A coherent practice of mens rea (‘guilty mind’) ascription in criminal law presupposes a concept of mens rea which is insensitive to the moral valence of an action’s outcome. For instance, an assessment of whether an agent harmed another person intentionally should be unaffected by the severity of harm done. Ascriptions of intentionality made by laypeople, however, are subject to a strong outcome bias. As demonstrated by the Knobe effect, a knowingly incurred negative side effect is standardly judged intentional, whereas (...) a positive side effect is not. We report the first empirical investigation into intentionality ascriptions made by professional judges, which finds (i) that professionals are sensitive to the moral valence of outcome type, and (ii) that the worse the outcome, the higher the propensity to ascribe intentionality. The data shows the intentionality ascriptions of professional judges to be inconsistent with the concept of mens rea supposedly at the foundation of criminal law. (shrink)

Do laypeople think that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism? Recently, philosophers and psychologists trying to answer this question have found contradictory results: while some experiments reveal people to have compatibilist intuitions, others suggest that people could in fact be incompatibilist. To account for this contradictory answers, Nichols and Knobe (2007) have advanced a ‘performance error model’ according to which people are genuine incompatibilist that are sometimes biased to give compatibilist answers by emotional reactions. To test for this hypothesis, we (...) investigated intuitions about determinism and moral responsibility in patients suffering from behavioural frontotemporal dementia. Patients suffering from bvFTD have impoverished emotional reaction. Thus, the ‘performance error model’ should predict that bvFTD patients will give less compatibilist answers. However, we found that bvFTD patients give answers quite similar to subjects in control group and were mostly compatibilist. Thus, we conclude that the ‘performance error model’ should be abandoned in favour of other available model that best fit our data. (shrink)

Recent research shows that in reasoning tasks, subjects usually produce an initial intuitive answer, accompanied by a metacognitive experience, which has been called feeling of rightness. This paper is aimed at exploring the complimentary experience of feeling of error, that is, the spontaneous, subtle sensation of cognitive uneasiness arising from conflict detection during thinking. We investigate FOE in two studies with the “bat-and-ball” reasoning task, in its standard and isomorphic control versions. Study 1 is a generation study, in which participants (...) are asked to generate their own response. Study 2 is an evaluation study, in which participants are asked to choose between two conflicting answers. In each study, the FOE is measured by the FOE questionnaire. Results show that the FOE is significantly present in the standard B&B task when participants give a wrong answer, that our questionnaire can measure it, and furthermore, that it is diagnostic of genuine error. (shrink)

Framing effects occur when different descriptions of the same decision problem give rise to divergent decisions. They can be seen as a violation of the decisiontheoretic version of the principle of extensionality (PE). The PE in logic means that two logically equivalent sentences can be substituted salva veritate. We explore what this notion of extensionality becomes in decision contexts. Violations of extensionality may have rational grounds. Based on some ideas proposed by the psychologist Craig McKenzie and colleagues, we contend that (...) framing effects are justified when the selection of one particular frame conveys choice relevant information. We first discuss this idea from a philosophical point of view, and proceed next to formalize it first in the context of the Bolker–Jeffrey decision theory. Finally, we extend the previous analysis to non-expected utility theories using the Biseparable Preference model introduced by Ghirardato and Marinacci (2001) and therefore show that the analysis is independent of the assumptions of Bayesian decision theory. (shrink)

Neuroeconomic studies are liable to fall into the reverse inference fallacy, a form of affirmation of the consequent. More generally neuroeconomics relies on two problematic steps, namely the inference from brain activities to the engagement of cognitive processes in experimental tasks, and the presupposition that such inferred cognitive processes are relevant to economic theorizing. The first step only constitutes the reverse inference fallacy proper and ways to correct it include a better sense of the neural response selectivity of the targeted (...) brain areas and a better definition of relevant cognitive ontologies for neuroeconomics. This second way also allows increased coherence between the cognitive processes actually involved in neuroeconomics experiments and the theoretical constructs of economics. We suggest means of increasing neural response selectivity in neuroeconomic experimental paradigms. We also discuss how the choice of cognitive ontologies can both avoid implicit reductionist strategies (from economic constructs to neural patterns) and irrelevance, as cognitive processes engaged in experimental tasks may lack immediate bearing on the study of economic behavior. With these joint improvements neuroeconomics can be a progressive science. (shrink)

Contingent valuation surveys generally elicit stated preferences by asking how much a respondent would be willing to pay for an environmental improvement. By drawing on linguistic theory, we propose that the modal phrasing of this question establishes a particular type of commitment towards a hypothetical payment, namely a subjective want or desire. Based on the idea that beyond subjective desires, considerations about what is morally adequate may guide expressed values and that elicitation of these can be linguistically facilitated, we employ (...) an experimental framework to investigate the effects of different modals ( willing, should and appropriate) in the elicitation question on stated preferences. We find that elicited amounts with appropriate are higher than those elicited with willing and should for environmental improvements more associated with use values, while differences are non-significant for environmental improvements more associated with non-use values. We discuss the implications of our findings for stated preference studies, as well as the potential broader theoretical implications that our study entails regarding linguistic representations of the moral entrenchment of environmental values. (shrink)

Textes de philosophes français et britanniques issus du colloque tenu à l'Université de Nantes en 1998. Ils sont consacrés à la philosophie analytique de la religion et abordent des sujets tels que la nature et la justification des croyances religieuses, la question du mal, celles des preuves de l'existence de Dieu, de la théodicée, du langage religieux, du miracle, de la prière, etc.

We propose an axiomatization of aversion to incomplete preferences. Some prevailing models of incomplete preferences rely on the hypothesis that incompleteness is temporary and that by keeping their opportunity set open individuals reveal a preference for flexibility. We consider that the maintenance of incomplete preference is also aversive. Our model allows us to show how incompleteness induces an aversive attitude in two different ways: intrinsic and instrumental. Intrinsic aversion holds when one instance of incomplete preference in the set suffices to (...) decrease its utility. Instrumental aversion holds only insofar dominating options are affected by incompleteness. Given two partially overlapping sets of axioms on the binary relation over sets we formalize their consistency with the two types of aversion to incompleteness. Finally, we relate our model to the classical Sen’s distinction between tentative and assertive incompleteness. The spelling out of this distinction in the terms of our approach uncovers to what extent aversion to incompleteness may be compatible with a preference for flexibility. (shrink)

Textes de philosophes français et britanniques issus du colloque tenu à l'Université de Nantes en 1998. Ils sont consacrés à la philosophie analytique de la religion et abordent des sujets tels que la nature et la justification des croyances religieuses, la question du mal, celles des preuves de l'existence de Dieu, de la théodicée, du langage religieux, du miracle, de la prière, etc.

Mister Freeze : Il est inscrit dans le marbre, sur le piédestal de cette statue de Thémistocle, et sur toutes ses copies dans les capitales du monde occidental, que ce général athénien est au point source de notre civilisation. Qu’en dites-vous chère amie ? Que c’est un culte de la personnalité immérité ? Miss Bazooka : Je laisse la critique idéologique pour un peu plus tard. La place des personnalités dans l’Histoire est un vieil enjeu, qu’on croyait disparu, qui réapparaît (...) sous les habits n.. (shrink)

Neuroeconomics is a recent extension of behavioral economics which aims at uncovering the brain mechanisms and activities that mediate regular and anomalous behaviour. Gul and Pesendorfer have launched a critique against the neuroeconomic research program, based on what they argue is the incommensurability of the theoretical constructs employed by each respective discipline. To respond to their argument we envision and illustrate several "directions of instruction" between neuroscience and economics, and provide counter-examples to their critique. This disciplinary cross-talk suggests that neuroeconomics (...) may play a crucial conceptual and methodological role in fostering the unity of behavioral sciences. (shrink)

L'interpretation analytique est attentive aux proprietes logiques et semantiques du cogito, proprietes qui peuvent apporter des solutions a certains problemes cartesiens, traditionnels ou apparus en philosophie analytique. C'est ainsi que la forme logique et les aspects pragmatiques du cogito permettent d'evaluer son caractere intuitif et la certitude qu'il comporte. De meme l'analyse de son caractere indexical met-elle en evidence la plausibilite d'un mode de renvoi subjectif a des pensees objectives. De meme encore la transition du cogito a la res cogitans (...) reste concevable, a la croisee d'une perspective a la premiere personne et d'une contrainte referentielle objective. Il ressort de ces analyses une epistemologie et une ontologie cartesiennes minimales qui ne pretent a aucune inference vers un dualisme radical, mais qui favorisent plutot une certaine analogie dans l'attribution des predicats mentaux et corporels, prise dans la perspective de la premiere personne. (shrink)

Zalta's notion of encoding which lies at the core of his theory of abstract objects is refined so that it can capture cognitive dynamic phenomena such as multiple object-tracking in particular intentional contexts; namely hypothetical stipulation concerning abstract objects and counter-essential conceivability about ordinary ones. Zalta's Modal Axiom of Encoding is weakened and the notion of 'quasi-encoding' is spelt out.

Une analyse de la prière rogatoire (de demande) dirigée vers un état de choses passé est proposée. Je sais qu'un Boeing s'est abîmé en mer, je prie pour qu'un être cher, peut-être déjà mort, ait survécu. On examine les conditions sous lesquelles une telle demande est i) rationnelle et ii) peut être efficace. Deux réponses traditionnelles à ces questions sont particulièrement examinées: la solution moliniste d'une part et les discussions talmudiques sur la prière vaine d'autre part.

We consider the potentially major role of lay economic representations in economic theoretical modelling. Departing both from the rational expectation hypothesis, that supposes a maximal cognitive fit between agents’ representations and the variables in the model, and from an approach in terms of psychological biases that would externally affect agents’representation of their environment, we consider that lay representations have essential features that make them potentially valuable tools for the reconciliation of normative and practical perspectives in macroeconomics. By reviewing a series (...) of studies in the sub-field of the psychology of lay economics, we first emphasize the collective and pragmatically-oriented features of these lay economic representations. We thereby uncover the major role of language and meaning, seemingly non-economic human institutions, in laying down the basis for economic understanding. Secondly, we directly address the question of the internal logic and cognitive features of these representations and uncover/in uncovering typical circular causal reasoning in lay macroeconomics. We finally re-assess the question of the maximal fit between ordinary economic psychology and predictive economic modelling. (shrink)

A conceptual and mathematical model of a social community behavior in a choice situation under a veil of ignorance, where two alternative policies—Rawlsian maximin and Harsanyian utilitarianism—can be implemented through the aggregation of individual preferences over these two policies, is constructed and investigated. We first incorporate in our conceptual model psychological features such as risk-aversion and prosocial preferences that likely underlie choices of welfare policies. We secondly develop and select the mathematical model presented it by means of an autonomous system (...) of ordinary differential equations. A qualitative analysis of this system global phase-plane behavior shows possible tendencies of community development under social choices over Rawlsian or utilitarian societies depending on psychological parameters such as risk aversion and prosocial preferences. (shrink)