Explicit Justifications Research Articles

Evolved and Cultural Intuitions. Highly Speculative Remarks on the Origins of our Sense of Fairness

The question of whether the sense of fairness constitutes an exclusively human trait has been answered mostly from two polar positions: the first one unambiguously affirms such exclusivity, thus denying the relevance of cognitive ethology to understand our evaluations of justice; the second one, on the contrary, postulates the existence of a (proto) sense of fairness in non-human animals, strongly related to ours, which would make cognitive ethology highly relevant to understand the mechanisms on which our evaluative practices are based. From a position of extreme caution in relation to the possibility of (eventually) offering concrete evidence in favor of innatist theses such as the one I will defend here, I will suggest that i) in line with the rupturist positions, it is possible to preserve the human exclusivity of the sense of justice, ii) in line with the continuist positions, the relevance of studies coming from cognitive ethology is guaranteed, insofar as (ex hypotesi) our evaluative practices often take as input innate psychological dispositions shared with other species. Finally, I will suggest that the concept of rationalization is central to determine in each case the possible articulation between innate dispositions and explicit justifications.

Stalling or oiling the engines of diagnosis? Shifting perspectives on the DSM and categorical diagnosis in psychiatry.

Diagnosis in psychiatry and its precursors has long attracted debate and dissent. Attempts to discipline professional praxis are associated especially with the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In this article, I explore how social actors with the institutional power to contribute in important ways to shaping psychiatric contexts construct the problems with and purposes of the DSM and of diagnosis in psychiatry. I suggest that despite common assumptions that influential psychiatrists and related stakeholders uncritically adopt the DSM and other tools of categorical diagnosis, their relationship with these is rather more nuanced, ambivalent, and even fraught. However, I will also show that critiques can themselves be folded into particular styles of psychiatric thought in ways that do little to impact wider concerns about biomedicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation-and might even further accelerate these processes. Moreover, since professional critiques of the DSM often underscore its ubiquity and entrenchment, when positioned against implicit or explicit justifications of the ongoing use of this text they might inadvertently contribute to a 'discourse of inevitability'-acting to 'oil' rather than 'stall' what Annemarie Jutel terms the 'engines of diagnosis'.

Bending Our Ethics Code

Abstract. Deception of research participants has long been and remains a hot-button issue in the behavioral sciences. At the same time, the field of psychology is fortunate to have an ethics code to rely on in determining whether and how to use and report on deception of participants. Despite ongoing normative controversies, the smallest common denominator among psychologists is that deception ought to be a last resort – to be used only when there is no other defensible way to study a question or phenomenon. Going beyond previous normative discussions or inquiries into the mere prevalence of deception, we ask the fundamental question whether common practice is compatible with this interpretation of our field’s ethical standards. Findings from an empirical literature review – focusing on the feasibility of nondeceptive alternative procedures and the presence of explicit justifications for the use of deception – demonstrate that there is a notable gap between the last resort interpretation of our ethical standards and common practice in psychological research. The findings are discussed with the aim of identifying viable ways in which researchers, journal editors, and the scientific associations crafting our ethics codes may narrow this gap.

Flip it and reverse it: Reasonable changes in designated controls can flip synergisms to antagonisms

Ecological systems are subjected to multiple stressors that can interact in complex ways resulting in “ecological surprises”. We examine the pivotal role of ‘control’ assignment in the categorization of stressors into five classes: additive, +synergistic, −synergistic, +antagonistic, and −antagonistic. We demonstrate if an alternate treatment can reasonably be considered the experimental control, nonlinear interaction classifications change, both in sign (+/−) and in direction (synergistic/antagonistic). Further, switching of interaction classifications is not predictable as changing control can result in multiple possible alternate nonlinear classifications. To explore the magnitude of this problem, we evaluate publications gathered for a recent meta-analysis to 1) explore rationales for choice of controls and 2) quantify how frequently it is reasonable to reassign the control. We found controls were designated with a variety of implicit and explicit justifications, with two overall rationales: 1) controls based on ‘natural’ conditions (historic, current, or future); 2) controls based on direction of impact, such that stressors always have negative impacts. We reasoned that control re-assignment was justified if an alternate treatment met one of these rationales. Of the 844 interactions classified in the meta-analysis, we determined >95% could be reassigned. Based on these findings, we recommend a new approach to meta-analyses, where the ‘control’ is strictly and consistently defined by the authors of the meta-analysis. These controls should be based on their broader question, rather than following the common practice of defaulting to controls assigned by the authors of each study, as we found these rationales vary broadly based on the specific questions of each study. Consistent control designation within the ecological or toxicological framework of each meta-analysis may provide deeper and more consistent insight into the nature of interactive effects between multiple stressors. Gaining this insight is crucial because stressor interactions are certain to increase in the Anthropocene.

Critical legal spectatorship and the affect of violence: a cultural legal reading of Netflix’s The Punisher

ABSTRACT This paper engages in a cultural legal reading of the character Frank Castle (a.k.a ‘the Punisher’) as rendered in Netflix’s Daredevil (2015–2018) and The Punisher (2017–2019). Situated within the superhero genre, Castle is an extreme vigilante who instead of simply capturing criminals, kills them, presenting a critical interrogation of law and justice. The paper focuses on the explicit and implicit justifications presented for the Punisher’s death-dealing violence, examining not only the way he goes beyond the law but aligns to and represents modern legality. Contributing to the literature on law, superheroes and sovereignty, it argues that Castle’s malleable relationship to the law challenges the presentation of the superhero as a figure of exceptional justice. By analysing both the narrative production of death-worthiness alongside the visceral and affective responses elicited from the viewer, the paper considers the ability of a critical legal spectatorship to judge cinematic images of violence.

Explicit and implicit justifications of experimental procedures in language education: Pedagogical implications of studying expert writers’ communicative resources

Writing the Methods section of a research report has occasionally been assumed as a relatively straightforward component, but our experience in postgraduate supervision and thesis examination has revealed that justifications of the experimental procedures in the section often constitute a difficult component that writers need to carefully deal with in the process of crafting their texts. This qualitative investigation therefore focuses on the communicative resources that writers employ to explicitly and implicitly justify their experimental procedures in a quest to boost the acceptability of their research methods. Grounded in a genre-based analytical framework, this paper reveals how writers (i) explicitly justify experimental procedures using subordinate evaluative clauses, facilitation-focused structures and positive lexical words expressing consistency and comparability, and (ii) implicitly justify their procedures using parenthetical citations, adjective-infinitive combinations and related clause structures that subtly demonstrate writers' cognizance of their participants’ behaviours. The findings of this study have noteworthy pedagogical implications for the teaching of English for academic purposes in that they clearly illustrate how the language resources of published writers in procedural justifications are closely associated with their persuasive rhetorical strategies.

The reasons young children give to peers when explaining their judgments of moral and conventional rules.

Moral justifications work, when they do, by invoking values that are shared in the common ground of the interlocutors. We asked 3- and 5-year-old peer dyads (N = 144) to identify and punish norm transgressors. In the moral condition, the transgressor violated a moral norm (e.g., by stealing); in the social rules condition, she/he violated a context-specific rule (e.g., by placing a yellow toy in a green box, instead of a yellow box). Children in both age groups justified their punishment in the social rules condition mostly by referring to the rule (e.g., "He must put yellow toys in the yellow box"). In contrast, in the moral condition they mostly justified their punishment by simply referring to the observed fact (e.g., "He stole"), seeing no need to state the norm involved (e.g., "He must not steal"), presumably because they assumed this as part of their moral common ground with their partner. These results suggest that preschoolers assume certain common ground moral values with their peers and use these in formulating explicit moral judgments and justifications. (PsycINFO Database Record

Possibilistic Justification Logic

Justification logic originated from the study of the logic of proofs. However, in a more general setting, it may be regarded as a kind of explicit epistemic logic. In such logic, the reasons a fact is believed are explicitly represented as justification terms. Traditionally, the modeling of uncertain beliefs is crucially important for epistemic reasoning. Graded modal logics interpreted with possibility theory semantics have been successfully applied to the representation and reasoning of uncertain beliefs; however, they cannot keep track of the reasons an agent believes a fact. This article is aimed at extending the graded modal logics with explicit justifications. We introduce a possibilistic justification logic, present its syntax and semantics, and investigate its metaproperties, such as soundness, completeness, and realizability.

Preschoolers’ Causal Reasoning During Shared Picture Book Storytelling: A Cross-Case Comparison Descriptive Study

This study investigates how shared picture book storytelling within a peer-group setting could stimulate causal reasoning in children aged 4 ½ to 6 years. Twenty-eight children from preschool classes of three schools were allocated to one of six groups (four to five children per group). Each group participated in six storytelling sessions over a period of 2 weeks. During these sessions, the children freely generated stories from stimuli in two picture books. Storytelling discourse was analyzed in the groups that showed the lowest and the highest pre- to postintervention improvement on a series of causal reasoning tasks. In the most-improving group, discourse was distinguished by detailed interpretations of perceptual features, causal explanations, and explicit justifications of statements. The least-improving group was distinguished by “superficial” talk (i.e., labeling perceptual features, simple inferences, uncritical acceptance of statements, and disagreements). These types of discourse could be related to time spent on storytelling. The findings generate hypotheses for future research on stimulating causal reasoning in early childhood education.

Affordances and reflexivity in ethical life: An ethnographic stance

Naturalistic, normative, and ethnographic approaches to ethical life seem to describe very different worlds. Focusing on ordinary social interactions and ideologies surrounding them, this article argues the ethnographic stance allows us to look in two directions, where we can see some points of articulation among these worlds. In one, the domain of naturalistic explanations, ethical life draws on affordances offered by psychological, linguistic, and other processes usually described as operating beneath the level of people’s awareness. In the other, the normative domain of reasons, principles, and arguments about them, it is the demands of ordinary social interaction that form some of the most ubiquitous inducements for people to account for themselves in ways that can become conscious, reflexive, and purposeful. When explicit reasons and justifications result they may give rise to historical objects like moral codes and ethical precepts.

Predictors of IV behaviors during and after the 2009 influenza pandemic in France

BackgroundControversies about the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza vaccination might have impacted the motivational processes that underlie individual immunization against seasonal influenza. The purpose of this article is to investigate correlates of vaccine uptake during and after the pandemic. MethodsData from the 1174 subjects of the CoPanFlu France cohort aged 15 and over were used. We used logistic regression models to identify social and behavioral predictors of getting vaccinated against seasonal influenza in 2009–2010 and in 2010–2011 and against H1N1 influenza in 2009–2010. ResultsThis study points out that correlates of vaccination behaviors varied according to the vaccine. Respondents under 65 years who adopted the seasonal influenza vaccine were, as usual, more likely to belong to a target group and have a lower education, contrary to subjects who chose the pandemic vaccine. Exceptionally during the pandemic, a higher socioeconomic status also led to adoption of either vaccine. Motivational processes differed by vaccine. Uptaking the “new” pandemic vaccine was the result of a deliberative decision-making process, influenced by cognitive factors related to the pandemic context (such as perceived severity of the H1N1 flu strain and trust in public health authorities). In contrast, respondents got the seasonal flu vaccine without relying on explicit justifications, but instead through habit of performing this behavior in the past. ConclusionsTarget groups for seasonal influenza but not those for pandemic influenza were more likely to adopt the pandemic vaccine, which is a cause for great concern. This may be due to large extent to the automatic and habitual nature of influenza vaccination decisions. Public health authorities, should pay more attention to situational than informational cues to facilitate vaccine uptake among priority groups, especially in case of mild pandemic influenza.

The logic of justified belief, explicit knowledge, and conclusive evidence

We present a complete, decidable logic for reasoning about a notion of completely trustworthy (“conclusive”) evidence and its relations to justifiable (implicit) belief and knowledge, as well as to their explicit justifications. This logic makes use of a number of evidence-related notions such as availability, admissibility, and “goodness” of a piece of evidence, and is based on an innovative modification of the Fitting semantics for Artemovʼs Justification Logic designed to preempt Gettier-type counterexamples. We combine this with ideas from belief revision and awareness logics to provide an account for explicitly justified (defeasible) knowledge based on conclusive evidence that addresses the problem of (logical) omniscience.

Exploring the Underground

Exploring the Underground

Why Did You Do That? A Methodological Exploration of Motive Attribution

The idea of a motive behind an action is an important part of the debate around the idea of social causation or of causation in political science. In practice most explanations of behavior in political science rely, whether implicitly or explicitly, on some attribution of motive to actors. However, motive and the attribution of motive to individuals and especially corporate actors, like the state, is rarely theorized in empirical studies, either in terms of what it means conceptually, or in terms of how attribution of motive is dealt with methodologically. This paper explores some of these issues and apply them to the practice of political science, with particular reference to examples in International Relations. In particular, this paper articulates the fundamental problem of motive attribution, that we cannot introspect the motives of other actors, and lays out its implications. There are three possible methodological responses to this fundamental problem; 1) assume or deduce a possible motive and explain behavior in terms of that motive; 2) use empirical evidence to adjudicate between possible motives; and 3) avoid the direct attribution of motive to individuals and locate explanatory leverage at an analytical level beyond the individual actor. I argue that how scholars react to the fundamental problem has constraining effects on the sort of knowledge claims that they can consistently make. That is, particular types of knowledge claims can only be supported by particular types of evidence. This has implications for some prominent disciplinary practices. For example, if a rational-choice analysis generates a plausible, novel reason for an action or set of actions, this is in and of itself a useful piece of research. If we are to empirically assess whether a motive is the actual motive for an action, then we must deal with the issues involved in appealing to explicit justifications and other actions as evidence of motive. In particular, cross-actor correlative evidence cannot be used to support a knowledge claim about a particular actor's motive for an action. That is, standard quantitative analysis has at best a small part to play in motive attribution. Finally, non-intentional explanation, while intuitively unsatisfying, is not subject to some of the major problems involved in direct motive attribution.

The targets of management rules for marine mammal populations require justification: A reply to Cooke et al. (2012)

The management of anthropogenic impacts on marine mammal populations involves the setting of targets that are built on assumptions and choices. Scientific methods can be used to investigate the implications of management actions, but the choice of overall objectives and priorities lies outside science. A recent paper ( Potential biological removal and other currently used management rules for marine mammal populations : A comparison in Marine Policy ), summarised the characteristics of the main approaches currently used to set conservation management targets for marine mammal populations in order to provide a basis for discussion of the targets they contain. Cooke et al. ( Management rules for marine mammal populations : A response to Lonergan in Marine Policy ) responded, giving some important additional information about these management rules. However most of that paper's criticisms were incorrect or misplaced. Specifically, it erroneously treated an example of how PBR could be reworked, to make its abundance explicit, as a proposal to ignore uncertainty in managing populations. This paper addresses Cooke's main criticisms, and suggests that explicit justifications should be an important part of the process of setting targets for the management of marine mammal populations. ► The purpose of conservation management rules is discussed. ► Criticisms that Cooke et al. (2012) made of the summaries of PBR and RMP in Lonergan (2011) are addressed. ► The need for transparent justification of conservation management goals is reiterated.

Self-Referential Justifications in Epistemic Logic

This paper is devoted to the study of self-referential proofs and/or justifications, i.e., valid proofs that prove statements about these same proofs. The goal is to investigate whether such self-referential justifications are present in the reasoning described by standard modal epistemic logics such as $\mathsf{S4}$. We argue that the modal language by itself is too coarse to capture this concept of self-referentiality and that the language of justification logic can serve as an adequate refinement. We consider well-known modal logics of knowledge/belief and show, using explicit justifications, that $\mathsf{S4}$, $\mathsf{D4}$, $\mathsf{K4}$, and $\mathsf{T}$with their respective justification counterparts $\mathsf{LP}$, $\mathsf{JD4}$, $\mathsf{J4}$, and $\mathsf{JT}$describe knowledge that is self-referential in some strong sense. We also demonstrate that self-referentiality can be avoided for $\mathsf{K}$and $\mathsf{D}$. In order to prove the former result, we develop a machinery of minimal evidence functions used to effectively build models for justification logics. We observe that the calculus used to construct the minimal functions axiomatizes the reflected fragments of justification logics. We also discuss difficulties that result from an introduction of negative introspection.

Coastal Lagoons and Climate Change: Ecological and Social Ramifications in U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coast Ecosystems

Anthony, A., J. Atwood, P. August, C. Byron, S. Cobb, C. Foster, C. Fry, A. Gold, K. Hagos, L. Heffner, D. Q. Kellogg, K. Lellis-Dibble, J. J. Opaluch, C. Oviatt, A. Pfeiffer-Herbert, N. Rohr, L. Smith, T. Smythe, J. Swift, and N. Vinhateiro. 2009. Coastal lagoons and climate change: ecological and social ramifications in U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coast ecosystems. Ecology and Society 14(1): 8. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-02719-140108

A note on the formulation of the Maxwell equations for a macroscopic medium

In formulating the Maxwell equations for electrodynamics in the presence of a macroscopic continuous medium, it is common among standard textbooks to simply borrow expressions for the polarization charges and magnetization currents derived in electrostatics and magnetostatics, without much explicit justifications for using them in electrodynamics. Here we emphasize that these quantities must be introduced without resorting to results in statics, and must be derived directly from their definitions which remain valid in the general situation of electrodynamics.

Measuring Efficiency in Corporate Law: The Role of Shareholder Primacy

The shareholder primacy norm defines the objective of the corporation as maximization of shareholder wealth. Law and economics scholars have incorporated the shareholder primacy norm into their empirical analyses of regulatory efficiency. An increasingly influential body of scholarship uses empirical methodology to evaluate legal rules that allocate power within the corporation. By embracing the shareholder primacy norm, empirical scholars offer normative assessments about regulatory choices based on the effect of legal rules on measures of shareholder value such as stock price, net profits and Tobins Q.This Article challenges the foundations of using the shareholder primacy norm to judge corporate law. As the Article explains, existing legal doctrine and economic theory provide only limited support for shareholder primacy. Similarly, shareholder primacy cannot be justified as a necessary consequence of existing limits on the enforcement of management fiduciary duties. The Article demonstrates that, rather than defining the corporation's objectives, the limited scope of a fiduciary duty claim provides a mechanism for institutional specialization in responding to the needs of different corporate stakeholders. Comparative institutional analysis suggests that the courts are uniquely positioned to protect the interests of shareholders in the context of inter-stakeholder conflicts. Implementation of this role through rules that grant shareholders a unique degree of judicial access does not privilege the interests of shareholders in the evaluation of firm value.The presence of other stakeholders, whose interests in the firm may be not reflected in an assessment of shareholder value, offers reasons to question the conclusions of existing empirical research. In addition, the measures of shareholder value typically employed by empirical scholars - particularly short term stock price - are problematic as indications of firm value and may reinforce inappropriate managerial decisions. The Article maintains that empirical scholars need to offer better and explicit justifications for their reliance on shareholder wealth and, more importantly, for their argument that shareholder wealth effects should dominate regulatory policy.

The Role of Shareholder Primacy in Institutional Choice

An extensive body of empirical research evaluates corporate law in terms of its effect on shareholder wealth and, based on this effect, makes efficiency claims designed to influence regulatory policy. Central to these claims is the premise that the principal objective of the corporation is the maximization of shareholder wealth. By defining regulatory efficiency in terms of shareholder wealth, the literature relies on the shareholder primacy norm to equate shareholder value with firm value. This Article challenges both the positive and the normative foundations of the shareholder primacy norm. The Article demonstrates that existing legal doctrine does not require corporations to maximize shareholder wealth at the expense of other stakeholder interests. Although economic analysis offers a theoretical defense of shareholder primacy, its conclusions are based on strong and questionable assumptions about the market conditions in which the corporation operates. Finally, the Article explores and rejects the argument that shareholder primacy may be grounded in existing limits on management fiduciary duties, offering an alternative defense of those limits in terms of comparative institutional analysis. Justifying the evaluation of corporate performance in terms of shareholder wealth is critical to empirical claims of regulatory efficiency. The presence of other stakeholders, whose interests in the firm may be not reflected in an assessment of shareholder value, raises questions about efficiency analyses that do not incorporate those interests into their assessment of firm value. Alternative conceptions of firm value suggest that empirical scholars need to offer better and explicit justifications for their reliance on shareholder wealth and, more importantly, for their argument that shareholder wealth effects should dominate regulatory policy.