Freedom Beyond Practical Reason: Duns Scotus on Will-Dependent Relations

Most acts of the will have a complex structure, i.e. wanting A in relation to B (e.g. as a means for an end or as a good for another person or for oneself). Duns Scotus makes the innovative claim that the will itself is responsible for the order of this complex structure. It does this by causing its own will-dependent relations, which he construes as a kind of mind-dependent relations (relationes rationis). By means of these relations, the will can arrange the terms of its will-acts independently of any arrangement proposed by the intellect. This not only allows the structure of one's will-act to diverge from the structure proposed by the intellect's final practical judgement; the structure of the will-act need not even have been considered by the intellect at all. One could, therefore, even will an inconceivable state of affairs. I argue that this theory, which scholars have virtually ignored, is fundamental to Scotus's account of divine, angelic, and human freedom, and that it follows necessarily from his voluntarist understanding of freedom. For Scotus, if the will could not structure its acts independently of the intellect, it would not be free.¹¹Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte (Leuven), the Cornell Summer Colloquium in Medieval Philosophy, and at UCLA. I am grateful for the discussion with those present on these occasions. Special thanks are due to Joshua Benson, Francis Feingold, Gloria Frost, Michael Gorman, Bonnie Kent, Calvin Normore, and Nick Kahm for helpful comments.     

Saving-enhanced performance: saving items after study boosts performance in subsequent cognitively demanding tasks

ABSTRACT

By saving and storing information, we use digital devices as our external memory stores, being able to offload and temporarily forget saved contents. Storm and Stone [2015. Saving-enhanced memory: The benefits of saving on the learning and remembering of new information. Psychological Science, 26(2), 182–188] showed that such memory offloading can be beneficial for subsequent memory performance. Saving already encoded items enhanced recall of items encoded after saving. In the present study, we did not only replicate saving-enhanced memory but found saving-enhanced performance for unrelated cognitively demanding tasks. Participants solved more modular arithmetic problems when they were able to offload a previously studied word list, compared to trials without the possibility to offload. Thus, saving of recently encoded items entailed a general benefit on subsequent cognitive performance, beyond encoding and retrieving word lists. We assume that offloading frees participants from the need to maintain offloaded items. Gained resources can then be used for subsequent tasks with high cognitive demands. In a nutshell, memory offloading can help to reduce the amount of information that has to be processed at a given time, efficiently delegating our limited cognitive resources to the most relevant tasks at hand while currently irrelevant information are safely stored outside our own memory.     

Social Status and the Desire to Resort to Violence: Using the Example of Uganda's Former Child Soldiers

Committing violent acts can be appealing, fascinating, exciting, and addictive (i.e., appetitive). Cultural settings that accept violence as a means to power and success promote this appetitive form of aggression. Former child soldiers of Uganda with military rank reported committing a greater variety of violent acts compared to those without rank. They experienced aggressive behavior as more positive than both those without rank and controls who had never been involved in armed groups. The relation between the number of individually committed offense types and appetitive aggression is weaker in former child soldiers without rank compared to those with rank. This indicates that the potential for rapid development of appetitive aggression is rewarded with higher social status in war-afflicted communities.     

Strength-Based Positive Interventions: Further Evidence for Their Potential in Enhancing Well-Being and Alleviating Depression

The impact of nine strengths-based positive interventions on well-being and depression was examined in an Internet-based randomized placebo-controlled study. The aims of the study were to: (1) replicate findings on the effectiveness of the gratitude visit, three good things, and using character strengths interventions; (2) test variants of interventions (noting three good things for 2 weeks; combining the gratitude visit and three good things interventions; and noting three funny things for a week); and (3) test the effectiveness of the counting kindness, gift of time, and another door opens-interventions in an online setting. A total of 622 adults subjected themselves to one of the nine interventions or to a placebo control exercise (early memories) and thereafter estimated their degrees of happiness and depression at five times (pre- and post-test, 1-, 3-, and 6 months follow-up). Eight of the nine interventions increased happiness; depression was decreased in all groups, including the placebo control group. We conclude that happiness can be enhanced through some “strengths-based” interventions. Possible mechanisms for the effectiveness of the interventions are discussed.     

Pragmatic Pluralism: Arendt,Cosmopolitanism, and Religion

Pragmatic pluralism denotes a particular approach to problems of international human rights and protections that departs from conventional cosmopolitan approaches. Pragmatic pluralism argues for situated and localized forms of cooperation between state and non-state actors, particularly religious groups and organizations, that may not share the secular, juridical understandings of rights, persons, and obligations common to contemporary cosmopolitan theory. A resource for the development of such a model of pragmatic pluralism can be found in the work of Hannah Arendt. Arendt's early dissertation "Love and Saint Augustine" affords a model of religious community and obligation that can be read productively alongside her later political writings. The possibilities inherent in a cooperative reading of these two parts of her work can be illustrated in relation to an issue of particular concern to cosmopolitan theorists: the international refugee crisis.     

Playing prosocial video games increases the accessibility of prosocial thoughts

Past research has provided abundant evidence that playing violent video games increases aggressive tendencies. In contrast, evidence on possible positive effects of video game exposure on prosocial tendencies has been relatively sparse. The present research tested and found support for the hypothesis that exposure to prosocial video games increases the accessibility of prosocial thoughts. These results provide support to the predictive validity of the General Learning Model (Buckley & Anderson, 2006) for the effects of exposure to prosocial media on social tendencies. Thus, depending on the content of the video game, playing video games can harm but may also benefit social relations.     

The effects of risk-glorifying media exposure on risk-positive cognitions, emotions, and behaviors: a meta-analytic review

In recent years, there has been a surge in the quantity of media content that glorifies risk-taking behavior, such as risky driving, extreme sports, or binge drinking. The authors conducted a meta-analysis involving more than 80,000 participants and 105 independent effect sizes to examine whether exposure to such media depictions increased their recipients' risk-taking inclinations. A positive connection was found for overall, combined risk taking (g=.41); as well as its underlying dimensions: risk-taking behaviors (g=.41), risk-positive cognitions and attitudes (g=.35), and risk-positive emotions (g=.56). This effect was observed across varying research methods (experimental, correlational, longitudinal); types of media (video games, movies, advertising, TV, music); and differing risk-related outcome measures (e.g., smoking, drinking, risky driving, sexual behavior). Multiple moderator analyses revealed 2 theoretically new boundary conditions for sociocognitive models. First, the effect was stronger for active (i.e., video games) than for passive (e.g., film, music) exposure to risk-glorifying media content. Second, the effect was stronger when there was a high degree of contextual fit between the media content and type of risk-taking measure. The theoretical, practical, and societal implications of the present research synthesis are discussed.     

A robust classic

In the present research, we argue for the robustness of illusory correlations (ICs, Hamilton & Gifford, 1976) regarding two boundary conditions suggested in previous research. First, we argue that ICs are maintained under extended experience. Using simulations, we derive conflicting predictions. Whereas noise-based accounts predict ICs to be maintained (Fielder, 2000; Smith, 1991), a prominent account based on discrepancy-reducing feedback learning predicts ICs to disappear (Van Rooy et al., 2003). An experiment involving 320 observations with majority and minority members supports the claim that ICs are maintained. Second, we show that actively using the stereotype to make predictions that are met with reward and punishment does not eliminate the bias. In addition, participants' operant reactions afford a novel online measure of ICs. In sum, our findings highlight the robustness of ICs that can be explained as a result of unbiased but noisy learning.     

Methodology in aesthetics: the case of musical expressivity

A central method within analytic philosophy has been to construct thought experiments in order to subject philosophical theories to intuitive evaluation. According to a widely held view, philosophical intuitions provide an evidential basis for arguments against such theories, thus rendering the discussion rational. This method has been the predominant way to approach theories formulated as conditional or biconditional statements. In this paper, we examine selected theories of musical expressivity presented in such logical forms, analyzing the possibilities for constructing thought experiments against them. We will argue that philosophical intuitions are not available for the evaluation of the types of counterarguments that would need to be constructed. Instead, the evaluation of these theories, to the extent that it can succeed at all, will centrally rely on inferential, non-immediate access to our subjective musical experiences. Furthermore, attempted thought experiments lose their methodological function because no proper distinction can be drawn between the persons figuring in the thought-experimental scenario and the evaluator of the scenario. Consequently, some of the central contributions to what is generally understood to be analytic philosophy of art are shown to represent a form of aesthetic criticism, offering much less basis for rational argumentation than is often thought.