By definition, metacognitive processes may monitor or regulate various stages of first-order processing. By combining causal analysis with hypotheses expressed by other authors we derive the theoretical and methodological consequences of this special relation between metacognition and the underlying processes. In particular, we prove that because multiple processing stages may be monitored or regulated and because metacognition may form latent feedback loops, (1) without strong additional causal assumptions, typical measures of metacognitive monitoring or regulation are confounded; (2) without strong additional (...) causal assumptions, typical methods of controlling for first-order task performance (i.e., calibration, staircase, including first-order task performance in a regression analysis, or analyzing correct and incorrect trials separately) not only do not deconfound measures of metacognition but may even introduce bias; (3) that the first two problems cannot be solved by using simple models of decision-making derived from Signal Detection Theory. We conclude the paper by advocating robust methods of discovering properties of latent mechanisms. (shrink)

It is sometimes thought that randomized study group allocation is uniquely proficient at producing comparison groups that are evenly balanced for all confounding causes. Philosophers have argued that in real randomized controlled trials this balance assumption typically fails. But is the balance assumption an important ideal? I run a thought experiment, the CONFOUND study, to answer this question. I then suggest a new account of causal inference in ideal and real comparative group studies that helps clarify the roles of confounding (...) variables and randomization. 1Confounders and Causes2The Balance Assumption3The CONFOUND Study 3.1CONFOUND 13.2CONFOUND 24Disjunction C and the Ideal Study 4.1The ultimate ‘other cause’: C4.2The ideal comparative group study4.3Required conditions for causal inference5Confounders as Causes, Confounders as Correlates6Summary. (shrink)

This essay takes the performance artworks of Tehching Hsieh as instructive allegories for a global ethics as theorized by a variety of left academics who ground universalism in a singularity that escapes the predicates of identity. Hsieh's projects, I argue, also place universal estrangement in the service of liberation for particular marginalized groups whose lives confound our fantasies of recognition. At the same time, they illustrate some of the challenges facing attempts to treat particular struggles as embodiments of universal conflicts.

In ‘The nature of moral judgments and the extent of the moral domain’, Fraser criticises findings by Kelly et al. that speak against the moral/conventional distinction, arguing that the experiment was confounded. First, we note that the results of that experiment held up when confounds were removed . Second, and more importantly, we argue that attempts to prove the existence of a M/C distinction are systematically confounded. In contrast to Fraser, we refer to data that support our view. We (...) highlight the implications for the moral/conventional theory. (shrink)

Several authors within psychology, neuroscience and philosophy take for granted that standard empirical research techniques are applicable when studying consciousness. In this article, it is discussed whether one of the key methods in cognitive neuroscience – the contrastive analysis – suffers from any serious confounding when applied to the field of consciousness studies; that is to say, if there are any systematic difficulties when studying consciousness with this method that make the results untrustworthy. Through an analysis of theoretical arguments in (...) favour of using contrastive analysis, combined with analyses of empirical findings, I conclude by arguing for three factors that currently are confounding of research using contrastive analysis. These are (1) unconscious processes, (2) introspective reports, and (3) attention. (shrink)

Agencies of the modern state, democratic and otherwise, manufacture pliant publics through sophisticated social‐scientific technologies ranging from wealth redistribution (which defines the contours of social relations) to the institutionalization of ethnicity (which exploits sociocultural cleavages for a variety of often contradictory purposes). The very sophistication of these technologies defies comprehension; that is, it engenders and exacerbates public ignorance. As a result, democratic surveillance of state power is more enabling myth than fact.

Figner, Mackinlay, Wilkening, and Weber (2009) developed the Columbia Card Task (CCT) to measure risk-taking attitudes. This tool consists of two versions: in the COLD version the decision maker needs to state in advance how many cards (out of 32) they want to turn over (so called static risk taking), in the HOT version they have the possibility of turning over all 32 cards one-by-one until they decide to finish (dynamic risk taking). We argue that the HOT version confounds (...) an individual’s willingness to accept risk with their beliefs in trend continuation vs. trend reversal in a prognostic task. In two experimental studies we show that people believing in trend continuation (momentum subjects) turn over more cards than those believing in trend reversal (contrarians) in the HOT version of the task. However, this is not the case in the COLD version. Thus, we provide evidence that, when considered as a dynamic risk propensity measure, the number of turned over cards in the HOT version of the CCT is a contaminated measure and reflects two phenomena: (1) risk preference and (2) the decision-maker’s belief in trend continuation. We speculate that other dynamic risk taking measures can also be biased by a momentum strategy. (shrink)

Studying the neural correlates of conscious awareness depends on a reliable comparison between activations associated with awareness and unawareness. One particularly difficult confound to remove is task performance capacity, i.e. the difference in performance between the conditions of interest. While ideally task performance capacity should be matched across different conditions, this is difficult to achieve experimentally. However, differences in performance could theoretically be corrected for mathematically. One such proposal is found in a recent paper by Lamy, Salti and Bar-Haim [Lamy (...) D, Salti M, Bar-Haim Y. Neural correlates of subjective awareness and unconscious processing: an ERP study. J Cognitive Neurosci 2009,21:1435-46], who put forward a corrective method for an electroencephalography experiment. We argue that their analysis is essentially grounded in a version of High Threshold Theory, which has been shown to be inferior in general to Signal Detection Theory. We show through a series of computer simulations that their correction method only partially removes the influence of perfor- mance capacity, which can yield misleading results. We present a mathematical correction method based on Signal Detection Theory that is theoretically capable of removing performance capacity confounds. We discuss the limitations of mathemati- cally correcting for performance capacity confounds in imaging studies and its impact for theories about consciousness. (shrink)

Controversy swept the U.K. in January of 2000 over public disclosure of the fact that a Scottish surgeon named Robert Smith had amputated the limbs of two able-bodied individuals who reportedly suffered from a condition known as apotemnophilia. The patients, both of whom had sought and consented to the surgery, claimed they had desperately desired for years to live as amputees and had been unable, despite considerable efforts, to reconcile themselves psychologically to living with the bodies with which they were (...) born. Both surgeries were successful, and both patients, who had undergone psychiatric evaluation prior to the amputations, subsequently reported having no regrets. In the wake of a wave of sensationalistic stories in the media, the hospital at which the surgeries had been performed, the Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary, banned any future surgeries of the kind. Outraged local politicians promptly announced their intention to pass laws banning the procedure outright. One member of Scottish Parliament declared the surgery obscene and asserted that the whole thing is repugnant and legislation needs to be brought in now to outlaw this. (shrink)

According to Roberts, self-experimentation is a viable tool for idea generation in the behavioral sciences. Here we discuss some limitations of this assertion, as well as particular design and data-analytic shortcomings of his experiments.

The sociogenomics revolution is upon us, we are told. Whether revolutionary or not, sociogenomics is poised to flourish given the ease of incorporating polygenic scores (or PGSs) as “genetic propensities” for complex traits into social science research. Pointing to evidence of ubiquitous heritability and the accessibility of genetic data, scholars have argued that social scientists not only have an opportunity but a duty to add PGSs to social science research. Social science research that ignores genetics is, some proponents argue, at (...) best partial and likely scientifically flawed, misleading, and wasteful. Here, I challenge arguments about the value of genetics for social science and with it the claimed necessity of incorporating PGSs into social science models as measures of genetic influences. In so doing, I discuss the impracticability of distinguishing genetic influences from environmental influences because of non-causal gene–environment correlations, especially population stratification, familial confounding, and downward causation. I explain how environmental effects masquerade as genetic influences in PGSs, which undermines their raison d’être as measures of genetic propensity, especially for complex socially contingent behaviors that are the subject of sociogenomics. Additionally, I draw attention to the partial, unknown biology, while highlighting the persistence of an implicit, unavoidable reductionist genes versus environments approach. Leaving sociopolitical and ethical concerns aside, I argue that the potential scientific rewards of adding PGSs to social science are few and greatly overstated and the scientific costs, which include obscuring structural disadvantages and cultural influences, outweigh these meager benefits for most social science applications. (shrink)

Simpson’s paradox (SP) is a statistical phenomenon where the association between two variables reverses, disappears, or emerges, after conditioning on a third variable. It has been proposed (by, e.g., Judea Pearl) that SP should be analyzed using the framework of graphical causal models (i.e., causal DAGs) in which SP is diagnosed as a symptom of confounding bias. This paper contends that this confounding-based analysis cannot fully capture SP: there are cases of SP that cannot be explained away in terms of (...) confounding. Previous works have argued that some cases of SP do not require causal analysis at all. Despite being a logically valid counterexample, we argue that this type of cases poses only a limited challenge to Pearl’s analysis of SP. In our view, a more powerful challenge to Pearl comes from cases of SP that do require causal analysis but can arise without confounding. We demonstrate with examples that accidental associations due to genetic drift, the use of inappropriate aggregate variables as causes, and interactions between units (i.e., inter-unit causation) can all give rise to SP of this type. The discussion is also extended to the amalgamation paradox (of which SP is a special form) which can occur due to the use of non-collapsible association measures, in the absence of confounding. (shrink)

I argue that, while Finlay et al, are correct to suggest that there are developmental regularities (or constraints) acting on brain component evolution, they are incorrect to infer from this that a developmental explanation necessarily implies that structural changes preceded functional use. Developmental and functional (adaptationist) explanations are complementary, not alternatives.

In their recent book, Is Inequality Bad for Our Health?, Daniels, Kennedy, and Kawachi claim that to “act justly in health policy, we must have knowledge about the causal pathways through which socioeconomic (and other) inequalities work to produce differential health outcomes.” One of the central problems with this approach is its dependency on “knowledge about the causal pathways.” A widely held belief is that the randomized clinical trial (RCT) is, and ought to be the “gold standard” of evaluating the (...) causal efficacy of interventions. However, often the only data available are non-experimental, observational data. For such data, the necessary randomization is missing. Because the randomization is missing, it seems to follow that it is not possible to make epistemically warranted claims about the causal pathways. Although we are not sanguine about the difficulty in using observational data to make warranted causal claims, we are not as pessimistic as those who believe that the only warranted causal claims are claims based on data from (idealized) RCTs. We argue that careful, thoughtful study design, informed by expert knowledge, that incorporates propensity score matching methods in conjunction with instrumental variable analyses, provides the possibility of warranted causal claims using observational data. (shrink)

The problem of missingness in observational data is ubiquitous. When the confounders are missing at random, multiple imputation is commonly used; however, the method requires congeniality conditions for valid inferences, which may not be satisfied when estimating average causal treatment effects. Alternatively, fractional imputation, proposed by Kim 2011, has been implemented to handling missing values in regression context. In this article, we develop fractional imputation methods for estimating the average treatment effects with confounders missing at random. We show that the (...) fractional imputation estimator of the average treatment effect is asymptotically normal, which permits a consistent variance estimate. Via simulation study, we compare fractional imputation’s accuracy and precision with that of multiple imputation. (shrink)

This edited collection draws on a range of disciplines in exploring the central place of narrative in social inquiry and understanding the ethical life. It provides scholarly and practical insights into the rewards and potential pitfalls of working in, and with narrative. It offers readers a broad range of carefully considered examples; the use of art in enhancing insight into the plights of rural communities in Australia; the use of illness narratives in medical education; applying narratives of torture survivors and (...) torturers in shaping humane political response and policy in the face of terrorism, and the place of the music, as a vehicle of story telling and moral growth. This volume illuminates the explicit links between the importance of narrative, that is, the telling of stories to create shape and meaning in our lives, and ethical engagement so critical to the achievement of a good life. (shrink)

Heir to Augustine’s and Anselm’s encounters with the Psalmist’s fool, Hobbes s confronts his own foolish interlocutor in Leviathan. This Foole says in his heart: there is no justice. Hobbes rebuts the unjust Foole’s objection by defending the reasonableness of justice. Readers’ ideas about the adequacy of Hobbes’s response to the Foole vary according to their views about what reason, justice, and covenant-keeping require. A confounding and little-remarked feature of this passage in Leviathan is Hobbes’s claim that his unjust Foole (...) is the same with respect to his atheism as the Psalmist’s fool. This identity, far from being accidental or coincidental, is crucial to an adequate understanding of the Foole’s objection and Hobbes’s rebuttal. (shrink)

To support their hypothesis, the authors point to an inverse correlation between latitude and the incidence of civil conflict and crime. This observation cannot be accepted as evidence for the hypothesis, because of a weighty confounding variable: the historical geography of colonialism and its effects on the fragility of nations.

Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded. Edited and translated by Humphrey Davies. 2 vols. Library of Arabic Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2016. Pp. lviii + 425; viii + 541. $40 each. Muḥammad ibn Maḥfūẓ al-Sanhūrī, Risible Rhymes. Edited and translated by Humphrey Davies. Library of Arabic Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv + 105. $30.

In many disciplines, mediating processes are usually investigated with randomized experiments and linear regression to determine if the treatment affects the outcome through a mediator. However, randomizing the treatment will not yield accurate causal direct and indirect estimates unless certain assumptions are satisfied since the mediator status is not randomized. This study describes methods to estimate causal direct and indirect effects and reports the results of a large Monte Carlo simulation study on the performance of the ordinary regression and modern (...) causal mediation analysis methods, including a previously untested doubly robust sequential g-estimation method, when there are confounders of the mediator-to-outcome relation. Results show that failing to measure and incorporate potential post-treatment confounders in a mediation model leads to biased estimates, regardless of the analysis method used. Results emphasize the importance of measuring potential confounding variables and conducting sensitivity analysis. (shrink)

We present a method for assessing the sensitivity of the true causal effect to unmeasured confounding. The method requires the analyst to set two intuitive parameters. Otherwise, the method is assumption free. The method returns an interval that contains the true causal effect and whose bounds are arbitrarily sharp, i.e., practically attainable. We show experimentally that our bounds can be tighter than those obtained by the method of Ding and VanderWeele, which, moreover, requires to set one more parameter than our (...) method. Finally, we extend our method to bound the natural direct and indirect effects when there are measured mediators and unmeasured exposure–outcome confounding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:155. REMARKS ON P. S. WADIA" S 'PHILO CONFOUNDED' In responding to Professor Wadia's paper in McGiIl Hume Studies, I will attempt to show why his analysis of the illustrative analogies in Part III of the Dialogues fails to capture what it is that Cleanthes sought to accomplish through them. On p. 285, Wadia begins his discussion of Part III and admits to being bewildered because one expects Cleanthes (...) to confine his illustrations to familiar things in the world around him. One wonders, however, why Wadia thinks the ilustrations should be so confined, since it is precisely matters such as these for which the Design Argument is attempting to account through the hypothesis of an intelligent external artificer - an hypothesis which Philo refuses to accept in this regard. Contrary to what Wadia maintains, there is one occasion in Part III where Cleanthes' defense does have recourse to natural phenomena. On p. 154 he asks Philo to consider, anatomise the eye, and behold the male and female of each species, the correspondence of their parts and instincts, their passions and whole course of life before and after generation to be persuaded that the most obvious conclusion surely is in favour of design! Cleanthes explains Philo's resistance to this most obvious conclusion as due to too luxuriant a fertility, which suppresses your natural good sense, by a profusion of unnecessary scruples and objections. (DNR155) On two occasions in Part III-in the first paragraph and once again toward the end of the seventh - Cleanthes comments on Philo's 'blindness' in rejecting the inference from natural phenomena to an intelligent cause of design. Given this assessment of Philo by Cleanthes, the employment of imaginary examples is easily appreciated inasmuch as actual examples have been impotent in convincing Philo. Just how these imaginary examples are relevant to his position has yet to be discussed; but the use of imaginary illustrations is not bewildering. 156. In setting the stage for his central claim on Cleanthes* intended use of his illustrations, Wadia seriously misrepresents the disagreement between Philo and Cleanthes. At one point (p. 286) he takes Philo to be arguing that empirical evidence regarding an intelligent designer is actually inconceivable. But, in fact, this was not Philo's position in Part II at all. Philo finds it easy indeed to conceive of the empirical evidence required to support the conclusion of the Design Argument, namely, the world must sufficiently resemble some thing which is known to be intelligently contrived to enable us to classify it as a further instance of that kind of thing. If this could be done, the principle 'like effects prove like causes' could be used to infer an intelligent cause for the design of the world. Philo, of course, denies that the required resemblance can be found. However, as I have shown, he never denies that it is conceivable. One page earlier, Wadia offers an account of Philo's position in Part II which is also incorrect. He argues that since, for Philo, an inference to the existence of an intelligent designer of the world requires having seen worlds formed under our eyes, this claim amounts to saying that it is impossible for there to be empirical evidence relevant to the conclusion of the Design Argument, because no one can satisfy this condition. Philo's argument in Part II, however, is not this one. He begins by considering how the world must present itself to justify reasoning by analogy to an intelligent designer. And it is only because the required resemblances between the world and objects of human contrivance are not present, that he offers 'seeing worlds formed under our eyes' as a condition which must be satisfied if the inference to an intelligent designer is to be acceptable. Now since Philo himself entertains possible states of the world which, if they existed, would constitute evidence for an intelligent designer, Wadia is mistaken in attributing "the impossibility claim* 157. to Philo. For Wadia to argue successfully regarding Philo's adoption of 'the impossibility claim' he must show that Philo has argues that it is impossible for the world to resemble objects of human contrivance - a position which Philo never... (shrink)

Although Burt clearly explains how modern genomic techniques work, and describes their limitations, her conclusion that they are therefore not valuable additions to understanding social outcomes is unwarranted. Understanding the causes of complex social outcomes depends on understanding how social, individual, and genetic factors complexly interact with each other. None can be understood without reference to the others.

Prior research has identified age 9–11 as a critical period for the development of the control-of-variables strategy (CVS). We examine the stability of interindividual differences in children's CVS skills with regard to their precursor skills during this critical developmental period. To this end, we relate two precursor skills of CVS at age 9 to four skills constituting fully developed CVS more than 2 years later, controlling for children's more general cognitive development. Note thatN= 170 second- to fourth-graders worked on multiple (...) choice-assessments of their understanding of indeterminacy of evidence and of confounding. We find relations between these two precursor skills and children's CVS skills 2 years later at age 11 inplanning, identifying, andinterpretingcontrolled experiments, and in recognizing the inconclusiveness of confounded comparisons (understanding). In accordance with the perspective that both indeterminacy and confounding constitute critical, related yet distinct elements of CVS, both precursor skills contribute to the prediction of later CVS. Together, the two precursor skills can explain 39% of students' later CVS mastery. Overall, the understanding of indeterminacy is a stronger predictor of fully developed CVS than that of confounding. The understanding of confounding, however, is a better predictor of the more difficult CVS sub-skills of understanding the inconclusiveness of confounded comparisons, and of planning a correctly controlled experiment. Importantly, both precursor skills maintain interactive predictive strength when controlling for children's general cognitive abilities and reading comprehension, showing that the developmental dynamics of CVS and its precursor skills cannot be fully ascribed to general cognitive development. We discuss implications of these findings for theories about the development of CVS and broader scientific reasoning. (shrink)

Unmeasured confounding is one of the most important threats to the validity of observational studies. In this paper we scrutinize a recently proposed sensitivity analysis for unmeasured confounding. The analysis requires specification of two parameters, loosely defined as the maximal strength of association that an unmeasured confounder may have with the exposure and with the outcome, respectively. The E-value is defined as the strength of association that the confounder must have with the exposure and the outcome, to fully explain away (...) an observed exposure-outcome association. We derive the feasible region of the sensitivity analysis parameters, and we show that the bounds produced by the sensitivity analysis are not always sharp. We finally establish a region in which the bounds are guaranteed to be sharp, and we discuss the implications of this sharp region for the interpretation of the E-value. We illustrate the theory with a real data example and a simulation. (shrink)

Biological and epidemiological phenomena are often measured with error or imperfectly captured in data. When the true state of this imperfect measure is a confounder of an outcome exposure relationship of interest, it was previously widely believed that adjustment for the mismeasured observed variables provides a less biased estimate of the true average causal effect than not adjusting. However, this is not always the case and depends on both the nature of the measurement and confounding. We describe two sets of (...) conditions under which adjusting for a non-deferentially mismeasured proxy comes closer to the unidentifiable true average causal effect than the unadjusted or crude estimate. The first set of conditions apply when the exposure is discrete or continuous and the confounder is ordinal, and the expectation of the outcome is monotonic in the confounder for both treatment levels contrasted. The second set of conditions apply when the exposure and the confounder are categorical. In all settings, the mismeasurement must be non-differential, as differential mismeasurement, particularly an unknown pattern, can cause unpredictable results. (shrink)

Parents’ perception of having no choice and strong emotions like fear about the prospect of living liver donation can lead professionals to question the voluntariness of their decision. We discuss the relation of these experiences (no choice and emotions), as they are communicated by parents in our study, to the requirement of voluntariness. The perceived lack of choice, and emotions are two themes we found in the interviews conducted within the “Living Related Donation; a Qualitative-Ethical Study” research program. As a (...) framework for the interpretation of these themes we discuss views of moral agency. We adopt a view in which relations are seen as constitutive of moral agency. Judging from this view, the perceived lack of choice can best be understood as a sign of commitment. We argue in this article that neither seeing no choice, nor emotions in themselves should be seen as compromises of a voluntary consent. However both experiences draw attention to aspects that are important to come to an evaluation of consent to donation. We discuss the story of one mother as an exemplary case to show how both themes can intertwine. (shrink)

To find the neural substrates of consciousness, researchers compare subjects’ neural activity when they are aware of stimuli against neural activity when they are not aware. Ideally, to guarantee that the neural substrates of consciousness—and nothing but the neural substrates of consciousness—are isolated, the only difference between these two contrast conditions should be conscious awareness. Nevertheless, in practice, it is quite challenging to eliminate confounds and irrelevant differences between conscious and unconscious conditions. In particular, there is an often-neglected confound (...) that is crucial to eliminate from neuroimaging studies: task performance. Unless subjects’ task performance is matched (and hence perceptual signal processing is matched), researchers risk finding the neural correlates of perception, rather than conscious perception. Here, we discuss the theoretical motivations for the performance matching framework and review empirical demonstrations of, and theoretical inferences derived from, obtaining differences in consciousness while controlling for task performance. We summarize signal detection theoretic modeling frameworks that explain how it is that we can derive performance-matched differences in consciousness without the effect being trivially driven by differences in criterion setting, and also provide principles for designing experimental paradigms that yield performance-matched differences in awareness. Finally, we address potential technical and theoretical issues that stem from matching performance across conditions of awareness, and we introduce the notion of “triangulation” for designing comprehensive experimental sets that can better reveal the neural substrates of consciousness. (shrink)