An Intuitionist Theory of Argument Strength in Politics: How Intuitive Cognitive Biases Produce Universally Strong Arguments

Why are some political arguments more persuasive than others? Extant theories have mainly explained argument strength with reference to familiarity. Such explanations suggest that arguments are only strong for particular populations: those living in particular cultures, those following particular news, or those holding particular political values. Here, we argue for and identify the existence of a universally strong class of arguments transcending such divides: arguments that are congruent with intuitively held cognitive biases. We focus on arguments about social welfare that are congruent with a particular cognitive bias: the deservingness heuristic. Embedding a novel experiment in representative surveys in the United States, Japan, and Denmark, we demonstrate that people intuitively process arguments that resonate with this heuristic and that such arguments are strong across cultural divides, across individual levels of familiarity with the arguments, and across individual differences in political values. Finally, against the idea that intuitive arguments are simplistic, we demonstrate that such arguments can be inferentially complex, as long as they resonate with a cognitive bias.     

Arguments for adjuncts

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

Looking for Arguments

How do people find arguments while engaged in a discussion? Following an analogy with visual search, a mechanism that performs this task is described. It is a metarepresentational device that examines representations in a mostly serial manner until it finds a good enough argument supporting one??s position. It is argued that the mechanism described in dual process theories as ??system 2??, or analytic reasoning fulfills these requirements. This provides support for the hypothesis that reasoning serves an argumentative function.     

Cross-cultural psychology: A symbiosis of cultural and comparative approaches

Culture–behaviour relationships can be understood in relation to many dimensions. It is argued that the cultural, indigenous and comparative traditions of research are mutually compatible, and indeed permit a symbiotic approach. This symbiosis produces a generic field, that of cross-cultural psychology, into which the three traditions can be incorporated, and permits the pursuit of a universal psychology.     

Analogical Arguments for Egalitarianism

Egalitarians sometimes analogize socioeconomic opportunities to starting gates, playing fields, and the results of a lottery. A fair game is one in which all have an equal opportunity to succeed; egalitarians propose that the same is true of a fair society. A second type of argument for egalitarianism appeals to intuitions about the distribution of found resources. A just division of manna discovered on a strange planet seems to be an equal one. Both types of argument share a crucial feature: they concern the once‐off division of a fixed sum of goods. I argue that the most compelling reasons to depart from an equal division of goods derive from the economic activity involved in producing more of those goods, e.g., Pareto improvements due to efficiency gains that result from incentives that encourage production. We cannot conclude that game analogies and found resources cases arbitrate in favour of equality against non‐egalitarian principles because they exclude precisely those considerations that provide the strongest reasons to reject equality.     

Helping families improve: an evaluation of two primary care approaches to parenting support in the Netherlands

The present study evaluated two primary care parenting interventions. First, we evaluated the most widely used Dutch practices for primary care parenting support. Second, we assessed the applicability of the Primary Care Triple P approach, which is now being utilized in a wide variety of primary care settings. Both interventions target parents of children with mild to moderate behavioural and/or emotional problems, with the aim of improving parenting skills and thereby decreasing child problems. We examined the interventions in pre‐, post‐ and follow‐up assessment, and compared the results. Both interventions produced significant reductions in reported child emotional and behaviour problems, that also remained after 3 months. For both groups, parenting styles were also found to have improved at both post‐test and follow‐up measurement. When compared with the regular Dutch parenting consultation practices, however, the Primary Care Triple P approach produced greater reductions in parental laxness and total parenting dysfunction, and greater improvement in total parenting competence at both post‐test and follow‐up. Primary Care Triple P may even—in light of the greater improvements in parenting skills and total parental competences in the Triple P group than in the regular Dutch parenting consultation group—produce better results in the long run concerning child behaviour and emotional problems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intuitive inventory management: An experimental system

The way people intuitively manage inventories is both an important issue in its own right and a context for research on various basic theoretical questions. The subject has not yet been systematically studied, owing partially to the lack of appropriate research tools. This paper presents some of the key concepts in formal inventory theory and describes an experimental system for the study of intuitive inventory management. This system is a computer program that allows subjects to interact with a simulated inventory system. Numerous system parameters can be manipulated, including demand functions, prices, costs, and the display of data. The usefulness of the system is demonstrated via the study of the effects of three parameters on intuitive inventory management in an illustrative experiment. Possible future uses of the system in basic and applied research and in training are indicated.     

政治不平等的两个论证

政治平等被认为是现代社会的一个重要特征。以贝淡宁和白彤东为代表的贤能政治学者反对政治平等,提倡政治不平等。他们的论证依靠的是对政治共同体的目的论的特定解读,同时他们的论证可以重构为工具主义和非工具主义两种版本。本文通过对这两个版本的重构,指出政治不平等的工具主义论证面临政治权利作为基本福祉反驳和滑坡论证反驳,而政治不平等的非工具主义论证面临专家-老板谬误反驳和非目的论反驳。     

Two Russellian Arguments for Acquaintance

Bertrand Russell [1912] argued that we are acquainted with our experiences. Although this conclusion has generated a lot of discussion, very little has been said about Russell's actual arguments for it. This paper aims to remedy that. I start by spelling out two Russellian arguments for acquaintance. Then I show that these arguments cannot both succeed. For if one is sound, the other isn't. Finally, I weigh our options with respect to these arguments, and defend one option in particular. I argue that we have good reason to believe that we can be, and sometimes are, acquainted with our experiences.     

Intuitive prediction: ecological validity versus representativeness

Insufficiently regressive intuitive predictions have been attributed to mistaken reliance on the representativeness heuristic. In contrast, we suggest that intuitive predictions stem from a conceptualization of ‘goodness of prediction’ that differs from the accepted statistical definition in terms of error minimization, namely, ecological validity—that is, representation of the substantive characteristics of the predicted variable Y and its distribution as well as of the relationship between Y and the predictor X—rather than minimization of prediction errors. Simultaneous satisfaction of the above representation requirements is achieved by multivalued prediction: The prediction of different Y′ values for the same X value, resulting in conditional distributions Y′|X for at least some X values. Empirical results supporting this hypothesis are presented and discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Cognitive-Miser Response Model: Testing for Intuitive and Deliberate Reasoning

In a number of psychological studies, answers to reasoning vignettes have been shown to result from both intuitive and deliberate response processes. This paper utilizes a psychometric model to separate these two response tendencies. An experimental application shows that the proposed model facilitates the analysis of dual-process item responses and the assessment of individual-difference factors, as well as conditions that favor one response tendency over another one.