Intelligence,Wellbeing and Procreative Beneficence

If Savulescu's (2001, 2009) controversial principle of Procreative Beneficence (PB) is correct, then an important implication is that couples should employ genetic tests for non‐disease traits in selecting which child to bring into existence. Both defenders as well as some critics of this normative entailment of PB have typically accepted the comparatively less controversial claim about non‐disease traits: that there are non‐disease traits such that testing and selecting for them would in fact contribute to bringing about the child who is expected to have the best life. We challenge this less controversial claim, not by arguing deductively for its falsity, but by showing that Savulescu's central argument for this presumably less controversial claim fails. Savulescu offers intelligence as the paradigm example of a testable non‐disease trait such that testing and selecting for it would increase the likelihood that the child selected would be the one who is expected to have the best life (or at least as good a life as the others). We provide a series of arguments aimed at demonstrating that Savulescu's argument from intelligence fails. If our arguments are successful, the upshot is not that PB is false, but more modestly, that the burden of proof remains squarely with Savulescu.     

Stronger autonomic response accompanies better learning: A test of Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis

According to Damasio's (1994, 1999) somatic marker hypothesis (SMH), positive and negative events are “marked” by bodily feelings. These markers aid future adaptive learning by producing signals to warn against or affirm behavioural options. An implicit assumption of the SMH is that the stronger the signal is, the stronger the resultant behaviour will be. In this study, we tested 30 healthy women on a gambling task (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994), while measuring skin conductance responses. For half of the participants, real money was used, and for half, fake money was used. Success on the task was positively correlated with anticipatory autonomic response, with no difference in pattern between real and fake money conditions. The results show clear support for Damasio's SMH, and suggest that it can be used to predict learning performance within a healthy population.     

Social Psychology,War and Peace: Towards a Critical Discursive Peace Psychology

In this paper, I make two related arguments: that peace psychology and social psychological peace research should give greater attention to discourse, and that critical discursive approaches in social psychology should explore matters of international military conflict, an area which has hitherto been somewhat neglected in this tradition of work. These arguments are developed in relation to debates concerning the nature and status of psychological ‘science’, and the neglect of language in social and peace psychology. To illustrate the possibilities of a critical discursive approach, research on the discursive function of ‘peace’ is discussed. In conclusion, it is suggested that a critical discursive perspective enables analysts to interrogate a range of assumptions underpinning militaristic ideologies.