Capacity For Deliberation Research Articles

Can machine learning make naturalism about health truly naturalistic? A reflection on a data-driven concept of health

Through hypothetical scenarios, this paper analyses whether machine learning (ML) could resolve one of the main shortcomings present in Christopher Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory of health (BST). In doing so, it foregrounds the boundaries and challenges of employing ML in formulating a naturalist (i.e., prima facie value-free) definition of health. The paper argues that a sweeping dataist approach cannot fully make the BST truly naturalistic, as prior theories and values persist. It also points out that supervised learning introduces circularity, rendering it incompatible with a naturalistic perspective. Additionally, it underscores the need for pre-existing auxiliary theories to assess results from unsupervised learning. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the epistemological entanglements between data and data processing methods to manage expectations about what data patterns can predict. In conclusion, the paper argues against delegating the final authority for defining complex concepts like health to AI systems, as it necessitates ethical judgment and capacities for deliberation that AI currently lacks. It also warns against granting creators and deployers of AI systems the discretionary authority to determine these definitions outside the wider social discussion, advocating for ongoing public engagement on normative notions. Failure to do so risks limiting individuals and collectives’ ability to shape a just digital future and diminishes their fundamental epistemic agency.

Gender Difference in Willingness and Capacity for Deliberation

AbstractThis article examines the gender gap in deliberation, focusing on three facets: willingness to deliberate, capacity for deliberation, and facilitation techniques aimed at reducing the gender gap. It hypothesizes that women will be less willing to deliberate but more likely to engage in strictly defined desired deliberative behaviors. Relying on original survey and experimental data, this paper finds women to be more willing to deliberate. However, men’s negative deliberative behaviors—particularly cutting others off or dominating speech––undermine women’s efforts to be effective deliberators. Finally, the two innovative facilitation methods outlined in the article eliminate the gender gap.

Democratic communities of inquiry: Creating opportunities to develop citizenship

One of the most significant obstacles to inquiry and deliberation is citizenship education. There are few mechanisms for the development of citizens’ democratic character within most societies, and greater opportunities need to be made to ensure our democracies are epistemically justifiable. The character and quality of citizens’ interactions are a crucial aspect for any democracy; their engagement (or lack thereof) make a significant difference between a deliberative society and an electoral oligarchy. I contend that through demarchic procedures, citizens are subject to collective learning process in virtue of being part of communal decision-making and in so doing can develop their capacities for deliberation with practice over time. Demarchic bodies (functionally decentralised authorities that have members chosen by random selection) can be utilised as communities of inquiry (learning processes where participants collectively construct a problem). By viewing democracy as both a learning process and a decision-making mechanism, the quality of deliberation and participation can improve over time as well.

Reflexive intergroup bias in third-party punishment.

Humans show a rare tendency to punish norm-violators who have not harmed them directly-a behavior known as third-party punishment. Research has found that third-party punishment is subject to intergroup bias, whereby people punish members of the out-group more severely than the in-group. Although the prevalence of this behavior is well-documented, the psychological processes underlying it remain largely unexplored. Some work suggests that it stems from people's inherent predisposition to form alliances with in-group members and aggress against out-group members. This implies that people will show reflexive intergroup bias in third-party punishment, favoring in-group over out-group members especially when their capacity for deliberation is impaired. Here we test this hypothesis directly, examining whether intergroup bias in third-party punishment emerges from reflexive, as opposed to deliberative, components of moral cognition. In 3 experiments, utilizing a simulated economic game, we varied participants' group relationship to a transgressor, measured or manipulated the extent to which they relied on reflexive or deliberative judgment, and observed people's punishment decisions. Across group-membership manipulations (American football teams, nationalities, and baseball teams) and 2 assessments of reflexive judgment (response time and cognitive load), reflexive judgment heightened intergroup bias, suggesting that such bias in punishment is inherent to human moral cognition. We discuss the implications of these studies for theories of punishment, cooperation, social behavior, and legal practice. (PsycINFO Database Record

Reflexive Intergroup Bias in Third-Party Punishment

Humans show a rare tendency to punish norm-violators who have not harmed them directly—a behavior known as third-party punishment. Research has found that third-party punishment is subject to intergroup bias, whereby people punish members of the out-group more severely than the in-group. While the prevalence of this behavior is well-documented, the psychological processes underlying it remain largely unexplored. Some work suggests that it stems from people’s inherent predisposition to form alliances with in-group members and aggress against out-group members. This implies that people will show reflexive intergroup bias in third-party punishment, favoring in-group over out-group members especially when their capacity for deliberation is impaired. Here we test this hypothesis directly, examining whether intergroup bias in third-party punishment emerges from reflexive, as opposed to deliberative, components of moral cognition. In three experiments, utilizing a simulated economic game, we varied participants’ group relationship to a transgressor, measured or manipulated the extent to which they relied on reflexive or deliberative judgment, and observed people’s punishment decisions. Across group-membership manipulations (American football teams, nationalities, and baseball teams) and two assessments of reflexive judgment (response time and cognitive load), reflexive judgment heightened intergroup bias, suggesting that such bias in punishment is inherent to human moral cognition. We discuss the implications of these studies for theories of punishment, cooperation, social behavior, and legal practice.

Madison's Metronome: The Constitution, Majority Rule, and the Tempo of American Politics. By GregWeiner. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012. 194 pp.

Madison's Metronome: The Constitution, Majority Rule, and the Tempo of American Politics. By Greg Weiner. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012. 194 pp. In this slim volume, Greg Weiner focuses our attention upon an underlying and abiding feature of James Madison's theory: time. Weiner explicates Madison's temporal republicanism to demonstrate his enduring commitment to majorities as both an inevitable and desirable form of decision making in a republic. The problem, of course, is that majorities are often passionate and unjust. To alleviate this problem, Weiner argues that Madison consistently pursues mechanisms that will slow down decision making such that time can temper passionate majorities. As Weiner explains, Madison's democratic theory consequently relies on delaying mechanisms that compel majorities to cohere for an interval sufficient to dispel passions. This use of time to season majorities enhances the likelihood that they will behave reasonably and avoids the necessity of a trade-off between majority rule and minority (p. 130). Weiner's analysis draws principally on Madison's thought regarding the extended republic, the Bill of Rights, and separation of powers, but he also delves into Madison's understanding of freedom of speech and conscience, the national negative, and the Virginia Resolutions and Report. Spanning the entirety of Madison's career, Weiner successfully illuminates and contextualizes Madison's enduring support for majority rule in an eloquently written and well-documented text. To understand and illuminate Madison's majoritarianism, Weiner emphasizes the passive role of time rather than its instrumental use in Madison's republicanism. The overweighting of passive time has the effect of enhancing the reasonableness of national majorities and minimizing the role of enlightened leadership in Madison's thought. For example, in his discussion of the Senate, Weiner argues against those who view this body as an aristocratic check on the will of the people. Instead, he claims that Madison considered the Senate something of a speed bump constructed to slow majoritarian decision making until the people returned to the basis upon which they ordinarily act, that of reason, justice, and truth (p. 50). More surprisingly, Weiner claims that it is the action of time itself that works this magic: there was no indication of moral tutelage by leaders (p. 32). Weiner rightly observes that Madison's theory, particularly the centrality of majoritarian institutions in his thought, tends to cultivate the people's capacity for deliberation and reflection in contrast to what Weiner sees as the contemporary overreliance on rights talk and the courts to determine matters of justice. …

Neuropsychological Aspects of Enhancing the Will

1. IntroductionThe will is an executive process involving the formation and translation of mental states into choices and actions. Some philosophers have defined the will as the mental act of trying.1 Neuroscientists tend to define it as neurobiologically based volition associated with unconscious brain processes underlying basic actions.2 Yet it seems more plausible to define the will as a cluster of conative, cognitive, affective, and physical capacities extending from an initial desire to act to the performance of the action. These capacities collectively provide an agent with control of her thought and behavior.The mental capacities necessary for self-control are mediated by neuronal processes involving re-entrant loops consisting of the subcortical basal ganglia and thalamus, limbic structures such as the amygdala, and prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and parietal cortices.3 Component structures of the basal ganglia, such as the striatum, primarily regulate motor control but also some of the conative, cognitive, and affective processes necessary for motivation, attention, and planning. The thalamus relays information from the sensory cortex to the amygdala and higher-brain regions. It also plays a critical role in conscious arousal and awareness through its projections to the cortex. The amygdala mediates emotion, and the anterior cingulate is crucial for empathy and the perception and resolution of conflict. Prefrontal areas of the cerebral cortex mediate practical and moral reasoning. Interacting cortical, limbic, and subcortical pathways provide the neurobiological underpinning of the mental and physical capacities necessary to reason, decide, and act. Still, the desires, beliefs, emotions, and intentions that constitute the will are not reducible to physical processes in the brain because these processes cannot capture the phenomenology, or subjective experience, of having these mental states in ordered or disordered forms.All persons with the capacity for conscious awareness have a will. But they possess and exercise it to varying degrees. The extent to which the will is free depends on whether the neurobiological processes that sustain the requisite mental and physical capacities for deliberation, choice, and action are functional or dysfunctional. This can be a matter of degree as well. Some of these capacities may be intact, while one or more may be impaired, which can diminish the will by constraining or compelling action. A person with Parkinson's disease may retain conative, cognitive, and affective capacities necessary to form plans of action but have diminished physical capacity to execute these plans because of impaired motor control. One with schizophrenia who experiences delusions may be sufficiently motivated and physically able to act but impaired in the cognitive capacity to have appropriate beliefs and respond to reasons for or against actions. A person with major depression may retain cognitive and physical capacities, but anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure from previously pleasurable activities), avolition (lack of motivation to pursue meaningful goals), and low mood may impair his conative and affective capacity to motivate himself to act. Even when there is no neurological or psychiatric abnormality, we do not always completely control our behavior because of unconscious neural processes involved in the performance of our actions.Drugs such as dopamine agonists or deep-brain stimulation (DBS) may restore motor control in Parkinson's disease by compensating for depletion of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra region of the basal ganglia. DBS for this disease involves implanting and stimulating electrodes in this same brain region to modulate overactive or underactive neural circuits regulating movement. Antipsychotic medication may resolve the delusions and restore the cognitive functions regulating the schizophrenic's beliefs to normal or near-normal levels. …

Agrarian Ideals, Sustainability Ethics, and US Policy: A Critique for Practitioners

If tacit ethical ideals shape policy and practice, even when practitioners are not fully aware of underlying philosophical assumptions, then philosophical frameworks that support diagnostic, evaluative, and adaptive capacity in the sphere of action are critical to sustainability. Thompson’s agrarian-influenced sustainability framework substantially advances beyond the prevailing triple bottom line approach, as experimental evaluation of biofuels sustainability illustrates. By suggesting that governance of complex social-natural systems lies at the core of contemporary sustainability challenges, Thompson illuminates the critical importance of social capacity for deliberation and choice—a powerful and somewhat unexpected theme requiring more development by philosophers and practitioners alike going forward.

Darwin - What if Man is Only an Animal, After All?

According to Darwin, humans, just like other organisms, are not created by any special act. All organisms arise by natural processes from inanimate matter. Humans are no exception. But can it really be the case that even humans are ‘only’ animals – natural beings which (a) are completely made up of natural parts (in the end, of macro-molecules which themselves consist of atoms), and for which it is (b) true that all processes that occur within them are physico-chemical processes? In recent years some German philosophers (e.g. Habermas and Wingert) have argued that man “is elevated above nature by his capacity for deliberation and his ability to judge and comprehend meanings” (Singer and Wingert 2003, 11). Does this mean that humans are ‘supernatural’ in some way or other? My aim is twofold. Firstly, I point out that even non-human animals to a certain extent have the capacity to deliberate and act for reasons. Secondly, I argue that one can also put forward theoretical considerations in favour of the thesis that entirely natural beings may have this capacity. Thus, my answer to the question of what parts of our accustomed views of humanity and the world must we abandon if even we humans are ‘only’ animals is: nothing or at any rate very little. At least, even if we humans are ‘only’ animals, we may have the capacity for deliberation and the ability to judge and comprehend meanings.

“Doing and Allowing” and Doing and Allowing

I. SCHEFFLER’S ARGUMENT In “Doing and Allowing,” Samuel Scheffler argues for the following conclusion concerning doing and allowing: “Provided people view themselves as subject to norms of individual responsibility . . . , they cannot accept any system of normative responsibility that does not, to some extent at least, assign them greater responsibility for what they do than for what they allow.” The heart of his argument is in the following passage: “To see oneself as subject to norms of responsibility is to see oneself as having reason to bring one’s conduct into conformity with those norms. But bringing one’s conduct into conformity with norms of individual responsibility is itself something one does, and not something that one merely allows to happen. It requires marshaling the full resources of one’s agency, including one’s capacities for deliberation, choice, and action.” It will be helpful to clarify the basic structure of his argument and label the premises. The argument seems to go like this:

Navigating between policy and populace : Estonia, its accession referendum and the EU convention

The Convention on the Future of Europe represented an unprecedented test of the EU’s capacity for deliberation and political consensus formation. In the candidate countries of the time, this challenge was even greater given the coterminous tasks of completing accession and facing a popular referendum. In Estonia’s case, we argue that the promise of the Convention’s deliberative process was largely lost, since not only was there a gulf between state administration and civil society, but also within the state to the extent that most policy was formed by a narrow set of civil servants working in the Eurointegration Office.

'Quality of life' and the analogy with the Nazis.

The introduction of 'quality of life' judgments into treatment decisions is viewed as pernicious by some who claim that these presuppose the Nazi position that those who are 'devoid of value' must be exterminated. 'Quality of life' judgments are said to deny the equal value of human beings and to assume that some lives are not 'worthy to be lived'. It is argued that the analogy misconstrues the senses of 'value' and 'quality' employed by Naziism and a 'quality of life' position. This leads the analogizers incorrectly to claim that both views assimilate the value of human beings to the value of their condition. A 'quality of life' position is grounded in recognition of the logical priority of the value of human beings as self-reflective evaluators and agents, which is a matter of kind, not degree. The 'quality of life' is explicated in terms of the standards of well-being of individuals, which are derived from their basic human needs and their individual priorities and goals. The use of 'quality of life' judgments is morally required to ensure that considerations of justice and individual autonomy govern treatment decisions. The purported analogy misconstrues the views of both the Nazi position and a 'quality of life' position and so is seriously misdirected.