Research Articles C. Bradley Thompson, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

As a way forward in assessing how the Old Testament wisdom tradition might speak to decisions in a modern medical context, in this paper, I propose exploring the iconographic function of the “tree of life” in the Old Testament, which is consistently associated with both wisdom as well as life and health, in order to tease out two-related issues that can help in providing a Christian theological framework for thinking about the problem of the medicalization of risk: first, how should (...) the natural and good human desire for health and long life be framed in terms of the pursuit of wisdom? And, second, how might a sapientially formed character approach risk and uncertainty in making medical decisions? The answers to these questions help establish a framework in which more specific questions related to the medicalization of risk can be assessed. As such, this paper is deliberately programmatic and perspectival rather than prescriptive. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories (CTs) are widespread ways by which people make sense of unsettling or disturbing cultural events. Belief in CTs is often connected to problematic consequences, such as decreased engagement with conventional political action or even political extremism, so understanding the psychological and social qualities of CTs belief is important. CTs have often been understood to be “monological”, displaying the tendency for belief in one conspiracy theory to be correlated with belief in (many) others. Explanations of monologicality invoke a nomothetical (...) or “closed” mindset whereby mutually supporting beliefs based on mistrust of official explanations are used to interpret public events as conspiracies, independent of the facts about those events (which they may ignore or deny). But research on monologicality offers little discussion of the content of monological beliefs and reasoning from the standpoint of the CT believers. This is due in part to the “access problem” (Wood & Douglas, 2015): CT believers are averse to being researched because they often distrust researchers and what they appear to represent. We used several strategies to address the access problem, and investigated the symbolic resources underlying CTs by reconstructing a conspiracy worldview - a set of beliefs held by CT believers about important dimensions of ontology, epistemology, and human agency. To do this, we analysed media documents, conducted field observation, and engaged in semi-structured interviews,. We describe six main dimensions of a conspiracy worldview: Views of the nature of reality, the self, the outgroup, the ingroup, action, and the future. We also describe a typology of five types of CT believers, which vary according to their positions on each of these dimensions. Our findings converge with prior explorations of CT beliefs but also revealed novel aspects: A sense of community among CT believers, a highly differentiated representation of the outgroup, a personal journey of conversion, variegated kinds of political action, and optimistic belief in future change. These findings are at odds with the typical image of monological CT believers as paranoid, cynical, anomic and irrational. For many, the CT worldview may rather constitute the ideological underpinning of a nascent pre-figurative social movement. (shrink)

Historically confined to the disadvantaged ranks of the stratification system, evangelical Christians have increasingly joined the corporate elite, eliciting concern from some and sanguinity from others. Quantitative studies of the effects of religion on executive behavior have thus far shown mixed and inconclusive effects, and those few qualitative analyses that have focused on evangelical business leaders have generally emphasized conflict between religion and business but failed adequately to explore areas of consonance. While evangelical executives do, in fact, experience conflict associated (...) with their professional contexts, this tension arises not because business and religion are inherently opposed, as some have argued, but because evangelical business leaders are made to feel like second-class citizens by members of their own faith communities. Indeed, in cases of apparent conflict between faith and business, evangelical executives insist that it is faith, not business, that must be reconceived. Equipped with an array of strategies for demonstrating that business is a sacred institution and a worthy occupation, evangelical business leaders hope to restore faith in business as they apply their faith in business. In these evangelical executives and their accounts, the "spirit of capitalism," defined by Max Weber as a positive attitude toward both work and wealth, finds ongoing embrace and new expression, with implications for understanding the so-called faith at work movement, evangelicalism, and the role of religion among elites. (shrink)

Sensory deficits are a feature of autism and schizophrenia, as well as the upper end of their non-clinical spectra. The mismatch negativity (MMN), an index of pre-attentive auditory processing, is particularly sensitive in detecting such deficits; however, little is known about the relationship between the visual MMN (vMMN) to facial emotions and autism and schizophrenia spectrum symptom domains. We probed the vMMN to happy, sad, and neutral faces in 61 healthy adults (18–40 years, 32 female), and evaluated their degree of (...) autism and schizophrenia spectrum traits using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). The vMMN to happy faces was significantly larger than the vMMNs to sad and neutral faces. The vMMN to happy faces was associated with interpersonal difficulties as indexed by AQ Communication and Attention to Detail subscales, and SPQ associated with more interpersonal difficulties. These data suggest that pre-attentive processing of positive affect might be more specific to the interpersonal features associated with autism and schizophrenia. These findings add valuable insights into the growing body of literature investigating symptom-specific neurobiological markers of autism and schizophrenia spectrum conditions. (shrink)

An incomplete science begets imperfect models. Nevertheless, the target article advocates for jettisoning deep-learning models with some competency in object recognition for toy models evaluated against a checklist of laboratory findings; an approach which evokes Alan Newell's 20 questions critique. We believe their approach risks incoherency and neglects the most basic test; can the model perform its intended task.

A frequent objection to the fine-tuning argument has been that although certain necessary conditions for life were admittedly exceedingly improbable, still, the many possible alternative sets of conditions were all equally improbable, so that no special significance is to be attached to the realization of the conditions of life. Some authors, however, have rejected this objection as fallacious. The object of this paper is to state the objection to the fine-tuning argument in a more telling form than has been done (...) hitherto, and to meet the charge of fallacy. (shrink)

The purpose of this valuable book is to consider recent cultural trends in bioethics from a Catholic perspective. Bioethics is intended for a lay audience interested in understanding bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective.

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

An allocation problem is a type of aggregation problem in which the values of individuals' opinions on some set of variables (canonically a set of mutually exclusive and exhaustive possibilities) sum to a constant. This paper shows that for realistic allocation problems, namely ones in which the set of possible opinion values is finite, the only universal aggregation methods that satisfy two commonly invoked conditions are the dictatorial ones. The two conditions are, first, that the aggregate opinion on any variable (...) depends only on the individuals' opinions on that variable and not on their opinions on any other variable and, secondly, that the aggregate opinion minimally preserves unanimous individual opinion. Connections between this result and similar ones in the literature on judgment aggregation are explored and their significance assessed. (shrink)

Corporations and investors are responding to recent major ethical scandals with increased attention to the social impacts of business operations. In turn, business colleges and their international accrediting body are increasing their efforts to make students more aware of the social context of corporate activity. Business education literature lacks data on student attitudes toward such education. This study found that postscandal business students, particularly women, are indeed interested in it. Their interest is positively related to their past donation, volunteerism, and (...) non-profit organization membership activities, whether limited or extensive. Some evidence supports the proposition that education can modify internal principles over time. We offer suggestions for classroom and program uses of these findings in hopes of enriching the vision of future business managers. (shrink)

James Ladyman has argued that constructive empiricism entails modal realism, and that this renders constructive empiricism untenable. We maintain that constructive empiricism is compatible with modal nominalism. Although the central term 'observable' has been analyzed in terms of counterfactuals, and in general counterfactuals do not have objective truth conditions, the property of being observable is not a modal property, and hence there are objective, non-modal facts about what is observable. Both modal nominalism and constructive empiricism require clarification in the face (...) of Ladyman's argument. But we also argue that, even if Ladyman were right that constructive empiricism entails modal realism, this would not be a problem for constructive empiricism. (shrink)

Building on philosophy of science literature and two original studies, this paper argues for the necessity of incorporating all three portions of Wood''s (1991) theoretical model of corporate social performance (CSP) into its measurement. It begins by describing the two studies of an organizational phenomenon not commonly studied – internal fund drives to employees. Insights from these studies of corporate PAC and United Way campaigns are then used to illustrate how important it is to incorporate all three portions of Wood''s (...) model into the measurement of CSP to prevent drawing faulty conclusions. The paper concludes by providing a matrix for use in testing the validity of CSP measures. (shrink)

The prominence of Bayesian modeling of cognition has increased recently largely because of mathematical advances in specifying and deriving predictions from complex probabilistic models. Much of this research aims to demonstrate that cognitive behavior can be explained from rational principles alone, without recourse to psychological or neurological processes and representations. We note commonalities between this rational approach and other movements in psychology – namely, Behaviorism and evolutionary psychology – that set aside mechanistic explanations or make use of optimality assumptions. Through (...) these comparisons, we identify a number of challenges that limit the rational program's potential contribution to psychological theory. Specifically, rational Bayesian models are significantly unconstrained, both because they are uninformed by a wide range of process-level data and because their assumptions about the environment are generally not grounded in empirical measurement. The psychological implications of most Bayesian models are also unclear. Bayesian inference itself is conceptually trivial, but strong assumptions are often embedded in the hypothesis sets and the approximation algorithms used to derive model predictions, without a clear delineation between psychological commitments and implementational details. Comparing multiple Bayesian models of the same task is rare, as is the realization that many Bayesian models recapitulate existing (mechanistic level) theories. Despite the expressive power of current Bayesian models, we argue they must be developed in conjunction with mechanistic considerations to offer substantive explanations of cognition. We lay out several means for such an integration, which take into account the representations on which Bayesian inference operates, as well as the algorithms and heuristics that carry it out. We argue this unification will better facilitate lasting contributions to psychological theory, avoiding the pitfalls that have plagued previous theoretical movements. (shrink)

Human sleeping arrangements have evolved over time and differ across cultures. The majority of adults share their bed at one time or another with a partner or child, and many also sleep with pets. In fact, around half of dog and cat owners report sharing a bed or bedroom with their pet. However, interspecies co-sleeping has been trivialized in the literature relative to interpersonal or human-human co-sleeping, receiving little attention from an interdisciplinary psychological perspective. In this paper, we provide a (...) historical outline of the “civilizing process” that has led to current sociocultural conceptions of sleep as an individual, private function crucial for the functioning of society and the health of individuals. We identify similar historical processes at work in the formation of contemporary constructions of socially normative sleeping arrangements for humans and animals. Importantly, since previous examinations of co-sleeping practices have anthropocentrically framed this topic, the result is an incomplete understanding of co-sleeping practices. By using dogs as an exemplar of human-animal co-sleeping, and comparing human-canine sleeping with adult-child co-sleeping, we determine that both forms of co-sleeping share common factors for establishment and maintenance, and often result in similar benefits and drawbacks. We propose that human-animal and adult-child co-sleeping should be approached as legitimate and socially relevant forms of co-sleeping, and we recommend that co-sleeping be approached broadly as a social practice involving relations with humans and other animals. Because our proposition is speculative and derived from canine-centric data, we recommend ongoing theoretical refinement grounded in empirical research addressing co-sleeping between humans and multiple animal species. (shrink)

Freedom and the Rule of Law takes a critical look at the historical beginnings of law in the United States, and how that history has influenced current trends regarding law and freedom. Anthony Peacock has compiled articles that examine the relationship between freedom and the rule of law in America. The rule of law is fundamental to all liberal constitutional regimes whose political orders recognize the equal natural rights of all.

This article seeks to answer why North—South climate negotiations have gone on for decades without producing any substantial results. To address this question, we revisit and seek to integrate insights from several disparate theories, including structuralism (new and old), world systems theory, rational choice institutionalism, and social constructivism. We argue that the lack of convergence on climate grew almost inevitably from our starkly unequal world, which has created and perpetuated highly divergent ways of thinking (worldviews and causal beliefs) and promoted (...) particularistic notions of fairness (principled beliefs). We attempt to integrate structural insights about global inequality with the micro-motives of rational choice institutionalism. The structuralist insight that ‘unchecked inequality undermines cooperation’ suggests climate negotiations must be broadened to include a range of seemingly unrelated development issues such as trade, investment, debt, and intellectual property rights agreements. We conclude by reviewing the work of some ‘norm entrepreneurs’ bringing justice issues into climate negotiations and explore how these insights might influence ‘burden sharing’ discussions in the post-Kyoto world, where development is constrained by climate change. (shrink)