is supposed to have been invented there by one Abner Doubleday in 1839. The date is precise but the myth of origins associated with it is no less so. In the early 19th century Doubleday is alleged to have interrupted some children playing marbles behind the shop belonging to the town's tailor. Then he is supposed to have started to teach them the rules of a new, more exciting game which he had just invented (if we adhere to this myth of origins) and which he proposed to call ‘baseball’. So he marked out a small-scale field on the ground: the first game of this typically American sport could now begin. (shrink)

The Adaptive Character of Thought John R. Anderson, Hillside, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum, Associates Inc., 1990The Psychology of Today's Woman: new psychoanalytic visions Toni Bernay & Dorothy W. Canton, Harvard University Press $12.95Leamability and Cognition: the acquisition of argument structure Steven Pinker, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1989 xiv + 410ppPropositional Attitudes, an essay on thoughts and how we ascribe them Mark Richard, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990 275 pp., 829.95Science and its Fabrication Alan Chalmers, Open University Press, Milton Keynes 1990, (...) 142pp ISBN 0–335–09318–3 ISBN 0–335–09317–5. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have given up on the quest for a silver bullet to put an end to all pseudoscience, as such a neat formal criterion to separate good science from its contenders has proven elusive. In the literature on critical thinking and in some philosophical quarters, however, this search for silver bullets lives on in the taxonomies of fallacies. The attractive idea is to have a handy list of abstract definitions or argumentation schemes, on the basis of which one (...) can identify bad or invalid types of reasoning, abstracting away from the specific content and dialectical context. Such shortcuts for debunking arguments are tempting, but alas, the promise is hardly if ever fulfilled. Different strands of research on the pragmatics of argumentation, probabilistic reasoning and ecological rationality have shown that almost every known type of fallacy is a close neighbor to sound inferences or acceptable moves in a debate. Nonetheless, the kernel idea of a fallacy as an erroneous type of argument is still retained by most authors. We outline a destructive dilemma we refer to as the Fallacy Fork: on the one hand, if fallacies are construed as demonstrably invalid form of reasoning, then they have very limited applicability in real life. On the other hand, if our definitions of fallacies are sophisticated enough to capture real-life complexities, they can no longer be held up as an effective tool for discriminating good and bad forms of reasoning. As we bring our schematic “fallacies” in touch with reality, we seem to lose grip on normative questions. Even approaches that do not rely on argumentation schemes to identify fallacies fail to escape the Fallacy Fork, and run up against their own version of it. (shrink)

Generally, rational decision-making is conceived as arriving at a decision by a correct application of the rules of logic and statistics. If not, the conclusions are called biased. After an impressive series of experiments and tests carried out in the last few decades, the view arose that rationality is tough for all, skilled field experts not excluded. A new type of planner's counsellor is called for: the normative statistician, the expert in reasoning with uncertainty par excellence. To unravel this view, (...) the paper explores a specific practice of clinical decision-making, namely Evidence-Based Medicine. This practice is chosen, because it is very explicit about how to rationalize practice. The paper shows that whether a decision-making process is rational cannot be assessed without taking into account the environment in which the decisions have to be taken. To be more specific, the decision to call for new evidence should be rational too. This decision and the way in which this evidence is obtained are crucial to validate the base rates. Rationality should be model-based, which means that not only the isolated decision-making process should take a Bayesian updating process as its norm, but should also model the acquisition of evidence (priors and tests results) as a rational process. (shrink)

Does conscious reflection lead to good decision-making? Whereas engaging in reflection is traditionally thought to be the best way to make wise choices, recent psychological evidence undermines the role of reflection in lay and expert judgement. The literature suggests that thinking about reasons does not improve the choices people make, and that experts do not engage in reflection, but base their judgements on intuition, often shaped by extensive previous experience. Can we square the traditional accounts of wisdom with the results (...) of these empirical studies? Should we even attempt to? I shall defend the view that philosophy and cognitive sciences genuinely interact in tackling questions such as whether reflection leads to making wise choices. (shrink)

Reasoning about underlying causal relations drives responsibility judgments: agents are held responsible for the outcomes they cause through their behaviors. Two main causal reasoning approaches exist: dependence theories emphasize statistical relations between causes and effects, while transference theories emphasize mechanical transmission of energy. Recently, pluralistic or hybrid models, combining both approaches, have emerged as promising psychological frameworks. In this paper, we focus on causal reasoning as involved in third-party judgements of responsibility and on related judgments of intention and control. In (...) particular, we used a novel visual paradigm to investigate the combined effects of two well-known causal manipulations, namely omission and pre-emption, on these evaluations. Our findings support the view that people apply a pluralistic causal reasoning when evaluating individual responsibility for negative outcomes. In particular, we observed diminished responsibility when dependence, transference, or both fail, compared to when these mechanisms are upheld. Responsibility judgement involves a cognitive hybrid of multiple aspects of causal reasoning. However, important differences exist at the interindividual level, with most people weighting transference more than dependence. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine (EBM), by its ability to decrease irrational variations in health care, was expected to improve healthcare quality and outcomes. The utility of EBM principles evolved from individual clinical decision-making to wider foundational clinical practice guideline applications, cost containment measures, and clinical quality performance measures. At this evolutionary juncture one can ask the following questions. Given the time-limited exigencies of daily clinical practice, is it tenable for clinicians to follow guidelines? Whose or what interests are served by applying performance (...) assessments? Does such application improve medical care quality? What happens when the best interests of vested parties conflict? Mindful of the constellation of socially and clinically relevant variables influencing health outcomes, is it fair to apply evidence-based performance assessment tools to judge the merits of clinical decision-making? Finally, is it fair and just to incentivize clinicians in ways that might sway clinical judgment? To address these questions, we consider various clinical applications of performance assessment strategies, examining what performance measures purport to measure, how they are measured and whether such applications demonstrably improve quality. With attention to the merits and frailties associated with such applications, we devise and defend criteria that distinguish between justice-sustaining and justice-threatening performance-based clinical protocols. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have identified a wide range of biases and heuristics in human decision making over the past few decades. Only recently have bioethicists begun to think seriously about the implications of these findings for topics such as agency, autonomy, and consent. This article aims to provide an overview of biases and heuristics that have been identified and a framework in which to think comprehensively about the impact of them on the exercise of autonomous decision making. I analyze the impact (...) that these biases and heuristics have on the following dimensions of autonomy: understanding, intentionality, absence of alienating or controlling influence, and match between formally autonomous preferences or decisions and actual choices or actions. (shrink)

To contribute to the organizational turn in research on participatory democracy, this paper examines the effects of organizational hierarchy on individual thinking. Power corrupts, but neither political scientists nor psychologists can really tell us how. To identify mechanisms by which it does so, the paper introduces recent advances in the field of cognitive psychology, here to suspicious political theorists. The study of cognition shows that we actively make meaning, and that we do so with a discernable neurological apparatus. The paper (...) presents hierarchy as a social construct that 'fits' this apparatus in such a way as to assist the capture of meaning by the interests of power. This process of capture takes place beneath individual awareness. For this reason, the concern here amounts to ideology critique: specifically, using cognitive psychology to reveal the ideological propagation of hierarchy. The fact that hierarchy has hidden cognitive costs has important implications for the prospects of a more participatory democracy. Any democratization of organizational life is seen to turn on the capacity of participants to selectively use and manage hierarchy and to minimize its cognitive costs. This entails, among other things, a recovery of our own thinking from the knowledge processing requirements of power saturated hierarchic organizations. In its examination of the personal effects of power, the paper seeks to reveal psychological mechanisms by which power corrupts, and by which, inadvertently, we come to serve the interests of power in the very way we think. (shrink)

Standard Analytic Epistemology (SAE) names a contingently clustered class of methods and theses that have dominated English-speaking epistemology for about the past half-century. The major contemporary theories of SAE include versions of foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, and contextualism. While proponents of SAE don’t agree about how to define naturalized epistemology, most agree that a thoroughgoing naturalism in epistemology can’t work. For the purposes of this paper, we will suppose that a naturalistic theory of epistemology takes as its core, as its starting-point, (...) an empirical theory. The standard argument against naturalistic approaches to epistemology is that empirical theories are essentially descriptive, while epistemology is essentially prescriptive, and a descriptive theory cannot yield normative, evaluative prescriptions. In short, naturalistic theories cannot overcome the is-ought divide. Our main goal in this paper is to show that the standard argument against naturalized epistemology has it almost exactly backwards. (shrink)

A heuristic is a rule of thumb. In psychology, heuristics are relatively simple rules for making judgments. A fast heuristic is easy to use and allows one to make judgments quickly. A frugal heuristic relies on a small fraction of the available evidence in making judgments. Typically, fast and frugal heuristics (FFHs) have, or are claimed to have, a further property: They are very reliable, yielding judgments that are about as accurate in the long run as ideal non-fast, non-frugal rules. (...) This paper introduces some well-known examples of FFHs, raises some objections to the FFH program, and looks at the implications of those parts of the FFH program about which we can have some reasonable degree of confidence. (shrink)

The standard Bayesian recipe for selecting the rational choice is presented. A familiar example in which the recipe fails to produce any definite result is introduced. It is argued that a generalization of Gärdenfors’ and Sahlin’s theory of unreliable probabilities — which itself does not guarantee a solution to the problem — offers the best available approach. But a number of challenges to this approach are also presented and discussed.

In the last chapter of In the beginning was the deed: realism and moralism in political argument, Williams raised the question of truthfulness in politics and warned that the media, particularly, television, and the market of communication in general, work in ways contrary to truthfulness -understood as the combination of the virtues of sincerity and accuracy. In this paper we would like to carry on Williams’ line of thinking in connection with the impact of the new social media platforms on (...) politics. Where Williams focused on television, we will consider the impact of the internet public sphere. After reviewing how the digital social media encourages motivated reasoning in general, we propose to focus on two main phenomena derived from it: the rise of conspiracy theories and the moralization of politics. Conspiracy theories epitomize the risk of self-deception Williams was concerned to signal. On the other hand, the process of moralization of politics triggers sectarianism and hate for the “others”, the outgroup. Both phenomena are not exclusive of the internet sphere, but both are boosted by it, and entail a lack of interest in truth and truthfulness, and in this way they threaten the value of truth for democracy. (shrink)

Individual differences have been neglected in decision-making research on heuristics and cognitive biases. Addressing that issue requires having reliable measures. The author first reviewed the research on the measurement of individual differences in cognitive biases. While reliable measures of a dozen biases are currently available, our review revealed that some measures require improvement and measures of other key biases are still lacking (e.g., confirmation bias). We then conducted empirical work showing that adjustments produced a significant improvement of some measures and (...) that confirmation bias can be reliably measured. Overall, our review and findings highlight that the measurement of individual differences in cognitive biases is still in its infancy. In particular, we suggest that contextualized (in addition to generic) measures need to be improved or developed. (shrink)

The author reviewed the research on the impact of cognitive biases on professionals’ decision-making in four occupational areas. Two main findings emerged. First, the literature reviewed shows that a dozen of cognitive biases has an impact on professionals’ decisions in these four areas, overconfidence being the most recurrent bias. Second, the level of evidence supporting the claim that cognitive biases impact professional decision-making differs across the areas covered. Research in finance relied primarily upon secondary data while research in medicine and (...) law relied mainly upon primary data from vignette studies. Two research gaps are highlighted. The first one is a potential lack of ecological validity of the findings from vignette studies, which are numerous. The second is the neglect of individual differences in cognitive biases, which might lead to the false idea that all professionals are susceptible to biases, to the same extent. To address that issue, we suggest that reliable, specific measures of cognitive biases need to be improved or developed. (shrink)

It is often assumed that perceptual experience provides evidence about the external world. But much perception can occur unconsciously, as in cases of masked priming or blindsight. Does unconscious perception provide evidence as well? Many theorists maintain that it cannot, holding that perceptual experience provides evidence in virtue of its conscious character. Against such views, I challenge here both the necessity and, perhaps more controversially, the sufficiency of consciousness for perception to provide evidence about the external world. In addition to (...) motivating and defending the idea that unconscious perception can and does often provide evidence, I observe that whether or not perceptual phenomenology is relevant to the evidentiary status of perception depends on the nature of consciousness. And I argue that a well-supported theory of consciousness—higher-order thought theory—invites a striking conclusion: that perceptual phenomenology is not on its own sufficient to provide for evidence of the external world. (shrink)

Dual Process Theory is currently a popular theory for explaining why we show bounded rationality in reasoning and decision-making tasks. This theory proposes there must be a sharp distinction in thinking to explain two clusters of correlational features. One cluster describes a fast and intuitive process, while the other describes a slow and reflective one. A problem for this theory is identifying a common principle that binds these features together, explaining why they form a unity, the unity problem. To solve (...) it, a hypothesis is developed combining embodied predictive processing with symbolic classical approaches. The hypothesis, simplified, states that Type 1 processes are bound together because they rely on embodied predictive processing whereas Type 2 processes form a unity because they are accomplished by symbolic classical cognition. To show that this is likely the case, the features of Dual Process Theory are discussed in relation to these frameworks. (shrink)

Most people have a clear sense of what they mean by disability, and have little trouble identifying conditions they consider disabling. Yet providing a clear and consistent definition of disability is far from straightforward. Standardly, disability is understood as the restriction in our abilities to perform tasks, as a result of an impairment of normal physical or cognitive human functioning. However, which inabilities matter? We are all restricted by our bodies, and are all incapable of performing some tasks, but most (...) of these inabilities are not considered disabilities. If, then, we are to avoid the category of disability becoming overly broad—and thus politically and practically useless—we need some way of picking out the specific inabilities that are disabling. I argue that our answer should be informed by an account of the opportunities individuals are entitled to be able to perform as a matter of justice. Thus, to be disabled is to have these opportunities restricted, and not to deviate from the species norm or lack any ability that might improve our well-being. (shrink)

Neuroscience investigations of emotional influences on social cognition have been dominated by the somatic marker hypothesis and dual-process theories. Taken together, these lines of inquiry have not provided strong evidence that emotional influences on social cognition rely on neural systems which code for bodily signals of arousal nor distinguish emotional reasoning from other modes of reasoning. Recent findings raise the possibility that emotionally influenced social cognition relies on two stages of neural changes: once when emotion is elicited and a different (...) set of changes at the time of social cognitive judgment. These findings suggest that affect infusion models may be a fruitful framework for bridging neuroscience and psychological understanding of the role of emotion in social cognition. (shrink)

The three main approaches in statistical inference—classical statistics, Bayesian and likelihood—are in current use in phylogeny research. The three approaches are discussed and compared, with particular emphasis on theoretical properties illustrated by simple thought-experiments. The methods are problematic on axiomatic grounds, extra-mathematical grounds relating to the use of a prior or practical grounds. This essay aims to increase understanding of these limits among those with an interest in phylogeny.

According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...) belter, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education. (shrink)

According to a widely accepted philosophical model, agent-regret is practically significant and appropriate when the agent committed a mistake, or she faced a conflict of obligations. I argue that this account misunderstands moral phenomenology because it does not adequately characterize the object of agent-regret. I suggest that the object of agent-regret should be defined in terms of valuable unchosen alternatives supported by reasons. This model captures the phenomenological varieties of regret and explains its practical significance for the agent. My contention (...) is that agent-regret is a mode of valuing: a way in which the agent expresses and confers value. (shrink)

This research explores the role of emotions in goal-directed behaviour. A model is provided for an emotional goal system whereby appraisals of the consequences of achieving or not achieving a goal are hypothesised to elicit anticipatory emotions; the anticipatory emotions are expected, in turn, to contribute to volitions in the service of goal pursuit (namely, intentions, plans, and the decision to expend energy); goal-directed behaviours next arise in response to volitions and lead to goal attainment; and the latter then functions (...) as the basis for a new set of appraisals and accompanying goaloutcome emotions. The model was tested in a longitudinal study of the responses of 406 adults (243 women, 163 men) in The Netherlands. The context for the study was the regulation of one's bodyweight via exercising and dieting. (shrink)

Uncertainty is an intriguing aspect of social life. Uncertainty is epistemic, future-oriented, and implies that we can neither predict nor foresee what will happen when acting. In cases in which no institutionalized certainty about future states exists, or can be generated, judgment is needed. This article presents the forms by which uncertainty is reduced as a result of judgments made about different alternatives in a process involving several actors. This type of uncertainty may exist, for example, about which artist is (...) the best, which offer in the market is more valuable, which football team is better than all the rest, or which research proposal will get a grant. The result of different forms of uncertainty reduction is increased certainty concerning alternatives in relation to one another, such as good and bad, rank lists, scores, quality assessment, and “winner and losers.” Based on the result, uncertainty is reduced and action is facilitated. The forms are structural and comprise roles; may be legitimate in a smaller or larger domain; and may exist in all spheres of life, as exemplified in sports competitions, in labor markets, and in the ranking of universities. Three forms of uncertainty reduction based on judgment are identified in this article: (1) decision, made by an authority; (2) valuation, by means of which order arises as a result of actors ascribing values; and (3) contest, by which an order is the result of direct struggle. (shrink)

In this paper, we show how game theoretic work on conversation combined with a theory of discourse structure provides a framework for studying interpretive bias and how bias affects the production and interpretation of linguistic content. We model the influence of author bias on the discourse content and structure of the author’s linguistic production and interpreter bias on the interpretation of ambiguous or underspecified elements of that content and structure. Interpretive bias is an essential feature of learning and understanding but (...) also something that can be exploited to pervert or subvert the truth. We develop three types of games to understand and to analyze a range of interpretive biases, the factors that contribute to them, and their strategic effects. (shrink)

There is no strong reason to believe that human-level intelligence represents an upper limit of the capacity of artificial intelligence, should it be realized. This poses serious safety issues, since a superintelligent system would have great power to direct the future according to its possibly flawed motivation system. Solving this issue in general has proven to be considerably harder than expected. This paper looks at one particular approach, Oracle AI. An Oracle AI is an AI that does not act in (...) the world except by answering questions. Even this narrow approach presents considerable challenges. In this paper, we analyse and critique various methods of controlling the AI. In general an Oracle AI might be safer than unrestricted AI, but still remains potentially dangerous. (shrink)

According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decision on our judgments about their consequences for achieving out goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...) better, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education. (shrink)

This essay lays the groundwork for a novel conception of autonomy that may be called “effective autonomy”—a conception designed to be genuinely action guiding in bioethics. As empirical psychology research on the heuristics and biases approach shows, decision making commonly fails to correspond to people’s desires because of the biases arising from bounded cognition. People who are classified as autonomous on contemporary philosophical accounts may fail to be effectively autonomous because their decisions are uncoupled from their autonomous desires. Accordingly, continuing (...) attempts to value patient autonomy must go beyond existing philosophical conceptions of autonomy to consider the background conditions of human decision making. (shrink)

This paper uses the idea of a proxy, which figures in discussions of bounded rationality, to construct an argument for a revisionary conclusion about ideal instrumental rationality. I consider how subjective responses can figure as proxies in heuristics and develop the following argument: (1) Proxies, even if relatively easy to recognize, can sometimes be messy, prompting incomplete or cyclic preferences. (2) From the point of view of ideal instrumental rationality, it is permissible for an agent to be concerned with a (...) proxy rather than with what it is a proxy for. And so, (3) although it is standardly assumed, as part of the prevailing conception of ideal instrumental rationality, that rational preferences are complete and acyclic, neither incomplete preferences nor cyclic preferences can be dismissed as invariably irrational from the point of view of ideal instrumental rationality. (shrink)