Money, Kisses, And Electric Shocks: On the Affective Psychology of Risk

Prospect theory's S-shaped weighting function is often said to reflect the psychophysics of chance. We propose an affective rather than psychophysical deconstruction of the weighting function resting on two assumptions. First, preferences depend on the affective reactions associated with potential outcomes of a risky choice. Second, even with monetary values controlled, some outcomes are relatively affect-rich and others relatively affect-poor. Although the psychophysical and affective approaches are complementary, the affective approach has one novel implication: Weighting functions will be more S-shaped for lotteries involving affect-rich than affect-poor outcomes. That is, people will be more sensitive to departures from impossibility and certainty but less sensitive to intermediate probability variations for affect-rich outcomes. We corroborated this prediction by observing probability-outcome interactions: An affect-poor prize was preferred over an affect-rich prize under certainty, but the direction of preference reversed under low probability. We suggest that the assumption of probability-outcome independence, adopted by both expected-utility and prospect theory, may hold across outcomes of different monetary values, but not different affective values.     

Positivity ratio of flourishing individuals: Examining the moderation effects of methodological variations and chronological age

We tested the relationship between flourishing and positivity ratio while accounting for different measures of affect and rating scale formats. We further examined age-related differences in positivity ratio. Studies 1 and 2 showed that positivity ratio is affected by the measure used, but not by the rating scale format. Study 3 further showed that positivity ratio is higher among older adults. The above pattern of methodological variations was replicated in Study 4 with daily ratings of emotions and in Study 5 where emotions were rated on an extended scale. Study 5 also replicated the aforementioned age effect. Together these studies suggest that positivity ratio is moderated by methodological variants and individual differences, such as chronological age. Future studies should account for these possible moderation effects when exploring the positivity ratio and its relationship to flourishing.     

The Secular University and Its Critics

Universities in the USA have become bastions of secularity in a distinctly religious society. As such, they are subjected to a variety of robust and rigorous religious critiques. In this paper I do not seek to engage in the debate between the supporters of the secular university and its opponents. Furthermore, I do not claim to summarize the history of the critique of the secular university, nor to present an exhaustive map of its current articulations. My purpose is rather more limited and modest, namely, to locate some of the key arguments of the current religious criticism of the secular university and put them in a wider philosophical context. Exploring the philosophical infrastructure of this criticism enables not only a more comprehensive and profound understanding of it, but also urges us to rethink the purpose and essence of the university as an institution that both reflects and forms our society and culture. The article is structured as follows; first section puts the religious criticism of the secular university in the context of the latest wave of criticism levelled at contemporary universities. Second section explores the argument according to which the secularization of the university led to the loss of the ideal of education for excellence in the wide, classical sense of the term. Third section examines the theoretical foundations of the call to reintegrate religion in contemporary universities, while fourth section explores the various practical consequences of this demand.     

The Present's Uniqueness

This paper offers an account of what makes the present unique. The present, it is argued, plays a constitutive role regarding succession, pastness and futurity, and is thus a pivot sustaining temporality. This is first shown with respect to experienced temporality, but the claim is then expanded to objective temporal relations and properties. A bulk of the argumentative effort goes towards establishing that, despite the crucial role experienced temporality plays in it, the result of the study is a Wittgensteinean kind of realism regarding objective time. That sets the proposal of this paper apart from both eternalism and presentism.     

Why Induction Is No Cure For Baldness

The paper aims at establishing that the premises of both the inductive and the multi‐premised versions of the sorites argument are not apparently acceptable and that, therefore, sorites‐type arguments do not constitute logical or conceptual paradoxes. Rather, it is suggested that such arguments are most properly and fruitfully described as skeptical challenges. A secondary goal of the paper is to focus attention to the unduly neglected inductive version of the argument.     

ABCs of principal–agent interactions: Accurate predictions,biased processes,and contrasts between working and delegating

We experimentally investigate people’s evaluations of incentive pay contracts and people’s predictions of others’ evaluations of incentive pay contracts. We emphasize that the construction of evaluations and predictions often includes two substeps, involving likelihood judgment and likelihood weighting. Predictors appear to be biased at both substeps but in opposing directions. Accurate overall predictions thus sometimes reflect two errors that are of the same magnitude and thereby offset. Moreover, predictions can become more inaccurate if one step is debiased but the other is left untouched. Importantly, principals deciding whether to delegate a task are susceptible to just one of the biases. Delegation assessments are thus often flawed, reflecting a single error that is not offset.     

“On the essence of temporal directionality and its irreversibility”

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - My analysis of temporal direction begins by establishing that time-reversal scenarios, scenarios in which the direction of time itself is reversed,...     

Conventional Fouls - A Note on Strategic Fouls

ABSTRACT

Strategic fouls (SF) are intentional violations of the rules ‘in which the violator expects to be detected and penalized but expects some benefit to his or her competitive effectiveness’ (Fraleigh 2003, 169). Sometimes SF are widely viewed within a playing practice as acceptable—possibly as legitimate prices) e.g. stopping the clock in Basketball). In other instances, they are considered illegitimate (e.g., handling the ball to prevent a goal in dying minutes of a football match). And of course sometimes the issue is contested (e.g., fouling to stop a counterattack in football). My aim is to defend Converionalsim: Conventionalism: SF of a certain type in a particular sport is justifiable if there is a legitimate agreement or a convention according to which it is legitimate. Simply put, Conventionalism means that stopping the clock in Basketball is justified because there is a convention that it is legitimate. After briefly setting out the initial case in favor of conventionalism, I will utilize some prominent discussions of SF to challenge Conventionalism, and will offer a response to these challenges.