Feyerabend’s well-ordered science: how an anarchist distributes funds

To anyone vaguely aware of Feyerabend, the title of this paper would appear as an oxymoron. For Feyerabend, it is often thought, science is an anarchic practice with no discernible structure. Against this trend, I elaborate the groundwork that Feyerabend has provided for the beginnings of an approach to organizing scientific research. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend’s pluralism, once suitably modified, provides a plausible account of how to organize science. These modifications come from C.S. Peirce’s account of the economics of theory pursuit, which has since been corroborated by empirical findings in the social sciences. I go on to contrast this approach with the conception of a ‘well-ordered science’ as outlined by Kitcher (Science, truth, and democracy, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001), Cartwright (Philos Sci 73(5):981–990, 2006), which rests on the assumption that we can predict the content of future research. I show how Feyerabend has already given us reasons to think that this model is much more limited than it is usually understood. I conclude by showing how models of resource allocation, specifically those of Kitcher (J Philos 87:5–22, 1990), Strevens (J Philos 100(2):55–79, 2003) and Weisberg and Muldoon (Philos Sci 76(2):225–252, 2009), unwittingly make use of this problematic assumption. I conclude by outlining a proposed model of resource allocation where funding is determined by lottery and briefly examining the extent to which it is compatible with the position defended in this paper.

     

Human nature and cognitive–developmental niche construction

Recent theories in cognitive science have begun to focus on the active role of organisms in shaping their own environment, and the role of these environmental resources for cognition. Approaches such as situated, embedded, ecological, distributed and particularly extended cognition look beyond ‘what is inside your head’ to the old Gibsonian question of ‘what your head is inside of’ and with which it forms a wider whole—its internal and external cognitive niche. Since these views have been treated as a radical departure from the received view of cognition, their proponents have looked for support to similar extended views within (the philosophy of) biology, most notably the theory of niche construction. This paper argues that there is an even closer and more fruitful parallel with developmental systems theory and developmental niche construction. These ask not ‘what is inside the genes you inherited’, but ‘what the inherited genes are inside of’ and with which they form a wider whole—their internal and external ontogenetic niche, understood as the set of epigenetic, social, ecological, epistemic and symbolic legacies inherited by the organism as necessary developmental resources. To the cognizing agent, the epistemic niche presents itself not just as a partially self-engineered selective niche, as the niche construction paradigm will have it, but even more so as a partially self-engineered ontogenetic niche, a problem-solving resource and scaffold for individual development and learning. This move should be beneficial for coming to grips with our own (including cognitive) nature: what is most distinctive about humans is their developmentally plastic brains immersed into a well-engineered, cumulatively constructed cognitive–developmental niche.     

EVALUATING THE EXTENDED MIND

According to proponents of radically extended cognition, some cognition is located outside the boundaries of biological organisms. In this paper, I offer a new argument for a modest version of this view according to which some cognitive processes are radically extended. I do so by showing that features of a subject's environment—in particular, the pen and paper that a subject uses to solve complex mathematical problems—can have epistemic roles that are indicative of cognitive roles. I end the paper by discussing how epistemology might play a significant role in diagnosing alleged cases of radically extended cognition.     

Textbook Treatments of Fallacies

In his Fallacies, Hamblin (1970) castigated what he called the “standard treatment” of fallacies in introductory textbooks of his day as debased, worn-out, dogmatic, and unconnected to anything else in modern logic. A bit more than 50 years later, I investigate the treatment of fallacies in six English-language introductory textbooks with a section on fallacies that have gone into 10 or more editions, to see whether their treatment of fallacies has taken account of the scholarship on fallacies that Hamblin’s book evoked and is better than the treatment that Hamblin described. The answer is: not much. I conclude by setting out criteria for an adequate treatment of fallacies in an introductory textbook.

     

Process Management Self-Efficacy: Scale Development and Validation

Managers, responsible for the work of others, are crucial for organizational success. A key function of managers is coordination and management of process(es) to ensure task completion (Bounty & Drucker-Godard in Human Relations, 72(3), 565-587, 2019; Mintzberg, 2009). Self-efficacy beliefs related to process management are likely to predict how well an individual manages processes. Thus, process management self-efficacy beliefs are crucial to managerial performance and, consequently, to organizational success. The lack of a scale to measure process management self-efficacy is a significant oversight, which this study attempts to remedy. In study 1, using data from four separate samples, we developed a process management self-efficacy scale (PMSES). To provide preliminary evidence of construct validity, we conducted studies 2 and 3. Using data collected from managers, their supervisors, and co-workers, results of study 2 indicated that managers’ process management self-efficacy was related to task performance evaluated by their superiors and to contextual performance rated by their co-workers. In addition, process management self-efficacy predicted additional variance in task and contextual performance, beyond a measure of generalized self-efficacy. In study 3, managers’ process management self-efficacy beliefs were related to their subordinates’ performance. We discuss implications for theory, research, and practice.

     

Toward a consensual taxonomy of emotions

ABSTRACT

In this article, I chart certain origins of the science of emotion back to the cognitive revolution. I then highlight new developments in the field – the influences of emotion upon cognition, the focus on over 20 emotions, the expanding emphasis on positive emotion, and an abiding interest in the functions emotions serve. I close by arguing for the need for the field to move toward a conceptual taxonomy of emotions, to move beyond decades of terminological debates about what emotions are to a convergent effort to understand what emotions do for people.     

Friends at last? Distributed cognition and the cognitive/social divide

Distributed cognition (d-cog) claims that many cognitive processes are “distributed” across groups and the surrounding material and cultural environment. Recently, Nancy Nersessian, Ronald Giere, and others have suggested that a d-cog approach might allow us to bring together cognitive and social theories of science. I explore this idea by focusing on the specific interpretation of d-cog found in Edwin Hutchins' canonical text Cognition in the wild. First, I examine the scope of a d-cog approach to science, showing that there are important disputes between cognitive and social theorists on which d-cog remains silent. Second, I suggest that, where social explanations can be recast in d-cog terms, this reformulation will not be acceptable to all social theorists. Finally, I ask how we should make sense of the claim that, on a d-cog analysis, social factors are cognitive factors.     

“Why Can’t Boys Be #LikeAGirl?”: Sticky Essentialism and Ambivalent (De)gendering in Fathers’ Online Accounts of Children’s Gender and Sexuality

In our media-centric age, stories and commentary about children’s gender socialization are exchanged online. Yet we know quite little about how fathers interpret the gender and sexual identities of their children and share those interpretations with others via social media. In this article, I present findings from a qualitative content analysis of blog posts about children’s gender and sexuality (n?=?122) written by American and Canadian fathers (n?=?36). I apply Kane’s (2012) “gender trap” typology to analyze how dad bloggers support and/or challenge heteronormative gendered identities, behaviors, relationships, and activities for children. Most of these fathers present anxious accounts of experimenting with gender-neutral parenting, imagining their children in future roles and relationships, permitting nonconformity in girls versus boys, and connecting childrearing to broader social inequalities. I develop the concepts of sticky essentialism—to demonstrate how essentialist logics permeate fathers’ explanations for gendered childhoods, and ambivalent (de)gendering—to explain fathers’ mixed feelings toward heteronormative gender socialization and accountability. To conclude, I discuss risks and benefits of fathers blogging publicly about children’s gender and sexuality.

     

What Are the “True” Statistics of the Environment?

A widespread assumption in the contemporary discussion of probabilistic models of cognition, often attributed to the Bayesian program, is that inference is optimal when the observer's priors match the true priors in the world—the actual “statistics of the environment.” But in fact the idea of a “true” prior plays no role in traditional Bayesian philosophy, which regards probability as a quantification of belief, not an objective characteristic of the world. In this paper I discuss the significance of the traditional Bayesian epistemic view of probability and its mismatch with the more objectivist assumptions about probability that are widely held in contemporary cognitive science. I then introduce a novel mathematical framework, the observer lattice, that aims to clarify this issue while avoiding philosophically tendentious assumptions. The mathematical argument shows that even if we assume that “ground truth” probabilities actually do exist, there is no objective way to tell what they are. Different observers, conditioning on different information, will inevitably have different probability estimates, and there is no general procedure to determine which one is right. The argument sheds light on the use of probabilistic models in cognitive science, and in particular on what exactly it means for the mind to be “tuned” to its environment.     

OUTSOURCED COGNITION

Recent developments in technologically enabled social cognition call for a rethinking of many aspects of human cognition. According to the hypothesis of extended cognition, we must revise our psychological categories by eliminating allegedly superficial distinctions between internal cognition and external processes. As an alternative to this proposal, I outline a hypothesis of outsourced cognition which seeks to respect distinctions that are operative in both folk psychology and the social and cognitive sciences. According to this hypothesis, the cognitive states and processes of the individual are substantially and explanatorily distinct from the relevant external states and processes. In consequence, the individual remains a cognitive unit that is both central and indispensable in the explanations of cognitive science. As a case study, I consider the epistemology of testimony. I will argue that important epistemological categories may be preserved by adopting the hypothesis of outsourced cognition over the hypothesis of extended cognition. Moreover, I will argue that the outsourced cognition hypothesis deepens the problems that beset an extended epistemology of testimony.     

Expanding the scope of reflective knowledge: From MINE to OURS

Ernest Sosa has suggested that we distinguish between animal knowledge, on the one hand, and reflective knowledge, on the other. Animal knowledge is direct, immediate, and foundationally structured, while reflective knowledge involves a knower's higher‐order awareness of her own mental states, and is structured by relations of coherence. Although Sosa's distinction is extremely appealing, it also faces serious problems. In particular, the sorts of processes that would be required for reflective knowledge, as Sosa understands it, are not processes that are instantiated in human cognition. I argue that the problems facing Sosa's notion of reflective knowledge stem from treating human cognitive processes individualistically. They stem from what I will term Sosa's perspective of methodologically individualistic noetic explanation—or MINE. I suggest that these problems disappear if we expand the scope of what counts as cognitive processes to include socially distributed cognitive processes, if we adopt a framework of other‐derived united reflective self‐evaluation—or OURS. In other words, I'll suggest that a solution to the problems facing the distinction between animal and reflective knowledge may be found in a shift of perspective from MINE to OURS.     

A review of Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, The Bounds of Cognition

In The Bounds of Cognition, Fred Adams and Kenneth Aizawa treat the arguments for extended cognition to withering criticism. I summarize their main arguments and focus special attention on their distinction between the extended cognitive system hypothesis and the extended cognition hypothesis, as well as on their demand for a mark of the mental.     

Reality check: A comparison of college students and a community sample of mock jurors in a simulated sexual violent predator civil commitment

Despite concerns about generalizability, past mock trial research has concluded that effects of sample (i.e., students versus representative mock jurors) are negligible. The current study was conducted to explore this conclusion within the conceptual framework of cognitive–experiential self‐theory (CEST). Through a mock civil commitment hearing of a sexually violent predator, responses of student (n = 138) and representative (n = 240) mock jurors were compared. Results revealed several important differences between samples: (a) the student sample scored higher on the rational processing measure (i.e., need for cognition); (b) students' verdicts were also significantly correlated to a measure of their cognitive processing style, an enduring personal characteristic related to the extent to which an individual engages in either effortful/effortless cognition; and (c) the representative sample was more punitive, was more persuaded by clinical expert testimony, and evidenced a greater gender effect in its decisions. Implications for jury decision‐making research are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.

     

ON McCAULEY'S WHY RELIGION IS NATURAL AND SCIENCE IS NOT: SOME FURTHER OBSERVATIONS

Robert McCauley's Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not provides a summary interpretive statement of the standard model in cognitive science of religion, what I have previously called the HADD + ToM + Cultural Epidemiology model, along with a more general argument comparing religious cognition to scientific thinking and a novel framework for understanding both in terms of the concept of the maturationally natural. I here follow up on some observations made in a previous paper, developing them in light of McCauley's own response to my previous arguments.     

A response to Chisholm’s paradox

Essentialists suppose that for every individual, if that individual exists at any possible world, then necessarily that individual exemplifies some non-trivial qualitative property essential to it, as such. Anti-essentialists deny this. One important argument leveled by some anti-essentialists against essentialism takes the form of a thought experiment, one originally introduced by Chisholm (Nous 1(1):1–8, 1967), sometimes referred to as Chisholm’s Paradox (CP). In this essay, I defend essentialism against CP. I begin by presenting the argument and showing how it leads to a contradiction of the essentialist thesis. I then consider one of the most popular solutions to CP to date, that given by Salmon (Midwest Stud Philos 11:75–120, 1986, Philos Rev 98(1):3–34, 1989, Philos Top 21(2):187–197, 1993). Next, I critique Salmon’s proposal and show that it is an insufficient response on behalf of the essentialist. And finally, I propose a novel solution to the paradox and discuss why it is that many metaphysicians in the past have found CP plausible, despite being fallacious.

     

Subtle Discrimination Overtakes Cognitive Resources and Undermines Performance

Meta-analyses demonstrate that the negative effects of subtle forms of discrimination on a range of work-related outcomes can be worse than those of overt discrimination (Dhanani et al. Personnel Psychology, 71(2), 147–179, 2018; Jones et al. Journal of Management, 42(6), 1588–1613, 2016). Yet, these syntheses and the primary studies on which they are based offer little insight into how or why these effects emerge. In the current study, we examine consequences of both of these types of discrimination on task performance and citizenship intentions via cognitive resource depletion. A total of 131 women experienced (a) overt discrimination, (b) subtle discrimination, (c) overt and subtle discrimination, or (d) no discrimination and were then asked to conduct a series of in-basket performance tasks. Results revealed that subtle (but not overt) discrimination significantly impaired measures of task performance and that cognitive resource depletion mediated these relationships. By pinpointing cognitive resource depletion as the mechanism that transmits the negative consequences of subtle discrimination, this work sheds new light onto this detrimental psychological experience and further opens up new opportunities for its remediation.

     

Towards a Unitary Case for Russellian Panpsychism

One of the most pressing challenges that occupy the Russellian panpsychist’s agenda is to come up with a way to reconcile the traditional argument from categorical properties (Seager Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(10–11), 129–145, 2006; Alter & Nagasawa, 2015) with H. H. Mørch’s dispositionalism-friendly argument from the experience of causation (2014, Topoi, 39, 1073–1088, 2018, 2020) — on the way to a unitary, all-encompassing case for the view. In this regard, Mørch claims that, via the commitment to the Identity theory of properties, one can consistently hold both panpsychist arguments without contradiction (2020: 281) — I shall refer to such proposal as Reconciliation. In my paper, I shall argue that this is not the case. To this extent, I will first consider H. Taylor’s argument that the Identity theorists have the exact same resources as the dispositionalists (as, after careful enquiry, their views on the metaphysics of properties turn out to coincide (Philosophical Studies, 175, 1423–1440, 2018: 1438)), and thus contend that Reconciliation fails to obtain. Then, I will suggest that one can avoid the problem and reconcile the arguments by adopting a different version of the powerful qualities view, namely the Compound view — and thus advance a reformulated version of the claim, i.e. Reconciliation*. Finally, even though pursuing my proposed solution might expose Russellian panpsychism to the risk of epiphenomenalism, I shall conclude that such specific form of epiphenomenalism is a rather benign one, and thus that, via Reconciliation*, the constitution of a unitary case for panpsychism as a positive proposal (and not as a mere alternative to dualism and physicalism) can be achieved.

     

Disagreeing about who we are

ABSTRACT

One argument that has been suggested for conventionalism about personal identity is that it captures that certain disagreements about personal identity seem irresolvable, without being committed to the view that these disagreements are merely verbal. In this paper, I will take the considerations about disagreement used to motivate conventionalism seriously. However, I will use them to motivate a very different, novel, and as yet unexplored view about personal identity. This is the view that personal identity is a non-representational concept, the nature of which isn’t to be accounted for in terms of what entity it represents, but its non-representational role. I highlight that we find structurally very similar concerns about disagreement in another philosophical debate, namely in meta-ethics. But, in meta-ethics, such sorts of considerations are, traditionally, thought to support one distinctive view: meta-ethical expressivism, a non-representational view about normative thought and discourse. This suggests that we should take a similar view seriously for personal identity. I also develop what such an unfamiliar view might look like, using expressivism as a template. On this view, judgements about personal identity are plans that regulate who to hold accountable.     

Beyond perceptual symbols: A call for representational pluralism

Recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience suggests that certain cognitive processes employ perceptual representations. Inspired by this evidence, a few researchers have proposed that cognition is inherently perceptual. They have developed an innovative theoretical approach that rests on the notion of perceptual simulation and marshaled several general arguments supporting the centrality of perceptual representations to concepts. In this article, I identify a number of weaknesses in these arguments and defend a multiple semantic code approach that posits both perceptual and non-perceptual representations.