Editors’ Overview: Neuroethics: Many Voices and Many Stories

Advances in neuroscience continue to enhance understanding of the brain and provide new tools to take advantage of that understanding. These changes are poised to profoundly alter society. Given that the impact will be felt not only by neuroscientists, but by diverse members of society, it is imperative that conversations engage all stakeholders. Doing so will allow for the sharing of diverse views and perspectives to understand and frame the science, better educate and prepare the public for new developments, and provide a shared approach to identifying and resolving ethical challenges. These were the goals of Neuroethics Week, staged in 2007 by the Center for Ethics in Science and Technology in San Diego, and are the basis for the contributions to this special issue of Science and Engineering Ethics.     

Too Many Blacks,Too Many Whites: Is There Racial Balance?

Racial conflict between African Americans and Whites has been observed to occur most frequently at two critical points: when African Americans make up approximately 30% of a given group or when African Americans make up approximately 50% of a given group. These two critical ratios are referred to as the J and (inverted) U patterns of racial conflict, respectively. To date, most of the data supporting either the J or U models have been derived from large demographic studies that do not directly assess individual perceptions. Thus, little is known about the individual reactions of members from either racial group to varying percentages of group racial composition. This small-group experiment examined the responses of African-American and White subjects to their inclusion in four-person groups of varying racial compositions. Three racial configurations were created and included the following percentages of African Americans: 25%, 50%, and 75%. The results support the U model of racial conflict. Moreover, the U model fit the data equally well for African Americans and Whites.     

How Many there Are Isn’t

Philosophia - A world where there exists exactly n concrete things is a count-determinate world. The orthodox assumption is that count-determinacy is necessary; if to be is to be the value of a...     

How Many Casualties Are Too Many? Proportional Reasoning in the Valuation of Military and Civilian Lives1

People frequently judge saved lives as less valuable and deaths more acceptable when they are characterized as small fractions of larger “at‐risk” groups. Two studies with U.S. college students demonstrated this effect in judgments concerning acceptable numbers of U.S. military and Middle Eastern civilian casualties. At the beginning of the current U.S.–Iraq conflict ( Study 1 ), priming cost–benefit reasoning produced greater proportional devaluation for Iraqi civilian than for U.S. military lives. In a hypothetical armed intervention in Iran to halt weapons development ( Study 2 ), women but not men showed greater proportional devaluation for U.S. military than for Iranian civilian lives. In both studies, proportional reasoners were willing to accept more casualties. Implications for public perceptions and attitudes are discussed.     

Countably Many Weakenings of Belnap–Dunn Logic

Studia Logica - Every Berman’s variety $$\mathbb {K}_p^q$$ which is the subvariety of Ockham algebras defined by the equation $${\sim ^{2p+q}}a = {\sim ^q}a$$ ($$p\ge 1$$ and $$q\ge 0$$)...     

Do Consequentialists Have One Thought Too Many?

In this paper I defend consequentialism against the objection that consequentialists are alienated from their personal relationships through having inappropriate motivational states. This objection is one interpretation of Williams' claim that consequentialists will have "one thought too many". Consequentialists should cultivate dispositions to act from their concern for others. I argue that having such a disposition is consistent with a belief in consequentialism and constitutes an appropriate attitude to personal relationships. If the consequentialist has stable beliefs that friendship is justifiable in consequentialist terms, that friendship requires acting from concern for others, and furthermore if the consequentialist finds that she is concerned for others, then she will be able to form a disposition which involves acting from her concern for others without having one thought too many.     

Why Do Eyewitnesses Make So Many Mistakes?

Previous research on eyewitness identification has demonstrated high rates of error. Subjects have frequently identified innocent targets as the "criminal" they had seen earlier (false identifications) or had falsely claimed that the criminal was not in the line-up (misses). The present study examines whether identification error rates are inflated by pressures in the typical experimental situation to "make a guess" regardless of one's confidence in the accuracy of the response. It was found that providing an explicit option for subjects to respond "don't know" significantly decreased false identifications and misses with no cost to the proportion of correct identifications. The addition of written and verbal instructions emphasizing the acceptability of the "don't know" option produced a marginally significant further decline in identification errors, again without cost to correct identifications. The discussion considered implications of the present results for experimental and actual police line-up procedures.     

What Can We Learn from Many Labs Replications?

Several hundred research groups attempted replications of published effects in so-called Many Labs studies involving thousands of research participants. Given this enormous investment, it seems timely to assess what has been learned and what can be learned from this type of project. My evaluation addresses four questions: First, do these replication studies inform us about the replicability of social psychological research? Second, can replications detect fraud? Third, does the failure to replicate a finding indicate that the original result was wrong? Finally, do these replications help to support or disprove any social psychological theories? Although evidence of replication failures resulted in important methodological changes, the 2015 Open Science Collaboration findings sufficed to make the point. To assess the state of social psychology, we have to evaluate theories rather than randomly selected research findings.     

Acronym Soup: How Many Do You Know?

The human services field is so fill of acronyms that it is a wonder we all understand each other. How many do you know?     

“How Many Partners Is Too Many?” Shaping Perceptions of Personal Vulnerability1

The effectiveness of interventions that directly inform people of the risks posed by their own behavior is frequently undermined by people's ability to defend themselves against unwanted information. In response to this difficulty, an alternative approach to shaping people's perceptions of personal vulnerability in which people remained unaware of the intervention was tested. As part of a survey on sexual issues, college undergraduates reported the total number of sexual partners they had had on a response scale that systematically framed their sexual behavior as being either above average or below average. Participants in the 2 conditions reported the same absolute number of sexual partners. However, those who received a response scale that implied they had had more partners than the average student reported greater concern about their sexual behavior than did those who received a scale that implied they had had fewer partners than average. The implications of this approach for influencing perceptions of personal risk are discussed.     

One or Many? Commentary on Paper by Debra Rothschild

This discussion of Rothschild's case history of a multiple personality disorder (MPD) treatment situates the issue of integration versus multiple self states in terms of cultural values, psychoanalytic theory, and transference–countertransference experience of MPD patients and therapists. Views from autobiographies of multiple personalities are included, and some questions are raised about the relationship of “parts” to traumatic experience: When, and for whom, is integration a treatment goal? When is dissociation a characterological defense, and when do the parts each hold separate traumatic knowledge? How does this question bear on treatment—what gets integrated, the knowledge or the parts? Are termination and integration simultaneous? A recommendation is offered for a wider, more complex view of narrative and historicity in the understanding of narrative reconstruction. A concrete focus on veridicality can be a defense against the overwhelming nature of traumatic experience. A final view is offered which positions the author as more distant from integration as a goal than is Rothschild.     

Does anchoring vary across cultures? Expanding the Many Labs analysis

Numerous investigations have examined anchoring effects, but most of them studied individuals from similar cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Replication studies have shown that anchoring heuristics have heterogeneous effects across different cultural groups. In the present investigation, we examined this heterogeneity by looking for associations between effect size and cultural values orientation. We conducted pre-registered meta-analyses of four anchoring tasks, using open data provided by previous works and collected from 6,344 participants in 10 countries. The analyses confirmed that anchoring effects display strong heterogeneity between cultures. Moreover, specific cultural values orientations explained substantial amounts of variability in anchoring effect sizes between cultures: Intellectual Autonomy and Egalitarianism were negatively correlated with anchoring effect size, as we had expected. Surprisingly, Harmony was also negatively correlated with anchoring effect size, whereas Mastery had a positive association. These results suggest that cultural differences can play an important role in observed anchoring effect size.     

The Many Faces of Life Satisfaction among Finnish Young Adults’

The aim of this study was to measure the levels of general life satisfaction among Finnish young adults, and to clarify the way in which life satisfaction is constructed. In order to explore these aims, the following research questions were specified: (1) What is the level of general life satisfaction among young Finnish adults?, (2) Which factors in young adults’ phase of life and social surroundings are related to their life satisfaction?, (3) Is it possible to find distinct groups of young adults among whom life satisfaction can be seen as differently constructed? If so, in what way are those groups different from each other? What kinds of factors are related to group members’ life satisfaction? The data for the study were gathered via a questionnaire. The subjects consisted of 192 Finnish young adults born in 1968, living throughout the country. The results showed the level of life satisfaction among Finnish young adults to be similar to that of the Finnish population in general. The two main factors underlying life satisfaction were found to be social relation-ships and factors related to working-life contexts. In addition, the study identified five distinct groups (three groups of women, two groups of men) which differed from each other, both in their levels of life satisfaction and in the factors underlying life satisfaction. The groups varied in the importance for life satisfaction that they attached to marital partnerships, friends, health, and hobbies. The results were seen as supporting the assumption that life satisfaction is a socially constructed phenomenon.     

What is a Truth Value And How Many Are There?

Truth values are, properly understood, merely proxies for the various relations that can hold between language and the world. Once truth values are understood in this way, consideration of the Liar paradox and the revenge problem shows that our language is indefinitely extensible, as is the class of truth values that statements of our language can take – in short, there is a proper class of such truth values. As a result, important and unexpected connections emerge between the semantic paradoxes and the set-theoretic paradoxes.     

Many moral buttons or just one? Evidence from emotional facial expressions

We investigated whether moral violations involving harm selectively elicit anger, whereas purity violations selectively elicit disgust, as predicted by the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). We analysed participants’ spontaneous facial expressions as they listened to scenarios depicting moral violations of harm and purity. As predicted by MFT, anger reactions were elicited more frequently by harmful than by impure actions. However, violations of purity elicited more smiling reactions and expressions of anger than of disgust. This effect was found both in a classic set of scenarios and in a new set in which the different kinds of violations were matched on weirdness. Overall, these findings are at odds with predictions derived from MFT and provide support for “monist” accounts that posit harm at the basis of all moral violations. However, we found that smiles were differentially linked to purity violations, which leaves open the possibility of distinct moral modules.     

Why So Many Questions? Measurement Issues and the Attitudinal Self-Control Scale

The Grasmick et al. (1993) scale is one of the most frequently used measures in criminology. Regardless of how commonly the scale is used, questions remain about its dimensionality and the nature of forming a composite measure from its 24 individual components. This study examines whether a composite measure is the most effective method for using the scale with a series of analyses using different approaches to combining—or not combining—these measures. Based on data from a sample of over 1,500 college students, the results indicate that a single-factor composite of the 24 items is the least effective approach in predicting crime/deviance. These results, instead, suggest using the individual components separately, multiple factors, or a composite measure made from just three of the original items lead to significant improvements over the one-factor solution.