Traction without Tracing: A (Partial) Solution for Control‐Based Accounts of Moral Responsibility

Control‐based accounts of moral responsibility face a familiar problem. There are some actions which look like obvious cases of responsibility but which appear equally obviously to lack the requisite control. Drunk‐driving cases are canonical instances. The familiar solution to this problem is to appeal to tracing. Though the drunk driver isn't in control at the time of the crash, this is because he previously drank to excess, an action over which he did plausibly exercise the requisite control. Tracing seeks to show that an agent's responsibility for some outcome (over which he lacked control) can be traced back to a prior exercise of control which caused (in the right way) the later lack of control. These and related cases have led many theorists to treat tracing as an indispensable component of any adequate theory of responsibility. This paper argues that tracing is in fact dispensable. I offer two strategies for explaining responsibility in drunk‐driving cases (and those with a similar structure): responsibility can either be exhaustively modeled on recklessness, or exhaustively modeled on negligence. Neither explanation, however, relies on tracing. If I'm right, the case for tracing is seriously weakened.     

Evidence for a fixed capacity limit in attending multiple locations

A classic question concerns whether humans can attend multiple locations or objects at once. Although it is generally agreed that the answer to this question is “yes,” the limits on this ability are subject to extensive debate. According to one view, attentional resources can be flexibly allocated to a variable number of locations, with an inverse relationship between the number of selected locations and the quality of information processing at each location. Alternatively, these resources might be quantized in a “discrete” fashion that enables concurrent access to a small number of locations. Here, we report a series of experiments comparing these alternatives. In each experiment, we cued participants to attend a variable number of spatial locations and asked them to report the orientation of a single, briefly presented target. In all experiments, participants’ orientation report errors were well-described by a model that assumes a fixed upper limit in the number of locations that can be attended. Conversely, report errors were poorly described by a flexible-resource model that assumes no fixed limit on the number of locations that can be attended. Critically, we showed that these discrete limits were predicted by cue-evoked neural activity elicited before the onset of the target array, suggesting that performance was limited by selection processes that began prior to subsequent encoding and memory storage. Together, these findings constitute novel evidence supporting the hypothesis that human observers can attend only a small number of discrete locations at an instant.     

Vicarious Peer Victimization and Adolescent Violence: Unpacking the Effects of Social Learning,General Strain,and Peer Group Selection

This study examines how the victimization of a close friend, or vicarious peer victimization, affects adolescent violence. Competing processes linking vicarious peer victimization and violence are empirically evaluated including social learning theory, general stain theory, and peer group selection models. The analyses use peer-network data from three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Regression models demonstrate that the association between vicarious peer victimization and violence is attributed primarily to peer-group selection and social learning mechanisms. These findings indicate that victimization affects not only the immediate victims of violence, but permeates throughout adolescent social networks.     

Hans Jonas's diagnosis of nihilism: The case of Heidegger

This paper is concerned with the implications of Husserl's phenomenological reformulation of the problem of error. Following Husserl, I argue that the phenomenon of error should not be understood as the accidental failure of a fully constituted cogito, but that it is itself constitutive of the cogito's formation. I thus show that the phenomenon of error plays a crucial role in our self-understanding as unified subjects of experience. In order to unpack this 'hermeneutical function' of error, I focus on three inter-related notions which are recurrently used by Husserl to refer to the central aspects of error apprehension: explosion (Explosion), replacement (Ersatz), and cancellation (Durchstreichung). My discussion, however, does not remain committed to the Husserlian framework as such. This is not only because Husserl's notion of explosion proves itself untenable, but because the Husserlian paradigm does not make room for a linguistic dimension intrinsic, in my view, to the realization of error. Hence, I proceed by reconstructing the Husserlian terms as tropes of realization, as narratological devices in the 'language game' of error. I argue that these hermeneutical devices are necessary for maintaining what Nietzsche would call the self's 'semblance of unity'. The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis for our thought and our consciousness in general? (Nietzsche, The Will to Power #490)     

No evidence of racial discrimination in criminal justice processing: Results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health

One of the most consistent findings in the criminological literature is that African American males are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated at rates that far exceed those of any other racial or ethnic group. This racial disparity is frequently interpreted as evidence that the criminal justice system is racist and biased against African American males. Much of the existing literature purportedly supporting this interpretation, however, fails to estimate properly specified statistical models that control for a range of individual-level factors. The current study was designed to address this shortcoming by analyzing a sample of African American and White males drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Analysis of these data revealed that African American males are significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated when compared to White males. This racial disparity, however, was completely accounted for after including covariates for self-reported lifetime violence and IQ. Implications of this study are discussed and avenues for future research are offered.     

Pseudocontingencies derived from categorically organized memory representations

Pseudocontingencies (PCs) allow for inferences about the contingency between two variables X and Y when the conditions for genuine contingency assessment are not met. Even when joint observations X _i and Y _i about the same reference objects i are not available or are detached in time or space, the correlation r(X _i ,Y _i ) is readily inferred from base rates. Inferred correlations are positive (negative) if X and Y base rates are skewed in the same (different) directions. Such PC inferences afford useful proxies for actually existing contingencies. While previous studies have focused on PCs due to environmental base rates, the present research highlights memory organization as a natural source of PC effects. When information about two attributes X and Y is represented in a hierarchically organized categorical memory code, as category-wise base rates p(X) and p(Y), the reconstruction of item-level information from category base rates will naturally produce PC effects. Three experiments support this contention. When the yes base rates of two respondents in four questionnaire subscales (categories) were correlated, recalled and predicted item-level responses were correlated in the same direction, even when the original responses to specific items within categories were correlated in the opposite direction.     

Psychometric Properties of the Anticipatory Social Behaviours Questionnaire

Relative to other components of Clark and Wells’ (1995) model, anticipatory processing has been understudied, despite research that suggests that anticipatory processing may maintain social anxiety through mechanisms such as increased anxiety, negative memory biases, and other negative consequences. Anticipatory processing has only been examined as a unitary process, with no efforts examining the underlying structure of this process. The purpose of the current study was to examine the factor structure of the Anticipatory Social Behaviours Questionnaire (ASBQ, Hinrichsen and Clark Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 34, 205–218, 2003) and identify relationships between the measure’s factors and other constructs of social anxiety. Study 1 (N?=?861) used exploratory factor analysis and concluded that a two-factor model (Avoidance and Preparation) was the best conceptualization of anticipatory processing. Study 2 confirmed the two factor model in a separate sample (N?=?485) and demonstrated the superiority of the two-factor model over a unitary model. Results of Study 3 suggested that, with a sample of high-socially-anxious undergraduates (N?=?59), the Avoidance factor was more maladaptive than the Preparation factor. Results are discussed in the context of the anticipatory processing literature and future directions are proposed.     

The Behavioral Genetics of Religiousness

Behavioral geneticists have sought to characterize the genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in religiousness. Behavioral genetic methodology is described and twin and adoption studies of religiousness are reviewed. It is concluded that familial resemblance for religiousness is due largely to shared environmental factors in childhood and adolescence, but to genetic factors in adulthood. Additional evidence shows that there is a genetic correlation between religiousness and antisocial and altruistic behavior. Claims for the discovery of a “God gene” are premature and unlikely, as any genetic influence is likely to represent the aggregate effect of many genetic factors.