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How to Make Decisions: Coherence, Emotion, and Practical Inference
... According to recent behavioural and neuroscience data, cognition and rational decision making is not exclusively the product of symbol manipulation, but require the support of emotion. More strongly, the neuroscientific evidence now available points to the necessity of emotion in the process of reasoning and decision making; indeed, when emotion is absent rationality has been shown to break down (some overviews and discussions of recent developments in the emotion-cognition debate are Damasio, 1996Damasio, , 1999Damasio, , 2003Glannon, 2007;Clark, 1997Clark, , 2001Churchland and Churchland, 1998;Churchland, P.M., 2007;Churchland, P.S., 2002;Tancredi, 2005;Gazzaniga, 2005;Quartz and Sejnowski, 2002). ...
... Drawing especially on the work of Damasio and his Iowa research team, Thagard (2006Thagard ( , 2001Thagard ( , 2000, Barnes and Thagard (1996), and Thagard and Millgram (1997), this paper is a first attempt at outlining some central features of a theory of emotional decisions that is biologically more realistic than the traditional rationalist-cognitive model. It involves showing that the traditionally presumed "disconnect" between cognition and emotion is not defensible, and to lay out some of the evidence for the intricate connection between reason and emotion. ...
... Drawing especially on the work of Damasio and his Iowa research team, Thagard (2006Thagard ( , 2001Thagard ( , 2000, Barnes and Thagard (1996), and Thagard and Millgram (1997), this paper is a first attempt at outlining some central features of a theory of emotional decisions that is biologically more realistic than the traditional rationalist-cognitive model. It involves showing that the traditionally presumed "disconnect" between cognition and emotion is not defensible, and to lay out some of the evidence for the intricate connection between reason and emotion. ...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to argue that emotion has a central role to play in rational decision making based on recent research in the neuroanatomy of emotion. As a result, traditional rational decision‐making theories, including Herbert Simon's modified model of satisficing that sharply demarcates emotions and values from rationality and rational decision making, need substantial revision. The paper concludes by outlining some central features of a theory of emotional decisions that is biologically more realistic than the traditional rationalist‐cognitive model.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper employs contemporary scientific as well as traditional philosophical criteria in its argumentation. Methodologically, it can be described as an example of applying naturalistic philosophy to a central issue of human thought and experience, and how humans are able to value things at all on the basis of their neuroanatomy.
Findings
– The paper presents some initial features of a new theory of emotional decisions that is biologically more realistic than the traditional rationalist‐cognitive model.
Originality/value
– The significance and originality of this paper lies in the fact that it proposes causal investigations of the real bases for rational decision making as a central human feature which runs counter to conventional wisdom and has far reaching implications for education, to name just one discipline; it demonstrates the importance and necessity of interdisciplinary research; and it outlines an exciting new research agenda that promises to be more productive in terms of understanding and hence planning for, the way in which humans make decisions.
... Unlike some of the variants of dual processing models, coherence theory focuses on both extreme ends of the data input and recognition systems; that is, on both preattentive stages in processing, as well as the highly cognitive stages of evaluation using coherence statements and knowledge structures to form plausible explanations. At the same time, coherence theory's fundamental premise is that global coherence is sought by actors across stages of social construction, allowing for changes in the 'external environment' to be incorporated as an opportunity belief in a manner that is consistent with the actor's view of reality to create a certain seamless, 'coherent' whole (Rensink, 2002;Thagard, 2001). Thus, coherence theory fi ts well with the entrepreneurship literature's claim that belief formation is rapid, preattentive and holistic (see Kirzner, 1980), yet also informed by learning and experience (Grégoire et al., 2006). ...
... These meta-representations come directly from coherence statements-pre-existing propositions about reality that have incorporated cognitive frames and beliefs. These meta-representations of the environment are then matched with sensory representations for comparison to determine the extent to which they form a coherent whole (Read and Marcus-Newhall, 1993;Thagard, 1989Thagard, , 1992Thagard, , 2001. For instance, a statement that 'the market is growing' is a meta-representation of the environment that is embedded in a broader statement about growth and a knowledge structure about what that entails. ...
... At the fi fth and fi nal stage, the entrepreneur attempts to construct internally consistent and valid statements about the environment that are congruent with the deeper knowledge structure. Philosophical coherence theory maintains that knowledge structures are quite sweeping and identify directly with reality (Thagard, 2001). This means that they contain conditions for truth or veracity; that is, of deeper belief. ...
Although (opportunity) beliefs are becoming increasingly recognized as fundamental to understanding entrepreneurial cognition and strategic action, little is understood about the mechanisms that are responsible for the formation and evolution of these beliefs. Introducing the mechanisms of gists, matching, and updating from philosophy's and psychology's coherence theory, we propose a theoretical framework to explain how third-person opportunity beliefs (beliefs that one has recognized an opportunity for someone with the right knowledge and motivation) are formed and how they evolve to become first-person opportunity beliefs (beliefs that one has recognized an opportunity for himself or herself). We conclude by examining how the model contributes to literatures ranging from entrepreneurial cognition and action, to strategic myopia and organizational attention, to opportunity recognition, discovery, and creation. Copyright © 2007 Strategic Management Society.
... The use of intuition (i.e. gut feeling) plays an important role and becomes a method in hypothesizing and guessing in decision making [67],[69],[70]. There are situations where one cannot accurately analyze, identify and distinguish the identical features of a thing or object, even after a thorough cognitive thinking that is based on general and specific knowledge. ...
... Even though the use of intuition at this level is subjected to fallibility and can be argued, it would help to enrich the hypotheses formation. The intuition suggested in this framework is not merely follow free instinct, but it is an informed intuition [70] guided by experience and prior knowledge. The truth of an observed matter can be proved in further testing [64],[71]. ...
Making a decision is not just a matter of selecting the best alternative nor pragmatic consideration that are based on predetermined alternatives. Prior to the selection process, hypotheses generation plays an important role as to nurture alternatives, so that decision making process could then take place. In this paper, we discuss the Pragmaticism’s scientific method as a foundation for hypotheses generation that underpins the selection process in decision making. Further, the appropriate principles for abduction are identified and discussed.
... The use of intuition (i.e. gut feeling) plays an important role and become a method in hypothesizing and guessing in decision making [49],[51],[52]. There are situations where one cannot accurately analyze, identify and distinguish the identical features of a thing, even after a thorough cognitive thinking that based on general and specific knowledge. ...
... Even though the use of intuition at this level is subjected to fallibility and can be argued, it would help to enrich the hypothesis formation. The intuition suggested in this framework is not solely based on free instinct, but it is informed intuition[52] guided by experience and prior knowledge. The truth of an observed matter can be proved in further testing [46],[53]. ...
Hypotheses generation plays an important role as to inference to plausible explanations and to nurture alternatives, where the testing and validation processes could then takes place. Hypotheses generation requires processes, techniques and principles to enable its application. In Artificial Intelligence, hypotheses generation is done through abduction process, a reasoning method that first introduced by Pierce through his Pragmaticism. This paper discusses the processes and the techniques, and reviews the principles of hypotheses generation. The outcome of this effort is a highlight and proposal of a framework for hypotheses generation principles. Further, the identified and proposed principles for hypotheses generation are discussed.
... The use of intuition (i.e. gut feeling) plays an important role and become a method in hypothesizing and guessing in decision making [49],[51],[52]. There are situations where one cannot accurately analyze, identify and distinguish the identical features of a thing, even after a thorough cognitive thinking that based on general and specific knowledge. ...
... Even though the use of intuition at this level is subjected to fallibility and can be argued, it would help to enrich the hypothesis formation. The intuition suggested in this framework is not solely based on free instinct, but it is informed intuition[52] guided by experience and prior knowledge. The truth of an observed matter can be proved in further testing [46],[53]. ...
... The use of intuition (i.e. gut feeling) plays an important role and becomes a method in hypothesizing and guessing in decision making [67],[69],[70]. There are situations where one cannot accurately analyze, identify and distinguish the identical features of a thing or object, even after a thorough cognitive thinking that is based on general and specific knowledge. ...
... Even though the use of intuition at this level is subjected to fallibility and can be argued, it would help to enrich the hypotheses formation. The intuition suggested in this framework is not merely follow free instinct, but it is an informed intuition [70] guided by experience and prior knowledge. The truth of an observed matter can be proved in further testing [64],[71]. ...
... In order to solve an automotive problem, for example, it is first necessary to understand (i.e., explain) the nature of the problem. Although there exists a relatively rich literature on how people evaluate explanations (see Keil, 2006; Lombrozo and Carey, 2006; Thagard, 2001), comparatively little is known about how people generate them in the first place (for progress in this direction, see Ahn et al., 1987; Patalano, Chin-Parker & Ross, 2006; VanLehn, Jones & Chi, 1992; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1987). This paper presents our early attempts to understand, at a detailed algorithmic level, the cognitive operations that underlie our ability to generate explanations. ...
... This question is a subject of ongoing research. Second, we must address the problem of explanation evaluation (for progress in this direction, see Thagard, 2001). One of the hard problems to be solved in this domain is contradiction detection: How does the cognitive architecture know when it has postulated something just plain stupid in the process of generating an explanation? ...
The ability to generate explanations plays a central role in human cognition. Generating explanations requires a deep conceptual understanding of the domain in question and tremendous flexibility in the way concepts are accessed and used. Together, these requirements constitute challenging design requirements for a model of explanation. We describe our progress toward providing a such a model, based on the LISA model of analogical inference (Hummel & Holyoak, 1997, 2003). We augment LISA with a novel representation of causal relations, and with an ability to flexibly combine knowledge from multiple sources in LTM without falling victim to the type-token problem. We demonstrate how the resulting model can serve as a starting point for an explicit process model of explanation.
... This question is a subject of ongoing research. Second, we must address the problem of explanation evaluation (for progress in this direction, see Thagard, 2001). One of the hard problems to be solved in this domain is contradiction detection: How does the cognitive architecture know when it has postulated something just plain stupid (e.g., "believe (Coke, some-proposition)") in the process of generating an explanation? ...
... In order to solve an automotive problem, for example, it is first necessary to understand (i.e., explain) the nature of the problem. Although there exists a relatively rich literature on how people evaluate explanations (see Keil, 2006; Lombrozo and Carey, 2006; Thagard, 2001), comparatively little is known about how we generate them in the first place (for progress in this direction, see Ahn et al., 1987; Patalano, Chin-Parker & Ross, 2006; VanLehn, Jones & Chi, 1992; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1987). This paper presents our early attempts to understand, at a detailed algorithmic level, the cognitive operations that underlie our ability to generate explanations. ...
The ability to generate explanations plays a central role in human cognition. Generating explanations requires a deep conceptual understanding of the domain in question and tremendous flexibility in the way concepts are accessed and used. Together, these requirements constitute challenging design requirements for a model of explanation. We describe our progress toward providing a such a model, based on the LISA model of analogical inference (Hummel & Holyoak, 1997, 2003). We augment LISA with a novel representation of causal relations, and with an ability to flexibly combine knowledge from multiple sources in LTM. This ability to combine knowledge from multiple sources in LTM entails relaxing the 1:1 mapping constraint, as a given structure in the explanandum will necessarily correspond to different structures across different sources. We demonstrate how the resulting model can serve as a starting point for an explicit process model of explanation.
... This idea, (e.g. Thagard and Millgram 1997;Verbeurgt 1998, 2000;Thagard 2001) assumes that people come to their decisions by considering various often competing goals and actions, and rank order them in light of some accepted goals. Rational decision-making consists in making decisions that cohere best with our current objectives and goals; that is, they satisfy the most constraints we are aware of. ...
... Moreover, user experience has become a crucial factor to influence post-adoption behavior (Castañeda, Muñoz-Leiva, & Luque, 2007;Parthasarathy & Bhattacherjee, 1998). Based on the CTD and Affective Events Theory (AET), the behavior is affected by the mutual interaction of cognitive and emotional factors, and the emotional response generated through the event experience will affect the overall satisfaction and subsequent behavioral response (Fisher, 2002;Thagard, 2001). Therefore, this research first reviews the related studies on online banking services in section 2.1. ...
The online banking service is the key element for the development of e-commerce and e-businesses. It provides users with convenient daily transaction services, such as wire transfer and online payment. Past studies on online banking services mostly focused on their functionality, whereas little pay attention to users’ hedonic feelings or a sense of pleasure. Besides, discussions about post-adoption behavior are also immature. Thus, this study aims to explore the impacts of customers' positive or negative experience of using online banking services on consumers' emotions. Furthermore, a discussion of post-adoption behaviors, including recommendations, complaints, and continuance intention is also provided. The result shows that positive user experience will have a significantly positive impact on the generation of utilitarian emotion. As for the sense of utilitarian emotion, users concern more about whether their goal could be achieved successfully via their operations or not, such as completing wire transfer transactions in the online banking environment.
... Uma proposição será aceita ou rejeitada com base nesses pesos. Assim, uma explicação não tem apenas um status cognitivo de ser aceita ou rejeitada (status IPF, por exemplo) elas também envolvem um status emocional de gosto ou desgosto (Thagard, 2001). A experiência do entendimento será marcada pela emergência de sentimentos e emoções positivas (Gopnik, 1998), isto implica que o monitoramento destas reações evidenciará esta experiência. ...
Trabalho escrito como requisito parcial do concurso para o cargo de Professor Adjunto, campo de conhecimento Ensino de Física, do Departamento de Física da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.
... Uma proposição será aceita ou rejeitada com base nesses pesos. Assim, uma explicação não tem apenas um status cognitivo de ser aceita ou rejeitada (status IPF, por exemplo) elas também envolvem um status emocional de gosto ou desgosto (Thagard, 2001). A experiência do entendimento será marcada pela emergência de sentimentos e emoções positivas (Gopnik, 1998), isto implica que o monitoramento destas reações evidenciará esta experiência. ...
... Uma proposição será aceita ou rejeitada com base nesses pesos. Assim, uma explicação não tem apenas um status cognitivo de ser aceita ou rejeitada (status IPF, por exemplo) elas também envolvem um status emocional de gosto ou desgosto (Thagard, 2001). A experiência do entendimento será marcada pela emergência de sentimentos e emoções positivas (Gopnik, 1998), isto implica que o monitoramento destas reações evidenciará esta experiência. ...
... Coherence, Emotion, and Practical Inference in Decision Making: According to Thagard (2001), the theory of emotional coherence shows how people's gut feelings about what to do may sometimes emerge from integrative unconscious judgments about the actions that might best accomplish their goals. But it also applies to cases where people's intuitions are too quick and uninformed. ...
This paper is an attempt to know the role of emotions and decision making process in sports. Emotions are central to decision-making processes, both as an input and as an output. The decisions which are made have consequences that affect our emotions, and many choices are guided by an anticipation of these emotions. This process is equally significant in sports too. This paper is therefore designed to find out the relation between emotional factors and decision making processes in sports. It is examined through the origin and evolution of related studies. It also offers information related to the influences of emotions and decision making in sports performance. This paper presents a concepts based findings. These data help us to offer an approximate view of the emotions and decision making in sports. Research suggests that the emotions and decision making process may improve performance in sports by following suitable strategies. It is recommended some of the various strategies like becoming more self aware by managing emotions and developing a positive outlook on life, developing team-referent attributions and logic based decision making, and inculcating scenario based learning, and training of decision making, maximising performance to avoid overtraining by paying attention to the emotional state in training process, developing training methods that provide an accurate balance between stability of actions, and a coach enhancement program that improve performance in sports.
... Kognitívne procesy sú popri emočných a vôľových procesoch základné psychické procesy mediujúce interakciu jedinca s prostredím (Thagard, 2001). V procese poznávania sa uskutočňuje spojenie medzi poznávajúcim subjektom a poznávaným objektom (Šoka, 1994). ...
The paper deals with the comparison of defining and conceptual delineating the concepts cognitive processes, cognitive functions, and cognitive abilities. The categorization of cognitive processes on horizontal and vertical level is sketched. Three approaches to defining the concept of cognitive function in the relation to defining the concept of cognitive process are specified. The cognitive function is regarded as a task or algorithm, the cognitive process presents rather the course of the given function. The cognitive ability expresses the alternative or the quality of the process or function. The differences among cognitive processes and functions and their relations are explained on the basis of criteria of speed, visibility, and hierarchy. In the concluding part, the paper analyzes the difference between the concept of cognitive process and cognitive ability. The theoretical framework for delineation and analysis of concepts is represented besides psychology also by means of mathematics. The linguistic basis of mentioned concepts is also taken into account. The paper responds to the need to precise the terminology in the scope of breakthrough of psychological concepts into the social sciences discourses.
... For inference, emotion is as important as cognition, as the brain uses the emotions to assign values to the representations which are crucial for making an important decision or for deciding which beliefs are beneficial. To support his opinions, Thagard(2001) refers to diverse works, amongst which are some of his previous ones, like Thagard(2000Thagard( , 2005Thagard( , 2006Thagard( , 2010, as well as Barsalou (1999, 2009), Clore& Palmer (2009 or, once again, Thagard& Findlay (2011). ...
In this paper I review the thesis set out by Thagard (2011) and some of the ideas taken on again in Thagard and Nussbaum (2014) about the existence of bias or tendencies towards error in human inferential activities, which lead us to make mistakes and move us away from scientific knowledge. I will analyze their main proposals and, specifically, their implications on decision making and on scientific literacy through critical thinking. In particular, I will focus on the revision of motivated inference and inference driven by fear through which the intent is to demonstrate the need for guiding us towards overcoming beliefs so, in this way, we make correct decisions about what we must believe and do in day-to-day and academic environments.
... La décision peut être vue dans des perspectives différentes selon (Thagard, 2001). Nous pouvons le voir soumise à l'intuition, ou au calcul et à la cohérence. ...
http://www.loria.fr/~robert/annot
... This is clearly incomplete, but what is right is harder to say. Second, we must address the problem of explanation evaluation (for progress in this direction, see Thagard, 2001). One of the hard problems to be solved in this domain is contradiction detection: How does the cognitive architecture know when it has postulated something just plain stupid [e.g., "believe (Coke, some-proposition)"]? Third, we must include a role for elaboration in explanation: in our example problem, for instance, the model is given the knowledge that ministers are politically conservative, but the model never suggests that the source of agreement between the Coke corporation and the ministers is one of conservative values. ...
People are habitual explanation generators. At its most mundane, our propensity to explain allows us to infer that we should not drink milk that smells sour; at the other extreme, it allows us to establish facts (e.g., theorems in mathematical logic) whose truth was not even known prior to the existence of the explanation (proof). What do the cognitive operations underlying the inference that the milk is sour have in common with the proof that, say, the square root of two is irrational? Our ability to generate explanations bears striking similarities to our ability to make analogies. Both reflect a capacity to generate inferences and generalizations that go beyond the featural similarities between a novel problem and familiar problems in terms of which the novel problem may be understood. However, a notable difference between analogy-making and explanation-generation is that the former is a process in which a single source situation is used to reason about a single target, whereas the latter often requires the reasoner to integrate multiple sources of knowledge. This seemingly small difference poses a challenge to the task of marshaling our understanding of analogical reasoning to understanding explanation. We describe a model of explanation, derived from a model of analogy, adapted to permit systematic violations of this one-to-one mapping constraint. Simulation results demonstrate that the resulting model can generate explanations for novel explananda and that, like the explanations generated by human reasoners, these explanations vary in their coherence.
... Algumas tradições de pesquisa por diferentes razões, sob vocabulários distintos, em diversos níveis e relativamente independentes delineiam esta conexão. A teoria da coerência emocional 4 de Paul Thagard (THAGARD, 2001, 2005; ZHU e THAGARD, 2002) parece evidenciar alguns elementos dos mecanismos que permitem a aceitação de uma explicação tanto em cientistas quanto em não-cientistas. Thagard procurou mostrar como julgamentos de coerência cognitiva podem gerar julgamentos emocionais. ...
Resumo. Neste trabalho analisaremos o conceito de explicação na ciência, no cotidiano e na educação científica. Isto nos ajudará a distinguir entendimento científico de entendimento na educação científica. Argumentamos que o entendimento na educação científica carece e busca valor psicológico, diferentemente do entendimento científico. Finalmente, discutiremos propostas na literatura que consideram aspectos subjetivos/afetivos de um indivíduo fatores que acompanham o entendimento de uma explicação. Abstract. In this work we will analyze the concept of explanation in science, in the daily life and the scientific education. This will help us to distinguish scientific understanding from understanding in scientific education. We argue that understanding in scientific education does need and seeks for psychological value dislike understanding in science. Finally, we will discuss proposals in literature that consider subjective/affective aspects factors that come along with the understanding of an explanation. Palavras-chave: explicações científicas, explicações escolares, entendimento, subjetividade/afetividade.
... The original EBM exercise and Learning Profile design were based on studies of the barriers to physician adoption of EBM practices and prior research suggesting that individuals' attitudes and beliefs affect the ways that they evaluate information and adopt new skills [18][19][20]. ...
Background
Reflective practice is a desirable trait in physicians, yet there is little information about how it is taught to or learned by medical students. The purpose of this study was to determine whether an online Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) exercise with a face-to-face debriefing session would prompt third year medical students to reflect on their current skills and lead them to further reflection on clinical decision making in the future.
Methods
All third year medical students at the University Of Maryland School Of Medicine who completed their pediatrics clerkship between 7/1/09 and 2/11/11 were required to complete the EBM exercise. Following completion each student received a personal report (Learning Profile) of their responses and attended a one hour large group debriefing session. Student responses to a survey following the debriefing sessions were analyzed using a post-test survey design with a single experimental cohort.
Results
Ninety-five percent of students completing the debriefing survey indicated that the debriefing session helped them better understand their learning profiles; 68% stated that their profiles allowed them to evaluate themselves and their decisions. Sixty-three percent noted that participating in the exercise and the debrief would lead them to either learn more about EBM and use EBM more in the future or reflect more on their own decision making.
Conclusions
The EBM exercise was a successful way to introduce the concept of reflective practice to third year medical students, and the graphic Learning Profiles were effective instigators of discussion and reflection.
... 8 How do we use what we already know and believe to deliberately change habits that no longer work? Philosopher Paul Thagard (2001), dissatisfied with the limitations of rational decision-making offers a coherence approach to practical reasoning. The rational approach popular among planning analysts relies on deductive inference and the conventions of calculation -formal cognitive assumptions and rules that do not capture the kinds of practical steps people take when making a judgment or a decision in complex settings. ...
Conceiving urban plan making as practical judgment shifts theoretical attention from questions of belief to questions of meaning. How do we make urban plans that combine intelligent coordination with savvy communication to anticipate and cope with urban complexity? Consider adopting a pragmatic approach that relies on coherence to inform the appraisal, comparison and selection that accompany practical judgment. Plans compose the meaning and consequence of future actions. Pragmatic composition combines representation and interpretation to frame problems of urban complexity. Four orientations are described using plan examples: protocol, precedent, prototype and policy.
... Emotions do affect the process of decision-making, for better and for worse. Thagard (2000Thagard ( , 2001) developed a computational model to reconcile both emotion-based and deliberative decisionmaking mechanisms based on his theory of emotional coherence, and offered suggestions on how to improve our practical reasoning performance using intuition and emotion. ...
The role of emotion in human action has long been neglected in the philosophy of action. Some prevalent misconceptions of the nature of emotion are responsible for this neglect: emotions are irrational; emotions are passive; and emotions have only an insignificant impact on actions. In this paper we argue that these assumptions about the nature of emotion are problematic and that the neglect of emotion's place in theories of action is untenable. More positively, we argue on the basis of recent research in cognitive neuroscience that emotions may significantly affect action generation as well as action execution and control. Moreover, emotions also play a crucial role in people's explanation of action. We conclude that the concept of emotion deserves a more distinctive and central place in philosophical theories of action.
... I argued that the explicit cost-benefit model of choice of experiments is psychologically unrealistic. A more plausible model is the account of decision making as informed intuition (Thagard, 2001). Intuitions are emotional judgments that arise from unconscious processes that balance various cognitive and emotional constraints. ...
This article provides a historical, philosophical, and psychological analysis of the recent discovery that reoviruses are oncolytic, capable of infecting and destroying many kinds of cancer cells. After describing Patrick Lee's very indirect path to this discovery, I discuss the implications of this case for understanding the nature of scientific discovery, including the economy of research, anomaly recognition, hypothesis formation, and the role of emotion in scientific thinking. Lee's discoveries involved a combination of serendipity, abductive and deductive inference, and emotional cognition.
... La décision peut être vue dans des perspectives différentes selon (Thagard, 2001). Nous pouvons le voir soumise à l'intuition, ou au calcul et à la cohérence. ...
Texte intégral accessible uniquement aux membres de l'Université de Lorraine
... I have argued elsewhere that emotions are a part of good decisions, not just bad ones, contrary to the traditional view that pits emotions against rationality. 15 Nevertheless, there is no question that there are cases where emotional influences distort judgments, as when treasurer Ford's personal allegiances overwhelmed his professional responsibilities. I use the term 'affective afflictions' to refer to a set of phenomena that involve emotional distortion of judgments, including bad decisions based on conflicts of interest. ...
abstract This paper is an investigation of the moral psychology of decisions that involve a conflict of interest. It draws on the burgeoning field of affective neuroscience, which is the study of the neurobiology of emotional systems in the brain. I show that a recent neurocomputational model of how the brain integrates cognitive and affective information in decision-making can help to answer some important descriptive and normative questions about the moral psychology of conflicts of interest. These questions include: Why are decisions that involve conflicts of interest so common? Why are people so often unaware that they are acting immorally as the result of conflicts of interest? What is the relation of conflicts of interest to other kinds of irrationality, especially self-deception and weakness of will? What psychological, social, and logical steps can be taken to reduce the occurrence of immoral decisions resulting from conflicts of interest? I discuss five strategies for dealing with conflicts of interest: avoidance, optimal reasoning patterns, disclosure, social oversight, and understanding of neuropsychological processes.
... The most delicate step is the last one, namely, moving from single features to their joint evaluation. Analytical reasoning (ratiocination) is in general not very effective at capturing and assessing interconnected sets of features: this is a task we seem to accomplish through a kind of holistic understanding, similar to pattern recognition in perception (as argued in Thagard 2000). However, under certain conditions, analysis may help. ...
I shall argue for a sufficientist understanding of reasonableness in legal decision-making: cognitive or moral optimality
are not required for reasonableness; what needed is just that a determination—be it epistemic or practical—is sufficiently
good (acceptable, or at least not unacceptable). Correspondingly, judicial review on the ground of unreasonableness requires
more than mere suboptimality: it requires failure to achieve the reasonableness threshold.
... Rational and deliberate decisions made by an agent are basically mediated by a conscious processing of high-level cognitive functions like the sentential ones (for example natural language) and various model-based ways of reasoning, but can also be intertwined with "thinking through doing" and action-based cognition, all able to carry an adequate amount of suitable knowledge. This kind of decision making has to be distinguished from that in which thoughts or cognitive actions enter the cognitive process without self-awareness, even if it has to be said that many decision making processes are the fruit of a hybrid blending between conscious and unconscious cognitive aspects [ Piller, 2000;Thagard, 2001 ] . The analysis above of the concept of affordance provides an alternative account of the role of the environment and of external-also artifactual-objects and devices, as the source of action possibilities (constraints for allowable actions). ...
As a matter of fact, humans continuously delegate and distribute cognitive functions to the environment to lessen their limits. They build models, representations, and other various mediating structures that are considered to aid thought. In doing these, humans are engaged in a process of cognitive niche construction. In this sense, I argue that a cognitive niche emerges from a network of continuous interplays between individuals and the environment, in which people alter and modify the environment by mimetically externalizing fleeting thoughts, private ideas, etc. into external supports. Through mimetic activities, humans create external semiotic anchors that are the result of a process in which concepts, ideas, and thoughts are projected onto external structures. Once concepts and thoughts are externalized and projected, new chances and ways of inferring come up from the blend. For cognitive niche construction may also contribute to make available a great portion of chances – in terms of information and knowledge – that otherwise would remain simply unexpressed or unreachable. The central part of the paper will illustrate that “abduction” – or reasoning to explanatory hypotheses – is also central to understanding some features of the problem of action and decision-making. Abduction prompts action and plays a key role in decision-making, like Peirce teaches: the neurological perspective depicted in this paper also increases knowledge about the distinction between thought and motor action, seeing both aspects as fruit of brain activity. We can say that thought possesses an essential “motor” component reflected in brain action but not in actual movement. On the basis of this analysis, I can further illustrate some problems related to the role of abducting chances in decision-making, both in deliberate and in unconscious cases.
... Some these problems need fast solution whence act of decision-making is done by individual, mostly using intuition and previous experience. o Intuitive decision-making, according to Thagard [12], has three main advantages: Action -the positive feeling toward an option will lead directly to action. ...
Manager who is adjusted to think about decision process in the terms of intuitive process, rational model, and model of bounded rationality is usually confused with many technical details describing something he does not understand. To take more advantage of decision support tools managers need IT professionals to speak with the same language. This article represents an attempt how to use managerial language in order to describe decision support tools.
... At the very least, a thinker's beliefs should affect what kind of facilitation relations hold between conative states. Therefore the authors provide a " principle of judgment " , stating that " facilitation and competition relations can depend on coherence with judgments about 18 Thagard and Millgram (1995); Millgram and Thagard (1996); Thagard (2000 Thagard ( , 2001). the acceptability of factual beliefs. ...
Dissertation (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-171). Photocopy.
... There are two interdependent ways affect can act as an attribute: as an attribute of a cognitive attribute of an object or category and as an attribute of an object or category itself. This proposal follows the line of thinking of other researchers who have sought to bring affect into purely cognitive models of psychological functioning as valence ''tags'' attached to cognitive elements (Bower 1991;Fiske and Pavelchak 1986;Ortony et al. 1988;Thagard 2001). In these views, a piece of cognitive information has a positive or negative valence tag of variable intensity connected to it. ...
Metaphors are both cognitive and affective in their meaning. However, a discussion of affect has been absent from recent theories of metaphor comprehension. This article looks at how affect, broadly conceptualized as positive and negative valence, may interact with cognition during the metaphor comprehension process to provide the full import of metaphorical meaning. Four major metaphor processing theories, which enjoy the most support from psychological studies, are discussed: conceptual structure, salience imbalance, class inclusion, and structure mapping. Given the comprehension mechanisms proposed by these theories, valence can contribute to the affective meaning of a metaphor as part of an experiential gestalt, as a pattern, or in a more componential fashion, as an attribute of an attribute of an object or category and as an attribute of an object or category itself.
... The SMH was featured prominently in Damasio's influential book Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (Damasio [1994]), and has made its way into philosophical discussions of the nature of rationality and its relation to emotion (e.g. Blackburn [1998]; Churchland [1996]; DeLancey [2002]; Greenspan [2005]; Ledwig [2006]; Pizarro [2000]; Roskies [2003]; Thagard [2001]), as well as into sociology (Elster [1999]) and neuroeconomics (Bechara and Damasio [2005]). ...
Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) is a prominent neuroscientific hypothesis about the mechanisms implementing decision-making. This paper argues that, since its inception, the SMH has not been clearly formulated. It is possible to identify at least two different hypotheses, which make different predictions: SMH-G , which claims that somatic states generally implement preferences and are needed to make a decision; and SMH-S , which specifically claims that somatic states assist decision-making by anticipating the long-term outcomes of available options. This paper also argues that neither hypothesis is adequately supported empirically; the task originally proposed to test SMH is not a good test for SMH-S , and its results do not support SMH-G either. In addition, it is not clear how SMH-G could be empirically invalidated, given its general formulation. Suggestions are made that could help provide evidence for SMH-S , and make SMH-G more specific.
1 Introduction
2 Two Hypotheses: Somatic Markers as Embodied Preferences, and as a Source of Farsightedness
3 Lack of Evidence for Somatic Farsightedness
4 Does Making Decisions Require Somatic Markers, and can it be Shown in the Laboratory?
5 Conclusion
Resumen: El trabajo de jefe de proyecto es exigente, complejo y variado. Conociendo que las habilidades de la Inteligencia Emocional pueden contribuir de forma decisiva al el éxito en la Gestión de Proyectos, entonces aún más significativo puede ser su contribución para abordar los problemas y retos que destacan en época de crisis. Se identifica a continuación esta relación y las aportaciones que puede hacer la Inteligencia Emocional a estas habilidades interpersonales necesarias para el éxito de la Gestión de Proyectos (GP) en tiempos de crisis. Palabras Clave: Gestión de proyectos, inteligencia emocional, habilidades interpersonales, competencias emocionales.
The paper challenges the received view regarding rationality
and dialogue
. According to Leibniz, different kinds of rationality
not only co-exist but also do not exclude each other or attempt to render the other acceptable or intelligible only in one’s own terms. The relevant distinction for the construal of conflicting rationalities
is that between hard and soft rationality.
Based on the knowledge of the previous chapters a few projects have been developed. A short description of the projects is given in this chapter. The following projects are described:
1
Physiological parameters monitoring system,
2
Emotion recognition system,
3
Smart power management system.
The decision making process represent one of the most important manager activities. Even though we can find different types of decision making (individual, group, intuitive, rational...) one thing remain the same. Almost each decision can be made using some tool from ICT (information and communication technology) branch. Text categorisation methods are good examples of such methods that can significantly lower manager workload and raise of objectivity in decision-making process. Automated processing of text documents can prevent simplifications and generalisation, which allow us to decide on the base of small amount of cases and widen this decision on all cases. The aim of this paper is then finding of highly effective methods from text categorization branch which fulfil criteria put on managerial decision-making process.
This volume is divided into two main parts. The first examines the nature of rationality broadly understood, which is customarily divided into the theoretical and the practical. Whereas theoretical or epistemic rationality is concerned with what it is rational to believe and sometimes with rational degrees of belief, practical rationality is concerned with what it is rational to do, or intend or desire to do. Included in part I are discussions of practical and theoretical rationality and the relations between them; the relation between reasoning and rationality; rationality as internal consistency; rationality and morality; formal methods in the study of rationality (Bayesianism, decision theory and game theory); rationality and emotion; rationality and rule-following; procedural and substantive rationality; internalism and externalism about practical reasons; Humean rationality; Kantian rationality; motivated irrationality; and paradoxes of rationality. Part II explores rationality's role in and relation to other domains of inquiry: psychology, gender, personhood, language, science, economics, law, and evolution.
Recent empirical and philosophical research challenges the view that reason and emotion necessarily conflict with one another. Philosophers of science have, however, been slow in responding to this research. I argue that they continue to exclude emotion from their models of scientific reasoning because they typically see emotion as belonging to the context of discovery rather than of justification. I suggest, however, that recent work in epistemology challenges the authority usually granted the context distinction, taking reliabilism as my example. Emotion may be seen as playing a reliable role in the formation, which for the reliabilist also means the justification of scientific beliefs.
Diese Arbeit untersucht und expliziert ein Verständnis von Autonomie, das seine Wurzeln (1) in der antiken politischen Autonomiekonzeption, (2) in Kants Theorie von Autonomie als Eigenschaft von Personen und (3) in Frankfurts individualistischem Verständnis von Autonomie hat. Autonomie wird systematisch aufgefasst als eine natürliche und graduelle Eigenschaft von Personen, die nicht an spezifische Normen gebunden ist und sich vom freien Willen abgrenzen lässt. Für Autonomie ist es wesentlich, dass die Person ihren eigenen, authentischen Standpunkt ausdrückt und dazu fähig und disponiert ist, Hindernisse zu überwinden und sich in Konflikten zu behaupten. Die zeitgenössische Autonomiedebatte hat diesem Aspekt von Autonomie zu wenig Beachtung geschenkt und sich nahezu ausschließlich auf Selbstgerichtetheit konzentriert. Ich argumentiere, dass Selbstgerichtetheit eine wesentliche, aber nicht hinreichende Dimension von Autonomie ist. Eine vollständige Konzeption von Autonomie muss die zweite Dimension von Autonomie, nämlich Entschlossenheit, mitberücksichtigen. Die persönliche Stärke, die Entschlossenheit auszeichnet, ist ein wesentliches Merkmal autonomer Akteure.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7941.2013v30n1p25
Há, recentemente, na Educação Científica um crescimento da consciência coletiva sobre a influência dos aspectos afetivos na atividade intelectual dos indivíduos, em particular, na aprendizagem e na tomada de decisões. Neste trabalho, investigamos a influência da dimensão afetiva na decisão de seguir a carreira de professor de Física em acadêmicos da Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina e da Universidade de São Paulo. A pesquisa foi orientada pelas seguintes questões: (1) Qual a influência da dimensão afetiva na decisão de seguir a carreira de professor de Física? (2) Quais são as principais experiências emocionais que motivam a escolha da carreira de professor de Física?(3) Quais eventos originam essas experiências emocionais? Foram investigados, por intermédio de um questionário, 68 licenciandos em Física. Nossos resultados evidenciaram que as experiências emocionais positivas e do interesse dos acadêmicos pesquisados formaram parte importante de suas motivações para se tornarem professores de Física. Utilizamos o modelo atribuição-expectativa de Silvia (2006) para explicar como tais experiências momentâneas contribuíram para formação de interesses duradouros nos sujeitos pesquisados.
A persistent puzzle for philosophers of science is the well-documented appeal made by scientists to their aesthetic emotions in the course of scientific research. Emotions are usually viewed as irremediably subjective, and thus of no epistemological interest. Yet, by denying an epistemic role for scientists’ emotional dispositions, philosophers find themselves in the awkward position of ignoring phenomena which scientists themselves often insist are of importance. This paper suggests a possible solution to this puzzle by challenging the wholesale identification of emotion with subjectivity. The proposed method is a naturalistic and externalist one, calling for empirical investigation into the intersubjective processes by which scientists’ emotional dispositions become refined and attuned to specific objects of attention. The proposal is developed through a critical discussion of Michael Polanyi’s theory of scientific passions, as well as plant geneticist Barbara McClintock’s celebrated “feeling for the organism.”
Decision making is influenced by multiple factors, especially when approaching controversial socio-scientific issues, such as stem cell research. In the present study, we used qualitative data from 132 college student papers in a biotechnology course to investigate how students made decisions about stem cell research issues. Students indicated their opinion about stem cell research topics and argued their stance using evidence they deemed relevant. We used NVivo7 software to develop categories, code student responses, and run queries. We identified a continuum of positions that students took regarding the support or opposition of stem cell research, and we found students used eight different perspectives as lenses to form their decisions: medical application, ethical, rights, economic, religious, personal anecdotes, political, or scientific. The most common perspective was 'medical application'. Most students relied upon multiple perspectives when making their decisions. We found that when students used multiple viewpoints, the perspectives were unequally valued, generally relying more on ethical perspectives. Scientific perspectives were not common. These findings have implications for improving instruction by focusing the curriculum toward integrating scientific perspectives with non-scientific perspectives held.
A computational model of human belief revision, UECHO (Uncertainty-aware Explanatory Coherence by Harmony Optimization), has been recreated as a Java package in such a way to maximise flexibility of choice between implementations of various key internal algorithmic aspects. The original algorithms were analysed and several deficiencies, errors and weaknesses identified and corrected. The original comparison with human subjects’ belief revision patterns in a specific experimental context is recreated, and the improved algorithms presented alongside. The classes could serve as a basis for further exploration of possible constructive simulation of human belief revision in a military context conducive to fratricide. This work was conducted for the Combat ID project, which aimed at identifying the critical attributes that systems such as Blue Force Tracking (BFT) need to have in order to reduce fratricide incidence as much as possible without affecting the operational effectiveness of the Land Forces unduly.
Purpose
This paper attempts to reduce the gap between management education and practice. It emphasises day‐to‐day decisions that middle and lower level managers make. The purpose is to provide an education framework embodying a flexible approach to interpretation and solution creation, suitable for situations of ambiguity and uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper examines the current state of tuition in management decision making, then provides a model that, when combined with practical exercises, helps trainees explore the type of problems managers confront on a daily basis.
Findings
The model guided students to think beyond problem definition to identify possible causes, and to think beyond the solution to the consequences of the solution. Use of class members as an education resource enabled a large number of interpretations of what might otherwise be considered “common sense”.
Practical implications
Undergraduate students often lack management experience but this paper argues that the use of real‐world examples with in‐built ambiguity can help prepare management trainees for a wide range of interpretations and create a mental “tool‐box” to better facilitate flexibility.
Originality/value
Non‐routine decision making at lower levels of management is an under‐explored academic activity. In an effort to create future leaders, business schools currently instruct on big issues such as strategy and organisational change. This paper argues that management education needs to prepare trainees for the type of problems they will face on a day to basis. To assist with uncertainty and ambiguity, students do not seek the “right answer”, but explore a broad range of interpretations.
The first half of this paper is an attemptto conceptualize and understand the paradoxicalnotion of ``passive action''''. The strategy is toconstrue passive action in the context ofemotional behavior, with the purpose toestablish it as a conceivable and conceptuallycoherent category. In the second half of thispaper, the implications of passive action forcausal theories of action are examined. I arguethat Alfred Mele''s defense of causalism isunsuccessful and that causalism may lack theresource to account for passive action.Following Harry Frankfurt, I suggest analternative way of understanding the nature ofaction that can accommodate passive action.
Understanding the science in a ‘socio-scientific issue’ is at the heart of the varied definitions of ‘scientific literacy’. Many consider that understanding evidence is necessary to participate in decision making and to challenge the science that affects people’s lives. A model is described that links practical work, argumentation and scientific literacy which is used as the basis of this research. If students are explicitly taught about evidence does this transfer to students asking questions in the context of a local socio-scientific issue? What do they ask questions about? Sixty-five primary teacher training students were given the pretest, before being taught the ‘concepts of evidence’ and applying them in an openended investigation and were tested again 15 weeks later. Data were coded using Toulmin’s argument pattern (TAP) and the ‘concepts of evidence’. After the intervention it was found that, in relation to a socio-scientific issue, they raised significantly more questions specifically about the evidence that lead to the scientists’ claims although questions explicitly targeting the quality of the data were still rare. This has implications for curricula that aim for scientific literacy.
In Study 1, college students' preferences for different brands of strawberry jams were compared with experts' ratings of the jams. Students who analyzed why they felt the way they did agreed less with the experts than students who did not. In Study 2, college students' preferences for college courses were compared with expert opinion. Some students were asked to analyze reasons; others were asked to evaluate all attributes of all courses. Both kinds of introspection caused people to make choices that, compared with control subjects', corresponded less with expert opinion. Analyzing reasons can focus people's attention on nonoptimal criteria, causing them to base their subsequent choices on these criteria. Evaluating multiple attributes can moderate people's judgments, causing them to discriminate less between the different alternatives.
This review proposes that implicit learning processes are the cognitive substrate of social intuition. This hypothesis is supported by (a) the conceptual correspondence between implicit learning and social intuition (nonverbal communication) and (b) a review of relevant neuropsychological (Huntington's and Parkinson's disease), neuroimaging, neurophysiological, and neuroanatomical data. It is concluded that the caudate and putamen, in the basal ganglia, are central components of both intuition and implicit learning, supporting the proposed relationship. Parallel, but distinct, processes of judgment and action are demonstrated at each of the social, cognitive, and neural levels of analysis. Additionally, explicit attempts to learn a sequence can interfere with implicit learning. The possible relevance of the computations of the basal ganglia to emotional appraisal, automatic evaluation, script processing, and decision making are discussed.
Contemporary philosophers interested in value theory appear to be largely concerned with questions of the following sort:
What is value?
What is the meaning of the word ‘good’?
Does the attribution of value to an object have a cognitive, or merely an emotive, significance?
The first question is metaphysical; to ask it is analogous to asking in physics:
What is matter?
What is electricity?
The others are generally treated as semantical questions; to ask them is analogous to asking in statistics:
What is the meaning of the word ‘probable’?
Does an attribution of probability express an objective fact, or merely a subjective attitude?
An Old and continuing tendency amongst critics of Kant's thought on ethics has been to maintain that since the categorical imperative merely provides a formal condition for the rightness of actions – that the principle of the action be universalizable without contradiction – it is inadequate as a test for the rightness of actions. Such critics as Hegel, Mill, and recently, R.P. Wolff, have suggested the same fundamental objection to Kant's doctrine: the requirement that a maxim be universalizable is formally compatible with any action whatsoever being right.
Jean Hampton is at the Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ 85721 USA.
I am grateful to the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University for supporting me during some of the time this paper was written. I would also like to thank Tom Christiano, Don Garrett, Ken O'Day, David Owen, and Terry Price for discussions about some of the issues raised in this paper. Finally, I would like to thank the Pew Foundation, whose grant to me through the Pew Evangelical Scholars Program, made much of the research for this paper possible.
1. That is, the agent's belief must satisfy epistemic norms regarding belief formation.
2. But I believe there are positions that are reasonably called instrumentalist that have a somewhat different characterization. See Jean Hampton, "On Instrumental Rationality," in Essays in Honor of Kurt Baier, edited by J. Schneewind (La Salle: Open Court, 1996).
3. See Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone for his mature account of the sufficiency of moral motives, and the role of the human will in choosing these motives to prevail against any conflicting motives.
4. J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977).
5. For one well-known discussion of the ontological commitments science seems to require of us, see W.V. Quine, "Facts of the Matter," in American Philosophy from Edwards to Quine, edited by R.W. Shahan and K.R. Merrill (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977).
6. See Gilbert Harman, "Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty," Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Fall 1983): 319.
7. Philippa Foot, "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," reprinted in her Virtues and Vices (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1978), 167.
8. Mackie, 28, my emphasis.
9. See John McDowell, "Are Moral Imperatives Hypothetical?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 52 (1978): 13
10. See Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
11. Jonathan Dancy, Moral Reasons (Oxford: 1993), Appendix I, 253-257. Dancy also notes the way in which Williams's internal/external distinction comes apart from a more traditional motivational way of making that distinction.
12. Immanuel Kant, Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 33.
13. Kant, Foundation, 34.
14. So defined, the Kantian position is really a family of positions, and not a single view, for there are a number of ways of elaborating the idea that, to be rational, a person who acts from a hypothetical imperative is motivated by the authority of that imperative. For example, one can hold that the authority of hypothetical imperatives is directly motivational, in a way analogous to the direct motivational efficacy of the authority of a (moral) categorical imperative. Alternatively, one can hold that the authority of these imperatives motivates us indirectly, for example by having an effect on our psychological structure such that a desire to do what the imperative directs is created. Kant suggests this second idea himself in the section "The Incentives of Pure Practical Reason" in Critique of Practical Reason. Indeed, there are times in this section when he seems to assume that the only way to explain how reason could be motivational is to credit it with the power to effect a desire in us to do the moral action. But note that this view still credits reason with the causal power to create a motive, even if it does not credit it with the power to directly motivate. And both positions preserve what is fundamental to the Kantian view, namely, the idea that our motivation to follow the imperative is derived from the authority of the imperative, so that we are appropriately said to be acting for the sake of the reason given us in the imperative. If one holds the former view, one might argue that while it is possible for the authority of imperatives to work indirectly, it is better if it does not; i.e., it is better if we act directly from the reasons we have for acting. In contrast, one could maintain that reason does not...
According to Singer, it is not directly wrong to kill ‘non‐self‐conscious beings’, such as lower animals, human foetuses and newborn infants, provided that any consequent loss of happiness is made good by the creation of new sentient life. In contrast, normal adult humans, being ‘self‐conscious’, generally have a strong preference for going on living, the flouting of which cannot, Singer argues, be morally counterbalanced by creating new, equally happy individuals. Singer's case might be reinforced by taking account, not only of the preference for continued life itself, but also of other preferences for whose satisfaction continued life is essential. It proves difficult, however, to find a formulation of ‘preference utilitarianism’ which, while lacking other obviously unacceptable consequences, supports Singer's ‘non‐replaceability principle’. Also, Singer's position fails adequately to accommodate our conviction that the lives of human beings are, in general, more valuable than those of other animals. Finally, his thesis that lower animals (let alone human infants) are replaceable, has decidely counterintuitive implications.
This paper provides a computational characterization of coherence that applies to a wide range of philosophical problems and psychological phenomena. Maximizing coherence is a matter of maximizing satisfaction of a set of positive and negative constraints. After comparing five algorithms for maximizing coherence, we show how our characterization of coherence overcomes traditional philosophical objections about circularity and truth.
Elizabeth Anderson offers a new theory of value and rationality that rejects cost-benefit analysis in our social lives and in our ethical theories. This account of the plurality of values thus offers a new approach, beyond welfare economics and traditional theories of justice, for assessing the ethical limitations of the market. In this light, Anderson discusses several contemporary controversies involving the proper scope of the market, including commercial surrogate motherhood, privatization of public services, and the application of cost-benefit analysis to issues of environmental protection.
Table of Contents:
Preface
1. A Pluralist Theory of Value
A Rational Attitude Theory of Value
Ideals and Self-Assessment
How Goods Differ in Kind (I): Different Modes of Valuation
How Goods Differ in Kind (II): Social Relations of Realization
2. An Expressive Theory of Rational Action
Value and Rational Action
The Framing of Decisions
The Extrinsic Value of States of Affairs
Consequentialism
Practical Reason and the Unity of the Self
3. Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods
The Advantages of Consequentialism
A Pragmatic Theory of Comparative Value Judgments
Incommensurable Goods
Rational Choice among Incommensurable Goods
4. Self-Understanding, the Hierarchy of Values, and Moral Constraints
The Test of Self-Understanding
The Hierarchy of Values
Agent-Centered Restrictions
Hybrid Consequentialism
A Self-Effacing Theory of Practical Reason?
5. Criticism, Justification, and Common Sense
A Pragmatic Account of Objectivity
The Thick Conceptual Structure of the Space of Reasons
How Common Sense Can Be Self-Critical
Why We Should Ignore Skeptical Challenges to Common Sense
6. Monistic Theories of Value
Monism
Moore's Aesthetic Monism
Hedonism
Rational Desire Theory
7. The Ethical Limitations of the Market
Pluralism, Freedom, and Liberal Politics
The Ideals and Social Relations of the Modern Market
Civil Society and the Market
Personal Relations and the Market
Political Goods and the Market
The Limitations of Market Ideologies
8. Is Women's Labor a Commodity?
The Case of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood
Children as Commodities
Women's Labor as a Commodity
Contract Pregnancy and the Status of Women
Contract Pregnancy, Freedom, and the Law
9. Cost-Benefit Analysis, Safety, and Environmental Quality
Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Form of Commodification
Autonomy, Labor Markets, and the Value of Life
Citizens, Consumers, and the Value of the Environment
Toward Democratic Alternatives to Cost-Benefit Analysis
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Reviews of this book:
Anderson is anxious to combat what she sees as a tendency for commercial values to invade areas of human life where they do not belong...A useful contribution to debate about the proper scope of the market.
"Not everything is a commodity, insists Anderson, and her brief should shake up social science technocrats." -- Philadelphia Inquirer
"The book is rich in both argument and application." --Alan Hamlin, Times Higher Education Supplement
"In this rich and insightful book Elizabeth Anderson develops an original account of value and rational action and then employs this account to address the pragmatic political question of what the proper range of the market should be. Anderson's principal targets are consequentialism, monism and the crude 'economistic' reasoning which underpins much contemporary social policy...This is an important book...For anyone interested in political philosophy this is essential reading." --A. J. Walsh, Australasian Journal of Philosophy
--Hugo Dixon, Financial Times [UK]
Reviews of this book:
Not everything is a commodity, insists Anderson, and her brief should shake up social science technocrats.
--Philadelphia Inquirer
Reviews of this book:
The book is rich in both argument and application.
--Alan Hamlin, Times Higher Education Supplement
Reviews of this book:
In this rich and insightful book Elizabeth Anderson develops an original account of value and rational action and then employs this account to address the pragmatic political question of what the proper range of the market should be. Anderson's principal targets are consequentialism, monism and the crude 'economistic' reasoning which underpins much contemporary social policy...This is an important book...For anyone interested in political philosophy this is essential reading.
--A. J. Walsh, Australasian Journal of Philosophy
trust that will grow in value for a specified period. When the trust matures the capital and accumulated income will go to an organization working to prevent famine, poverty and human suffering. You are pessimistic about human affairs, but optimistic about the long term future of the stock market. You expect human suffering to grow at a slow constant rate, but you believe the money in the trust will grow at a slightly faster rate (in real, inflation-adjusted dollars). There might even be proportionally less and less human misery in the world and still constant absolute misery growth. Total human happiness would just have to soar fast enough. Having imagined those conditions, ask yourself a simple question. What date would you set for dissolving the trust? For any date that you pick, had you picked a later date, you could have helped more people with more money. If you do not pick a date, if you have the trust grow forever, then of course the trust will never help anyone. As a utilitarian, your guiding
From most branches of economics the concept of cardinal utility has been eliminated as redundant since ordinal utility has been found to suffice for doing the job. Cardinal utility has been kept only in welfare economics to support the demand for a more equal income distribution. Recently, however, the concept of cardinal utility has been introduced also in the theory of choices involving risk.1
Much experimental evidence indicates that choice depends on the status quo or reference level: changes of reference point often lead to reversals of preference. The authors present a reference-dependent theory of consumer choice, which explains such effects by a deformation of indifference curves about the reference point. The central assumption of the theory is that losses and disadvantages have greater impact on preferences than gains and advantages. Implications of loss aversion for economic behavior are considered. Copyright 1991, the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
An individual with known preferences over lotteries can be led to accept random wealth distributions different from his initial
endowment by a sequential process in which some uncertainty is resolved and he is offered a new lottery in place of the remaining
uncertainty. This paper examines the restrictions that can be placed on an individual's preferences by axioms that stipulate
that such a process not be able to generate a new wealth distribution that is prima facie inferior to the original. The relationship
of these axioms to the independence axiom of von Neumann and Morgenstern and to the quasi convexity of preferences in the
wealth distribution are explored.
This paper studies the historical roots of the relationship between economics and psychology, and places recurring controversies between these disciplines in the context of the relationship between economics and the other human sciences, especially sociology. We focus on the formative years of contemporary economics, the early twentieth century, when psychologists and institutionalist economists attacked the "unscientific" nature of economics. Economists responded by (mistakenly) renouncing verstehen and claiming adherence to behaviorism, rather than by actually addressing the institutionalist critique. "Behaviorist" economics declared independence from psychology, and by analogy, from the other human sciences. Our illusion of independence continues to this day.