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Ecological Rationality: When Is Bias A Good Thing?

Ecological Rationality: When Is Bias A Good Thing?

By Rebecca Brown

Many people will be broadly familiar with the ‘heuristics and biases’ (H&B) program of work, made prominent by the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s. H&B developed alongside the new sub-discipline of Behavioural Economics, both detailing the ways in which human decision-makers deviate from what would be expected of homo economicus – an imaginary, perfectly rational being that always aims at maximising utility. For instance, in a famous experiment, Tversky and Kahneman gave people the following information (1983: 297):

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. 

Participants were then asked which of the two alternatives was more probable:

1. Linda is a bank teller.

2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

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Why Epistemologists Should Sniff

By Charles Foster

There are lots of big and clever books about epistemology. It’s a complex business. Although one can do some epistemology (some icy thinkers say all) without making any empirical claims about what the senses show (and hence how the senses work), such empirical claims are essential for the discipline to get any real traction on the world.

Whenever this is acknowledged (and it often is not), the emphasis is very much on sight. There is the same bias in lay speech and thought – so much so that sight and some sort of cognitive process or conclusion are commonly conflated. ‘Seeing is believing’, we say. ‘I see’, we say, when we really mean that we understand.

This is not surprising. Language and cognition are intimately entangled, and so are vision and cognition. Vision and ‘higher order’ cognition (important inverted commas, those) are spatially close to one another in the brain: that spatial closeness is reflected in functional closeness. Evolutionarily older centres – notably olfaction – are buried deep in the brain. Since they don’t have an office near to ‘higher order’ cognition, their contribution tends to be overlooked in the cognitive league tables. The insights of the nose tend to be denigrated.Read More »Why Epistemologists Should Sniff

Health vs Choice? The Vaccination Debate.

On Sunday 3 November, OUC’s Dr Alberto Giubilini participated in a debate on compulsory vaccination at 2019 Battle of Ideas Festival (Barbican Centre, London). Chaired by Ellie Lee, the session also featured Dr Michael Fitzpatrick (GP and author, MMR and Autism: what parents need to know and Defeating Autism: a damaging delusion); Emilie Karafillakis (Vaccine Confidence Project); and Nancy McDermott (author, The Problem with Parenting: a therapeutic mode of childrearing).

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Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships

Announcement: Brian Earp and Julian Savulescu’s new book ‘Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships‘, published by (Stanford University Press) is now available.

Is there a pill for love? What about an “anti-love drug”, to help us get over an ex? This book argues that certain psychoactive substances, including MDMA—the active ingredient in Ecstasy—may help ordinary couples work through relationship difficulties and strengthen their connection. Others may help sever an emotional connection during a breakup. These substances already exist, and they have transformative implications for how we think about love. This book builds a case for conducting research into “love drugs” and “anti-love drugs” and explores their ethical implications for individuals and society. Scandalously, Western medicine tends to ignore the interpersonal effects of drug-based interventions. Why are we still in the dark about the effects of these drugs on romantic partnerships? And how can we overhaul scientific research norms to take relationships more fully into account?

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Climate Ought to Change Politics

Written by Stephen Rainey

In the midst of global climate change set to devastate entire ways of life, and ultimately on track to render the biosphere uninhabitable for all but the most adaptable organisms, it seems timely to question how political legitimacy relates to matters of scientific fact. While it seems mostly desirable that groups of people ought to be self-determining in terms of how they get along with the business of living, there appears to be a limit wherein this principle renders mutual self-determination among groups impossible.

Self-determination among different groups in some sense generates contradictory demands. Especially where limited resources are a factor, not everyone can successfully pursue their own ends, which generates tensions between groups. Among the limits that prompt such mutually challenging ways of life are the kinds of facts discovered in scientific research. We know from trends observable by climate scientists that patterns of living currently enjoyed by many are unsustainable and are causing damage to the possibility of continued living on Earth. Yet this is known in a rather strange way.Read More »Climate Ought to Change Politics

Announcement: New Issue of the Journal of Practical Ethics Available Open Access

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We are pleased to announce Volume 7 Issue 3 of the Journal of Practical Ethics, our open access journal on moral and political philosophy. You can read our complete open access archive online and hard copies can be purchased at cost price following links from each issue. The Duty to Remove Statues of Wrongdoers Helen… Read More »Announcement: New Issue of the Journal of Practical Ethics Available Open Access

Mutilation or Enhancement? What is Morally at Stake in Body Alterations

By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp)

 

Those who follow my work will know that I have published a number of papers on the ethics of medically unnecessary genital cutting practices affecting children of all sexes and genders (a partial bibliography is at the end of this post). When my writing touches on the sub-set of these practices that affect persons with characteristically female genitalia, primarily women and girls, I have on occasion received some pushback for using the term ‘FGC’ for female genital cutting rather than ‘FGM’ for female genital mutilation (though I have also received words of appreciation, so, I cannot please everyone).

A recent instance of such pushback came from a respected colleague in response to a forthcoming paper of mine in Archives of Sexual Behavior, in which I explicitly argue against the use of ‘mutilation’ in certain contexts, as there is evidence that such stigmatizing language may have adverse effects on the very people who are meant to be helped. The paper, “Protecting Children from Medically Unnecessary Genital Cutting Without Stigmatizing Women’s Bodies: Implications for Sexual Pleasure and Pain” is available as a pre-print here.

Given that this terminological issue is likely to keep coming up, I thought I would share parts of the reply I wrote to my colleague (lightly edited). I certainly don’t expect that everyone will agree with what I say below, but I hope it can shed some light on at least one plausible way of thinking about such difficult matters.

One last thing. In order to understand my reply, you need to know that my colleague argued that my use of ‘FGC’ rather than ‘FGM’ is disrespectful because it goes against the recommendation of the 2005 Bamako Declaration adopted by the Inter-African Committee (IAC) on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children. My answer is immediately below.

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Lying About Santa: The Sequel

Written by Ben Davies

Another Christmas, and another blog about the ethics of Christmas-based lying.

Around this time last year, Alberto Giubilini wrote a post about whether we should allow children to believe in Santa. Alberto was pretty scathing about some of the arguments in favour of Santa-based honesty, but I want to offer some ethical considerations in favour of this unpopular view.

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