MIND & SOCIETY
Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences |
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| 1, 2010, Mind&Society, vol.9 |
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Articles:
Aaron V. Cicourel
In memoriam of Mary Douglas (1921 – 2007)
David R. Mandel
Predicting blame assignment in a case of negligent harm
Abstract
Theories of blame posit that observers consider causality, controllability, and foreseeability when assigning blame to actors. The present study examined which of these factors, either on their own or in interaction, predicted blame assigned to actors in a case of harm caused by negligence. The findings revealed that only causal impact ratings predicted blame. The findings also revealed a novel form of asymmetric discounting: the causal impact of a negligent actor was used to discount blame assigned to an innocent actor, but the causal impact of the innocent actor was not used to discount the blame assigned to the negligent actor.
Roberto Casati
Trust, secrecy and accuracy in voting systems: the case for transparency
Abstract
If voting systems are to be trusted, they not only need to preserve both secrecy (if requested) and accuracy, but the mechanisms that preserve these features should be transparent, in the sense of being both cognitively understandable and accessible. Electronic voting systems, much as they promise accuracy in counting, and on top of being criticized for their insufficent protection of secrecy, violate the transparency requirement.
Alfred L. McAlister
Moral disengagement and tolerance for health care inequality in Texas
Abstract
Societies vary in their levels of social inequality and in the degree of popular support for policies that reduce disparities within them. Survey research in Texas, where levels of disparity in health and medical care are relatively high, studied how psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement relate to public support for expanding access to government-subsidized health care. Telephone interviews (N=1,063) measured agreement with statements expressing tendencies to minimize the effects of inequality, blame its victims and morally justify limits on government help. The interviews also assessed support for general and specific policies to reduce inequality, e.g., through state-subsidized health care for lower income groups, as well as political party affiliation, ideological orientation, gender, age, education and income. Agreement with beliefs expressing moral disengagement was associated with opposition to governmental policies to reduce inequality in children’s health care. Beliefs that justify the withholding of government assistance, blame the victims of societal inequality, and minimize perceptions of their suffering were strongly related to variation between and within groups in support for governmental action to reduce inequality.
Cristina Meini • Alberto Voltolini
How pretence can really be metarepresentational
Abstract
Our lives are commonly involved with fictionality, an activity that adults share with children. After providing a brief reconstruction of the most important cognitive theories on pretence, we will argue that pretence has to do with metarepresentations, albeit in a rather weakened sense. In our view, pretending entails being aware that a certain representation does not fit in the very same representational model as another representation.
This is a minimal metarepresentationalism, for normally metarepresentationalism on pretense claims that pretending is or entails representing a representation qua representation, i.e., as conceptualized as a representation, in its very content. In the final section we will try to draw some consequences of our view as to the debate in cognitive science on mindreading.
Given this minimal metarepresentationalism, the two main positions on mindreading, the 'theory-theory' and the 'simulation theory', turn out to be closer than one would have originally supposed.
Masudul Alam Choudhury • Mohammad Shahadat Hossain
Neuro-cybernetics of socio-scientific systems
Abstract
The field of information technology is broadened up to the domain of 'learning' systems and cybernetics. In covering this extension of the field due recourse is made to the epistemological basis of theory construction. When so comprehended, information technology becomes a philosophical inquiry on a variety of social, scientific and technological issues. A new idea that we refer to as neuro-cybernetics is born. The term neuro-cybernetics is used to delineate the epistemological field of system and cybernetic study.
The above-mentioned phenomenological or the epistemic model of a cybernetic and system type is applied to flood control problem in Bangladesh. This example presents an application of the cybernetic model to a physico-human problem. This is the nature of socio-scientific system. In it, organically unifying relations occur between the environment and the human world, with the objective of controlling the perennial problem of floods by using interactive factors.
Bernardo Pino Rojas
Re-assessing ecology of tool transparency in epistemic practices
Abstract
In this paper, the radical view that transparent equipment is the result of an ecological assembly between tool users and physical aspects of the world is critically assessed. According to this perspective, tool users are normally viewed as plastically organized hybrid agents. In this view, such agents are able to interact with tools (artefacts or technologies) in ways that are opportunistic and fully locked to the local task environment.
This intimate and flexible interaction would provide grounds for the thesis that cognitive agents and tools constitute literal extended cognitive systems. By contrast, a revised understanding of tool use transparency will be attempted.
In this perspective, the interplay between on-line and off-line thinking is understood in terms of a socially reified cognitive delegation that subsumes the advantages normally associated to the so-called ‘open-ended ecological controllers. Thus, the notion of transparent technologies can be explored on the basis of a derived or mediated cognitive delegation. This view will be complemented by the notion of communities of practice (CoP). Special sorts of CoP will be proposed as suitable and flexible cognitive environments for the development of tool transparency.
Paul Thagard
Book Review
Magnani, L. (2010).
Abductive cognition: The Epistemological and Eco-Cognitive Dimensions of Hypothetical Reasoning. Springer
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