This article takes off from Johan van Benthem’s ruminations on the interface between logic and cognitive science in his position paper “Logic and reasoning: Do the facts matter?”. When trying to answer Van Benthem’s question whether logic can be fruitfully combined with psychological experiments, this article focuses on a specific domain of reasoning, namely higher-order social cognition, including attributions such as “Bob knows that Alice knows that he wrote a novel under pseudonym”. For intelligent interaction, it is important that the (...) participants recursively model the mental states of other agents. Otherwise, an international negotiation may fail, even when it has potential for a win-win solution, and in a time-critical rescue mission, a software agent may depend on a teammate’s action that never materializes. First a survey is presented of past and current research on higher-order social cognition, from the various viewpoints of logic, artificial intelligence, and psychology. Do people actually reason about each other’s knowledge in the way proscribed by epistemic logic? And if not, how can logic and cognitive science productively work together to construct more realistic models of human reasoning about other minds? The paper ends with a delineation of possible avenues for future research, aiming to provide a better understanding of higher-order social reasoning. The methodology is based on a combination of experimental research, logic, computational cognitive models, and agent-based evolutionary models. Keywords Epistemic logic - Cognitive science - Intelligent interaction - Cognitive modeling. (shrink)

This article takes off from Johan van Benthem’s ruminations on the interface between logic and cognitive science in his position paper “Logic and reasoning: Do the facts matter?”. When trying to answer Van Benthem’s question whether logic can be fruitfully combined with psychological experiments, this article focuses on a specific domain of reasoning, namely higher-order social cognition, including attributions such as “Bob knows that Alice knows that he wrote a novel under pseudonym”. For intelligent interaction, it is important that the (...) participants recursively model the mental states of other agents. Otherwise, an international negotiation may fail, even when it has potential for a win-win solution, and in a time-critical rescue mission, a software agent may depend on a teammate’s action that never materializes. First a survey is presented of past and current research on higher-order social cognition, from the various viewpoints of logic, artificial intelligence, and psychology. Do people actually reason about each other’s knowledge in the way proscribed by epistemic logic? And if not, how can logic and cognitive science productively work together to construct more realistic models of human reasoning about other minds? The paper ends with a delineation of possible avenues for future research, aiming to provide a better understanding of higher-order social reasoning. The methodology is based on a combination of experimental research, logic, computational cognitive models, and agent-based evolutionary models. (shrink)

This volume, The Brazilian Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, is the first attempt to present to a general audience, works from Brazil on this subject. The included papers are original, covering a remarkable number of relevant topics of philosophy of science, logic and on the history of science. The Brazilian community has increased in the last years in quantity and in quality of the works, most of them being published in respectable international journals on the subject. The (...) chapters of this volume are forwarded by a general introduction, which aims to sketch not only the contents of the chapters, but it is conceived as a historical and conceptual guide to the development of the field in Brazil. The introduction intends to be useful to the reader, and not only to the specialist, helping them to evaluate the increase in production of this country within the international context. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of an extended unit of action, which is the idea that the reasons for or against an individual action can depend on the qualities of a larger pattern of action of which it is a part. One concept of joint action is that the unit of action can be extended in this sense. But the idea of an extended unit of action is surprisingly minimal in its commitments. The paper argues for this conclusion by examining (...) uses of the idea of an extended unit of action in four theoretical contexts. It also explains why the idea of an extended unit of action need not involve magical thinking, and discusses possible replies to an objection based on a worry about recklessness. (shrink)

Against the orthodox view of the Nash equilibrium as “the embodiment of the idea that economic agents are rational” (Aumann, 1985, p 43), some theorists have proposed ‘non-classical’ concepts of rationality in games, arguing that rational agents should be capable of improving upon inefficient equilibrium outcomes. This paper considers some implications of these proposals for economic theory, by focusing on institutional design. I argue that revisionist concepts of rationality conflict with the constraint that institutions should be designed to be incentive-compatible, (...) that is, that they should implement social goals in equilibrium. To resolve this conflict, proponents of revisionist concepts face a choice between three options: (1) reject incentive compatibility as a general constraint, (2) deny that individuals interacting through the designed institutions are rational, or (3) accept that their concepts do not cover institutional design. I critically discuss these options and I argue that a more inclusive concept of rationality, e.g. the one provided by Robert Sugden’s version of team reasoning, holds the most promise for the non-classical project, yielding a novel argument for incentive compatibility as a general constraint. (shrink)

Many believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. This paper focuses on epistemic aspects of the putative link between emotions and value by asking two related questions. First, how exactly are emotions supposed to latch onto or track values? And second, how well suited are emotions to detecting or learning about values? To answer the first question, the paper develops the heuristics-model of emotions. This approach models emotions as sui generis heuristics of value. The empirical plausibility of the heuristics-model (...) is demonstrated using evidence from experimental psychology, evolutionary anthropology and neuroscience. The model is used then to answer the second question. If emotions are indeed heuristics of value, then it follows that emotions can be an important and useful source of information about value. However, emotions will not be epistemically superior in the sense of being the highest court of appeal for the justification of axiological beliefs (the latter view is referred to as the Epistemic Dependence Thesis, or EDT for short). The paper applies the heuristics-model to celebrated cases from the philosophy of emotions literature arguing that while the heuristics-model offers a good explanation of typical patterns of emotional reactions in such cases, advocates of EDT will have a hard time accounting for these patterns. The paper also shows that the conclusions drawn from special cases generalize. The paper ends by arguing that skepticism about the metaethical significance of emotions is compatible with a commitment to the importance of emotions in first-order normative ethics. (shrink)

After offering a brief account of how we understand the shared circuits model (SCM), we divide our response into four sections. First, in section R1, we assess to what extent SCM is committed to an account of the ontogeny and phylogeny of shared circuits. In section R2, we examine doubts raised by several commentators as to whether SCM might be expanded so as to accommodate the mirroring of emotions, sensations, and intransitive actions more generally. Section R3 responds to various criticisms (...) that relate to the account of social-learning Hurley proposes in the target article. We conclude in section R4 by responding to a number of commentators who argued for the limitation of control theory as a framework for studying social cognition. (shrink)

The game theoretic notion of best-response reasoning is sometimes criticized when its application produces multiple solutions of games, some of which seem less compelling than others. The recent development of the theory of team reasoning addresses this by suggesting that interacting players in games may sometimes reason as members of a team – a group of individuals who act together in the attainment of some common goal. A number of properties have been suggested for team-reasoning decision-makers’ goals to satisfy, but (...) a few formal representations have been discussed. In this paper we suggest a possible representation of these goals based on the notion of mutual advantage. We propose a method for measuring extents of individual and mutual advantage to the interacting decision-makers, and define team interests as the attainment of outcomes associated with maximum mutual advantage in the games they play. (shrink)

Machiavellianism is a popular construct in research on ethics and organizational behavior. This research has demonstrated that Machiavellianism predicts a host of counterproductive, deviant, and unethical behaviors. However, individuals high in Machiavellianism also adapt to their organizational surroundings, engaging in unethical behavior only in certain situations. Nevertheless, the utility of Machiavellianism has been questioned. Meta-analyses have demonstrated that psychopathy out-predicts Machiavellianism for most antisocial outcomes. Thus, many researchers assume Machiavellianism is a derivative and redundant construct. However, researchers examining the utility (...) of Machiavellianism may be asking the wrong question about how Machiavellianism is unique. In our review, we find it less informative to ask about what antisocial behaviors Machiavellianism predicts. Instead, we find it more informative to ask when Machiavellianism predicts antisocial behaviors. Drawing on Field Theory and Trait Activation Theory, we argue that Machiavellianism is a trait that is associated with person × environment interactions. Their adaptive nature is made possible through the presence of impulse control and environmental sensitivity to punishment, two characteristics that individuals high in psychopathy lack. Consequently, individuals high in Machiavellianism constrain their antisocial behavior to environments when the benefits outweigh the costs. Thus, environmental context, especially the risk of external punishment, moderates Machiavellian misbehavior more than it does for those high in psychopathy. These behavioral constraints align with Lewin’s argument that behavior is a function of the person, environment, and interaction between the two. From this discussion, we arrive at recommendations pertaining to the future of Machiavellianism research in organizational and other applied settings. (shrink)

Imitation, deliberation, and mindreading are characteristically human sociocognitive skills. Research on imitation and its role in social cognition is flourishing across various disciplines. Imitation is surveyed in this target article under headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation. A model is then advanced within which many of the developments surveyed can be located and explained. The shared circuits model (SCM) explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by subpersonal mechanisms of control, mirroring, and simulation. It is (...) cast at a middle, functional level of description, that is, between the level of neural implementation and the level of conscious perceptions and intentional actions. The SCM connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other, and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. It avoids the common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central cognition. Rather, it contributes to the situated cognition movement by showing how mechanisms for perceiving action can be built on those for active perception.;>;>The SCM is developed heuristically, in five layers that can be combined in various ways to frame specific ontogenetic or phylogenetic hypotheses. The starting point is dynamic online motor control, whereby an organism is closely attuned to its embedding environment through sensorimotor feedback. Onto this are layered functions of prediction and simulation of feedback, mirroring, simulation of mirroring, monitored inhibition of motor output, and monitored simulation of input. Finally, monitored simulation of input specifying possible actions plus inhibited mirroring of such possible actions can generate information about the possible as opposed to actual instrumental actions of others, and the possible causes and effects of such possible actions, thereby enabling strategic social deliberation. Multiple instances of such shared circuits structures could be linked into a network permitting decomposition and recombination of elements, enabling flexible control, imitative learning, understanding of other agents, and instrumental and strategic deliberation. While more advanced forms of social cognition, which require tracking multiple others and their multiple possible actions, may depend on interpretative theorizing or language, the SCM shows how layered mechanisms of control, mirroring, and simulation can enable distinctively human cognitive capacities for imitation, deliberation, and mindreading. (shrink)

Imitation, deliberation, and mindreading are characteristically human sociocognitive skills. Research on imitation and its role in social cognition is flourishing across various disciplines; it is here surveyed under headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation. A model is then advanced within which many of the developments surveyed can be located and explained. The shared circuits model explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by subpersonal mechanisms of control, mirroring and simulation. It is cast at a middle, (...) functional level of description, between the level of neural implementation and the level of conscious perceptions and intentional actions. The shared circuits model connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. It avoids the common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central cognition. Rather, it contributes to the situated cognition movement by showing how mechanisms for perceiving action can be built on those for active perception. (shrink)

Many now accept the thesis that norms are somehow constitutively involved in people's contentful intentional states. I distinguish three versions of this normative thesis that disagree about the type of norms constitutively involved. Are they objective norms of correctness, subjective norms of rationality, or intersubjective norms of social practices? I show the advantages of the third version, arguing that it improves upon the other two versions, as well as incorporating their principal insights. I then defend it against two serious challenges: (...) (1) If content is constituted by others' normative judgments, how can content be causally efficacious? (2) This account appears to make having contentful thoughts a matter of people having contentful thoughts about your thoughts. That appears to be viciously circular and so can't be naturalistic. (shrink)

According to some accounts, an individual participates in joint intentional cooperative action by virtue of conceiving of him- or herself and other participants as if they were parts of a single agent or body that performs the action. I argue that this notional singularization move fails if they act as if they were parts of a single agent. It can succeed, however, if the participants act as if to bring about the goal of a properly functioning single body in action (...) of which they would be parts. This latter version of the move manages to capture the cooperative character of joint intentional cooperative action. It does this without requiring of participants that they act on higher-order interlocking intentions. (shrink)

Verifica-se um fértil intercâmbio entre filósofos e biólogos, de modo especial nas investigações contemporâneas sobre a evolução humana. Avalio, inicialmente, o compatibilismo como postura filosófica, que coloca em evidência a possibilidade de que hábitos de interpretação, com base numa psicologia de senso comum, tenham desempenhado um papel na evolução em nossa linhagem. Essa hipótese pode lançar luz sobre dilemas que surgem na construção de uma teoria que pressuponha a interação entre modalidades genética e cultural de herança. Para que a cultura (...) desempenhe essa função, é necessário que evoluam capacidades especiais para a aprendizagem social, que estariam associadas a capacidades para interpretar o comportamento de agentes. Num registro metafísico, discuto as condições para que grupos culturais possam ser considerados indivíduos no sentido de unidades de seleção. Num registro metodológico, eu analiso também o emprego de modelos matemáticos em tentativas de se construir cenários plausíveis para a evolução que nos tornou humanos. (shrink)

The concept of natural kind is center stage in the debates about scientific realism. Champions of scientific realism such as Richard Boyd hold that our most developed scientific theories allow us to “cut the world at its joints” (Boyd, 1981, 1984, 1991). In the long run we can disclose natural kinds as nature made them, though as science progresses improvements in theory allow us to revise the extension of natural kind terms.

One of the conceptual limitations of the orthodox game theory is its inability to offer definitive theoretical predictions concerning the outcomes of noncooperative games with multiple rationalizable outcomes. This prompted the emergence of goal-directed theories of reasoning – the team reasoning theory and the theory of hypothetical bargaining. Both theories suggest that people resolve non-cooperative games by using a reasoning algorithm which allows them to identify mutually advantageous solutions of non-cooperative games. The primary aim of this thesis is to enrich (...) the current debate on goaldirected reasoning theories by studying the extent to which the principles of the bargaining theory can be used to formally characterize the concept of mutual advantage in a way which is compatible with some of the conceptually compelling principles of orthodox game theory, such as individual rationality, incentive compatibility, and non-comparability of decision-makers’ personal payoffs. I discuss two formal characterizations of the concept of mutual advantage derived from the aforementioned goal-directed reasoning theories: A measure of mutual advantage developed in collaboration with Jurgis Karpus, which is broadly in line with the notion of mutual advantage suggested by Sugden, and the benefit-equilibrating bargaining solution function, which is broadly in line with the principles underlying Conley and Wilkie’s solution for Pareto optimal point selection problems with finite choice sets. I discuss the formal properties of each solution, as well as its theoretical predictions in a number of games. I also explore each solution concept’s compatibility with orthodox game theory. I also discuss the limitations of the aforementioned goal-directed reasoning theories. I argue that each theory offers a compelling explanation of how a certain type of decision-maker identifies the mutually advantageous solutions of non-cooperative games, but neither of them offers a definitive answer to the question of how people coordinate their actions in non-cooperative social interactions. (shrink)

This thesis studies some philosophical and ethical issues that economic design raises. Chapter 1 gives an overview of economic design and argues that a crossfertilisation between philosophy and economic design is possible and insightful for both sides. Chapter 2 examines the implications of mechanism design for theories of rationality. I show that non-classical theories, such as constrained maximization and team reasoning, are at odds with the constraint of incentive compatibility. This poses a problem for non-classical theories, which proponents of these (...) theories have not addressed to date. Chapter 3 proposes a general epistemology of economic engineering, which is motivated by a novel case study, viz. the reform of a matching market for medical practitioners. My account makes use of causal graphs to explain how models allow encoding counterfactual information about how market outcomes change if the design of the market changes. The second part of the thesis examines ethical issues. In Chapter 4, I apply tools from matching theory to gain insights into the distribution of refugees, such as among countries of the European Union. There is an ethical trade-off between the fairness of matchings and their efficiency, and I argue that in this context, fairness is the morally weightier criterion. Chapter 5 deals with the ethics of kidney exchange. Against critics, I give two arguments for the implementation of kidney exchange programmes. The first argument is that they are instrumental in meeting a moral obligation, namely to donate effectively. The second is that kidney exchange may increase the motivation for altruistic donations, because the donation of one kidney may trigger > 1 life savings. The final chapter identifies questions for future research and it closes with some thoughts about the future trajectory of economic design. (shrink)