According to what I call the ‘argument from public bads’, if a researcher deceived subjects in the past, there is a chance that subjects will discount the information that a subsequent researcher provides, thus compromising the validity of the subsequent researcher’s experiment. While this argument is taken to justify an existing informal ban on explicit deception in experimental economics, it can also apply to implicit deception, yet implicit deception is not banned and is sometimes used in experimental (...) economics. Thus, experimental economists are being inconsistent when they appeal to the argument from public bads to justify banning explicit deception but not implicit deception. (shrink)

Focusing on the work of Friedrich von Hayek and Vernon Smith, we discuss some conceptual links between Austrian economics and recent work in behavioral game theory and experimental economics. After a brief survey of the main methodological aspects of Austrian and experimental economics, we suggest that common views on subjectivism, individualism, and the role of qualitative explanations and predictions in social science may favour a fruitful interaction between these two research programs.

A central feature of experimental development economics is the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effectiveness of prospective socioeconomic interventions. The use of RCTs in development economics raises a host of ethical issues which are just beginning to be explored. In this article, I address one ethical issue in particular: the routine use of the status quo as a control when designing and conducting a development RCT. Drawing on the literature on the principle of (...) standard care in medical research ethics, as well as considerations of distributive justice in non-ideal circumstances, I argue that the practice of using the status quo as a control is ethically justifiable. However, I add an important qualification based on the natural duty of rescue to address the concern that my account is overly permissive. (shrink)

Until recently, experimental philosophy has been associated with the questionnaire-based study of intuitions; however, experimental philosophers now adapt a wide range of empirical methods for new philosophical purposes. New methods include paradigms for behavioural experiments from across the social sciences as well as computational methods from the digital humanities that can process large bodies of text and evidence. This book offers an accessible overview of these exciting innovations. The volume brings together established and emerging research leaders from several (...) areas of experimental philosophy to explore how new empirical methods can contribute to philosophical debates. Each chapter presents one or several methods new to experimental philosophy, demonstrating their application in a key area of philosophy and discussing their strengths and limitations. Methods covered include eye tracking, virtual reality technology, neuroimaging, statistical learning, and experimental economics as well as corpus linguistics, visualisation techniques and data and text mining. The volume explores their use in moral philosophy and moral psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and the history of ideas. Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy is essential reading for undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

This entry summarizes an emerging subdiscipline of both empirical bioethics and experimental philosophy (“x-phi”) which has variously been referred to as experimental philosophical bioethics, experimental bioethics, or simply “bioxphi”. Like empirical bioethics, bioxphi uses data-driven research methods to capture what various stakeholders think (feel, judge, etc.) about moral issues of relevance to bioethics. However, like its other parent discipline of x-phi, bioxphi tends to favor experiment-based designs drawn from the cognitive sciences – including psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral (...) economics – to tease out why and how stakeholders think as they do. (shrink)

Evolutionary economics often focuses on the comparison between economic competition and the process of natural selection to select the fitter members of a given population. But that neglects the other "half" of an evolutionary process, the mechanism for the generation of new possibilities that is key to dynamic efficiency. My topic is the process of parallel experimentation which I take to be a process of multiple experiments running concurrently with some form of common goal, with some semi-isolation between the (...) experiments, with benchmarking comparisons made between the experiments, and with the "migration" of discoveries between experiments wherever possible to ratchet up the performance of the group. The thesis is that parallel experimentation is a fundamental dynamic efficiency scheme to enhance and accelerate variation, innovation, and learning in contexts of genuine uncertainty or known ignorance. Within evolutionary biology, this type of parallel experimentation scheme was developed in Sewall Wright's shifting balance theory of evolution. It addressed the rather neglected topic of how a population on a low fitness peak might eventually be able to go "downhill" against selective pressures, traverse a valley of low fitness, and then ascend a higher fitness peak. The theme of parallel experimentation is used to recast and pull together dynamic and pluralistic theories in economics, political theory, philosophy of science, and social learning. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in philosophy about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others and, if not, what is the moral principle underlying the prohibition. Hypothetical moral dilemmas are used in order to probe moral intuitions. Philosophers use them to achieve a reflective equilibrium between intuitions and principles, psychologists to investigate moral decision-making processes. In the dilemmas, the harms that are traded off are almost always deaths. However, the (...) moral principles and psychological processes are supposed to be broader than this, encompassing harms other than death. Further, if the standard pattern of intuitions is preserved in the domain of economic harm, then that would open up the possibility of studying behaviour in trolley problems using the tools of experimental economics. We report the results of two studies designed to test whether the standard patterns of intuitions are preserved when the domain and severity of harm are varied. Our findings show that the difference in moral intuitions between bystander and footbridge scenarios is replicated across different domains and levels of physical and non-physical harm, including economic harms. (shrink)

In this paper we use an experimental approach to investigate how linguistic conventions can emerge in a society without explicit agreement. As a starting point we consider the signaling game introduced by Lewis. We find that in experimental settings, small groups can quickly develop conventions of signal meaning in these games. We also investigate versions of the game where the theoretical literature indicates that meaning will be less likely to arise—when there are more than two states for actors (...) to transfer meaning about and when some states are more likely than others. In these cases, we find that actors are less likely to arrive at strategies where signals have clear conventional meaning. We conclude with a proposal for extending the use of the methodology of experimental economics in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

From the mid-1960s until the late 1980s, the well-known general philosophies of science of the time were applied to economics. The result was disappointing: none seemed to fit. This paper argues that this is due to a special feature of economics: it possesses ‘orientational paradigms’ in high number. Orientational paradigms are similar to Kuhn’s paradigms in that they are shared across scientific communities, but dissimilar to Kuhn’s paradigms in that they are not generally accepted as valid guidelines for (...) further research. As will be shown by several examples, orientational paradigms provide economics with common points of reference that support its epistemic coherence and make scientific discourse more easily possible across school boundaries. With the help of systematicity theory, a newer general philosophy of science, one can further elucidate the role of orientational paradigms with regard to scientific progress. (shrink)

Discussions of the non-identity problem presuppose a widely shared intuition that actions or policies that change who comes into existence don't, thereby, become morally unproblematic. We hypothesize that this intuition isn’t generally shared by the public, which could have widespread implications concerning how to generate support for large-scale, identity-affecting policies relating to matters like climate change. To test this, we ran a version of the well-known dictator game designed to mimic the public's behavior over identity-affecting choices. We found the public (...) does seem to behave more selfishly when making identity-affecting choices, which should be concerning. We further hypothesized that one possible mechanism is the notion of harm the public uses in their decision-making and find that substantial portions of the population seem to each employ distinct notions of harm in their normative thinking. These findings raise puzzling features about the public’s normative thinking that call out for further empirical examination. (shrink)

It would be unkind but not inaccurate to say that most experimental philosophy is just psychology with worse methods and better theories. In Experimental Ethics: Towards an Empirical Moral Philosophy, Christoph Luetge, Hannes Rusch, and Matthias Uhl set out to make this comparison less invidious and more flattering. Their book has 16 chapters, organized into five sections and bookended by the editors’ own introduction and prospectus. Contributors hail from four countries (Germany, USA, Spain, and the United Kingdom) and (...) five disciplines (philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, economics, and sociology). While the chapters are of mixed quality and originality, there are several fine contributions to the field. These especially include Stephan Wolf and Alexander Lenger’s sophisticated attempt to operationalize the Rawlsian notion of a veil of ignorance, Nina Strohminger et al.’s survey of the methods available to experimental ethicists for studying implicit morality, Fernando Aguiar et al.’s exploration of the possibility of operationalizing reflective equilibrium in the lab, and Nikil Mukerji’s careful defusing of three debunking arguments about the reliability of philosophical intuitions. (shrink)

In this paper I reconstruct the birth, blossoming and decline of an eighteenth century program, namely “Moral Newtonianism”. I reconstruct the interaction, or co-existence, of different levels: positive theories, methodology, worldviews and trace the presence of scattered items of the various levels in the work of Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart. I highlight how Mirowski’s reconstruction of the interaction between physics and economics may be extended to the eighteenth century in an interesting way once the outdated reconstruction (...) of Adam Smith that has been adopted by Mirowski is updated. I show how general methodological ideas, such as the distinction between ultimate causes or essences and intermediate principles, that originated in a context where the issue was the interaction between natural science and theology, proved useful when transferred to social theory in encouraging a kind of “experimental” approach to social phenomena. I discuss finally the genesis of frozen metaphors such as equilibrium, circulation, and value, arguing that Canguilhem’s lesson – namely that scientific change is produced not only by similarity but also by opposition – may be applied also to the history of economic thought. I take as an example Adam Smith’s ‘discovery’ of social mechanisms vis-à-vis his sceptical mistrust of neo-Stoic and Platonic views of a world-order. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that simulation can serve as epistemic substitute for experimentation. Such a claim might be suggested by the fast-spreading use of computer simulation to investigate phenomena not accessible to experimentation (in astrophysics, ecology, economics, climatology, etc.). But what does that mean? The paper starts with a clarification of the terms of the issue and then focuses on two powerful arguments for the view that simulation and experimentation are ‘epistemically on a par’. One is based on the (...) claim that, in experimentation, no less than in simulation, it is not the system under study that is manipulated but a system that ‘stands-in’ for it. The other one highlights the pervasive use of models in experimentation. It will be argued that these arguments, as compelling as they might seem, are each based on a mistaken interpretation of experimentation and that, far from simulation and experimentation being epistemically on a par, they do not have the same epistemic function, do not produce the same kind of epistemic results. (shrink)

Abstract: Don Ross’ Economic Theory and Cognitive Science (2005) provides an elaborate philosophical defense of neoclassical economics. He argues that the central features of neoclassical theory are associated with what he calls the Robbins-Samuelson argument pattern and that it can be reconciled with recent developments in experimental and behavioral economics, as well as contemporary cognitive science. This paper argues that Ross’ Robbins-Samuelson argument pattern is not in the work of either Robbins or Samuelson and in many ways (...) is in conflict with their own versions, and defenses, of neoclassical theory. (shrink)

It is exhibited that mature scientific economical theory is a set of propositions that describe the relationship between theoretical objects of two types - basic objects and derivative ones. The set of basic objects makes up the aggregate of initial idealizations (the Fundamental Theoretical Scheme or FTS) with no direct reference to experimental data. The derivative theoretical objects are formed from the basic ones according to certain rules. The sets of derivative objects form partial theoretical schemes or PTS. Any (...) mature economics scientific theory grows due to transitions, in order to describe each new experimental situation, from FTS to PTS. Each PTS construction from the FTS represents a problem that cannot be reduced to a strict algorithm. (shrink)

Prof. Miščević has long been an ardent defender of the use of thought experiments in philosophy, foremost metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Recently he has, in his typically sophisticated manner, extended his general account of philosophical thought-experimenting to the domain of normative politics. Not only can the history of political philosophy be better understood and appreciated, according to Miščević, when seen as a more or less continuous, yet covert, practice of thought-experimenting, the very progress of the discipline may crucially (...) depend on finding the right balance between the constraints of (biological, psychological, economic, political, and so on) reality and political-moral ideals when we set to design our basic political notions and institutions. I have much less confidence in this project than prof. Miščević does. As a subspecies of moral TE, political TE share all their problems plus exhibit some of their own. In the paper, I present and discuss two types of evidence that threaten to undermine political philosophers’ trust in thought-experiments and the ethical/political intuitions elicited by them: (i) the dismal past record of thought-experimentation in moral and political philosophy; and (ii) the variety, prevalence, and stubbornness, of bias in ordinary social/political judgment. (shrink)

This paper presents empirical findings from a set of reasoning and mock jury studies presented at the Experimental Psychology Oxford Seminar Series (2010) and the King's Bench Chambers KBW Barristers Seminar Series (2010). The presentation asks the following questions and presents empirical answers using the Lenses of Evidence Framework (Cowley & Colyer, 2010; see also van Koppen & Wagenaar, 1993): -/- Why is mental representation important for psychology? -/- Why is mental representation important for evidence law? -/- Lens 1: (...) The self representation - Key findings -/- Lens 2: The expert representation - Key findings -/- Lens 3: The anchor representation - Key findings -/- Conclusions & Future directions. -/- The series of research essentially explores how people represent evidence in mind and presents key findings now cited in the following literatures: Philosophy of Science, Cognitive Expertise, Behavioural Economics, Cognitive Science, Psychology and Public Policy, & Causation and the Law. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

We perform an experimental investigation using a dictator game in which individuals must make a moral decision —to give or not to give an amount of money to poor people in the Third World. A questionnaire in which the subjects are asked about the reasons for their decision shows that, at least in this case, moral motivations carry a heavy weight in the decision: the majority of dictators give the money for reasons of a consequentialist nature. Based on the (...) results presented here and of other analogous experiments, we conclude that dicator behavior can be understood in terms of moral distance rather than social distance and that it systematically deviates from the egoism assumption in economic models and game theory. (shrink)

An obituary of Philippe Mongin (1950-2020).

Human agents happen to judge that a conjunction of two terms is more probable than one of the terms, in contradiction with the rules of classical probabilities—this is the conjunction fallacy. One of the most discussed accounts of this fallacy is currently the quantum-like explanation, which relies on models exploiting the mathematics of quantum mechanics. The aim of this paper is to investigate the empirical adequacy of major quantum-like models which represent beliefs with quantum states. We first argue that they (...) can be tested in three different ways, in a question order effect configuration which is different from the traditional conjunction fallacy experiment. We then carry out our proposed experiment, with varied methodologies from experimental economics. The experimental results we get are at odds with the predictions of the quantum-like models. This strongly suggests that this quantum-like account of the conjunction fallacy fails. Future possible research paths are discussed. (shrink)

Governments are increasingly using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate policy interventions. RCTs are often understood to provide the highest quality evidence regarding the causal efficacy of an intervention. While randomization plays an essential epistemic role in the context of policy RCTs however, it also plays an important distributive role. By randomly assigning participants to either the intervention or control arm of an RCT, people are subject to different policies and so, often, to different types and levels of benefits. In (...) this paper, I identify one necessary condition as well as a set of sufficient conditions for the permissible use of random assignment by government agencies. I argue first that random assignment is permissible only if it is consistent with governments’ duty to realize morally important outcomes. I argue second that random assignment is permissible in cases where investigators are in a state of genuine equipoise regarding all arms of the experiment and the policy to which people have a claim of justice. Finally, I defend a set of conditions under which random assignment is permissible in cases where one or more arms of a policy RCT are reasonably expected to be either superior or inferior to this policy. (shrink)

According to the order ethics approach to business ethics, moral rules must be im-plemented by institutions that provide incentives for following the rules. As a minimal (normative) condition, these institutions must be able to motivate the homo eco-nomicus. But even if an institution passes this test, it will only motivate actual people (i.e. the homo psychologicus) to follow moral rules, if they have the relevant compe-tences and self-efficacy beliefs. Consequently, good institutional design includes com-prehensive change management. At this point applied (...) order ethics can draw on find-ings of psychology and experimental economics. It turns out, that role models can support self-efficacy beliefs and are thus more important for order ethics than has traditionally been assumed. (shrink)

Over the years, mathematics and statistics have become increasingly important in the social sciences1 . A look at history quickly confirms this claim. At the beginning of the 20th century most theories in the social sciences were formulated in qualitative terms while quantitative methods did not play a substantial role in their formulation and establishment. Moreover, many practitioners considered mathematical methods to be inappropriate and simply unsuited to foster our understanding of the social domain. Notably, the famous Methodenstreit also concerned (...) the role of mathematics in the social sciences. Here, mathematics was considered to be the method of the natural sciences from which the social sciences had to be separated during the period of maturation of these disciplines. All this changed by the end of the century. By then, mathematical, and especially statistical, methods were standardly used, and their value in the social sciences became relatively uncontested. The use of mathematical and statistical methods is now ubiquitous: Almost all social sciences rely on statistical methods to analyze data and form hypotheses, and almost all of them use (to a greater or lesser extent) a range of mathematical methods to help us understand the social world. Additional indication for the increasing importance of mathematical and statistical methods in the social sciences is the formation of new subdisciplines, and the establishment of specialized journals and societies. Indeed, subdisciplines such as Mathematical Psychology and Mathematical Sociology emerged, and corresponding journals such as The Journal of Mathematical Psychology (since 1964), The Journal of Mathematical Sociology (since 1976), Mathematical Social Sciences (since 1980) as well as the online journals Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (since 1998) and Mathematical Anthropology and Cultural Theory (since 2000) were established. What is more, societies such as the Society for Mathematical Psychology (since 1976) and the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (since 1996) were founded. Similar developments can be observed in other countries. The mathematization of economics set in somewhat earlier (Vazquez 1995; Weintraub 2002). However, the use of mathematical methods in economics started booming only in the second half of the last century (Debreu 1991). Contemporary economics is dominated by the mathematical approach, although a certain style of doing economics became more and more under attack in the last decade or so. Recent developments in behavioral economics and experimental economics can also be understood as a reaction against the dominance (and limitations) of an overly mathematical approach to economics. There are similar debates in other social sciences. It is, however, important to stress that problems of one method (such as axiomatization or the use of set theory) can hardly be taken as a sign of bankruptcy of mathematical methods in the social sciences tout court. This chapter surveys mathematical and statistical methods used in the social sciences and discusses some of the philosophical questions they raise. It is divided into two parts. Sections 1 and 2 are devoted to mathematical methods, and Sections 3 to 7 to statistical methods. As several other chapters in this handbook provide detailed accounts of various mathematical methods, our remarks about the latter will be rather short and general. Statistical methods, on the other hand, will be discussed in-depth. (shrink)

The punishment of social misconduct is a powerful mechanism for stabilizing high levels of cooperation among unrelated individuals. It is regularly assumed that humans have a universal disposition to punish social norm violators, which is sometimes labelled “universal structure of human morality” or “pure aversion to social betrayal”. Here we present evidence that, contrary to this hypothesis, the propensity to punish a moral norm violator varies among participants with different career trajectories. In anonymous real-life conditions, future teachers punished a talented (...) but immoral young violinist: they voted against her in an important music competition when they had been informed of her previous blatant misconduct toward fellow violin students. In contrast, future police officers and high school students did not punish. This variation among socio-professional categories indicates that the punishment of norm violators is not entirely explained by an aversion to social betrayal. We suggest that context specificity plays an important role in normative behaviour; people seem inclined to enforce social norms only in situations that are familiar, relevant for their social category, and possibly strategically advantageous. (shrink)

This paper defends a challenge, inspired by arguments drawn from contemporary ordinary language philosophy and grounded in experimental data, to certain forms of standard philosophical practice. The challenge is inspired by contemporary philosophers who describe themselves as practicing “ordinary language philosophy”. Contemporary ordinary language philosophy can be divided into constructive and critical approaches. The critical approach to contemporary ordinary language philosophy has been forcefully developed by Avner Baz, who attempts to show that a substantial chunk of contemporary philosophy is (...) fundamentally misguided. I describe Baz’s project and argue that while there is reason to be skeptical of its radical conclusion, it conveys an important truth about discontinuities between ordinary uses of philosophically significant expressions (“know”, e.g.) and their use in philosophical thought experiments. I discuss some evidence from experimental psychology and behavioral economics indicating that there is a risk of overlooking important aspects of meaning or misinterpreting experimental results by focusing only on abstract experimental scenarios, rather than employing more diverse and more ecologically valid experimental designs. I conclude by presenting a revised version of the critical argument from ordinary language. (shrink)

Amartya Sen’s remarkable endeavour to realize the normative capability of welfare economics goes beyond the impecunious resultants of the neoclassical welfare economy. The neoclassical welfare economy decoratively bracketed values to speculate about factual observations. This was due to the influence of logical positivists and their convictions about experimental scientific statements (primarily mathematical) and their vicinity to empirical truths and analytic statements. Sen adequately inquires “whether morality can be expressed in the form of choice between preference patterns rather than (...) between actions” (Sen, 1997a, 78). “A new phase classical theory” in economics from the hands of Sen and some others put forth two pivotal issues in a unified manner: a. Mathematical models of an economy. b. Ethical reflection on the subject of welfare economy–a value-laden enterprise in Sen’s literature. -/- In general, welfarists and utilitarians affirm that moral values are anchored in individual agency and involve mental metric utilities (pleasure, happiness, pain etc.). This focus, first of all, results in a disadvantage, as it undermines freedom in terms of achievement. Secondly, it pays no heed to achievement reasonably giving more importance to those who are incapable of reflecting on any one of those mental metrics. Besides, Sen argues that equality of opportunity does not accord with the equality of freedom, and its reason is rooted in the scope of the incongruity of human beings and the diversified meanings of efficiency. Developing a general methodological approach to revisit the notion of inequality concerned by exploring a particular substantive stand that Sen aims to underscore involves examining how social arrangements work to define freedom, capabilities, and welfare to ensure comparisons and assessments of quality of life. (shrink)

Consent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that (...) specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even when the consenter makes an irrational and inauthentic decision. Finally, Study 3 showed that the effect of autonomy on judgments of valid consent carries important downstream consequences for moral reasoning about the rights and obligations of third parties, even when the consented-to action is morally wrong. Overall, these findings suggest that laypeople embrace a normative, domain-general concept of valid consent that depends consistently on the possession of autonomous capacities, but not on the exercise of these capacities. Autonomous decisions and autonomous capacities thus play divergent roles in moral reasoning about consent interactions: while the former appears relevant for assessing the wrongfulness of consented-to acts, the latter plays a role in whether consent is regarded as authoritative and therefore as transforming moral rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACT“Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these limitations and therefore take evidence-based findings with a much larger grain of salt than do policy makers. Their experience suggests that (...) the real world is more heterogeneous than the world imagined by evidence-based policy enthusiasts. (shrink)

This paper considers the practical question of why people do not behave in the way they ought to behave. This question is a practical one, reaching both into the normative and descriptive domains of morality. That is, it concerns moral norms as well as empirical facts. We argue that two main problems usually keep us form acting and judging in a morally decent way: firstly, we make mistakes in moral reasoning. Secondly, even when we know how to act and judge, (...) we still fail to meet the requirements due to personal weaknesses. This discussion naturally leads us to another question: can we narrow the gap between what people are morally required to do and what they actually do? We discuss findings from neuroscience, economics, and psychology, considering how we might bring our moral behavior better in line with moral theory. Potentially fruitful means include nudging, training, pharmacological enhancement, and brain stimulation. We conclude by raising the question of whether such methods could and should be implemented. (shrink)

This paper argues that the plethora of experiments with decentralized social technologies (DSTs)—clusters of which are sometimes called “the Web 3.0 ecosystem” or “the Fediverse”—have brought us to a constitutional moment. These technologies enable radical innovations in social, economic, and political institutions and practices, with the potential to support transformative approaches to political economy. They demand governance innovation. The paper develops a framework of prudent vigilance for making ethical choices in this space that help to both grasp positive opportunities for (...) transformation and avoid the potentially problematic consequences. Most of our specific examples and concerns come from the blockchain/Web3 universe, as this has received the greatest investment, attention, and adoption to date. However, we aim to offer a framework for governance decision-making in conditions of uncertainty that applies more broadly to other DSTs. Specifically, under the framework of prudent vigilance, we propose a pragmatic, democratic, and pluralist approach to navigating bold experimentation with social practices and political economy enabled by these technologies. Our overarching goal is to provide a framework open to transformative improvement and constrained by guardrails and guiding values supportive of democracy, freedom, and pluralism. We take a relatively strong position, rather than simply laying out ethical issues and potential approaches. We seek to be provocative in order to spur further work and hope this paper will serve as a first bridge between academic philosophy and the DST community, which have hardly interacted to date. (shrink)

This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, young children tend to optimize their own gain, not showing many signs of self-sacrifice (...) or generosity. Already by 3 years of age, self-optimizing in distributive justice is based on perspective taking and rudiments of mind reading. By 5 years, overall, children tend to show more fairness in sharing. What varies across cultures is the magnitude of young children's self-interest. More fairness (less self-interest) in distributive justice is evident by children growing up in small-scale urban and traditional societies thought to promote more collective values. (shrink)

This paper analyzes and synthesizes concepts and alternative perspectives of sociologist and author Allan G. Johnson’s book “Privilege, Power, and Difference” through the lens of the sociological imagination. The first phase of the review addresses the different chapter dimensions of the concept (or purported abstraction) of ‘inequality’ as social, economic, and historical concretion. The model is later elaborated upon, and the work is extrapolated into a meta-theoretical analysis of the first seven chapters of the textbook. By identifying and reviewing the (...) principal points within the book, we present a multitude of vantage points by which continuation and assimilation of material in qualitative sociology at the undergraduate level can be both experimental and comprehensive for students interested in the subject. (shrink)

A small consortium of philosophers has begun work on the implications of epistemic networks (Zollman 2008 and forthcoming; Grim 2006, 2007; Weisberg and Muldoon forthcoming), building on theoretical work in economics, computer science, and engineering (Bala and Goyal 1998, Kleinberg 2001; Amaral et. al., 2004) and on some experimental work in social psychology (Mason, Jones, and Goldstone, 2008). This paper outlines core philosophical results and extends those results to the specific question of thresholds. Epistemic maximization of certain types (...) does show clear threshold effects. Intriguingly, however, those effects appear to be importantly independent from more familiar threshold effects in networks. (shrink)

This paper discusses the so-called non-interference assumption (NIA) grounding causal inference in trials in both medicine and the social sciences. It states that for each participant in the experiment, the value of the potential outcome depends only upon whether she or he gets the treatment. Drawing on methodological discussion in clinical trials and laboratory experiments in economics, I defend the necessity of partial forms of blinding as a warrant of the NIA, to control the participants’ expectations and their strategic (...) interactions with the experimenter. (shrink)

Expressivism is a blossoming meta-semantic framework sometimes relying on what Carter and Chrisman call “the core expressivist maneuver.” That is, instead of asking about the nature of a certain kind of value, we should be asking about the nature of the value judgment in question. According to expressivists, this question substitution opens theoretical space for the elegant, economical, and explanatorily powerful expressivist treatment of the relevant domain. I argue, however, that experimental work in cognitive psychology can shed light on (...) how the core expressivist maneuver operates at the cognitive level and that this: raises worries about the aptness of the expressivist question substitution and supports an evolutionary debunking argument against expressivism. Since evolutionary debunking arguments are usually run in favor of expressivism, this creates an obvious puzzle for expressivists. I wrap up by briefly responding to the objection that the debunking argument against expressivism overgeneralizes and, therefore, should be rejected. (shrink)

In recent years, genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes have been proposed as a public health measure against the high incidence of mosquito-borne diseases among the poor in regions of the global South. While uncertainties as well as risks for humans and ecosystems are entailed by the open-release of GE mosquitoes, a powerful global health governance non-state organization is funding the development of and advocating the use of those bio-technologies as public health tools. In August 2016, the US Food and Drug Agency (...) (FDA) approved the uncaged field trial of a GE Aedes aegypti mosquito in Key Haven, Florida. The FDA’s decision was based on its assessment of the risks of the proposed experimental public health research project. The FDA is considered a global regulatory standard setter. So, its approval of the uncaged field trial could be used by proponents of GE mosquitoes to urge countries in the global South to permit the use of those bio-technologies. -/- From a public health ethics perspective, this paper evaluates the FDA’s 2016 risk assessment of the proposed uncaged field trial of the GE mosquito to determine whether it qualified as a realistic risk evaluation. -/- The FDA’s risk assessment of the proposed uncaged field trial did not proximate the conditions under which the GE mosquitoes would be used in regions of the global South where there is a high prevalence of mosquito-borne diseases. -/- Given that health and disease have political-economic determinants, whether a risk assessment of a product is realistic or not particularly matters with respect to interventions meant for public health problems that disproportionately impact socio-economically marginalized populations. If ineffective public health interventions are adopted based on risk evaluations that do not closely mirror the conditions under which those products would actually be used, there could be public health and ethical costs for those populations. (shrink)

Using placebos in day-to-day practice is an ethical problem. This paper summarises the available epidemiological evidence to support this difficult decision. Based on these data we propose to differentiate between placebo and “knowledge framing”. While the use of placebo should be confined to experimental settings in clinical trials, knowledge framing — which is only conceptually different from placebo — is a desired, expected and necessary component of any doctor-patient encounter. Examples from daily practice demonstrate both, the need to investigate (...) the effects of knowledge framing and its impact on ethical, medical, economical and legal decisions. (shrink)

The paper links higher education reforms and welfare states reforms in postcommunist Central European countries. It links current higher education debates and public sector debates, stressing the importance of communist-era legacies in both areas. It refers to existing typologies of both higher education governance and welfare state regimes and concludes that the lack of the inclusion of Central Europe in any of them is a serious theoretical drawback in comparative social research. The region should still, after more than two decades (...) of transition and heavy international policy advising, be viewed as a “laboratory of social experimentation”. It is still too risky to suggest generalizations about how Central European higher education and welfare systems fit existing typologies. Consequently, the “transition” period is by no means over: it is over in terms of politics and economics but not in terms of social arrangements. Both higher education and welfare states should be viewed as “work in progress”: permanently under reform pressures, and with unclear future. (shrink)

The aim of this research was to x-ray some causes of poor performance of pupils in primary school mathematics. Specifically, the study examined the use of instructional materials and pupils’ academic performance in mathematics; parents’ socio-economic background and pupils’ academic performance in mathematics; compared the performance of private and public primary school pupils in mathematics; examined ways in which teachers contribute to pupils’ poor performance in mathematics. The study employed a correlational and quasi- experimental research designs. A simple random (...) sampling technique was used to select a sample of 270 pupils and 45 teachers drawn from nine primary schools in Akamkpa local government area of Cross River State. A questionnaire and a mathematics achievement test (MAT) were instruments used for data collection. The collected data was analysed using a simple percentage (%) and arithmetic mean (X). The findings of the study revealed that the use of instructional materials adequately led to pupils’ poor performance in mathematics; parents’ socio-economic status contributed to the pupils’ performance in mathematics; pupils in private primary school perform better than their colleagues in public schools in mathematics; and teachers contribute to the poor performance of pupils in mathematics. Based on this results, conclusions and recommendations were made. (shrink)

The algebra of transactions as fundamental measurements is constructed on the basis of the analysis of their properties and represents an expansion of the Boolean algebra. The notion of the generalized economic measurements of the economic “quantity” and “quality” of objects of transactions is introduced. It has been shown that the vector space of economic states constructed on the basis of these measurements is relativistic. The laws of kinematics of economic objects in this space have been analyzed and the stages (...) of constructing the dynamics have been formulated. In particular, the “principle of maximum benefit”, which represents an economic analog of the principle of least action in the classical mechanics, and the principle of relativity as the principle of equality of all possible consumer preferences have been formulated. The notion of economic interval between two economic objects invariant to the selection of the vector of consumer preferences has been introduced. Methods of experimental verification of the principle of relativity in the space of economic states have been proposed. (shrink)

This dissertation compares the notions of homo rationalis in Philosophy and homo oeconomicus in Economics. Particularly, in Part I, we claim that both notions are close methodological substitutes. Accordingly, we show that the constraints involved in the notion of economic rationality apply to the philosophical notion of rationality. On these premises, we explore the links between the notions of Kantian and Humean rationality in Philosophy and the constructivist and ecological approaches to rationality in economics, respectively. Particularly, we show (...) that the constraints involved in both approaches to rationality in economics apply to the notions of Kantian and Humean rationality. That is why we introduce the notion of minimal global rationality. In a nutshell, the latter links one’s rationality to one’s ability to make good use of their cognitive apparatus to process contextual variables. On this basis, in Part II, we present two empirical tests showing that minimal global rationality is at work in philosophical experiments because systematic manipulations of contextual variables predictably affect philosophical judgment in the Trolley Problem and in some Knobe-like vignettes. In the first case, the manipulation of the information provided to subjects predictably causes inconsistent judgments. More precisely, subjects’ response to information shocks predictably causes them to issue inconsistent judgments. Instead, in the second case, our experimental results reveal that the Knobe Effect activates only if the perpetrator of an action is likely to be perceived as evil and unfriendly. Besides, when the Knobe-like vignettes include probabilistic outcomes, the Knobe Effect does not activate or is reduced in magnitude. For these reasons, we maintain that the availability heuristic bias arguably affects one’s judgment in Knobe-like experiment settings. Eventually, in Part III, we survey the general implications of the findings presented in Part II. First and foremost, we show that when manned social media algorithms produce wide-ranging availability cascades, agents predictably respond to those cascades by herding around biased claims. Interestingly, we find that the exposure to similarly redundant online content makes new social groups emerge unhindered. That is why populists and conspiracy theorists obtain such a large follow-up online. Secondly, we find that manned social media algorithms can exploit the flaws of minimal global rationality at a faster pace than humans. Yet, given that latter algorithms cannot do so on their own, we argue that the Turing Test is still an open game. Specifically, we argue so because state-of-the-art technology can request a service to be supplied (e.g., Google Duplex) but cannot operate direct sales. This constraint of state-of-the-art technology is linked to its inability to exploit the flaws of global minimal rationality as well as humans can. Importantly, we show that if algorithms were able to do so, the involved sociopolitical risk would be high. Therefore, we argue that only some form of regulation over state-of-the-art technology can prevent and reduce such sociopolitical risks. -/- In case you want a copy of this dissertation, please email me. (shrink)

Gerontologia kreatywna - dział gerontologii społecznej postulowany przez Anitȩ Stefańsk¸a} i Martȩ Szabelsk¸a}-Holeksȩ. Docelowo subdyscyplina ta ma zajmować siȩ problematyk¸a} twórczości i kreatywności osób starszych. Gerontologia kreatywna jest przede wszystkim zwi¸a}zana z psychologi¸a} twórczości, a szczególnie z akmeologi¸a} kreatywn¸a}, czyli psychologi¸a} osobowości twórczej człowieka. Gerontologia kreatywna z jednej strony korzysta z wiedzy pochodz¸a}cej z geriatrii, gerontopsychologii, gerontologii eksperymentalnej, gerontosocjologii i geragogiki. Z drugiej strony zaś podstawy gerontologii kreatywnej osadzone s¸a w działach akmeologii kreatywnej, w szczególności w: historii akmeologii kreatywnej, akmeologii (...) kreatywnej działalności zawodowej, akmeologii kreatywnej osobowości, eksperymentalnej akmeologii kreatywnej oraz stosowanej akmeologii kreatywnej. Konceptualizacja teorii gerontologii kreatywnej jest prób¸a zastosowania teorii istniej¸acych już na gruncie psychologii i gerontologii. Gerontologia kreatywna jako nauka multidyscyplinarna ma także korzystać z dorobku socjologii, filozofii, medycyny, biologii, ekonomii, demografii, antropologii społecznej i kultury, pedagogiki społecznej, kultur i twórczości oraz nauk o kulturze i sztuce. ** Creative gerontology - department of social gerontology postulated by Anita Stefańska and Marta Szabelska-Holeksa. Ultimately, this sub-discipline is to deal with the issues of creativity and creativity of older people. Creative gerontology is primarily associated with the psychology of creativity, and especially with creative acmeology, or the psychology of the creative personality of a human being. On the one hand, creative gerontology uses knowledge derived from geriatrics, gerontopsychology, experimental gerontology, gerontosociology and geragogy. On the other hand, the foundations of creative gerontology are embedded in the sections of creative acmeology, in particular in the history of creative acmeology, creative occupational acmeology, creative personality acmeology, experimental creative acmeology and applied creative acmeology. Conceptualization of the theory of creative gerontology is an attempt to apply theories already existing on the basis of psychology and gerontology. Creative gerontology as a multidisciplinary science is also to use the achievements of sociology, philosophy, medicine, biology, economics, demography, social anthropology and culture, social pedagogy, cultures and creativity as well as the sciences of culture and art. (shrink)

American history has been far from kind to Black and African Americans. As a group, they were subjected to the gruesome, racist human rights violations committed during the period of American slavery, then Jim Crow laws, economic and political rights violations, medical experimentation, redlining, and lack of representation in politics all came to remind Black Americans that their fight for equality was far from over. Recent periods of activism, however, have brought some of the current plights of Black Americans to (...) the forefront of media coverage. One such example is the greater Covid-19 vaccination hesitancy found among minority groups – specifically Black and African American communities. Despite the variety of implications such an issue has, literature surrounding the issue is relatively one-sided – often looking only at public health and medical education implications. This paper will analyze previous literature on institutional and political trust and epistemic norms, then apply them to the issue of Black American Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy. First, analyzing previous literature on institutions and trust to differentiate institutional trust from trust’s other forms. Then, developing this conception of institutional trust by applying epistemic normativity (Kauppinen 2018). Then, create an application of this conception of institutional trust to the case of Black hesitancy to Covid-19 vaccines. Finally, concludes with educational and political implications of this theory. (shrink)

At the present time there is a boom in the use of pharmacological cognitive enhancers (PCEs) particularly within an academic and labor context. Numerous objections to the use of this medicines arise in the context of Neuroethics, being one of the most important, the principle of justice. Among the most prevalent arguments put forward it is noted the disturbance of distributive justice and competitive fairness. -/- Succinctly it is established that hypothetical PCEs without adverse effects could promote the social fragmentation (...) by favoring economically dominant classes. However, it has been experimentally observed that PCEs present benefits ruled by the inverted U phenomenon, where cognitive benefits given by these medicines are not dose-dependent and have dependence on the baseline performance. Producing bigger benefits in individuals that initially had a worst performance. In this way the use of PCEs, assuming a context of open-access, could contribute to social equity and distributive justice. (shrink)

Purpose. The creation ofan ergonomic methodical approach to the modernization of management processes of metallurgical production, which involves a human factor while developing and exploiting the difficult man-machine system and estimating the degree of implementation of ergonomic requirements at different stages of an operator’s activity planning. -/- Methodology. Ananalytical model of the organization of the research works devoted to the ergonomic modernization of man-machine systems was developed. Searching and purpose-oriented investigations at different stages of man-machine system development and exploitation were (...) modelled from the sketchy projection till the exploitation of the system. Theoretical, system analytical and experimental methods were used. -/- Findings.The results of ergonomic modernization of management processes of metallurgical production in two countries under new economic (market) conditions were discussed. The factors, which define the tension in rolling-mill operators’ activity, were exposed. Certain recommendations on modernization of the existing technology and labor organization were formulated. -/- Originality. The scientific novelty consists in the development and adaptation of the methodical approach that describes adequately the cognitive complexity and psychophysiological tension in an operator’s activity as the modernization factors of modern metallurgical production in two countries. -/- Practical value.The practical value involves the creation of an ergonomic management system of the development, exploitation and modernization of difficult men-machine systems and metallurgical production management processes. (shrink)

Experimental Philosophy (X-Phi) is now a fully-fledged methodological project with applications in almost all areas of analytic philosophy, including, as of recently, aesthetics. Another methodological project which has been attracting attention in the last few years is conceptual engineering (CE). Its areas of implementation are now diverse, but as was the case initially with experimental philosophy, aesthetics has unfortunately been left out (or perhaps aestheticians have failed to pay attention to CE) until now. In this paper, I argue (...) that if conceptual engineers are interested in expanding their project to the field of aesthetics, which would greatly benefit the field, then they should rely on the existing experimental work of aestheticians. Experimental philosophers have only recently started to join forces with conceptual engineers in various fields, as well as to explore the methodological implications of such an alliance. This paper goes a step further by not only arguing that CE has potential in aesthetics, but that the way to realize this potential is to piggyback, so to speak, on the work of experimental aestheticians. In other words, instead of building a CE project in aesthetics from the ground up, this paper describes the support that CE can and should derive from current experimental aesthetics, thereby making the former’s development more efficiently realizable. Furthermore, I argue that doing so would also be beneficial to experimental aesthetics. Currently, the integration of X-Phi to the wider field of aesthetics is losing ground because certain objections—notably, the objection that X-Phi cannot be of relevance to normative questions—have not been properly refuted. By pairing up with a normative programme like CE, though, experimental aestheticians should finally be able to put these objections to rest. (shrink)

Neuroscience is a laboratory-based science that spans multiple levels of analysis from molecular genetics to behavior. At every level of analysis experiments are designed in order to answer empirical questions about phenomena of interest. Understanding the nature and structure of experimentation in neuroscience is fundamental for assessing the quality of the evidence produced by such experiments and the kinds of claims that are warranted by the data. This article provides a general conceptual framework for thinking about evidence and experimentation in (...) neuroscience with a particular focus on two research areas: cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of consciousness aims to investigate and explain our thinking about phenomenally conscious states. Based on empirical studies, researchers have argued (a) that we lack a folk concept of consciousness, (b) that we do not think entities like Microsoft feel regret, (c) that unfelt pains are widely accepted, and (d) that people do not attribute phenomenally conscious states to duplicated hamsters. In this article, I review these and other intriguing claims about people’s understanding of phenomenal consciousness. In doing (...) so, I also show why experimental philosophy of consciousness is challenging, although perhaps not quite as daunting as studying phenomenal consciousness itself. (shrink)