The studies we report indicate that it is possible to manipulate explicit ascriptions of consciousness by manipulating whether an agent’s behavior is deterministically caused. In addition, we explore whether this impact of determinism on consciousness is direct, or mediated by notions linked to agency – notions like moral responsibility, free will, deliberate choice, and sensitivity to moral reasons. We provide evidence of mediation. This result extends work on attributions of consciousness and their connection to attributions of agency by Adam Arico, (...) Brian Fiala, and Shaun Nichols (Arico et al. 2011, Fiala et al. 2014) and supports it against recent criticisms (e.g., Sytsma 2014). (shrink)

Psychologists have generated numerous measures designed to capture the “spiritual,” “religious,” and “transcendent” structures of human cognition, emotion, and behavior. Researchers often identify...

Volume 33, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 653-656.

In light of recent empirical data, many psychologists and philosophers have turned away from rationalism about moral judgment and embraced sentimentalism. In the process, they have rejected the classical “moral signature” as a way of distinguishing moral from conventional norms in favor of a sentimentalist approach to carving out the moral domain. In this paper, we argue that this sentimentalist turn has been made prematurely. Although we agree that the experiments reveal that the classical approach is flawed, we propose to (...) replace it with an alternative, according to which a norm is moral precisely if it is justifiable to all. This does not hold for most norms based on disgust or loyalty to a particular community. We accommodate the fact that such norms are not merely conventional by introducing a third domain, the domain of ethics. Our proposal reveals that (psychological) rationalism is still a viable option, as a lot of the experimental evidence that features emotions concerns the domain of ethics rather than morality. (shrink)

Five studies replicate and extend recent experimental findings on a divergence between theoretical and subjectively-experienced decision freedom. While conditions like conflict, uncertainty, or com...

Concept contextualism is the view that the information associated with a concept is dependent on the context in which it is tokened. This view is gaining support in recent years. The received and c...

Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates to (...) very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing ideological hostility in the field, occasionally even from those from their own side of the political spectrum. Finally, while about half of the subjects believed that discrimination against left- or right-leaning individuals in the field is not justified, a significant minority displayed an explicit willingness to discriminate against colleagues with the opposite ideology. Our findings are both surprising and important, because a commitment to tolerance and equality is widespread in philosophy, and there is reason to think that ideological similarity, hostility, and discrimination undermine reliable belief formation in many areas of the discipline. (shrink)

In this short article I will review Galen Strawson’s most recent book, “Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self, etc.“ As it is impossible to do justice to the full collection in a review,...

Despite the recent attention given to moral character in moral psychology and moral philosophy, there is little evidence on how the folk concept of character is structured. Virtue ethics literature...

Volume 33, Issue 3, April 2020, Page 469-473.

ABSTRACTAmbitious Higher-order theories of consciousness – Higher-order theories that purport to give an account of phenomenal consciousness – face a well-known objection from the possibility of ra...

Volume 33, Issue 3, April 2020, Page 474-477.

This paper argues that a crucial skill needed to empathize with others cannot be trained by reading fiction: the skill of reading the evidence for the other person’s state of mind and, thus, empath...

A series of our experimental studies show that some actions which consequentialists would treat as morally right or wrong were not regarded by ordinary people as a matter of morality. These results...

Holistic views of content claim that we each speak and think in distinct and idiosyncratic idiolects: although we may often entertain thoughts with similar contents, the content of our thoughts can...

ABSTRACTThe psychological and philosophical literature exploring the role of social influence in moral judgments suggests that conformity in moral judgments is common and, in many cases, seems to b...

Recent work in moral psychology that claims to show that human beings make moral judgements on the basis of multiple, divergent moral foundations has been influential in both moral psychology and moral philosophy. Primarily, such work has been taken to undermine monistic moral theories, especially those pertaining to the prevention of harm. Here, I call one of the most prominent and influential empirical cases for moral pluralism into question, namely that of Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues. I argue that Haidt (...) et al.’s argument is not as strong as it is often made out to be, given significant problems with the design of one of the key experiments used to ground the claim that there are divergent moral foundations across cultures. The flaws that I point out pose a significant challenge to Haidt et al.’s findings and have a detrimental impact on subsequent work based on this immensely influential experiment. Accordingly, I argue that both empirical and normative claims made on the basis of Haidt et al.’s findings should be treated with caution. I conclude by making some suggestions as to how some of the problems that I point out might be addressed. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCompared to expertise in other domains, moral expertise remains a controversial topic. The current research employs a folk-psychological approach to explore which characteristics laypeople...

Volume 33, Issue 2, February 2020, Page 309-312.

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the relationship between cultural and cognitive-psychological processes, and discusses the potential impact of the cognitive sciences on understand...

In a very short time, it is likely that we will identify many of the genetic variants underlying individual differences in intelligence. We should be prepared for the possibility that these variants are not distributed identically among all geographic populations, and that this explains some of the phenotypic differences in measured intelligence among groups. However, some philosophers and scientists believe that we should refrain from conducting research that might demonstrate the (partly) genetic origin of group differences in IQ. Many scholars (...) view academic interest in this topic as inherently morally suspect or even racist. The majority of philosophers and social scientists take it for granted that all population differences in intelligence are due to environmental factors. The present paper argues that the widespread practice of ignoring or rejecting research on intelligence differences can have unintended negative consequences. Social policies predicated on environmentalist theories of group differences may fail to achieve their aims. Large swaths of academic work in both the humanities and social sciences assume the truth of environmentalism and are vulnerable to being undermined. We have failed to work through the moral implications of group differences to prepare for the possibility that they will be shown to exist. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I outline a new candidate hypothesis concerning autism: Semantic Feature Dissociation. This is the claim that, in some cases of autism, connections between feature repr...

ABSTRACTEmpathy is commonly defined as the ability to feel another person’s emotion, and has previously received significant attention from various research communities. The third-person nature of...