‘Ought implies Can’ and the law

In this paper, we investigate the ‘ought implies can’ (OIC) thesis, focusing on explanations and interpretations of OIC, with a view to clarifying its uses and relevance to legal philosophy. We first review various issues concerning the semantics and pragmatics of OIC; then we consider how OIC may be incorporated in Hartian and Kelsenian theories of the law. Along the way we also propose a taxonomy of OIC-related claims.     

Don't sit so close to me: unconsciously elicited affect automatically provokes social avoidance

Behavior may be automatically prompted by cues in our social environment. Previous research has focused on cognitive explanations for such effects. Here we hypothesize that affective processes are susceptible to similar automatic influences. We propose that exposure to groups stereotyped as dangerous or violent may provoke an anxiety response and, thus, a tendency to move away. In the present experiment, we subliminally exposed participants to images of such a group, and found that they displayed greater avoidance in a subsequent interaction. Critically, this effect was explained by their increased sensitivity to threat-related information. These findings demonstrate an affective mechanism responsible for nonconscious priming effects on interpersonal behavior.     

A Theory of Blame

We introduce a theory of blame in five parts. Part 1 addresses what blame is: a unique moral judgment that is both cognitive and social, regulates social behavior, fundamentally relies on social cognition, and requires warrant. Using these properties, we distinguish blame from such phenomena as anger, event evaluation, and wrongness judgments. Part 2 offers the heart of the theory: the Path Model of Blame, which identifies the conceptual structure in which blame judgments are embedded and the information processing that generates such judgments. After reviewing evidence for the Path Model, we contrast it with alternative models of blame and moral judgment (Part 3) and use it to account for a number of challenging findings in the literature (Part 4). Part 5 moves from blame as a cognitive judgment to blame as a social act. We situate social blame in the larger family of moral criticism, highlight its communicative nature, and discuss the darker sides of moral criticism. Finally, we show how the Path Model of Blame can bring order to numerous tools of blame management, including denial, justification, and excuse.     

Investigating mental representation of order with a speeded probed recall task

We compare three models of representation of item order in a verbal STM task: item-item associations, item-position associations, and primacy gradient. A speeded probed recall task is used, in which a list of words is presented, immediately followed by a probe; participants must report as fast as possible the word that was in the probed position. In the number probe condition, a digit is presented and one must say the word in that position. In the word probe condition, the probe is an item of the list and participants must say the immediately following item. Response times (RTs) are analyzed according to probe type and position. The three models imply different predictions about RTs as a function of serial order in the two conditions. Our results suggest a serial, self-terminating search from the beginning of the list to the target position, except for the final position, which is directly accessible. The item-item and item-position association models are ruled out; the primacy gradient model accounts satisfactorily for our results, except for the finding of a larger recency effect with a number probe. Alternative interpretations are also discussed.     

Mainstream Economics and Sense-Making

This work presents a semiotic approach to the economy, underlining that any economic phenomena is at the same time a communicative act as it is contingent to sense-making.The article discusses this topic by focusing on a specific phenomenon studied by economics: the underground economy. It shows that the conceptualization of the underground economy in terms of sense-making processes offers a thought-provoking perspective for theoretical development. More in general, the discussion proposed makes it clear that in order to deepen our vision of economic phenomena in a more thoughtful and realistic way we need to rethink these phenomena as being reciprocally and circularly embedded in the semiotic flow of life. The economy is within sense-making and it is shaped by it; at the same time sense-making is within the economy, as its semiotic substance.

Comparing Business School Faculty Classification for Perceptions of Student Cheating

Faculty continue to address academic dishonesty in their classes. In this follow-up to an earlier study on general perceived faculty student cheating, using a sample of business school faculty, we compared three levels of faculty classification: full-time non-tenure track (NTT, n?=?86), full-time tenured/tenure-track (TT, n?=?66), and part-time adjuncts (A, n?=?71). Results showed that NTTs perceived higher levels for three different types of student cheating, i.e., paper-based, forbidden teamwork, and hiring someone to take an exam. In addition, NTTs were more likely to report a student for cheating. NTTs reported a higher course load and average class size, and average class size was positively related to all five types of cheating measured. Given the predicted increase in NTTs across all disciplines, making sure that all faculty, (but especially NTTs), have the resources needed to deter student cheating is important. All faculty have an obligation to hold students accountable for their behavior. Individual integrity is paramount; and it is what employers expect. Regardless of the chosen field or discipline, an employer’s expectations, in terms of character, is to hire individuals who possess a level of honesty that is above reproach. Addressing cheating is an obligation that all faculty need to address purposefully. Providing resources to help faculty address cheating is critical. Resources might include conflict resolution training to provide instructors with the necessary guidance so that they can better handle these difficult situations. This is important not only for the student while in school, but also for a university/college’s reputation.     

Enough skill to kill: Intentionality judgments and the moral valence of action

Extant models of moral judgment assume that an action’s intentionality precedes assignments of blame. Knobe (2003b) challenged this fundamental order and proposed instead that the badness or blameworthiness of an action directs (and thus unduly biases) people’s intentionality judgments. His and other researchers’ studies suggested that blameworthy actions are considered intentional even when the agent lacks skill (e.g., killing somebody with a lucky shot) whereas equivalent neutral actions are not (e.g., luckily hitting a bull’s-eye). The present five studies offer an alternative account of these provocative findings. We suggest that people see the morally significant action examined in previous studies (killing) as accomplished by a basic action (pressing the trigger) for which an unskilled agent still has sufficient skill. Studies 1 through 3 show that when this basic action is performed unskillfully or is absent, people are far less likely to view the killing as intentional, demonstrating that intentionality judgments, even about immoral actions, are guided by skill information. Studies 4 and 5 further show that a neutral action such as hitting the bull’s-eye is more difficult than killing and that difficult actions are less often judged intentional. When difficulty is held constant, people’s intentionality judgments are fully responsive to skill information regardless of moral valence. The present studies thus speak against the hypothesis of a moral evaluation bias in intentionality judgments and instead document people’s sensitivity to subtle features of human action.