Epistemic Responsibility and Critical Thinking

Should we always engage in critical thinking about issues of public policy, such as health care, gun control, and LGBT rights? Michael Huemer (2005) has argued for the claim that in some cases it is not epistemically responsible to engage in critical thinking on these issues. His argument is based on a reliabilist conception of the value of critical thinking. This article analyzes Huemer's argument against the epistemic responsibility of critical thinking by engaging it critically. It presents an alternative account of the value of critical thinking that is tied to the notion of forming and deploying a critical identity. And it develops an account of our epistemic responsibility to engage in critical thinking that is not dependent on reliability considerations alone. The primary purpose of the article is to provide critical thinking students, or those that wish to reflect on the value of critical thinking, with an opportunity to think metacritically about critical thinking by examining an argument that engages the question of whether it is epistemically responsible for one to engage in critical thinking.     

Validation of the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale in College Students

ABSTRACT

Impulsive (IA) and premeditated (PM) aggression reflect functions of aggressive behavior that may have differential correlates and clinical utility. The purpose of this study was to extend the use of the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale (IPAS) for characterizing aggression in a college student sample. Three hundred forty students completed the IPAS, Buss and Perry's (1992) Buss, A. H. and Perry, M. 1992. The Aggression Questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63: 452–459. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] Aggression Questionnaire (AQ), and measures of childhood maltreatment and negative life events. Principal components analyses supported reliable IA and PM factors. The degree of IA was significantly higher than that of PM. Convergent validity for the IA scale was supported with significant relationships with certain AQ scales. Implications for studying aggressive functions in this age group may inform violence prevention and treatment on college campuses.     

Responsibility Without Blame: Empathy and the Effective Treatment of Personality Disorder

Effective treatment of personality disorder (PD) presents a clinical conundrum. Many of the behaviors constitutive of PD cause harm to self and others. Encouraging service users to take responsibility for this behavior is central to treatment. Blame, in contrast, is detrimental. How is it possible to hold service users responsible for harm to self and others without blaming them? A solution to this problem is part conceptual, part practical. I offer a conceptual framework that clearly distinguishes between ideas of responsibility, blameworthiness, and blame. Within this framework, I distinguish two sorts of blame, which I call 'detached' and 'affective.' Affective, not detached, blame is detrimental to effective treatment. I suggest that the practical demand to avoid affective blame is largely achieved through attention to PD service users' past history. Past history does not eliminate responsibility and blameworthiness. Instead, it directly evokes compassion and empathy, which compete with affective blame.     

Critical Thinking and Epistemic Responsibility Revisited

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - It is generally assumed that critical thinking is the preferred mode of inquiry in all situations. However, Michael Huemer, in 2005, has...     

Thinking Without Words: An Overview for Animal Ethics

In Thinking without Words I develop a philosophical framework for treating some animals and human infants as genuine thinkers. This paper outlines the aspects of this account that are most relevant to those working in animal ethics. There is a range of different levels of cognitive sophistication in different animal species, in addition to limits to the types of thought available to non-linguistic creatures, and it may be important for animal ethicists to take this into account in exploring issues of moral significance and the obligations that we might or might not have to non-human animals. I am grateful for comments on an earlier version from Robert Francescotti and Clare Palmer.     

Intuition in Judgment and Decision Making: Extensive Thinking Without Effort

We claim that intuition is capable of quickly processing multiple pieces of information without noticeable cognitive effort. We advocate a component view stating that intuitive processes in judgment and decision making are responsible for information integration and output formation (e.g., preference, choice), whereas analytic thinking mainly guides input formation such as search, generation, and change of information. We present empirical evidence corroborating this notion and show that integration of information and preference formation works without cognitive control and is unconstrained by the amount of encoded information and cognitive capacity. We discuss the implications of our findings for the bounded rationality perspective and the multiple strategy approach to judgment and decision making. Finally we outline a connectionist framework for integrating intuitive and analytic thought processes.     

16 PF Profile of Schizophrenics With and Without Criminal Record

This study examined the personality characteristics of sixty Schizophrenics with and without criminal record on inpatients of Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Allied Sciences, Ranchi (RINPAS) India. A comparison of their personality profiles on 16 PF test revealed that Schizophrenics with criminal record were more assertive, less reserved, less conscientious, and more extraverted than Schizophrenics without criminal record. It indicates that Schizophrenics who commit offences may be differentiated from those who are not involved in criminal act on the basis of their personality characteristics.     

Criminogenic Thinking Mediates the Relation Between Violent Media Exposure and Aggression

For decades researchers have been exploring the connection between exposure to violent media and aggression in adolescents. In this study, we hypothesized that criminogenic thinking would mediate the relationship between violent media exposure and aggression. A sample of 382 undergraduate students completed questionnaires regarding exposure to violent media during their adolescent years, and their current endorsement of criminogenic thinking and level of aggression. Results indicated that criminogenic thinking patterns did, in fact, mediate the relationships between exposure to various forms of violent media and aggression. The implications of these findings toward a better understanding of the relationship between violent media exposure and aggressive behavior are discussed.     

Thinking Without Global Generalisations: A Cognitive Defence of Moral Particularism1

In their article entitled “Ethical Particularism and Patterns”, Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Michael Smith (JPS henceforth) argue that moral particularism is a cognitively implausible theory since it appears to entail the view that one might have a skill that is not grounded in an ability to recognise and represent natural patterns in the world. This charge echoes the complaints of computational theorists of cognition against their embodied cognition counterparts, namely that, theories of cognition that eschew talk of mental representation are implausible qua theories of cognition. In both debates, the cognitive role of generalisation is central to the discussion; however, contrary to the received wisdom, I want to suggest that the dispute is not between generalisation or mental representation on the one hand and no generalisation or mental representation on the other, but rather between what I will call global and local generalisation. Using the dialogue between JPS and Dancy (our paradigm particularist) to frame this discussion, I show that by replacing Dancy's connectionist model for particularist reasoning with a case‐based one, we not only vindicate his response to JPS, but we also gain insight into how it is the global/local distinction rather than the generalisation/no generalisation distinction that divides the two views.     

论医疗刑事责任的根据

医疗行为具有很强的专业性,也具有极高的风险性,因此,在诊疗护理活动中医疗过失难免会发生.因此,对于医疗过失行为承担刑事责任的范围不宜过于宽泛.结合1997年刑法的规定及刑法基本理论,阐述了认定医疗刑事责任的根据,限定了医疗过失行为承担刑事责任的范围,以期对司法实践有所裨益.     

浅谈非法实施胎儿性别鉴定的刑事立法

目前,我国出生婴儿性别比例严重失调,给整个社会带来了严重的危害.虽然国家和各地方制定了一系列相关的法律、法规,严禁对胎儿实施性别鉴定.但依靠的是民事和行政法律手段,因而收效甚微,未能有效遏制这一现象的恶性循环,男女性别比例失调的形势愈加严峻.因此,有必要对非法实施胎儿性别鉴定行为进行刑事立法.以我国出生婴儿性别比严重失调的现状为切入点,并以此为基点提出一些个人的刑事立法观点.