Making recognition decisions often requires us to reference the contents of working memory, the information available for ongoing cognitive processing. As such, understanding how recognition decisions are made when based on the contents of working memory is of critical importance. In this work we examine whether recognition decisions based on the contents of visual working memory follow a continuous decision process of graded information about the correct choice or a discrete decision process reflecting only knowing and guessing. We find a (...) clear pattern in favor of a continuous latent strength model of visual working memory–based decision making, supporting the notion that visual recognition decision processes are impacted by the degree of matching between the contents of working memory and the choices given. Relation to relevant findings and the implications for human information processing more generally are discussed. (shrink)

Higher order cognitive processes, including ethical decision making (EDM), are influenced by the experiencing of discrete emotions. Recent research highlights the negative influence one such emotion, anger, has on EDM and its underlying processes. The mechanism, however, by which anger disrupts the EDM has not been investigated. The current study sought to discover whether cognitive appraisals of an emotion-evoking event are the driving mechanisms behind the influence of anger on EDM. One primary (goal obstacle) and one secondary (certainty) appraisal of (...) anger were examined. Study results suggest that appraisals of certainty are the driving mechanism behind the negative relationship between anger and EDM. Certainty appraisals led to less application of EDM-promoting strategies and more unethical social motives. Findings further highlight the value of investigating appraisals of emotional events, given their cognitive nature, for their potential effects on cognitive operations, such as EDM. Future directions and implications are discussed. (shrink)

A nonfoundationalist reading of Fides et Ratio, both in its negative regard for Enlightenment reasoning and its implicit understanding of the philosophical task of justifying belief, enables an appreciation of the encyclical as a particular kind of post-Enlightenment Roman Catholic stance. A nonfoundationalist perspective, understood as a philosophical position on the justification of belief, can be instructive in the encyclical’s articulation of Credo ut intelligam. Fides et Ratio offers a contextualized understanding of justification in its treatment of universality that can (...) only be recognized, affirmed and confessed within the particularity of faith. (shrink)

My critical comments focus mainly on premises,, and. However, in treating these I will address other of James’s assumptions—particularly, the presupposition of his argument that it is possible to will to believe. Later I will try to accommodate existential aspects of James’s argument that retain value, even if my objections to his argument stand.

When someone presents an argument on a charged topic and it is (credibly) alleged that the arguer has a strong personal interest and investment in the conclusion, the allegation, directed to the reception or evaluation of the argument, typically gives rise to two seemingly conflicting reactions:I. The allegation is an unwarranted diversion (a species ofargumentum ad hominemorgenetie fallacy).The prejudices or biases of the arguer are irrelevant to thecogencyof the argument. ('Cogency’ is used broadly to refer both to correct support relations, (...) validity, in the case of deductive arguments, and to the soundness, warrant, and relevance of the premises.) In particular, it is a distraction from the crucial judgment of whether the argument is cogent to press the question of whether the arguer truly holds his conclusion on the grounds that he offers, or whether he believes it on some illicit or suspect basis (prejudice, ideology, self-interest, wishful thinking, bias). (shrink)

The two main psychological theories of the ordinary conditional were designed to account for inferences made from assumptions, but few premises in everyday life can be simply assumed true. Useful premises usually have a probability that is less than certainty. But what is the probability of the ordinary conditional and how is it determined? We argue that people use a two stage Ramsey test that we specify to make probability judgements about indicative conditionals in natural language, and we describe experiments (...) that support this conclusion. Our account can explain why most people give the conditional probability as the probability of the conditional, but also why some give the conjunctive probability. We discuss how our psychological work is related to the analysis of ordinary indicative conditionals in philosophical logic. (shrink)

Surprise is of great value for learning, especially in cases where deep‐seated preconceptions and assumptions are upset by vivid demonstrations. In this essay, Jonathan Adler explores the ways in which surprise positively affects us and serves as a valuable tool for motivating learning. Adler considers how students’ attention is aroused and focused self‐critically when their subject matter–related expectations are not borne out. These “surprises” point students toward discoveries about gaps or weaknesses or false assumptions within their subject matter understanding; (...) as a result, students become internally motivated to correct their errors and to seek better understanding, rather than merely responding to external mandates imposed by a teacher, institution, or other authority. In this essay Adler argues persuasively that the use of surprise in teaching, both as a pedagogical tool and a topic of study, offers many educational advantages and benefits for learning. (shrink)

There is consensus that children have questionable decisional capacity and, therefore, in general a parent or a guardian must give permission to enroll a child in a research study. Moreover, freedom from duress and coercion, the cardinal rule in research involving adults, is even more important for children. This principle is embodied prominently in the Nuremberg Code (1947) and is embodied in various federal human research protection regulations. In a program named "SATURN" (Student Athletic Testing Using Random Notification), each school (...) in the Oregon public-school system may implement a mandatory drug-testing program for high school student athletes. A prospective study to identify drug use among student-athletes, SATURN is designed both to evaluate the influence of random drug testing and to validate the survey data through identification of individuals who do not report drug use. The enrollment of students in the drug-testing study is a requirement for playing a school sport. In addition to the coercive nature of this study design, there were ethically questionable practices in recruitment, informed consent, and confidentiality. This article concerns the question of whether research can be conducted with high school students in conjunction with a mandatory drug-testing program, while adhering to prevailing ethical standards regarding human-subjects research and specifically the participation of children in research. (shrink)

Evidentialism implies that, for epistemic purposes, belief should be responsive only to evidence. Focusing on our reactive attitude such as resentment or indignation, I construct an argument that the beliefs or judgments accompanying those attitudes are constrained in advance by circumstances to be full, rather than being open to the whole range of partial beliefs. These judgments or beliefs imply strong claims to justification. But the circumstances in which those attitudes are formed allow only very limited evidence. Nevertheless, we cannot (...) opt out regularly since the formation of such attitudes is so central a feature of a minimally content human social life. (shrink)

A much disputed conceptual argument aims to show the impossibility of direct believing at will. Regardless of the success of this argument, it has been held to be impotent against indirect forms of belief-control, such as by developing oneself to be more careful or fair-minded in evaluating evidence. However, the shift to indirect forms inherits difficulties connected to the conceptual argument.

This review confirms Herman’s work as a praiseworthy contribution to East-West and comparative philosophical literature. Due credit is given to Herman for providing English readers with access to Buber’s commentary on, a personal translation of, the Chuang-Tzu; Herman’s insight into the later influence of I and Thou on Buber’s understanding of Chuang-Tzu and Taoism is also appropriately commended. In latter half of this review, constructive criticisms of Herman’s work are put forward, such as formatting inconsistencies, a tendency toward verbosity and (...) jargon, and a neglect of seemingly important hermeneutical issues. Such issues, seemingly substantive but neglected by Herman, are the influence of Buber’s prior familiarity with Hasidic teachings on his encounter with Chuang-Tzu, as well as the prevalence of Hasidic and Taoist thought in Buber’s conception of good and evil. (shrink)

This Element is on new developments in the psychology of reasoning that raise or address philosophical questions. In traditional studies in the psychology of reasoning, the focus was on inference from arbitrary assumptions and not at all from beliefs, and classical binary logic was presupposed as the only standard for human reasoning. But recently a new Bayesian paradigm has emerged in the discipline. This views ordinary human reasoning as mostly inferring probabilistic conclusions from degrees of beliefs, or from hypothetical premises (...) relevant to a purpose at hand, and as often about revising or updating degrees of belief. This Element also covers new formulations of dual-process theories of the mind, stating that there are two types of mental processing, one rapid and intuitive and shared with other animals, and the other slow and reflective and more characteristic of human beings. The final topic covered is the new developments and rationality. (shrink)

This volume collects all of Firth’s major published writings, two sets of unpublished lectures, and three essays from his unfinished book on epistemology. John Troyer provides a very helpful overview of the essays, as well as a short biography of a person of deep convictions and a devoted teacher and colleague. : 109-18, should also be consulted.).

The power of the application of bioinformatics across multiple publicly available transcriptomic data sets was explored. Using 19 human and mouse circadian transcriptomic data sets, we found that NR1D1 and NR1D2 which encode heme‐responsive nuclear receptors are the most rhythmic transcripts across sleep conditions and tissues suggesting that they are at the core of circadian rhythm generation. Analyzes of human transcriptomic data show that a core set of transcripts related to processes including immune function, glucocorticoid signalling, and lipid metabolism is (...) rhythmically expressed independently of the sleep‐wake cycle. We also identify key transcripts associated with transcription and translation that are disrupted by sleep manipulations, and through network analysis identify putative mechanisms underlying the adverse health outcomes associated with sleep disruption, such as diabetes and cancer. Comparative bioinformatics applied to existing and future data sets will be a powerful tool for the identification of core circadian‐ and sleep‐dependent molecules. (shrink)

Traditional theories of moral development emphasize the role of controlled cognition in mature moral judgment, while a more recent trend emphasizes intuitive and emotional processes. Here we test a dual-process theory synthesizing these perspectives. More specifically, our theory associates utilitarian moral judgment (approving of harmful actions that maximize good consequences) with controlled cognitive processes and associates non-utilitarian moral judgment with automatic emotional responses. Consistent with this theory, we find that a cognitive load manipulation selectively interferes with utilitarian judgment. This interference (...) effect provides direct evidence for the influence of controlled cognitive processes in moral judgment, and utilitarian moral judgment more specifically. (shrink)

: President Clinton's charge to the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments included the identification of ethical and legal standards for evaluating government-sponsored radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War. In this paper, we review the traditional account of the history of American research ethics, and then highlight and explain the significance of a number of the Committee's historical findings as they relate to this account. These findings include both the national defense establishment's struggles with legal and insurance issues concerning (...) human experiments, and the medical profession's perspective on human experimentation in the years following the Nuremberg Medical Trials. We conclude that the Committee's work both enriches the traditional view of the history of research ethics and opens important new areas for study. (shrink)

Although interactions of proteins with glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), such as heparin and heparan sulphate, are of great biological importance, structural requirements for protein‐GAG binding have not been well‐characterised. Ionic interactions are important in promoting protein‐GAG binding. Polyelectrolyte theory suggests that much of the free energy of binding comes from entropically favourable release of cations from GAG chains. Despite their identical charges, arginine residues bind more tightly to GAGs than lysine residues. The spacing of these residues may determine protein‐GAG affinity and specificity. (...) Consensus sequences such as XBBBXXBX, XBBXBX and a critical 20 Å spacing of basic residues are found in some protein sites that bind GAG. A new consensus sequence TXXBXXTBXXXTBB is described, where turns bring basic interacting amino acid residues into proximity. Clearly, protein‐GAG interactions play a prominent role in cell‐cell interaction and cell growth. Pathogens including virus particles might target GAG‐binding sites in envelope proteins leading to infection. BioEssays 20:156–167, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Cushman raises the intriguing possibility that rationalization accesses/constructs intuitions that are not otherwise cognitively available. However, he substantially over-reaches in arguing that rationalization is mostly right on average, based on claims that the process must have emerged adaptively. The adaptiveness of “bounded rationalization” is domain specific and is unlikely to be adaptive in a large number of important applications.

There is consensus that children have questionable decisional capacity and, therefore, in general a parent or a guardian must give permission to enroll a child in a research study. Moreover, freedom from duress and coercion, the cardinal rule in research involving adults, is even more important for children. This principle is embodied prominently in the Nuremberg Code and is embodied in various federal human research protection regulations. In a program named "SATURN", each school in the Oregon public-school system may implement (...) a mandatory drug-testing program for high school student athletes. A prospective study to identify drug use among student-athletes, SATURN is designed both to evaluate the influence of random drug testing and to validate the survey data through identification of individuals who do not report drug use. The enrollment of students in the drug-testing study is a requirement for playing a school sport. In addition to the coercive nature of this study design, there were ethically questionable practices in recruitment, informed consent, and confidentiality. This article concerns the question of whether research can be conducted with high school students in conjunction with a mandatory drug-testing program, while adhering to prevailing ethical standards regarding human-subjects research and specifically the participation of children in research. (shrink)

Recently, a new method of considering successful intentional thought suppression has emerged. This method, the think/no-think paradigm has been utilized over a multitude of settings and has fairly robustly demonstrated the ability to interfere with memory recall. The following experiment examined the effect of intentional thought suppression on recognition memory of nonverbalizeable shapes. In this experiment, participants learned word–shape targets. For some of the pairs, they rehearsed the shape when presented with the word; for others, they suppressed the shape when (...) presented with the word. Finally, participants were shown multiple shapes, one at a time, and asked to identify which they had previously seen as paired with a word. Results of the experiment indicated that, similar to results involving words, participants were less accurate in identifying suppressed shapes, as compared to rehearsed shapes. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

After reviewing various formulations of the problems of universals and individuation, this essay considers the dialectic that informs the relationship between the two. This dialectic involves a distinction between a realist theory of universals that satisfies the requirements of science but fails to account for the non-instantiability of individuals and a nominalist theory of universals that fails to satisfy the requirements of science but accounts for the non-instantiability of individuals. Inadequacies found in one view tend to motivate movement to the (...) other view. But, like a pendulum swing, this movement inevitably involves facing what motivated the original view. This dialectic is illustrated by a consideration of the views of five medieval authors: Boethius, Peter Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. (shrink)

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” or (...) “personal”. Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent’s muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people’s real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas. (shrink)

: The two main psychological theories of the ordinary conditional were designed to account for inferences made from assumptions, but few premises in everyday life can be simply assumed true. Useful premises usually have a probability that is less than certainty. But what is the probability of the ordinary conditional and how is it determined? We argue that people use a two stage Ramsey test that we specify to make probability judgements about indicative conditionals in natural language, and we describe (...) experiments that support this conclusion. Our account can explain why most people give the conditional probability as the probability of the conditional, but also why some give the conjunctive probability. We discuss how our psychological work is related to the analysis of ordinary indicative conditionals in philosophical logic. (shrink)

Although the role of fairness in tax compliance has been of increasing interest among the academic and professional tax communities, very little is known about the role of interactional fairness. Interactional fairness refers to the quality of the treatment provided to individuals from authority figures, such as tax authority representatives. We conduct an experiment using US taxpayers to examine the role of interactional fairness on tax compliance intentions, and how detection influences this relation. Taxpayers’ detection salience reflects their perceptions that (...) they will be audited by the tax authority. Using insights from conditional cooperation theory, we predict and find that detection moderates the relation between interactional fairness and tax compliance intentions, such that the effect of interactional fairness on tax compliance intentions diminishes with higher detection. We discuss the implications of our results for tax policy. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)