Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Kristoffer Moody ( University of Edinburgh ) on his recent paper, " The Manipulationist Threat to moral responsibility " ( Synthese 2024). Kristoffer Moody We all have that one relative, let’s call him Antonio, who, at family gatherings, irritates us by expounding on how vaccines cause autism, that the election was stolen, or other strange, problematic, or offensive beliefs. While it’s tendentious whether or not we can hold Antonio responsible for holding those beliefs, it may seem clear that we can hold him responsible for acting on the basis of those beliefs. However, I claim using evidence from psychology that Antonio may have been manipulated in the formation of his belief. I claim, on the basis of evidence of our propensity towards choice-blindness, the ‘truth effect’, and confirmation bias, that we are far more susceptible to manipulation than we might pre-theoretically think, and that we appear to be particularly so susceptible via social medi...

Michel De Lara (below left) is a researcher concerned with the mathematical and economic aspects of risk. Jérôme Boutang (below right) is a communication professional with expertise in environmental threats such as air pollution and climate change. Together with the Paris School of Economics, they started a research project on risk perception which soon developed into the Biased Mind project. In this post they introduce their new book The Biased Mind , which is published in the Copernicus popular science collection of Springer. Why is it that the French eat snails but not slugs? What makes the number 7 so special? Will your recent marriage last? Why is it that Batman, Superman and Spiderman fearlessly defeat evil monsters, but are hopelessly shy when it comes to women? And why is it that we crave sugary and greasy food, even though we know it's not healthy? The answer to these questions is that our mind is like a smartphone, filled with adaptive software, whose different...

This post is by Alex Tillas and James Trafford . Alex is a a Research Fellow at the University of Düsseldorf in Germany. He holds a PhD from University of Bristol and is mainly working on philosophy of psychology and cognitive science, broadly construed. James is a Senior Lecturer in Contextual and Critical Studies at the University of the Creative Arts in London. He completed a PhD in philosophy of mind at the University of East London, and his primary research interests lie in reasoning, rationality, and logical inferentialism.   This post is based on their co-authored papers ' Intuition and Reason: Re-assessing Dual-Process Theories with Representational Sub-Activation ', forthcoming in Teorema, and 'The Fear Factor: Reconsidering the Roles of Emotion in Reasoning', currently under review. Emotionally responding to environmental cues is crucial for adaptive human behaviour. For instance, in the presence of a predator, fear can be a good advisor since it can sha...