Leibniz and the Square: A Deontic Logic for the Vir Bonus

Seventeenth century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz's contributions to metaphysics, mathematics, and logic are well known. Lesser known is his ‘invention’ of deontic logic, and that his invention derives from the alethic logic of the Aristotelian square of opposition. In this paper, I show how Leibniz developed this ‘logic of duties’, which designates actions as ‘possible, necessary, impossible, and omissible’ for a ‘vir bonus’ (good person). I show that for Leibniz, deontic logic can determine whether a given action, e.g. as permitted, is therefore obligatory or prohibited (impossible). Secondly, since the deontic modes are derived from what is possible, necessary, etc., for a good person to do, and that ‘right and obligation’ are the ‘moral qualities’ of a good person, we can see how Leibniz derives deontic logic from these moral qualities. Finally, I show how Leibniz grounds a central deontic concept, namely obligation, in the human capacity for freedom.     

The Positive Influence of Creating a Holistic Facial Composite on Video Line‐up Identification

Witnesses to a crime may be asked to create a facial composite of the offender from memory. They may then view a suspect in a police line‐up. Previous research on this topic has found both recognition impairment and enhancement following composite construction. In Experiment 1, creator‐participants employed the holistic facial composite system system EFIT‐V or the feature‐based E‐FIT system to create a single composite, and in Experiment 2, creators constructed up to three EFIT‐Vs. In both experiments, facial composite creators were one‐and‐a‐half times more likely than non‐composite creating controls to make correct target identifications from a video line‐up. No between condition effects were found in target‐absent trials in Experiment 1. The development of holistic facial composite systems has enhanced suspect identification rates in police investigations, and these results suggest that the use of such a system can also have a positive influence on a composite‐creating witness' later recognition of the suspect. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toward a cosmopolitan ethos

There has been a rising trend in cosmopolitan moral theory to seriously take into consideration the human's rootedness in, and partiality toward, particular cultures, places, peoples and traditions. This essay suggests that reframing our theorizing on cosmopolitanism from one that primarily addresses an ethico-political set of questions to one that addresses questions related to moral psychology, personal and collective identity formation and the ways in which civilizations and cultural communities cultivate an ethos may assist in the task of generating a rooted form of cosmopolitanism. Conceptualizing cosmopolitanism as an ethos entails a shift from considering our moral obligations to distant others toward a focus on the types of dispositions and character traits necessary to forge a sense of intercultural solidarity. Through an analysis of the ideas of ‘diaspora’, ‘proximity’, ‘partiality' and the ‘foreign’, it will be suggested that through our rootedness in particularity, and our ability to be partial to particular persons and identify with particular cultures, we are capable of fostering a sense of world citizenship that can serve as a foundation upon which we can secure a tenable global ethic for our pluralistic society.     

Reflexive orienting in response to short- and long-duration gaze cues in young,young-old,and old-old adults

Shifting visual focus on the basis of the perceived gaze direction of another person is one form of joint attention. In the present study, we investigated whether this socially relevant form of orienting is reflexive and whether it is influenced by age. Green and Woldorff (Cognition 122:96–101, 2012) argued that rapid cueing effects (i.e., faster responses to validly than to invalidly cued targets) were limited to conditions in which a cue overlapped in time with a target. They attributed slower responses following invalid cues to the time needed to resolve the incongruent spatial information provided by the concurrently presented cue and target. In the present study, we examined the orienting responses of young (18–31 years), young-old (60–74 years), and old-old (75–91 years) adults following uninformative central gaze cues that overlapped in time with the target (Exp. 1) or that were removed prior to target presentation (Exp. 2). When the cue and target overlapped, all three groups localized validly cued targets more quickly than invalidly cued targets, and validity effects emerged earlier for the two younger groups (at 100 ms post-cue-onset) than for the old-old group (at 300 ms post-cue-onset). With a short-duration cue (Exp. 2), validity effects developed rapidly (by 100 ms) for all three groups, suggesting that validity effects resulted from reflexive orienting based on the gaze cue information rather than from cue–target conflict. Thus, although old-old adults may be slow to disengage from persistent gaze cues, attention continues to be reflexively guided by gaze cues late in life.     

The Choice Architect’s Trilemma

Critics have long dismissed paternalistic choice architecture as conceptually muddled at best and oxymoronic at worst. In this article, I argue that this criticism remains true despite recent replies to the contrary. Further, I suggest that a similar conceptual criticism also applies to non-paternalistic choice architecture. This is due to a three-way tension between the effectiveness, avoidability, and distinctiveness of each nudge. To illustrate this tension, I provide a novel explanation of the mechanics of nudging and a taxonomy of these interventions. I then argue that choice architects who defend the distinctiveness of nudging according to how it guides our behaviour via our unreflective intuitive reasoning encounter a trilemma because the distinctiveness of nudging hinges on interventions being both avoidable and effective. Choice architects cannot achieve this aim without harnessing both our automatic and reflective systems of thought in tandem. However, this diminishes the distinctive character of nudging by bringing it closer to other traditional policy interventions. This establishes the choice architect’s trilemma: a nudge is likely to be either ineffective, effective via some morally unacceptable means, or effective in a manner that is conceptually indistinct from other evidence-based policy interventions.     

Neurocognitive mechanisms behind emotional attention: Inverse effects of anodal tDCS over the left and right DLPFC on gaze disengagement from emotional faces

Background

Attention to relevant emotional information in the environment is an important process related to vulnerability and resilience for mood and anxiety disorders. In the present study, the effects of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (i.e., DLPFC) stimulation on attentional mechanisms of emotional processing were tested and contrasted.

Methods

A sample of 54 healthy participants received 20 min of active and sham anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (i.e., tDCS) either of the left (n = 27) or of the right DLPFC (n = 27) on two separate days. The anode electrode was placed over the left or the right DLPFC, the cathode over the corresponding contra lateral supraorbital area. After each neurostimulation session, participants completed an eye-tracking task assessing direct processes of attentional engagement towards and attentional disengagement away from emotional faces (happy, disgusted, and sad expressions).

Results

Compared to sham, active tDCS over the left DLPFC led to faster gaze disengagement, whereas active tDCS over the right DLPFC led to slower gaze disengagement from emotional faces. Between-group comparisons showed that such inverse change patterns were significantly different and generalized for all types of emotion.

Conclusions

Our findings support a lateralized role of left and right DLPFC activity in enhancing/worsening the top-down regulation of emotional attention processing. These results support the rationale of new therapies for affective disorders aimed to increase the activation of the left over the right DLPFC in combination with attentional control training, and identify specific target attention mechanisms to be trained.

     

A flexible and accurate method to estimate the mode and stability of spontaneous coordinated behaviors: The index-of-stability (IS) analysis

Patterns of coordination result from the interaction between (at least) two oscillatory components. This interaction is typically understood by means of two variables: the mode that expresses the shape of the interaction, and the stability that is the robustness of the interaction in this mode. A potent method of investigating coordinated behaviors is to examine the extent to which patterns of coordination arise spontaneously. However, a prominent issue faced by researchers is that, to date, no standard methods exist to fairly assess the stability of spontaneous coordination. In the present study, we introduce a new method called the index-of-stability (IS) analysis. We developed this method from the phase-coupling (PC) analysis that has been traditionally used for examining locomotion–respiration coordinated systems. We compared the extents to which both methods estimate the stability of simulated coordinated behaviors. Computer-generated time series were used to simulate the coordination of two rhythmic components according to a selected mode m:n and a selected degree of stability. The IS analysis was superior to the PC analysis in estimating the stability of spontaneous coordinated behaviors, in three ways: First, the estimation of stability itself was found to be more accurate and more reliable with the IS analysis. Second, the IS analysis is not constrained by the limitations of the PC analysis. Third and last, the IS analysis offers more flexibility, and so can be adapted according to the user’s needs.     

No Place to Hide: Football Players' and Coaches' Perceptions of the Psychological Factors Influencing Video Feedback

The purpose of this two-part study was to examine the role of psychological factors within the delivery of video feedback in elite youth football. Interviews were conducted with 11 coaches and 12 players. A thematic content analysis yielded data relating to three general dimensions: (a) the psychological responses engaged during delivery; (b) the impact of using a range of delivery strategies; and (c) the impact of the delivery climate surrounding practice. The findings suggest that a greater appreciation of these factors would add significant value to the way coaches, sport scientists, and athletes currently use video technology for performance enhancement.     

Perspective taking and theory of mind in hide and seek

Does theory of mind play a significant role in where people choose to hide an item or where they search for an item that has been hidden? Adapting Anderson’s "Hide-Find Paradigm" Anderson et al. (Action, Perception and Performance, 76, 907–913, 2014) participants viewed homogenous or popout visual arrays on a touchscreen table. Their task was to indicate where in the array they would hide an item, or to search for an item that had been hidden, by either a friend or a foe. Critically, participants believed that their sitting location at the touchtable was the same as—or opposite to—their partner's location. Replicating Anderson et al., participants tended to (1) select items nearer to themselves on homogenous displays, and this bias was stronger for a friend than foe; and (2) select popout items, and again, more for a friend than foe. These biases were observed only when participants believed that they shared the same physical perspective as their partner. Collectively, the data indicate that theory of mind plays a significant role in hiding and finding, and demonstrate that the hide-find paradigm is a powerful tool for investigating theory of mind in adults.