This paper consists of two parts. In the first, we discuss the neuropsychological correlates of belief in a 'paranormal' or magical causation of coincidences. In particular, we review experimental evidence demonstrating that believers in ESP and kindred forms of paranormal phenomena differ from disbelievers with respect to indices of sequential response production and semantic-associative processing. Not only do believers judge artificial coincidences as more 'meaningful' than disbelievers, they also more strongly suppress coincidental productions (i.e. repetitions) in their generation of random (...) sequences. These findings illuminate the cognitive mechanisms underlying the formation and maintenance of paranormal beliefs for which the right cerebral hemisphere is hypothesized to play a central role. These same right hemispheric semantic-associative processing characteristics are centrally implicated in the creative thought process as well as the genesis of delusional (pathological) beliefs (e.g. ideas of reference). (shrink)

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts’ features—the number of concepts they occur in and likelihood of co-occurrence —determine conceptual activation. To test these claims, we investigated the role of distinctiveness/sharedness and correlational strength in speech-to-meaning mapping, using a lexical decision task and computational simulations. Responses were faster for concepts with higher sharedness, suggesting that shared features are facilitatory in tasks like lexical decision (...) that require access to them. Correlational strength facilitated responses for slower participants, suggesting a time-sensitive co-occurrence-driven settling mechanism. The computational simulation showed similar effects, with early effects of shared features and later effects of correlational strength. These results support a general-to-specific account of conceptual processing, whereby early activation of shared features is followed by the gradual emergence of a specific target representation. (shrink)

Affect misattribution occurs when affective cues color subsequent unrelated evaluations. Research suggests that affect misattribution decreases when one is aware that affective cues are unrelated to the evaluation at hand. We propose that affect misattribution may even occur when one is aware that affective cues are irrelevant, as long as the source of these cues seems ambiguous. When source ambiguity exists, affective cues may freely influence upcoming unrelated evaluations. We examined this using an adapted affect misattribution procedure where pleasant and (...) unpleasant responses served as affective cues that could influence later evaluations of unrelated targets. These affective cues were either perceived as reflecting a single source , or as reflecting two sources suggesting source ambiguity. Results show that misattribution of affect decreased when participants perceived affective cues as representing one source rather than two. (shrink)

We propose the SIMS model can be strengthened by detailing the dynamic interaction between sensorimotor activation and contextual conceptual information. Rapidly activated evaluations and contextual knowledge can guide and constrain embodied simulations. In addition, we stress the potential importance of extending the SIMS model to dynamic social interactions that go beyond the passive observer.

Recent research suggests that one can have the feeling of being the cause of an action’s outcome, even in the absence of a prior intention to act. That is, experienced self-agency over behavior increases when outcome representations are primed outside of awareness, prior to executing the action and observing the resulting outcome. Based on the notion that behavior can be represented at different levels, we propose that priming outcome representations is more likely to augment self-agency experiences when the primed representation (...) corresponds with a person’s behavior representation level. Three experiments, using different priming and self-agency tasks, both measuring and manipulating the level of behavior representation, confirmed this idea. Priming high level outcome representations enhanced experienced self-agency over behavior more strongly when behavior was represented at a higher level, rather than a lower level. Thus, priming effects on self-agency experiences critically depend on behavior representation level. (shrink)

Experiences of having caused a certain outcome may arise from motor predictions based on action–outcome probabilities and causal inferences based on pre-activated outcome representations. However, when and how both indicators combine to affect such self-agency experiences is still unclear. Based on previous research on prediction and inference effects on self-agency, we propose that their contribution crucially depends on whether people have knowledge about the causal relation between actions and outcomes that is relevant to subsequent self-agency experiences. Therefore, we manipulated causal (...) knowledge that was either relevant or irrelevant by varying the probability of co-occurrence of specific actions and outcomes. Afterwards, we measured self-agency experiences in an action–outcome task where outcomes were primed or not. Results showed that motor prediction only affected self-agency when relevant actions and outcomes were learned to be causally related. Interestingly, however, inference effects also occurred when no relevant causal knowledge was acquired. (shrink)

Escalation of commitment causes people to continue a failing course of action. We study the role of construal level in such escalation of commitment. Consistent with the widely held view of construal level as a primed effect, we employed a commonly used prime for manipulating this construct in a laboratory experiment. Our findings revealed that the prime failed to produce statistically significant differences in construal level, which was measured using the Behavior Identification Form. Furthermore, there was no effect of the (...) prime on escalation of commitment, or on constructs that have previously been linked to construal level such as the perceived importance of feasibility considerations relative to desirability considerations, and the number of pros and cons that subjects can think of.Interestingly, however, subjects’ actual construal level scores on the BIF were found to significantly affect escalation. Specifically, our findings show that people with a low construal level are less willing to continue a failing project. This relation is mediated by the perceived importance of the feasibility of the project relative to its desirability. For people with a low construal level, the perceived importance of feasibility relative to desirability is higher, which in turn makes escalation of commitment less likely.Our findings are consistent with prior research suggesting that priming construal level may not always be effective. Thus, while construal level has typically been regarded as a state-like variable that can be primed, in this study, we show that construal level may also be considered as a trait. (shrink)

Newton’s famous pronouncement, Hypotheses non fingo, first appeared in 1713, but his anti-hypothetical stance was present as early as 1672. For example, in his first paper on optics, Newton claims that his doctrine of light and colours is a theory, not a hypothesis, for three reasons (1) It is certainly true, because it supported by (or deduced from) experiment; (2) It concerns the physical properties of light, rather than the nature of light; and (3) It has testable consequences. Despite his (...) clear anti-hypothetical statements, a corpuscular hypothesis lies beneath Newton’s theory of colours. What are we to make of this? Is Newton guilty of feigning a hypothesis? Some writers, such as Sabre and Dear, argue that Newton’s Hypotheses non fingo is merely ‘lip-service’ to the dominant methodological tradition. Others, such as Janiak, argue that Newton’s anti-hypotheticalism is a polemic device, designed specifically to oppose his Cartesian and Leibnizian critics. I argue that, despite his corpuscular hypothesis, we should take Newton’s pronouncement as a genuine account of his methodology. I take a fresh look at Newton’s first optical papers in light of the role of hypotheses in the Baconian-experimental tradition in which Newton’s early research was conducted. I argue that Newton is working with a rough but genuine distinction between hypothesis and theory. This distinction is consistent with both the Baconian-experimental method and with his later anti-hypothetical pronouncements. I conclude that Newton did not ‘feign’ the corpuscular hypothesis. (shrink)

Background Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are federally mandated to include both nonscientific and unaffiliated representatives in their membership. Despite this, there is no guidance or policy on the selection of unaffiliated or non-scientist members and reports indicate a lack of clarity regarding members’ roles. In the present study we sought to explore processes of recruitment, training, and the perceived roles for unaffiliated and non-scientist members of IRBs.Methods We distributed a self-administered REDCap survey of members of the Association for the Accreditation (...) of Human Research Protection Programs familiar with IRB member recruitment. The survey included closed and open-ended questions regarding: the operation of the HRPP/IRB(s), how unaffiliated and non-scientist members are recruited, whether they had faced challenges recruiting for these roles, and training and mentorship offered. The survey also collected information regarding the perceived value and roles of unaffiliated and non-scientist members.Results 76 responses were included in the analysis (38% completion rate). The most common approach for recruitment was referral from current IRB members, with almost half of respondents indicating challenges recruiting unaffiliated members. Over 75% indicated no additional training was provided to unaffiliated or non-scientist members compared to affiliated or scientist members. Most common supports provided were travel/parking expenses and honoraria. Commonly perceived roles were to provide an independent voice from the participant perspective, notably regarding consent processes and materials.Conclusions Respondents indicated challenges in defining unaffiliated and non-scientist members and limited practices toward recruitment and support. Future work should more closely examine the challenges in defining these roles and applying the definitions in practice, as well as strategies that may improve recruitment and retention of unaffiliated and non-scientist members. (shrink)

Psychology's tendency to focus on confirmatory analyses before ensuring constructs are clearly defined and accurately measured is exacerbating the generalizability crisis. Our growing use of digital behaviors as predictors has revealed the fragility of subjective measures and the latent constructs they scaffold. However, new technologies can provide opportunities to improve conceptualizations, theories, and measurement practices.

Public health and service delivery programmes, interventions and policies are typically developed and implemented for the primary purpose of effecting change rather than generating knowledge. Nonetheless, evaluations of these programmes may produce valuable learning that helps determine effectiveness and costs as well as informing design and implementation of future programmes. Such studies might be termed ‘opportunistic evaluations’, since they are responsive to emergent opportunities rather than being studies of interventions that are initiated or designed by researchers. However, current ethical guidance (...) and registration procedures make little allowance for scenarios where researchers have played no role in the development or implementation of a programme, but nevertheless plan to conduct a prospective evaluation. We explore the limitations of the guidance and procedures with respect to opportunistic evaluations, providing a number of examples. We propose that one key missing distinction in current guidance is moral responsibility: researchers can only be held accountable for those aspects of a study over which they have control. We argue that requiring researchers to justify an intervention, programme or policy that would occur regardless of their involvement prevents or hinders research in the public interest without providing any further protections to research participants. We recommend that trial consent and ethics procedures allow for a clear separation of responsibilities for the intervention and the evaluation. (shrink)

Die Arbeit liefert im Rahmen eines kognitiv-konstruktivistischen Ansatzes eine theoretische Grundlage für die systematische Integration von Metaphern in den Fremdsprachenunterricht. Es wird dargestellt, wie Menschen ihre Umwelt und ihr auf diese Umwelt gerichtetes Denken und Handeln kognitiv erfassen und auf der Basis dieses Wissens Vorstellungen von Welt entwickeln, die sich in Sprache niederschlagen. Die Rolle kognitiver mapping-Prozesse für die Konstruktion von Wissen und Bedeutung, d.h. für Lernprozesse im Allgemeinen, wird erläutert, und es wird demonstriert, wie sich das Ergebnis solcher Prozesse (...) häufig in Form metaphorischer Ausdrücke in Sprache widerspiegelt. Es wird aufgezeigt, wie sich die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse für den Fremdsprachenerwerb nutzen lassen. (shrink)

Algorithms silently structure our lives. Algorithms can determine whether someone is hired, promoted, offered a loan, or provided housing as well as determine which political ads and news articles consumers see. Yet, the responsibility for algorithms in these important decisions is not clear. This article identifies whether developers have a responsibility for their algorithms later in use, what those firms are responsible for, and the normative grounding for that responsibility. I conceptualize algorithms as value-laden, rather than neutral, in that algorithms (...) create moral consequences, reinforce or undercut ethical principles, and enable or diminish stakeholder rights and dignity. In addition, algorithms are an important actor in ethical decisions and influence the delegation of roles and responsibilities within these decisions. As such, firms should be responsible not only for the value-laden-ness of an algorithm but also for designing who-does-what within the algorithmic decision. As such, firms developing algorithms are accountable for designing how large a role individual will be permitted to take in the subsequent algorithmic decision. Counter to current arguments, I find that if an algorithm is designed to preclude individuals from taking responsibility within a decision, then the designer of the algorithm should be held accountable for the ethical implications of the algorithm in use. (shrink)

Recent develops in AI technology have led to increasingly sophisticated forms of video manipulation. One such form has been the advent of deepfakes. Deepfakes are AI-generated videos that typically depict people doing and saying things they never did. In this paper, I demonstrate that there is a close structural relationship between deepfakes and more traditional fake barn cases in epistemology. Specifically, I argue that deepfakes generate an analogous degree of epistemic risk to that which is found in traditional cases. Given (...) that barn cases have posed a long-standing challenge for virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge, I consider whether a similar challenge extends to deepfakes. In doing so, I consider how Duncan Pritchard’s recent anti-risk virtue epistemology meets the challenge. While Pritchard’s account avoids problems in traditional barn cases, I claim that it leads to local scepticism about knowledge from online videos in the case of deepfakes. I end by considering how two alternative virtue-theoretic approaches might vindicate our epistemic dependence on videos in an increasingly digital world. (shrink)

When artificial intelligence (AI) is used to make high-stakes decisions, some worry that this will create a morally troubling responsibility gap—that is, a situation in which nobody is morally responsible for the actions and outcomes that result. Since the responsibility gap might be thought to result from individuals lacking knowledge of the future behavior of AI systems, it can be and has been suggested that deploying explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques will help us to avoid it. These techniques provide humans (...) with certain forms of understanding of the systems in question. In this paper, I consider whether existing XAI techniques can indeed close the responsibility gap. I identify a number of significant limits to their ability to do so. Ensuring that responsibility for AI-assisted outcomes is maintained may require using different techniques in different circumstances, and potentially also developing new techniques that can avoid each of the issues identified. (shrink)

Newton’s earliest publications contained scandalous epistemological claims: not only did he aim for certainty; he also claimed success. Some commentators argue that Newton ultimately gave up claims of certainty in favor of a high degree of probability. I argue that no such shift occurred. I examine the evidence of a probabilistic shift: a passage from query 23/31 of the Opticks and rule 4 of the Principia. Neither passage supports a probabilistic approach to natural philosophy. The aim of certainty, then, was (...) an enduring feature of Newton’s methodology. (shrink)

This article explores Lyotard’s notion of performativity through an engagement with McKenzie’s analysis of performance as a ‘formation of knowledge and power’ that has displaced the notion of discipline as the tool for social evaluation. Through conditions of ‘performance’ capitalism, education is to conform to a logic of performativity that ensures not only the efficient operation of the state in the world market, but also the continuation of a global culture of performance. I further trace Lyotard’s postmodern aesthetic of experimentation (...) through performance as an ‘event’ in an analogous attempt to track the process of cultural production in terms that acknowledge the temporality of the event so as not to reduce the artwork to a commodity, knowledge to information, and ‘performance’ to be managed. Where this has critical traction is in education, a site that deals with the intersection of politics, art, theory, philosophy and history—in short, a site where all aspects of ‘performance’ are fully realized. This article engages with the key ideas of these thinkers’ approaches to notions of performance, and assesses their relevance for an understanding of the ambiguities of ‘performance’ in contemporary education institutions. (shrink)

The Relevance View, exemplified by Alex Voorhoeve's Aggregate Relevant Claims, has considerable appeal. It accommodates our reluctance to aggregate weak claims in canonical cases like Life for Headaches, while permitting aggregation of claims in a range of other cases. But it has been the target of significant criticism. In an important recent paper, Patrick Tomlin argues that the view suffers from failures of internal logic, violating plausible consistency constraints and generating incoherent combinations of verdicts on cases. And in cases resembling (...) real-world healthcare allocation problems, Tomlin argues that the view offers no guidance at all. In response, I argue that the internal logic of the Relevance View is sound, and the view's core principles, suitably clarified, support a significant extension of the view beyond the simple cases to which it is typically applied. (shrink)

In cases where the claims of different groups of people compete, the Relevance View occupies a middle ground between aggregation and nonaggregation. It allows weaker claims to aggregate to outweigh a stronger claim just when the competing claims, compared pairwise, are sufficiently close in strength. The view has strong intuitive appeal when applied to simple binary choices, but I argue that attempts to extend it to nonbinary choices have been unsuccessful. I propose a new extension of the Relevance View to (...) nonbinary choices based on a “binary contrastive” account of the moral reasons that obtain in the cases of interest. (shrink)

Illicit drug users are frequently identified as a ‘vulnerable population’ requiring ‘special protection’ and ‘additional safeguards’ in research. However, without specific guidance on how to enact these special protections and safeguards, research ethics committee (REC) members sometimes fall back on untested assumptions about the ethics of illicit drug use research. In light of growing calls for ‘evidence-based research ethics’, this commentary examines three common assumptions amongst REC members about what constitutes ethical research with drug users, and whether such assumptions are (...) borne out by a growing body of empirical data. The assumptions that form the focus of this commentary are as follows: (i) drug users do not have the capacity to provide informed consent to research; (ii) it is ethically problematic to provide financial incentives to drug users to participate in research; and (iii) asking drug users about their experiences ‘re-traumatizes’ and ‘re-victimizes’ them. (shrink)

The assumption that students are differently talented often underlies the public and philosophical debate about the justice of school systems. It is striking that despite the centrality of the notion of ‘talent’ in these debates, the concept is hardly ever explicated. I will suggest two explications: First, philosophers who point to different talents often assume that these are somehow fixed potentials that pose limits to what someone can achieve. According to this understanding, no matter how hard someone tries, she simply (...) cannot perform well due to a lack of talent. Second, talking about different talents can be understood as saying that two students who will receive the same amount of educational resources are nevertheless expected to perform differently in the future. In the public as well as the philosophical debate it is common to assume that educational prospects should be equalized when it comes to unequal social backgrounds, but not when it comes to unequal talents. In this paper, I put into question three reasons that could speak in favor of this assumption: the first refers to the connection between talents and limits, the second to the relation between talents and the transformation of resources and the last one to the idea that talents somehow go back to the person’s true self. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider how spatial experience is fundamentally connected to the development and maintenance of “existential healthy” agency. More specifically, I examine how our formation as choosing, active, and self-defining persons is dependent upon the spatially-thick and interpersonally-interwoven “gestures” through which we develop a lived sense of space as supportive and cooperative or hostile and threatening. I conclude from this both that existentially healthy agency is always already a relational capacity, and, more central to my focus here, that (...) it depends in significant part upon the cultivation of an appropriately supportive spatial environment. (shrink)

The traditional debate about having reasons for actions has focussed on the motivational and justificatory dimensions. I argue that discussion of these issues has neglected a further and important condition of reasons for action. A person can have a reason only if the considerations that provide the reason are accessible to her. Access means that the agent must be able to see that her reason speaks in favor of her φ-ing. I argue for my thesis by pointing out, first, that (...) theoretical reasons must be accessible in order to justify a person's beliefs and second, that the accessibility of theoretical reasons excludes the inaccessibility of practical reasons. (shrink)

Although convinced by Frankfurt-style cases that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise, semicompatibilists have not wanted to accept a parallel claim about moral responsibility for omissions, and so they have accepted asymmetrical requirements on moral responsibility for actions and omissions. In previous work, I have presented a challenge to various attempts at defending this asymmetry. My view is that semicompatibilists should give up these defenses and instead adopt symmetrical requirements on moral responsibility for actions and omissions, (...) and in this paper I highlight three advantages of doing so: first, it avoids a strange implication of the truth of determinism; second, it allows for a principled reply to Philip Swenson’s recent ‘No Principled Difference Argument’; third, it provides a reason to reject a crucial inference rule invoked by Peter van Inwagen’s ‘Direct Argument’ for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. (shrink)

Though “dwelling” is more commonly associated with Heidegger’s philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, “being-at-home” is in fact integral to Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-Ponty’s more familiar notions of the “lived body” and the “level,” and, in particular, I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that (...) rests in the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our “conscious” control—being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain . This analysis of home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving. (shrink)

Moral realists often assume that folk intuitions are predominantly realist, and they argue that this places the burden of proof on antirealists. More broadly, appeals to intuition in metaethics typically assume that folk judgments are generally consistent across individuals, such that they are at least predominantly something, if not realist. A substantial body of empirical work on moral objectivism has investigated these assumptions, but findings remain inconclusive due to methodological limitations. Objectivist judgments classify individuals into broad categories of realism and (...) antirealism, but they do not address more specific conflicts in the metaethical literature between different types of realism and antirealism, such as between nonnaturalism and divine command theory, or between noncognitivism and error theory. Further, the data currently show that the folk are objectivists about some moral claims but not others, raising questions that have not been addressed in previous studies about how much of the moral domain is judged to be objective, and about how endorsements of different types of realism and antirealism are distributed among different types of moral claims. Here, I present a new survey that addresses these limitations. The results challenge both of the empirical assumptions identified above, with important implications for metaethical methodology. (shrink)

Theoretical and methodological discussions of ethnography and ethics have appeared regularly in the Journal of Religious Ethics for at least the past 13 years. Many of these conversations have been preoccupied by the relationship between “normative” work in religious ethics and “descriptive” work on moral worlds and patterns of reasoning. However, there has often been a perceived impasse when it comes to drawing “normative” ethical arguments from fine-grained ethnographic study. This paper begins by assessing significant contributions to religious ethics made (...) by ethnographers of Islam, focusing on the way they render a stark descriptive/normative binary irrelevant. I then turn to an example from my own fieldwork that expands our understanding of the relationship between ethnography and ethics. Through this example, I argue that ethical thinkers working outside the academy—theologians, activists, and cultural producers—also draw on an “ethnographic imagination” to make moral arguments. I end by reflecting on how the “ethnographic imagination” situates religious ethics as part of broader humanistic inquiry, showing that careful accounts of how people do live are always enmeshed with visions of how we should live. (shrink)

ArgumentThe deficit model of science communication assumes that the creation and dissemination of knowledge is limited to researchers with formal credentials. Recent challenges to this model have emerged among “e-patients” who develop extensive online activist communities, demand access to their own health data, conduct crowd-sourced experiments, and “hack” health problems that traditional medical experts have failed to solve. This article explores the aesthetics of medical media that enact the transition from a deficit model to a patient-driven model of visual representation (...) and health communication. I present a framework for understanding the role of film and video in patient movements by analyzing the historical transition from researchers filming patients as nameless, voiceless human research subjects to patients recording their own health narratives through activist cinematography. By comparing several approaches to patient-centered video, I argue that imperfect production aesthetics play a critically important role in establishing the credibility of health communications. (shrink)

Summary 1. Ecologists and conservation biologists consider many issues when designing a field study, such as the expected value of the data, the interests of the study species, the welfare of individual organisms and the cost of the project. These different issues or values often conflict; however, neither animal ethics nor environmental ethics provides practical guidance on how to assess trade-offs between them. -/- 2. We developed a decision framework for considering trade-offs between values in ecological research, drawing on the (...) field of ecological ethics. We used a case study of the population genetics of three frog species, in which a researcher must choose between four methods of sampling DNA from the study animals. We measured species welfare as the reduction in population growth rate following sampling, and assessed individual welfare using two different definitions: (i) the level of suffering experienced by an animal, and (ii) the level of suffering combined with loss of future life. -/- 3. Tipping the tails of tadpoles ranked as the best sampling method for species welfare, while collecting whole tadpoles and buccal swabbing of adult frogs ranked best for the first and second definitions of individual welfare, respectively. Toe clipping of adult frogs ranked as the worst sampling method for species welfare and the first definition of individual welfare, and equal worst for the second definition of individual welfare. -/- 4. When considering species and individual welfare simultaneously, toe clipping was clearly inferior to the other sampling methods, but no single sampling method was clearly superior to the other three. Buccal swabbing, collecting tadpoles and tail tipping were all preferred options, depending on the definition of individual welfare and the level of precision with which we assessed species welfare. -/- 5.Synthesis and applications. The decision framework we present can be used by ecologists to assess ethical and other trade-offs when planning field studies. A formal decision analysis makes transparent how a researcher might negotiate competing ethical, financial and practical objectives. Defining the components of the decision in this way can help avoid errors associated with human judgement and linguistic uncertainty. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that consumerautonomy does not count in favor of thelabeling of genetically modified foods (GMfoods) more than for the labeling of non-GMfoods. Further, reasonable considerationssupport the view that it is non-GM foods ratherthan GM foods that should be labeled.

It is widely thought that Atemporalism—the view that, because God is “outside” of time, he does not foreknow anything —constitutes a unique solution to the problem of freedom and foreknowledge. However, as I argue here, in order for Atemporalism to escape certain worries, the view must appeal to the dependence of God’s timeless knowledge on our actions. I then argue that, because it must appeal to such dependence, Atemporalism is crucially similar to the recent sempiternalist accounts proposed by Trenton Merricks, (...) Philip Swenson, and Jonathan Westphal, and I conclude by briefly sketching some implications of this result. (shrink)

The assumption that students are differently talented often underlies the public and philosophical debate about the justice of school systems. It is striking that despite the centrality of the notion of ‘talent’ in these debates, the concept is hardly ever explicated. I will suggest two explications: First, philosophers who point to different talents often assume that these are somehow fixed potentials that pose limits to what someone can achieve. According to this understanding, no matter how hard someone tries, she simply (...) cannot perform well due to a lack of talent. Second, talking about different talents can be understood as saying that two students who will receive the same amount of educational resources are nevertheless expected to perform differently in the future. In the public as well as the philosophical debate it is common to assume that educational prospects should be equalized when it comes to unequal social backgrounds, but not when it comes to unequal talents. In this paper, I put into question three reasons that could speak in favor of this assumption: the first refers to the connection between talents and limits, the second to the relation between talents and the transformation of resources and the last one to the idea that talents somehow go back to the person’s true self. (shrink)