People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which (...) other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time. (shrink)

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States increased exponentially, quickly leading to a pandemic in 2020, which created a serious public-health emergency. During the period in which the COVID-1...

Counterfactual thinking involves imagining hypothetical alternatives to reality. Philosopher David Lewis argued that people estimate the subjective plausibility that a counterfactual event might have occurred by comparing an imagined possible world in which the counterfactual statement is true against the current, actual world in which the counterfactual statement is false. Accordingly, counterfactuals considered to be true in possible worlds comparatively more similar to ours are judged as more plausible than counterfactuals deemed true in possible worlds comparatively less similar. Although Lewis (...) did not originally develop his notion of comparative similarity to be investigated as a psychological construct, this study builds upon his idea to empirically investigate comparative similarity as a possible psychological strategy for evaluating the perceived plausibility of counterfactual events. More specifically, we evaluate judgments of comparative similarity between episodic memories and episodic counterfactual events as a factor influencing people's judgments of plausibility in counterfactual simulations, and we also compare it against other factors thought to influence judgments of counterfactual plausibility, such as ease of simulation and prior simulation. Our results suggest that the greater the perceived similarity between the original memory and the episodic counterfactual event, the greater the perceived plausibility that the counterfactual event might have occurred. While similarity between actual and counterfactual events, ease of imagining, and prior simulation of the counterfactual event were all significantly related to counterfactual plausibility, comparative similarity best captured the variance in ratings of counterfactual plausibility. Implications for existing theories on the determinants of counterfactual plausibility are discussed. (shrink)

The neural reuse framework developed primarily by Michael Anderson proposes that brain regions are involved in multiple and diverse cognitive tasks and that brain regions flexibly and dynamically interact in different combinations to carry out cognitive functioning. We argue that the evidence cited by Anderson and others falls short of supporting the fundamental principles of neural reuse. We map out this problem and provide solutions by drawing on recent advances in network neuroscience, and we argue that methods employed in network (...) neuroscience provide the means to fully engage in a research program operating under the principles of neural reuse. (shrink)

People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief change has focused on a limited set of well-known, charged, contentious issues and has not accounted for deliberation over reasons and arguments in belief formation prior to experimental sessions. With a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 3,001), we attempt to overcome these existing problems, and we investigate the causes and (...) consequences of resistance to belief change for five diverse and less contentious socio-political issues. After participants chose initially to support or oppose a given socio-political position, they were provided with reasons favoring their chosen position (affirming reasons), reasons favoring the other, unchosen position (conflicting reasons), or all reasons for both positions (reasons for both sides). Our results indicate that participants are more likely to stick with their initial decisions than to change them no matter which reasons are considered, and that this resistance to belief change is likely due to a motivated, biased evaluation of the reasons to support their initial beliefs (prior-belief bias). More specifically, they rated affirming reasons more favorably than conflicting reasons—even after accounting for reported prior knowledge about the issue, the novelty of the reasons presented, and the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. In many cases, participants who did not change their positions tended to become more confident in the superiority of their positions after considering many reasons for both sides. (shrink)

In four studies, we investigated the role of remembering, reflecting on, and mutating personal past moral transgressions to learn from those moral mistakes and to form intentions for moral improvement. Participants reported having ruminated on their past wrongdoings, particularly their more severe transgressions, and they reported having frequently thought about morally better ways in which they could have acted instead (i.e., morally upward counterfactuals; Studies 1–3). The more that participants reported having mentally simulated morally better ways in which they could (...) have acted, the stronger their intentions were to improve in the future (Studies 2 and 3). Implementing an experimental manipulation, we then found that making accessible a morally upward counterfactual after committing a moral transgression strengthened reported intentions for moral improvement—relative to resimulating the remembered event and considering morally worse ways in which they could have acted instead (Study 4). We discuss the implications of these results for competing theoretical views on the relationship between memory and morality and for functional theories of counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

Having positive moral traits is central to one’s sense of self, and people generally are motivated to maintain a positive view of the self in the present. But it remains unclear how people foster a positive, morally good view of the self in the present. We suggest that recollecting and reflecting on moral and immoral actions from the personal past jointly help to construct a morally good view of the current self in complementary ways. More specifically, across four studies we (...) investigated the extent to which people believe they have changed over time after recollecting their own moral or immoral behaviors from the personal past. Our results indicate that recollecting past immoral actions is associated with stronger impressions of dissimilarity and change in the sense of self over time than recollecting past moral actions. These effects held for diverse domains of morality (i.e., honesty/dishonesty, helping/harming, fairness/unfairness, and loyalty/disloyalty), and they remained even after accounting for objective, calendar time. Further supporting a motivational explanation, these effects held when people recollected their own past actions but not when they recollected the actions of other people. (shrink)

There is considerable variability across people in their punitive responses to employee offenses in the workplace. We attempt to explain this variability by positing a novel antecedent of punishment: moral recognition. We find consistent evidence that identifying moral considerations and implications for workplace offenses predicts punitive responses toward employees who commit those offenses. Drawing on functional theoretical accounts of morality and punishment, we posit that people are motivated to punish others to the extent that they believe a moral offense has (...) been committed, because much of what it means to commit a moral offense (as opposed to a non-moral offense) is to act in a way that prevents, or inhibits, cooperative behavior to achieve social goals. Punishment can discourage group members from committing those offenses in the future, thereby regulating behavior in a way that facilitates cooperation and social cohesion. We offer correlational and causal evidence that the link between moral recognition and punishment is explained, in part, by participants’ beliefs that committing these offenses prevents cooperative behavior to achieve organization-related goals. (shrink)

Ethics education has become a priority at many business schools. A common pedagogical strategy in business ethics education has been to encourage students to deliberate and reason about cases and dilemmas. However, relatively little is known about how students actually reason, by default, about business ethics cases and dilemmas. In a large-scale study with undergraduate management students, we investigate how students reason about ethical dilemmas in business. Our results suggest that, after making an initial decision in a dilemma, students rarely (...) changed their minds after deliberating over an extensive set of reasons for both sides of the dilemma. Students evaluated reasons in a way that preferentially supported their initial decisions. This post-hoc evaluation of reasons to preferentially support initial decisions also had implications for decision entrenchment: students actually tended to become more confident in the superiority of their initial decisions after deliberating over the reasons for both sides. We discuss the challenges that our findings pose for teaching business ethics. (shrink)

People frequently entertain counterfactual thoughts, or mental simulations about alternative ways the world could have been. But the perceived plausibility of those counterfactual thoughts varies widely. The current article interfaces research in the philosophy and semantics of counterfactual statements with the psychology of mental simulations, and it explores the role of perceived similarity in judgments of counterfactual plausibility. We report results from seven studies (N = 6405) jointly supporting three interconnected claims. First, the perceived plausibility of a counterfactual event is (...) predicted by the perceived similarity between the possible world in which the imagined situation is thought to occur and the actual world. Second, when people attend to differences between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as less similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as less plausible. Lastly, when people attend to what is identical between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as more similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as more plausible. We discuss these results in light of philosophical, semantic, and psychological theories of counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAnxiety and depression diagnoses are associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviours. However, a categorical understanding of these associations limits insight into identifying dimensional mechanisms of suicide risk. This study investigated anxious and depressive features through a lens of suicide risk, independent of diagnosis. Latent class analysis of 97 depression, anxiety, and suicidality-related items among 616 psychiatric outpatients indicated a 3-class solution, specifically: a higher suicide-risk class uniquely differentiated from both other classes by high reported levels of depression and anxious arousal; (...) a lower suicide-risk class that reported levels of anxiety sensitivity and generalised worry comparable to Class 1, but lower levels of depression and anxious arousal; and a low to non-suicidal class that reported relatively low levels across all depression and anxiety measures. Discriminants of the higher suicide-risk class included borderline personality disorder; report... (shrink)

Au cours des deux dernières décennies, les études sur Stanley Milgram ont connu une véritable renaissance interdisciplinaire, qui a conduit à modifier profondément le débat sur ces expériences de psychologie sociale parmi les plus controversées du xxe siècle. L’intérêt considérable pour les conditions expérimentales de ses travaux constitue une nouvelle perspective, qui a des implications pour la philosophie de la psychologie sociale. L’ontologie sociale (ou ontologie historique), de différents styles, peut mettre en lumière les caractéristiques contingentes de l’« obéissance (...) à l’autorité» et d’autres expériences classiques de la psychologie sociale nord-américaine. Dans ce numéro de Philosophia Scientiæ consacré à Milgram, ma contribution consiste à montrer comment une approche empirique de l’interaction sociale peut aider à éclairer – « à partir de la base» -– les relations de pouvoir dans le laboratoire de Milgram, ainsi que les résistances à la poursuite de l’expérience. Tout d’abord, je présente le pouvoir comme une caractéristique multidimensionnelle de la sociabilité humaine, en soulignant son aspect performatif. Dans le laboratoire, les sujets jouant le rôle des Enseignants sont contraints à exercer leur pouvoir de différentes façons très contrastées, soit en exerçant ce pouvoir sur l’Apprenant (en se conformant à la volonté de l’expérimentateur), soit contre l’expérimentateur (c’est-à-dire en lui résistant). Deuxièmement, je propose que, comme la moralité, le pouvoir au sens performatif peut être compris à l’aide de la distinction entre premier-plan et arrière-plan (dans le vocabulaire Gestaltiste, la distinction figure/fond), les deux aspects du phénomène étant empiriquement fondés, et orientés vers les pratiques concrètes des agents en interaction. Troisièmement, je précise la notion de pouvoir performatif, en relation avec la pratique de ceux qui, parmi les sujets en position d’Enseignants, s’opposent à la continuation de l’expérience. En conclusion, l’article illustre la valeur de l’analyse éthnométhodologique conversationnelle, en tant que style d’ontologie sociale adapté tant à l’étude des relations de pouvoirs, à celle des prétentions à la connaissance en psychologie sociale, qu’à la reconstruction des présupposés de la psychologie sociale nord-américaine classique. (shrink)

RésuméD. C. Matthew propose une critique originale et importante de l'intégration raciale. Son affirmation selon laquelle l'intégration aggravera la dévaluation phénotypique des traits typiquement noirs, menaçant l'estime de soi noire, est persuasive. Pourtant, son argument normatif le plus solide, selon lequel les Noirs devraient rejeter l'intégration puisque les dommages potentiels à leur estime de soi l'emportent sur ses prétendus avantages, est moins convaincant, car il s'appuie sur une analyse coût-bénéfice douteuse. En définitive, étant donné l'incertitude d'un processus aussi complexe (...) qui se déroule dans un avenir spéculatif, je soutiens que nous devrions, dans tous les cas, résister à la tentation d'offrir une analyse coût-bénéfice définitive de l'intégration raciale. (shrink)

Funding agencies and large public scientific institutions are increasingly using the term “research portfolio” as a means of characterizing their research. While portfolios have long been used as a heuristic for managing corporate R&D, they remain ill-defined in a science policy context where research is aimed at achieving societal outcomes. In this article we analyze the discursive uses of the term “research portfolio” and propose some general considerations for their application in science policy. We explore the use of the term (...) in private R&D and related scholarly literature in existing science policy practices, and seek insight in relevant literature in science policy scholarship. While the financial analogy can in some instances be instructive, a simple transposition from the world of finance or of corporate R&D to public research is problematic. However, we do identify potentially fruitful uses of portfolio analysis in science policy. In particular, our review suggests that the concept of research portfolio can indeed be a useful analytical instrument for tackling complex societal challenges. Specifically, the strands of scholarship identified suggest that the use of research portfolio should: i) recognize the diversity of research lines relevant for a given societal challenge, given the uncertainty and ambiguity of research outcomes; ii) examine the relationships between research options of a portfolio and the expected societal outcomes; and iii) adopt a systemic perspective to research portfolios – i.e. examine a portfolio as a functional whole, rather than as the sum of its parts. We argue that with these considerations, portfolio-driven approaches may foster social inclusion in science policy decisions, help deliberation between “alternative” portfolios to tackle complex societal challenges, as well as promote cost-effectiveness and transparency. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Critical realist thought has theorised convincingly that epistemic relativism is constellationally embedded in ontological realism which in turn necessitates judgemental rationality. In social science, judgemental rationality involves acting upon plausible decisions about competing points of view. However, the tools for doing this are, as yet, under-articulated. This paper addresses this absence by articulating triangulation and depth-reflexivity as two tools for doing judgemental rationality in empirical research. It draws on the experiences of a diverse team working on an international comparative (...) research project on conversion to Islam in prisons. It demonstrates how epistemic and relational gaps between researchers and research subjects can be bridged by mobilising the ‘laminated’ properties and personal attributes of a diverse research team that factors in attributes that are absent as well as those present. The biographical experiences of the team are analyzed in a variety of intersecting dimensions: faith, ethnicity/ethno-culture, gender, class and professionality. (shrink)

Amid the unrest, dislocation, and uncertainty of seventeenth-century Europe, readers seeking consolation and assurance turned to philosophical and scientific books that offered ways of conquering fears and training the mind—guidance for living a good life. _The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution_ presents a triptych showing how three key early modern scientists, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz, envisioned their new work as useful for cultivating virtue and for pursuing a good life. Their scientific and philosophical innovations stemmed in (...) part from their understanding of mathematics and science as cognitive and spiritual exercises that could create a truer mental and spiritual nobility. In portraying the rich contexts surrounding Descartes’ geometry, Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, and Leibniz’s calculus, Matthew L. Jones argues that this drive for moral therapeutics guided important developments of early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

One of the most basic functions of human language is to convey who did what to whom. In the world's languages, the order of these three constituents (subject [S], verb [V], and object [O]) is uneven, with SOV and SVO being most common. Recent experiments using experimentally elicited pantomime provide a possible explanation of the prevalence of SOV, but extant explanations for the prevalence of SVO could benefit from further empirical support. Here, we test whether SVO might emerge because (a) (...) SOV is not well suited for describing reversible events (a woman pushing a boy) and (b) pressures to be efficient and mention subjects before objects conspire to rule out many other alternatives. We tested this by asking participants to describe reversible and non‐reversible events in pantomime, and we instructed some participants to be consistent in the form of their gestures and to teach them to the experimenter. These manipulations led to the emergence of SVO in speakers of both English (SVO) and Turkish (SOV). (shrink)

This article makes the case for a contemporary philosophy of Islam to help Muslims surmount the challenges of postmodernity and to transcend the hiatuses and obstacles that Muslims face in their interaction and relationships with non-Muslims. It argues that the philosophy of critical realism so fittingly underlabours for the contemporary interpretation, clarification and conceptual deepening of Islamic doctrine and practice as to suggest and necessitate the development of a distinctive Islamic critical realist philosophy, social and educational theory and world-view, specifically (...) suited for this purpose. This approach is called Islamic critical realism. (shrink)

The philosophy of metaReality and, in particular, ideas of transcendence can ‘underlabour’ for the re-enchantment of Islamic praxis, ethics and law by helping to uncover in a systematic, non-arbitrary way the spiritual objectives inherent in the basic beliefs, practices and obligations of Islam. The commonly accepted elements of the Islamic legal pathway, such as the obligation of marriage, far from being inhibiting, can help humans access the dialectical pulse of freedom and the emancipatory meaning inherent tendentially in human relationships. Thus, (...) the Islamic Shari'a, underlaboured by the philosophy of metaReality, rather than a symbol of legal backwardness and inflexibility, can be conducive once again to greater personal ontological wholeness and collective human flourishing. (shrink)

In Italy, a judge reduced the sentence of a defendant by 1 year in response to evidence for a genetic predisposition to violence. The best characterized of these genetic differences, those in the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), were cited as especially relevant. Several months previously in the USA, MAOA data contributed to a jury reducing charges from 1st degree murder (a capital offence) to voluntary manslaughter. Is there a rational basis for this type of use of MAOA evidence in criminal (...) court? This paper will review in context recent work on the MAOA gene–environment interaction in predisposing individuals to violence and address the relevance of such findings to murder trials. Interestingly, the MAOA genetic variants impact future violence and aggression only when combined with the adverse environmental stimuli of childhood maltreatment. Thus nature and nurture interact to determine the individual’s risk. Based on current evidence, I argue there is a weak case for mitigation. But should future experiments confirm the hypothesis that individual differences in impulse control and response to provocation found in MAOA-L men (without abuse) are significantly magnified when combined with childhood maltreatment, the case could turn into a stronger one. (shrink)

The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution presents a triptych showing how three key early modern scientists, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried ...

Educating Muslims in the Multi-Faith World makes the case for a contemporary educational philosophy of Islam to help Muslims surmount the challenges of post-modernity and to transcend the hiatuses and obstacles that Muslim face in their interaction and relationships with non-Muslims and visa-versa. It argues that the philosophy of critical realism in its original, dialectical and meta-Real moments so fittingly 'underlabours' for the contemporary interpretation, clarification and conceptual deepening of Islamic doctrine, practice and education as to suggest and necessitate a (...) distinctive branch of critical realist philosophy, specifically suited for this purpose. The book proceeds to explain how Islamic Critical Realism can revive and re-energise interpretation of the consensual elements of Islamic doctrine such as the six elements of Islamic belief and the five 'pillars' of Islamic practice so that these essential features of the Islamic way of life can help believers contribute positively to life in multi-faith democracies in a globalising world. Finally, the book shows how this Islamic Critical Realist approach can be brought to bear in humanities classrooms in history, religious education and citizenship to help Muslim young people negotiate and discover innovatively traditional Islamic approaches in the fields of education, economics, culture, gender-relations and inter-faith dialogue in 'new' Western Islamic and multi-faith contexts. Hence, this book provides a comprehensively theorised approach to thinking about Islam and Muslims in education to help Muslim and non-Muslim teachers, pupils and citizens to think creatively and coherently about the meanings of Islam in the West. (shrink)

At the end of Matters of Exchange , Harold Cook's major revisionist account of the early modern scientific revolution, he locates the political and economic writings of Bernard Mandeville within the practices and values of contemporaneous Dutch observational medicine. Like Mandeville, Cook describes the potency of early modern capitalism and its attendant value system in generating industry and knowledge; like Mandeville, Cook finds coercive systems of moral regulation to be mistaken in their estimation of human capacities; and like Mandeville, Cook (...) does not shy away from the violence that often made the worldwide commerce in matters of fact possible. “Every Part was full of Vice,” famously rhymed Mandeville, “Yet the whole Mass a Paradise.” The practices and values of science, this book suggests, stemmed from the vices of the merchant and the consumer, not the sprezzatura of the baroque courtier, the asceticism of the Christian gentleman, the speculation of the university philosopher, or the dour appraisal of the theologian. Interest, not claims to disinterest, made modern science and its attendant values possible. Scrupulous attention to goods from around the world and right at home created the conditions for natural knowledge. (shrink)

Volume 18, Issue 1, February 2019, Page 91-94.

At the end of Matters of Exchange, Harold Cook's major revisionist account of the early modern scientific revolution, he locates the political and economic writings of Bernard Mandeville within the practices and values of contemporaneous Dutch observational medicine. Like Mandeville, Cook describes the potency of early modern capitalism and its attendant value system in generating industry and knowledge; like Mandeville, Cook finds coercive systems of moral regulation to be mistaken in their estimation of human capacities; and like Mandeville, Cook does (...) not shy away from the violence that often made the worldwide commerce in matters of fact possible. “Every Part was full of Vice,” famously rhymed Mandeville, “Yet the whole Mass a Paradise.” The practices and values of science, this book suggests, stemmed from the vices of the merchant and the consumer, not the sprezzatura of the baroque courtier, the asceticism of the Christian gentleman, the speculation of the university philosopher, or the dour appraisal of the theologian. Interest, not claims to disinterest, made modern science and its attendant values possible. Scrupulous attention to goods from around the world and right at home created the conditions for natural knowledge. (shrink)

Nearly all of us would accept that at least some of our thoughts – desires, beliefs, and intentions, for example – can be causally responsible for movements in our bodies. Starting in antiquity, and especially since Descartes, philosophers have deployed this claim as the pivotal premise in an increasingly popular line of argument against dualism. The purpose of this paper is to show that, in the Phaedo, Socrates uses this very same claim as the pivotal premise in a surprisingly powerful (...) two-part argument for dualism. (shrink)