Ethical thought experiments such as the trolley dilemma have been investigated extensively in the past, showing that humans act in utilitarian ways, trying to cause as little overall damage as possible. These trolley dilemmas have gained renewed attention over the past few years, especially due to the necessity of implementing moral decisions in autonomous driving vehicles. We conducted a set of experiments in which participants experienced modified trolley dilemmas as drivers in virtual reality environments. Participants had to make decisions between (...) driving in one of two lanes where different obstacles came into view. Eventually, the participants had to decide which of the objects they would crash into. Obstacles included a variety of human-like avatars of different ages and group sizes. Furthermore, the influence of sidewalks as potential safe harbors and a condition implicating self-sacrifice were tested. Results showed that participants, in general, decided in a utilitarian manner, sparing the highest number of avatars possible with a limited influence by the other variables. Derived from these findings, which are in line with the utilitarian approach in moral decision making, it will be argued for an obligatory ethics setting implemented in ADVs. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, governments have turned their attention to digital contact tracing. In many countries, public debate has focused on the risks this technology poses to privacy, with advocates and experts sounding alarm bells about surveillance and mission creep reminiscent of the post 9/11 era. Yet, when Apple and Google launched their contact tracing API in April 2020, some of the world’s leading privacy experts applauded this initiative for its privacy-preserving technical specifications. In an interesting twist, the tech (...) giants came to be portrayed as greater champions of privacy than some democratic governments. This article proposes to view the Apple/Google API in terms of a broader phenomenon whereby tech corporations are encroaching into ever new spheres of social life. From this perspective, the advantage these actors have accrued in the sphere of the production of digital goods provides them with access to the spheres of health and medicine, and more worrisome, to the sphere of politics. These sphere transgressions raise numerous risks that are not captured by the focus on privacy harms. Namely, a crowding out of essential spherical expertise, new dependencies on corporate actors for the delivery of essential, public goods, the shaping of public policy by non-representative, private actors and ultimately, the accumulation of decision-making power across multiple spheres. While privacy is certainly an important value, its centrality in the debate on digital contact tracing may blind us to these broader societal harms and unwittingly pave the way for ever more sphere transgressions. (shrink)

[Paul Boghossian] The paper asks under what conditions deductive reasoning transmits justification from its premises to its conclusion. It argues that both standard externalist and standard internalist accounts of this phenomenon fail. The nature of this failure is taken to indicate the way forward: basic forms of deductive reasoning must justify by being instances of ’blind but blameless’ reasoning. Finally, the paper explores the suggestion that an inferentialist account of the logical constants can help explain how such reasoning is possible. (...) /// [Timothy Williamson] The paper challenges the inferentialist account of concept possession that Paul Boghossian takes as a premise in his account of the transmission of justification by deductive reasoning in his paper ’Blind Reasoning’. Unorthodox speakers who reject the inferences in an alleged possession condition can still have the concept by understanding a word for it. In that sense, the inferences are not analytic. Inferentialist accounts of logical constants, theoretical terms (using the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis method) and pejorative expressions such as ’Boche’ are examined and rejected. It is suggested that epistemological questions cannot be reduced to questions in the theory of thought and meaning. (shrink)

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto, the downfall (...) of Bernard Madoff, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Explaining why traditional approaches to ethics don't work, the book considers how blind spots like ethical fading--the removal of ethics from the decision--making process--have led to tragedies and scandals such as the Challenger space shuttle disaster, steroid use in Major League Baseball, the crash in the financial markets, and the energy crisis. The authors demonstrate how ethical standards shift, how we neglect to notice and act on the unethical behavior of others, and how compliance initiatives can actually promote unethical behavior. They argue that scandals will continue to emerge unless such approaches take into account the psychology of individuals faced with ethical dilemmas. Distinguishing our "should self" from our "want self", the authors point out ethical sinkholes that create questionable actions. Suggesting innovative individual and group tactics for improving human judgment, Blind Spots shows us how to secure a place for ethics in our workplaces, institutions, and daily lives. (shrink)

The paper asks under what conditions deductive reasoning transmits justification from its premises to its conclusion. It argues that both standard externalist and standard internalist accounts of this phenomenon fail. The nature of this failure is taken to indicate the way forward: basic forms of deductive reasoning must justify by being instances of 'blind but blameless' reasoning. Finally, the paper explores the suggestion that an inferentialist account of the logical constants can help explain how such reasoning is possible.

One of the most fascinating topics of current investigation in the literature on judgment and decision-making concerns the exploration of foreign language effects (henceforth, FLE). Specifically, recent research suggests that presenting information in a foreign language helps reasoners make better choices. However, this piece aims at making scholars aware of a blind spot in this stream of research. In particular, research on FLE has imported only one view of judgment and decision-making, in which the heuristics that people use are seen (...) as conducive to biases and, in turn, to costly mistakes. But heuristics are not necessarily a liability, and this article indicates two routes to push forward research on FLE in judgment and decision-making. First, research on FLE should be expanded to explore also classes of fast and frugal heuristics, which have been shown to lead to accurate predictions in several contexts characterized by uncertainty. Second, research on FLE should be open to challenge the interpretations given to previous FLE findings, since alternative accounts are plausible and not ruled out by evidence. (shrink)

Do newborns think-do they know that 'three' is greater than 'two'? Do they prefer 'right' to 'wrong'? What about emotions--do newborns recognize happiness or anger? If they do, then how are our inborn thoughts and feelings encoded in our bodies? Could they persist after we die? Going all the way back to ancient Greece, human nature and the mind-body link are the topics of age-old scholarly debates. But laypeople also have strong opinions about such matters. Most people believe, for example, (...) that newborn babies don't know the difference between right and wrong-such knowledge, they insist, can only be learned. For emotions, they presume the opposite-that our capacity to feel fear, for example, is both inborn and embodied. These beliefs are stories we tell ourselves about what we know and who we are. They reflect and influence our understanding of ourselves and others and they guide every aspect of our lives. In a twist that could have come out of a Greek tragedy, Berent proposes that our errors are our fate. These mistakes emanate from the very principles that make our minds tick: our blindness to human nature is rooted in human nature itself. An intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent's own cutting-edge research, The Blind Storyteller grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so infatuated with our brains to what happens when we die. The end result is a startling new perspective on our humanity. (shrink)

One curious phenomenon of several social groups is that they are ‘redundant’ in the sense that they contain more cooperators than strictly needed to complete certain group tasks, such as foraging. Redundancy is puzzling because redundant groups are particularly susceptible to invasion by defectors. Yet, redundancy can be found in groups formed by a wide range of organisms, including insects and microbes. Birch ([2012]) has recently argued that coercive behaviours might account for redundancy using insect colonies as a case study. (...) However, microbial examples suggest redundancy can evolve without coercive behaviours. This paper formulates an explanation for redundancy that does not require targeted punishment of defectors; instead, it proposes that redundancy might be due to ignorance. Specifically, it is suggested that redundancy evolves as a by-product of selection when group members have to opt whether to cooperate or not while being blind to the strategies of others. Accordingly, possessing information about the strategies of the group members might undermine rather than facilitate cooperation within groups. (shrink)

Animal ethicists have recently debated the ethical questions raised by disenhancing animals to improve their welfare. Here, we focus on the particular case of breeding hens for commercial egg-laying systems to become blind, in order to benefit their welfare. Many people find breeding blind hens intuitively repellent, yet ‘welfare-only’ positions appear to be committed to endorsing this possibility if it produces welfare gains. We call this the ‘Blind Hens’ Challenge’. In this paper, we argue that there are both empirical and (...) theoretical reasons why even those adopting ‘welfare-only’ views should be concerned about breeding blind hens. But we also argue that alternative views, which (for example) claim that it is important to respect the telos or rights of an animal, do not offer a more convincing solution to questions raised by the possibility of disenhancing animals for their own benefit. (shrink)

Over the last four decades arguments for and against the claim that creative hypothesis formation is based on Darwinian ‘blind’ variation have been put forward. This paper offers a new and systematic route through this long-lasting debate. It distinguishes between undirected, random, and unjustified variation, to prevent widespread confusions regarding the meaning of undirected variation. These misunderstandings concern Lamarckism, equiprobability, developmental constraints, and creative hypothesis formation. The paper then introduces and develops the standard critique that creative hypothesis formation is guided (...) rather than blind, integrating developments from contemporary research on creativity. On that basis, I discuss three compatibility arguments that have been used to answer the critique. These arguments do not deny guided variation but insist that an important analogy exists nonetheless. These compatibility arguments all fail, even though they do so for different reasons: trivialisation, conceptual confusion, and lack of evidence respectively. Revisiting the debate in this manner not only allows us to see where exactly a ‘Darwinian’ account of creative hypothesis formation goes wrong, but also to see that the debate is not about factual issues, but about the interpretation of these factual issues in Darwinian terms. (shrink)

Many scholars have rejected cultural evolutionary theory on the grounds that cultural variation is directed and intentionally created, rather than incremental and blind with respect to function, as is the case for novel genetic variation in genetic evolution. Meanwhile, some cultural evolution researchers insist that cultural variation is blind and undirected, and the only directional force is selection of randomly-generated variants. Here I argue that neither of these positions are tenable. Cultural variation is directed in various ways. While this does (...) not invalidate cultural evolution, more attention should be paid to the different sources of non-randomness in culturally evolving systems. (shrink)

In this article, I critically assess Hélène Landemore's new model of Open Democracy, asking whether it requires of citizens to blindly defer to the decisions of the mini-public. To address this question, I, first, discuss three institutional mechanisms in Open Democracy, all of which can be read to grant citizens democratic control. I argue that neither the capacity to authorize the selection mechanism (random sortition), nor the lottocratic conception of political equality, nor the self-selection mechanisms of Landemore's model deliver the (...) form of control that would insulate Open Democracy from the charge of blind deference. I then discuss the direct democracy mechanisms that Landemore incorporates into her model. Although these devices grant citizens control and, by extension, offer the resources for repudiating the charge of blind deference, they also, I argue, subvert the logic of Landemore's lottocratic model, rendering Open Democracy predictably unstable. Given the deliberative asymmetries between the mini-public and the citizenry, a high frequency of bottom-up challenges is to be expected that would throw the whole system into jeopardy. Thus, the challenge for lottocrats is to show how democratic control can be achieved in a lottocratic system without undermining the benefits of the legislature by lot. (shrink)

Blind Realism originated in the deeply felt conviction that the widespread acceptance of Gettier-type counterexamples to the classical definition of knowledge rests in a demonstrably erroneous understanding of the nature of human knowledge. In seeking to defend that conviction, Robert F. Almeder offers a fairly detailed and systematic picture of the nature and limits of human factual knowledge.

Dispositionalist accounts of belief define beliefs in terms of specific sets of dispositions. In this article, I provide a blind-spot argument against these accounts. The core idea of the argument is that beliefs having the form [p and it is not manifestly believed that p] cannot be manifestly believed. This means that one cannot manifest such beliefs in one’s assertions, conscious thoughts, actions, behaviours, or any other type of activity. However, if beliefs are sets of dispositions, they must be manifestable (...) in some way. Therefore, according to my argument, beliefs are not sets of dispositions. The argument is defended against some possible objections. (shrink)

In this report, the phenomenology of two blind users of a sensory substitution device – “The vOICe” – that converts visual images to auditory signals is described. The users both report detailed visual phenomenology that developed within months of immersive use and has continued to evolve over a period of years. This visual phenomenology, although triggered through use of The vOICe, is likely to depend not only on online visualization of the auditory signal but also on the users’ previous (albeit (...) distant) experience of veridical vision (e.g. knowledge of shapes and visual perspective). Once established, the sensory substitution mapping between the auditory and visual domains is not confined to when the device is worn and, thus, may constitute an example of acquired synaesthesia. (shrink)

The growing prevalence of misleading information (i.e., bullshit) in society carries with it an increased need to understand the processes underlying many people’s susceptibility to falling for it. Here we report two studies (N = 412) examining the associations between one’s ability to detect pseudo-profound bullshit, confidence in one’s bullshit detection abilities, and the metacognitive experience of evaluating potentially misleading information. We find that people with the lowest (highest) bullshit detection performance overestimate (underestimate) their detection abilities and overplace (underplace) those (...) abilities when compared to others. Additionally, people reported using both intuitive and reflective thinking processes when evaluating misleading information. Taken together, these results show that both highly bullshit-receptive and highly bullshit-resistant people are largely unaware of the extent to which they can detect bullshit and that traditional miserly processing explanations of receptivity to misleading information may be insufficient to fully account for these effects. (shrink)

High percentages of submitted papers are rejected at editorial levels without offering a second chance to authors by sending their papers for further peer-reviews. In most cases, the rejections are typical quick answers without helpful argumentations related to the content of the rejected material. More surprisingly, some journals vaunt their high rejection rates as a “mark of prestige”!However, journals that reject high percentages of submitted papers have built their prominent positions based on a flawed measure, the impact factor, and from (...) a long and favorable historical context. Their shareholders may think that they are allowed to have a large margin of rejection rates without affecting their sponsorship or funding sources thanks to an extended anchorage since tens, or in some cases hundreds, of years compared to unknown or new journals that struggle to pave a way in the scientific publication world. Historical anchorage of some journals also makes it unfair to compare old and new .. (shrink)

Normativists about belief hold that belief formation is essentially rule- or norm-guided. On this view, certain norms are constitutive of or essential to belief in such a way that no mental state not guided by those norms counts as a belief, properly construed. In recent influential work, Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss develop novel arguments against normativism. According to their regress of motivations argument, not all belief formation can be rule- or norm-guided, on pain of a vicious infinite regress. I (...) argue that the regress of motivations argument is unsuccessful: an appeal to the notion of blind rule-following, drawn from a plausible interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following, stops the regress of motivations in its tracks. (shrink)

In two highly powered studies (total N = 1617), we showed that individuals estimated that they would stop earlier than others in a Milgram-like biomedical task leading to the death of an animal, confirming the relevance of the Better than Average Effect (BTAE) in a new research setting. However, this effect was not magnified among participants displaying high self-esteem. We also showed that participants who already knew obedience studies expected that others would be more obedient and would administer more damaging (...) treatment to the target. However, knowledge of Milgram’s studies was unrelated to a higher estimate of their own behavior (study 1), and was even linked to the prediction that they would stop earlier (study 2, preregistered). Despite the wide educational use of Milgram’s studies to increase people’s awareness of the risks inherent to blind obedience, it may be that this knowledge only serves to evaluate other’s behaviors, and not oneself. (shrink)

sirThe recent article by Evans in the journal on the single blind placebo in drug research is timely and its conclusions were persuasive. The basic premiss that single blind placebo “washout” periods are ethically specious was well argued and I agree that from a scientific point of view they have no valid justification. The real reasons ….

No theory seems to describe accurately and explain competently the new, unusual, and idiosyncratic Northeast Asian regional order phenomenon. It is because Northeast Asian specialists like the blind men have seen only one of the parts of the or a part of what is taking place in Northeast Asia. This paper attempts to employ a new, more appropriate, more productive analytical tool to understand and navigate efficiently the Northeast Asian regional order. The main objective of this paper is, what it (...) is and what is taking place in the empirical world when we say that something we call is taking place. (shrink)

In this chapter a new problem about rule-following is outlined, one that is distinct both from Kripke’s and Wright’s versions of the problem. This new problem cannot be correctly responsed to, as Kripke’s can, by invoking Wright’s Intentional Account of rule-following. The upshot might be called, following Kant, an antinomy of pure reason: we both must — and cannot — make sense of someone’s following a rule. The chapter explores various ways out of this antinomy without here endorsing any of (...) them. (shrink)

In the spirit of James and Dewey, I ask what one might want from a theory of knowledge. Much Anglophone epistemology is centered on questions that were once highly pertinent, but are no longer central to broader human and scientific concerns. The first sense in which epistemology without history is blind lies in the tendency of philosophers to ignore the history of philosophical problems. A second sense consists in the perennial attraction of approaches to knowledge that divorce knowing subjects from (...) their societies and from the tradition of socially assembling a body of transmitted knowledge. When epistemology fails to use the history of inquiry as a laboratory in which methodological claims can be tested, there is a third way in which it becomes blind. Finally, lack of attention to the growth of knowledge in various domains leaves us with puzzles about the character of the knowledge we have. I illustrate this last theme by showing how reflections on the history of mathematics can expand our options for understanding mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

These lectures on logic, more specifically proof theory, are basically intended for postgraduate students and researchers in logic. The question at stake is the nature of mathematical knowledge and the difference between a question and an answer, i.e., the implicit and the explicit. The problem is delicate mathematically and philosophically as well: the relation between a question and its answer is a sort of equality where one side is ``more equal than the other'': one thus discovers essentialist blind spots. Starting (...) with Godel's paradox --so to speak, the incompleteness of answers with respect to questions--the book proceeds with paradigms inherited from Gentzen's cut-elimination. Various settings are studied: sequent calculus, natural deduction, lambda calculi, category-theoretic composition, up to geometry of interaction, all devoted to explicitation, which eventually amounts to inverting an operator in a von Neumann algebra. Mathematical language is usually described as referring to a preexisting reality. Logical operations can be given an alternative procedural meaning: typically, the operators involved in GoI are invertible, not because they are constructed according to the book, but because logical rules are those ensuring invertibility. Similarly, the durability of truth should not be taken for granted: one should distinguish between imperfect and perfect modes. The procedural explanation of the infinite thus identifies it with the unfinished, i.e., the perennial. But is perenniality perennial? This questioning yields a possible logical explanation for algorithmic complexity. This highly original course on logic by one of the world's leading proof theorists challenges mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, and philosophers to rethink their views and concepts on the nature of mathematical knowledge in an exceptionally profound way. (shrink)

Willful blindness is not an appropriate substitute for knowledge in crimes that require a mens rea of knowledge because an actor who contrives his own ignorance is only sometimes as culpable as a knowing actor. This paper begins with the assumption that the classic willfully blind actor—the drug courier—is culpable. If so, any plausible account of willful blindness must provide criteria that find this actor culpable. This paper then offers two limiting cases: a criminal defense lawyer defending a client he (...) suspects of perjury and a pain doctor who suspects his patient may be lying about her pain. The paper argues that each of these actors is justified in cultivating ignorance about his client’s or patient’s truthfulness. If this is right, then a good theory of willful blindness must distinguish these cases. The article argues that neither Husak & Callender’s motivation-based account of willful blindness nor the recklessness account is able to do so. The paper proposes the following alternative: contrived ignorance constitutes culpable blindness when the decision to remain blind or to cultivate blindness is not itself justified. This Justification approach meshes with our intuitions about willfully blind drug couriers as well as willfully blind lawyers and doctors. (shrink)

This article examines the contradictions inherent in blind women’s appearance management. Based on an anthropological analysis of interviews with 40 blind women in Israel, the article argues that while serving as a valuable tool within stigma management, appearance management operates simultaneously as a site of rigorous discipline of the body in an effort to comply with feminine visual norms, and as a vehicle for the expression and reception of sensory pleasure. It argues for the significant role of blind women’s appearance (...) in negotiating normalcy and rejecting the normative, stigmatizing script written for them as disabled-blind-women. By studying the role of appearance in the lives of women who do not rely on sight as a central mode of perception, the article addresses the complicated position of blind women in visual culture and challenges the traditional ocular focus of the study of feminine identity and gender performance. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify several interpretive problems posed by the final part ofDAII.11 (423b27–424 a10), where Aristotle intertwines the thesis that a sense is like a ‘mean’ and an explanation for the existence of a ‘blind spot’ related to the sense of touch, adding the further contention that we are capable of discriminating because the mean ‘becomes the other opposite’ in relation to the perceptible property being perceived. To solve those problems, the paper explores a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s (...) claims, arguing that they describe a homeostatic physiological reaction by which the sensory apparatus responds to perceptible stimuli. According to the proposed interpretation, such homeostatic reaction constitutes a necessary condition for perceiving what Aristotle refers to as ‘proper’ perceptible features, which include properties like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ as well as colors and sounds. (shrink)

There is considerable debate amongst philosophers as to the basic philosophical problem Wittgenstein is attempting to solve in _Philosophical Investigations_. In this bold and original work, Meredith Williams argues that it is the problem of "normative similarity". In _Blind Obedience_ Williams demonstrates how Wittgenstein criticizes traditional, representationalist theories of language by employing the ‘master/novice’ distinction of the learner, arguing that this distinction is often overlooked but fundamental to understanding philosophical problems about mind and language. The book not only provides revealing (...) discussions of Wittgenstein’s corpus but also intricate analyses of the work of Brandom, Dummett, Frege, Sellars, Davidson, Cavell and others. These are usefully compared in a bid to better situate Wittgenstein’s non-intellectualist, non-theoretical approach and to highlight is unique features. (shrink)

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein cites the Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Koehler almost as often as he cites William James in his posthumously published writings on the philosophy of psychology. Yet, few treatments of the Wittgenstein–Koehler relation in the philosophical literature could be called sustained discussions. Moreover, most of them treat Koehler as a mere whipping boy for Wittgenstein, one more opportunity to criticize the practice of psychologists. This article emphasizes how much the two thinkers agreed, and the extent to which some (...) of Wittgenstein’s work not only agreed with but also has a logical structure parallel to some of Koehler’s text. Both thinkers hold that the theoretician should strive to recognize and resist the impulse to step in and purify, distill, streamline, or exclude phenomena: common, everyday experience for Koehler and common, everyday uses of words for Wittgenstein. They both aim to counteract the tendency to discount and disparage what is ordinary and common. (shrink)

The foregoing considerations have shown that on the Fregean model, no descriptive rendition of the meaning of a word, and no feature of the subject's psychological state, will be sufficient to answer the question of how reference takes place. Reference is determined by an independent semantical object, and the mind is limited by its perceptual access to this external semantical realm. The psychological and epistemic states of the language user will be causally influenced by this perceptual contact, and such causal (...) influences will enable the subject to evince the appropriate behavioral signs of comprehension. But the internal effects produced by the perception of meaning are not in principle sufficient to individuate their semantical causes, and hence some of the prominent criticisms of the traditional theory are simply not applicable to Frege's system. (shrink)

Bringing sex and philosophy together on a blind date, Anne Dufourmantelle’s provocative study uses this analogy to uncover and examine philosophy’s blind spot. Delightful and startling comparisons spring from the date: both sex and philosophy are dangerous, both are socially subversive, and both are obsessions. Although sex and philosophy have much in common, however, they have scarcely known one another until now. Socrates and Diogenes had little to say about sex, and although it was notoriously explored by the Marquis de (...) Sade, this study explains why philosophy has never been fully sexualized nor sex really philosophized. Blind Date highlights the marked deletion of sexual topics and themes from philosophical works, while also opening doors for their union. Inviting readers to remember that thought does not require repressed desire, Dufourmantelle argues that sex is everywhere, and it affects all kinds of thinking. (shrink)

The introduction of new medical treatments based on invasive technologies has often been surrounded by both hopes and fears. Hope, since a new intervention can create new opportunities either in terms of providing a cure for the disease or impairment at hand; or as alleviation of symptoms. Fear, since an invasive treatment involving implanting a medical device can result in unknown complications such as hardware failure and undesirable medical consequences. However, hopes and fears may also arise due to the cultural (...) embeddedness of technology, where a therapy due to ethical, social, political and religious concerns could be perceived as either a blessing or a threat. While Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for treatment resistant depression (TRD) is still in its cradle, it is important to be proactive and try to scrutinize both surfacing hopes and fears. Patients will not benefit if a promising treatment is banned or avoided due to unfounded fears, nor will they benefit if DBS is used without scrutinizing the arguments which call for caution. Hence blind optimism is equally troublesome. We suggest that specificity, both in terms of a detailed account of relevant scientific concerns as well as ethical considerations, could be a way to analyse expressed concerns regarding DBS for TRD. This approach is particularly fruitful when applied to hopes and fears evoked by DBS for TRD, since it can reveal if our comprehension of DBS for TRD suffer from various biases which may remain unnoticed at first glance. We suggest that such biases exist, albeit a further analysis is needed to explore this issue in full. (shrink)

Many special problems crop up when evolutionary theory turns, quite naturally, to the question of the adaptive value and causal role of consciousness in human and nonhuman organisms. One problem is that -- unless we are to be dualists, treating it as an independent nonphysical force -- consciousness could not have had an independent adaptive function of its own, over and above whatever behavioral and physiological functions it "supervenes" on, because evolution is completely blind to the difference between a conscious (...) organism and a functionally equivalent (Turing Indistinguishable) nonconscious "Zombie" organism: In other words, the Blind Watchmaker, a functionalist if ever there was one, is no more a mind reader than we are. Hence Turing-Indistinguishability = Darwin-Indistinguishability. It by no means follows from this, however, that human behavior is therefore to be explained only by the push-pull dynamics of Zombie determinism, as dictated by calculations of "inclusive fitness" and "evolutionarily stable strategies." We are conscious, and, more important, that consciousness is piggy-backing somehow on the vast complex of unobservable internal activity -- call it "cognition" -- that is really responsible for generating all of our behavioral capacities. Hence, except in the palpable presence of the irrational (e.g., our sexual urges) where distal Darwinian factors still have some proximal sway, it is as sensible to seek a Darwinian rather than a cognitive explanation for most of our current behavior as it is to seek a cosmological rather than an engineering explanation of an automobile's behavior. Let evolutionary theory explain what shaped our cognitive capacity (Steklis & Harnad 1976; Harnad 1996, but let cognitive theory explain our resulting behavior. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

In the property listing task (PLT), participants are asked to list properties for a concept (e.g., for the concept dog, “barks,” and “is a pet” may be produced). In conceptual property norming (CPNs) studies, participants are asked to list properties for large sets of concepts. Here, we use a mathematical model of the property listing process to explore two longstanding issues: characterizing the difference between concrete and abstract concepts, and characterizing semantic knowledge in the blind versus sighted population. When we (...) apply our mathematical model to a large CPN reporting properties listed by sighted and blind participants, the model uncovers significant differences between concrete and abstract concepts. Though we also find that blind individuals show many of the same processing differences between abstract and concrete concepts found in sighted individuals, our model shows that those differences are noticeably less pronounced than in sighted individuals. We discuss our results vis‐a‐vis theories attempting to characterize abstract concepts. (shrink)

It is estimated that over 800 million people are hungry each day and two billion are suffering from the consequences of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. While a paradigm shift towards a multi-dimensional and multi-sectoral approach to food and nutrition insecurity is emerging, technical approaches largely prevail to tackle the causes of hunger and malnutrition. Founded in original in-depth field research among smallholder farmers in southwest Kenya, we argue that incorporating cultural or social dimensions in this technical debate is imperative and (...) that by systematically overlooking these dimensions, food insecurity cannot be accurately captured nor properly addressed. Based on a sub-location in rural southwest Kenya where the food plate is rapidly narrowing towards a high-calorie low nutrient diet and where over 80 % of households experience food shortages at least once a year, conclusions suggest that preferences, the local function of food, and the practices that emerge therefrom can affect the regularity of meals and their composition. The findings allow us to complement emerging research and program development with a more comprehensive and locally adapted approach to tackle food and nutrition insecurity. (shrink)

One curious phenomenon of several social groups is that they are ‘redundant’ in the sense that they contain more cooperators than strictly needed to complete certain group tasks, such as foraging. Redundancy is puzzling because redundant groups are particularly susceptible to invasion by defectors. Yet, redundancy can be found in groups formed by a wide range of organisms, including insects and microbes. Birch has recently argued that coercive behaviours might account for redundancy using insect colonies as a case study. However, (...) microbial examples suggest redundancy can evolve without coercive behaviours. This paper formulates an explanation for redundancy that does not require targeted punishment of defectors; instead, it proposes that redundancy might be due to ignorance. Specifically, it is suggested that redundancy evolves as a by-product of selection when group members have to opt whether to cooperate or not while being blind to the strategies of others. Accordingly, possessing information about the strategies of the group members might undermine rather than facilitate cooperation within groups. 1The Evolution of Redundancy 2Explaining Redundancy via Coercion 3Explaining Redundancy via Ignorance 3.1Cooperation behind the Darwinian veil of ignorance 3.2Modelling group tasks with a public goods game 3.3Group tasks under harsh environments 4Conclusion. (shrink)

Likert-scale surveys are frequently used in cross-cultural studies on leadership. Recent publications using digital text algorithms raise doubt about the source of variation in statistics from such studies to the extent that they are semantically driven. The Semantic Theory of Survey Response (STSR) predicts that in the case of semantically determined answers, the response patterns may also be predictable across languages. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) was applied to 11 different ethnic samples in English, Norwegian, German, Urdu and Chinese. Semantic (...) algorithms predicted responses significantly across all conditions, although to varying degree. Comparisons of Norwegian, German, Urdu and Chinese samples in native versus English language versions suggest that observed differences are not culturally dependent but caused by different translations and understanding. The maximum variance attributable to culture was a 5% unique overlap of variation in the two Chinese samples. These findings question the capability of traditional surveys to detect cultural differences. It also indicates that cross-cultural leadership research may risk lack of practical relevance. (shrink)

A new generation of environmental satellites, the Sentinels, has recently been launched by the European Space Agency. Part of ESA’s Copernicus Programme, the sentinel mission has adopted an Open Data policy which intends to make different levels of data freely available via an online data hub. Sentinel data will support applications including land monitoring, emergency management and security and will thus form the evidence-base for a wide-range of local, regional, national and international decisions, from individual insurance claims to humanitarian interventions. (...) By providing ever more data streams for monitoring and managing the planet, the sentinels institute a novel mode of visibility in terms of resolution, coverage and frequency. At the same time, they are co-constitutive of the increasing datafication of the environment. In the entwinement of heavenly gaze and data visions, I want to recover the work of ‘data fictions’ in order to demystify notions of visibility and calculability associated with “earth observation” and trouble its unquestioned pursuit of total monitoring. (shrink)