How do people judge the degree of causal responsibility that an agent has for the outcomes of her actions? We show that a relatively unexplored factor -- the robustness of the causal chain linking the agent’s action and the outcome -- influences judgments of causal responsibility of the agent. In three experiments, we vary robustness by manipulating the number of background circumstances under which the action causes the effect, and find that causal responsibility judgments increase with robustness. In the first (...) experiment, the robustness manipulation also raises the probability of the effect given the action. Experiments 2 and 3 control for probability-raising, and show that robustness still affects judgments of causal responsibility. In particular, Experiment 3 introduces an Ellsberg type of scenario to manipulate robustness, while keeping the conditional probability and the skill deployed in the action fixed. Experiment 4, replicates the results of Experiment 3, while contrasting between judgments of causal strength and of causal responsibility. The results show that in all cases, the perceived degree of responsibility increases with the robustness of the action-outcome causal chain. (shrink)

Can knowledge be defined? We expound an argument of John Cook Wilson's that it cannot. Cook Wilson's argument connects knowing with having the power to inquire. We suggest that if he is right about that connection, then knowledge is, indeed, indefinable.

Language pragmatics is applied to analyse problem statements and instructions used in a few influential experimental tasks in the psychology of reasoning. This analysis aims to determine the interpretation of the task which the participant is likely to construct. It is applied to studies of deduction (where the interpretation of quantifiers and connectives is crucial) and to studies of inclusion judgment and probabilistic judgment. It is shown that the interpretation of the problem statements or even the representation of the task (...) as a whole often turn out to differ from the experimenter's assumptions. This has serious consequences for the validity of these experimental results and therefore for the claims about human irrationality based on them. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This collection of essays engages with several topics in Aristotle's philosophy of mind, some well-known and hotly debated, some new and yet to be explored. The contributors analyze Aristotle's arguments and present their cases in ways that invite contemporary philosophers of mind to consider the potentials--and pitfalls--of an Aristotelian philosophy of mind. The volume brings together an international group of renowned Aristotelian scholars as well as rising stars to cover five main themes: method in the philosophy of mind, sense perception, (...) mental representation, intellect, and the metaphysics of mind. The papers collected in this volume, with their choice of topics and quality of exposition, show why Aristotle is a philosopher of mind to be studied and reckoned with in contemporary discussions. Encounters with Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of ancient philosophy and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Wynn's claims are, in principle, entirely reasonable; although, as always, the devil is in the details. With respect to Wynn's discussion of the cultural evolution of artifactual symmetry, we provide a few more arguments for the utility of mirror symmetry and extend the enquiry into the tacit and explicit processing of natural and artifactual symmetry.

Considering that negative intergroup emotions can hinder conflict resolution, we proposed integrative emotion regulation as possibly predicting conciliatory policies towards outgroups in violent conflict. Two studies examined Jewish Israelis’ self-reported IER, empathy, liberal attitudes, and support for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Study 1 found that unlike reappraisal Jewish Israelis’ ability to explore emotions promoted concern for others’ emotions, which in turn predicted support for humanitarian aid. Study 2 replicated this mediation model, additionally confirming that liberal attitudes moderated the (...) relation between IER and support for humanitarian aid. Thus, IER linked more strongly with humanitarian support when the commitment for liberal egalitarian beliefs was high. Preliminary results hold important theoretical and practical implications regarding the potential to empathise with outgroup members in intractable conflicts. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 3, September 2020, Page 271-280.

‘Honor’ is one of the key notions in Renaissance ethics. The present paper analyzes the honor code which Francesco Piccolomini articulates in his Vniuersa Philosophia de Moribus. Drawing not only on Aristotle, Plato, and ancient Stoicism, but also on medieval and early-modern Christian authorities, he argues that ‘proper honor’ is situated in the inner of a virtuous person because “everybody is the artificer of their own merits of honor.” Despite the aristocratic and patriarchal aspects of his ethics, he propounds an (...) interiorizing and non-militarist interpretation of honor, which runs parallel with Montaigne’s concept of vray honneur and even anticipates to some extent Kant’s Ehrliebe. (shrink)

The intelectual virtue of discernment occupies a privileged position in Aristotle’s ethics, since it intervenes in judging and choosing the best option regarding our voluntary actions. As for the Stoics, the virtues are cognitions and can be reduced to only one. The person who possesses that unique virtue is called a ‘sage’ and is able to choose, for himself, the right action to reach happiness. Thus, we propose to discover if the Stoic sage can be compared to the prudent man (...) in Aristotle by examining some key ethical issues of theses philosophical schools. We conclude that the similar theses exceed the different ones, despite encountering a quite distinct vocabulary which deceives at first sight. (shrink)

There are indications that simple reaction time might have slowed in Western countries, based on both cohort- and multi-study comparisons. A possible limitation of the latter method in particular is measurement error stemming from methods variance, which results from the fact that instruments and experimental conditions change over time and between studies. We therefore set out to measure the simple auditory reaction time (SRT) of 7,081 individuals (2,997 males and 4,084 females) born in Sweden 1959-1985 (subjects were aged between 27 (...) and 54 years at time of measurement). Depending on cut-offs and adjustment for ageing related slowing on SRT, the data suggest that SRT has increased between 3 and 16 ms in the 27 birth years covered in the present sample. The slowing is unlikely to be explained by attrition, as evaluated by comparing the general intelligence × birth-year interactions and standard deviations for both male participants and dropouts, utilizing military conscript cognitive ability data. The present result is consistent with previous studies employing alternative methods, and may result from several synergistic factors, such as possible recent micro-evolutionary trends favouring lower g in Sweden and the effects of industrially produced neurotoxic substances on peripheral nerve conduction velocity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:OSCAR WILDE AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM by Guy Willoughby Towards the beginning ofthe hugely entertaining and provocative manifesto called "The Critic as Artist" (1890),1 Oscar Wilde causes the well-named discipulus Ernest to inquire of the suave magister, Gilbert: "But what are the two supreme and highest arts?" The prompt answer takes us to the heart ofWilde's aesthetic priorities: "Life and Literature," says Gilbert: "Life and the perfect expression of life" (p. (...) 1016). The aim of this discussion is, first, to consider the terms of Oscar Wilde's aesthetics; second, to relate them to tendencies in contemporary theory. I will be arguing, in sum, that the ideas entertained in his essays, and demonstrated in his fictions, have suggestive implications for our practices today—particularly in die light of a gathering rapprochement across the range of cultural study. The abiding theme ofOscar Wilde's writings is his insistence throughout not merely on art's primacy, but on the vital importance ofaesthetic criteria to life itself. In de Profundü (1897), that extraordinary attempt at self-definition, the author claims that it is only by conceiving of one's existence as an art-statement, as a dynamic convergence of forces extending in time and place, that trial, humiliation, and reversal—the shocks the flesh is heir to—can be imaginatively subsumed into a composite whole. He summed up the argument of the apologia thus to André Gide: "My life is like a work of art; an artist never starts the 316 Guy Willoughby317 same thing twice... or if he does, it's that he hasn't succeeded. My life before prison was as successful as possible. Now it's something that's over."2 Accordingly, he ascribes in de Profundis the greatest value to the frank acceptance of all one's deeds and susceptibilities, no matter how vicious or unlovely: "to reject one's experiences is to arrest one's development," he writes. "Whatever is realised is right" (p. 916). It is noteworthy, furthermore, that Wilde oudines this same argument under varying conditions throughout his work as essayist, story-teller, and playwright. In his wry but delicately tuned fairy tales, the most successful heroes and heroines are those who—like the litde Nightingale, the young King, or the Star-Child—manage to transform their lives into images of complex, artistic unity, suggestive of the radical power of the imagination. As the author ofde Profundis was to remark: "every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image. Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy" (p. 928). Likewise, the elegant rhetorical strategies of Wilde's two critical dialogues announce art's power to starde and provoke its spectators into new attitudes, and—in particular—to suggest a transference ofaesthetic criteria to life itself. Artistic appreciation develops "that sense of form which is the basis of creative no less than of critical achievement," which may then be profitably applied to one's disparate experience: "it is form that creates not merely the critical temperament, but also the aesthetic instinct, that unerring instinct that reveals to one all things under their conditions of beauty" ("The Critic as Artist," p. 1052). It is only by cultivating a flexible, formalist oudook that a cramping and static Weltanschauung may be avoided; ethical distinctions too must be recast, if a successful life-as-artwork is to be sustained. Thus, writes Wilde, "Ethics, like natural selection, makes existence possible. Aesthetics, like sexual selection, makes life lovely and wonderful, fills it with new forms, and gives it progress, variety and change" (p. 1058). Moreover, the critical or aesthetic impulse—and the point of Wilde's essay is that the terms are interchangeable—has overall a vital cosmopolitan function; it will heal all human divisions, "by insisting on the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms" (p. 1057). If we transfer aesthetic criteria from art to life, therefore, we will discover a new raison d'être in a skeptical age; we will understand that our apprehension of symmetry in art offers a motive for restoring a novel order to our own lives, singly and together. So it will be that "form [will... (shrink)