Exploring the Stability of Belief: Resiliency and Temptation

Abstract

Belief allows us to coordinate our thought with our action. As Ramsey famously puts it, belief is a map by which we steer. For belief to play its role, on the one hand it must be stable under certain kinds of informational change; on the other hand it must be sensitive to changing evidence. Keeping belief stability in mind, we can ask about the norms that govern belief change in circumstances where there is epistemic pressure on us to change our belief. One such circumstance involves interpersonal conflict—in cases of disagreement with others. Another such circumstance involves intrapersonal conflict—the case of epistemic temptation. In this paper, I focus on a particular epistemic temptation case to explore what is rationally permitted and what is rationally required for us to do in the name of stability of belief.     

Testing VBN theory in Japan: Relationships between values,beliefs, norms,and acceptability and expected effects of a car pricing policy

The VBN (value-belief-norm) theory of environmentalism postulates that values influence pro-environmental behaviour via pro-environmental beliefs and personal norms. A few studies provided support for the theory in explaining pro-environmental behaviour in Europe and Latin America. Beyond these studies, the question remains to what extent the VBN theory can also explain pro-environmental beliefs, norms, and behaviour in other cultures. This study tests the VBN theory in Japan and demonstrates that, as expected, the more people endorse biospheric values, the stronger they believe that car use has negative environmental impacts, the more they feel responsible for the problems caused by car use, and the more they feel personally obliged to reduce their car use. In contrast, stronger hedonic and, to a lesser extent, stronger egoistic values were related to less strong pro-environmental beliefs and norms. Furthermore, support was found for the mediation effects of pro-environmental beliefs in the relationships between hedonic and biospheric value orientations and norms. The VBN theory explained the acceptability and expected effects of a car pricing policy on an individual’s transport choices, but less strongly than in previous studies. Interestingly, biospheric and hedonic values not only predicted adjacent beliefs, but also other beliefs and norms farther down the causal chain, suggesting that values play an important role in promoting sustainable mobility.     

Do the right thing: but only if others do so

Social norms play an important role in individual decision making. We argue that two different expectations influence our choice to obey a norm: what we expect others to do (empirical expectations) and what we believe others think we ought to do (normative expectations). Little is known about the relative importance of these two types of expectation in individuals' decisions, an issue that is particularly important when normative and empirical expectations are in conflict (e.g., systemic corruption, high crime cities). In this paper, we report data from Dictator game experiments where we exogenously manipulate dictators' expectations in the direction of either selfishness or fairness. When normative and empirical expectations are in conflict, we find that empirical expectations about other dictators' choices significantly predict a dictator's own choice. However, dictators' expectations regarding what other dictators think ought to be done do not have a significant impact on their decisions after controlling for empirical expectations. Our findings about the crucial influence of empirical expectations are important for designing institutions or policies aimed at discouraging undesirable behavior. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On surrender, death, and the sociology of knowledge

Surrender-and-catch is a protest against [... our time] and an attempt at remembrance of what a human being can be. The sociology of knowledge is a protest against its hypocrisy and against unexamined social influences. Like surrender, the sociology of knowledge does not fear but passionately seeks what is true and thus, like surrender, is a remembrance, proclamation, and celebration of the spirit. Both ideas, that of the sociology of knowledge and that of surrender, are critical, polemical, radical [...]; so is the sociology of knowledge also in its practice, while in its practice surrender is cognitive live. Using a [...] distinction developed by Mannheim, we may also say that the sociology of knowledge is an extrinsic interpretation of its time, our time; surrender, an intrinsic one: the former is, advocates, and practices such an extrinsic (sociological) interpretation but needs the latter to overcome the relativism it encounters in its practice by its remembrance, rediscovery, reinvention, the catch, of what is common to all human beings, what is universally human (Wolff, 1982., pp. 265–266).     

Conservative speech

In this paper, I argue that an utterance can function to conserve or maintain the truth of its asserted content, what I call conservative speech. Conservative utterances can work to preserve the truth of their asserted content in two ways. In the first, directive conservatives, the utterance serves as an indirect directive for interlocutors to act in ways that serve to maintain the asserted content. In the second, constitutive conservatives, serve to partly constitute the truth conditions of the asserted content directly. Constitutive conservatives, I argue, are particularly important because they are a central tool for how social groups enforce and thereby maintain facts about group norms and values in the face of deviation. They thus have a central role to play in understanding the role of language in the abilities of social groups to create and maintain their norms and values.     

Deference in Indians' decision making: introjected goals or injunctive norms?

We examine the claim that Indians are more likely than Americans to act deferentially in the presence of authority figures and explore 2 possible psychological mechanisms for this cultural difference: introjected goals and injunctive norms. Studies 1 and 2 showed that after reflecting upon an authority's expectations, Indians were more likely than Americans to make clothing and course choices consistent with the authority's expectations, but there was no such cultural difference for peers' expectations. Study 3 showed that merely activating the concept of authority figures, without highlighting specific expectations, was sufficient to influence Indians' choices but not their evaluations. Examining a more basic distinction underlying introjected goals versus injunctive norms, Study 4 showed that authority primes influenced Indians' sense of what they should do but not what they want to do. Study 5 showed that, inconsistent with the internalized goal mechanism, the effect of explicit authority primes did not increase after brief delays. However, Indian participants who were less likely to accommodate to the salient authority experienced more guilt across delay conditions, which supported the injunctive norms mechanism. The findings suggest that manipulating injunctive norms can be an effective means for inducing or eliminating deferential behaviors in Indian settings.     

Caught between cultures: cultural norms in Jungian psychodynamic process

Abstract: In our increasingly mobile world, more of us are caught between cultures rather than in one culture. We straddle different ethnic, racial, political, geographical, and religious groups, forced into awareness of the precarious nature of our self‐definition, involuntarily gazing at the constructed nature of our cultural norms, unable to avoid reckoning with the choices of which collective to honour. The impossibility of separating individual from collective is foundational to work as Jungian practitioners, but a paradox of individuation is becoming free of the control of collective norms while simultaneously living within those very norms. In such a conflict it becomes easy to overlook the fact that when the norms we have incorporated into ourselves are from cultures vastly different from the one in which we live, the cacophony can be overwhelming. In this paper, I will draw from postmodern theorists such as Derrida, Foucault and Irigaray in an effort to re‐imagine the role of culture in psychodynamic process. The case of a Muslim Iranian man working with a Christian American woman analyst will be used to explore the complexity of a multitude of cultural norms present in the consulting room.     

On surrender,death, and the sociology of knowledge

Surrender-and-catch is a protest against [... our time] and an attempt at remembrance of what a human being can be. The sociology of knowledge is a protest against its hypocrisy and against unexamined social influences. Like surrender, the sociology of knowledge does not fear but passionately seeks what is true and thus, like surrender, is a remembrance, proclamation, and celebration of the spirit. Both ideas, that of the sociology of knowledge and that of surrender, are critical, polemical, radical [...]; so is the sociology of knowledge also in its practice, while in its practice surrender is cognitive live. Using a [...] distinction developed by Mannheim, we may also say that the sociology of knowledge is an extrinsic interpretation of its time, our time; surrender, an intrinsic one: the former is, advocates, and practices such an extrinsic (sociological) interpretation but needs the latter to overcome the relativism it encounters in its practice by its remembrance, rediscovery, reinvention, the catch, of what is common to all human beings, what is universally human (Wolff, 1982., pp. 265–266).     

What Is an Immature Science?

Cognitive and social sciences such as psychology and sociology are often described as immature sciences. But what is immaturity? According to the received view, immaturity is disunity, where disunity can usefully be cashed out in terms of having a plurality of disunified frameworks in play, where these frameworks consist of concepts, theories, goals, practices, methods, criteria for what counts as a good explanation, etc. However, there are some reasons to think that the cognitive and social sciences should be disunified in this sense. If that is right, either these sciences should remain immature, or we need a new account of immaturity. The former option is unappealing. I therefore provide an alternative account of immaturity, based on Dudley Shapere’s work on the internal/external distinction. I then go on to use this account to argue against the imposition of unification on the cognitive and social sciences. Acceptance of disunity may be the route to maturity, rather than a sign of immaturity.     

Reasoning under Scarcity

Practical deliberation consists in thinking about what to do. Such deliberation is deemed rational when it conforms to certain normative requirements. What is often ignored is the role that an agent's context can play in so-called ‘failures’ of rationality. In this paper, I use recent cognitive science research investigating the effects of resource-scarcity on decision-making and cognitive function to argue that context plays an important role in determining which norms should structure an agent's deliberation. This evidence undermines the view that the norms of ‘ideal’ rationality are necessary and universal requirements on deliberation. They are a solution to the problems faced by cognitively limited agents in a context of moderate scarcity. In a context of severe scarcity, the problems faced by cognitively limited agents are different and require deliberation structured by different norms. Agents reason rationally when they use the norms best suited to their context and cognitive capacities.     

FREEDOM AND WEAKNESS OF WILL

Can absolute freedom of will be defended by arguing that apparent cases of diminished freedom when we act out of passion are cases of weakness of will? Rogers Albritton thought so. What is intriguing about Albritton's view is that he thought when we act from desire we are making choices, yet our desires are not functioning as reasons for those choices. So our desires must be influencing our choices in some other unspecified way that does not diminish our freedom. I challenge the coherence of this position. My strategy is to examine the views of leading theorists of the will – Descartes, Aquinas and Reid – to argue that the only clear way in which passions can influence our choices so that we can accurately be described as weak‐willed and yet nevertheless free is that our passions influence our choices by providing reasons for them.     

Should Metaphysics Care About Linguistics?

Naturalized metaphysics is based on the idea that philosophy should be guided by the sciences. The paradigmatic science that is relevant for metaphysics is physics because physics tells us what fundamental reality is ultimately like. There are other sciences, however, that de facto play a role in philosophical inquiries about what there is, one of them being the science of language, i.e. linguistics. In this paper I will be concerned with the question what role linguistics should and does play for the metametaphysical question of how our views about fundamental reality can be reconciled with the everyday truisms about what there is. I will present several examples of two kinds of approaches to this question, linguistics-based accounts and purely philosophical accounts, and will discuss their respective methodological merits and shortcomings. In the end I will argue that even proponents of a purely philosophical answer to the metametaphysical question should take the results of linguistics seriously.     

Aesthetic practices and normativity

What should we do, aesthetically speaking, and why? Any adequate theory of aesthetic normativity must distinguish reasons internal and external to aesthetic practices. This structural distinction is necessary in order to reconcile our interest in aesthetic correctness with our interest in aesthetic value. I consider three case studies—score compliance in musical performance, the look of a mowed lawn, and literary interpretation—to show that facts about the correct actions to perform and the correct attitudes to have are explained by norms internal to a practice. Practice-internal norms, however, cannot settle the distinct question of which practices we have reason to opt into. When it comes to the source of aesthetic normativity—in virtue of what aesthetic value is genuinely reason-giving—I argue that existing accounts, which appeal to pleasure or achievement, are inadequate. The only practice-external aesthetic requirement is a generic one to opt into at least some aesthetic practices.     

Social norms and the traditional deterrence game

Bicchieri (The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of norms, 2006, xi) presents a formal analysis of norms that answers the questions of “when, how, and to what degree” norms affect human behavior in the play of games. The purpose of this paper is to apply a variation of the Bicchieri norms analysis to generate a model of norms-based play of the traditional deterrence game (Zagare and Kilgour, Int Stud Q 37:1–27, 1993; Morrow, Game theory for political scientists, 1994), the paradigmatic model of conflict initiation in International Relations. The deterrence game is modeled here as a sequential decision problem. As such, our analysis is an adaptation of Bicchieri’s game-theoretic formalization of norms to what we will call the norms account of the game. We find that the standard account of the traditional deterrence game is a special case of the norms account of the game. We also show that the adaptation of Bicchieri’s analysis of social norms yields new and interesting claims regarding when, how, and to what degree norms operate as a constraint on risk-related behavior in the traditional deterrence game. Moreover, we discuss how the results of the model provide testable propositions of relevance to the role of norms in international interactions.     

Using Stars for Moral Navigation: An Ethical Exploration into Celebrity

What role do celebrities play in our moral lives? Philosophers have explored the potential for celebrities to function as moral exemplars and role models. We argue that there are more ways in which celebrities play a role in helping us navigate our moral lives. First, gossiping about celebrities helps us negotiate our moral norms and identify competing styles of life. Second, fandom for celebrities serves as the basis for the development of distinct moral communities and identities. Third, celebrities possess high levels of epistemic power which can be used to help change and adapt our moral norms. We will then investigate two kinds of problems that arise from using celebrities in this way. Firstly, harm is done to celebrities because they are used in the ways explained in the first part of the article; secondly, celebrity life has a distinctive nature that can affect the moral agency of celebrities. Fame, we suggest, might lead to a morally unhealthy asymmetry in human relationships. We end by discussing the ethical implications of our analysis and conclude that when using stars for moral navigation, we should take into account the harm this does to them and the distinctive nature of their lives.     

Rethinking technology, revitalizing ethics: Overcoming barriers to ethical design

This paper explores the role of ethics in design. Traditionally, ethical questions have been seen as marginal issues in the design of technology. Part of the reason for this stems from the widely held notion of technology being “out of control.” This notion is a barrier to what I call “ethical design” because it implies that ethics has no role to play in the development of technology. This view, however, is challenged by recent work in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Looking into the dynamics of technological change, STS scholars argue that human choices are present at every stage of a technology’s development and, furthermore, that human values are reflected in the very design of artifacts. This alternative view suggests that ethics can and should be included in the design process. Drawing on examples from the privacy arena. I point to some of the potential advantages of addressing ethical concerns early on in the design of a technology. I conclude with some general strategies for bringing ethics back into design. A version of this paper was presented at ETHICOMP98, the Fourth International Conference on Ethical Issues of Information Technology, March 25–27, 1998, Erasmus University, the Netherlands. Patrick Feng is a Ph.D. student in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer. His research focuses on the development of technical standards that are designed to address social values such as privacy and trust.     

Political Animals: Luck, Love and Dignity

Human beings are both needy and dignified. How should we think about the relationship between our neediness and our worth? Card argues well that our vulnerability to luck is intertwined in the very conditions of moral agency. We can see the merit of her approach even more clearly by turning to some difficulties the Stoics have in preserving dignity while removing vulnerability. Stoicism does, however, help us to sort through the difficulties involved as we try to combine love of particular people with respect for all human life. Richardson is correct to suggest that love itself can animate the concern for all humanity; I also agree with him that institutions must play a major role in any solution to problems of inequality between nations. Although the “capabilities approach” offers an attractive account of one part of the goal of just political institutions, combining, as Moody-Adams suggests, respect for difference with a commitment to universal norms, I now believe that the capabilities account should be combined with a form of Rawlsian political liberalism that protects spaces within which citizens may pursue the good as they understand it.     

Religion,difference and the promise of liberal political theory: on Abeysekara's The Politics of Postsecular Religion

Ananda Abeysekara's work revolves around the ‘aporia of our democratic existence.’ This review offers a close analysis of this puzzle and then connects it to the historical process whereby the internal dynamics of western Christianity gave shape to normative political theory. Normative political models have a peculiar relation to the empirical world. At any point, one can judge the factual empirical situation in a liberal democracy – no matter what that factual situation is – as deficient vis-à-vis norms like equality, freedom of expression, religious freedom and separation of church and state. The trouble is that we do not know what the ‘complete’ fulfillment of these norms would look like. Still, these norms propel political analysis: as Abeysekara notes, classical and postcolonial studies of conflict in Sri Lanka build on a set of deep-seated norms about ‘difference,’ ‘unity’ and ‘humanism,’ which have emerged from the Christian dynamic of universalization that laid the foundations of liberal political theory.     

The Spiritual,the Earthly and the Decadent

Under this somewhat grandiose title I want to consider a basic picture that dominates our thinking and feeling in many areas; to show why this picture is inadequate; and to suggest an alternative. I will consider how the embodied self, as both earthly and spiritual, conceptualises and gives meaning to all experience. It is not objects as such but our use of them that determines their 'purity'. Purity consists in being true to, and not corrupting, a desirable form of life. We need to distinguish between what is undesirable because it is corrupt and what is undesirable because it falls into the category of the partial, displaying only one aspect of a desirable form of life. I then consider the notion of decadence and how its cycle can be broken. The human self is not simply a mixture of instincts and regulations for control, but a blend, a state of consciousness in which rules and norms may be pleasurably followed. Good teachers will initiate their pupils into those forms of life that do justice to both these elements.