Subjectivism,instrumentalism, and prudentialism about reasons: On the normativity of instrumental transmission

According to a subjectivist theory, normative reasons are grounded in facts about our desires. According to an instrumentalist theory, reasons are grounded also in facts about the relevant means to desired objects. These are distinct theories. The widespread tendency to conflate the normativity of subjective and instrumentalist precepts obscures two facts. First, instrumentalist precepts incorporate a subjective element with an objective one. Second, combining these elements into a single theory of normative reasons requires explaining how and why they are to be combined. I argue that the most plausible justification for combining the two elements—which appeals to a theory of well‐being—exposes the inadequacy of the instrumentalist theory: The grounds required to justify the instrumentalist combination are also grounds for the normativity of prudential precepts and with them practical reasons that may have no internal connection to an agent's conative, motivational states.     

The special status of actions in causal reasoning in rats

A. P. Blaisdell, K. Sawa, K. J. Leising, and M. R. Waldmann (2006) reported evidence for causal reasoning in rats. After learning through Pavlovian observation that Event A (a light) was a common cause of Events X (an auditory stimulus) and F (food), rats predicted F in the test phase when they observed Event X as a cue but not when they generated X by a lever press. Whereas associative accounts predict associations between X and F regardless of whether X is observed or generated by an action, causal-model theory predicts that the intervention at test should lead to discounting of A, the regular cause of X. The authors report further tests of causal-model theory. One key prediction is that full discounting should be observed only when the alternative cause is viewed as deterministic and independent of other events, 2 hallmark features of actions but not necessarily of arbitrary events. Consequently, the authors observed discounting with only interventions but not other observable events (Experiments 1 and 2). Moreover, rats were capable of flexibly switching between observational and interventional predictions (Experiment 3). Finally, discounting occurred on the very first test trial (Meta-Analysis). These results confirm causal-model theory but refute associative accounts.     

The scope of instrumental morality

In The Order of Public Reason (2011a), Gerald Gaus rejects the instrumental approach to morality as a viable account of social morality. Gaus’ rejection of the instrumental approach to morality, and his own moral theory, raise important foundational questions concerning the adequate scope of instrumental morality. In this article, I address some of these questions and I argue that Gaus’ rejection of the instrumental approach to morality stems primarily from a common but inadequate application of this approach. The scope of instrumental morality, and especially the scope of pure moral instrumentalism, is limited. The purely instrumental approach to morality can be applied fruitfully to moral philosophy only in situations of extreme pluralism in which moral reasoning is reduced to instrumental reasoning, because the members of a society do not share, as assumed by traditional moral theories, a consensus on moral ideals as a basis for the derivation of social moral rules, but only an end that they aim to reach. Based on this understanding, I develop a comprehensive two-level contractarian theory that integrates traditional morality with instrumental morality. I argue that this theory, if implemented, is most promising for securing mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in deeply pluralistic societies, as compared to cooperation in a non-moralized state of nature.     

The instrumental rationality of addiction

The claim that non-addictive drug use is instrumental must be distinguished from the claim that its desired ends are evolutionarily adaptive or easy to comprehend. Use can be instrumental without being adaptive or comprehensible. This clarification, together with additional data, suggests that Müller & Schumann's (M&S's) instrumental framework may explain addictive, as well as non-addictive consumption.     

The fixity of reasons

I consider backtracking reasoning: that is, reasoning from backtracking counterfactuals such as if Hitler had won the war, he would have invaded Russia six weeks earlier. Backtracking counterfactuals often strike us as true. Despite that, reasoning from them just as often strikes us as illegitimate. A number of diagnoses have been offered of the illegitimacy of such backtracking reasoning which invoke the fixity of the past, or the direction of causation. I argue against such diagnoses, and in favor of one that invokes a principle I call the fixity of reasons. Backtracking reasoning violates the fixity of reasons. But, the fixity of reasons is a principle that must be observed in order to engage in practical reasoning at all.     

The composition of reasons

How do reasons combine? How is it that several reasons taken together can have a combined weight which exceeds the weight of any one alone? I propose an answer in mereological terms: reasons combine by composing a further, complex reason of which they are parts. Their combined weight is the weight of their combination. I develop a mereological framework, and use this to investigate some structural views about reasons. Two of these views I call “Atomism” and “Wholism”. Atomism is the view that atomic reasons are fundamental: all reasons reduce to atomic reasons. Wholism is the view that whole reasons are fundamental. I argue for Wholism, and against Atomism. I also consider whether reasons might be “context-sensitive”.     

The pavlovian analysis of instrumental conditioning

An account was given of the development within the Russian literature of a uniprocess formulation of classical and instrumental conditioning, known as the bidirectional conditioning hypothesis. The hypothesis purports to offer a single set of Pavlovian principles to account for both paradigms, based upon a neural model which assumes that bidirectional (forward and backward) connections are formed in both classical and instrumental conditioning situations. In instrumental conditioning, the bidirectional connections are hypothesized to be simply more complex than those in classical conditioning, and any differences in empirical functions are presumed to lie not in difference in mechanism, but in the strength of the forward and backward connections. Although bidirectional connections are assumed to develop in instrumental conditioning, the experimental investigation of the bidirectional conditioning hypothesis has been essentially restricted to the classical conditioning operations of pairing two CSs (sensory preconditioning training), a US followed by a CS (backward conditioning training) and two USs. However, the paradigm involving the pairing of two USs, because of theoretical and analytical considerations, is the one most commonly employed by Russian investigators. The results of an initial experiment involving the pairing of two USs, and reference to the results of a more extensive investigation, leads us to tentatively question the validity of the bidirectional conditioning account of instrumental conditioning.     

The matter of motivating reasons

Philosophical Studies - It is now standard in the literature on reasons and rationality to distinguish normative reasons from motivating reasons. Two issues have dominated philosophical theorising...     

The duplication of love's reasons

If X loves Y does it follow that X has reasons to love a physiologically exact replacement for Y? Can love's reasons be duplicated? One response to the problem is to suggest that X lacks reasons for loving such a duplicate because the reason-conferring properties of Y cannot be fully duplicated. But a concern, played upon by Derek Parfit, is that this response may result from a failure to take account of the psychological pressures of an actual duplication scenario. In the face of the actual loss of a loved one and the subsequent appearance of a duplicate, how could we resist the inclination to love? Drawing upon duplication scenarios from Parfit and from Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, this paper will argue that there could be reasons for X to come to love a duplicate of Y but that these would not be identical with the reasons that X had (and may still have) to love Y. Nor (in the case of an agent with a normal causal history) could they be reasons for a love that violates the requirement that love is a response to a relationship and therefore takes time to emerge.     

Similarity relations among spoken words: The special status of rimes in English

This paper presents an analysis of the distribution of phonological similarity relations among monosyllabic spoken words in English. It differs from classical analyses of phonological neighborhood density (e.g., Luce &; Pisoni, 1998) by assuming that not all phonological neighbors are equal. Rather, it is assumed that the phonological lexicon has psycholinguistic structure. Accordingly, in addition to considering thenumber of phonological neighbors for any given word, it becomes important to consider thenature of these neighbors. If one type of neighbor is more dominant, neighborhood density effects may reflect levels of segmental representation other than the phoneme, particularly prior to literacy. Statistical analyses of the nature of phonological neighborhoods in terms ofrime neighbors (e.g.,hat/cat),consonant neighbors (e.g.,hat/hit), andlead neighbors (e.g.,hat/ham) were thus performed for all monosyllabic words in the Celex corpus (4,086 words). Our results show that most phonological neighbors are rime neighbors (e.g.,hat/cat) in English. Similar patterns were found when a corpus of words for which age-of-acquisition ratings were available was analyzed. The resultant database can be used as a tool for controlling and selecting stimuli when the role of lexical neighborhoods in phonological development and speech processing is examined.     

The instrumental use of group prototypicality judgments

Recently, Waldzus et al. [Waldzus, S., Mummendey, A., Wenzel, M., & Boettcher, F. (2004). Of bikers, teachers and Germans: Groups’ diverging views about their prototypicality. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 385-400] have shown that ingroup members often tend to judge the ingroup as more prototypical of the superordinate group than other subgroups. In this paper, we argue that, in addition to the motivational processes that have been posited to explain this phenomenon, prototypicality judgments may vary according to instrumental considerations. In particular, those who believe their ingroup interest to be undermined by remaining part of the common group will downplay ingroup’s prototypicality as a way to sustain their separatist position. In a first study (N = 63), we found that Scottish respondents who support Scottish independence judged the Scots to be less prototypical of Britain than the English, as compared with Scots who do not support independence. In a second study (N = 191), we manipulated the rhetorical context within which prototypicality judgments were made. Results showed that the pattern found in study 1 only applied when the issue of independence was made salient. When the issue of the importance of Scottish history in Britain was made salient, the opposite pattern appeared, i.e. supporters of independence judged the Scots more prototypical than the English compared to non-supporters. These results were also interpreted in instrumental terms.     

The functional architecture of instrumental conditional reflexes

The author holds the opinion that the so-called operant, or instrumental, conditional reflexes, in spite of differences in specific features, do not differ in principle from classical conditional reflexes, and therefore they should not be opposed to them, or be placed in a special or separate group. In support of this opinion, this paper presents data which show that:

1. 1.
   In the establishment of classical and operant conditional reflexes, two-way conditional connections—direct and reverse—are formed.     
   
   

On the special status of "ego threats".

This article comments on a recent article by Heatherton, Herman, and Polivy (1991) in which they suggest that ego threats are a prerequisite to affectively induced disinhibition of food intake in restrained eaters and current dieters. In contrast, the present review suggests that mood induction procedures that involve no apparent threat (e.g., viewing a frightening film) can also prompt disinhibition in restrained eaters. Thus, any mood induction procedure that does not directly physically threaten the S may disinhibit restrained eaters. It is concluded that recommendations to focus future research on ego threats are premature and may serve to obscure the mechanisms by which changes in affective state influence food intake in dieters.     

The effect of deprivation level during noncontingent pairings and instrumental learning on subsequent instrumental performance

In Experiment 1, rats received either response-noncontingent pairings of a tone stimulus with food or response-contingent instrumental training during which only responses in the presence of the tone were reinforced. During this training rats were maintained at either 70 or 90% of their growth-adjusted predeprivation body weights. In a subsequent test phase, one-half of the subjects in each training condition were tested under either 70 or 90% body weight. Subjects which had received response-contingent instrumental training under 70% body weight responded significantly faster to presentations of the tone than did 90% body weight-trained subjects, regardless of test deprivation condition. There was no effect of the deprivation level in effect during response-noncontingent pairings. In Experiment 2, rats received noncontingent tone-reward pairings or nonpairings under either 70 or 90% body weight. In a later test phase under 90% body weight, instrumental responding to the tone was significantly faster for subjects which had received the tone-reward pairings. Deprivation level during the pairings again produced no effect. These results support two conclusions. First, the expectancy learning process appears to be relatively independent of deprivation conditions in effect when such learning takes place; and secondly, deprivation conditions in effect during instrumental learning affect the strength of S-R associative bonds formed.     

The epistemic limits of shared reasons

Accounts of public reason disagree as to the conditions a reason must meet in order to qualify as public. On one prominent account, a reason is public if, and only if, it is shareable between citizens. The shareability account, I argue, relies on an implausibly demanding assumption regarding the epistemic capabilities of citizens. When more plausible, limited, epistemic capabilities are taken into consideration, the shareability account becomes self‐defeating. Under more limited epistemic conditions, few, if any, reasons will be shareable between all reasonable citizens, making the shareability account so demanding that it precludes public reasoning altogether.     

The dispositional architecture of epistemic reasons

Epistemic reasons are meant to provide justification for beliefs. In this paper, I will be concerned with the requirements that have to be met if reasons are to discharge this function. It is widely recognized, however, that only possessed reasons can justify beliefs and actions. But what are the conditions that have to be satisfied in order for one to possess reasons? I shall begin by motivating a particular condition, namely, the ‘treating’ requirement that has been deemed to be necessary for possessing reasons. In Sect. 1, I explain and criticize some of the existing accounts of the treating requirement for reason-possession. In Sect. 2, I will suggest a dispositional account of reason-possession in which the treating condition features prominently. Section 3 will deal with the some of the consequences of this account for such issues as the structure of epistemic defeat, the immediacy of perceptual justification and logical knowledge.

     

The possibility of pragmatic reasons for belief and the wrong kind of reasons problem

In this paper I argue against the stronger of the two views concerning the right and wrong kind of reasons for belief, i.e. the view that the only genuine normative reasons for belief are evidential. The project in this paper is primarily negative, but with an ultimately positive aim. That aim is to leave room for the possibility that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief. Work is required to make room for this view, because evidentialism of a strict variety remains the default view in much of the debate concerning normative reasons for belief. Strict versions of evidentialism are inconsistent with the view that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief.

The sensory nature of reward in instrumental behavior

Improvement in the sensory state, or “better-being,” achieved either through obtaining desirable sensations or through escaping undesirable sensations, is considered the essential value which maintains the instrumental behavior. This value may vary depending on such factors as the intensity of the stimulus producing sensations, the effects of its previous occurrence, and the changes in the internal and external environment. Methods of evaluation of sensory “better-being” by means of measuring instrumental, autonomic and EEG responses are discussed.