Stanley Milgram’s work on obedience to authority is social psychology’s most influential contribution to theorizing about Holocaust perpetration. The gist of Milgram’s claims is that Holocaust perpetrators were just following orders out of a sense of obligation to their superiors. Milgram, however, never undertook a scholarly analysis of how his obedience experiments related to the Holocaust. The author first discusses the major theoretical limitations of Milgram’s position and then examines the implications of Milgram’s (oft-ignored) experimental manipulations for Holocaust theorizing, (...) contrasting a specific case of Holocaust perpetration by Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police. It is concluded that Milgram’s empirical findings, in fact, do not support his position-one that essentially constitutes an obedience alibi. The article ends with a discussion of some of the social dangers of the obedience alibi. (shrink)

The paradox that individually rational actions collectively can lead to irrational outcomes is exemplified in human appropriation of a class of goods known as "common-pool resources" : natural or humanly created resource systems which are large enough to make it costly to exclude potential beneficiaries. Appropriations of common-pool resources for private use tend toward abusive practices that lead to the loss of the resource in question: the tragedy of thecommons. Prescriptions for escape from tragedy have involved two institutions, each applied (...) largely in isolation from the other: private markets and government coercion . Yet examples exist of local institutions that have utilized mixtures of public and private practices and have survived for hundreds of years.Two problems further exacerbate efforts to avoid the tragic nature of common-pool resource use. One, given the current level of knowledge, the role of the resource is not recognized for what it is. It is, thus, in a fundamental, epistemological sense invisible. Two, if the resource is recognized, it may not be considered scarce, thus placing it outside the scrutiny of economic theory. Both types of error are addressed by the emerging field of ecological economics.This paper discusses common pool resources, locates the ambiguities that make their identification difficult, and argues that avoidance of a CPR loss is inadequately addressed by sharply separated market and state institutions. When the resource is recognized for what it is, a common-pool good, which is subject to overexploitation, it may be possible to identify creative combinations of public and private institutions that can combine to save that resource. Disparate examples of self-organized enterprises, public/private utilities, and "green" taxes, to name a few, provide empirical content for developing theories of self-organized collective action. (shrink)

I argue that irreducible multiple conceptions of moral obligation may be found in efforts to define "sustainability." Individualistic ethics currently dominate and will probably continue to shape discussions of natural resource depletion. Non-individualistic, organic ethics, which focus on entire generations of humans, are useful for overcoming problems of intergenerational identification. Finally, however, an expansion of the purview of ethics to the entire biotic community, as suggested by Aldo Leopold, represents a third scale of concern and obligation. By means of an (...) articulated, scalar bequest package, incorporating each of these disparate foci, I outline a hierarchical ethic of sustainability. (shrink)

The international technology assessment movement represents a noteworthy attempt at understanding and mastery of technological progress by modem industrial society. This paper explains why Technology Assessment has enjoyed marginal success. TA has patterned its methodology after the technologies it must evaluate. More fundamentally it has sought philosophical support from the same positivistic assumptions on which science based technology is grounded. Because positivism perpetuates the error that scientific technology is intelligible in terms independent of the political and economic context, TA itself (...) is deprived of substantive criteria which could form the basis of a critique of technology. (shrink)

The current sociotechnical enterprise known as technology assessment (TA) is examined. Applying Skolimowski's analysis of epistemic possibility, the two foci of TA activities, impact analysis and policy analysis are shown to involve different logical and methodological forms. Impact analysis is shown to follow the logic of applied science while policy analysis involves the logic of technological design. Methodological implications of this distinction are isolated. Areas requiring conceptual clarification internal to TA practice are identified and limitations of the overall approach are (...) articulated. (shrink)

This audio recording contains a lecture led by Dr. William Christian, Dr. Shirley C. Guthrie, and Dr. Stanley R. Hopper on November 20, 1965 as a part of the America and the Future of Theology Lecture Series. Dr. William Christian discusses the possibility of interaction between metaphysics and theology, the concept of God in Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics, the relation of Whitehead’s metaphysics to Platonism, and the relation of Whitehead’s metaphysics to Christian theology. Dr. Guthrie responds to Dr. Christian (...) by accepting the interaction of metaphysics and theology as a possible subject and how metaphysics is necessary to theology, but only as an instrument not a dictator. Dr. Stanley responds to Dr. Christian by posing two questions: Can the relationship between theology and philosophy or theology and metaphysics be adequately represented when the concept of God has a strong family resemblance according to Whitehead, and What is the relationship between metaphysics and theology? Lastly, Dr. Christian responds to both Dr. Guthrie and Dr. Stanley. (shrink)

The significance of counterfactual thinking in the causal judgement process has been emphasized for nearly two decades, yet no previous research has directly compared the relative effect of thinking counterfactually versus factually on causal judgement. Three experiments examined this comparison by manipulating the task frame used to focus participants' thinking about a target event. Prior to making judgements about causality, preventability, blame, and control, participants were directed to think about a target actor either in counterfactual terms (what the actor could (...) have done to change the outcome) or in factual terms (what the actor had done that led to the outcome). In each experiment, the effect of counterfactual thinking did not differ reliably from the effect of factual thinking on causal judgement. Implications for research on causal judgement and mental representation are discussed. (shrink)

An experiment was conducted to test the effectiveness of brief instruction in information structuring (i.e., representing and integrating information) for improving the coherence of probability judgments and binary choices among intelligence analysts. Forty-three analysts were presented with comparable sets of Bayesian judgment problems before and immediately after instruction. After instruction, analysts’ probability judgments were more coherent (i.e., more additive and compliant with Bayes theorem). Instruction also improved the coherence of binary choices regarding category membership: after instruction, subjects were more likely (...) to invariably choose the category to which they assigned the higher probability of a target’s membership. The research provides a rare example of evidence-based validation of effectiveness in instruction to improve the statistical assessment skills of intelligence analysts. Such instruction could also be used to improve the assessment quality of other types of experts who are required to integrate statistical information or make probabilistic assessments. (shrink)

Bermúdez's case for rational framing effects, while original, is unconvincing and gives only parenthetical treatment to the problematic assumptions of extensional and semantic equivalence of alternative frames in framing experiments. If the assumptions are false, which they sometimes are, no valid inferences about “framing effects” follow and, then, neither do inferences about human rationality. This commentary recaps the central problem.

The rationality debate centers on the meaning of deviations of decision makers' responses from the predictions/prescriptions of normative models. But for the debate to have significance, the meaning and functions of normative analysis must be clear. Presently, they are not, and the debate's persistence owes much to conceptual blur. An attempt is made here to clarify the concept of normative analysis.

The susceptibility of decision-makers’ choices to variations in option framing has been attributed to individual differences in cognitive style. According to this view, individuals who are prone to a more deliberate, or less intuitive, thinking style are less susceptible to framing manipulations. Research findings on the topic, however, have tended to yield small effects, with several studies also being limited in inferential value by methodological drawbacks. We report two experiments that examined the value of several cognitive-style variables, including measures of (...) cognitive reflection, subjective numeracy, actively open-minded thinking, need for cognition, and hemispheric dominance, in predicting participants’ frame-consistent choices. Our experiments used an isomorph of the Asian Disease Problem and we manipulated frames between participants. We controlled for participants’ sex and age, and we manipulated the order in which choice options were presented to participants. In Experiment 1 (N = 190) using an undergraduate sample and in Experiment 2 (N = 316) using a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, we found no significant effect of any of the cognitive style measures taken on predicting frame-consistent choice, regardless of whether we analyzed participants’ binary choices or their choices weighted by the extent to which participants preferred their chosen option over the non-chosen option. The sole factor that significantly predicted frame consistent choice was framing: in both experiments, participants were more likely to make frame consistent choices when the frame was positive than when it was negative, consistent with the tendency towards risk aversion in the task. The present findings do not support the view that individual differences in people’s susceptibility to framing manipulations can be substantially accounted for by individual differences in cognitive style. (shrink)