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At first sight, it may appear that my proposal is simply a more formal char- Salmon (1989, 137) and Brandon (1990, 178-179) consider consistency with known facts to be a hallmark of HPEs. On the Dray-type side, Forber (2010, 34) appeals to a "causal principle of possibility". Furthermore, HPEs usually considered in the literature (Grüne-Yanoff, 2013a) do not simply show that there is logical entailment between the explanans and the explanandum. This is too easy. Instead, they also appear |
and 'q' are true whereas an antirealist may be content if only 'p because q' is true under certain conditions. For an antirealist, the explanatory relationship may be true in the absence of true explanantia and explananda (see Khalifa, 2011 can also consider that we have no evidence that it is the HAE. In fact, we may even have evidence that some other cause is the HAE. In short, we may have zero evidence that the HPE is the actual explanation, yet still consider that it is possible. A HPE is therefore fully supported by the evidence for the |
Contrary to some versions of the Hempel-type and Dray-type, the external conditions I propose are either more or less demanding. They can be more demanding insofar as the mere logical form of an explanation is often not sufficient. A stronger modal appraisal is called for. It requires one to evaluate whether it is true that the explanans and the explanandum are possible according to a relevant modality. Contrary to some versions of the Dray-type, they can be less demanding as my account does not require any actual proposition. HPEs can include claims of actuality, but actuality is not required to establish claims of |
In this respect, I would say that Brandon's and Forber's accounts are similar to External conditions Account Internal cond. Possibility Actuality Dray (1957) ♦p because c Epistemic (?) p Necessary c Hempel (1965) p because q Logical -Brandon (1990) ♦(p because q) Epistemic c, 'because' q Forber (2010) ♦(p because q) Local causal c, 'because' p, q Forber (2010) ♦(p because q) Global causal p, q, c - Table 2 : An |
We can find more variance in what external conditions the different accounts put forward. Brandon (1990) appears to say that HPEs should include actual generalizations 'q' and that they should be epistemically possible. Forber's (2010) global HPEs should be causally possible-note the different modality-relative to the global information set, but imposes no actuality requirement. His local HPEs use the same modality, but relative to the local information set. And the explanandum and the generalizations should be actual. Table 2 summarizes the preceding discussion, which suggests two things. First, that |
Models are not explanations. Explanations are simply sets of propositions satisfying the internal and external conditions stated by one's favourite theory (Strevens, 2013). Whereas explanations are linguistic entities, models are widely viewed as being non-linguistic. This is clearly true of physical models such as the MONIAC (aka Phillips Hydraulic Computer), but also of the mathematical models usually discussed in the literature such as the Lotka-Volterra model (Weisberg, 2007). So, when we say that a model explains a given phenomenon, what this means is that there is a given model proposition-pro |
Discussing one recent and influential account of models may help to see the evidential role of models and its relationship to possibility. Sugden (2000; argues, especially in his more recent work, that posited similarities between models and the world may license inductive inferences from the model to the world. For instance, Sugden describes the inductive schema of explanation where the facts that 1) the explanandum 'p' is caused by the explanans 'q' in the model world and that 2) both 'p' and 'q' occur in the world 3) provide "reason to believe" that |
While similarity is, according to Sugden, the key notion to license inductive inferences, he argues that one important dimension along which to judge it is credibility. 10 In this context, credibility means that the confidence we have in our inferences is "greater the extent to which we can understand the relevant model as a description of how the world could be" (Sugden, 2000, 24, emphasis in original). Credibility in that sense is not about considering that the model is real, but about judging that it is compatible with one's knowledge and beliefs about the world (Sugden, |
Using the account of HPEs developed here helps to clarify Sugden's views and the debate about them. In a discussion of Schelling's (1971; 1978) model of residential segregation, Sugden (2011) argues that the 1971 model is an "explanation in search of an observation" (2011, 722) whereas the 1978 model was really trying to tell us something about the world. In other words, the 1978 model is an explanation and the 1971 model is a potential explanation (Sugden, 2011, 734 (Sugden |
But it is also possible to make an argument to the effect that HPEs, while not actually explaining, afford understanding. Having a scientific explanation is a sufficient condition for scientific understanding. But is it necessary? And if propositions afford understanding, does this imply they should be qualified as an explanation? Put differently, that propositions explain is a cue that they afford understanding. However, if propositions afford understanding, is it equally a cue that they constitute an explanation? That HPEs may contribute to learning (Grüne-Yanoff, 2009, 2013a or understanding (Rohwer and Rice, 2013; |
Asimov spent more than half of the twentieth century cultivating that transformative unity of art and science. He wrote and edited around 500 books and penned myriad stories, articles and essays. They spanned the rich microscopic worlds of cytoplasm, cells and subatomic particles, and ventured into the boundless wilds of space. Throughout, Asimov razed the make-believe boundary between imagination and reason. As he wrote in the gemlike 1978 essay 'Art and Science', the artist's work suffers if knowledge is deficient; the scientist's suffers if leaps of intuition, which so often outpace the leaden trot |
Asimov was central to science fiction's Golden Age, as the writer of iconic works such as I, Robot (1950), the Foundation series and The Gods Themselves (1972). As a scientist, he was a popularizer who often drew comparisons with H. G. Wells. The leitmotif of his life was an unstinting thirst for knowledge. In Asimov's New Guide to Science (first published as The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science in 1960), he wonderfully characterized the deep history of life on Earth as an adventure of curiosity. The book takes us from the clumsy |
Asimov's curiosity was first sparked in the windowless back rooms of a string of Brooklyn sweet shops. Born in 1920 in Petrovichi in Soviet Russia, Asimov was three when he and his family arrived at Ellis Island and began to scrape a living in New York. Three years later, his father had saved enough money to set up the first shop. Young Isaac spent long days delivering newspapers, schlepping boxes and magazines -and reading voraciously. By the age of five, he had taught himself to read by studying street signs. At six, he got his first library card from the Brooklyn Public Library |
Asimov started reading science-fiction at nine, just as the genre had begun a journey from pulp extravagance to a more science-centred era. He had convinced his father that Hugo Gernsback's magazine Science Wonder Stories contained serious stuff, despite the covers' motley depictions of space ships and aliens. From then on, he would regularly abscond to the shop's storeroom to immerse himself. Thus began a lifelong habit of exploring the open frontiers of possibility in enclosed, electric-lit spaces -not unlike the time-travelling Andrew Harlan (in his 1955 novel The End of E |
A prodigy, Asimov graduated from high school at 15. He was, however, rejected by Columbia College in Manhattan and directed to Seth Low Junior College, a satellite school in Brooklyn. Anti-Semitism was at work. Undeterred, he plodded through his studies. Meanwhile, a distinctive vision of science fiction as "the literature of social change" took shape in his mind. In 1938, he joined a remarkable sci-fi fan club, the Futurians, along with authors Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth and Donald Wollheim. The group was progressive and political, opposing the |
Asimov's annus mirabilis spanned 1941 and 1942. He published 'Nightfall' in Astounding, a metaphor for humankind's devastating psychological confrontation with its own cosmic insignificance. In 1968, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted it one of the greatest sci-fi stories ever penned. He also produced several of his celebrated robot stories -such as 'Reason', 'Liar' and 'Runaround' -in which he coined the term robotics (after the robots of R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots), a play by Czech writer Karel Čapek, published |
The next decade was a busy one. Asimov worked as a scientist for the US Navy during the Second World War; completed a doctorate in chemistry at Columbia; and, in 1949, took a post teaching biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine in Massachusetts. Even as his science-fiction career gathered pace, his academic role nudged him towards science writing, beginning with the co-authored 800-page Biochemistry and Human Metabolism in 1952. Six books on chemistry followed, along with a run of sparkling popular-science essays with beguiling titles such as 'The Explosions Within Us' and ' |
On 4 October 1957, the world was galvanized as the Soviet Union propelled the 84-kilogram satellite Sputnik 1 into elliptical Earth orbit. In the United States, panic rose over the gap in research progress. As US citizens turned on short-wave radios to listen for its eerie 'beep-beep', Sputnik mania sparked a massive demand for educational popular-science writing -and a shift towards a more unified vision of Earth. Nature ended and Ecology was born, the media theorist Marshall McLuhan later noted: "The planet became a global theater in which there are no spectators but |
Asimov recognized that this troubling disconnect had grave planetary consequences. In his perceptive 1971 essay 'The Good Earth Is Dying', he pointed out that, with accelerating technological advancement, harmful impacts on society and the environment had already reached a global scale. Meanwhile, attitudes such as the reverence for limitless growth and the embrace of tribalism persisted -dictated by antiquated parochial beliefs and local conventions, rather than being transposed in a global key and altered accordingly. Asimov wrote: "What was common sense in a world that once existed has become myth in the totally different world that now exists, and suicidal |
Many decades before the rise of idioms of anxious sociotechnical reflection such as 'the sixth extinction', or the 'Anthropocene epoch', Asimov was writing about how "anthropogenic processes" were poisoning the planet. From the 1970s onwards, he wrote about how atmospheric pollution was destroying the ozone layer, acidifying the oceans and exacerbating the scale of natural catastrophes. He described human-driven global warming and its probable effects on the biosphere. He noted how overpopulation and the sweep of reckless human activities were prompting a "great die-off" of species at an unprecedented rate. Asimov |
As someone who has published more than a trillion P values, I disagree that testing an association for statistical significance should be banned (see V. Amrhein et al. Nature 567, 305-307; 2019). We might just as well argue in favour of banning exams. Associations are ranked on P values, rather as exams are assigned a pass mark. A student might score just below that grade (equivalent to, say, 'P = 0.051'), and another just above it ('P = 0.049'). The candidates are not so different, but setting a pass/fail threshold |
Concerned scientists met the research minister in March, supported by more than 12,000 signatures on a petition demanding that the 50 positions be reinstated (see go.nature.com/2vcuey). Together, these would cost €5 million (US$5.6 million) per year, much less than the roughly €6 billion given in tax credits to private research companies. So far, there has been no indication that the government is prepared to change course on the issue, or on its strategy for academic research funding in general. Guillaume Gaullier University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA. guillaume |
Moral dilemmas in psychology play a critical role in probing our intuitions and revealing the complexities underlying our moral judgments. In the interest of understanding the foundations of moral reasoning, people have been asked if it is okay to sacrifice one person to save five (e.g., Cikara, Farnsworth, Harris, & Fiske, 2010; Crockett, Clark, Hauser, & Robbins, 2010; Cushman, 2015; Foot, 1967; Mikhail, 2000; Mikhail, 2007), accept stolen goods (Haidt, 2007; H |
The extent of these contributions to the psychology of moral reasoning is perhaps the more striking because the moral scenarios that enabled them are, prima facie, remote from human psychology. Most of us will live all our lives without encountering anything very like the dilemmas above. We do of course enact decisions which trade off the good of a few against the good of many, engage in sexual behaviors others might deem perverse, subordinate the needs of infants to other goals, exploit animals and the environment, engage in economic injustices, commit acts of physical aggression, and behave irreverently and disrespectfully. However, to the degree that we worry about such |
Here we are interested in ''the rest of the time": times when we experience neither moral conviction nor moral complacency, although the stakes (in comparison to the scenarios above) are relatively low. We suggest that the scenarios we experience as moral dilemmas do not typically involve questions of intentionality, or pressing conflicts between utilitarian and deontological ends. Rather we believe that many of our everyday moral anxieties center on cases where there is a conflict between our belief in any proposition (including morally neutral ones) and our belief that actions consistent with that proposition will upset someone we love. It is in this sense that love can lead to |
We will start with a trivial example: the moral status of Pogs. (For those of you who were neither a parent nor child in the 1990's, Pogs are collectible colored disks, originally from bottle caps.) Clearly in the world at large, if someone steps on a Pog, uses one to prop up a table leg, or publically disparages them on national TV, he is morally blameless. He is morally blameless even if he knows that Pogs are valued by millions of school children in his culture. Suppose however, your child comes up to you and says, ''Pogs are the |
Of course what is bad in this example is hurting your child's feelings, not hurting Pogs. Nonetheless, we suggest that the effect of moral alchemy is to (locally) change the moral status of Pogs. You cannot disregard them as objects worthy of care and attention without insufficiently valuing your child's values. Critically however, and in contrast to other arbitrary objects that attain moral significance through their association with culturally important moral values (Moll & Schulkin, 2009; Shweder et al., 1997; Turiel, Killen, & Helwig, 1987), P |
Of course many morally neutral things can take on moral content in specific contexts. Basement stairs for the parents of toddlers, or earthquakes for residents of the Pacific Northwest, can be morally relevant insofar as failures to attend to them appropriately could cause harm (and subsequent guilt). Critically however, stairs and earthquakes don't lose (and may even increase) their moral relevance if the potential victims are indifferent or oblivious to the risk: stairs are intrinsically dangerous to toddlers and earthquakes to Oregonians. Although care for others can make many things, innocuous in themselves, an appropriate target of our moral anxieties, here we reserve the term moral |
Why important? It is after all, uncontroversial that people value idiosyncratic things and that morality requires respecting things that others value. However, we suggest that taken together, these commonplaces of human psychology play a key and underappreciated role in real life moral dilemmas, moral learning and moral change. Consider a proposition less trivial than ''Pogs are the best thing ever." Consider ''Academic achievement is important." For the sake of argument, let's presume that within a given cultural context, this counts as a value but not a moral one: everyone concerned accepts that mediocre students can be morally unim |
We would contend that although the proposition ''Academic achievement is important" has no moral content, the proposition ''My parents value academic achievement" does. Insofar as your parents may find your actions hurtful and disrespectful to them because you did not take their utilities as your own, a moral issue is at stake. The effect is (loosely) analogous to the referential opacity induced by complement structures in language: much as the truth value of ''It is raining" is independent of the truth value of ''Sally believes 'It's raining'", knowing that ''My parents care about academic achievement" may have a moral status independent |
We have stressed the importance of close interpersonal relations. Why should it matter that these interactions occur in the context of loving relationships? Why morally, should it matter, that your child cares about Pogs, or your parents care about academic achievement, if, in the world in general, these are largely matters of indifference? We suggest that this is because moral alchemy is only possible when there is a risk of hurt, harm, and interpersonal conflict. If a proposition has moral content in itself (e.g., the belief that ''homosexuality is wrong") then moral values (fairness, loyalty, autonomy, care, liberty, purity |
All of the above requires substantial unpacking, in particular to note the ways in which this idea is distinct from a number of other ideas to which it is, nonetheless, indebted. First, notwithstanding our emphasis on concern for others' feelings, our topic is orthogonal to debates about the relative contribution of emotion (Blair, 1995; Damasio, 1999; Decety et al., 2012; Greene & Haidt, 2002; Shweder & Haidt, 1993; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2006; Wheatley & Haidt, 200 |
Second, in emphasizing caring about others, we are not suggesting that moral cognition reduces to concerns about care and harm. Rather, we believe that obligations of care can give morality a reach that extends beyond the scope even of pluralist taxonomies of morality. That is, through care of others, we can be morally preoccupied by issues that are not intrinsically harmful, and that also may have no bearing on autonomy, community, and divinity (Shweder et al., 1997), reciprocity, purity, hierarchy, and loyalty (Haidt & Graham, 2007) ; disgust, social conventions, |
Finally of course, there is nothing new in the proposal that moral cognition is connected to attachment, kinship and empathetic concern for members of one's own social groups (e.g., Barragan & Dweck, 2014; Brewer, 1979; de Waal, 1982 de Waal,, 1996 de Waal & Lanting, 1997; Goodall, 1986; Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007; Moll & Schulkin, 2009; Rai & Fiske, 2011). In this vein |
We are sympathetic to the concern that relationist motives are in tension with universal moral values (e.g., Kant & Gregor, 1988; Rawls, 1971) but not to the tension between ''ethics of care" and analytic rational thought. We suggest that the ability to care about relationships is predicated on, not in opposition to, abstract ''analytical" cognition. Specifically, we assume that moral reasoning is supported by our ability to reason about others' beliefs and desires, represent others' utilities, and recursively link our utilities to theirs. To the extent that our utilities depend on advancing another's, we |
What are the implications of moral alchemy for real world moral dilemmas? When we think of moral failings we are prone to consider problems caused by doing immoral things (stealing, lying, cheating, etc.) or failing to do moral ones (helping the afflicted, preventing harm, etc.). As above, we may also think of the difficulties posed when one moral value conflicts with another (e.g., caring versus fairness or autonomy versus loyalty). These concerns are real enough. However, we suspect that everyday moral difficulties are posed as often by our desire to do, or not do, something of no particular consequence in itself that takes |
In the respect that the rightness or wrongness of these actions depends on whether someone cares about them, alchemical norms have something in common with social-conventional norms: we may believe it is right to hang up our backpacks and wrong to leave them in our lockers if this is an expectation but the expectation can change if everyone (or an acknowledged authority) agrees to change it (e.g., Nucci & Turiel, 1978 ; though see Kelly, Stich, Haley, Eng, & Fessler, 2007 and Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003 for discussion). However, |
Thus perhaps it is unsurprising that everyday moral problems frequently take the form of considering whether other people have a right to care as much as they do. Suppose for instance, my own reward in having a clean house, together with my recursive value in promoting my partner's goals, fail to overcome the costs of cleaning the house. When my partner comes home to a mess, she may reasonably infer that I did not put much weight on her happiness. However, I may believe that she is wrong to value cleanliness so much (or my costs so little). When we experience moral anxiety we often vacillate between guilt that we did not promote |
We suggest that the phenomenon of moral alchemy matters to human psychology not only because it may be the source of much of our moral anxiety but also because it is a potential route to moral change. Consider again the belief that ''homosexuality is wrong." As noted, this belief has moral content all by itself; it does not become moral merely because a close other believes it. However, although moral alchemy cannot make an already moral matter moral, it can alter the stakes. One can feel righteous about standing up to homophobia and still feel guilty for grieving and upsetting one's parents. However, if you are gay and your parents |
In addition to playing a role in real world moral dilemmas and moral transformation, we believe that moral alchemy has implications for moral learning. Developmental psychologists have long looked at the effects of parenting styles and particular attitudes and beliefs expressed by parents on children's moral behavior (Baumrind, 1986; Eisenberg & Valiente, 2002; Grusec, Goodnow, & Kuczynski, 2000; Hoffman, 1970; Hoffman, 1975; Kochanska, 1997; Strayer & Roberts, 2004), proposing that children experience ''parents as |
In light of this emphasis on moral learning, and considerable evidence that pro-social and empathetic concerns are innate or very early-emerging (Aknin, Hamlin, & Dunn, 2012; Hamlin, 2013; Hamlin & Wynn, 2011; Hamlin et al., 2007; Hamlin et al., 2010; Joyce, 2006; Katz, 2000; Martin & Clark, 1982; Mikhail, 2011; Sagi & Hoffman, 1976; Warneken & Tomasello, 2007) it is perhaps surprising that |
Arguably, children may simply subscribe to a broader morality than adults do. Evidence that children distinguish arbitrary conventions from morals (e.g., Nucci & Turiel, 1978) does not speak to how broadly children may construe moral values themselves. Like the ancient Greeks, they may take all traits that constitute a ''good" life as evidence of virtue (Aristotle & Sachs, 2002). Alternatively, children may ascribe to broad definitions of goodness because adults deliberately foster behaviors (e.g., diligence, orderliness, and self-control) that make individuals better people with whom to have relationships (e.g |
However, we suggest that children may subscribe to a broad notion of ''goodness" because they correctly ascertain that the people they care about most deeply, care deeply about many things, including being hardworking, attractive, intelligent, athletic, kind, artistic and helpful. Although some of these are moral values simpliciter and some are not, insofar as they are valued by the people children love, they may all become subject to moral alchemy. On this account, it is not just that parents use the words ''good" and ''bad" polysemously, to refer to both moral and non-moral matters, but that |
Of course the heart of our contention is that this kind of slippage between moral and non-moral concerns is not limited to moral reasoning in early childhood, it is a feature of every close relationship; thus indications that we moralize non-moral concerns when others care deeply about them should be manifest even in adulthood. The current study is a preliminary test of this claim. In Phase 1 of Experiment 1, we asked two groups of participants to rate how much they cared about items in 21 different categories ranging from matters of dress to matters of harm and welfare (adapted from previous work on moral reasoning). This measure is |
We note, pre-emptively, that insofar as the feelings of close others influence moral judgment, one might expect that effect to obtain broadly, regardless of whether one is asked to think about a close other or not. Additionally we recognize that relative shifts in people's permissibility or value judgments are not tantamount to transforming non-moral values into moral ones. Nonetheless, in the context of a survey-based laboratory task, using items potentially relevant to all participants but not tailor-made to any individual, we believe it would be compelling if considering another person's investment in different kinds of behaviors was associated with a shift in people's value |
Finally, because it is a relatively subtle distinction, we stress that the moral alchemy hypothesis is distinct from the idea that people might share values with our close others, either because people choose to affiliate with those who share their values (e.g., Buss, 1995) or because close others influence each other (e.g., Whitbeck & Gecas, 1988). Rather, the moral alchemy hypothesis predicts that when a loved one values a behavior, it can raise an individual's estimate of the moral status of the behavior, independent of whether it makes the individual herself care about the behavior more. That is |
Participants were recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk and paid for their participation. One group of participants (N = 46, m age = 33.96 years, 52% female) was used to norm the stimulus items. Another group of participants (N = 298) was recruited for the experimental conditions. Participants were excluded for (1) having previously participated in the norming study or another HIT posted for the study (n = 32); (2) failure to answer attention check and comprehension questions correctly (n = 47), or (3) a mismatch between their initial and final response in identifying the target person (n |
Forty-eight items in this study, three from each of 16 categories, were adapted from the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (Graham et al., 2009 ), the Schwartz' Value Scale (Schwartz, 1992), the Portrait Values Questionnaire (Schwartz et al., 2001), and the European Social Survey (Davidov, Schmidt, & Schwartz, 2008 ). An additional 15 items from 5 categories (Art and Aesthetics, Dress, Organization and Neatness, Religion, Scholarship) were added by the authors to ensure a diverse range of content. In Phase |
In norming study, half of the participants rated all three items from ten categories while the other half rated all three items from the other eleven categories. Items were presented in a fixed random order, and participants were also asked to rate how easy the question was to read. In the experimental conditions, a single item was taken from each category to generate three different stimulus sets: A, B, and C. The presentation of items within a set was randomized. A sixth of participants were assigned to set A, B, C, a sixth to A, C, B, a sixth to B, A, C, etc., in Ph |
2.1.3. Procedure 2.1.3.1. Stimulus norming. Participants were tested online using the Qualtrics survey program. They were shown a sliding scale (see example in Fig. 1 ) that they could manipulate with their computer mouse. They were told that they would be given a series of statements and asked to judge how much they agreed with each statement ''Along a sliding scale of endorsement, from 0 (Not at all) to 100 (Passionately). You can place the pointer at any point along the scale." They were also told, ''Although these statements are about |
The norming study was used to establish (1) that participants understood the task and used the sliding scale appropriately with respect to common sense judgments of more and less severe wrongs; (2) that there was variability both within and across items in participants' responses, and (3) that the items in each category were easy to read. All of these results were confirmed. Participants used the scale in a meaningful way. For instance an intuitively minor (''It is wrong not to wear clothes that are appropriate for the season"), a moderately bad (e.g., ''It is wrong not to show what one is capable of.. |
2.1.3.2. Experimental design. 2.1.3.2.1. Phase 1. Participants were also tested online using the Qualtrics survey program. They were introduced to the sliding scale as in the norming study. In Phase 1, the items were phrased to reflect endorsement of positive statements (see Appendix A, part 1) rather than judgments of wrongness. Participants were instructed as follows: ''For the first part of the study, you will be presented with a number of statements. For each statement, we will ask you to respond on a scale of 0 |
On each trial in Phase 2, participants in the Close Other condition were asked, ''How strongly would the person you love endorse this statement?" and participants in the Distant Other condition were asked, ''How strongly would the person you know endorse this statement?" Note that our interest was not in how accurate people were in their ratings of others, but in whether participants' beliefs about the endorsements of close and distant others affected participants' permissibility judgments. 2.1.3.2.3. Phase 3. Phase 3 used a third stimulus set (see Appendix A) and was identical to the norming study |
Following Phase 3, participants were asked to report whom they were thinking about as a reference when they responded to the Phase 3 questions. If they did not answer that they were responding based on how most people would rate the statements (i.e., rather themselves or a specific other person) they were excluded from the study. Twenty-seven participants were excluded for this reason. Additionally, at the end of the study participants were asked to re-enter the person or relationship they had thought of in Phase 2 to confirm it matched their initial response (suggesting they were actually thinking of this person throughout Phase 2). No participants were excluded for |
To assess this we first identified categories in which participants' Phase 2 ratings (ratings of how much the other person cared) were higher than their Phase 1 ratings (ratings for themselves). Recall that participants rated different specific items in each phase, in different fixed, random orders, and were never asked to compare themselves directly with the other. To avoid imposing any arbitrary threshold on the difference scores, we used participants' raw scores; a ''higher" rating refers to a numerical difference in the scores for the Phase 1 and Phase 2 item drawn from the same category. Individual items where participants did not provide a response in any one |
We can also ask whether the effect of Condition (Close versus Distant other) depends on the individual ratings in Phase 1 and Phase 2. We did this in two ways. First, we ran a regression analysis Table 1 Mean Phase 3 ratings by condition for each category where the other person cared more than the participant. Categories are listed in order of their mean ratings from the norming studies for Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 respectively. The numerically higher mean rating is boldfaced. looking at the effect of Condition after including Phase 1 and Phase 2 ratings (as controls) in the model. Int |
These results suggest that failing to engage in a behavior is perceived as ''more wrong" by people in general when someone you care about cares more about the behavior than you do. This is consistent with our account of moral alchemy, in which behaviors ranging from matters of negligible import to actual moral imperatives take on additional moral heft when a loved one cares more than you do. By hypothesis, this is because in caring but not distant relationships, failing to care sufficiently about what the other person cares about is a potential source of interpersonal harm, and thus in itself, a moral wrong; by contrast, if you already valued the behavior as |
It might of course be the case that thinking about a loved one leads people to value all positive behaviors more than they would otherwise (and thus view failing to act in accord with these behaviors as more than usually wrong). Our results however, suggest that this was not the case. Participants in the Close Other condition did not perceive failure to engage in all the positive behaviors as ''more wrong" than those in the Distant Other condition; the effect was specific to those behaviors where the loved one cared more than the participant. This suggests that people were not motivated by concern for the loved one generally but that the act of caring about loved ones' |
Arguably, having just indicated that someone believed, relatively strongly, that a behavior was important in Phase 2, participants might have been more likely to provide higher ratings for comparable items in Phase 3. Relatedly, because people in Phase 3 were asked to respond on the basis of how ''people in general" would respond, the effect of having just considered a specific other person's response might have anchored their responses or contributed to an availability heuristic, leading to the higher rating in Phase 3 (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Again however, |
It remains possible that the Phase 2 responses were nonetheless more salient (and therefore more likely to prime subsequent responses) in the Close Other than the Distant Other condition. However, we believe the experimental design makes a simple carry over effect very unlikely. In Phase 2, participants rated how passionately they cared about 21 different behaviors, each presented singly (so that participants could not track their responses across questions), and each from a different, unlabeled category. In Phase 3, participants responded to a different set of behaviors, in a different random order, and to a different question: not how much they cared about the behavior |
As researchers have long noted, there are many beliefs and behaviors that are normative within a culture -e.g., habits of dress or manners -to which people broadly subscribe, but in which they are nonetheless not deeply invested; such social conventional norms can change by general agreement or by the will of an authority member (see Nucci, 2001; Turiel, 1983 ; though see Kelly et al., 2007; Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003 for discussion). Other beliefs, which we will call values, may not be held as broadly, in that they vary from individual to individual |
Our aim here is not to reify distinctions among these categories but to look at how caring about someone who cares about a behavior might affect the distinctions people make. That is, given that valued behaviors can exist ''along a continuum of relative importance" (Rokeach, 1973, p. 5), we can ask whether moral alchemy shifts this relative importance. To do this, in Experiment 2 we replicated Phase 1 and 2 of Experiment 1 but changed the question in both the norming study and Phase 3 to ask participants where each behavior fell on a scale in which norms were the least important |
Participants were recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk and paid for their participation. One group of participants (N = 38, m age = 35.66 years, 58% female) was used to norm the stimulus items. Another group of participants (N = 305) was recruited for the experimental conditions. Participants were excluded for 1) failure to answer attention check and comprehension questions correctly (n = 31) a mismatch between their initial and final response in identifying the target person (n = 5) (see Inclusion Criteria below for details), resulting in a final sample of 269 participants (n = 131 in |
There are some beliefs people hold, and expect others to hold, but don't feel too strongly about (like believing the napkin belongs on the left side of the plate). We will call these conventions. For other kinds of beliefs, people differ widely. Some people care a great deal and others not at all (like believing that theater is important). We will call these values. Other beliefs people feel strongly about (like believing stealing is wrong) and expect others to feel strongly about. We will call these morals. Conventions, values, and morals differ in many ways. But here we will ask you to consider how much most people |
Again, the norming study was used to establish (1) that participants understood the task and used the sliding scale appropriately with respect to common sense judgments; (2) that there was variability both within and across items in participants' responses, and (3) that the items were easy to read. All of these results were confirmed. Overall, the statements received a mean rating of 42.03 (20.92); range 3.84-95.75. Participants used the scale in a meaningful way. For instance a statement that intuitively reflected a social convention (''People should use proper etiquette..."), a |
We looked first at categories where the participant believed the other person cared more, corresponding to a higher rating in Phase 2 than Phase 1 for items drawn from a single category. As in Experiment 1, we did not impose any threshold on the difference scores. We used participants' raw scores: a ''higher" rating refers to a numerical difference in the scores for the Phase 1 and Phase 2 item drawn from the same category. Individual items where participants did not provide a response in any one of the three phases (n = 64 in total) were not included. In the Close Other condition, participants rated the other |
Also as in Experiment 1, we ran a regression analysis looking at the effect of Condition after including the other variables (as controls) in the model. Recall that items with higher Phase 1 and Phase 2 scores will have higher Phase 3 scores because they are different behaviors drawn from the same category. Nonetheless, in Experiment 2, there was a trend for Condition to predict Phase 3 ratings even after controlling for the Phase 1 and Phase 2 ratings (p = 0.069). A median split looking at whether there was an interaction between high versus low Phase 1 or Phase 2 ratings and Condition on |
Finally, to ensure that these effects were specific to cases where the participant believed the other person cared more, we compared the Phase 3 ratings between conditions, looking at cases where participants had not rated the other person as caring more about that kind of behavior than themselves. Again, as predicted, there was no difference between conditions in the Phase 3 ratings for these items: t(3014.1)=0.17, p = 0.866 (Close Other, mean: 48.40; Distant Other, mean = 48.22; CI for Difference of the means = [À1.97, |
As in Experiment 1, we believe the results are unlikely to be due to participants' Phase 2 estimates directly influencing their Phase 3 estimates. Both the proportion of behaviors identified as more valuable to the other than the self, and the degree to which behaviors were valued, were similar between conditions in Phase 1 and Phase 2. However, despite comparable responses in the preceding phases (and thus comparable opportunities to carry over the earlier responses, or to treat the earlier estimates as representative) participants shifted behaviors further towards the moral end of the scale in the Close than Distant Other condition of Phase 3. Although thinking about a close |
We do not want to overstate the results here. In both Experiments 1 and 2, the differences between participants' mean ratings of the moral status of the behaviors in the two conditions were small (3.60 points in Experiment 1 and 2.46 points in Experiment 2). The small change in ratings may seem insufficient to warrant the term ''moral alchemy" insofar as alchemy implies a transformation from one kind of thing into another (e.g., a convention or value into a moral). However, for some individual items, the average difference between the close and distant other conditions were fairly striking ( |
Note that participants were randomly assigned to the Close versus Distant Other condition and the results are consistent with the causal claim that consideration of the values of close others elevates the degree to which those values are seen as moral. As predicted, we also found that these results held only when the participants believed the other person cared more than they did (and not when the participants believed the other person cared less). However, the others' values were reported, not manipulated. Thus although it is possible that thinking about a loved one caring more led participants to raise the moral status of the behavior, other interpretations are possible. For instance, those who believed |
We have already discussed the respects in which we believe these results cannot be explained by simple carry over effects, or by a general enhancement of the importance of positive behaviors in the context of loving relationships. For similar reasons, the results can also not be explained as a kind of ''chameleon effect" in which people automatically and unconsciously take on others' attributes or behaviors others (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). While it may be generally valuable for close kin and members of in-group to align with each other's values (see Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004 for review), in this context |
Note that although participants treated behaviors valued more by loved ones than themselves as more morally important to the world at large, this does not mean that participants necessarily changed their personal estimate of the behaviors. Our experiment did not address this directly (because endorsements for the self always preceded estimates for the loved one). However, on our account, it is possible to remain relatively indifferent to a behavior -say the importance of appreciating art -and nonetheless (if a loved one cares deeply about it) be more likely to feel that third parties will perceive it as (somewhat) wrong not to appreciate art, and elevate art appreciation to something more like a |
In line with most work on moral reasoning, we also looked here at moral judgment rather than moral behavior (and there is evidence that hypothetical moral judgments do not necessarily align with behavior; see e.g., Crockett et al., 2014). However, in the case of moral alchemy it is especially true that shifts in moral judgment may not be reflected in all morally relevant behaviors. If for instance, someone does not care greatly about some behaviors (academic achievement, homosexuality, etc.) except insofar as her loved one does, she might be disposed both to elevate their status as moral behaviors and yet (outside the realm of potential |
Similarly, more work is necessary to understand why people shift their judgments in close relationships but not more distant ones. Future work might see whether the shifts in moral judgment seen here correlate with particular measures of closeness in the social psychology literature. For instance, people might be more likely to shift their judgments in relationships which include high degrees of self-disclosure and ''including the other in the self" (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992) or they might be more subject to moral alchemy in relationships where partners routinely generate constructive responses to potentially destructive behavior and manifest high interpersonal commitment (Rusbult, Ver |
We have asserted that failing to endorse the values of close others risks hurting their feelings (and is therefore a legitimate source of moral concern). However we have elided the question of when and why value differences should be painful. That they are not always so is clear; many of us have delighted in debate and intellectual sparring with intimate friends and family. It may be that such experiences are delightful because they attest to attachments so secure that even conflict is ''safe". However in many other contexts, disagreement, especially but not exclusively over moral matters, causes social discomfort and threatens the integrity of groups (Aronson, 1999; Fest |
Finally, although here we have tested our account of moral alchemy with adults, future work might look at whether the findings here extend to young children and whether it leads not just to transient shifts in moral judgments but to more enduring behavioral changes. To the degree that it does, the phenomenon is potentially most relevant to learning a system of values in early childhood. In adding moral weight to the issues their parents care about most, moral alchemy may support children's internalization of values (through ''referencing the absent parent"; Thompson, Meyer, & McGinley, 2006 ; see also Emde, Biringen, Cly |
The physiological theory of Asclepiades of Bithynia (fl. later second/earlier first century BC) stated that the human body, like all perceptible objects, is composed of imperceptible particles referred to as onkoi. Health is maintained by the free and balanced motion of these onkoi through imperceptible pores in the body, while disease results from blockages and rebounds arising ultimately from the differences in the sizes and shapes of both the onkoi and the pores. Explanations of a full range of physiological and psychological processes were also derived from the postulated existence of these pores and the |
The nature of the pores and the question of void in Asclepiades' theory thus remain points of controversy, though these issues are clearly fundamental to our understanding of his theory and its intellectual background. The present paper attempts to resolve at least some of the controversies surrounding Asclepiadean pores and to offer a detailed account of their basic character. 4 In section I, I shall consider the evidence for the general thesis that Asclepiades was a void theorist, and in section II, the evidence 1) E.g. Harig (1983), 44-45 and n. 17; Cas |
That there are certain void spaces in both water and air follows from the doctrine of Epicurus and Asclepiades on the elements. λέγω δὴ ἀραιὰν ἧς τὰ μόρια διαλαμβάνεται χώραις κεναῖς, ἐπισταμένων ἡμῶν δηλονότι καὶ μεμνημένων ἀεὶ πῶς λέγεται χώρα κενὴ πρὸς τῶν ἡνῶσθαι φασκόντων τὴν οὐσίαν, ὅτι μὴ καθάπερ ᾽Ε |
By 'rarefied' (substance) I mean that which has parts which are separated by empty spaces, understanding of course and recalling always the way in which 'empty space' is meant by those who say that substance is continuous, (i.e.) that in all rarefied bodies 'empty space' is not as Epicurus and Asclepiades think, but full of air. SMT 1. 14 [11.405 K.] εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἐξ ἀτόμου καὶ τοῦ κενοῦ κατὰ τὸν ᾽Επικούρου τε |
For if everything is constituted out of atom and void according to the theory of Epicurus and Democritus, or out of certain onkoi and pores according to the physician Asclepiades -for in this way he changed only the names, speaking of onkoi instead of atoms, and pores instead of void, and wanting the substance of what exists to be the same as they (did). Ther. Pis. 11 [14.250 K.] Galen here offers unambiguous testimony, repeated in a range of contexts, that Asclepiades was a void theorist, and adhered to a specifically Epic |
8 Secondly, Galen would not appear to gain much by falsely attributing a theory of void to Asclepiades. He is 5) For useful discussions of various kinds of distortive strategies employed by Galen in reporting the views of his medical opponents, see e.g. von Staden (1997), 192-96; Allen (2001); Tecusan (2004), 29-36. 6) Galen cites it at Hipp. Elem. 9.26 and 35 [1.487,. 7). 8) See Gal. Cur. Rat. Ven. Sect |
The main proponent of a sceptical attitude towards Galen's testimony is Vallance. Based on the divisibility of the onkoi and the indivisibility of atoms, Vallance denies any Epicurean influence on Asclepiades' theory of matter. If this were correct, it would obviously undermine Galen's testimony on Asclepiades as a void theorist. I have tried to show elsewhere, however, that Asclepiades' conception of his onkoi is indeed based directly on Epicurean atomism, and that the differences between the two can and should be explained as a conscious modification on |
10 This is simply not true, however, of any of the passages quoted above in which Galen explicitly characterizes arguments against Asclepiades' theory of matter, namely the failure of the onkoi to account for the phenomenon of pain. 9) Leith (2009). 10) Vallance (1990), 57: 'If we look more closely at the context of those passages where Asclepiades as a void theorist: there is no indication in the contexts in which they are found that the Methodists are on Galen's mind. Vallance goes on to claim that ' |
Indeed, Galen elsewhere can be quite clear about the Methodists' views on void. In his Method of Healing, he argues that their use of certain kinds of terms commits them to a theory of matter similar to that of Asclepiades, since the use of such terms 'is legitimate only for those who posit onkoi and pores or atoms and void or generally impassive and unalterable first elements.' 14 He is certainly not thereby asserting that the Methodists were void theorists, but merely that, given the provenance of the sorts of terminology they use, they ought to be. The Methodists, with regard |
19 Hence Asclepiades is listed among those who posit large-scale void. Immediately, however, the fact that Anaxagoras is also numbered among the void theorists, where he certainly does not belong, undermines the reliability of this testimony for Asclepiades, and a case could accordingly be made for a more general doxographical distortion in this passage. On the other hand, things are not quite so simple with regard to Asclepiades, for the passage is inaccurate in another respect, in that the principal point of doctrine which Calcidius attributes to all these authorities in this sentence, viz. the non-existence |
20 Therefore, if there is any truth to the attribution of void to these authorities, then we would expect it to be true of Asclepiades most of all. And of course we know that it is not entirely inaccurate, since the attribution is at least true of Democritus and Epicurus. Calcidius' testimony 17) I assume that what is meant here is that matter is not a continuum, but divided up and separated by void as Calcidius goes on immediately to specify; cf. the sense of 'divided' in e.g. S.E. PH 2.5: οἷ |
18) On the Placita tradition in Calcidius and other sources, see Mansfeld (1990), 3112-17, and esp. 3113 n. 238 on this passage; on Asclepiades and the referent of Calcidius' solidae moles, Switalski (1902), 53 and especially Polito (2007). 19) In Tim. 215: 'aut enim moles quaedam sunt leves et globosae eaedemque admodum delicatae, ex quibus anima subsistit, qu |
In the third sense, hypothesis means the basis of a proof, that is, a postulate for establishing something. In this sense it is said that Democritus uses as a hypothesis atoms and void, and Asclepiades onkoi and pores. ps. Def. 138.8 [p. 166 Heiberg] The ps.-Galenic author of the Introductio sive Medicus explicitly states that there are two irreducible constituents of the human body, the frangible onkoi and the pores. 21 Insofar as they are both elements, these entities are presented as sharing the |
22) The passage comes from a series of extracts added to Hero's Definitions by a Byzantine compiler (cf. Heath (1921), 316). There is a similar account, likewise referring to Asclepiades' doctrine of pores and onkoi, in Sextus Empiricus' book Against the Geometers (M. 3.3-5, partially quoted below), and presumably both are drawing ultimately on a common source. 23) Vallance (1990) identify the onkoi with atoms, nor the pores with void, but there is an implicit acknowledgement that both pairs have an analogous and |
26 Epicurus appears simply to have accepted this argument, and concluded that indeed the atoms were in 24) As confirmed at S.E. M 3.5: δευτέρᾳ δὲ ὅτι πάντοθεν ὑγροῦ μέρη καὶ πνεύματος ἐκ λόγῳ θεωρητῶν ὄγκων συνηράνισται δι᾽ αἰῶνος ἀνηρεμήτων ('Second, that the parts of moisture and pneuma are gathered together from all sides out of onkoi perceptible by reason which are in motion forever'); Cael |
29 I offer here a revised text based on autopsy of the papyrus: 30 10... ὅτι τρέφεται, (φησίν), πᾶν μέρος ἡμῶ̣ ν τ]ο̣ ῦ σώμα̣ τ̣ ο̣ ς καὶ, λό̣ γου εἵνεκ̣ α̣, σ̣ ώ̣ μα διὰ σώ(ματος) οὐ χωρεῖ], κ̣ αὶ τὸ σύν̣ π̣ α̣ ν καὶ τἄλλα τ̣ ο̣ ῦ σ̣ ώ̣ μ̣ |
ὅτι δὲ μᾶλλον αὔξησις οὐκ ἔστι μὴ ὄντος κενοῦ, φανερόν. τὴν μὲν γὰρ αὔξησιν δεῖ γίνεσθαι πάντη προσκρινομένης τῷ αὐξανομένῳ σώματι τῆς τροφῆς, τοῦτο δὲ οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο μὴ πάντη διιούσης αὐτῆς, ἀδύνατον δέ ἐ |
It is clear furthermore that growth cannot exist without the existence of void. For it is necessary that growth occurs by the assimilation of nutriment everywhere in the body which is being increased, and this would not happen if it was not dispersed everywhere. But it is impossible for it, being body, to pass through the whole body, unless we place some void in bodies. Them. Phys. 124.4-9 εἰ γὰρ ἡ μὲν αὔξησις γίνεται διὰ τροφῆς πάντῃ διιούσης, ἡ δὲ τροφὴ σῶ |
Both Asclepiades' argument and that reported by Themistius and Simplicius infer from the uniform growth of animals that nutriment is distributed to every part of the body. A disjunction is then introduced, such that the distribution of the corporeal nutriment must occur either through space that is full or space that is empty. The principle that 'body does not pass through body' is used to exclude the first alternative, leaving the second as the necessary conclusion. That the same argument was used by the Epicureans as a proof of void is indicated by a brief reference to one of its premises made by |
Asclepiades' version is paralleled so closely by the argument described by Themistius and Simplicius that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he knew at least an earlier version of it. His use of an atomist argument for the existence of void, then, clearly points to his acceptance of the same conclusion. Although the Peripatetics could also rely on the principle 'body does not pass through body' in explaining growth with reference to their refutation of the Stoic theory of total blending (κρᾶσις δι᾽ ὅλου), 33 they did not operate with the |
Asclepiades, nevertheless, does not mention the existence of void in his own version, but only the existence of invisible pores. I suggest, however, that this apparent difference need only be one of emphasis, for this argument from growth will yield not only void per se, but in particular void within a living body, and thus void in the form of gaps between primary particles in a perceptible, solid object, allowing the movement of matter to every part of the body as a whole. This, certainly, is what is envisaged in the Epicurean theory of the distribution of nutriment. As I shall argue in |
Some further points of interest are raised by Asclepiades' use of the principle 'body does not pass through body.' Robert Todd has argued convincingly that the discrepancy between Aristotle's phrase 'it is impossible for two bodies to be in the same place' and the commentators' 'body does not pass through body' reflects the reformulation of the general argument to suit the new context of a refutation of the Stoic theory of total blending, which was taken by their opponents to entail that 'body passes through body.' 34 Certainly the form 'body does not pass through body' is nowhere used by Aristotle, and it seems |
37 I would suggest, however, that an Epicurean origin for the principle 'body does not pass through body' is much more likely. It is only for the Epicureans (i.e. insofar as the Epicureans are the only, or at least most prominent, post-Aristotelian void theorists) that a constructive use of the principle can be found, viz. in the argument for void from growth reported by Themistius and Simplicius and referred to by Lucretius. It is not implausible on historical grounds to imagine that they would have had an interest also in its destructive function in |
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