A fundamental assumption of theories of decision-making is that we detect mismatches between intention and outcome, adjust our behavior in the face of error, and adapt to changing circumstances. Is this always the case? We investigated the relation between intention, choice, and introspection. Participants made choices between presented face pairs on the basis of attractiveness, while we covertly manipulated the relationship between choice and outcome that they experienced. Participants failed to notice conspicuous mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome (...) they were presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. We call this effect choice blindness. (shrink)

The legacy of Nisbett and Wilson’s classic article, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes , is mixed. It is perhaps the most cited article in the recent history of consciousness studies, yet no empirical research program currently exists that continues the work presented in the article. To remedy this, we have introduced an experimental paradigm we call choice blindness [Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., & Olsson, A. . Failure to detect mismatches between intention (...) and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310, 116–119.]. In the choice blindness paradigm participants fail to notice mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome they are presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. In this article, we use word-frequency and latent semantic analysis to investigate a corpus of introspective reports collected within the choice blindness paradigm. We contrast the introspective reasons given in non-manipulated vs. manipulated trials, but find very few differences between these two groups of reports. (shrink)

Every day, thousands of polls, surveys, and rating scales are employed to elicit the attitudes of humankind. Given the ubiquitous use of these instruments, it seems we ought to have firm answers to what is measured by them, but unfortunately we do not. To help remedy this situation, we present a novel approach to investigate the nature of attitudes. We created a self-transforming paper survey of moral opinions, covering both foundational principles, and current dilemmas hotly debated in the media. This (...) survey used a magic trick to expose participants to a reversal of their previously stated attitudes, allowing us to record whether they were prepared to endorse and argue for the opposite view of what they had stated only moments ago. The result showed that the majority of the reversals remained undetected, and a full 69% of the participants failed to detect at least one of two changes. In addition, participants often constructed coherent and unequivocal arguments supporting the opposite of their original position. These results suggest a dramatic potential for flexibility in our moral attitudes, and indicates a clear role for self-attribution and post-hoc rationalization in attitude formation and change. (shrink)

Reasoning research suggests that people use more stringent criteria when they evaluate others' arguments than when they produce arguments themselves. To demonstrate this “selective laziness,” we used a choice blindness manipulation. In two experiments, participants had to produce a series of arguments in response to reasoning problems, and they were then asked to evaluate other people's arguments about the same problems. Unknown to the participants, in one of the trials, they were presented with their own argument as if it was (...) someone else's. Among those participants who accepted the manipulation and thus thought they were evaluating someone else's argument, more than half rejected the arguments that were in fact their own. Moreover, participants were more likely to reject their own arguments for invalid than for valid answers. This demonstrates that people are more critical of other people's arguments than of their own, without being overly critical: They are better able to tell valid from invalid arguments when the arguments are someone else's rather than their own. (shrink)

Cognition, Education, and Communication Technology presents some of the recent theoretical developments in the cognitive and educational sciences and implications for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the organization of school and university education. Internationally renowned researchers present theoretical perspectives with proposals for and evaluations of educational practices. Each chapter discusses different aspects of the use of ICT in education, including: *the role of perceptual processes in learning; *external cognition as support for interactive learning; *the role of (...) meta-cognition; *simulation learning environments as cognitive tools; *the role of science controversy for knowledge integration; *the use of ICT in the development of educators; and *the role of narratives in education. ICT has great potential for revolutionizing education. Large investments of resources are being made, often without a strong understanding of how ICT will or should be implemented. The expectation is that students will show immediate improvements in terms of their motivation to learn and their learning achievements, but reality is different. Progress of ICT in education requires more than just computers in the classroom. It demands an understanding of the complex processes contributing to human learning and how they interact with new technologies. This text provides theoretical perspectives on the learning processes that can be used as a foundation for constructing pedagogically valuable tools based on ICT. The combination of results--from cognitive science and pedagogy, with more practically oriented suggestions for how ICT can be used in various forms of education--makes this book suitable for researchers and students in the cognitive and educational sciences, as well as for practitioners and planners of education. (shrink)

Experiments on choice blindness support von Hippel & Trivers's (VH&T's) conception of the mind as fundamentally divided, but they also highlight a problem for VH&T's idea of non-conscious self-deception: If I try to trick you into believing that I have a certain preference, and the best way is to also trick myself, I might actually end up having that preference, at all levels of processing.

This thesis is an empirical and theoretical exploration of the surprising finding that people often may fail to notice dramatic mismatches between what they want and what they get, a phenomenon my collaborators and I have named choice blindness. The thesis consists of four co-authored papers, dealing with different aspects of the phenomenon. Paper one presents an initial set of studies using a computerised choice procedure, and discusses the relation of choice blindness to the parent phenomenon of change blindness. Paper (...) two is the most central paper of the thesis. In this study, participants were shown pairs of pictures of female faces, and were instructed to choose which face in each pair they found most attractive. In addition, on some trials, immediately after their choice, they were asked to verbally describe the reasons for choosing the way they did. Unknown to the participants, on certain trials, a double-card ploy was used to covertly exchange one face for the other. On these trials, the outcome of the choice became the opposite of what they intended. Counting across all conditions of the experiment no more than a fourth of all such manipulated trials were detected. But not only were the participants in the experiment blind to the manipulation of their choices, they also offered introspectively derived reasons for preferring the alternative they were given instead. A second major conclusion of this paper is that normal participants may produce confabulatory reports when asked to describe the reasons behind their choices. Paper three applies this form of analysis of introspection and confabulation to a second corpus of reports collected within the choice blindness paradigm. In this paper we use word-frequency and latent semantic analysis to contrast the introspective reasons given in non-manipulated and manipulated trials, but very few differences between these two groups of reports were found. In paper four, passer-by shoppers in a local supermarket were invited to sample two different varieties of jam and tea, and to decide which alternative in each pair they preferred the most. After their choice, the participants were asked to again sample to chosen alternative and describe why that one was preferred. At this point, the content of the sample containers were secretly switched, so that the outcome of the choice became the opposite of what the participants intended. No more than a third of the manipulated trials were detected, thus demonstrating considerable levels of choice blindness for the taste and smell of two different consumer goods. (shrink)

The role of intentions in motor planning is heavily weighted in classical psychological theories, but their role in generating eye movements, and our awareness of these oculomotor intentions, has not been investigated explicitly. In this study, the extent to which we monitor oculomotor intentions, i.e. the intentions to shift one’s gaze towards a specific location, and whether they can be expressed in conscious experience, is investigated. A forced-choice decision task was developed where a pair of faces moved systematically across a (...) screen. In some trials, the pair of faces moved additionally as soon as the participants attempted to gaze at one of the faces, preventing them from ever viewing it. The results of the experiment suggest that humans in general do not monitor their eye movement intentions in a way that allows for mismatches between planned gaze landing target and resulting gaze landing target to be consciously experienced during decision-making. (shrink)

We are very happy that someone has finally tried to make sense of rationalization. But we are worried about the representational structure assumed by Cushman, particularly the “boxology” belief-desire model depicting the rational planner, and it seems to us he fails to accommodate many of the interpersonal aspects of representational exchange.

Political candidates often believe they must focus their campaign efforts on a small number of swing voters open for ideological change. Based on the wisdom of opinion polls, this might seem like a good idea. But do most voters really hold their political attitudes so firmly that they are unreceptive to persuasion? We tested this premise during the most recent general election in Sweden, in which a left- and a right-wing coalition were locked in a close race. We asked our (...) participants to state their voter intention, and presented them with a political survey of wedge issues between the two coalitions. Using a sleight-of-hand we then altered their replies to place them in the opposite political camp, and invited them to reason about their attitudes on the manipulated issues. Finally, we summarized their survey score, and asked for their voter intention again. The results showed that no more than 22% of the manipulated replies were detected, and that a full 92% of the participants accepted and endorsed our altered political survey score. Furthermore, the final voter intention question indicated that as many as 48% (69.2%) were willing to consider a left-right coalition shift. This can be contrasted with the established polls tracking the Swedish election, which registered maximally 10% voters open for a swing. Our results indicate that political attitudes and partisan divisions can be far more flexible than what is assumed by the polls, and that people can reason about the factual issues of the campaign with considerable openness to change. (shrink)

The project “A Plurality of Lives” was funded and hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University, Sweden. The aim of the project was to better understand how a second origin of life, either in the form of a discovery of extraterrestrial life, life developed in a laboratory, or machines equipped with abilities previously only ascribed to living beings, will change how we understand and relate to life. Because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the project aim, (...) the project took an interdisciplinary approach with a research group made up of 12 senior researchers representing 12 different disciplines. The project resulted in a joint volume, an international symposium, several new projects, and a network of researchers in the field, all continuing to communicate about and advance the aim of the project. (shrink)

Sparrows fly because they are birds. This mushroom is poisonous because it is an Amanita muscaria. Pointing out the kind to which things belong explains many of their properties. Jonathan Lowe’s four-category ontology and his account of laws of nature provide a framework to account for the explanatory appeal of referring to kind membership. For Lowe, “Electron has Unit-negative charge” is a typical example for a law of nature: a kind universal characterized by a property universal. We present both Lowe’s (...) original account of laws of nature and later developments, and show how Lowe’s account can help to solve notorious problems of other accounts, namely, the regularity view and the Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley view. We argue that there are two challenges that Lowe’s view cannot master. First, Lowe conflates generics and dispositions, which is a considerable problem for Lowe, because his account of dispositional predication and his account of laws of nature are intimately connected. Second, there is the identification problem of fully specifying and identifying the formal ontological relation of characterization between kind universals and property universals. In order to solve these problems, we develop an account of formal causation inspired by Aristotle’s theory of explanation in his Posterior Analytics. Though very close to Lowe’s own account, our neo-Aristotelian account avoids Lowe’s confusion regarding dispositions, avoids overdetermination through several similar laws of nature, and provides an answer to the identification problem: The characterization of a kind universal by a property universal constitutes the relation of formal causation. By virtue of this relation, the kind Amanita muscaria is the formal cause of this mushroom having the attribute of being poisonous. (shrink)

The counterfactual comparative account of harm has counterintuitive implications in cases involving overdetermination and preemption. A popular strategy for dealing with these problems appeals to plural harm—several events being jointly harmful. Björn Petersson criticizes this strategy on the grounds that it conflicts with a strong intuition that helps to motivate the counterfactual comparative account, namely, that harming someone essentially involves making a difference for the worse for her. In this paper, I argue that Petersson’s argument is unconvincing.

Enormous gaps between HIV burden and health care availability in low-income countries raise severe ethical problems. This article analyzes four HIV-priority dilemmas with interest across contexts and health systems. We explore principled distributive conflicts and use the Atkinson index to make explicit trade-offs between health maximization and equality in health. We find that societies need a relatively low aversion to inequality to favor treatment for children, even with large weights assigned to extending the lives of adults: higher inequality aversion is (...) needed to share resources equally between high-cost and low-cost treatment; higher inequality aversion is needed to favor treatment rather than prevention, and the highest inequality aversion is needed to favor sharing treatment between urban and rural regions rather than urban provision of treatment. This type of ethical sensitivity analysis may clarify the ethics of health policy choice. (shrink)

The classical view of the gene prevailing during the 1910s and 1930s comprehended the gene as the indivisible unit of genetic transmission, genetic recombination, gene mutation and gene function. The discovery of intragenic recombination in the early 1940s led to the neoclassical concept of the gene, which prevailed until the 1970s. In this view the gene or cistron, as it was now called, was divided into its constituent parts, the mutons and recons, materially identified as nucleotides. Each cistron was believed (...) to be responsible for the synthesis of one single mRNA and concurrently for one single polypeptide. The discoveries of DNA technology, beginning in the early 1970s, have led to the second revolution in the concept of the gene in which none of the classical or neoclassical criteria for the definition of the gene hold strictly true. These are the discoveries concerning gene repetition and overlapping, movable genes, complex promoters, multiple polyadenylation sites, polyprotein genes, editing of the primary transcript, pseudogenes and gene nesting. Thus, despite the fact that our comprehension of the structure and organization of the genetic material has greatly increased, we are left with a rather , open and general concept of the gene. This article discusses past and present contemplations of genes, genomes, genotypes and phenotypes as well as the most recent advances of the study of the organization of genomes. (shrink)

In this article I argue for an empiricist view on laws. Some laws are fundamental in the sense that they are the result of inductive generalisations of observed regularities and at the same time in their formulation contain a new theoretical predicate. The inductive generalisations simul- taneously function as implicit definitions of these new predicates. Other laws are either explicit definitions or consequences of other previously established laws. I discuss the laws of classical mechanics, relativity theory and electromagnetism in detail. (...) Laws are necessary, whereas acciden- tal generalisations are not. But necessity here is not a modal concept, but rather interpreted as short for the semantic predicate “... is necessarily true”. Thus no modal logic is needed. The neces- sity attributed to law sentences is in turn interpreted as “necessary condition for the rest of the the- ory”, which is true since fundamental laws are implicit definitions of theoretical predicates use in the theory. (shrink)

Newtonian mechanics has a container conception of space. Space is regarded as an empty receptacle in which all material bodies exist. For a long time, most defenders of this view claimed that it must be mind-dependent. Anton Marty is the first modern philosopher to argue both that physical space is mind-independent and that it has the features characteristic of Newtonian physical space. Moreover, he works out a number of metaphysical implications of this view. Therefore, Marty ought to be given a (...) prominent place in the history of conceptions of space. As shown by Graham Nerlich, a container conception can be defended even after the twentieth-century revolutions in physics. By bringing Marty and Nerlich together, the paper claims that a container conception of space/space-time should even today be taken seriously in the philosophy of physics. (shrink)

Electromagnetism is usually understood as a theory describing how charged particles and eletromagnetic fields interact. In this paper I argue that a double ontology comprising both particles and fields is problematic. Either we should think of electromagnetism as a theory about charged particles directly interacting with each other, or as theory of fields whose local interactions are manifested as field quanta, called "particles." From a purely theoretical point of view the choice between a particle and a field interpretation does not (...) matter much when it concerns classical electromagnetism; both interpretations are possible and, as shown by Quine, there is a general method for translating a theory about one kind of objects into a theory assuming another kind of objects, provided these theories are empirically equivalent. From an empiricist point of view, however, the particle interpretation is the choice, since some particles are directly observable. Testable predictions of electromagnetism are predictions of the motion of charged bodies, in theory represented as particles, so this must be the empiricists' choice of ontology. In quantum electrodynamics one is however forced to chose a field ontology, since a particle ontology for this theory is impossible. So called "quantum particles" are field quanta, which cannot be treated as individuals making up a domain of quantification. There is thus a tension regarding ontology between classical and quantum electrodynamics. But this tension is nothing else than the much debated measurement problem of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

We have argued that the counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit (CCA) violates the plausible adequacy condition that an act that would harm an agent cannot leave her much better off than an alternative act that would benefit her. In a recent paper in this journal, however, Neil Feit objects that our argument presupposes questionable counterfactual backtracking. He also argues that CCA proponents can justifiably reject the condition by invoking so-called plural harm and benefit. In this reply, we argue (...) that Feit’s lines of criticism are both unsuccessful. (shrink)

In this paper, we put forward two novel arguments against the counterfactual comparative account (CCA) of harm and benefit. In both arguments, the central theme is that CCA conflicts with plausible judgements about benefit and prudence.

Inductive thinking is a universal human habit; we generalise from our experiences the best we can. The induction problem is to identify which observed regularities provide reasonable justification for inductive conclusions. In the natural sciences, we can often use strict laws in making successful inferences about unobserved states of affairs. In the social sciences, by contrast, we have no strict laws, only regularities which most often are conditioned on ceteris paribus clauses. This makes it much more difficult to make reliable (...) inferences in the social sciences. In particular, we want knowledge about general causal relations in order to be able to determine what to do in order to achieve a certain state of affairs. Knowledge about causal relations that are also valid in the future requires experiments or so called ‘natural experiments’. Only knowledge derived from such experiences enable us to draw reasonably reliable inferences about how to act in order to achieve our goals. (shrink)

Everyday resistance is about the many ways people undermine power and domination through their routine and everyday actions. Unlike open rebellions or demonstrations, it is typically hidden, not politically articulated, and often ingenious. But because of its disguised nature, it is often poorly understood as a form of politics and its potential underestimated. Conceptualizing Everyday Resistance presents an analytical framework and theoretical tools to understand the entanglements of everyday power and resistance. These are applied to diverse empirical cases including queer (...) relationships in the context of heteronormativity, Palestinian daily life under military occupation, workplace behaviors under office surveillance, and the tactics of fat acceptance bloggers facing the War against obesity. Johansson and Vinthagen argue that everyday resistance is best understood by accounting for different repertoires of tactics, relations between actors, and struggles around constructions of time and space. Through a critical dialogue with the work of James C. Scott, Michel de Certeau, and Asef Bayat, they aim to reconstruct the field of resistance studies, expanding what counts as resistance and building systematic analysis. Conceptualizing Everyday Resistance offers researchers and students from different theoretical and empirical backgrounds, an essential overview of the field and a creative framework that illuminates the potential of all people to transform society. (shrink)

The main causes of suicide and how suicide could and should be prevented are ongoing controversies in the scientific literature as well as in public media. In the bill on public health from 2008, the Swedish Parliament adopted an overarching “Vision Zero for Suicide” and nine strategies for suicide prevention. However, how the VZ should be interpreted in healthcare is unclear. The VZ has been criticized both from a philosophical perspective and against the background of clinical experience and alleged empirical (...) claims regarding the consequences of regulating suicide prevention. This study is part of a larger research project in medical ethics with the overarching aim to explore whether the VZ is ethically justifiable. The aim is to enrich the normative discussion by investigating empirically how the VZ is perceived in healthcare. Interviews based on a semi-structured interview guide were performed with 12 Swedish psychiatrists. The interviews were analysed with descriptive qualitative content analysis aiming for identifying perceptions of the Vision Zero for Suicide as well as arguments for and against it. Though most of the participants mentioned at least some potential benefit of the Vision Zero for Suicide, the overall impression was a predominant skepticism. Some participants focused on why they consider the VZ to be unachievable, while others focused more on its potential consequences and normative implications. The VZ was perceived to be impossible to realize, nonconstructive or potentially counterproductive, and undesirable because of potential conflicts with other values and interests of patients as well as the general public. There were also important notions of the VZ having negative consequences for the working conditions of psychiatrists in Sweden, in increasing their work-related anxiety and thwarting the patient-physician relationship. (shrink)

This paper reviews the contemporary discussion on the epistemological and ontological effects of Big Data within social science, observing an increased focus on relationality and complexity, and a tendency to naturalize social phenomena. The epistemic limits of this emerging computational paradigm are outlined through a comparison with the discussions in the early days of digitalization, when digital technology was primarily seen through the lens of dematerialization, and as part of the larger processes of “postmodernity”. Since then, the online landscape has (...) become increasingly centralized, and the “liquidity” of dematerialized technology has come to empower online platforms in shaping the conditions for human behavior. This contrast between the contemporary epistemological currents and the previous philosophical discussions brings to the fore contradictions within the study of digital social life: While qualitative change has become increasingly dominant, the focus has gone towards quantitative methods; while the platforms have become empowered to shape social behavior, the focus has gone from social context to naturalizing social patterns; while meaning is increasingly contested and fragmented, the role of hermeneutics has diminished; while platforms have become power hubs pursuing their interests through sophisticated data manipulation, the data they provide is increasingly trusted to hold the keys to understanding social life. These contradictions, we argue, are partially the result of a lack of philosophical discussion on the nature of social reality in the digital era; only from a firm metatheoretical perspective can we avoid forgetting the reality of the system under study as we are affected by the powerful social life of Big Data. (shrink)

Exceptions are often cited as a counterargument against formal causation. Against this I argue that Aristotle explicitly allows for exceptions to essences in his biological writings, and that he has a means of explaining them through formal causation – though this means that he has to slightly elaborate on his general case theory from the Posterior Analytics, by supplementing it with a special case application in the biological writings. Specifically for Aristotle an essential predication need not be a universal predication. (...) Rather an essential predication is where a property belongs essentially to a species or genus. This essential predication serves a causal and explanatory role, and is not dependent on a corresponding universal predication. (shrink)

The proliferation of digital data has been the impetus for the emergence of a new discipline for the study of social life: ‘computational social science’. Much research in this field is founded on the premise that society is a complex system with emergent structures that can be modeled or reconstructed through digital data. This paper suggests that computational social science serves practical and legitimizing functions for digital capitalism in much the same way that neoclassical economics does for neoliberalism. In recognition (...) of this homology, this paper develops a critique of the complexity perspective of computational social science and argues for a heterodox computational social science founded on the meta-theory of critical realism that is critical, methodological pluralist, interpretative and explanative. This implies diverting computational social science’ computational methods and digital data so as to not be aimed at identifying invariant laws of social life, or optimizing state and corporate practices, but to instead be used as part of broader research strategies to identify contingent patterns, develop conjunctural explanations, and propose qualitatively different ways of organizing social life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Suppose that, for every possible event and person who would exist whether or not the event were to occur, there is a well-being level that the person would occupy if the event were to occur, and a well-being level that the person would occupy if the event were not to occur. Do facts about such connections between events and well-being levels always suffice to determine whether an event would harm or benefit a person? Many seemingly attractive accounts of harm (...) and benefit entail an affirmative answer to this question, including the widely held Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA). In this paper, however, we argue that all such accounts will be unsuccessful. (shrink)