Active inference, sensory attenuation and illusions

Active inference provides a simple and neurobiologically plausible account of how action and perception are coupled in producing (Bayes) optimal behaviour. This can be seen most easily as minimising prediction error: we can either change our predictions to explain sensory input through perception. Alternatively, we can actively change sensory input to fulfil our predictions. In active inference, this action is mediated by classical reflex arcs that minimise proprioceptive prediction error created by descending proprioceptive predictions. However, this creates a conflict between action and perception; in that, self-generated movements require predictions to override the sensory evidence that one is not actually moving. However, ignoring sensory evidence means that externally generated sensations will not be perceived. Conversely, attending to (proprioceptive and somatosensory) sensations enables the detection of externally generated events but precludes generation of actions. This conflict can be resolved by attenuating the precision of sensory evidence during movement or, equivalently, attending away from the consequences of self-made acts. We propose that this Bayes optimal withdrawal of precise sensory evidence during movement is the cause of psychophysical sensory attenuation. Furthermore, it explains the force-matching illusion and reproduces empirical results almost exactly. Finally, if attenuation is removed, the force-matching illusion disappears and false (delusional) inferences about agency emerge. This is important, given the negative correlation between sensory attenuation and delusional beliefs in normal subjects—and the reduction in the magnitude of the illusion in schizophrenia. Active inference therefore links the neuromodulatory optimisation of precision to sensory attenuation and illusory phenomena during the attribution of agency in normal subjects. It also provides a functional account of deficits in syndromes characterised by false inference and impaired movement—like schizophrenia and Parkinsonism—syndromes that implicate abnormal modulatory neurotransmission.     

Personality and Dissonance Among Mormon Missionaries

The distinguishing characteristics of dissonant missionaries were identified by examining the responses of 58 current and former Mormon missionaries to a questionnaire about missionary service, a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Denial scale, and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) Compulsive and Submissive/Aggressive special scales. The participants, 12 women and 46 men, were mailed the materials after being identified by their friends or acquaintances as current or former missionaries. Women had less satisfying missionary experiences than men and were more likely to report a loss of self-esteem due to missionary service, but were not more dissonant missionaries than men. Missionaries with lower scores on the Denial, Compulsive, and Submissive/Aggressive scales were more likely to question mission policies than subjects with higher scores. Thus, it appears that Denial, Compulsive, and Submissive/Aggressive scale scores can identify potentially dissonant missionaries.     

Review of Clinical Medicine and Religious Practice

The purpose was to evaluate faith-based studies within the medical literature to determine whether there are ways to help physicians understand how religion affects patients’ lives and diseases. We reviewed articles that assessed the influence of religious practices on medicine as a primary or secondary variable in clinical practice. This review evaluated 49 articles and found that religious faith is important to many patients, particularly those with serious disease, and patients depend on it as a positive coping mechanism. The findings of this review can suggest that patients frequently practice religion and interact with God about their disease state. This spiritual interaction may benefit the patient by providing comfort, increasing knowledge about their disease, greater treatment adherence, and quality of life. The results of prayer on specific disease states appear inconsistent with cardiovascular disease but stronger in other disease states.     

Closure of autobiographical memories moderates their directive effect on behaviour

Specific autobiographical memories have been theorised to serve a directive function, whereby the content of the memory directs behaviour outside awareness. The present research tested whether the extent to which a memory feels low in closure, or psychologically not in the past, moderates this directive effect. A total of 163 participants in an online experiment were asked to recollect a specific autobiographical memory of a time they had failed to donate to charity, or were not asked to recollect a memory. Those who recollected a memory were randomly assigned to think of the memory as high versus low in closure. Recollecting an autobiographical memory made to feel low in closure led to more memory-relevant behaviour than either recollecting a memory made to feel high in closure, or no memory at all. Moreover, the directive effect of a low-closure memory occurred whether participants were made aware of an upcoming behavioural opportunity or not. Discussion centres on possible processes linking low closure and behaviour, as well as implications for the self-memory system theory of autobiographical memory.     

Against Moral Intellectualism

This paper argues that non‐cognitivism about moral judgements is compatible with moral realism. In order to reveal the possibility, and plausibility, of this hitherto under‐explored position in metaethics, it surveys a series of four increasingly fine‐grained formulations of the distinction between cognitivism and non‐cognitivism. It argues that all but the last of these distinctions should be rejected, on the grounds that they lead advocates of non‐cognitivism away from what initially motivated them to advocate non‐cognitivism in the first place. One significant pay‐off of this reconceived formulation of the cognitivism/non‐cognitivism distinction is that it reveals what it would take to properly appreciate the place of virtue ethics in contemporary metaethical debates.     

Consensus, clinical decision making, and unsettled cases

The model of clinical ethics consultation (CEC) defended in the ASBH Core Competencies report has gained significant traction among scholars and healthcare providers. On this model, the aim of CEC is to facilitate deliberative reflection and thereby resolve conflicts and clarify value uncertainty by invoking and pursuing a process of consensus building. It is central to the model that the facilitated consensus falls within a range of allowable options, defined by societal values: prevailing legal requirements, widely endorsed organizational policies, and professional standards of practice and codes of conduct. Moreover, the model stipulates that ethics consultants must refrain from giving substantive recommendations regarding how parties to a moral disagreement in the clinic should evaluate their options. We argue that this model of CEC is incomplete, because it wrongly assumes that what counts as the proper set of allowable options among which the parties are to deliberate will itself always be clearly discernible. We illustrate this problem with a recent case on which one of us consulted-a neonate born with trisomy 18 (T18). We try to show that law, policy, and standards of practice reveal no clear answer to the question posed by the case: namely, whether forgoing gastrostomy tube feedings for a baby with T18 is allowable. We suggest there may be other kinds of cases in which it may simply be unsettled whether a given choice falls within the set of allowable options within which consensus is to be facilitated. What should an ethicist do when confronting such unsettled cases? We agree with the facilitation model that an ethicist should remain neutral among the allowable options, when it is clear what the allowable options are. But, in unsettled cases, the role of a consultant should be expanded to include a process of moral inquiry into what the allowable options should be. We end by raising the issue of whether this means an ethicist should share his or her own conclusions or views about the allowability of a given clinical option.     

Does response variability predict distractibility among adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder?

Increased intraindividual variability in response time (RTSD) has been observed reliably in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and has often been used as a measure of inattention. RTSD is assumed to reflect attentional lapses and distractibility, though evidence for the validity of this connection is lacking. We assessed whether RTSD is an indicator of inattention by comparing RTSD on the stop-signal task (SST) with performance on the delayed oculomotor response (DOR) task, a measure of distractibility. Participants included 30 adults with ADHD and 28 controls. Participants completed the SST and the DOR task, which measured subjects' ability to maintain attention and avoid distraction by inhibiting reflexive saccades toward distractors. On the SST, the ADHD group was slower to inhibit than were controls, indicating poorer inhibitory control in ADHD. The ADHD group also displayed slower reaction times (RTs), greater RTSD, and more omission errors. On the DOR task, the ADHD group displayed more premature saccades (i.e., greater distractibility) than did controls. Greater variability in RT was associated with increased distraction on the DOR task, but only in ADHD participants. Results suggest that RTSD is linked to distractibility among adults with ADHD and support the use of RTSD as a valid measure of inattention in ADHD.     

Moral Mistakes

Is it possible to show that a moral claim is mistaken without taking a moral stand with regard to it? A striking number of contemporary metaethicists suppose that it is. In this paper, I argue against a prominent line of support for this supposition. My goal is to cast suspicion on a general tendency to think that the epistemic standing of moral claims is something that can be assessed from outside the practices of making and critically evaluating moral judgements. I do this by focusing on a widely accepted criterion of competence with regard to the use of moral concepts, the moral supervenience criterion (MSC). This criterion holds that someone who judges two acts or events to be morally different without thinking that he has to identify some non‐particular non‐moral difference between them simply doesn't understand what it is to make a moral judgement. I focus on a paradigmatic example of the sort of mistake in moral judgement that is supposed to support the MSC and argue that it provides no support whatsoever. I then offer my own alternative explanation of this sort of mistake in moral judgement. I conclude with a discussion of why advocates of the MSC are inclined to suppose that it is possible to assess the epistemic standing of a moral claim without oneself taking a moral stand with regard to it.     

Differentially tuned responses to restricted versus prolonged awareness of threat: a preliminary fMRI investigation

Responses to threat occur via two known independent processing routes. We propose that early, reflexive processing is predominantly tuned to the detection of congruent combinations of facial cues that signal threat, whereas later, reflective processing is predominantly tuned to incongruent combinations of threat. To test this prediction, we examined responses to threat-gaze expression pairs (anger versus fear expression by direct versus averted gaze). We report on two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, one employing prolonged presentations (2 s) of threat-gaze pairs to allow for reflective processing (Study 1), and one employing severely restricted (33 ms), backward masked presentations of threat-gaze pairs to isolate reflexive neural responding (Study 2). Our findings offer initial support for the conclusion that early, reflexive responses to threat are predominantly tuned to congruent threat-gaze pairings, whereas later reflective responses are predominantly tuned to ambiguous threat-gaze pairings. These findings highlight a distinct dual function in threat perception.     

Julian of Norwich: Problems of Evil and the Seriousness of Sin

Julian of Norwich emphasizes God’s eternal and unchanging love for humankind. Her visions show how God is not angry with our sins and so has no need to forgive us. God does not shame or blame us but excuses us and plans how to reward and compensate us for sin. In relation to Mother Jesus, we remain dear lovely children who need help, correction, and education. Although these remarks suggest to some that Julian must be “soft” on sin, that she has no adequate appreciation of the worthiness of God or the dignity of human nature, I argue that this is far from the case. On the contrary, she makes Divine worthiness axiomatic and urges readers to live into it. She relocates human dignity not in its intrinsic value but in our centrality to God’s plan. She measures the seriousness of sin in terms of the “real hard work” it takes to rear us up out of it: crucifixion for Christ, the hell of being a sinner and the crucifixion of life-long penance for us. Nevertheless, the brightness of her visions dominates with her assurance that despite the sin-produced sufferings of this present life, all will be well.