Can advances in neuroscience be harnessed to enhance human moral capacities? And if so, should they? De Grazia explores these questions in ‘Moral Enhancement, Freedom, and What We Value in Moral Behaviour’.1 Here, I offer a neuroscientist's perspective on the state of the art of moral bioenhancement, and highlight some of the practical challenges facing the development of moral bioenhancement technologies.The science of moral bioenhancement is in its infancy. Laboratory studies of human morality usually employ highly simplified models aimed at (...) measuring just one facet of a cognitive process that is relevant for morality. These studies have certainly deepened our understanding of the nature of moral behaviour, but it is important to avoid overstating the conclusions of any single study. De Grazia cites several purported examples of ‘non-traditional means of moral enhancement’, including one of my own studies. According to De Grazia, we showed that ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors as a means to being less inclined to assault people’. In fact, our findings are a bit more subtle and nuanced than implied in the target article, as is often the case in neuroscientific studies of complex human behaviour. In our study, we tested the effects of the selective serotonin reuptake …. (shrink)

Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutili- tarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into people’s attitudes toward instrumental harm—that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate a (...) new scale—the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale—to dissociate individual differences in the ‘negative’ (permissive attitude toward instrumental harm) and ‘positive’ (impartial concern for the greater good) dimensions of utilitarian thinking as manifested in the general population. We show that these are two independent dimensions of proto-utilitarian tendencies in the lay population, each exhibiting a distinct psychological profile. Empathic concern, identification with the whole of humanity, and concern for future generations were positively associated with impartial beneficence but negatively associated with instrumental harm; and although instrumental harm was associated with subclinical psychopathy, impartial beneficence was associated with higher religiosity. Importantly, although these two dimensions were independent in the lay population, they were closely associated in a sample of moral philosophers. Acknowledging this dissociation between the instrumental harm and impartial beneficence components of utilitarian thinking in ordinary people can clarify existing debates about the nature of moral psychology and its relation to moral philosophy as well as generate fruitful avenues for further research. (shrink)

Tomasello argues in the target article that a sense of moral obligation emerges from the creation of a collaborative “we” motivating us to fulfill our cooperative duties. We suggest that “we” takes many forms, entailing different obligations, depending on the type of the relationship in question. We sketch a framework of such types, functions, and obligations to guide future research in our commentary.

A sample of 523 newly ordained female Anglican clergy in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales completed the Eysenck Personality Profiler. The data demonstrated that the female clergy tended to be less extravert than women in general, less neurotic than women in general, and less toughminded than women in general. These findings help to clarify the way in which women clergy tend to project a characteristically masculine personality profile in respect of one major dimension of personality, but a characteristically feminine personality (...) profile in respect of the other two major dimensions of personality. (shrink)

To understand public discourse in the United States on genetic causation of behavioral disorders, we analyzed media representations of genetic research on addiction published between 1990 and 2010. We conclude first that the media simplistically represent biological bases of addiction and willpower as being mutually exclusive: behaviors are either genetically determined, or they are a choice. Second, most articles provide only cursory or no treatment of the environmental contribution. A media focus on genetics directs attention away from environmental factors. Rhetorically, (...) media neglect the complexity underlying the etiology the addiction and direct focus back toward individual causation and responsibility. (shrink)

The authors explore the interfaces between different dimensions of moral cognition, bridging economic, Bayesian and reinforcement learning perspectives. The human aversion to harming others cuts across these different interfaces, influencing decisions, judgments, and inferences about morality.

Portrayals of female scientists in science fiction tend to be rare and often distorted. Our research investigates the social media discourse related to public perceptions of the portrayals of scientists in science fiction. We explore the following questions: How does audience discourse about a female scientist protagonist in a science fiction film compare with that about a male scientist in a comparable movie? And, what fraction of discourse in each case is dedicated to (a) comments on physical appearance and (b) (...) incredulity that the character is a scientist? Using automated nonparametric sentiment analysis software that employs an intelligent algorithm informed by human coding, we analyze Twitter discourse around the release of two summer 2011 science fiction blockbusters with scientists in lead roles: Thor and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Although scholars have pointed to sexualized portrayals of women scientists in popular media, we found relatively few mentions of the attractiveness of an admittedly attractive female scientist. Additionally, audience discourse was not centered on the implausibility of the female scientist. This is particularly meaningful when combined with previous research showing that strong women in lead roles do not decrease profitability of science fiction films. (shrink)

Both individuals with diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and individuals high in psychopathic traits show reduced susceptibility to contagious yawning; that is, yawning after seeing or hearing another person yawn. Yet it is unclear whether the same underlying processes are responsible for the relationship between reduced contagion and these very different types of clinical traits. College Students watched videos of individuals yawning or scratching while their eye movements were tracked. They completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, the Psychopathy (...) Personality Inventory-Revised, and the Adolescent and Adult Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist. Both psychopathic traits and autistic traits showed an inverse relationship to contagious yawning, consistent with previous research. However, the relationship between autistic traits and contagious yawning was moderated by eye gaze. Furthermore, participants high in autistic traits showed typical levels of contagious itching whereas adults high in psychopathic traits showed diminished itch contagion. Finally, only psychopathic traits were associated with lower overall levels of empathy. The findings imply that the underlying processes contributing to the disruptions in contagious yawning amongst individuals high in autistic vs. psychopathic traits are distinct. In contrast to adults high in psychopathic traits, diminished contagion may appear amongst people with high levels of autistic traits secondary to diminished attention to the faces of others, and in the absence of a background deficit in emotional empathy. (shrink)

This article presents Schelling’s claim that nature has an evolutionary process and Hegel’s response that nature is the development of the concept. It then examines whether evolution is progressive. While many evolutionary biologists explicitly repudiate the suggestion that there is progress in evolution, they often implicitly presuppose this. Moreover, such a notion seems required insofar as the shape of life’s history consists in a directional trend. This article argues that, insofar as a notion of progress is indeed conceptually ineliminatable from (...) evolutionary biology or needed to articulate the shape of life’s history, progress should be viewed as constitutive. The section on “Why Schelling and .. (shrink)

John Dewey's A Common Faith is an exercise in cultural innovation. In those lectures Dewey re-works some of the key words from traditional Christianity into vocabulary for what amounts to a new, humanistic, religion. Faith is made to be a matter of devotion to ideals that are imaginatively projected out of goods currently enjoyed. Divinity becomes a function, that of uniting ideals with one another and with actual conditions.

Critical realists would have us believe that representations have a connection to the world, that of truth or reference for example, which is independent of their usefulness to us. They would have us believe further that knowledge about this connection serves to put religion and science in their proper places with respect to one another. This essay raises pragmatic objections to these belief's.

Robbins, Francis, and Rutledge documented the personality profile of Church of England clergymen and clergywomen prior to the ordination of the first women to the priesthood in 1994, drawing on Eysenck's three-dimensional model of personality. They found that the personality profiles of clergymen and clergywomen were indistinguishable. The present paper reports a comparable study conducted in 2004 among 182 clergywomen and 540 clergymen serving in similar parochial posts in order to examine whether the ordination of women to the priesthood (...) had impacted the overall personality profile of Anglican clergy. The data suggest that little change had taken place between the two cohorts of clergy studied. Once again clergywomen and clergymen appeared to be formed in the same image. (shrink)

_The Empirical Science of Religious Education_ draws together a collection of innovative articles in the field of religious education which passed the editorial scrutiny of Professor Robert Jackson over the course of his impactful fourteen year career as editor of the British Journal of Religious Education. These articles have made an enormous contribution to the international literature establishing of the empirical science of religious education as a research field. The volume draws together, organises and illustrates the contours of this emerging (...) field and is an essential compendium which covers work in: teacher education and teacher experience; student understanding, attitudes and values; varieties of religious schooling, and; worldview and life interpretation Organised into ten thematic sections the contributors cover the field comprehensively and bring with them an international and reflexive approach to their research. It is an essential resource for those practitioners and researchers who wish to access original and innovative research undertaken by way of ethnographic fieldwork, practitioner research, life-history approaches to research, psychological scales and measures, and large surveys. Particularly interested readers will be studying PGCE and masters level programmes in religious education, as well as qualified religious educators undertaking continuing professional development. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga titles the closing chapter of his book Warrant and Proper Function "Is Naturalism Irrational?" He answers that it is. More precisely, he claims that anyone who is aware of the epistemological argument that he presents in this chapter has an unavoidable reason to doubt the combination of naturalism (according to which there is no God as conceived of in traditional theism) and evolutionary theory (according to which our cognitive capabilities are the products of blind processes operating on genetic (...) variations). But then, he says, anyone who still accepts these propositions is irrational because it is irrational to accept a belief for which one knows there are unavoidable reasons to doubt. (shrink)

I will, first, describe my brand of pragmatism. Then, second, I will use it to discuss two beliefs that have played an important role in American religious history, the belief that America is a Christian nation and the belief in religious freedom.

While reading, and thinking about how to respond to, Willem Drees’s Religion, Science and Naturalism, I was reminded of an earlier dispute between George Santayana and John Dewey about, among other things, how to incorporate religion into a naturalistic world view. Dewey described Santayana’s naturalism as "broken backed" because of his dualistic distinction between the mechanism of nature and the life of the mind and his relegation of religion to the latter, epiphenomenal realm.

Nancey Murphy claims that a shift in “thinking strategy” from modern to postmodern modes of thought makes it easier to exhibit the intellectual respectability of theology vis‐à‐vis the sciences. Her case for this proposition depends on modernist interests, most notably in systematizing the sciences for reasons that have their origin in Plato's divided line.

Sheila Davaney’s Pragmatic Historicism provides yet another opportunity for us to discuss disagreements between two kinds of pragmatism. One, which I espouse, is a non-metaphysical pragmatism. It is rooted in James’s and Dewey’s appropriation of Darwinian biology for philosophical purposes and, more recently, Donald Davidson’s philosophy of language. Richard Rorty is its most influential contemporary spokesman. The other is a metaphysical pragmatism. It is rooted in James’s radical empiricism and Whitehead’s process philosophy. In the Highlands Institute, William Dean and now (...) Davaney, among others, advocate versions of metaphysical pragmatism. (shrink)

Pragmatism and critical realism are different vocabularies for talking about the cognitive value of religion and science. Each can be, and has been, used to make the case for cognitive parity between religious and scientific discourse. Critical realism presupposes a particular form of cognitive psychology that entails general skepticism about the external world and forecloses scientific inquiry in the name of a preconceived idea of what the nature of human cognition must be. Thus, of the two, pragmatism is the better (...) vocabulary for fostering mutual understanding between religion and science. (shrink)

William Dean is a tireless proponent of a public role for religion in American society, most recently in his American Academy of Religion award winning book The Religious Critic in American Culture . He writes there about the importance of, and need for, both a common American spiritual culture and public intellectuals who would understand, criticize, and innovatively rework that shared American religion. Dean represents a metaphysical strand of American pragmatism. His thought is rooted in William James’s radical empiricism, Bernard (...) Meland’s and Bernard Loomer’s empirical theology, and Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics. He takes seriously what I will call the problem of cosmic estrangement. The American public religion that he advocates, among other things, is supposed to resolve that problem. Its theoretical core is Dean’s version of Whiteheadian panpsychism, which he calls ontological conventionalism. (shrink)

Pragmatism is first and foremost an intellectual self-image. It is a unique way of understanding the mental abilities that distinguish we humans from other living things on earth. The pragmatist description of our mind and its relationship to the rest of the world is a relatively new one. It has its roots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century work of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. These philosophers, influenced by Darwinian biology among other things, redefined the (...) human mind. (shrink)

The general question I shall consider here is this: To what are we committed when we say that we “accept” or “entertain” a scientific hypothesis? I shall be concerned with whether or not such acceptance requires an inductive inference, and in particular with whether or not Wesley Salmon's analysis of Popper's idea of “degree of corroboration” is correct. -/- The problem of what claim we make for the hypotheses we accept is not, I think, of merely academic interest, although there (...) is a tendency among some philosophers and scientists (of which Salmon is one) to assume that science is inductive in this respect and that any discussion of acceptance must take induction as a “given.”. (shrink)

This study examines the association between mystical experience, as captured by the Francis-Louden Mystical Orientation Scale, and psychological health, as captured by the Eysenckian three dimensional model of personality, among 329 students attending a state university in Turkey. The data reported no significant association between mystical orientation and psychoticism scores, and a small but significant positive association between mystical orientation and neuroticism scores, after controlling for sex differences. This finding suggests that there may be a small inverse association between mystical (...) experience and psychological health among students in Turkey. (shrink)

In response to concern over the numeracy skills deficit displayed by student nurses, an online computer programme, ?Authentic World??, which aims to simulate a real-life clinical environment and improve the medication dosage calculation skills of users, was developed (Founded in 2004 Authentic World Ltd is a spin out company of Glarmorgan and Cardiff Universities, Cardiff, Wales UK.). Two randomised controlled trials were conducted, each at a UK University, in order to investigate the impact of Authentic World? on student nurses? general (...) numeracy abilities. All first year nursing students who gave consent were randomised equally into an intervention or control group. The intervention group were given access to Authentic World?. The primary outcome measure was the students? scores on a general numeracy test. The Intention to Treat (ITT) analysis in both trials revealed a small negative effect of Authentic World? on general numeracy, which was statistically significant in one trial. However, compliance with the intervention was very low in both trials, with only 24 and 12% of students allocated to the intervention groups spending more than 15 minutes using the programme. Providing nursing students with access to Authentic World? is not an effective use of resources since use of the programme appears to be very low. (shrink)

The philosopher Michael Ruse accounts for the difference between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, and thus the origin of distinctively moral obligations like that of altruism, in genetic terms. This is part of an attempt to develop a philosophy that takes Darwin seriously by substituting respectable scientific entities, specifically those of evolutionary biology, for suspect theological or philosophical ones, like God or the transcendental ego, as a basis for addressing philosophical questions. Pragmatists take Darwin seriously, but in a very different way (...) from that proposed by Ruse. Darwin introduced a "logic" into the study of living things-including human beings, the human mind, and culture-that leads philosophers to ask new and different questions about morality rather than trying to supply new answers to the same old questions. This essay contrasts these two different ways of taking Darwin seriously for purposes of philosophy and claims certain advantages for the pragmatist way over Ruse's. (shrink)