Social grooming is an important element of social life in terrestrial primates, inducing the putative benefits of β-endorphin stimulation and group harmony and cohesion. Implicit in many analyses of grooming (e.g. biological markets) are the assumptions of costs and benefits to grooming behaviour. Here, in a review of literature, we investigate the proximate costs and benefits of grooming, as a potentially useful explanatory substrate to the well-documented ultimate (functional) explanations. We find that the hedonic benefits of grooming are well documented. (...) However, we did not find convincing evidence for costs. If proximate costs do exist, they might consist of energetic, cognitive, opportunity costs, or some combination of all of these. Nonetheless, there remains the possibility that grooming costs are negligible, or even that the provision of allogrooming is rewarding in itself. We suggest empirical research to resolve this issue. (shrink)

Tarot use has become increasingly popular in contemporary society. However, unlike the position afforded divination in some cultures, it is not culturally consecrated as a legitimate way of knowing in the so‐called Modern West—in large part, due to the attempted disenchantment of the world by the colonial project of modernity. This paper posits that engagement with tarot divination can be a decolonizing methodology. I explore how divination's dependence on chance, the imagination, and engagement with spirits can heal the Cartesian mental (...) models that underly modernity's hold on our society. Academic writing on divination has, until recently, largely been authored by people who are not also practitioners of divination themselves. Writing as both a scholar and practitioner of tarot, I use the cards as a form of “imaginal research” to directly assist in the creation of this paper—allowing the tarot itself to speak (as much as me speak about it). (shrink)

As with any proposal for institutional reform, and especially one that has gained so much ground in such a short amount of time, this paper asks whether diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement is good for corporations. Are businesses stronger with DEI practices and ideas or weaker? We believe that the DEI movement is asking the right questions: How do we create more just and equitable institutions? The challenge, however, is whether this movement is giving the right answers to such (...) questions. The main premise of our paper is that without deeper principles than DEI itself, these qualities of corporate life will be misunderstood, misused, and disordered in our increasingly fragmented and politicized culture. We propose in this essay that “subsidiarity” serves as one of those deeper principles that can order and enrich our understanding of DEI. It serves as a gift principle that begins to reveal the deepest nature of our work, namely, that our work allows us to exercise our gifts in serving others. (shrink)

A recent Letter to the Editor in Anthropology of Consciousness, by Sosteric, Ratkovic, and Sosteric, is positioned as a critique of my article “Imaginal Research for Unlearning Mastery: Divination With Tarot as a Decolonizing Methodology.” The letter posits that the esoteric tarot is a repository of colonial ideological propaganda, and because of that, it cannot and should not be used as a tool for decolonial practices. However, the letter is misleading in its implications that what I have proposed in my (...) article cannot be a methodology for decolonizing mental models, and includes statements about my position which are incorrect. This response clarifies and expands on ideas from my article—both about the tarot and also about the carceral mental models my article attempts to address—in part by highlighting the modern/colonial underpinnings of Sosteric et al.'s critique. (shrink)

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of (...) judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements. (shrink)

This article discusses a concept introduced by art theorist Philip Galanter in several publications over the past decade: complexism is a notion that looks at both past and future while aiming to reconcile (post) modern aesthetics with the cybernetic and biological paradigms. This article focuses on the re-evaluation of the performance arts within the framework of this theory, favouring the idea that every artwork necessarily resists attempts of subordination through language and scientific discourses. By referring to the dispositive, a notion (...) that considers complexism as a conceptual matrix, the author argues that it can be described in terms of pulsion and computation. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus is an effective treatment for the motor symptoms of movement disorders including Parkinson's Disease. Despite its therapeutic benefits, STN-DBS has been associated with adverse effects on mood and cognition. Specifically, apathy, which is defined as a loss of motivation, has been reported to emerge or to worsen following STN-DBS. However, it is often challenging to disentangle the effects of STN-DBSper sefrom concurrent reduction of dopamine replacement therapy, from underlying PD pathology or from disease (...) progression. To this end, pre-clinical models allow for the dissociation of each of these factors, and to establish neural substrates underlying the emergence of motivational symptoms following STN-DBS. Here, we performed a systematic analysis of rodent studies assessing the effects of STN-DBS on reward seeking, reward motivation and reward consumption across a variety of behavioral paradigms. We find that STN-DBS decreases reward seeking in the majority of experiments, and we outline how design of the behavioral task and DBS parameters can influence experimental outcomes. While an early hypothesis posited that DBS acts as a “functional lesion,” an analysis of lesions and inhibition of the STN revealed no consistent pattern on reward-related behavior. Thus, we discuss alternative mechanisms that could contribute to the amotivational effects of STN-DBS. We also argue that optogenetic-assisted circuit dissection could yield important insight into the effects of the STN on motivated behavior in health and disease. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the effects of STN-DBS on motivated behavior-will be critical for optimizing the clinical application of STN-DBS. (shrink)

Within the growing developmental literature on children's testimonial learning, the emphasis placed on children's evaluations of testimonial evidence has shielded from view some of the more collaborative dimensions of testimonial learning. Drawing on recent philosophical work on testimony and interpersonal trust, we argue for an alternative way of conceptualizing the social nature of testimonial learning. On this alternative, some testimonial learning is the result of a jointly collaborative epistemic activity, an activity that aims at the epistemic goal of true belief, (...) but that does so by means of an irreducibly social process. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is widely promulgated as beneficial to science and society. However, there are three quite serious problems which can limit the success of any interdisciplinary research collaboration. The first problem is expertise (it takes years of effort to cultivate a deep knowledge of even one discipline). The second problem is comprehensibility (experts in different disciplines do not reliably understand each other). The third problem is service (in a given interdisciplinary endeavour, it often occurs that one discipline benefits and the other (...) discipline does not benefit). This essay is an elaboration of these three problems. Parallels are drawn between translation between languages and translation between disciplines. (shrink)

Evidence on AI acceptance comes from a diverse field comprising public opinion research and largely experimental studies from various disciplines. Differing theoretical approaches in this research, however, imply heterogeneous ways of studying AI acceptance. The present paper provides a framework for systematizing different uses. It identifies three families of theoretical perspectives informing research on AI acceptance—user acceptance, delegation acceptance, and societal adoption acceptance. These models differ in scope, each has elements specific to them, and the connotation of technology acceptance thus (...) changes when shifting perspective. The discussion points to a need for combining the three perspectives as they have all become relevant for AI. A combined approach serves to systematically relate findings from different studies. And as AI systems affect people in different constellations and no single perspective can accommodate them all, building blocks from several perspectives are needed to comprehensively study how AI is perceived in society. (shrink)

In The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896, Yvan Lamonde traces the province's political and intellectual development from the British Conquest to the election of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. From the individuals who formulated them, to the networks in which they circulated, to their reception, Yvan Lamonde focuses on ideas at work and their role in shaping Quebec history. The mapping of a complete intellectual circuit allows Lamonde to follow the strains of ideological debates - monarchism, liberalism, (...) republicanism, democracy, revolution, ultramontanism, nationalism - over more than a century. His work is informed by an encyclopaedic reading of the print culture of the period and the book conveys a profound and nuanced knowledge of the social context and cultural channels - educational institutions, newspapers, the book trade - in which intellectual debate occurred. Lamonde argues that while these ideas concerned politics, they went beyond the political: they were a fundamental and everyday element of civic society that was expressed in the public sphere through pamphlets, the popular press, and sermons. Lamonde's scrutiny of public opinion in Quebec allows him to place such currents of thought in the colony's international context: that of France, England, Rome, the United States, and their respective metropolises. The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896 covers a volatile time in the province's history - from the end of the French Regime through the American invasion, the War of 1812, and the Rebellions in Lower Canada - capturing the cultural ascension of a society and the foundations of Quebec identity. (shrink)

La thèse de l'illimitation de l'interprétation nous est aujourd'hui familière. Discussion critique sur l'interprétation d'une langue étrangère, d'une oeuvre littéraire ou artistique, d'une texte religieux ou philosophique, d'un rêve ou d'un acte, d'un phénomène...

The Influence of turbulence on nutrient fluxes towards phytoplankton cells has been previously estimated, but those studies did not take into account the intermittent nature of turbulent processes. This has been investigated here comparing the nutrient fluxes obtained using both mean and instantaneous turbulent energy dissipation rates. This approach shows that the size of cell potentially influenced by turbulence is lower than previously indicated, and that the spectral average estimate of the turbulence effect overestimates the flux. The capacity of cell (...) to use such intermittent flux is then discussed. (shrink)

Paul Appelbaum and colleagues propose four models of informed consent to research that deploys whole genome sequencing and may generate incidental findings. They base their analysis on empirical data that suggests that research participants want to be offered incidental findings and on a normative consensus that researchers incur a duty to offer them. Their models will contribute to the heated policy debate about return of incidental findings. But in my view, they do not ask the foundational question, In the context (...) of genome sequencing, how much work can consent be asked to do? (shrink)

What is ‘counterintuitive’? There is general agreement that it refers to a violation of previously held knowledge, but the precise definition seems to vary with every author and study. The aim of this paper is to deconstruct the notion of ‘counterintuitive’ and provide a more philosophically rigorous definition congruent with the history of psychology, recent experimental work in ‘minimally counterintuitive’ concepts, the science vs. religion debate, and the developmental and evolutionary background of human beings. We conclude that previous definitions of (...) counterintuitiveness have been flawed and did not resolve the conflict between a believer’s conception of the supernatural entity (an atypical “real kind”) and the non-believer’s conception (empty name/fictional). Furthermore, too much emphasis has been placed on the universality and (presumed) innateness of intuitive concepts (and hence the criteria for what is counterintuitive)—and far too little attention paid to learning and expertise. We argue that many putatively universal concepts are not innate, but mostly learned and defeasible—part of a religious believer’s repertoire of expert knowledge. Nonetheless, the results from empirical studies about the memorability of counterintuitive concepts have been convincing and it is difficult to improve on existing designs and methodologies. However, future studies in counterintuitive concepts need to embed their work in research about context effects, typicality, the psychology of learning and expertise (for example, the formation of expert templates and range defaults), with more attention to the sources of knowledge (direct and indirect knowledge) and a better idea of what ‘default’ knowledge really is. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wandering the Magnetosphere*Ingrid Koenig (bio)Navigation notes: These emergent drawings–excerpts from a visual essay–take up the complex network of impacts across physical forces entangled with bio-geo-political time. A key element for this work is a living cosmography to depict movement across time, and to visualize wandering on a planet, in the magnetosphere, and between the internal energy of Earth and the solar energy of the cosmos. Physicists say there (...) are no things, there are only relations between things.Q: Hello ancient stone - may I unfold you like a book? Do you carry a message from deep time? A: Yes, what you’re holding is not a thing, but a process. Click for larger view View full resolutionDrawing from Svalbard, Day 17 expedition, 2019[End Page 97]Drifting on a rocky planet, between the internal energy of Earth and the solar energy of the cosmos–we live within a “cosmo-tectonic circulation” —Jerome Gaillardet, geo-chemist. Click for larger view View full resolutionGeocosmic Logic[End Page 98] Click for larger view View full resolutionHow Entropy is Time (detail) Click for larger view View full resolutionMagnetic Story[End Page 99] Click for larger view View full resolutionMessage From Deep Time 3 Click for larger view View full resolutionMessage From Deep Time 1[End Page 100] Click for larger view View full resolutionLooping Matters 1 (Litli-Hrutur, Iceland) Click for larger view View full resolutionLooping Matters 2[End Page 101] Click for larger view View full resolutionMother Rock Waves (Miradalir Valley, Iceland) Click for larger view View full resolutionMother Rock in Time[End Page 102] Click for larger view View full resolutionVolcanic Logic (Miradalir Valley, Iceland) Click for larger view View full resolutionSonic Lava (Miradalir Valley, Iceland)[End Page 103] Click for larger view View full resolutionWaves Across Time (Miradalir Valley, Iceland) Click for larger view View full resolutionDisorientations[End Page 104] Click for larger view View full resolutionMessage From Deep Time 2 Click for larger view View full resolutionGravitational Thought[End Page 105] Click for larger view View full resolutionMagnetic Thought (Miradalir Valley, Iceland) Click for larger view View full resolutionDistance Ladder Collapse[End Page 106] Click for larger view View full resolutionMattering Logic 3 Click for larger view View full resolutionMattering Logic 4[End Page 107] Click for larger view View full resolutionHow We Make Time into Space Click for larger view View full resolutionHow Entropy is Time (detail 2–Svalbard)[End Page 108]Ingrid Koenig Ingrid Koenig is Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada. She was the inaugural Artist in Residence (2011 to 2021) at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator center, and co-organizes processes of collaboration between artists and physicists in a project called Leaning Out of Windows. Her studio and research practices traverse the fields of physics, social history, feminist theory, and narratives of science. Her drawings explore the complex phenomena of physics and involve intuitive responses to specific sites through fieldwork in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, Germany, Iceland, Arctic Circle art + science expeditions, and through collaborations with physicists. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Goethe Institute, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. She co-edited the recently published book, Leaning Out of Windows: An Art and Physics Collaboration (Figure 1 Publishing, 2023).Footnotes* Excerpts from Wandering the Magnetosphere–drawings by Ingrid Koenig, 2019 to 2023, and ongoingCopyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc... (shrink)

Une critique de la définition de l'affectivité chez Michel Henry met en évidence le rapport de réversibilité entre la métaphysique de Henry et celle de la philosophie de l'intentionnalité qu'il récuse en vue d'établir une nouvelle conception de l'esprit. Il est alors possible de reformuler le débat en faisant apparaître l'affectivité inhérente à l'action. Pour cela, il s'agit de faire appel à la liberté kantienne et à la perspective symbolique de Cassirer mais en revisant le statut accordé à la sensibilité. (...) Ainsi, la sensibilité se différencie selon son dynamisme propre, l'affectivité, et selon son rapport à la raison, à travers la perception qui identifie seulement de façon indirecte la sensibilité aux sens. Il s'agit d'un nouveau rapport entre le sensible et l'intelligible.The critic of Henry's definition of affectivity shows that the metaphysics of Henry is the mirror of the metaphysics carried by the philosophy of intentionality. By challenging the last one, Henry aims to establish a new conception of the spirit. I suggest that there is more to find about affectivity if we look at it in the context of action. The kantian liberty and the symbolic perspective of Cassirer are going in this way if we accept to change the status of the sensibility. In fact, it is possible to differentiate the sensibility : the affectivity enunciates the dynamism of the sensibility and, by his relation to the reason through the perception, shows only indirectly its identification to the sense. Then, we find a new relationship between the sensibility and the intelligibility. (shrink)

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is widely promulgated as beneficial to science and society. However, there are three quite serious problems which can limit the success of any interdisciplinary research collaboration. The first problem is expertise (it takes years of effort to cultivate a deep knowledge of even one discipline). The second problem is comprehensibility (experts in different disciplines do not reliably understand each other). The third problem is service (in a given interdisciplinary endeavour, it often occurs that one discipline benefits and the other (...) discipline does not benefit). This essay is an elaboration of these three problems. Parallels are drawn between translation between languages and translation between disciplines. (shrink)

The original book chapter does not have an abstract. However, I have written an abstract for this repository: Religious life encompasses a wide diversity of situations for which the emotional tone is on a continuum from extreme euphoria to extreme dysphoria. In this book chapter, we propose the novel hypothesis that euphoria and dysphoria have distinctly separate functional consequences for religious evolution and survivability. This is due to the differential cognitive states that are created in euphoric and dysphoric situations. Based (...) on readings from religious studies and cognitive psychology, we propose that euphoria in religion is conducive to social bonding and situations needing lateral thinking and creativity; whereas dysphoria in religion is conducive to situations where precision and analogical reasoning are necessary. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed across the language sciences that some semantic participant information is lexically encoded in the representation of verbs and some is not. In this paper, we propose that semantic obligatoriness and verb class specificity are criteria which influence whether semantic information is lexically encoded. We present a comprehensive survey of the English verbal lexicon, a sentence continuation study, and an on-line sentence processing study which confirm that both factors play a role in the lexical encoding of participant (...) information. (shrink)

Direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and reputation are important interrelated topics in the evolution of sociality. This non-mathematical review is a summary of each. Direct reciprocity (the positive kind) has a straightforward structure (e.g., "A rewards B, then rewards A") but the allocation might differ from the process that enabled it (e.g., whether it is true reciprocity or some form of mutualism). Indirect reciprocity (the positive kind) occurs when person (B) is rewarded by a third party (A) after doing a good (...) deed towards somebody else (C) — with the structure "A observes B help C, therefore A helps B." Here too, the allocation differs from the process: if there is underlying cognition, then indirect reciprocity is based on some ability to keep track of the reputations of others (to remember that "B helped C"). Reputation is a kind of social impression based on typicality, derived from three channels of experience (direct encounters, bystander observation, and gossip). Although non-human animals cannot gossip verbally, they can eavesdrop on third parties and learn vicariously. This paper ends with a proposal to investigate the topic of social expertise as a model for understanding how animals understand and utilise observed information within their social groups. (shrink)

Natural Law, Science, and the Social Construction of Reality looks at changes in knowledge and the relationship to values from the modern era to today. Author Bernie Koenig examines Newton's influence on Locke and Kant, how Kant influenced Darwin and Freud, and the implications of their work for both anthropology and moral theory.

Can there be a global demos? The current debate about this topic is divided between two opposing camps: the “pessimist” or “impossibilist” camp, which holds that the emergence of a global demos is either conceptually or empirically impossible, and the “optimist” or “possibilist” camp, which holds that the emergence of a global demos is conceptually as well as empirically possible and an embryonic version of it already exists. However, the two camps agree neither on a common working definition of a (...) global demos, nor on the relevant empirical facts, so it is difficult to reconcile their conflicting outlooks. We seek to move the debate beyond this stalemate. We argue that existing conceptions of a demos are ill-suited for capturing what kind of a global demos is needed to facilitate good global governance, and we propose a new conception of a demos that is better suited for this purpose. We suggest that some of the most prominent conceptions of a demos have focused too much on who the members of a demos are and too little on what functional characteristics the demos must have in order to perform its role in facilitating governance within the relevant domain. Our new proposal shifts the emphasis from the first, “compositional” question to the second, “performative” one, and provides a more “agency-based” account of a global demos. The key criterion that a collection of individuals must meet in order to qualify as a demos is that it is not merely demarcated by an appropriate membership criterion, but that it can be organized, democratically, so as to function as a state-like agent. Compared to the existing, predominantly “compositional” approaches to thinking about the demos, this agency-based approach puts us into a much better position to assess the empirical prospects for the emergence of a global demos that can facilitate good global governance. (shrink)

The Component Process Model posits that attention is appraisal-driven rather than stimulus-driven and that the appraisal of relevance is of critical importance in such a mechanism. This means that any stimulus can attract attention or not depending on how relevant it is appraised. This hypothesis was tested in an implicit border similarity judgement task, in which thirsty participants were presented with bottles and vases that were respectively very relevant and weakly relevant to their goal to quench their thirst. These stimuli (...) were also presented to quenched participants for whom none of the stimuli was relevant. The findings support the idea that our attention is more likely to be appraisal-driven than stimulus-driven, since bottles produced an attentional interference in thirsty participants only. It was also observed that, even if vases were judged weakly relevant by thirsty participants, they produced an attentional interference compared to empty stimuli, which was not the case in the quenched participants group. The concept of goal relatedness was proposed as an explanation for this result, and methodological implications were also discussed. (shrink)

What is the nature of children's trust in testimony? Is it based primarily on evidential correlations between statements and facts, as stated by Hume, or does it derive from an interest in the trustworthiness of particular speakers? In this essay, we explore these questions in an effort to understand the developmental course and cognitive bases of children's extensive reliance on testimony. Recent work shows that, from an early age, children monitor the reliability of particular informants, differentiate between those who make (...) true and false claims and keep that differential accuracy in mind when evaluating new information from these people. We argue that this selective trust is likely to involve the mentalistic appraisal of speakers rather than surface generalizations of their behavior. Finally, we review the significance of children's deference to adult authority on issues of naming and categorization. In addition to challenging a purely inductive account of trust, these and other findings reflect a potentially rich set of tools brought by children to the task of learning from people's testimony. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhat is the nature of children's trust in testimony? Is it based primarily on evidential correlations between statements and facts, as stated by Hume, or does it derive from an interest in the trustworthiness of particular speakers? In this essay, we explore these questions in an effort to understand the developmental course and cognitive bases of children's extensive reliance on testimony. Recent work shows that, from an early age, children monitor the reliability of particular informants, differentiate between those who make (...) true and false claims and keep that differential accuracy in mind when evaluating new information from these people. We argue that this selective trust is likely to involve the mentalistic appraisal of speakers rather than surface generalizations of their behavior. Finally, we review the significance of children's deference to adult authority on issues of naming and categorization. In addition to challenging a purely inductive account of trust, these and other findings reflect a potentially rich set of tools brought by children to the task of learning from people's testimony. (shrink)

Cosmopolitics, the concept of a world politics based on shared democratic values, is in an increasingly fragile state.

The current research applied a mid-level evolutionary theory that has been successfully employed across numerous animal species—life history theory—in an attempt to understand the Dark Triad personality trait cluster (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism). In Study 1 (N = 246), a measure of life history strategy was correlated with psychopathy, but unexpectedly with neither Machiavellianism nor narcissism. Study 2 (N = 321) replicated this overall pattern of results using longer, traditional measures of the Dark Triad traits and alternative, future-discounting indicators of (...) life history strategy (a smaller-sooner, larger-later monetary dilemma and self-reported risk-taking behaviors). Additional findings suggested two sources of shared variance across the Dark Triad traits: confidence in predicting future outcomes and openness to short-term mating. (shrink)

In an undated letter, Peirce claims that he can make a machine that will automatically encrypt and decrypt messages, an astonishing claim considering the state of American science during his time. In two undated manuscripts, Peirce actually describes a cryptosystem, a system for encrypting and decrypting, suggesting the use of arithmetical transformations and binary notation. The relationship between the manuscripts and the letter are discussed in the paper. The paper also describes Peirce’s cryptosystem, places it in its historical context and (...) assesses its comparative value. The paper ends with speculations on whether Peirce could really have built the machine. Considering that he understood the relationship between electricity, binary arithmetic, and Boolean logic, and was familiar with the experiences on the logical machines of his time, the paper concludes that Peirce had all the knowledge necessary to build such a machine. (shrink)