“How social norms change” is not only a theoretical question but also an empirical one. Many organizations have implemented programs to abandon harmful social norms. These programs are standardly monitored and evaluated with a set of empirical tools. While monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of changes in objective outcomes and behaviors is well developed, we will argue that M&E of changes in the wide range of beliefs and preferences important to social norms is still problematic. In this paper, we first present (...) a theoretical framework and then show how it should guide social norms measurement. As a case study, we focus on the harmful practice of child marriage. We show how an operational theory of social norms can guide the design of surveys, experiments and vignettes. We use examples from existing research to illustrate how to study social norms change. (shrink)

A descriptive norm is a behavioral rule that individuals follow when their empirical expectations of others following the same rule are met. We aim to provide an account of the emergence of descriptive norms by first looking at a simple case, that of the standing ovation. We examine the structure of a standing ovation, and show it can be generalized to describe the emergence of a wide range of descriptive norms.

Paul Ricœur and Jan Patočka are considered among the most important phenomenologists of the 20 th century. As with Ricœur, Patočka ’s philosophy is shaped by an enduring critical confrontation with Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s phenomenological analyses of Dasein. The present paper aims at analyzing Ricœur ’s and Patočka ’s convergences and mutual inspirations in their perspectives on the topic of history. More precisely, I will take up the question of the meaning of history in Ricœur and Patočka as profoundly (...) influenced by their readings of Husserl’s Krisis. Then, the attention will be turned to Ricœur ’s concept of historicity and Patočka ’s notion of care of the soul as concerns involved in the search for meaning in history as an open-ended mediation. In this context, I will discuss Ricœur ’s and Patočka ’s critical examination of Heidegger’s conception of thrownness and projection, that is, Dasein’s already-being-in-the-world and its disclosedness, as necessary concepts for understanding their own philosophical approaches to history. (shrink)

The functional role of mirror neurons has been assessed in many different ways. They have been regarded, inter alia, as the core mechanism of mind reading, the mechanism of language understanding, the mechanism of imitation. In this paper we will discuss the thesis according to which MNs are a conceptual mechanism. This hypothesis is attractive since it could accommodate in an apparently simple way all the above-mentioned interpretations. We shall take into consideration some reasons suggesting the conceptualist characterization of MNs, (...) as well as some possible replies. We shall figure out how an argument for the conceptualist hypothesis could be deployed, focusing on the notion of off-line processes, which turns out to be the crucial property necessary to ascribe concept possession. Our conclusion will be that, despite of there being some evidence for the conceptualist account, the issue cannot be definitely settled, because there are both experimental shortages and conceptual difficulties. In particular, there are three distinct senses in which MNs can be regarded as a conceptual mechanism, but we shall argue that only one of these interpretations can be defended. (shrink)

Resumo: A Kehre (viragem) no pensamento de Heidegger foi amplamente discutida e debatida. A introdução da noção de metontologia (Metontologie), em 1927, informou proveitosamente esse debate, uma vez que implica uma preocupação com o domínio ôntico, por parte de Heidegger, que não está presente em trabalhos anteriores. O fato de essa noção desaparecer logo após ser introduzida, porém, desafia sua contribuição para esse debate. Neste artigo, mostra-se que o desaparecimento da metontologia não significa o desaparecimento da preocupação de Heidegger com (...) o ôntico, mas o contrário. Começa-se apresentando a visão de Freeman de uma tensão entre o ôntico e o ontológico, no pensamento de Heidegger, em meados da década de 1920, que resulta na introdução da metontologia, em 1927. Mais tarde, evidencia-se que a explicação de McNeill para o desaparecimento da metontologia, como consequência da visão de Heidegger, de meados dos anos 30, de que a projeção a priori do ser é uma retirada do ser (Entzug des Seins), permite dizer que esse desaparecimento não acarreta uma repentina falta de preocupação de Heidegger com o ôntico. Ao considerar a análise de Heidegger de “o matemático”, em Die Frage nach dem Ding, finalmente, argumenta-se que a metontologia desaparece do pensamento de Heidegger, porque sua dependência da ontologia a impede de explicar sua crescente preocupação com o ôntico, de maneira adequada. (shrink)

In The Grammar of Society, first published in 2006, Cristina Bicchieri examines social norms, such as fairness, cooperation, and reciprocity, in an effort to understand their nature and dynamics, the expectations that they generate, and how they evolve and change. Drawing on several intellectual traditions and methods, including those of social psychology, experimental economics and evolutionary game theory, Bicchieri provides an integrated account of how social norms emerge, why and when we follow them, and the situations where we are (...) most likely to focus on relevant norms. Examining the existence and survival of inefficient norms, she demonstrates how norms evolve in ways that depend upon the psychological dispositions of the individual and how such dispositions may impair social efficiency. By contrast, she also shows how certain psychological propensities may naturally lead individuals to evolve fairness norms that closely resemble those we follow in most modern societies. (shrink)

In Norms in the Wild, distinguished philosopher Cristina Bicchieri argues that when it comes to human behavior, social scientists place too much stress on rational deliberation. In fact, she says, many choices occur without much deliberation at all. Two people passing in a corridor automatically negotiate their shared space; cars at an intersection obey traffic signals; we choose clothing based on our instincts for what is considered appropriate. Bicchieri's theory of social norms accounts for these automatic components of coordination, (...) where individuals react automatically to cues that focus their attention on what the norm is in that situation. Social norms thus act as rules for making choices in a social world where people expect others -- often unconsciously -- to follow the same rule. Some norms enable seamless social co-operation, while others are less beneficial to human flourishing.Bicchieri is famous for her interdisciplinary work on game theory and most recently her work on social norms, and Norms in the Wild represents her latest challenge to many of the fundamental assumptions of the social sciences. Bicchieri's work has broad implications not only for understanding human behavior, but for changing it for better outcomes. People have a strongly conditioned preference for following social norms, but that also means that manipulating their expectations can cause major behavioral changes. Bicchieri has been working recently with UNICEF and other NGO's to explore the applicability of her views to issues of human rights around the world. Is it possible to change social expectations around forced marriage, genital mutilations, and public health practices like vaccinations and sanitation? If so, how? What tools might we use? This short book explores how social norms work, and how changing them - changing preferences, beliefs, and especially social expectations - can potentially improve lives all around the world. It will appeal to an unusually broad range of readers including philosophers, psychologists and others in behavioral sciences, and anyone involved in public policy or at NGOs. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem presents a serious challenge to externalist theories of epistemic justification. In recent years, externalists have developed a number of strategies for responding to the problem. A popular line of response involves distinguishing between a belief’s being epistemically justified and a subject’s being epistemically blameless for holding it. The apparently problematic intuitions the New Evil Demon Problem elicits, proponents of this response claim, track the fact that the deceived subject is epistemically blameless for believing as she (...) does, not that she is justified for so believing. This general strategy—which I call the “unjustified-but-blameless maneuver”—is motivated, in part, by the assumption that the distinction between epistemic justification and blamelessness is merely an extension of the familiar distinction between moral justification and blamelessness. In this paper, I consider three ways of drawing the distinction between justification and blamelessness familiar from the moral domain: the first in terms of a connection with reactive attitudes, the second in terms of the distinction between wrongness and wronging, and the third in terms of reasons-responsiveness. All three ways of drawing the distinction, I argue, make it difficult to see how an analogous distinction in the epistemic domain could help externalists explain away the intuitions which underwrite the New Evil Demon Problem. Motivating the unjustified-but-blameless maneuver, I conclude, is a much less straightforward task than its proponents tend to assume. (shrink)

Embora a relação entre subjectividade e tempo seja fulcral para a fenomenologia, é-o sempre com o intuito de fundamentar ontologicamente a consciência na sua verdade A grande originalidade de Levinas consiste em abandonar o plano do cogito e, consequentem.

Representing the thinking of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, coaches, and sports writers, these essays bring together a wide range of approaches to ...

The thesis of mental fragmentation has recently attracted increased attention as a way of explaining facts about mind and language. This volume provides an accessible introduction and essays on foundations and applications of fragmentation.

We report the results of an experiment designed to determine the effects of psychological proximity—proxied by awareness of pain and friendship—on moral reasoning. Our study tests the hypotheses that a moral agent’s emphasis on justice decreases with proximity, while his/her emphasis on care increases. Our study further examines how personality, gender, and managerial status affect the importance of care and justice in moral reasoning. We find support for the main hypotheses. We also find that care should be split into two (...) components, one related to protection and the other to the preservation of relationships. Although gender does not affect moral reasoning directly, we find that it does so indirectly via personality, controlling for age, professional status, and professional background. We do not find a significant effect of managerial status on ethics of justice, but do find that holding a managerial position has a negative impact on ethics of care. Regarding personality, we detect significant positive effects of conscientiousness on ethics of justice and of neuroticism on ethics of care. (shrink)

This dissertation discusses friendship in relation to self-identity in the thought of Paul Ricoeur. Its main claim is that Ricoeur's notion of self-identity designates a hermeneutically mediated experience, and that this complex experience can only be illumined by a phenomenology that is sensitive to ethical aspects. Another finding is that, according to Ricoeur, whatever we do, say, or write, takes on the form of narrative experience. Finally, the dissertation shows that what looks like the force of the discourse, driving author (...) to reader, and readers to one another, is in fact the force of philia, and that the latter is a source that nourishes practical wisdom exercised in relations with others. The call to friendship is a call to esteem for the being-like-me, a call to recognize a likeness beyond question and doubt, which relates selfhood and alterity, sameness and difference. (shrink)

Recent studies have proposed that the executive advantages associated with bilingualism may stem from language-switching frequency rather than from bilingualism per se (see for example, Prior & Gollan, 2011). Barbu, Gillet, Orban and Poncelet (2018) showed that high-frequency language switchers outperformed low-frequency switchers on a mental flexibility task but not on alertness or response inhibition tasks. The aim of the present study was to replicate these results as well as to compare proficient high and low-frequency bilingual language switchers to a (...) control group of monolingual participants. Two groups of proficient bilingual adults (30 high-frequency language switchers and 21 low-frequency language switchers) and a group of 28 monolinguals participated in the study. The results showed superior mental flexibility skills in high-frequency language switchers compared to low-frequency switchers and monolinguals; furthermore, the two latter groups showed no difference in mental flexibility skills. These results provide novel support for the hypothesis that the so-called bilingual advantage is, in fact, a result of language-switching habits. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of social intentions on action. Participants were requested to reach towards, grasp an object, and either pass it to another person or put it on a concave base . Movements’ kinematics was recorded using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The results indicate that kinematics is sensitive to social intention. Movements performed for the ‘social’ condition were characterized by a kinematic pattern which differed from those obtained for the ‘single-agent’ condition. (...) Results are discussed in terms of a motor simulation hypothesis, which assumes that the same mechanisms underlying motor intention are sensitive to social intentions. (shrink)

This article aims to show the consistency of Simone Weil’s political thought. To this end, I will analyze some of her main writings in which a tension is displayed between an accentuated political realism and a critical longing for a politics free from the subjection to force and the legitimation of the status quo. From this point of view, Weil’s thought can be understood as a form of political mysticism in which the images, notions, and symbols of mysticism serve the (...) purpose to innervate a renewed political rationality. (shrink)

This paper addresses theoretical challenges, still relevant today, that arose in the first decades of the twentieth century related to the concept of the organism. During this period, new insights into the plasticity and robustness of organisms as well as their complex interactions fueled calls, especially in the UK and in the German-speaking world, for grounding biological theory on the concept of the organism. This new organism-centered biology understood organisms as the most important explanatory and methodological unit in biological investigations. (...) At least three theoretical strands can be distinguished in this movement: Organicism, dialectical materialism, and holistic biology. This paper shows that a major challenge of OCB was to describe the individual organism as a causally autonomous and discrete unit with consistent boundaries and, at the same time, as inextricably interwoven with its environment. In other words, OCB had to conciliate individualistic with anti-individualistic perspectives. This challenge was addressed by developing a concept of life that included functionalist and metabolic elements, as well as biochemical and physical ones. It allowed for specifying organisms as life forms that actively delimit themselves from the environment. Finally, this paper shows that the recent return to the concept of the organism, especially in the so-called “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” is challenged by similar anti-individualistic tendencies. However, in contrast to its early-twentieth-century forerunner, today’s organism-centered approaches have not yet offered a solution to this problem. (shrink)

This paper argues that hypocritical blame renders blame inappropriate. Someone should not express her blame if she is guilty of the same thing for which she is blaming others, in the absence of an admission of fault. In failing to blame herself for the same violations of norms she condemns in another, the hypocrite evinces important moral faults, which undermine her right to blame. The hypocrite refuses or culpably fails to admit her own mistakes, while at the same time demands (...) that others admit theirs. The paper argues that this lack of reciprocity—expecting others to take morality seriously by apologizing for their faults, without one doing the same in return—is what makes hypocritical blame unfair. (shrink)

This essay is part of a dossier on Cristina Lafont's book Democracy without Shortcuts.

:This essay investigates the relationships among scripts, schemata, and social norms. The authors examine how social norms are triggered by particular schemata and are grounded in scripts. Just as schemata are embedded in a network, so too are social norms, and they can be primed through spreading activation. Moreover, the expectations that allow a social norm’s existence are inherently grounded in particular scripts and schemata. Using interventions that have targeted gender norms, open defecation, female genital cutting, and other collective issues (...) as examples, the authors argue that ignoring the cognitive underpinnings of a social norm can hamper the effectiveness of behavioral interventions. (shrink)

There is widespread disagreement about whether epistemic akrasia is possible. This paper argues that the possibility of epistemic akrasia follows from a traditional rationalist conception of epistemic critical reasoning, together with considerations about the fallibility of our capacities for reasoning. In addition to defending the view that epistemic akrasia is possible, we aim to shed light on why it is possible. By focusing on critical epistemic reasoning, we show how traditional rationalist assumptions about our core cognitive capacities help to explain (...) the possibility of epistemic akrasia. (shrink)

Often, when several norms are present and may be in conflict, individuals will display a self-serving bias, privileging the norm that best serves their interests. Xiao and Bicchieri (J Econ Psychol 31(3):456–470, 2010) tested the effects of inequality on reciprocating behavior in trust games and showed that—when inequality increases—reciprocity loses its appeal. They hypothesized that self-serving biases in choosing to privilege a particular social norm occur when the choice of that norm is publicly justifiable as reasonable, even if not optimal (...) for one of the parties. In line with the literature on motivated reasoning, this justification should find some degree of support among third parties. The results of our experimental survey of third parties support the hypothesis that biases are not always unilateral selfish assessments. Instead, they occur when the choice to favor a particular norm is supported by a shared sense that it is a reasonable and justifiable choice. (shrink)

In a dissonance case, a person sincerely and with conviction asserts that P, while his/her overall automatic behavior suggests that he/she believes that not-P. According to Schwitzgebel, this is a case of in-between believing. This article raises several concerns about Schwitzgebel's account and proposes an alternative view. I argue that the in-between approach yields incorrect results in belief self-ascriptions and does not capture the psychological conflict underlying the individual's dissonance. I advance the view that in relevant cases the dissonant individual (...) has two mutually contradictory beliefs. (shrink)

The public debate on climate change is filled with moral claims. However, scientific knowledge about the role that morality, ethics, and values play in this issue is still scarce. Starting from this research gap, we focus on corporations as central decision makers in modern society and analyze how they respond to societal demands to take responsibility for climate change. While relevant literature on business ethics and climate change either places a high premium on morality or presents a strong skeptical bias, (...) our sociological model depicts morality as an indeterminate force: it can lead to both workable solutions or merely reinforce the status quo, depending on what different corporations make of it. We describe, on the one side, the diffusion of moral values in the media discourse on climate change and, on the other side, the specific responses of corporations. While the media discourse generates a pressure on corporations to act responsibly, their moral claims do not provide clear advice for action. As a result, morality becomes available to organizations as a medium that can be re-specified according to their internal dynamics. Corporations transform moral values into something compatible with their own structures through a variety of different responses: introducing formal ethical structures (e.g., codes of conduct), initiating value-oriented projects, or developing informal moral norms, and so on. In some occurrences, morality becomes a mere façade, while in others it serves as a decision-making criterion and deeply influences core activities in firms. (shrink)

Previous literature has demonstrated the important role that trust plays in developing and maintaining well-functioning societies. However, if we are to learn how to increase levels of trust in society, we must first understand why people choose to trust others. One potential answer to this is that people view trust as normative: there is a social norm for trusting that imposes punishment for noncompliance. To test this, we report data from a survey with salient rewards to elicit people’s attitudes regarding (...) the punishment of distrusting behavior in a trust game. Our results show that people do not behave as though trust is a norm. Our participants expected that most people would not punish untrusting investors, regardless of whether the potential trustee was a stranger or a friend. In contrast, our participants behaved as though being trustworthy is a norm. Most participants believed that most people would punish someone who failed to reciprocate a stranger’s or a friend’s trust. We conclude that, while we were able to reproduce previous results establishing that there is a norm of reciprocity, we found no evidence for a corresponding norm of trust, even among friends. (shrink)

In recent years, biologists and philosophers of science have argued that evolutionary theory should incorporate more seriously the idea of ‘reciprocal causation.’ This notion refers to feedback loops whereby organisms change their experiences of the environment or alter the physical properties of their surroundings. In these loops, in particular niche constructing activities are central, since they may alter selection pressures acting on organisms, and thus affect their evolutionary trajectories. This paper discusses long-standing problems that emerge when studying such reciprocal causal (...) processes between organisms and environments. By comparing past approaches to reciprocal causation from the early twentieth century with contemporary ones in niche construction theory, we identify two central reoccurring problems: All of these approaches have not been able to provide a conceptual framework that allows maintaining meaningful boundaries between organisms and environments, instead of merging the two, and integrating experiential and physical kinds of reciprocal causation. By building on case studies of niche construction research, we provide a model that is able to solve these two problems. It allows distinguishing between mutually interacting organisms and environments in complex scenarios, as well as integrating various forms of experiential and physical niche construction. (shrink)

David Lewis may be regarded as an antiessentialist. The reason is that he is said to believe that individuals do not have essential properties independent of the ways they are represented. According to him, indeed, the properties that are determined to be essential to individuals are a matter of which similarity relations among individuals are salient, and salience, in turn, is a contextual matter also determined to some extent by the ways individuals are represented. Todd Buras argues that the acknowledgment (...) of natural properties in counterpart theoretic ontology affects Lewis’s theory with regard to essentialism. Buras’s reasoning is appealing. He claims that, since natural properties determine the existence of similarity relations among individuals that are salient independent of context, Lewis can no longer be claimed to be an antiessentialist. The aim of this paper is to argue, against Buras, that if counterpart theory was antiessentialist before natural properties were taken into account, then it remains so afterwards. (shrink)

In this new study, Cristina Chimisso explores the work of the French Philosopher of Science, Gaston Bachelard by situating it within French cultural life of the first half of the century. The book is introduced by a study - based on an analysis of portraits and literary representations - of how Bachelard's admirers transformed him into the mythical image of the Philosopher, the Patriarch and the 'Teacher of Happiness'. Such a projected image is contrasted with Bachelard's own conception of (...) philosophy and his personal pedagogical and moral ideas. This pedagogical orientation is a major feature of Bachelard's texts, and one which deepens our understanding of the main philosophical arguments. The primary thesis of the book is based on the examination of the French educational system of the time and of French philosophy taught in schools and conceived by contemporary philosophers. This approach also helps to explain Bachelard's reception of psychoanalysis and his mastery of modern literature. _Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination_ thus allows for a new reading of Bachelard's body of work, whilst at the same time providing an insight into twentieth century French culture. (shrink)

The difficulty of defining rational behavior in game situations is that the players'' strategies will depend on their expectations about other players'' strategies. These expectations are beliefs the players come to the game with. Game theorists assume these beliefs to be rational in the very special sense of beingobjectively correct but no explanation is offered of the mechanism generating this property of the belief system. In many interesting cases, however, such a rationality requirement is not enough to guarantee that an (...) equilibrium will be attained. In particular, I analyze the case of multiple equilibria, since in this case there exists a whole set of rational beliefs, so that no player can ever be certain that the others believe he has certain beliefs. In this case it becomes necessary to explicitly model the process of belief formation. This model attributes to the players a theory of counterfactuals which they use in restricting the set of possible equilibria. If it were possible to attribute to the players the same theory of counterfactuals, then the players'' beliefs would eventually converge. (shrink)

Insight problem solving is thought to underpin creative thought as it incorporates both divergent (generating multiple ideas and solutions) and convergent (arriving at the optimal solution) thinking approaches. The current literature on schizotypy and creativity is mixed and requires clarification. An alternate approach was employed by designing an exploratory web-based study using only correlates of schizotypal traits (paranoia, dissociation, cognitive failures, fantasy proneness, and unusual sleep experiences) and examining which (if any) predicted optimal performance on an insight problem-solving task. One (...) hundred and twenty-one participants were recruited online from the general population and completed the number reduction task. The discovery of the hidden rule (HR) was used as a measure of insight. Multivariate logistic regression analyses highlighted persecutory ideation to best predict the discovery of the HR (OR = 1.05; 95% CI 1.01–1.10, p = 0.017), with a one-point increase in persecutory ideas corresponding to the participant being 5% more likely to discover the HR. This result suggests that persecutory ideation, above other schizotypy correlates, may be involved in insight problem solving. (shrink)