The paper reports experimental data on the behavior in the first-price sealed-bid auction for a varying number of bidders when values and bids are private information. This feedback-free design is proposed for the experimental test of the one-shot game situation. We consider both within-subjects and between-subjects variations. In line with the qualitative risk neutral Nash equilibrium prediction, the data show that bids increase in the number of bidders. However, in auctions involving a small number of bidders, (...) average bids are above, and in auctions involving a larger number of bidders, average bids are below the risk neutral equilibrium prediction. The quartile analysis reveals that bidding behavior is not constant across the full value range for a given number of bidders. On the high value quartiles, however, the average bid–value ratio is not different from the risk neutral prediction. The behavior is different when the winning bid is revealed after each repetition. (shrink)

In this paper we examine optimal bidding without the independence axiom in a unified framework which allows for a clear graphical representation. Thus, we can show very simply the independence axiom to be a necessary and sufficient condition on preferences for strategical equivalence of the two first-price and second-price auctions, respectively, and for the second-price sealed-bid auction to be demand revealing. The analysis reveals that the betweenness property is necessary and sufficient for the ascending-bid (...) auction to be demand revealing while optimal bids exceed (are less than) bidders' valuations, iff preferences are quasiconcave (quasiconvex). Furthermore, it can be shown that fanning out (fanning in) leads to a higher (lower) selling-price in open than in sealed-bid auctions. (shrink)

The winner’s curse in auctions might emerge from asymmetric information and/or from some willingness to pay for winning. This article is based on a sealed-bid common value first price auction, with a net loss for the subject with the second highest bid. The results show the existence of a trade-off between the magnitude of the potential loss and the willingness to pay for the victory. In the context of public procurement these results suggest that companies are (...) willing to overpay small contracts to gain a sort of ‘free advertising’, whereas this is not the case when the contracts are large. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present implications of the seller's ability to bid in the four classical auction forms, with independent private values: English, Dutch, first‐ and second‐price auctions.Design/methodology/approachUnder each auction form, the identity of the winning bidder and the expected winning bid are compared between the case when the seller may bid and when he cannot, using equilibrium bidder strategies. The seller's incentive to bid is evaluated.FindingsThe strategies and the welfare results differ with (...) auction type and underlying information assumptions – bidders are either aware or unaware of the seller's ability to bid. In the Dutch and the first‐price auctions, seller‐bidding does not affect any classical results. In the English and the second‐price auctions, it leads to no lower expected prices than without it and higher prices with positive probability. In the English and the second‐price auctions, the seller bids above his reservation value and may unintentionally win the auction. These auctions result in inefficiency with positive probability.Practical implicationsThe English and the second‐price auctions are the most common real‐world auctions. In these auctions, the seller's ability to bid – secretly or publicly – redistributes welfare among participants and introduces a possibility of inefficiency. Making this ability publicly known does not solve the latter problem. Auctioneers must prevent the seller from bidding, or must select a different auction form when seller‐bidding is anticipated.Originality/valueThe paper clarifies to regulators, auction designers, bidders, and other readers which auction forms are susceptible to subversion by seller‐bidding and what the potential damages are. (shrink)

Lowest-unique sealed-bid auctions are auctions with endogenous participation, costly bids, and the lowest bid among all unique bids wins. Properties of symmetric NEs are studied. The symmetric NE with the lowest expected gains is the maximin outcome under symmetric strategies, and it is the solution to a mathematical program. Comparative statics for the number of bidders, the value of the item and the bidding cost are derived. The two bidders’ auction is equivalent to the Hawk–Dove game. Simulations of (...) replicator dynamics provide numerical evidence that the symmetric NE with the lowest expected gains is also asymptotically stable. (shrink)

Lowest-unique sealed-bid auctions are auctions with endogenous participation, costly bids, and the lowest bid among all unique bids wins. Properties of symmetric NEs are studied. The symmetric NE with the lowest expected gains is the maximin outcome under symmetric strategies, and it is the solution to a mathematical program. Comparative statics for the number of bidders, the value of the item and the bidding cost are derived. The two bidders’ auction is equivalent to the Hawk–Dove game. Simulations of (...) replicator dynamics provide numerical evidence that the symmetric NE with the lowest expected gains is also asymptotically stable. (shrink)

We study a first-price auction preceded by a negotiation stage with complete information, during which bidders may form a bidding ring. We prove that in the absence of externalities, the grand cartel forms in equilibrium, allowing ring members to gain the auctioned object for a minimal price. However, identity-dependent externalities may lead to the formation of small rings, as often observed in practice. Potential ring members may condition their participation on high transfer payments as a compensation (...) for their expected externalities if the ring forms. The cartel may therefore profitably exclude these bidders, although risking tougher competition in the auction. We also analyze ring efficiency in the presence of externalities, showing that a ring may prefer sending an inefficient member to the auction, if the efficient member exerts threatening externalities on bidders outside the ring, which in turn leads to a higher winning price. (shrink)

I analyze optimal auction design in the presence of linear type-dependent negative externalities. I characterize the properties of the optimal mechanism when externalities are “strongly decreasing” and “increasing” in the agent’s valuation and I discuss its implementation with sealed-bid auctions. Interestingly, bidding strategies are not necessarily increasing in valuations, and the optimal mechanism can be implemented by setting a price ceiling instead of a reserve price.

This paper develops a new ascending-price multi-unit auction protocol that has following characteristics: it has an open format, sincere bidding is an equilibrium strategy even if the marginal utilities of each agent can increase and agents can submit false-name bids. False-name bids are bids submitted under fictitious names such as multiple e-mail addresses, which can be done easily in the Internet. This is the first protocol that has these two characteristics. We show that our new protocol outperforms (...) an existing protocol, which satisfies, with respect to the social surplus and the seller's revenue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:216 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Sealing Cheng Pikachu’s Tears: Children’s Perspectives on Violence in Hong Kong How do children experience the sudden onset of massive unrest, violence, and police brutality? It has been difficult even for many adults to process how Hong Kong—a cosmopolitan city known for its stability and low crime rate—descended overnight, on June 12, 2019, into tear gas and (...) violent confrontations. What began as a mass protest against amendments to a bill that would have facilitated the extradition of fugitives in Hong Kong to mainland China for trial turned into a protracted struggle for universal suffrage and investigations into police brutality. In the process, countless scenes of excessive police violence against protestors have challenged any dichotomous, black-and-white worldview of good cop/bad criminal; the geography and tempo of the city have been remade by protests, crackdowns, and transportation shutdowns; and social and familial tensions and divisions about the source of the violence have plagued the routines of everyday life. Children, like adults, have to find new ways of being and becoming in the city during this political upheaval. Their existential liminality, however, provides children with a unique perspective from which to sense, experience, and engage with the volatility around them. Careful listening allows children’s “small voices” to speak to “big issues.”1 1. Allison James, “Giving Voice to Children’s Voices: Practices and Problems, Pitfalls and Potentials,” American Anthropologist 109, no. 2 (2007): 261–72. Sealing Cheng 217 Unmooring children from “the restrictive and constricting frameworks of innocence and/or victimhood” with “incomplete moral and social personhood,” Karen Lury analyzed the child as a version of Berlant’s “infantile citizen,” whose “‘stubborn naïveté’ gives her/him enormous power to unsettle, expose, and reframe the machinery of national life.”2 I offer reflections below as an observer of the ways my children participate in their changing world as socio-moral beings. I write as a mother who searches for her own ethical anchor with and through my children in a collective project of engaging with our fears, hopes, and possibilities. “Will the Government Talk to Us?” I am a mother of two girls, ages six and nine. My daughters usually want to go swimming on Sundays, but since June 9, 2019, our family has instead spent many Sundays at marches and protests against the anti-extradition law and police brutality, reiterating the “five demands” of the movement. Our family has participated in protest marches before, but the prospect of walking in a crowd through the city streets for hours in the summer heat—rather than swimming in the pool—was highly unappealing to my kids. I had to explain to them why it was important. I said that if amendments to the Extradition Law passed, we could be accused of committing a crime under mainland Chinese laws, and we would lose our rights to do many of the things we had taken for granted. As an example, I explained that they would not be allowed to watch Winnie the Pooh again because President Xi did not like that people likened him to the cute bear. My daughters found it puzzling why anyone would object to such an innocuous comparison. I also said that if the law passed, we might no longer be free to say the words “8964” commemorating the June 4, 1989, Massacre on Tiananmen Square. (While these changes might not really happen, they speak to Hongkongers’ utter distrust of the judicial system in China.) I explained to my daughters that we needed to tell Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her government that we did not want this law passed. They agreed. 2. Karen Lury, “Children in an Open World: Mobility as Ontology in New Iranian and Turkish Cinema,” Feminist Theory 11, no. 3 (2010): 284; Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays of Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 29, quoted in Lury, “Children in an Open World,” 284–5. 218 Sealing Cheng When we joined our first anti-extradition march toward the government headquarters on June 9, we were among one million people who... (shrink)

How do rational minds make contact with the world? The empiricist tradition sees a gap between mind and world, and takes sensory experience, fallible as it is, to provide our only bridge across that gap. In its crudest form, for example, the traditional idea is that our minds consult an inner realm of sensory experience, which provides us with evidence about the nature of external reality. Notoriously, however, it turns out to be far from clear that there is any viable (...) conception of experience which allows it to do the job. The original problem is to show that thought is rationally constrained by external reality. If sensory experience is to provide the solution--in particular, if it is to provide the answer to sceptical challenges--it must therefore meet two criteria. First, it must itself be `receptive'--i.e., appropriately constrained by external reality. Second, it must be the kind of thing that can enter into a logical or rational relationship with belief--it must already be `conceptual,' in other words. In arguing against the idea that anything could serve both roles, Wilfred Sellars termed this conception of experience "the Myth of the Given.". (shrink)

Professor Vernon L. Smith is a major creator of the new discipline of experimental economics. This collection of his papers from 1962 to 1990 surveys key developments in the field from early attempts to study economic behaviour in now classic double oral auction markets through recent studies of industrial organization and decision making. Topics covered include monopoly and oligopoly, supply and demand theory under posted pricing, uniform pricing, double continuous auction, and sealed bid-offer auctions; hypothetical valuation and (...) market pricing; asset price bubbles; predatory pricing; market contestability and natural monopoly; and the methodology of experimental economics. Taken together, the papers form a history of the study of economics under controlled conditions. (shrink)

Originally published in Mexico in 1970, _Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América _is the first book by the Argentine philosopher Rodolfo Kusch to be translated into English. At its core is a binary created by colonization and the devaluation of indigenous practices and cosmologies: an opposition between the technologies and rationalities of European modernity and the popular mode of thinking, which is deeply tied to Indian ways of knowing and being. Arguing that this binary cuts through América, Kusch seeks (...) to identify and recover the indigenous and popular way of thinking, which he contends is dismissed or misunderstood by many urban Argentines, including leftist intellectuals. _Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América_ is a record of Kusch's attempt to immerse himself in the indigenous ways of knowing and being. At first glance, his methodology resembles ethnography. He speaks with and observes indigenous people and mestizos in Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. He questions them about their agricultural practices and economic decisions; he observes rituals; he asks women in the market the meaning of indigenous talismans; he interviews shamans; he describes the spatial arrangement and the contents of shrines, altars, and temples; and he reproduces diagrams of archaeological sites, which he then interprets at length. Yet he does not present a "them" to a putative "us." Instead, he offers an inroad to a way of thinking and being that does not follow the logic or fit into the categories of Western social science and philosophy. In his introduction, Walter D. Mignolo discusses Kusch's work and its relation to that of other twentieth-century intellectuals, Argentine history, and contemporary scholarship on the subaltern and decoloniality. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of pain depends, at least partly, on recognizing its subjectivity (thus, its first-person epistemology). This in turn requires using a first-person experiential method in addition to third-person experimental approaches to study it. This paper is an attempt to spell out what the former approach is and how it can be integrated with the latter. We start our discussion by examining some foundational issues raised by the use of introspection. We argue that such a first-person (...) method in the scientific study of pain (as in the study of any experience) is in fact indispensable by demonstrating that it has in fact been consistently used in conjunction with conventional third-person methodologies, and this for good reasons. We show that, contrary to what appears to be a widespread opinion, there is absolutely no reason to think that the use of such a first-person approach is scientifically and methodologically suspect. We distinguish between two uses of introspective methods in scientific experiments: one draws on the subjects’ introspective reports where any investigator has equal and objective access. The other is where the investigator becomes a subject of his own study and draws on the introspection of his own experiences. We give examples using and/or approximating both strategies that include studies of second pain summation and its relationship to neural activities, and brain imaging- psychophysical studies wherein sensory and affective qualities of pain are correlated with cerebral cortical activity. We explain what we call the experiential or phenomenological approach that has its origins in the work of Price and Barrell (1980). This approach capitalizes on the scientific prospects and benefits of using the introspection of the investigator. We distinguish between its vertical and horizontal applications. Finally, we conclude that integrating such an approach to standard third-person methodologies can only help us in having a fuller understanding of pain and of conscious experience in general. (shrink)

The subject of my lecture is an appropriate one for several reasons. The first is purely chronological. Hume's first and greatest work, the Treatise of Human Nature, was published in 1739, two hundred years ago. Its illustrious author was then quite unknown in the world, and as he tells us himself the book “fell dead-born from the press.” But by the end of the eighteenth century its reputation was securely established, and it has long been regarded as one (...) of the masterpieces of European thought, and as the classical statement of the Empiricist Philosophy. It is true that, like other classics, it has had its ups and downs. During the Absolute Idealist period, which ended early in the present century, Hume was the great bogey-man, and the duty of all self-respecting philosophers was to refute him. In our own day things are different. Empiricism, despite many obituary notices, is very much alive again. And this time it is in close alliance with Natural Science, and has equipped itself with all the technique of modern Symbolic Logic; it is more vigorous in construction and more formidable in criticism than it has ever been before. Consequently Hume is no longer the bogey-man. People now read the Treatise not as an awful warning, but as a source of stimulus and illumination. Incidentally, we can now enjoy his admirable style without any qualms. It is no longer thought that if a philosopher writes in clear and entertaining English, what he writes must therefore be either superficial or false. We regard obscurity and turgidity as demerits, not as signs of profound thinking. Moreover, we have learned to appreciate the eighteenth century, of which Hume was one of the most characteristic products. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of pain at least partly depends on recognizing its inherent first person epistemology and on using a first person experiential and third person experimental approach to study it. This approach may help to understand some of the neural mechanisms of pain and consciousness by integrating experiential–phenomenological methods with those of neuroscience. Examples that approximate this strategy include studies of second pain summation and its relationship to neural activities and brain imaging-psychophysical studies wherein sensory and affective (...) qualities of pain are correlated with cerebral cortical activity. The experiential paradigm of Price and Barrell offers the possibility of improved designs and methods for investigating neural mechanisms underlying pain and consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 30-42 [Access article in PDF] How Can Music Seem to be Emotional? Kingsley Price Johns Hopkins University Preliminary Let me make some preliminary remarks about my question. First, the distinction employed in it, the distinction between seeming and reality, comes in two forms. The first is inclusive. A thing that really is so-and-so also seems to be so-and-so. The (...) butler really is guilty and seems guilty as well. The second is exclusive. A thing that is really not so-and-so seems to be so-and-so. The butler is really not guilty but seems to be guilty. The distinction that underlies my question is of the exclusive form.Second, the music I ask about is not music as read from scores on paper or held in memory. Nor is it music that contains linguistic elements-words or gestures as in song, opera, ballet, etc. Rather, it is purely instrumental music, and that as perceived or heard.Third, the emotions I refer to are not physiological conditions that may cause them, nor the behavior that may express them, but the conscious feelings we find in ourselves when we are undergoing emotion. [End Page 30] The Problem Persons (perhaps even the lower animals) can seem to be, without really being, emotional. They are pretending, or we perceive mistakenly. There is no difficulty, in principle, in explaining the situation. But there would be if they were sculptured persons only-that is, if they could not possibly be emotional. A sculpture cannot seem to be emotional by pretending it; nor can we perceive mistakenly that it is emotional when we know that it is a sculpture only.Much music is like sculpture. Not personal, we know that it cannot really be emotional. None-the-less, we hear the wedding march from Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream as joyful, the second movement of Chopin's Sonata in B-flat Minor as sorrowful, "The Great Fugue" as grimly resigned, the first movement of the first Razumowski as hopeful, etc. How can this be so? How can music seem to be emotional?I look for an answer to this question, first, within the perception, the hearing of music, and then, without it in its meaning. If seeming emotionality is found in either place, I shall have answered the question. And now, for the first place. The Perception In sense perception there are two major constituents.1 One is awareness; the other is the object of awareness. Awareness occurs in all the kinds of consciousness-in remembering, imagining, dreaming, and thinking, for example, as well as in sense perception. In this last, it is brought about by operation of the senses; while in the others, that operation plays no direct part. But although it differs in its cause, awareness in sense perception is precisely the same, considered in itself, as it is in all the other kinds of consciousness, considered in themselves.What is awareness? It cannot be explained, as many notions can, by eliciting its parts. To understand what squareness is, for example, we need only bring forward the parts that constitute it: four straight lines equal in length, four right angles, and closed plane figure. But awareness has no parts and cannot be explained in this way. To call attention to its simplicity and its identity in all kinds of consciousness, indeed, is all that can be done to explain it though we might add the simile that likens awareness to the light that brings things before our minds out of the dark that conceals them in its absence.Now, hearing is a kind of sense perception-the kind that occurs by virtue of operation of the auditory organs; and music heard is one of the objects of auditory awareness. Can we understand how this object can seem to be emotional by appeal to the awareness of it? If that awareness seemed to exist and did not really do so, the answer would be that we cannot since the awareness of it... (shrink)

In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents.1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory.2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is (...) a cause of a distinct event B just in case bringing about the occurrence of A would be an effective means by which a free agent could bring about the occurrence of B. In our view the unpopularity of the agency approach to causation may be traced to two factors. The first is a failure to appreciate certain distinctive advantages that this approach has over its various rivals. We have drawn attention to some of these advantages elsewhere, and we summarize below. However, the second and more important factor is the influence of a number of stock objections, objections that seem to have persuaded many philosophers that agency accounts face insuperable obstacles. In this paper we want to show that these objections have been vastly overrated. There are four main objections. (shrink)

This book explores for the first time an idea common to both Plato and Aristotle: although people are separate, their lives need not be; one person's life may overflow into another's, so that helping someone else is a way of serving oneself. Price considers how this idea unites the philosophers' treatments of love and friendship (which are otherwise very different), and demonstrates that this view of love and friendship, applied not only to personal relationships, but also to the (...) household and even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A number of writers have been attracted to the idea that some of the peculiarities of quantum theory might be manifestations of 'backward' or 'retro' causality, underlying the quantum description. This idea has been explored in the literature in two main ways: firstly in a variety of explicit models of quantum systems, and secondly at a conceptual level. This note introduces a third approach, intended to complement the other two. It describes a simple toy model, which, under a natural interpretation, (...) shows how retrocausality can emerge from simple global constraints. The model is also useful in permitting a clear distinction between the kind of retrocausality likely to be of interest in QM, and a different kind of reverse causality, with which it is liable to be confused. The model is proposed in the hope that future elaborations might throw light on the potential of retrocausality to account for quantum phenomena. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Concepts employed in folk descriptions of the world often turn out to be more perspectival than they seem at first sight, involving previously unrecognised sensitivity to the viewpoint or 'situation' of the user of the concept in question. Often, it is progress in science that reveals such perspectivity, and the deciding factor is that we realise that other creatures would apply the same concepts with different extension, in virtue of differences between their circumstances and ours. In this paper I (...) argue that causal concepts are perspectival in this way, and describe the 'situation' on which they depend in terms of an abstract characterisation of the viewpoint of a deliberating agent. I argue that this approach makes better sense than rivals of the apparent asymmetry and temporal orientation of the causal relation. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

We consider a class of dynamic tournaments in which two contestants are faced with a choice between two courses of action. The first is a riskless option (“hold”) of maintaining the resources the contestant already has accumulated in her turn and ceding the initiative to her rival. The second is the bolder option (“roll”) of taking the initiative of accumulating additional resources, and thereby moving ahead of her rival, while at the same time sustaining a risk of temporary setback. (...) We study this tournament in the context of a jeopardy race game (JRG), extend the JRG to $N > 2$ contestants, and construct its equilibrium solution. Compared to the equilibrium solution, the results of three experiments reveal a dysfunctional bias in favor of the riskless option. This bias is substantially mitigated when the contestants are required to commit in advance how long to pursue the risky course of action. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Reissued in 1997 with corrections and a new Afterword, this book fully explores for the first time an idea common to Plato and Aristotle, which unites their treatments - otherwise very different - of love and friendship. The idea is that although persons are separate, their lives need not be. One person's life may overflow into another's, and as such, helping another person is a way of serving oneself. The author shows how their view of love and (...) friendship, within not only personal relationships, but also the household and even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism. (shrink)

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A 2015 experiment by Hanson and Delft colleagues provided further confirmation that the quantum world violates the Bell inequalities, being the first Bell test to close two known experimental loopholes simultaneously. The experiment was also taken to provide new evidence of ‘spooky action at a distance’. Here we argue for caution about the latter claim. The Delft experiment relies on entanglement swapping, and our main claim is that this geometry introduces an additional loophole in the argument from violation of (...) the Bell inequalities to action at a distance: the apparent action at a distance may be an artifact of ‘collider bias’. In the absence of retrocausality, the sensitivity of such experiments to this ‘Collider Loophole’ depends on the temporal relation between the entanglement swapping measurement C and the two measurements A and B between which we seek to infer a causal connection. CL looms large if the C is in the future of A and B, but not if C is in the past. The Delft experiment itself is the intermediate case, in which the separation is spacelike. We argue that this leaves it vulnerable to CL, unable to establish conclusively that it avoids it. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate around the abilities of large language models such as GPT-3, dealing with: firstly, evaluating how well GPT does in the Turing Test, secondly the limits of such models, especially their tendency to generate falsehoods, and thirdly the social consequences of the problems these models have with truth-telling. We start by formalising the recently proposed notion of reversible questions, which Floridi & Chiriatti propose allow one to ‘identify the nature of the source of their answers’, (...) as a probabilistic measure based on Item Response Theory from psychometrics. Following a critical assessment of the methodology which led previous scholars to dismiss GPT’s abilities, we argue against claims that GPT-3 completely lacks semantic ability. Using ideas of compression, priming, distributional semantics and semantic webs we offer our own theory of the limits of large language models like GPT-3, and argue that GPT can competently engage in various semantic tasks. The real reason GPT’s answers seem senseless being that truth-telling is not amongst them. We claim that these kinds of models cannot be forced into producing only true continuation, but rather to maximise their objective function they strategize to be plausible instead of truthful. This, we moreover claim, can hijack our intuitive capacity to evaluate the accuracy of its outputs. Finally, we show how this analysis predicts that a widespread adoption of language generators as tools for writing could result in permanent pollution of our informational ecosystem with massive amounts of very plausible but often untrue texts. (shrink)

Donald Gustafson has argued that grief centres on a combination of belief and desire:The belief that the subject has suffered an irreparable loss.The desire that this should not be the case.And yet, as Gustafson points out, if the belief is true, the desire cannot be satisfied. Gustafson takes this to show that grief inevitably implies an irrational conflict between belief and desire.I offer a partial defence of grief against Gustafson's charge of irrationality. My defence rests on two elements. First, (...) I offer an alternative model of emotion, which presents emotions as complex episodes, initiated by emotional appraisals. Secondly, I appeal to John Bowlby's account of grief to argue that grief involves two forms of sadness (anguish and desolation) which Gustafson's analysis runs together. I concede that anguish does characteristically involve an element of irrationality. But the irrationality of anguish does not arise from an apparently gratuitous clash between belief and desire, but from a conflict between emotion and belief—a form of irrationality that is both familiar and easily explained. Moreover, desolation need not involve any irrationality. (shrink)

May I first say, Mr Chairman, that I regard it as a great honour to have been invited to take part in this Conference? I speak to you as a philosopher who happens to be interested both in religion and in psychical research. But I am afraid I am going to discuss some questions which it is ‘not done’ to talk about.

Reciprocity theory (RT) and costly signaling theory (CST) provide different explanations for the high status of pro-community altruists: RT proposes that altruists are positively and negatively sanctioned by others, whereas CST proposes that altruists are attractive to others. Only RT, however, is beset by first- and higher-order free rider problems, which must be solved in order for RT to explain status allocations. In this paper, several solutions to RT’s free rider problems are proposed, and data about status allocations to (...) Ecuadorian Shuar pro-community altruists are analyzed in light of RT and CST. These data confirm that perceived pro-community altruists are indeed high status and suggest that (1) community residents skillfully monitor the altruism of coresidents, (2) residents who engage in opportunities to broadcast desirable qualities are high status only to the extent that they are considered altruistic, and (3) individuals who sanction coresidents based on coresidents’ contributions to the community are themselves relatively high status. To a greater extent than CST, RT straightforwardly predicts all of these results. (shrink)

I am very grateful to Professor R. W. Sleeper for his critical comments on my article, as also for the kind way in which he has expressed them. I should now like to make a few comments on his comments. May I first say that I have no objection to being metaphysical? I do not like the word ‘metaphysics’ very much, and wish that we could find a less provocative one. But still, I do think that the difference between (...) the reducible and the irreducible belief-in is a difference which there really is . Moreover, I fully admit that when we believe in God we are making a factual claim. It is, of course, a factual claim of rather a special kind. If it is a fact that there is a supreme Being, ‘The Lord of All’, this is not just one fact among others. It is not quite like the fact that there is a stormy north-westerly wind this morning. One could not just give a list of facts and add at the end, ‘There is also another fact which I had forgotten to mention: there is a God’. All the same, this factual claim, like others, does need to be justified; and how is it to be justified? I am afraid that the brief hint which I offered elsewhere on this subject is indeed ‘not good enough’ as it stands . To be even half good enough, it needs much more elaboration, and I agree that there is much force in Mr Gunderson's criticisms. (shrink)

Can an agent deliberating about an action A hold a meaningful credence that she will do A? 'No', say some authors, for 'Deliberation Crowds Out Prediction' (DCOP). Others disagree, but we argue here that such disagreements are often terminological. We explain why DCOP holds in a Ramseyian operationalist model of credence, but show that it is trivial to extend this model so that DCOP fails. We then discuss a model due to Joyce, and show that Joyce's rejection of DCOP rests (...) on terminological choices about terms such as 'intention', 'prediction', and 'belief'. Once these choices are in view, they reveal underlying agreement between Joyce and the DCOP-favouring tradition that descends from Ramsey. Joyce's Evidential Autonomy Thesis (EAT) is effectively DCOP, in different terminological clothing. Both principles rest on the so-called 'transparency' of first-person present-tensed reflection on one's own mental states. (shrink)

In the first chapter of From Metaphysics to Ethics, Frank Jackson begins, as he puts it, ‘by explaining how serious metaphysics by its very nature raises the location problem.’ (1998, p. 1) He gives us two examples of location problems. The first concerns semantic properties, such as truth and reference: Some physical structures are true. For example, if I were to utter a token of the type ‘Grass is green’, the structure I would thereby bring into existence would (...) be true ... How are the semantic properties of the sentence related to the non-semantic properties of the sentence? Where, if anywhere, are the semantic properties of truth, content and reference to be found in the non-semantic, physical or naturalistic account of the sentence?’ (1998, p. 2) Jackson notes two possible answers to questions of this kind. The first denies that there are any such semantic properties. (shrink)

John Cottingham identifies “the grand traditional project of synoptic ethics” as an attempt to define the essential features of a good human life within a rational understanding of the world, and of man’s place within it. That the project now seems dated he explains in two ways. First, he notes the recent specialization and professionalization of philosophy, its preference of technical topics to grand questions. Second, he adduces a skepticism that doubts the objectivity, and a liberalism that accepts a (...) plurality, of values. The upshot of both trends is a “committee ethics” that takes on “the task of articulating the structure of an optimal political system in which maximum scope is given for the pursuit of whatever values are in fact chosen by the citizens” —a grandish issue, surely, but neither a personal nor a metaphysical one. Cottingham’s main aim is to cast further doubt on the practicability of the traditional project so long as it is pursued in the traditional “ratiocentric” style. What that is he conveys through discussions of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. (shrink)

We first describe how the concept of “fringe consciousness” can characterise gradations of consciousness between the extremes of implicit and explicit learning. We then show that the NEO-PI-R personality measure of openness to feelings, chosen to reflect the ability to introspect on fringe feelings, influences both learning and awareness in the serial reaction time task under conditions that have previously been associated with implicit learning . This provides empirical evidence for the proposed phenomenology and functional role of fringe consciousness (...) in so-called implicit learning paradigms . Introducing an individual difference variable also helped to identify possible limitations of the exclusion task as a measure of conscious sequence knowledge. Further exploration of individual differences in fringe awareness may help to avoid polarity in the implicit learning debate, and to resolve apparent inconsistencies between previous SRT studies. (shrink)

The first half of Mr. Burgener's article is a very clear and very just exposition of my views. There is, however, one point which he may not have appreciated fully, and that is the "climate of opinion" in which I was writing, and against which I was reacting. One of my main aims was to protest against the transformation of the empiricist epistemology into a linguistic epistemology, a transformation initiated by the Logical Positivists of the 1930's, and completed by (...) Wittgenstein and his disciples. Hence the amount of space devoted to sign-cognition, to the intelligence of animals, and to image-thinking, all of which are non-verbal or pre-verbal. But, as he has surmised, I am really just an old-fashioned British empiricist. I am fighting on two fronts, as it were, throughout the book: against a purely linguistic conception of thinking on one side, and against the "classical" inspective conception of it on the other. And in this two-fold battle, I am taking just the line which Locke, Berkeley, and Hume would have taken if they had been alive today: one which they do in fact suggest in their writings, though of course they could not anticipate the lengths to which the purely linguistic or verbalistic conception of thinking would go, or how it would ally itself with a behavioristic conception of human personality. One of the things I most object to in current British philosophy is the attack which is made on all sides of the "inner life," the attempt to show that there is no such thing, or that it is a mere muddle to suppose there is, or that to the extent that it does exist it is of no importance. Perhaps there is some connection between this attack on the inner life and the attack on private life which is made by the politicians, social reformers, and economic planners. Perhaps they are only two aspects of the same thing. Anyway, between them they have gone a long way towards a kind of "dehumanisation" of man; and this seems to me one of the darkest features of the very dark age in which we live. I feel concerned about it not only as an epistemologist, but also as a religious person, or at least as a person who is interested in religion in a very undenominational way. Religion, as I view it, is very closely connected with the "inner life"; and if one is forbidden to take an interest in the "inner life," religion will wither away from sheer inanition. At any rate, the most mystical types of religion will, and these are the ones which seem to me the most important. (shrink)

There has been a renewed interest in psychology and anthropology in the idea of altered states of consciousness. This paper begins by examining the meaning of this term and the extent to which such experiences are reported globally. The topic of shamanism is then discussed, first with respect to its social functions, and then to what is known about its psychological aspects (which is little). Far more is known about altered states of consciousness (ASCs) as they are expressed in (...) meditation, trance and possession, and channeling, and a number of studies are reviewed, both of individuals and of groups, which illustrate the full extent of ASCs. The following section then goes more deeply into the stimulus situations that are associated with ASCs. This brings the discussion into drugs, attempts at altering the sensorium (music and imagery in particular) and recent technological innovations, peculiar to our time, which deliberately alter our usual state of awareness through feedback principles. In the final section, what is known about the physiology of ASCs is reviewed and also the extent to which these phenomena, including shamanism, are regarded as pathological. As a great number of people across the world utilize the healing aspects of trance, possession and shamanic practices, this aspect is discussed, and lastly the adaptive functions of ASCs are considered, with their context in the history of psychology. (shrink)

In the first chapter of From Metaphysics to Ethics, Frank Jackson begins, as he puts it, ‘by explaining how serious metaphysics by its very nature raises the location problem.’ (1998, p. 1) He gives us two examples of location problems. The first concerns semantic properties, such as truth and reference: Some physical structures are true. For example, if I were to utter a token of the type ‘Grass is green’, the structure I would thereby bring into existence would (...) be true ... How are the semantic properties of the sentence related to the non-semantic properties of the sentence? Where, if anywhere, are the semantic properties of truth, content and reference to be found in the non-semantic, physical or naturalistic account of the sentence?’ (1998, p. 2) Jackson notes two possible answers to questions of this kind. The first denies that there are any such semantic properties. (shrink)

Objectives - To explore the wvay ethical principles develop during a medical education course for three groups of medical students - in their first year, at the beginning of their penultimate (fifth) year and towards the end of their final (sixth) year. Design - Survey questionnaire administered to medical students in their first, fifth and final (sixth) year. Setting - A large medical school in Queensland, Australia. Survey sample - Approximately half the students in each of three years (...) (first, fifth and sixth) provided data on a voluntary basis, a total of 385 students. Results - At the point of entry, minor differences were found between medical students and first year law and psychology students. More striking were differences between male and female medical students, suggesting early socialization had a substantial impact here. Conclusions - Results indicate that substantial changes in attitude have developed by the beginning of fifth year with little change thereafter. Gender difference persisted. Some difference in ethical attitudes were found when groups of different ethnic backgrounds were compared. The impact of a move to a graduate medical course, which gives high priority to ethics within a professional development domain, can now be evaluated. (shrink)

The dissemination of models across disciplinary lines has become a phenomenon of interest to philosophers of science. To account for this phenomenon, philosophers have invented two units of analysis. The first identifies to the thing that transfers, model templates. The second identifies the thing to which transferable templates apply, landing zones. There exists a dynamic between the thing that is transferred and the thing to which transferrable templates apply. The use of a transferable template in a new domain requires (...) reconception of domain-specific phenomena. This paper examines two cases of model transfer, the use of the ideal gas law in biology by R.A. Fisher and the use of the virial theorem in chemistry by Richard Bader. These two stories of model transfer in biology and chemistry indicate a dimension to conceptual progress related to this dynamic. Using discourse on model transfer affords philosophers a novel approach for depicting the invention of, for instance, chemical concepts and resulting disputes. (shrink)

Regret is a slippery phenomenon. Fundamental questions about its fittingness conditions and functions have yet to be settled. Here, I offer a diagnosis of regret’s slippery character. Extending a suggestion made by Daniel Kahneman, I argue that regret comes in a range of emotional flavours, distinguished in the first instance by their phenomenology. While regret has received some attention from philosophers, its varied phenomenology has not been investigated. Yet the varied phenomenology of regret is significant: it reflects further variations (...) in its cognitive and motivational effects. As a result, I argue, different flavours of regret have different fittingness conditions and contribute to our lives in different ways. In Section I, I offer a preliminary sketch of regret and introduce the questions that drive my discussion. In Section II, I introduce regret’s different flavours. In Section III, I investigate their contrasting cognitive and motivational effects, with a view to determining their functions. In Section IV, I investigate what this implies concerning regret’s fittingness conditions—and, in particular, what constitutes a regrettable action. (shrink)

The comorbidity of chronic pain and opioid addiction is a serious problem that has been growing with the practice of prescribing opioids for chronic pain. Neuroimaging research has shown that chronic pain and opioid dependence both affect brain structure and function, but this is the first study to evaluate the neurophysiological alterations in patients with comorbid chronic pain and addiction. Eighteen participants with chronic low back pain and opioid addiction were compared with eighteen age- and sex-matched healthy individuals in (...) a pain-induction fMRI task. Unified structural equation modeling (SEM) with Lagrange multiplier (LM) testing yielded a network model of pain processing for patient and control groups based on 19 a priori defined regions. Tests of differences between groups on specific regression parameters were determined on a path-by-path basis using z-tests corrected for the number of comparisons. Patients with the chronic pain and addiction comorbidity had increased connection strengths; many of these connections were interhemispheric and spanned regions involved in sensory, affective, and cognitive processes. The affected regions included those that are commonly altered in chronic pain or addiction alone, indicating that this comorbidity manifests with neurological symptoms of both disorders. Understanding the neural mechanisms involved in the comorbidity is crucial to finding a comprehensive treatment, rather than treating the symptoms individually. (shrink)

Hume maintained that, philosophically speaking, there is no difference between exiting a room out of the first-floor window and using the door. Nevertheless, Hume’s reason and common sense prevailed over his scepticism and he advocated that we should always use the door. However, we are currently living in a world that is more seriously committed to the Humean philosophy of empiricism than he was himself and thus the potential to act inappropriately is an ever-present potential. In this paper, I (...) explore how Hume’s two versions of causality have detrimentally affected our ability both to arrive at and to use research to improve human well-being. I illustrate my argument with an example of what I think is an incorrect yet supposedly scientifically sound assumption: that absenteeism causes poor school attainment. Instead I make the interdisciplinary argument that absenteeism is better understood as an aggravating symptom of a number of other causes of poor attainment, such as poverty and individual psychological factors. I suggest that an instrumental, punitive policy against parents whose children tend to be absent from school may be ineffectual or even counterproductive if the objective is to improve the well-being of those children. To support my argument, I introduce the critical realist idea of transfactuality. Using the example of research into moon rocks, I show how mainstream science uses transfactuality despite its empiricist aversion to it. I also suggest that it is our honesty, integrity, and stoicism that lead us to the extreme overthrow of reason and common sense that we see today in many of the UK’s social policies; an overthrow that Hume himself did not achieve. Metaphorically speaking, British professionals, stoically and honestly believing in the ability of their trusted research correlations to guide their action, are exiting out of the first-floor window rather than using the door. This is a significant barrier to our ability to devise and implement social policy. (shrink)

Carnap was one of the first to use the term 'non-cognitivism'. His linguistic pluralism and voluntarism, and his deflationary views of ontology and semantics, are highly congenial to those of us who want to take non-cognitivism in the direction of global expressivism. In his own case, however, this move is in tension with his continued endorsement of what he calls 'the general thesis of logical empiricism', that 'there is no third kind of knowledge besides empirical and logical knowledge.’ So (...) while Carnap clears a path towards global expressivism, he doesn't seem to appreciate what it requires him to leave behind. (shrink)

Bhaskar's philosophy supports society via a process of homeostasis to resist socioecological system disintegration by developing its values and ethics in response to endogenous and exogenous change. To the contrary, positivist (first generation) and hermeneuticist (second generation) approaches to systems theory have distorted humanity's mechanism of homeostasis because, amongst other things, they disallow the use of facts to guide values/actions. Since acting on knowledge is, ceteris paribus, a given in Bhaskar's approach, resolving socioecological system problems involves correcting the method (...) of homeostasis (our method of finding knowledge and acting on it) rather than correcting the consequences of the failure of homeostasis (the poorly informed action or inaction). This is reminiscent of Gandhi's approach to social transformation in which we trust the means to arrive at appropriate ends and it releases activists from having to be keepers of the moral high-ground or having to try to change people's behaviour. (shrink)