Proof Paradoxes,Agency, and Stereotyping

Many have attempted to justify various courts’ position that bare or naked statistical evidence is not sufficient for findings of liability. I provide a particular explanation by examining a different, but related, issue about when and why stereotyping is wrong. One natural explanation of wrongness of stereotyping appeals to agency. However, this has been scrutinised. In this paper, I argue that we should broaden our understanding of when and how our agency can be undermined. In particular, I argue that when we take seriously that our agency is exercised in the social world, we can see that stereotyping can and does undermine our agency by fixing the social meaning of our choices and actions as well as by reducing the quality and the kinds of choices that are available to us. Although this improves the agency-based explanation, it must be noted that undermining agency is not an overriding reason against stereotyping. Much depends on the balance of reasons that take into account moral stakes involved in a case of stereotyping. This results in a messier picture of when and why stereotyping is wrong, but I argue that this is a feature, not a bug. I end by applying this agency-based explanation to cases that have motivated the so-called Proof Paradoxes.     

Response to Commentaries: Actions as Perceptual-Conceptual "Gestalts"

The author clarifies the objective and essence of the psychological, or perceptual-cognitive, approach to voluntary movement. According to that approach, voluntary movements are organized and performed as meaningful, perceptible events with bodily and environmental aspects. Body-oriented control is thus not neglected in the perceptual-cognitive approach but is actually an important issue. He further clarifies how material and psychological factors relate to each other in motor control and why they are not considered a coalition of constraints. The central importance of the sparse coding principle for the perceptual-cognitive approach is underlined. Finally, the author argues that the psychological information format is particularly suitable for motion control and stresses the power of the perceptual-cognitive approach to possibly provide a unifying framework for understanding human voluntary movements.     

UNDERSTANDING AND PREVENTING ADOLESCENT DATING VIOLENCE: THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPMENTAL, SOCIOCULTURAL, AND GENDERED PERSPECTIVES

The three articles in this special section on the development of adolescent dating violence provide important insights that can help shape future research and theory. Several common themes emerged. The roots of adolescent dating violence are broad and deep; thus, developmental and sociocultural perspectives are necessary to adequately understand this phenomenon. Adolescent dating violence is deeply gendered and requires that researchers make gender a centerpiece of their theorizing. These two insights lead to the conclusion that prevention efforts must start early, be broad based, and include gender in a fundamental way. In addition, longitudinal and ecological approaches hold the most promise for future research.     

County-level IQ and fertility rates: A partial test of Differential-K theory

Human intelligence (IQ) correlates with a number of important life outcomes ranging from mortality and morbidity to social rank and status. Noticeably absent from the literature, however, has been a unifying framework from which to examine why IQ should correspond to so many seemingly disparate outcomes. Rushton’s Differential-K theory represents a theoretical perspective capable of accounting for the role of IQ in understanding human flourishing. We tested predictions suggested by Differential-K theory by examining the association between IQ at the aggregate level and two life-history variables: parental investment and fertility rates. Our results provide tentative support for some of the predictions of Differential-K theory.     

Flaws of drug instrumentalization

The adaptive use of drugs, or "drug instrumentalization," is presented as a reality that the scientific literature has largely ignored. In this commentary, we demonstrate why this concept has limited value from the standpoint of nosology, why it should not be viewed as "adaptive," and why it has dangerous implications for policy and public health efforts.     

“Seeing the Difference”: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Death, Dying, Humanities, and Medicine

This essay explores how strategies integral to inquiry in the humanities provide insights into developing an interdisciplinary approach to studies of death and dying that will be relevant to medical practice as well as to humanistic study. The author asks how we can produce new modes of knowledge in an area where "knowing" is highly problematized and argues that while a putative field of death and dying studies must include a range of disciplinary approaches it must also account for lived, subjective experience and the ways that we, as individuals and as a culture, create meaning.     

To Achieve Sustainability

Having passed the level of sustainability, we now face a depleted planet and the possible extinction of our species. With hunter-gatherer brains we have created a civilization we cannot handle. We must understand what's gone wrong, what's needed for sustainability, and the difficulties we will face achieving it. We need a holistic view of the world and a better understanding of the biosphere and ourselves. We must reorient our economy away from perpetual growth toward meeting needs of humanity within the limitations of the planet. Our conscious mind must take control over the unconscious, and we must become more than what we now are.     

Neuroeconomics: cross-currents in research on decision-making

Despite substantial advances, the question of how we make decisions and judgments continues to pose important challenges for scientific research. Historically, different disciplines have approached this problem using different techniques and assumptions, with few unifying efforts made. However, the field of neuroeconomics has recently emerged as an inter-disciplinary effort to bridge this gap. Research in neuroscience and psychology has begun to investigate neural bases of decision predictability and value, central parameters in the economic theory of expected utility. Economics, in turn, is being increasingly influenced by a multiple-systems approach to decision-making, a perspective strongly rooted in psychology and neuroscience. The integration of these disparate theoretical approaches and methodologies offers exciting potential for the construction of more accurate models of decision-making.     

Psychology's search for unity

Arguments for unifying psychology's disparate elements are examined in relation to the actualities of scientific practice. These arguments are often based on such implicit unexamined assumptions as: (1) psychology resembles physics conceptually and historically; (2) there is an underlying rational order to knowledge which will define and justify the direction unification will take; (3) there is a knowable reality independent of our perceptions; (4) the outcome of unification will resemble a harmonious family working for the common good of “knowledge” and “truth.” While these assumptions have plausibility, it is argued that alternative views have equally legitimate claims and if we accept them, the possibility of unifying psychology becomes more problematic. Psychology's desire for unification appears parallel to a similar yearning within society that seeks to counteract the fragmentation of social life and consciousness that characterizes modernity.     

What’s wrong with human extinction?

Abstract

This paper explores what could be wrong with the fact of human extinction. I first present four reasons why we might consider human extinction to be wrong: (1) it would prevent millions of people from being born; (2) it would mean the loss of rational life and civilization; (3) it would cause existing people to suffer pain or death; (4) it would involve various psychological traumas. I argue that looking at the question from a contractualist perspective, only reasons (3) and (4) are admissible. I then consider what implications this limitation on reasons has for the wrongfulness of various forms of human extinction.     

Revisiting the “strong but wrong“ effect

In the 1930s, J. M. Stephens found that strong verbal associations called wrong are more likely to be changed than weak verbal associations called wrong, relative to items with no feedback. The present study produced a much larger "strong but wrong" effect, apparently as a result of defining "strong" in terms of meanings presumably stored in long-term memory. It was also found that such items are followed by high recall of feedback on the next trial, and that, indeed, when feedback recall is statistically controlled, the effect disappears. An explanation of why feedback is better recalled for "strong but wrong" items is offered, and several predictions are generated, some of which are tested (and confirmed) from the present data.     

Thoughts and feelings and things: A new psychiatric epistemology

Epistemology — the study of knowledge — is a philosophical discipline with close ties to psychiatry. When epistemologists address specific questions about how knowledge is actually realized by human beings, their philosophy must be informed by empirical studies of the sort psychiatrists now take up in a variety of forms. As this paper describes, psychiatrists can likewise improve their understanding of human psychology through a deeper appreciation of philosophical analysis in epistemology.The aim of this article is to introduce a unifying framework within which the experience from different approaches to psychiatry — (1) the conceptual schemas of cognitive psychiatry, (2) the mental structures of psychoanalytic psychiatry, (3) the categorical forms of existential psychiatry, and (4) the neural pathways of biological psychiatry — can all be applied productively to the central question of epistemology. By establishing a broad understanding of the problem of knowledge, this new view of epistemology is developed within the idiom of each psychiatric approach. In addressing themselves to a unitary problem, these diverse psychiatric approaches are themselves revealed, not as competing points of view, but as complementary views of a single subject. The result is a new epistemology that can not only bring the insights of psychiatry to philosophy, but can also contribute to the care of patients when psychiatrists bring this broader view to their clinical work.     

Information and representation in autonomous agents

Information and representation are thought to be intimately related. Representation, in fact, is commonly considered to be a special kind of information. It must be a special kind, because otherwise all of the myriad instances of informational relationships in the universe would be representational — some restrictions must be placed on informational relationships in order to refine the vast set into those that are truly representational. I will argue that information in this general sense is important to genuine agents, but that it is a blind alley with regard to the attempt to understand representation. On the other hand, I will also argue that a different, quite non-standard, form of information is central to genuine representation. First, I turn to some of the reasons why information as usually considered is the wrong category for understanding representation; second, to an alternative model of representation — one that is naturally emergent in autonomous agents, and that does involve information, but not in standard form; and third, I return to standard notions of informational relationships and show what they are in fact useful for.     

Controlling variability

In human motor control, there is uncertainty in both estimation of initial sensory state and prediction of the outcome of motor commands. With practice, increasing precision can often be achieved, but such precision incurs costs in time, effort, and neural resources. Therefore, motor planning must account for variability, uncertainty, and noise, not just at the endpoint of movement but throughout the movement. The author presents a mathematical basis for understanding the time course of uncertainty during movement. He shows that it is possible to achieve accurate control of the endpoint of a movement even with highly inaccurate and variable controllers. The results provide a first step toward a theory of optimal control for variable, uncertain, and noisy systems that must nevertheless accomplish real-world tasks reliably.     

Trust,expertise, and the philosophy of science

Trust is a central concept in the philosophy of science. We highlight how trust is important in the wide variety of interactions between science and society. We claim that examining and clarifying the nature and role of trust (and distrust) in relations between science and society is one principal way in which the philosophy of science is socially relevant. We argue that philosophers of science should extend their efforts to develop normative conceptions of trust that can serve to facilitate trust between scientific experts and ordinary citizens. The first project is the development of a rich normative theory of expertise and experience that can explain why the various epistemic insights of diverse actors should be trusted in certain contexts and how credibility deficits can be bridged. The second project is the development of concepts that explain why, in certain cases, ordinary citizens may distrust science, which should inform how philosophers of science conceive of the formulation of science policy when conditions of distrust prevail. The third project is the analysis of cases of successful relations of trust between scientists and non-scientists that leads to understanding better how ‘postnormal’ science interactions are possible using trust.     

The anatomy of sorrow: a spiritual,phenomenological, and neurological perspective

There is considerable controversy, both within and outside the field of psychiatry, regarding the boundaries of normal sadness and clinical depression. Furthermore, while there are frequent calls for a "pluralistic", comprehensive approach to understanding depression, few writers have tried to integrate insights from the spiritual, philosophical, and neurobiological literature. The author proposes that such a synthesis is possible, and that our understanding of ordinary sorrow and clinical depression is enriched by drawing from these disparate sources. In particular, a phenomenological analysis of sorrow and depression reveals two overlapping but distinct "lifeworlds". These differ in the relational, temporal, dialectical, and intentional realms. Recent brain imaging studies are also beginning to reveal the neurobiological correlates of sorrow and depression. As we come to understand the neurobiology of these states, we may be able to correlate specific alterations in "neurocircuitry" with their phenomenological expressions.     

From movement to dance

This article begins with a summary phenomenological analysis of movement in conjunction with the question of “quality” in movement. It then specifies the particular kind of memory involved in a dancer’s memorization of a dance. On the basis of the phenomenological analysis and specification of memory, it proceeds to a clarification of meaning in dance. Taking its clue from the preceding sections, the concluding section of the article sets forth reasons why present-day cognitive science is unable to provide insights into dance, notably because being largely tethered to happenings in the brain, it lacks foundational grounding in experience, specifically, the actual experience of movement, which is to say in kinesthesia.     

Obsessive-compulsive disorder as a disturbance of security motivation

The authors hypothesize that the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), despite their apparent nonrationality, have what might be termed an epistemic origin--that is, they stem from an inability to generate the normal "feeling of knowing" that would otherwise signal task completion and terminate the expression of a security motivational system. The authors compare their satiety-signal construct, which they term yedasentience, to various other senses of the feeling of knowing and indicate why OCD-like symptoms would stem from the abnormal absence of such a terminator emotion. In addition, they advance a tentative neuropsychological model to explain its underpinnings. The proposed model integrates many previous disparate observations and concepts about OCD and embeds it within the broader understanding of normal motivation.     

ACKNOWLEDGING A HIDDEN GOD: A THEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE OF STANLEY CAVELL ON SCEPTICISM

In his early work, the philosopher Stanley Cavell offers a sustained engagement with the threat of epistemological scepticism, shaped by the intuition that although (as the late Wittgenstein shows) ordinary language use is the practice within which alone meaning is possible (and which can thus not be further analysed or rationalised), it is also a basic human inclination to wish to escape the limitations of the ‘ordinary’. This, for Cavell, is the root of scepticism. Scepticism, on this view, thus appears not primarily as an epistemological but as an (injurious) moral stance, which cannot be refuted but must be continually confronted and overcome. Vis‐à‐vis scepticism, ‘acknowledgement’ is the practice‐based recognition of the world and other people in their continuing elusiveness, which ineluctably involves risk, but just so is the only way of knowing that is appropriate to and honours the (finite) human condition. One problematic aspect of this (very fertile) approach is that Cavell's secular viewpoint makes it difficult for him to say both why the desire for a ‘beyond’ arises in the first place, and why its expression as denial is morally wrong (rather than merely misguided). His approach thus invites a theological ‘supplementation’ which grounds the human condition in an original and real relation to God that is meant to draw the believer, through Christ, into the divine life itself. Such a reinterpretation both elucidates the concepts of scepticism and acknowledgement, and makes these concepts available for a theological outlook that is able to accommodate Cavell's profound insights into ‘the human’.