Do intuitions about Frankfurt-style cases rest on an internalist prejudice?

“Frankfurt-style cases” (FSCs) are widely considered as having refuted the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) by presenting cases in which an agent is morally responsible even if he could not have done otherwise. However, Neil Levy has recently argued that FSCs fail because (i) our intuitions about cases involving counterfactual interveners (CIs) are inconsistent (we accept that the mere presence of CIs is enough to make us gain but not lose responsibility-underwriting capacities), and (ii) this inconsistency is best explained by the fact that our intuitions about such cases are grounded in an internalist prejudice about the location of mental states and capacities. In response to this challenge, we argue that (i) there is no inconsistency in our intuitions about cases involving CIs, as soon as we draw the comparison properly, and that (ii) intuitions about such cases do not rest on an internalist prejudice, but on a more basic distinction between two kinds of dispositions. Additionally, we discuss some methodological issues that arise when comparing intuitions about thought experiments and end with a discussion of the implications of our argument for the reliability of intuitions about FSCs.     

Do framing effects make moral intuitions unreliable?

I address Sinnott-Armstrong's argument that evidence of framing effects in moral psychology shows that moral intuitions are unreliable and therefore not noninferentially justified. I begin by discussing what it is to be epistemically unreliable and clarify how framing effects render moral intuitions unreliable. This analysis calls for a modification of Sinnott-Armstrong's argument if it is to remain valid. In particular, he must claim that framing is sufficiently likely to determine the content of moral intuitions. I then re-examine the evidence which is supposed to support this claim. In doing so, I provide a novel suggestion for how to analyze the reliability of intuitions in empirical studies. Analysis of the evidence suggests that moral intuitions subject to framing effects are in fact much more reliable than perhaps was thought, and that Sinnott-Armstrong has not succeeded in showing that noninferential justification has been defeated.     

Do judgments about freedom and responsibility depend on who you are? Personality differences in intuitions about compatibilism and incompatibilism

Recently, there has been an increased interest in folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility from both philosophers and psychologists. We aim to extend our understanding of folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility using an individual differences approach. Building off previous research suggesting that there are systematic differences in folks' philosophically relevant intuitions, we present new data indicating that the personality trait extraversion predicts, to a significant extent, those who have compatibilist versus incompatibilist intuitions. We argue that identifying groups of people who have specific and diverse intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility offers the possibility for theoretical advancement in philosophy and psychology, and may in part explain why some perennial philosophical debates have proven intractable.     

Categorization and action: What about object consistence?

Categorization studies have focused on the importance of a variety of perceptual properties (shape, size, weight). The present study explored whether the softness or hardness of an object might influence the way we categorize and consider category members. Of additional interest was whether information on consistence is automatically activated and whether it is modulated by the kind of task and of response modality. Three experiments demonstrated that information on consistence is automatically activated, and it helps us to distinguish between artefacts and natural objects. Interestingly, the results are in agreement with the simulation hypothesis; namely, when we consider artefacts, we simulate using them and information on their consistence is activated; this simulation is modulated by the task. The way we differently process artefacts and natural objects across the experiments confirms the simulation hypothesis and our sensitivity to the response modality.     

What do our intuitions about the experience machine really tell us about hedonism?

Robert Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment is often considered a decisive refutation of hedonism. I argue that the conclusions we draw from Nozick’s thought experiment ought to be informed by considerations concerning the operation of our intuitions about value. First, I argue that, in order to show that practical hedonistic reasons are not causing our negative reaction to the experience machine, we must not merely stipulate their irrelevance (since our intuitions are not always responsive to stipulation) but fill in the concrete details that would make them irrelevant. If we do this, we may see our feelings about the experience machine becoming less negative. Second, I argue that, even if our feelings about the experience machine do not perfectly track hedonistic reasons, there are various reasons to doubt the reliability of our anti-hedonistic intuitions. And finally, I argue that, since in the actual world seeing certain things besides pleasure as ends in themselves may best serve hedonistic ends, hedonism may justify our taking these other things to be intrinsically valuable, thus again making the existence of our seemingly anti-hedonistic intuitions far from straightforward evidence for the falsity of hedonism.     

Reliable but not home free? What framing effects mean for moral intuitions

Various studies show moral intuitions to be susceptible to framing effects. Many have argued that this susceptibility is a sign of unreliability and that this poses a methodological challenge for moral philosophy. Recently, doubt has been cast on this idea. It has been argued that extant evidence of framing effects does not show that moral intuitions have an unreliability problem. I argue that, even if the extant evidence suggests that moral intuitions are fairly stable with respect to what intuitions we have, the effect of framing on the strength of those intuitions still needs to be taken into account. I argue that this by itself poses a methodological challenge for moral philosophy.     

Can psychology be objective about free will?

This paper takes up the question of free will in behaviour, what it can mean, and how it might be said to occur. The case is made that, thanks to psychology's commitment to a 17th century conception of natural science, it has been effectively insulated from putting teleology to a proper empirical test. After presenting a justification and definition of free will in terms of the human being's telosponsive capacities, the paper closes by surveying aspects of the psychological literature which have gathered data relating to telic behaviour only to explain them away via traditional nontelic “scientific” theories.     

Do action systems resist visual illusions?

Arguments about the relative independence of visual modules in the primate brain are not new. Recently, though, these debates have resurfaced in the form of arguments about the extent to which visuomotor reaching and grasping systems are insensitive to visual illusions that dramatically bias visual perception. The first wave of studies of illusory effects on perception and action have supported the idea of independence of motor systems, but recent findings have been more critical. In this article, I review several of these studies, most of which (but not all) can be reconciled with the two-visual-systems model.     

Do muscles matter for coordinated action?

This article investigates coordination stability when 2 fingers of each hand periodically tap together. The main question concerns the functional origin of the symmetry tendency, which has widely been conceived as a bias toward coactivation of homologous fingers and homologous muscular portions. In Experiment 1, the symmetry tendency was independent of finger combination. In Experiment 2, virtually identical stability characteristics were revealed under full vision and no vision. In Experiment 3, symmetrical and parallel visual labels on the fingers neither stabilized nor destabilized symmetrical and parallel tapping patterns. In Experiment 4, in which the relative position of the hands was varied, it revealed that the observed stability characteristics are to be defined in a hand-centered reference frame. Because the symmetry tendency was always independent of finger combination, the authors suggest that it is not a bias toward coactivation of homologous muscle portions but instead originates on a more abstract, functional level.     

Effects of concerns about pathogens on conservatism and anti-fat prejudice: are they mediated by moral intuitions?

Threat perceptions are associated with politically conservative attitudes. Research has also found that specific forms of threat perception (e.g., concerns about pathogens) are associated with functional reactions (e.g., anti-fat prejudice). Recently, moral intuitions have been implicated in explaining political orientation: Liberals tend to place greater weight on "individualizing foundations" (justice and care concerns) in particular, whereas conservatives tend to place high weight on "binding foundations" (loyalty, respect, and purity concerns) as well. A recent study attempted to integrate the above strands of research by showing that the effect of threat perceptions on conservatism is mediated by a tendency to place relatively greater weight on the binding foundations. The present study was intended to replicate and extend past research by testing (a) whether concerns about pathogens predict conservatism and anti-fat prejudice and (b) whether those effects are mediated by a tendency to place relatively greater weight on the binding foundations.     

Do facial first impressions reflect a shared social reality?

Influential facial impression models have repeatedly shown that trustworthiness, youthful–attractiveness, and dominance dimensions subserve a wide variety of first impressions formed from strangers’ faces, suggestive of a shared social reality. However, these models are built from impressions aggregated across observers. Critically, recent work has now shown substantial inter-observer differences in facial impressions, raising the important question of whether these dimensional models based on aggregated group data are meaningful at the individual observer level. We addressed this question with a novel case series approach, using factor analyses of ratings of twelve different traits to build individual models of facial impressions for different observers. Strikingly, three dimensions of trustworthiness, youthful/attractiveness, and competence/dominance appeared across the majority of these individual observer models, demonstrating that the dimensional approach is indeed meaningful at the individual level. Nonetheless, we also found differences in the stability of the competence/dominance dimension across observers. Taken together, results suggest that individual differences in impressions arise in the context of a largely common structure that supports a shared social reality.     

Working mothers versus homemakers: Do dreams reflect the changing roles of women?

In order to examine potential psychological changes arising from women's new social roles, 15 working and 15 nonworking mothers were asked to report dreams collected within a period of three weeks. In addition, they were administered the Jackson Research Personality Form. Two dreams from each subject were analyzed with selected scales which previous studies had shown to be sensitive to sex differences. On the personality inventory, working mothers were found to have higher social recognition and achievement motives. On the dream content measures, discriminant analyses showed that the two groups could be statistically differentiated on the basis of several scales. In accordance with the notion of continuity between waking and dreaming, working mothers experienced more unpleasant emotions, more male characters, and less residential dreams settings than homemakers. The latter group, surprisingly, had more overt hostility in its dreams. These results suggest that as the trend toward carrying the dual role of wage earner and homemaker is expanding, the gender differences typically observed in dreams content may decrease. They also suggest that the analysis of dream content may prove useful to study the strategies of women adapting to role changes.     

Close relationships and placemaking: Do objects in a couple's home reflect couplehood?

The domain of couple closeness extends well beyond the individual couple members themselves. Current research suggests that there are also indicators of couple closeness, functioning, and commitment that reside in the couple's physical environment. Two community samples of adults in marital or cohabitating romantic relationships (N = 110) completed a questionnaire that tapped several relationship qualities and that asked them to indicate (a) the objects in their home that they most wanted visitors to notice and (b) their favorite objects. We examined couple displays (the percentage of objects they wanted a visitor to notice that were jointly acquired, as opposed to individually acquired), and couple markers (the percentage of favorite objects that were jointly acquired). Consistent with hypotheses, relationship qualities (closeness, dyadic adjustment, and commitment) were positively associated with reporting a relatively high proportion of (a) jointly acquired objects among those they wanted visitors to notice and (b) jointly acquired favorite objects. We discuss these results in the context of couple placemaking—the physical and symbolic creation of a home as represented operationally in the acquisition and placement of relationship–relevant objects.     

Do readers make inferences about conversational topics?

When we read that two protagonists in a story chatted together for a couple of minutes, do we draw inferences about the topic of the conversation on the basis of information presented earlier in the text? Participants read passages in which protagonists part and later reunite; the passages ended with a sentence either that implied conversation or did not. In Experiment 1, participants' continuation sentences indicated that inferences about the topic of conversation were drawn. Recognition probe data in Experiment 2 provided more immediate evidence of such inferences. Experiment 3 addressed a possible confound in Experiment 2 and again provided evidence that readers inferred the continuation of the conversation. In Experiments 4 and 5, we investigated the effect of having the targeted conversational topic be a secret that should not be shared between the protagonists. The results are discussed in terms of the collaboration between passive, memory-based text processing and schema-driven comprehension processes.     

Do action goals mediate social inhibition of return?

Social inhibition of return is the phenomenon whereby an individual is slower to reach to locations to which another individual has recently responded. Although this suggests that an observer represents another person's action, little is known about which aspects of the action are encoded. The present work describes a series of three experiments examining whether social inhibition of return represents the endpoint goal of the action, i.e., is 'goal based'. Pairs of participants sat opposite to one another and alternated responses to a cued or non-cued object presented on a table top. Importantly, either the two participants performed the same interaction with the object or a different interaction. Although all our experiments showed social inhibition of return, the size of the effect was not modulated according to whether each participant had the same or different goal. We conclude that although the mechanisms giving rise to social inhibition of return do encode some aspects of a response they do not code for terminal action goals.     

Do nonhuman animals reason about prestige-based status?

Status is a complex, but crucially important, aspect of life across species. In recent decades, researchers have made significant contributions to our understanding of both the pathways by which status can be attained, as well as our underlying capacities for reasoning about these pathways. In 2001, Henrich & Gil-White proposed a prestige-based pathway to status where low status actors willingly defer to competent or knowledgeable high status actors, as a means of facilitating social learning and cultural transmission. Although this type of status hierarchy, and the capacity to reason about it, was hypothesized to be unique to humans, here I argue that there are several reasons why we might observe prestige-based status, and the capacity for reasoning about this pathway to status, in some nonhuman species as well. These reasons focus on the prevalence, importance, and sophistication of social learning in certain taxa, as well as the marked variation in hierarchy characteristics and structure across species. I point out places where our current methodologies encounter difficulties distinguishing whether a hierarchy in the wild is based on dominance or prestige, where our experimental methods leave us unable to assess whether an individual is reasoning about a high status actor as being prestigious or formidable, and provide suggestions for addressing these limitations. Adopting a comparative approach will clarify whether prestige-based status truly is unique to humans, and—if not—precisely what selective pressures facilitate the emergence of prestige-based status and the capacity for reasoning about it.     

Attention and stuttering: Do stutterers think too much about speech?

In this investigation the ability of stutterers and nonstutterers to simultaneously perform speech and nonspeech tasks was compared. Subjects were 10 stutterers and 10 nonstutterers. Two experiments were conducted. In the first, subjects performed a non-attention-demanding gross-motor task while they read aloud. In the second, subjects performed an attention-demanding task (reading comprehension) during speech. Results indicated that there was no significant change in the disfluency values of stutterers during the motor activity or as a result of the reading comprehension task. However, stutterers were found to perform significantly poorer than nonstutterers on the reading comprehension task. This finding was taken as evidence that stutterers devote more attention to speech than do nonstutterers.