Memories of real-life decisions

Three studies investigated decision makers' memory representations of choice alternatives in most important real-life decisions. In Study 1, each participant recalled the most important decision that she or he had ever made and rated to what degree a number of characteristics could describe the decisions. In Study 2, the participants were asked to think about an important decision that they had made during the last 7-10 days. In Study 3, the memory representations of decisions of a group of action-oriented participants were compared with those of a group of state-oriented participants (Kuhl, 1983). Characteristics related to standard decision theory, like consequences, values, and likelihood, had high ratings of applicability as well as affect/feeling. When testing the applicability of a circumplex model, the fuzzy-trace theory of memory, and differences between state- and action-oriented decision makers, we found (1) that there was no support for the circumplex model of emotions. Instead, an important decision problem was characterised by both positive and negative affect/emotion and thus, a bipolar mapping was found inadequate; (2) that a comparison of abstract and concrete aspects showed that the abstract characteristics scored higher, thereby supporting the fuzzy-trace theory; and (3) that the prediction that action-oriented participants would score higher than state-oriented participants on the characteristic of activity was not supported. However, state-oriented decision makers rated passivity higher than action-oriented decision makers for the important decision of leaving a partner. State-oriented decision makers used perceptual/cognitive scenario representations to a greater extent than action-oriented participants. Finally, it was stressed that in the development of decision theories it is essential to find theoretical representations as close as possible to how decision makers themselves represent the decisions. The method used in this contribution is focused on the role of memory in decision making and gives further insights into how important real-life decisions are represented by different decision makers.     

Revising Beliefs Towards the Truth

Belief revision (BR) and truthlikeness (TL) emerged independently as two research programmes in formal methodology in the 1970s. A natural way of connecting BR and TL is to ask under what conditions the revision of a belief system by new input information leads the system towards the truth. It turns out that, for the AGM model of belief revision, the only safe case is the expansion of true beliefs by true input, but this is not very interesting or realistic as a model of theory change in science. The new accounts of non-prioritized belief revision do not seem more promising in this respect, and the alternative BR account of updating by imaging leads to other problems. Still, positive results about increasing truthlikeness by belief revision may be sought by restricting attention to special kinds of theories. Another approach is to link truthlikeness to epistemic matters by an estimation function which calculates expected degrees of truthlikeness relative to evidence. Then we can study how the expected truthlikeness of a theory changes when probabilities are revised by conditionalization or imaging. Again, we can ask under what conditions such changes lead our best theories towards the truth.     

Mind and Miracles

Miracles are real or imagined events that contradict our intuitive expectations of how entities normally behave. Miracles in the weak sense are unexplained counterintuitive events. Miracles in the strong sense are counterintuitive events we explain by referring to the counterintuitive agents and forces of various religious traditions. Such explanations result from the fact that our minds treat half–understood information by carrying out searches in the memory, trying to connect new information with something already known. This is cognitively the most economical way of dealing with new information: we obtain the maximum of relevance at minimal processing cost.     

Jñānagarbha and the “God's‐eye view”

In trying to define the difference between conventional and ultimate truth, the Mādhyamika Buddhist author Jñānagarbha ends up in paradoxical formulations. Putnam's discussion of Nietzsche's remark that “as the circle of science grows larger it touches paradox at more places” is presented as an illustration for Jñānagarbha's case. No comparison of Putnam and Jñānagarbha is intended as regards the contents of their presentations, the focus being only on the logical form of their argumentation. The paradoxical nature of Jñānagarbha's doctrinal system is explained to derive from the logical incompleteness of formal systems. The paradox is also explained to work as a direction arrow pointing to what can only be realised in a mystical experience.     

The aim and structure of applied research

The distinction between basic and applied research is notoriously vague, despite its frequent use in science studies and in science policy. In most cases it is based on such pragmatic factors as the knowledge and intentions of the investigator or the type of research institute. Sometimes the validity of the distinction is denied altogether. This paper suggests that there are two ways of distinguishing systematically between basic and applied research: (i) in terms of the utilities that define the aims of inquiry, and (ii) by reference to the structure of the relevant knowledge claims. An important type of applied research aims at results that are expressed by techical norms (in von Wright's sense): if you wish to achieveA, and you believe you are in a situationB, then you should doX. This conception of design sciences allows us to re-evaluate many issues in the history, philosophy, and ethics of science.     

God is great – but not necessary? On Ara Norenzayan,Big Gods (2013)

Norenzayan provides ample evidence to support the claim that beliefs about moralizing Big Gods correlate with prosocial behavior. Atheists, for their part, are the most mistrusted minority wherever there is a widespread belief in moralizing gods. Projecting these patterns of thought and behavior on to our ancestors 10 000 years back is risky, though. It is a plausible hypothesis that prosociality in societies where people meet anonymous others on a regular basis may have coevolved with beliefs about Big Gods, but it remains historically speculative and the direction of causality is impossible to establish.     

Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity

This article presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that persons consider counterintuitive representations more likely to be religious than other kinds of beliefs. In three studies the subjects were asked to rate the probable religiousness of various kinds of imaginary beliefs. The results show that counterintuitive representations in general, and counterintuitive representations involving a conscious agent in particular, are considered much more likely to be religious. Counterintuitiveness thus seems to be an important element in a folk-understanding of religion.     

The feasibility of working memory tablet tasks in predicting scholastic skills in classroom settings

Cognitive assessment in natural group settings facilitates data collection but poses threats to the validity. In this study, tablet‐based working memory (WM) tasks, the counting span, and reading span were used in predicting 12‐year‐old children's (N = 837) scholastic skills and fluid intelligence in a classroom with environmental noise. WM tasks had excellent internal consistency, correlated with scholastic skills, and accounted for more of the variance in cognitive performance (grade point average, fluid intelligence, scholastic skills) compared with individually administered (n = 190) digit span task. Furthermore, the multilevel analysis revealed that compared with the classrooms with no noise, when naturally occurring speech or nonspeech types of environmental noises were present during assessment, WM scores or the reliability estimates were not lower. In contrast, when both types of noises were present, the relationships between some of the WM and achievement scores were even stronger. Thus, assessments in natural classroom contexts may promote revealing the individual differences in WM.