In recent years, there has been a heated debate about how to interpret findings that seem to show that humans rapidly and automatically calculate the visual perspectives of others. In the current study, we investigated the question of whether automatic interference effects found in the dot-perspective task (Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, & Bodley Scott, 2010) are the product of domain-specific perspective-taking processes or of domain-general “submentalizing” processes (Heyes, 2014). Previous attempts to address this question have done so by implementing inanimate (...) controls, such as arrows, as stimuli. The rationale for this is that submentalizing processes that respond to directionality should be engaged by such stimuli, whereas domain-specific perspective-taking mechanisms, if they exist, should not. These previous attempts have been limited, however, by the implied intentionality of the stimuli they have used (e.g. arrows), which may have invited participants to imbue them with perspectival agency. Drawing inspiration from “novel entity” paradigms from infant gaze-following research, we designed a version of the dot-perspective task that allowed us to precisely control whether a central stimulus was viewed as animate or inanimate. Across four experiments, we found no evidence that automatic “perspective-taking” effects in the dot-perspective task are modulated by beliefs about the animacy of the central stimulus. Our results also suggest that these effects may be due to the task-switching elements of the dot-perspective paradigm, rather than automatic directional orienting. Together, these results indicate that neither the perspective-taking nor the standard submentalizing interpretations of the dot-perspective task are fully correct. (shrink)

Aesthetic transfiguration, as described by Nietzsche, is the capacity of art to alchemize the meaningless sufferings of natural existence into the aesthetically magnificent struggle that is human ‘life’. Like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer assessed ‘art from the perspective of life’. As Schopenhauer is standardly read, however, his conception of aesthetic experience has little in common with that offered by Nietzsche. Against the standard reading, this chapter argues that Nietzsche’s psychology of aesthetic experience—and in particular his idea that aesthetic transfiguration invests human experience (...) with positive value—is essentially an elaboration of insights owed to Schopenhauer. (shrink)

Abstract This chapter addresses the meta-ethical and psychological implications of Murdoch’s epistemic internalism—her claim that moral responsiveness is a condition of reliable and accurate moral evaluations. Part 1 examines Murdoch’s view that moral judgments feature a quasi-experiential phenomenology analogous to that of certain perceptual ones. Focussing on the phenomenology of our perception-based judgments of certain aspectual properties (e.g., pictorial and musical ones) it argues that such judgments support both Murdoch’s analogy and the internalism she takes it to imply. In Part (...) 2 this chapter considers Murdoch’s internalism as a psychological thesis, assessing it in view of several empirical studies of psychopathic subjects. It argues that the psychopath’s distinctive complex of cognitive and motivational deficits supports Murdoch’s conviction that moral judgment and moral motivation are interdependent. Just as Murdoch believed, many of our ordinary, non-pathological moral beliefs seem to be the natural progeny of our responsiveness to other persons, and so inherit the intrinsic power that others have to move us. (shrink)

This chapter explores the cognitive and moral significance of the kind of imaginative experience poetry offers. It identifies two forms of imaginative experience that are especially important to poetry: ‘experiencing-as’ and ‘experience-taking’. Experiencing-as is ‘inherently first-personal, embodied, and phenomenologically characterized’ while in experience-taking one ‘takes the perspective of another, simulating some aspect or aspects of his psychology as if they were his own’. Through a sensitive and probing reading of Paul Celan’s Psalm, the chapter shows the role these two forms (...) of experience play in producing the unique form of ethical and epistemic value poetry can bear. The chapter’s argument for this has important implications for our understanding of the poetic imagination and nature of our experience of meaning in poetic contexts. (shrink)

'PERHAPS WHAT is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express)', wrote Wittgenstein, 'is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning'. Wittgenstein's remark is a useful reminder to all who attempt to write about the nature and the value of art, for there our powers of expression often seem inadequate to the phenomena we aim to describe. In such cases it is natural to direct attention to the 'background' of aesthetic experience itself. In (...) consequence, many philosophical elucidations of art works will make good sense only to whose who are already engaged with them on their own terms—engaged with their distinctive character and forms. That this is so is perhaps most evident when the philosopher's target is the art of music. Roger Scruton's latest contribution to philosophical aesthetics, The Aesthetics of MusIc, is guided by a deep appreciation of the background of musical experience and he often allows music to speak for itself, through musical example and illustration. This study is exceptionally, if not uniquely, informed by a wide and thorough acquaintance with its subject matter, and it is commendably replete with references to, andmusic examples illustrating specific compositions. (shrink)

What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen's famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast members, the duck is acting as animal subject in a quasi-experiment, conducted in a private setting. Analysed from this perspective, the play allows us to discern the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the new scientific animal practice (systematic observation of animal behaviour under artificial conditions) emerging precesely at that time. Ibsen's play stages the clash between a scientific and (...) a romantic understanding of animals that still constitutes the backdrop of most contemporary debates over animals in research. Whereas the scientific understanding reduces the animal's behaviour, as well as its environment, to discrete and modifiable elements, the romantic view regards animals as being at one with (or violently disconnected from) their natural surroundings. (shrink)

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, (...) have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality. (shrink)

This paper analyses the technoscientific objective of building a synthetic cell from a Jungian perspective. After decades of fragmentation and specialisation, the synthetic cell symbolises a turn towards restored wholeness, both at the object pole and at the subject pole. From a Jungian perspective, it is no coincidence that visual representations of synthetic cells often reflect an archetypal, mandala-like structure. As a symbol of restored unity, the synthetic cell mandala compensates for technoscientific fragmentation via active imagination, providing a visual aid (...) for the technoscientific turn towards reintegration. Although the biotechnological desire to reconstruct life in vitro has been compared to alchemy before, a Jungian analysis allows us to make this comparison more specific and precise. The problem of archetypal images, however, is that alluring prospects of reintegration may underestimate and obfuscate the deficiencies and tensions at work in the current situation. As a projection of a future wholeness, it fosters optimism, but may also function as a misleading façade, covering up collisions and complexities. This can be averted by the conscious employment of the mandala as a symbolic scaffold fostering processes of individuation and working through. (shrink)

Friedrich Engels’ dialectical assessment of modern science resulted from his fascination with the natural sciences in combination with his resurging interest in the work of “old Hegel.” Engels became especially interested in what he saw as the molecular essence of life, namely proteins or, more specifically, albumin, seeing life as the mode of existence of these enigmatic substances. Hegelian dialectics is crucial for a dialectical materialist understanding of contemporary technoscience. The dialectical materialist understanding of technoscience as a research practice builds (...) on Engels, but also on later authors who were inspired by his writings, e.g., life scientists such as Haldane and Bernal. Considering the criticism raised against Engels’ dialectics by 20th-century Marxists, a dialectical diagnostic of contemporary technoscience can be achieved, which shifts the focus from artificial albumin as “living matter” to contemporary research on synthetic cells. (shrink)

This paper subjects Dan Brown’s most recent novel Origin to a philosophical reading. Origin is regarded as a literary window into contemporary technoscience, inviting us to explore its transformative momentum and disruptive impact, focusing on the cultural significance of artificial intelligence and computer science: on the way in which established world-views are challenged by the incessant wave of scientific discoveries made possible by super-computation. While initially focusing on the tension between science and religion, the novel’s attention gradually shifts to the (...) increased dependence of human beings on smart technologies and artificial intelligence. Origin’s message, I will argue, reverberates with Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, which aims to outline a morphology of world civilizations. Although the novel starts with a series of oppositions, most notably between religion and science, the eventual tendency is towards convergence, synthesis and sublation, exemplified by Sagrada Família as a monumental symptom of this transition. Three instances of convergence will be highlighted, namely the convergence between science and religion, between humanity and technology and between the natural sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

In this paper, I will reread the history of molecular genetics from a psychoanalytical angle, analysing it as a case history. Building on the developmental theories of Freud and his followers, I will distinguish four stages, namely: (1) oedipal childhood, notably the epoch of model building (1943–1953); (2) the latency period, with a focus on the development of basic skills (1953–1989); (3) adolescence, exemplified by the Human Genome Project, with its fierce conflicts, great expectations and grandiose claims (1989–2003) and (4) (...) adulthood (2003–present) during which revolutionary research areas such as molecular biology and genomics have achieved a certain level of normalcy—have evolved into a normal science. I will indicate how a psychoanalytical assessment conducted in this manner may help us to interpret and address some of the key normative issues that have been raised with regard to molecular genetics over the years, such as ‘relevance’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘promise management’. (shrink)

Metaphors for describing the introduction, impacts, and management of non-native species are numerous and often quite outspoken. Policy-makers have adopted increasingly disputed metaphorical terms from scientific discourse. We performed a critical analysis of the use of strong metaphors in reporting scientific findings to policy-makers. Our analysis shows that perceptions of harm, invasiveness or nativeness are dynamic and inevitably display multiple narratives in science, policy or management. Improving our awareness of multiple expert and stakeholder narratives that exist in the context of (...) non-native species management, as well as metaphorical alternatives, is critical. (shrink)

According to the two-systems account of mindreading, our mature perspective-taking abilities are subserved by two distinct mindreading systems: a fast but inflexible, “implicit” system, and a flexible but slow “explicit” one. However, the currently available evidence on adult perspective-taking does not support this account. Specifically, both Level-1 and Level-2 perspective-taking show a combination of efficiency and flexibility that is deeply inconsistent with the two-systems architecture. This inconsistency also turns out to have serious consequences for the two-systems framework as a whole, (...) both as an account of our mature mindreading abilities and of the development of those abilities. What emerges from this critique is a conception of context-sensitive, spontaneous mindreading that may provide insight into how mindreading functions in complex social environments. This in turn offers a bulwark against skepticism about the role of mindreading in everyday social cognition. (shrink)

Quarantines and virtual learning became necessary as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigates the challenges and opportunities in virtual classes; and how they affect the academic goals. There were 150 secondary students from Junior and Senior High School levels of education in the Philippines, who were deliberately selected; and they participated in the quantitative online survey that used a 62-item self-made 4-point Likert scale questionnaire, with 0.81 reliability coefficients. The data were evaluated by means of the percentage, (...) the mean, and the standard deviation. Sex and secondary education levels were used, in order to compare the students’ challenges and opportunities. One-way ANOVA compared the male and female respondents’ perceived challenges and opportunities. The results revealed that junior high-school (JHS) girls highlighted academic satisfaction; while school-life balance, and virtual learning helped as challenges and opportunities. The females found school-life balance, communication (F(1,149)=11.098; F(1,149)=8.430, p<0.01), academic fulfilment, self-directedness, and time-management (F(1,149)=4.224; F(1,149)=4.470; F(1,149)=4.030, p<0.05) more difficult than did the males. Senior high school (SHS) students were less satisfied with the virtual teaching (F(1,149)=14.391, p<0.001), technology use (F(1,149)=7.342, p<0.01), and communication (F(1,149)=3.934, p<0.05) than JHS students. Males were more satisfied with school and teachers’ assistance (F(1,149)=7.482, p<0.01). Some viewed virtual learning more favourably; and they regard themselves as being adaptive; they think the subject matter and learning tasks are interrelated; and they viewed virtual feedback more positively (F(1,149)=6.438; F(1,149)=5.900; F(1,149)=5.183; F(1,149)=4.470, p<0.05). The JHS students reported subject matter and the virtual learning tasks as being interrelated; and they valued virtual feedback, school and teacher support, and the adaptability to change. Challenges and opportunities may serve as the foundation for establishing a more inclusive policy on virtual learning implementation, with school and stakeholders’ cooperation needed to sustain learners’ holistic development. (shrink)

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue that researchers in the field of precision medicine need to address the performative dimension (...) of collecting data. We propose the fun-house mirror as a metaphor for the use of personal health data; each health data source yields a particular type of image that can be regarded as a ‘data mirror’ that is by definition specific and skewed. This requires competence on the part of individuals to adequately interpret the images thus provided. (shrink)

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

Social norms are commonly understood as rules that dictate which behaviors are appropriate, permissible, or obligatory in different situations for members of a given community. Many researchers have sought to explain the ubiquity of social norms in human life in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying their acquisition, conformity, and enforcement. Existing theories of the psychology of social norms appeal to a variety of constructs, from prediction-error minimization, to reinforcement learning, to shared intentionality, to domain-specific adaptations for norm acquisition. In (...) this paper, we propose a novel methodological and conceptual framework for the cognitive science of social norms that we call normative pluralism. We begin with an analysis of the explanatory aims of the cognitive science of social norms. From this analysis, we derive a recommendation for a reformed conception of its explanandum: a minimally psychological construct that we call normative regularities. Our central empirical proposal is that the psychological underpinnings of social norms are most likely realized by a heterogeneous set of cognitive, motivational, and ecological mechanisms that vary between norms and between individuals, rather than by a single type of process or distinctive norm system. This pluralistic approach, we suggest, offers a methodologically sound point of departure for a fruitful and rigorous science of social norms. (shrink)

Social norms – rules governing which behaviours are deemed appropriate or inappropriate within a given community – are typically taken to be uniquely human. Recently, this position has been challenged by a number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethologists, who have suggested that social norms may also be found in certain non-human animal communities. Such claims have elicited considerable scepticism from norm cognition researchers, who doubt that any non-human animals possess the psychological capacities necessary for normative cognition. However, there is (...) little agreement among these researchers about what these psychological prerequisites are. This makes empirical study of animal social norms difficult, since it is not clear what we are looking for and thus what should count as behavioural evidence for the presence (or absence) of social norms in animals. To break this impasse, we offer an approach that moves beyond contested psychological criteria for social norms. This approach is inspired by the animal culture research program, which has made a similar shift away from heavily psychological definitions of ‘culture’ and to become organized around a cluster of more empirically tractable concepts of culture. Here, we propose an analogous set of constructs built around the core notion of a normative regularity, which we define as a socially maintained pattern of behavioural conformity within a community. We suggest methods for studying potential normative regularities in wild and captive primates. We also discuss the broader scientific and philosophical implications of this research program with respect to questions of human uniqueness, animal welfare and conservation. (shrink)

Nativists about theory of mind have typically explained why children below the age of four fail the false belief task by appealing to the demands that these tasks place on children’s developing executive abilities. However, this appeal to executive functioning cannot explain a wide range of evidence showing that social and linguistic factors also affect when children pass this task. In this paper, I present a revised nativist proposal about theory of mind development that is able to accommodate these findings, (...) which I call the pragmatic development account. According to this proposal, we can gain a better understanding of the shift in children’s performance on standard false-belief tasks around four years of age by considering how children’s experiences with the pragmatics of belief discourse affect the way they interpret the task. (shrink)

The Centre for Society and Genomics (CSG) was established in 2004, funded by NGI (the Netherlands Genomics Initiative). Funding was continued in 2008. This report summarises the basic outcomes of almost a decade of interactive societal research, in close collaboration with the other centres of the NGI network. There are two reasons for presenting these results. First of all, at the end of this year, the CSG Next programme (2008-2013), encompassing more than 50 research projects conducted at 10 Dutch universities, (...) will be completed. Moreover, we are currently preparing ourselves for the years to come. The network of principal investigators, together with the research communities they represent and the societal and international networks they are involved in, have agreed to continue to work together, on the basis of mutual learning, transdisciplinary collaboration and collegial support. Notably, we offer our networks, experiences and expertise to help prepare the ground for promoting Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in the context of Horizon2020, together with our European colleagues. This report summarises what our type of research can achieve and how we want to continue our activities in the future. After a concise sketch of the life sciences landscape as it has evolved during the past seven decades or so, we explain how CSG came about and what kind of approach we have developed. Subsequently, we list our main results, notably in the form of project vignettes, so as to make the harvest of the CSG Next programme as tangible and concrete as possible. Finally, we explain how we see our role in the future. As is already indicated by the title: this is not merely a retrospective summary of our results (CSG harvest), but an invitation to readers (from academia, industry, policy and civil society) to reassemble and to optimally prepare ourselves for things to come, by strengthening and broadening our collaborative efforts, building on what we have achieved so far. (shrink)

In this chapter, we explore a tension between the mindshaping hypothesis and commonsense Western ideas about moral agency and its relation to the social world. To illustrate this tension, we focus on the phenomenon of virtue signaling. We argue that moral intuitions about the perniciousness of virtue signaling reflect an individualistic conception of agency that we call the inside-out ideal. We argue that this ideal fits poorly with the deeply social, interactive, and regulative portrait of human nature revealed by the (...) mindshaping hypothesis. As an alternative to the inside-out ideal, we advocate for a more outside-in conception of agency. We argue that recent work on self control fits with such a conception, and show how it provides the virtue signaler with a path towards genuine moral growth that is scaffolded by mindshaping dynamics connected to reputational incentives and communal support, and should be accepted as perfectly morally legitimate. (shrink)

‘Virtue signaling’ is the practice of using moral talk in order to enhance one’s moral reputation. Many find this kind of behavior irritating. However, some philosophers have gone further, arguing that virtue signaling actively undermines the proper functioning of public moral discourse and impedes moral progress. Against this view, I argue that widespread virtue signaling is not a social ill, and that it can actually serve as an invaluable instrument for moral change, especially in cases where moral argument alone does (...) not suffice. Specifically, virtue signaling can change the broader public’s social expectations, which can in turn motivate the adoption of new, positive social norms. I also argue that the reputation-seeking motives underlying virtue signaling impose important constraints on virtue signalers’ behavior, which serve to keep the worst excesses of virtue signaling in check. (shrink)

Both mindreading and stereotyping are forms of social cognition that play a pervasive role in our everyday lives, yet too little attention has been paid to the question of how these two processes are related. This paper offers a theory of the influence of stereotyping on mental-state attribution that draws on hierarchical predictive coding accounts of action prediction. It is argued that the key to understanding the relation between stereotyping and mindreading lies in the fact that stereotypes centrally involve character-trait (...) attributions, which play a systematic role in the action–prediction hierarchy. On this view, when we apply a stereotype to an individual, we rapidly attribute to her a cluster of generic character traits on the basis of her perceived social group membership. These traits are then used to make inferences about that individual’s likely beliefs and desires, which in turn inform inferences about her behavior. (shrink)

How is human social intelligence engaged in the course of ordinary conversation? Standard models of conversation hold that language production and comprehension are guided by constant, rapid inferences about what other agents have in mind. However, the idea that mindreading is a pervasive feature of conversation is challenged by a large body of evidence suggesting that mental state attribution is slow and taxing, at least when it deals with propositional attitudes such as beliefs. Belief attributions involve contents that are decoupled (...) from our own primary representation of reality; handling these contents has come to be seen as the signature of full-blown human mindreading. However, mindreading in cooperative communication does not necessarily demand decoupling. We argue for a theoretical and empirical turn towards “factive” forms of mentalizing here. In factive mentalizing, we monitor what others do or do not know, without generating decoupled representations. We propose a model of the representational, cognitive, and interactive components of factive mentalizing, a model that aims to explain efficient real-time monitoring of epistemic states in conversation. After laying out this account, we articulate a more limited set of conversational functions for nonfactive forms of mentalizing, including contexts of meta-linguistic repair, deception, and argumentation. We conclude with suggestions for further research into the roles played by factive versus nonfactive forms of mentalizing in conversation. (shrink)

Keeping track of what others believe is a central part of human social cognition. However, the social relevance of those beliefs can vary a great deal. Some belief attributions mostly tell us about what a person is likely to do next. Other belief attributions tell us more about a person's social identity. In this paper, I argue that we cope with this challenge by employing two distinct concepts of belief in our everyday social interactions. The epistemic concept of belief is (...) primarily used to keep track of what other people take to be true, and this informs how we predict and interpret their behaviors. The symbolic concept of belief, in contrast, is primarily used as a means of signaling one's social identity to other members of one's community. In turn, community members closely monitor each other's symbolic beliefs as a means of enforcing social norms. (shrink)

Traditionally, theories of mindreading have focused on the representation of beliefs and desires. However, decades of social psychology and social neuroscience have shown that, in addition to reasoning about beliefs and desires, human beings also use representations of character traits to predict and interpret behavior. While a few recent accounts have attempted to accommodate these findings, they have not succeeded in explaining the relation between trait attribution and belief-desire reasoning. On my account, character-trait attribution is part of a hierarchical system (...) for action prediction, and serves to inform hypotheses about agents’ beliefs and desires, which are in turn used to predict and interpret behavior. (shrink)

Character judgments play an important role in our everyday lives. However, decades of empirical research on trait attribution suggest that the cognitive processes that generate these judgments are prone to a number of biases and cognitive distortions. This gives rise to a skeptical worry about the epistemic foundations of everyday characterological beliefs that has deeply disturbing and alienating consequences. In this paper, I argue that this skeptical worry is misplaced: under the appropriate informational conditions, our everyday character-trait judgments are in (...) fact quite trustworthy. I then propose a mindreading-based model of the socio-cognitive processes underlying trait attribution that explains both why these judgments are initially unreliable, and how they eventually become more accurate. (shrink)

We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challenges in the coordinated development and application of these resources. Challenge 1 is to adopt a standardized definition for cognitive processes. We describe three possibilities and recommend one that is consistent with the standard view in cognitive and biomedical sciences. Challenge 2 is harmonization. Gaps and conflicts in representation must be resolved so that these resources can be combined for mark-up and interpretation of multi-modal data. Finally, Challenge (...) 3 is to test the utility of these resources for large-scale annotation of data, search and query, and knowledge discovery and integration. As term definitions are tested and revised, harmonization should enable coordinated updates across ontologies. However, the true test of these definitions will be in their community-wide adoption which will test whether they support valid inferences about psychological and neuroscientific data. (shrink)

The general methodology of "algebraizing" logics is used here for combining different logics. The combination of logics is represented as taking the colimit of the constituent logics in the category of algebraizable logics. The cocompleteness of this category as well as its isomorphism to the corresponding category of certain first-order theories are proved.

Moral character judgments pervade our everyday social interactions. But are these judgments epistemically reliable? In this paper, I discuss a challenge to the reliability of ordinary virtue and vice attribution that emerges from Christian Miller’s Mixed Traits theory of moral character, which entails that the majority of our ordinary moral character judgments are false. In response to this challenge, I argue that a key prediction of this theory is not borne out by the available evidence; this evidence further suggests that (...) our moral character judgments do converge upon real psychological properties of individuals. I go on to argue that this is because the evidence for the Mixed Traits Theory does not capture the kind of compassionate behaviors that ordinary folk really care about. Ultimately, I suggest that our ordinary standards for virtue and vice have a restricted social scope, which reflects the parochial nature of our characterological moral psychology. (shrink)

In “Rethinking Norm Psychology,” Cecilia Heyes offers an insightful critique of nativist approaches to the psychology of norms and then proposes a plausible alternative model grounded in the theory of cognitive gadgets. We are broadly sympathetic to both the critique and to the cognitive-gadgets model, though our own pluralistic approach to the psychology of norms (Westra & Andrews, 2022) leads us to think that the range of psychological and ecological processes that contributes to our norm psychology is even more (...) diverse than what Heyes proposes. Here, though, we focus on Heyes’s conceptual critique of the nativist model and its explanatory target—namely, a system for representing and processing rules. Heyes’s criticism of this representational rule-based conception of the psychology of norms is quite sound. However, we will argue that Heyes’s alternative behavioral explanandum for the psychology of norms also fails to escape the gravitational pull of a rule-based approach. (shrink)

Resumo: A crise na União Europeia e os programas de austeridade subsequentes fizeram emergir uma miríade de movimentos sociais, diversos na sua natureza e nos seus propósitos. O que se pretende aferir neste artigo é a relação e a conexão existentes entre o Estado, o poder económico, a sociedade civil e os movimentos sociais neste contexto específico de crise. Procuraremos, nesta breve abordagem, explanar alguns elementos de originalidade intrínsecos aos movimentos sociais hodiernos, patentes na sua forma de participação e organização, (...) assim como aplicar estas questões teóricas relevantes ao contexto português. A parte empírica, dada a escassez de estudos de caso existentes, será apoiada no último inquérito do European Social Survey, de 2012. Analisando um conjunto de perguntas aí explícitas, podemos compreender, de forma indirecta, algumas das dinâmicas que caracterizam estes movimentos. Abstract: The crisis in the European Union and the subsequent austerity programs have unleashed a myriad of social movements, diverse in its nature and purpose. The purpose of this paper is to assess the relationship and connection between the State, economic power, civil society and social movements in this specific context of crisis. We will try, in this brief approach, to explain some elements of originality intrinsic to modern social movements, evident in their form of participation and organization, as well as to apply these theoretical questions relevant to the Portuguese context. The empirical part, given the paucity of existing case studies, will be supported in the last survey of the European Social Survey of 2012. By analyzing a set of questions explicit there, we can, indirectly, understand some of the dynamics that characterize these movements. (shrink)

In How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition, Shannon Spaulding develops a novel account of social cognition with pessimistic implications for mindreading accuracy: according to Spaulding, mistakes in mentalizing are much more common than traditional theories of mindreading commonly assume. In this commentary, I push against Spaulding’s pessimism from two directions. First, I argue that a number of the heuristic mindreading strategies that Spaulding views as especially error prone might be quite reliable in practice. Second, I argue that current (...) methods for measuring mindreading performance are not well-suited for the task of determining whether our mental-state attributions are generally accurate. I conclude that any claims about the accuracy or inaccuracy of mindreading are currently unjustified. (shrink)

A graph-theoretic account of logics is explored based on the general notion of m-graph (that is, a graph where each edge can have a finite sequence of nodes as source). Signatures, interpretation structures and deduction systems are seen as m-graphs. After defining a category freely generated by a m-graph, formulas and expressions in general can be seen as morphisms. Moreover, derivations involving rule instantiation are also morphisms. Soundness and completeness theorems are proved. As a consequence of the generality of the (...) approach our results apply to very different logics encompassing, among others, substructural logics as well as logics with nondeterministic semantics, and subsume all logics endowed with an algebraic semantics. (shrink)

The European project European and Latin American Systems of Ethics Regulation of Biomedical Research Project (EULABOR) has carried out the first comparative analysis of ethics regulation systems for biomedical research in seven countries in Europe and Latin America, evaluating their roles in the protection of human subjects. We developed a conceptual and methodological framework defining ‘ethics regulation system for biomedical research’ as a set of actors, institutions, codes and laws involved in overseeing the ethics of biomedical research on humans. This (...) framework allowed us to develop comprehensive national reports by conducting semi-structured interviews to key informants. These reports were summarised and analysed in a comparative analysis. The study showed that the regulatory framework for clinical research in these countries differ in scope. It showed that despite the different political contexts, actors involved and motivations for creating the regulation, in most of the studied countries it was the government who took the lead in setting up the system. The study also showed that Europe and Latin America are similar regarding national bodies and research ethics committees, but the Brazilian system has strong and noteworthy specificities. (shrink)

Phillips and colleagues convincingly argue that knowledge attribution is a faster, more automatic form of mindreading than belief attribution. However, they do not explain what it is about knowledge attribution that lends it this cognitive advantage. I suggest an explanation of the knowledge-attribution advantage that would also help to distinguish it from belief-based and minimalist alternatives.

The notion of information processing has dominated the study of the mind for over six decades. However, before the advent of cognitivism, one of the most prominent theoretical ideas was that of Habit. This is a concept with a rich and complex history, which is again starting to awaken interest, following recent embodied, enactive critiques of computationalist frameworks. We offer here a very brief history of the concept of habit in the form of a genealogical network-map. This serves to provide (...) an overview of the richness of this notion and as a guide for further re-appraisal. We identify 77 thinkers and their influences, and group them into seven schools of thought. Two major trends can be distinguished. One is the associationist trend, starting with the work of Locke and Hume, developed by Hartley, Bain, and Mill to be later absorbed into behaviorism through pioneering animal psychologists (Morgan and Thorndike). This tradition conceived of habits atomistically and as automatisms (a conception later debunked by cognitivism). Another historical trend we have called organicism inherits the legacy of Aristotle and develops along German idealism, French spiritualism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. It feeds into the work of continental psychologists in the early 20th century, influencing important figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, and Gibson. But it has not yet been taken up by mainstream cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Habits, in this tradition, are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality. These are properties that make habit a particularly attractive idea for embodied, enactive perspectives, which can now re-evaluate it in light of dynamical systems theory and complexity research. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy and literary theory defending the view that engagement with literature promotes readers’ empathy. Until the last century, few of the empirical claims adduced in that tradition were investigated experimentally. Recent work in psychology and neuropsychology has now shed new light on the interplay of empathy and literature. This article surveys the experimental findings, addressing three central questions: What is it to read empathically? Does reading make us more empathic? What characteristics of literature, if (...) any, affect readers’ empathy? While experimental studies have delivered no conclusive answers to these questions, it has exposed their psychological complexity and constructed a more nuanced picture of the diverse ways in which literature interacts with our empathic capacities. (shrink)

This introduction to the topical collection, Folk Psychology: Pluralistic Approaches reviews the origins and basic theoretical tenets of the framework of pluralistic folk psychology. It places special emphasis on pluralism about the variety folk psychological strategies that underlie behavioral prediction and explanation beyond belief-desire attribution, and on the diverse range of social goals that folk psychological reasoning supports beyond prediction and explanation. Pluralism is not presented as a single theory or model of social cognition, but rather as a big-tent research (...) program encompassing both revisionary and more traditionally inspired approaches to folk psychology. After reviewing the origins of pluralistic folk psychology, the papers in the current issue are introduced. These papers fall into three thematic clusters: Folk-psychological strategies beyond propositional attitude attribution ; Enculturation and regulative folk psychology ; and Defenses of pluralism. (shrink)

We suggest that there is confusion between why consciousness developed and what additional functions, through continued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent past events, it seems like a terrible system—prone to forgetting and false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory developed to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good system. We (...) argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accomplish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound implications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in general. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness. Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contributes to this conscious memory system. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have advocated for an ‘interactive turn’ in the methodology of social-cognition research: to become more ecologically valid, we must design experiments that are interactive, rather than merely observational. While the practical aim of improving ecological validity in the study of social cognition is laudable, we think that the notion of ‘interaction’ is not suitable for this task: as it is currently deployed in the social cognition literature, this notion leads to (...) serious conceptual and methodological confusion. In this paper, we tackle this confusion on three fronts: 1) we revise the ‘interactionist’ definition of interaction; 2) we demonstrate a number of potential methodological confounds that arise in interactive experimental designs; and 3) we show that ersatz interactivity works just as well as the real thing. We conclude that the notion of ‘interaction’, as it is currently being deployed in this literature, obscures an accurate understanding of human social cognition. (shrink)

This study was intended to determine the level of factors affecting the decision of 4th year BS Accountancy students from College of Maasin to work after graduation or to take the 2022 CPALE. In order to determine the factors affecting the decision of the graduating Accountancy students, the researchers adopted the descriptive survey design. Descriptive survey is a sort of descriptive study that uses surveys to collect data on a variety of issues. The goal of this information is to see (...) how different circumstances can be obtained among the respondents. The following results were derived in the course of the conduct of this study; There is bigger percentage of female than of male where 26 out of 27 belongs to the age group of 20 to 22. Majority of the student’s parent’s occupation status is working. Conversely, most of them only earns P2,000 to P5,000 per month even though the household member earning for a living is 1 to 4 members, the first 3 factors namely financial status, peer pressure and parent’s influence were found to slightly affect the decision of the student with regards to taking the CPALE or to work after graduation. The last factor, school’s teaching influence turned out that it somewhat affects the decision of the students, there is a significant difference between the teaching influence factor and the demographic profile of gender while on the age and parent’s occupation status, it has a significance difference with financial status factor. As BSA students taking a course where a licensure examination awaits after graduation, it is necessary to take some factors into consideration before coming up into a decision regarding taking the CPALE or to work after graduation. Based on the results of the study, the level of factors to affect the decision of the students was determined. It has been shown in the results that the three factors namely financial status, peer pressure and parent’s influence can slightly affect the student’s decision. However, among three, peer pressure has the highest weighted mean rating of 2.86. On the other hand, the school’s teaching influence has the lowest weighted mean rating of 2.29 which means it can somewhat affect the decision of the student. (shrink)

Looks into evaluation of information provision probability from different sources, based on use of linguistic variables. Formation of functions appurtenant for its unclear variables provides for adoption of decisions by the decision maker, in conditions of nonprobabilistic equivocation. The development of market relations in Ukraine increases the independence and responsibility of enterprises in justifying and making management decisions that ensure their effective, competitive activities. As a result of the analysis, it is determined that the condition of economic facilities can be (...) described and determined by the decision-maker, in the presence of the necessary information. The confidence of the decision-maker in the information received is different and the decisions made have a correspondingly different level of information risk. It is important to substantiate the procedure for assessing the numerical extent of information risk in decision-making based on the information obtained in conditions of uncertainty. The use of a linguistic variable in the processing of expert data presented in the form of a matrix of binary relations of values of the membership function, which allowed to move to further processing of knowledge to support decision-making in the management of industrial, commercial, financial and other activities. As a mathematical model for estimating the numerical measure of information risk when making decisions based on the information obtained in conditions of non-stochastic uncertainty, a model has been developed to model natural language uncertainties, which differs from existing ones by formalizing knowledge taking into account uncertainty of input information. Making such a clear decision in a fuzzy environment has appropriate values of effectiveness and risk. The paper proposes all the functions and accessories of indicators of both quantitative nature and qualitative nature to bring their values in the field of definition to one scale. Then the indicator of the effectiveness of decision-making will be a measure of the clarity of the cross-section of fuzzy subsets, which correspond to the introduced indicators of information risk. The condition of economic facilities can be described and determined by the decision-maker, if the necessary information is available. Decision-making on thenumerical measure of information risk must be determined by a set of basic indicators, which can be both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Predictive values of indicators should be determined in conditions of nonstochastic uncertainty. In this case, the indicators of a quantitative nature can be determined by fuzzy triangular numbers, which implement a high level of confidence in the subjective judgments of experts. Indicators of qualitative nature should be presented in linguistic variables. The values of the indicators of qualitative nature that are predicted must be considered for all fuzzy variable terms-sets of linguistic variables introduced into consideration. For any fuzzy variable, the introduction to the consideration of a clear set of values as carriers of the α-level of its membership function allows to reduce to a single interpretation of the predicted values of indicators of quantitative and qualitative nature in terms of non-stochastic uncertainty. (shrink)

There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring to someone involves preferring to make any decision (...) using their opinions instead of your own. In a slogan, deferring opinions is deferring decisions. Generalizing the proposal of Dorst (2020a), we first formulate a new principle that shows exactly how your opinions must relate to an expert’s for this to be so. We then build off the results of Levinstein (2019) and Campbell-Moore (2020) to show that this principle is also equivalent to the constraint that you must always expect the expert’s estimates to be more accurate than your own. Finally, we characterize the conditions an expert’s opinions must meet to be worthy of deference in this sense, showing how they sit naturally between the too-strong constraints of Reflection and the too-weak constraints of New Reflection. (shrink)

This paper addresses the cultural impact of genomics and the Human Genome Project on human self-understanding. Notably, it addresses the claim made by Francis Collins that the genome is the language of God and the claim made by Max Delbrück that Aristotle must be credited with having predicted DNA as the soul that organises bio-matter. From a continental philosophical perspective I will argue that human existence results from a dialectical interaction between two types of texts: the language of molecular biology (...) and the language of civilisation; the language of the genome and the language of our socio-cultural, symbolic ambiance. Whereas the former ultimately builds on the alphabets of genes and nucleotides, the latter is informed by primordial texts such as the Bible and the Quran. In applied bioethics deliberations on genomics, science is easily framed as liberating and progressive, religious world-views as conservative an... (shrink)

In four experiments, we offer evidence that virtues are often judged as uniquely important for some business practices (e.g., hospital management and medical error investigation). Overall, actions done only from virtue (either by organizations or individuals) were judged to feel better, to be more praiseworthy, to be more morally right, and to be associated with more trustworthy leadership and greater personal life satisfaction compared to actions done only to produce the best consequences or to follow the correct moral rule. These (...) results accord with claims made by some virtue ethicists. The current data contribute to a small but growing body of literature emphasizing both empirical soundness and philosophical rigor in the scientific study of virtue. Results also offer some guidance concerning how businesses, employees, and executives are evaluated and perceived. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Understanding the folk notion of free will and moral responsibility is important for a host of applied and theoretical issues in psychology, philosophy, and ethics. The bulk of experimental research has focused on folk intuitions concerning determinism's relation to free will and moral responsibility. However, determinism is a difficult term for many folk to understand. Accordingly researchers often use comprehension questions to identify and exclude large proportions of participants who seem to struggle with relevant concepts. Here, we document some of (...) the cognitive mechanisms involved in folk judgments related to comprehension of determinism, and its relations to free will and moral responsibility. Results provide prescriptions for experimental designs that can increase comprehension, potentially decreasing sampling biases. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. (shrink)