This study tested four theoretical models of leadership with data from the ethnographic record. The first was a game-theoretical model of leadership in collective actions, in which followers prefer and reward a leader who monitors and sanctions free-riders as group size increases. The second was the dominance model, in which dominant leaders threaten followers with physical or social harm. The third, the prestige model, suggests leaders with valued skills and expertise are chosen by followers who strive to emulate them. The (...) fourth proposes that in small-scale, kin-based societies, men with high neural capital are best able to achieve and maintain positions of social influence (e.g., as headmen) and thereby often become polygynous and have more offspring than other men, which positively selects for greater neural capital. Using multiple search strategies we identified more than 1000 texts relevant to leadership in the Probability Sample of 60 cultures from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). We operationalized the model with variables and then coded all retrieved text records on the presence or absence of evidence for each of these 24 variables. We found mixed support for the collective action model, broad support for components of the prestige leadership style and the importance of neural capital and polygyny among leaders, but more limited support for the dominance leadership style. We found little evidence, however, of emulation of, or prestige-biased learning toward, leaders. We found that improving collective actions, having expertise, providing counsel, and being respected, having high neural capital, and being polygynous are common properties of leaders, which warrants a synthesis of the collective action, prestige, and neural capital and reproductive skew models. We sketch one such synthesis involving high-quality decision-making and other computational services. (shrink)

Attribution theorists assume that character information informs judgments of blame. But there is disagreement over why. One camp holds that character information is a fundamental determinant of blame. Another camp holds that character information merely provides evidence about the mental states and processes that determine responsibility. We argue for a two-channel view, where character simultaneously has fundamental and evidential effects on blame. In two large factorial studies (n = 495), participants rate whether someone is blameworthy when he makes a mistake (...) (burns a cake or misses a bus stop). Although mental state inferences predict blame judgments, character information does not. Using mediation analyses, we find that character information influences responsibility via two channels (Studies 3–4; n = 447), which are sensitive to different kinds of information (Study 5; n = 149). On the one hand, forgetfulness increases judgments of responsibility, because mental lapses manifest an objectionable character flaw. On the other hand, forgetfulness decreases judgments of state control, which in turn decreases responsibility judgments. These two channels cancel out, which is why we find no aggregate effect of forgetfulness on responsibility. Our results challenge several fundamental assumptions about the role of character information in moral judgment, including that good character typically mitigates blame. (shrink)

The common “human in the loop” narrative in artificial intelligence (AI) implementation is in critical need of analysis and explanation, as Salloch and Eriksen (2024) rightfully argue. Researchers...

For decades, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have questioned the appropriateness and utility of prior review of their research by human subjects' ethics committees. This essay seeks to organize thematically some of their published complaints and to serve as a brief restatement of the major critiques of ethics review. In particular, it argues that 1) ethics committees impose silly restrictions, 2) ethics review is a solution in search of a problem, 3) ethics committees lack expertise, 4) ethics committees (...) apply inappropriate principles, 5) ethics review harms the innocent, and 6) better options exist. (shrink)

Although mind-wandering occupies up to half of our waking thoughts, it is seldom discussed in philosophy. My paper brings these neglected thoughts into focus. I propose that mind-wandering is unguided attention. Guidance in my sense concerns how attention is monitored and regulated as it unfolds over time. Roughly speaking, someone’s attention is guided if she would feel pulled back, were she distracted from her current focus. Because our wandering thoughts drift unchecked from topic to topic, they are unguided. One motivation (...) for my theory is what I call the “Puzzle of the Purposeful Wanderer”. On the one hand, mind-wandering seems essentially purposeless; almost by definition, it contrasts with goal-directed cognition. On the other hand, empirical evidence suggests that our minds frequently wander to our goals. My solution to the puzzle is this: mind-wandering is purposeless in one way—it is unguided—but purposeful in another—it is frequently caused, and thus motivated, by our goals. Another motivation for my theory is to distinguish mind-wandering from two antithetical forms of cognition: absorption and rumination. Surprisingly, previous theories cannot capture these distinctions. I can: on my view, absorption and rumination are guided, whereas mind-wandering is not. My paper has four parts. Section 1 spells out the puzzle. Sections 2 and 3 explicate two extant views of mind-wandering—the first held by most cognitive scientists, the second by Thomas Metzinger. Section 4 uses the limitations of these theories to motivate my own: mind-wandering is unguided attention. (shrink)

La démarchandisation, ou la capacité à maintenir un niveau de vie raisonnable pour une personne incapable de participer au marché du travail, est l’objectif principal des prestations liées au handicap. Toutefois, peu de recherches ont été menées jusqu’à présent pour savoir si les dispositifs mis en œuvre atteignent cet objectif dans le monde réel. Cet article propose un retour socio-historique sur les dispositifs de prestations handicap et décrit les réformes entreprises, qui sont largement transnationales à l’ère post-industrielle. L’article évalue ensuite (...) la manière dont ces dispositifs démarchandisent en s’appuyant sur des données qui englobent neuf pays et deux systèmes de politiques en faveur des personnes handicapées, à partir de données tirées de l’enquête sur la santé, le vieillissement et les retraites en Europe. Il présente et analyse enfin des mesures visant à améliorer la démarchandisation induite par les dispositifs liés au handicap, tout en proposant un programme de recherche pour l’avenir. (shrink)

I investigate the meaning and significance of Spinoza’s elusive concept of “expression”. I do so by situating expression among his canonical relations of conception, causation, and inherence. I argue that, for Spinoza, expression necessarily corresponds to what is sufficient for conception, but implies neither causation nor inherence. This correspondence with sufficient conditions on conception and the pulling apart of expression from causation and inherence has important consequences for our grasp of the interconnections among Spinoza’s key metaphysical relations. But it also (...) has profound implications for our understanding of the essential structure of Spinoza’s ontology itself, and for the proper assessment of his rationalism. I explore these consequences by explicating Spinoza’s assertion that substance and each of its attributes are “conceived through themselves”, and by demonstrating that, on his view, the relation of conception is not to be accounted for in causal terms. A systematic treatment of the expression relation sheds new light on these issues. The result is a view of the underpinnings of Spinoza’s metaphysics that is as surprising as it is compelling. (shrink)

Chad Flanders has argued that retributivism is inconsistent with John Rawls’s core notion of public reason, which sets out those considerations on which legitimate exercises of state power can be based. Flanders asserts that retributivism is grounded in claims about which people can reasonably disagree and are thus not suitable grounds for public policy. This essay contends that Rawls’s notion of public reason does not provide a basis for rejecting retributivist justifications of punishment. I argue that Flanders’s interpretation of public (...) reason is too exclusionary: on it, public reason would rule out any prominent rationale for punishment. On what I contend is a better interpretation of public reason, whether retributivism would be ruled out as a rationale for punishment depends on whether a retributivist account can be constructed from shared political commitments in a liberal democracy. Some prominent versions of retributivism meet this requirement and so are consistent with public reason. (shrink)

In this Special Issue of Journal of Critical Realism on Normativity, Elder-Vass has provided a paper that in part responds to one that Chris Winship and I wrote together, which was presented at the...

Motivated reasoning occurs when we reason differently about evidence that supports our prior beliefs than when it contradicts those beliefs. Adult participants (N = 377) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) system completed written responses critically evaluating strengths and weaknesses in a vignette on the topic of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). The vignette had two fictional scientists present prototypical arguments for and against anthropogenic climate change that were constructed with equally flawed and conflicting reasoning. The current study tested and found support (...) for three main hypotheses: cognitive style, personality, and ideology would predict both motivated reasoning and endorsement of human caused climate change; those who accept human-caused climate change will be less likely to engage in biased reasoning and more likely to engage in objective reasoning about climate change than those who deny human activity as a cause of climate change. (144 words). (shrink)

A semantic theory aims to make predictions that are accurate and comprehensive. Sometimes, though, a semantic theory falls short of this aim, and there is a mismatch between prediction and data. In such cases, defenders of the semantic theory often attempt to rescue it by appealing to Gricean pragmatics. The hope is that we can rescue the theory as long as we can use pragmatics to explain away its predictive failures. This pragmatic rescue strategy is one of the most popular (...) moves in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and formal semantics. In this paper I argue that this strategy fails whenever the predictive failures at issue can be recast in epistemological or metaphysical terms. This general “reformulation argument” undermines a wide variety of pragmatic rescue attempts. (shrink)

Despite a strong historical record of resettling and providing care for refugee populations, the Australian Federal Government has increasingly implemented harsh and restrictive policies regarding the treatment and management of asylum seekers. Most controversial of these has been the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, a policy applied indiscriminately and without discretion where individual cases have not been subject to judicial review or time constraints. From the outset health professionals have raised concerns about the possible adverse mental health impacts of prolonged (...) detention. In contrast, government representatives have characterized conditions in detention as benign and comfortable, and have consistently contested criticism of detention, often citing a lack of scientific evidence as tacit support for the continuation of the policy. Nevertheless, requests for access to the detention centres to undertake rigorous scientific investigations have gone unheeded. In this context we argue that the Australian Government has failed to uphold its commitment to good governance by allowing transparency, openness and a willingness to have the impact of its policies scrutinized by scientists. The manifest conflict of interest in the government position leads to a breach in the normal social contract between mental health researchers and those responsible for the policy of detention. There is, we argue, a legitimate moral imperative in such situations for clinical researchers to breach the walls of enforced silence and give a voice to those who are afflicted. This imperative, however, must be carefully balanced against the risks that may face detainees agreeing to participate in such research. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that a process of choosing a point at random from the surface of a sphere can be probabilistically symmetric, in the sense that any two regions of the sphere which differ by a rotation are equally likely to include the chosen point. Isaacs, Hájek, and Hawthorne (2022) argue from such symmetry principles and the mathematical paradoxes of measure to the existence of imprecise chances and the rationality of imprecise credences. Williamson (2007) has argued from a (...) related symmetry principle to the failure of probabilistic regularity. We contend that these arguments fail, because they rely on auxiliary assumptions about probability which are inconsistent with symmetry to begin with. We argue, moreover, that symmetry should be rejected in light of this inconsistency, and because it has implausible decision- theoretic implications. -/- The weaker principle of probabilistic invariance says that the probabilistic comparison of any two regions is unchanged by rotations of the sphere. This principle supports a more compelling argument for imprecise probability. We show, however, that invariance is incompatible with mundane judgments about what is probable. Ultimately, we find reason to be suspicious of the application of principles like symmetry and invariance to nonmeasurable regions. (shrink)

Brought to you by: Crop X editors: Jonathan Alexander Perez, Harmony Smith, Corinne Tendorf, David Turturo, and Derek Rahn Williams. Faculty Advisor: David Turturo; Crop X team included: Chaimae Alehyane, Zachary S. Casey, Suzanna Brinez, Jacob Brown, Elizabeth George, Francisco Javier Muniz Ituarte, Brodey Myers. -/- Credits: Huckabee College of Architecture; Graphic Designers: Studio BLDG (Blossom Liu + Danny Gray); English Editor: Luke Studebaker; Spanish Translator: Jessie Forbes; Printer: Die Keure. Cover Photo: Derek Williams. -/- Generously supported by the (...) Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Huckabee College of Architecture, Texas Tech University. (shrink)

Several other commentators capably articulate and defend an important objection to Christie, Brusse, et al.: the claim that the existence of a trait is entirely, rather than partially explained by the effects for which it was selected is stronger than the selected effects theorist needs or seeks to defend. Nonetheless, Christie, Brusse, et al.’s cases do draw our attention to a point about the explanatory relation between selected effects functions and their bearers that has not been emphasized by selected effects (...) theorists, although some have quietly accommodated it. This is the idea that, for a trait T to be for performing F, T’s ability to perform F must figure in an explanation of T’s existence in a particular way. It is not T’s absolute propensity to produce F as an effect but its comparative propensity, as compared with alternatives to T, that must figure in the explanation. The pattern of explanation sought by selected effects theorists to underwrite function attributions therefore requires a correct choice of comparison class. When we spell this idea out, we arrive at a hypothesis about what is bothering Christie, Brusse, et al. about the cases they find problematic. Consider their Gouldian finches. Focusing on the role of comparative propensities, the difficulty becomes clear: the claim that the red-heads’ hormonal levels have persisted in the finch population because they have had the effect of dislodging competitors more reliably than the black-heads’ hormonal levels is incorrect. The red-head phenotype doesn’t stick around by outdoing the black-heads at dislodging, since the black-heads can’t be outdone at something they are not in the business of doing in the first place. However, this point is not in the end a serious problem for selected effects theories because the problem comes from a wrong choice of comparison class: namely, black-heads, rather than inferior red-heads. If the hormonal trait of today’s red-heads reached or persists at its present frequency because of some historical selection against other, perhaps quite similar, hawkish variants, this trait will be for dislodging competitors, since it is around because it outdid those alternatives at dislodging. (shrink)

The question of humanness requires a philosophical anthropology and we need a revision of what philosophical anthropology means in light of contemporary efforts in speculative realism and object-oriented ontology. This is the main claim of the book which expands into the smaller supporting claims that 1) contemporary work in speculative realism indicates that Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein needs to be rethought in consideration of certain Kantian values 2) recent philosophical anthropology offers an incomplete look at the central concern of philosophical (...) anthropology, namely, the question of humanness 3) current ontological models do not account adequately for humanness, because they do not begin with humanness. From these considerations, a new ontological model better suited to account for humanness is proposed, spectral ontology. Under spectral ontology, Being is treated as a spectrum consisting of beings, nonbeings, and hyperbeings. Nonbeings, or nonrelational entities, and hyper-beings, are spectral insofar as they are like a specter which haunts the being that manifests in the world. Thus, spectral in this sense refers to both the nonrelational status of nonbeings and to an ontology which reflects such a spectrum of Being. (shrink)

One widely-endorsed argument in the experimental philosophy literature maintains that intuitive judgments are unreliable because they are influenced by the order in which thought experiments prompting those judgments are presented. Here, we explicitly state this argument from ordering effects and show that any plausible understanding of the argument leads to an untenable conclusion. First, we show that the normative principle is ambiguous. On one reading of the principle, the empirical observation is well-supported, but the normative principle is false. On the (...) other reading, the empirical observation has only weak support, and the normative principle, if correct, would impugn the reliability of deliberative reasoning, testimony, memory, and perception, since judgments in all these areas are sensitive to ordering in the relevant sense. We then reflect on what goes wrong with the argument. (shrink)

Doxastic normativism is the thesis that norms are constitutive of or essential to belief, such that no mental state not subject to those norms counts as a belief. A common normativist view is that belief is essentially governed by a norm of truth. According to Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi, truth norms for belief cannot be formulated without unpalatable consequences: they are either false or they impose unsatisfiable requirements on believers. I propose that we construe the fundamental norm of belief (...) as a knowledge norm, rather than a truth norm. I argue that a specific kind of knowledge norm—one that has a subject's obligation to believe that p depend on her being in a position to know that p—might avoid the well-known formulation problems with truth norms. (shrink)

Human beings are highly irrational, at least if we hold to an economic standard of ‘rationality’. Experimental economics studies the irrational behavior of human beings, with the aim of understanding exactly how our behavior deviates from the Homo economicus, as ‘rational man’ has been called. Insofar as philosophical theories depend upon rationality assumptions, experimental economics is the source of both problems and (at least potential) solutions to several philosophical issues. This article offers a programmatic and highly biased survey of some (...) of these issues, with the hope of convincing the reader that experimental economics is well-deserving of careful study by philosophers. (shrink)

This paper considers the maturation of the American Catholic tradition of social and economic thought in the seminal period between 1920 and 1940, particularly as encapsulated in the work of John A. Ryan. While different social ethical models emerged in the American Church during this time, the dominant school of thought was the liberal tradition associated with Ryan. This tradition, which Ryan described as "true economic liberalism," forged American political liberalism and papal critiques of secular modernity into a new social (...) ethical theory which became the capstone of prewar Catholic progressivism. True economic liberalism first manifested itself in critiques of the Supreme Court's description of "freedom" in Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923). It took positive form during the 1920s in the widespread Catholic embrace of industrial democracy as a moral alternative to laissez-faire capitalism It was during the 1930s, however, when the Church confronted the economic crisis of the Great Depression, that true economic liberalism became a more totalizing system of social thought. It was also during the 1930s that this theory revealed the difficulties Catholic liberals have had in defining their relationship to a market economy and the state. On one hand, true economic liberalism provoked the creative maturation of Catholic thought and established the Church as a leading progressive critic of capitalism. At the same time, true economic liberalism circumscribed the possible depths of the Catholic moral critique. American Catholics liberals were so committed to constructing a social ethic that upheld "the priceless goods of liberty, opportunity, and democracy," that they accepted a reformed capitalism, guarded and chastened by religion, as the most desirable outcome for a modern economy. As John P. Carroll revealingly wrote, "The remedy, then, for the social evils. . . does not lie in the destruction of the present social system. The way to clean a house is not to dynamite it." By accommodating the Church's social ethic to the ideals of American democracy, liberal Catholics rejected radical reforms in favor of moderate legislative schemes which one writer described in Commonweal as "sniping at capitalism." It was for this reason that so many Catholics fawningly embraced the New Deal and, indeed, found in Franklin Roosevelt the supreme advocate for the principles set forth in Pius XI’s 1931 Quadragesimo Anno. (shrink)

In chapter 6 of An Essay on Free Will Peter van Inwagen presents an influential argument that we are justified in believing we are free. He does so by claiming that the determinist’s objection to the argument for the belief in freedom fails in the exact same way that the skeptic’s argument fails to prove that none of our empirical beliefs are justified. I show that this strategy to defend the belief in freedom fails due to a disanalogy. The failure (...) of his attempted defense raises the question whether there are any other arguments available to him for his target conclusion. I answer this question affirmatively by presenting an interesting argument for belief in freedom that van Inwagen gestures toward without ever explicitly formulating. Namely, that “If you deliberate about what to do while believing you’re not free, then you have inconsistent beliefs.” Alongside this conclusion, van Inwagen suggests that (1) inconsistency is an epistemic defect and (2) it is implausible that some truth is such that your simply believing it would make epistemically defective your engaging in so basic an activity as deliberation. In this way, the above conclusion plays an important role in van Inwagen’s overall argument for the thesis that we should (epistemically speaking) believe in free will. Finally, I show that this argument fares no better than the other. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers have disputed the nature of “artistic value” for over six decades, bringing much needed clarity and rigor to a subject discussed with fashionable obscurity in other disciplines. This essay frames debates between analytic philosophers on artistic value and suggests new directions for future research. In particular, the problem of “intrinsic value” is considered, that is, whether a work’s value derives from its experienced properties, as a work of art, or from cultural trends outside the work’s properties. It is (...) argued that neurobiological research helps resolve perceived differences between a work’s intrinsic and extrinsic values. A work can be both rewarding and punishing on its own, “intrinsic” merit—as a percipient, real thing in the world evoking predictable kinds of emotion—and with respect to ever shifting, “extrinsic” cultural norms. (shrink)

Brian Skyrms has argued that the evolution of the social contract may be explained using the tools of evolutionary game theory. I show in the first half of this paper that the evolutionary game-theoretic models are often highly sensitive to the specific processes that they are intended to simulate. This sensitivity represents an important robustness failure that complicates Skyrms's project. But I go on to make the positive proposal that we may none the less obtain robust results by simulating the (...) population structures that existed among our evolutionary ancestors. It is by extending the evolutionary models in this way that we should pursue the project of explaining the evolution of the social contract. (shrink)

Descartes maintains that we can love God and that it is pleasant and morally beneficial to do so. In this essay, I examine the necessary conditions for such an intellectual love of God. I argue that the intellectual love of God is incited by a judgment that we are joined to God in reality, which is constitutive of an intellectual joy. I go on to show that the intellectual love of God is, itself, constituted by a stripping of our private (...) interests in favor of God’s divine will. (shrink)

What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues—such as confirmation bias—further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief revision. In two experiments, participants considered a moral dilemma in which an overwhelming majority of people judged that it was inappropriate to take action (...) to maximize utility. Their judgments contradicted a utilitarian principle they otherwise strongly endorsed. Exposure to this scenario led participants to revise their belief in the utilitarian principle, and this revision persisted over several hours. This method provides a new avenue for inducing belief revision. (shrink)

Jewish Agrarian Movements (JAM hereafter) in North America express the many different shapes and iterations of Jewish farming on the continent, grounded in historical perspectives that influence current practices and activities. From within this diversity, common threads emerge with much to contribute to agrarian social movements and scholarship. Jewish values of returning (_t_’_shuvah_), releasing (_shmitah_), and repairing (_tikkun_), along with theories of _doikayt_ (an anti-zionist movement around “hereness”) and radical diasporism, animate JAM’s critical engagement with agri-food systems. As researchers who (...) have both studied and participated in Jewish agrarianism in a variety of U.S. and Canadian contexts, we solidify a series of themes and tensions that emerge from JAM: diaspora and indigeneity, modernity and tradition, Jewish agroecological knowledge production, and lived religion. We argue that, while JAM has not yet been examined thoroughly within critical food scholarship, it has the potential to contribute to broader debates and frameworks within sub-fields such as radical food geographies, critical agrarianism, and decoloniality. Without consideration of JAM as a part the study of food and agriculture, there are risks of marginalization of farmers, activists and researchers of Jewish identity. (shrink)

Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany examines the dual transformation of institutions and ideas that led to the emergence of theology as science, the paradigmatic project of modern theology associated with Friedrich Schleiermacher. Beginning with earlier educational reforms across central Europe and especially following the upheavals of the Napoleonic period, an impressive list of provocateurs, iconoclasts, and guardians of the old faith all confronted the nature of the university, the organization of knowledge, and the unity of theology's various parts, (...) quandaries which together bore the collective name of 'theological encyclopedia'. Schleiermacher's remarkably influential programme pioneered the structure and content of the theological curriculum and laid the groundwork for theology's historicization. Zachary Purvis offers a comprehensive investigation of Schleiermacher's programme through the era's two predominant schools: speculative theology and mediating theology. Purvis highlights that the endeavour ultimately collapsed in the context of Wilhelmine Germany and the Weimar Republic, beset by the rise of religious studies, radical disciplinary specialization, a crisis of historicism, and the attacks of dialectical theology. In short, the project represented university theology par excellence. Engaging in detail with these developments, Purvis weaves the story of modern university theology into the broader tapestry of German and European intellectual culture, with periodic comparisons to other national contexts. In doing so, he Purvis presents a substantially new way to understand the relationship between theology and the university, both in nineteenth-century Germany and, indeed, beyond. (shrink)

Individualist normative theories appear inadequate for the complex moral challenges of climate change. In climate ethics, this is especially notable with the relative marginalization of Kant. I argue that Kant’s philosophy, understood through its historical and cosmopolitan dimensions, has untapped potential for the climate crisis. First, I situate Kant in climate ethics and evaluate his marginalization due to perceived individualism, interiority and anthropocentrism. Then, I explore aspects of Kant’s historical and cosmopolitan writings, which present a global, future-orientated picture of humanity. (...) Ultimately, Kant’s philosophy offers a unique take on the climate deadlock capable of sustaining the individual in the collective. (shrink)

According to one recently popular “flicker of freedom” style response to Frankfurt-style arguments against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities—the “Triple O” flicker strategy—agents in Frankfurt-style cases are really or most fundamentally morally responsible for performing an action (A-ing) on their own, but not for A-ing simpliciter. This essay has two related aims. First, I offer an interpretation of the Triple O strategy which insulates it against an objection raised by Carolina Sartorio in “Flickers of Freedom and Moral Luck.” Second, I (...) argue that a sub-version of the strategy (“the inheritance view”) according to which agents in Frankfurt-style cases are derivatively responsible for A-ing simpliciter in virtue of A-ing on their own, for which they are basically responsible, is untenable. I show that “A-ing simpliciter” is not plausibly an outcome of “A-ing on one’s own” in the sense required for the transfer of responsibility. Several candidates for the generative relation via which responsibility might be transferred are canvassed, and it is found that none of these relations plausibly hold between an agent’s A-ing on his own and his A-ing simpliciter. Next, I identify the generative relation (if any) that does hold between these items and show that the direction of generation problematically conflicts with the direction of the inheritance view’s purported transfer of responsibility. (shrink)

A large body of research has indicated international students in the United States and abroad experience difficulties understanding what academic integrity is and how to avoid academic misconduct, 159–172 2011; Brown & Howell, 2001; Gullifer and Tyson Studies in Higher Education, 39, 1202-1218 2014). While most studies focus on academic misconduct and academic corruption in research ethics, 339-358 2014), this study analyzes the length, English-language readability, and translation of academic integrity policies of 453 four-year U.S. institutions of higher education. Findings (...) indicate average academic integrity policies are over 2000 words long, are written above the 16th-grade reading level, and are very rarely translated into a language other than English. In addition, no institutions published their academic integrity policies in full on their institutional international student website, possibly rendering the policy difficult to locate on the institution’s website for international students. Implications for research, policy, and practice are addressed. (shrink)

This paper attempts to establish that, and explain why, the practice of punishing offenders is in principle morally permissible. My account is a nonstandard version of the fair play view, according to which punishment 's permissibility derives from reciprocal obligations shared by members of a political community, understood as a mutually beneficial, cooperative venture. Most fair play views portray punishment as an appropriate means of removing the unfair advantage an offender gains relative to law-abiding members of the community. Such views (...) struggle, however, to provide a plausible account of this unfairly gained benefit. By contrast, on my account punishment 's permissibility follows more straightforwardly from the fair play view of political obligation: Specifically, the rule instituting punishment is itself among those rules with which members of the political community are obliged to comply. For criminal offenders, compliance requires submitting to the prospect of punishment. (shrink)

This paper presents a new system of logic, LF, that is intended to be used as the foundation of the formalization of science. That is, deductive validity according to LF is to be used as the criterion for assessing what follows from the verdicts, hypotheses, or conjectures of any science. In work currently in progress, we argue for the unique suitability of LF for the formalization of logic, mathematics, syntax, and semantics. The present document specifies the language and rules of (...) LF, lays out some notational conventions, and states some basic technical facts about the system. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend divine conceptualism against one prominent critique from William Lane Craig in his book God and Abstract Objects. Craig argues that the divine conceptualist’s only way out of the “bootstrapping objection” results in an unpalatable concession of defeat to the metaphysical anti-realist. Craig’s argument depends on an analysis whereby God is causally or logically prior to the divine concepts. As such, the conceptualist may resist it by adopting—following Ralph Cudworth—a version of divine conceptualism which does not (...) construe the relationship between God and His thoughts as one of either causal or logical priority. (shrink)

The current research investigates how prior preferences affect causal learning. Participants were tasked with repeatedly choosing policies (e.g., increase vs. decrease border security funding) in order to maximize the economic output of an imaginary country and inferred the influence of the policies on the economy. The task was challenging and ambiguous, allowing participants to interpret the relations between the policies and the economy in multiple ways. In three studies, we found evidence of motivated reasoning despite financial incentives for accuracy. For (...) example, participants who believed that border security funding should be increased were more likely to conclude that increasing border security funding actually caused a better economy in the task. In Study 2, we hypothesized that having neutral preferences (e.g., preferring neither increased nor decreased spending on border security) would lead to more accurate assessments overall, compared to having a strong initial preference; however, we did not find evidence for such an effect. In Study 3, we tested whether providing participants with possible functional forms of the policies (e.g., the policy takes some time to work or initially has a negative influence but eventually a positive influence) would lead to a smaller influence of motivated reasoning but found little evidence for this effect. This research advances the field of causal learning by studying the role of prior preferences, and in doing so, integrates the fields of causal learning and motivated reasoning using a novel explore‐exploit task. (shrink)

The main argument of this paper is that the debate on whether Nietzsche is communitarian or individualist is wrongheaded, failing to distinguish the conception of community and individual Nietzsche critiques, the 'mob' and the 'Higher Man', from the conceptions Nietzsche envisions and hopes for, his 'free spirits' and – what I call, based on the critique of indivisible subjects in the Genealogy of Morality – the idiosyncrasy. I propose a reading of Nietzsche which elaborates his novel conception of a non-ascetic (...) will to truth, based in courageous honesty and self-overcoming, rather than self-preservation, in order to conceive these individuals and communities. The coupling of Dionysus and Apollo has to be replaced with Dionysus and Ariadne because, using key terms from Deleuze's Nietzsche, the sense and value of critique is generated from a labyrinthine, Dionysian meaning as will to power and Ariadne's thread as evaluation based on the eternal recurrence, constituting the idiosyncrasy and the free spirits, respectively. (shrink)

A number of thinkers have been wondering about the moral obligations humans have, or will have, to intelligent technologies. An underlying assumption is that “moral machines” are decades in the offing, and thus we have no pressing obligations now. But, in the context of technology, we are yet to consider that we might owe moral consideration to something that is not a member of the moral community but eventually will be as an outcome of human action. Do we have current (...) actual obligations to technologies that do not currently exist? If there are obligations to currently non-existing technologies, we must confront what might be called the Non-Identical Machines Problem. Can we harm or benefit an entity by making it one way rather than another? This paper presents the problem and argues that it is more challenging than the standard Non-Identity Problem. (shrink)