Public discussions of political and social issues are often characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology, it’s standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show that groups of deliberating agents using coherence-based strategies for managing their limited resources tend (...) to polarize into different subgroups. We argue that using that strategy is epistemically rational for limited agents. So even though group polarization looks like it must be the product of human irrationality, polarization can be the result of fully rational deliberation with natural human limitations. (shrink)

We motivate a picture of social epistemology that sees forgetting as subject to epistemic evaluation. Using computer simulations of a simple agent-based model, we show that how agents forget can have as large an impact on group epistemic outcomes as how they share information. But, how we forget, unlike how we form beliefs, isn’t typically taken to be the sort of thing that can be epistemically rational or justified. We consider what we take to be the most promising argument for (...) this claim and find it lacking. We conclude that understanding how agents forget should be as central to social epistemology as understanding how agents form beliefs and share information with others. (shrink)

Agent-based models have played a prominent role in recent debates about the merits of democracy. In particular, the formal model of Lu Hong and Scott Page and the associated “diversity trumps ability” result has typically been seen to support the epistemic virtues of democracy over epistocracy (i.e., governance by experts). In this paper we first identify the modeling choices embodied in the original formal model and then critique the application of the Hong-Page results to philosophical debates on the relative merits (...) of democracy. In particular we argue that the “best-performing agents” in Hong-Page model should not be interpreted as experts. We next explore a closely related model in which best-performing agents are more plausibly seen as experts and show that the diversity trumps ability result fails to hold. However, with changes in other parameters (such as the deliberation dynamic) the diversity trumps ability result is restored. The sensitivity of this result to parameter choices illustrates the complexity of the link between formal modeling and more general philosophical claims; we use this debate as a platform for a more general discussion of when and how agent-based models can contribute to philosophical discussions. (shrink)

In the original publication of the article, the Acknowledgement section was inadvertently not included. The Acknowledgement is given in this Correction.

The Hong and Page ‘diversity trumps ability’ result has been used to argue for the more general claim that a diverse set of agents is epistemically superior to a comparable group of experts. Here we extend Hong and Page’s model to landscapes of different degrees of randomness and demonstrate the sensitivity of the ‘diversity trumps ability’ result. This analysis offers a more nuanced picture of how diversity, ability, and expertise may relate. Although models of this sort can indeed be suggestive (...) for diversity policies, we advise against interpreting such results overly broadly. (shrink)

In early 2020, as the first of many COVID lockdowns began across Australia, a collective of feminist and queer performance scholars and artists embarked on the research project Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism and Socially Engaged Art. Our aim was to document contributions of womxn theatre makers, while conducting a feminist analysis of strategies used to deal with gender inequality and oppression, on stage and off. While pivoting to the digital and the virtual, we recognised a need to support (...) womxn theatre makers whose lives and livelihoods are thrown into further precarity by the pandemic. This paper speaks to our commitment to bringing together critical theory, arts practices and everyday life in ethical forms and encounters that make visible, recognise and express care for one another and for the work. (shrink)

In a series of formal studies and less formal applications, Hong and Page offer a ‘diversity trumps ability’ result on the basis of a computational experiment accompanied by a mathematical theorem as explanatory background (Hong & Page 2004, 2009; Page 2007, 2011). “[W]e find that a random collection of agents drawn from a large set of limited-ability agents typically outperforms a collection of the very best agents from that same set” (2004, p. 16386). The result has been extremely influential as (...) an epistemic justification for diversity policy initiatives. Here we show that the ‘diversity trumps ability’ result is tied to the particular random landscape used in Hong and Page’s simulation. We argue against interpreting results on that random landscape in terms of ‘ability’ or ‘expertise.’ These concepts are better modeled on smother and more realistic landscapes, but keeping other parameters the same those are landscapes on which it is groups of the best performing that do better. Smoother landscapes seem to vindicate both the concept and the value of expertise. Change in other parameters, however, also vindicates diversity. With an increase in the pool of available heuristics, diverse groups again do better. Group dynamics makes a difference as well; simultaneous ‘tournament’ deliberation in a group in place of the ‘relay’ deliberation in Hong and Page’s original model further emphasizes an advantage for diversity. ‘Tournament’ 2 dynamics particularly shows the advantage of mixed groups that include both experts and non-experts. As a whole, our modeling results suggest that relative to problem characteristics and conceptual resources, the wisdom of crowds and the wisdom of the few each have a place. We regard ours as a step toward attempting to calibrate their relative virtues in different modelled contexts of intellectual exploration. (shrink)

Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply this analysis to evaluate (...) the types of polarization generated by the three major families of computational models proposing specific mechanisms of opinion polarization. (shrink)

This article aims to describe the last 10 years of the collaborative scientific endeavors on polarization in particular and collective problem-solving in general by our multidisciplinary research team. We describe the team’s disciplinary composition—social psychology, political science, social philosophy/epistemology, and complex systems science— highlighting the shared and unique skill sets of our group members and how each discipline contributes to studying polarization and collective problem-solving. With an eye to the literature on team dynamics, we describe team logistics and processes that (...) we believe make our multidisciplinary team persistent and productive. We emphasize challenges and difficulties caused by disciplinary differences in terms of terminology, units/levels of analysis, methodology, and theoretical assumptions. We then explain how work disambiguating the concepts of polarization and developing an integrative theoretical and methodological framework with complex systems perspectives has helped us overcome these challenges. We summarize the major findings that our research has produced over the past decade, and describe our current research and future directions. Last, we discuss lessons we have learned, including difficulties in a “three models” project and how we addressed them, with suggestions for effective multidisciplinary team research. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have argued that epistemic diversity is an asset for the production of scientific knowledge, guarding against the effects of biases, among other advantages. The growing privatization of scientific research, on the contrary, has raised important concerns for philosophers of science, especially with respect to the growing sources of biases in research that it seems to promote. Recently, Holman and Bruner ( 2017 ) have shown, using a modified version of Zollman ( 2010 ) social network model, (...) that an industrial selection bias can emerge in a scientific community, without corrupting any individual scientist, if the community is epistemically diverse. In this paper, we examine the strength of industrial selection using a reinforcement learning model, which simulates the process of industrial decision-making when allocating funding to scientific projects. Contrary to Holman and Bruner’s model, in which the probability of success of the agents when performing an action is given a priori, in our model the industry learns about the success rate of individual scientists and updates the probability of success on each round. The results of our simulations show that even without previous knowledge of the probability of success of an individual scientist, the industry is still able to disrupt scientific consensus. In fact, the more epistemically diverse the scientific community, the easier it is for the industry to move scientific consensus to the opposite conclusion. Interestingly, our model also shows that having a random funding agent seems to effectively counteract industrial selection bias. Accordingly, we consider the random allocation of funding for research projects as a strategy to counteract industrial selection bias, avoiding commercial exploitation of epistemically diverse communities. (shrink)

People can be disgusted by the concrete and by the abstract -- by an object they find physically repellent or by an ideology or value system they find morally abhorrent. Different things will disgust different people, depending on individual sensibilities or cultural backgrounds. In _Yuck!_, Daniel Kelly investigates the character and evolution of disgust, with an emphasis on understanding the role this emotion has come to play in our social and moral lives. Disgust has recently been riding a swell (...) of scholarly attention, especially from those in the cognitive sciences and those in the humanities in the midst of the "affective turn." Kelly proposes a cognitive model that can accommodate what we now know about disgust. He offers a new account of the evolution of disgust that builds on the model and argues that expressions of disgust are part of a sophisticated but largely automatic signaling system that humans use to transmit information about what to avoid in the local environment. He shows that many of the puzzling features of moral repugnance tinged with disgust are by-products of the imperfect fit between a cognitive system that evolved to protect against poisons and parasites and the social and moral issues on which it has been brought to bear. Kelly's account of this emotion provides a powerful argument against invoking disgust in the service of moral justification. (shrink)

A number of formal models, including a highly influential model from Hong and Page, purport to show that functionally diverse groups often beat groups of individually high-performing agents in solving problems. Thompson argues that in Hong and Page’s model, that the diverse groups are created by a random process explains their success, not the diversity. Here, I defend the diversity interpretation of the Hong and Page result. The failure of Thompson’s argument shows that to understand the value of functional diversity, (...) we should be clearer about how we conceive of and measure that diversity. (shrink)

In slapstick comedy, the worst thing that could happen usually does: The person with a sore toe manages to stub it, sometimes twice. Such errors also arise in daily life, and research traces the tendency to do precisely the worst thing to ironic processes of mental control. These monitoring processes keep us watchful for errors of thought, speech, and action and enable us to avoid the worst thing in most situations, but they also increase the likelihood of such errors when (...) we attempt to exert control under mental load (stress, time pressure, or distraction). Ironic errors in attention and memory occur with identifiable brain activity and prompt recurrent unwanted thoughts; attraction to forbidden desires; expression of objectionable social prejudices; production of movement errors; and rebounds of negative experiences such as anxiety, pain, and depression. Such ironies can be overcome when effective control strategies are deployed and mental load is minimized. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of humour standardly account for humour in terms of what happens within a person. On these internalist accounts, humour is to be understood in terms of cognition, perception, and sensation. These accounts, while valuable, are poorly-situated to engage the social functions of humour. They have difficulty engaging why we value humour, why we use it define ourselves and our friendships, and why it may be essential to our self-esteem. In opposition to these internal accounts, I offer a social (...) account of humour. This account approaches humour as a social practice. It foregrounds laughter and participation, and thereby gives an account of humour that helps to understand why we value humour, why we use it as we do, and why we use it to define our relationship to the world. (shrink)

The accessibility of suppressed thoughts was compared with the accessibility of thoughts on which Ss were consciously trying to concentrate. In Experiment I, Ss made associations to word prompts as they tried to suppress thinking about a target word (e.g., house) or tried to concentrate on that word. Under the cognitive load imposed by time pressure, they gave the target word in response to target-related prompts (e.g., home) more often during suppression than during concentration. In Experiment 2, reaction times for (...) naming colors of words were found to be greater under conditions of cognitive load when Ss were asked to suppress thinking of the word than under conditions of no cognitive load or when Ss were asked to concentrate on the word. The results support the idea that an automatic search for the suppression target increases the accessibility of the target during.. (shrink)

Recent medical and bioethics literature shows a growing concern for practitioners’ emotional experience and the ethical environment in the workplace. Moral distress, in particular, is often said to result from the difficult decisions made and the troubling situations regularly encountered in health care contexts. It has been identified as a leading cause of professional dissatisfaction and burnout, which, in turn, contribute to inadequate attention and increased pain for patients. Given the natural desire to avoid these negative effects, it seems to (...) most authors that systematic efforts should be made to drastically reduce moral distress, if not altogether eliminate it from the lives of vulnerable practitioners. Such efforts, however, may be problematic, as moral distress is not adequately understood, nor is there agreement among the leading accounts regarding how to conceptualize the experience. With this article I make clear what a robust account of moral distress should be able to explain and how the most common notions in the existing literature leave significant explanatory gaps. I present several cases of interest and, with careful reflection upon their distinguishing features, I establish important desiderata for an explanatorily satisfying account. With these fundamental demands left unsatisfied by the leading accounts, we see the persisting need for a conception of moral distress that can capture and delimit the range of cases of interest. (shrink)

Prescription opioid abuse (POA) is an escalating clinical and public health problem. Physician worries about iatrogenic addiction and whether patients are ‘drug seeking’, ‘abusing’ and ‘diverting’ prescription opioids exist against a backdrop of professional and legal consequences of prescribing that have created a climate of distrust in chronic pain management. One attempt to circumvent these worries is the use of opioid contracts that outline conditions patients must agree to in order to receive opioids. Opioid contracts have received some scholarly attention, (...) with trust and trustworthiness identified as key values and virtues. However, few articles have provided a critical account of trust and trustworthiness in this context, particularly when there exists disagreement about their role in terms of enhancing or detracting from the patient–physician relationship. This paper argues that opioid contracts represent a misleading appeal to patient–physician trust. Assuming the patient is untrustworthy may wrongfully undermine the credibility of the patient's testimony, which may exacerbate certain vulnerabilities of the person in pain. However, misplaced trust in certain patients may render the physician vulnerable to the potential harms of POA. If patients distrust their physician, or feel distrusted by them, this may destabilise the therapeutic relationship and compromise care. A process of epistemic humility may help cultivate mutual patient–physician trust. Epistemic humility is a collaborative effort between physicians and patients that recognises the role of patients’ subjective knowledge in enhancing physicians’ self-understanding of their theoretical and practice frameworks, values and assumptions about the motivations of certain patients who report chronic pain. (shrink)

abstract Assume that some group, A, is under a serious threat from some other group, B. The only way group A can defend itself is by using lethal force against group B, but the standard conditions for using force in self‐defence are not met. Ought group A to avoid the use of force even if this means yielding to an aggressive, evil power? Most people would resist this conclusion, yet given the violation of essential conditions for self‐defence, this resistance is (...) hard to justify. The aim of this paper is to point to an interesting yet unnoticed move made by some philosophers to find a way out of this problem, a move which relies on construing the situation at hand as a tragic dilemma. I show the attractiveness of this solution and argue that in the end it fails. (shrink)

Dear Norm,Thank you for sharing such a personal and heartfelt essay. I have been asked by the editors to comment. Reading it inspires me to do so in a similarly heartfelt way. Although I don't know you well, I thought I'd write to you as if you were my patient.I share your sense that Alzheimer disease is a terrible scourge. I've seen much of this disease over a lifetime of practice, and I deeply understand its ravages and the debility and (...) suffering it causes. But what you propose is not a good solution for the problems that Alzheimer disease poses for patients, families, and society. It will ultimately do far more harm than good. Please let me try to explain. (shrink)

For years, tour guide Daniel Lum has brought visitors as well as his children out to the remote corners of Barrow, Alaska, one of the northernmost cities in the world, to witness polar bears and walrus on the dark, sandy beaches. Over time, snapping pictures for tourists and shooting photographs of his own, he has been a first-hand witness to the profound environmental changes taking place as his homeland shifts and disappears before his eyes. As arguments over climate change (...) rage in more temperate locales, Nuvuk, the Northernmost is a poignant snapshot of life in a town where these changes are impossible to overlook. Lum's vivid photographs of wildlife, such as whales, polar bears, and birds, offer rare close-ups of animals few ever see. In addition, Lum provides vivid descriptions and pictures of daily life in and around Barrow, offering a compelling insider's introduction to living on the tip of the world. With Lum as a capable guide, Nuvuk, the Northernmost is a chance to see a rare world before it changes forever. (shrink)

The experience of authorship arises when we feel that observed effects (e.g., the onset of a light) are caused by our own actions (e.g., pushing a switch). This study tested whether dysphoric persons’ authorship ascription can be modulated implicitly in a situation in which the exclusivity of the cause of effects is ambiguous. In line with the idea that depressed individuals’ self-schemata include general views of uncontrollability, in a subliminal priming task we observed that dysphoric (compared with nondysphoric) participants experienced (...) lower authorship of action effects when the self-concept was primed. Priming the potential effects of an action just prior to their occurrence, however, increased experiences of authorship in all participants and eliminated the effect of self-concept priming on dysphoric participants’ authorship experiences. These findings suggest that the human mental system seizes on a match between primed and actual action effect to establish a sense of authorship, even in a state of depression when persons have weak self-views of causing behavioral outcomes. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Benefit-cost analysis is typically defined as an implementation of the potential Pareto criterion, which requires inclusion of any impact for which individuals have willingness to pay. This definition is incompatible with the exclusion of impacts such as rights and distributional concerns, for which individuals do have WTP. I propose a new definition: BCA should include only impacts for which consumer sovereignty should govern. This is because WTP implicitly preserves consumer sovereignty, and is thus only appropriate for ‘sovereignty-warranting’ impacts. I compare (...) the high cost of including non-sovereignty-warranting impacts to the relatively low cost of excluding sovereignty-warranting impacts. (shrink)

Business Ethics is designed to serve as a textbook for first year students of MBA and diploma students of management courses. The book provides a deep insight into the crucial role played by ethical choices in managerial decision making within an organization as well as the impact of such decisions on the world at large. Starting with a broad overview of the meaning and scope of ethics and the development of ethical thought, the book puts forward the applications of ethical (...) standards to business areas such as corporate governance, marketing and brand management, advertising, and finance. The discussion shifts to a more human level with the various issues of workplace ethics as well as consumer rights. Special focus is given to ethical choices related to the environment, cyber space and criminal intimidation. Contemporary issues like corporate code of ethics, political correctness and the role played by NPO and NGO in upholding moral values are discussed in detail. Finally, several open-ended issues like Intellectual Property. The book follows a debate-based approach where both for and against views are presented, followed by concept analysis and logical deductions. This approach is well aided with a number of caselets, case studies and end chapter review questions. This book will also serve as a useful reference for BBA faculty and professionals. (shrink)

A partir de courtes meditations nees d'une chronique a la radio, le philosophe Daniel Vigne s'interroge sur le sens de notre vie comme de ce que nous avons de plus precieux. Chercher la direction, la signification, les enjeux de cette existence dans laquelle, dirait Pascal, nous sommes embarques. Les sujets abordes sont regroupes en sept rubriques, qui evoquent successivement: l'etonnement comme accueil du sens, le monde comme eclat du sens, le temps comme elan du sens, le langage comme voix (...) du sens, le corps comme noeud du sens, quelques objets pleins de sens, et quelques conduites insensees... Sur ces divers themes, on ne trouvera ici ni discours savant, ni expose systematique. Le but est moins de donner des solutions que d'ouvrir des horizons, de proposer des reperes, des cles, des intuitions qui nous aident a vivre. Il est d'utiliser au mieux notre intelligence pour l'orienter vers la verite. Ces reflexions sur le sens sont donc, au fond, des questions de bon sens. Le fait qu'elles soient posees par un professeur de philosophie ne doit inquieter personne: il s'agit avant tout de favoriser l' etonnement d'exister. (shrink)

The conceptual promise of relational values, theorized as the principles and virtues of human relationships (with other humans and nature), to motivate sustainability may be observed in its rapid uptake in theoretical and policy domains. Both relying on and impacting nature, agriculture has garnered attention among efforts to apply relational values. However, quantitative measures have received little focus in efforts to operationalize relational values. Guided by the assertion that sustainable agriculture is embedded with both relational and instrumental values (i.e., self-interested (...) ends), this study considers theoretical and methodological challenges and offers a pathway to quantitatively measuring relational values within agriculture, focusing specifically on seeds—an agricultural input embedded with plural values. Drawing on 151 survey responses from seed growers in Vermont, this study assesses how relational and instrumental values are reflected among commercial and non-commercial seed growers and are associated with the presence of crop diversity in their farms and gardens. The findings show that those who sell seeds for income have significantly higher relational values, instrumental values, and crop diversity than those who do not sell seeds. Should these findings be confirmed in future studies, potential exists for policy initiatives encouraging market behavior and its governance to express a range of values beyond instrumental ones exclusively. This paper concludes by arguing that all economic exchange is likely embedded with both relational and instrumental values, meaning that policies and programs that activate a range of values will most likely maximize the impacts of the myriad initiatives pursuing sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

(2013). Precaution and Proportionality: A Reply to Turner. Ethics, Policy & Environment. ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/21550085.2013.844572.

Scientific psychology and neuroscience are taking increasingly precise and comprehensive pictures of the human mind, both in its physi- cal architecture and its functional processes. Meanwhile, each human mind has an abbreviated view of itself, a self-portrait that captures how it thinks it operates, and that therefore has been remarkably influential. The mind’s self-portrait has as a central feature the idea that thoughts cause actions, and that the self is thus an origin of the body’s actions. This self- portrait is (...) reached through a process of inference of apparent mental cau- sation, and it gives rise to the experience that we are consciously willing what we do. Evidence from several sources suggests that this self-portrait may often be a humble and misleading caricature of the mind’s opera- tion—but one that underlies the feeling of authorship and the acceptance of responsibility for action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Symposium: The Future of the Art Museum: Curatorial and Educational Perspectives:IntroductionDaniel A. SiedellIntroductionThere are few futures pondered more often than the art museum's. The new millennium has spawned a veritable cottage industry of such prognostication. Most of it has occurred from the perspectives of building expansion, audience growth, and collection development. These are not, by any means, unimportant considerations. However, such sustained attention to them by directors, marketers, board (...) members, collectors, and the mass media tend to obscure the fact that these areas of concern are not ends in themselves. A new museum wing, higher attendance, and more gifts of art to the collection mean little unless they serve to facilitate specific curatorial and educational ends, which themselves are in the service of expanding and deepening their capacity to enhance the experience of art. The future of the art museum rests on the ability of curators and educators to develop new and more robust curatorial and educational work that is responsive to both the larger culture and to the vocational standards of their respective professions. Curators and educators need, then, to be more self-critical of their practices.This symposium brings together a few of these professionals to reflect on the future of the art museum from the perspective of those involved in the day-to-day production, presentation, and interpretation of works of art. It is occasioned by the publication of David Carrier's book, Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries, recently published by Duke University Press, and more specifically, Carrier's conclusion, which offers its own reflection on the future of the art museum. A frequent contributor to the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Carrier is a philosopher and art critic whose interests range widely from the art criticism of John Ruskin and Adrian Stokes to the writing of art history and the paintings of Sean Scully.1 Carrier's book, written while a scholar in residence at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, explores the history and philosophy of art museums from the point of view of the narratives on which they rely as well as produce. And it is narratives that art educators and curators produce, affirm, and expand when they curate exhibitions and do educational programming.Because they are "public" institutions (even when they are private organizations) and serve many competing audience constituencies, art museums [End Page 1] often suffer from an acute identity crisis, even while they build large expansions, engage in aggressive campaigns to court collectors, placate increasingly more powerful governing boards, and expand their programming to the point that it ceases to be education. The business of the art museum often masks these deep crises, which eventually become a neurosis that plagues curatorial and educational practice. A symptom of this illness can be seen in the misplaced tension between curators and educators as a battle between the "scholars" and the "popularizers," the "elites" and the "community."In 1946 Alfred H. Barr Jr. of the Museum of Modern Art presented a paper called "Research and Publication in Art Museums."2 In it Barr not only recognizes the importance of museum scholarship; he argues that such scholarship, unlike that of the academic art historian, must engage and interact with "the man off the street." Indeed, Barr passionately believed that museum scholarship not only could but should engage a broader and more diverse public all the while remaining committed to scholarly ideals. Barr acknowledges the tensions between museums as "popular community centers" and museums as places of "research and publication." But, he continues, "Both can be done provided we have enough faith to believe in the values of both and enough skill to persuade others to agree with us."3 Barr's expansive definition of scholarship is instructive and a challenge. "By publication I mean not only the scholarly treatise but also the popular article or book, the classroom or public lecture, the gallery talk, publicity releases."4 For Barr, scholarship is not merely a curator's or educator's opportunity to address her professional colleagues and strengthen guild rank; it is a value that is infused throughout all work... (shrink)