Normative Concern Research Articles

The autocorrelated Bayesian sampler: A rational process for probability judgments, estimates, confidence intervals, choices, confidence judgments, and response times.

Normative models of decision-making that optimally transform noisy (sensory) information into categorical decisions qualitatively mismatch human behavior. Indeed, leading computational models have only achieved high empirical corroboration by adding task-specific assumptions that deviate from normative principles. In response, we offer a Bayesian approach that implicitly produces a posterior distribution of possible answers (hypotheses) in response to sensory information. But we assume that the brain has no direct access to this posterior, but can only sample hypotheses according to their posterior probabilities. Accordingly, we argue that the primary problem of normative concern in decision-making is integrating stochastic hypotheses, rather than stochastic sensory information, to make categorical decisions. This implies that human response variability arises mainly from posterior sampling rather than sensory noise. Because human hypothesis generation is serially correlated, hypothesis samples will be autocorrelated. Guided by this new problem formulation, we develop a new process, the Autocorrelated Bayesian Sampler (ABS), which grounds autocorrelated hypothesis generation in a sophisticated sampling algorithm. The ABS provides a single mechanism that qualitatively explains many empirical effects of probability judgments, estimates, confidence intervals, choice, confidence judgments, response times, and their relationships. Our analysis demonstrates the unifying power of a perspective shift in the exploration of normative models. It also exemplifies the proposal that the "Bayesian brain" operates using samples not probabilities, and that variability in human behavior may primarily reflect computational rather than sensory noise. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Distributed Discovery of News and Perceived Misinformation Exposure: A Cross-Continent Application of the Resilience to Online Disinformation Framework

Perceived misinformation exposure (PME) among citizens is a global phenomenon and a normative concern because it can lead to reduced trust and faith in democratic institutions, actors, and processes. Using secondary data from multiple sources, this study analyzed individuals’ online news habits across forty-six countries in six continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia: N = 91,061) and country-level factors from the resilience to online disinformation framework that shape the relationship between distributed discovery of news and PME. Multilevel analyses showed that increased incidental news exposure and searching for news online at the individual level and news sharing on social media at the country level increased PME while aggregate media trust reduced PME. Cross-level interactions also indicated that higher levels of public service media in a country attenuated the relationship between online news search and PME, exhibiting what we call soft resilience. This study demonstrates the theoretical utility of the resilience to disinformation framework and certain country-level factors that can affect the individual-level dynamics of news consumption and PME.

The Machine Hums! Addressing Ontological and Normative Concerns Regarding Machine Learning Applications in Organizational Scholarship

The Machine Hums! Addressing Ontological and Normative Concerns Regarding Machine Learning Applications in Organizational Scholarship

Legislative performance and the electoral connection in European Parliament elections

AbstractThe absence of an electoral connection is a widely held assumption in the scholarship on the European Parliament (EP) and a cause of serious normative concern about the functioning of the European Union. Weak individual legislator accountability is part of this assumption, even if we still know little about the extent to which legislative performance matters for citizens in EP elections that allow preferential voting. This study is the first to analyse how legislative performance influences the preference vote shares of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and whether this is moderated by their parties’ EU salience and incumbent intra‐party competition. It draws on an original dataset that combines candidate and electoral data from three rounds of EP elections held between 2004 and 2014 under open or flexible list rules with information on individual legislative activity (i.e., number of reports, parliamentary questions and speeches) and leadership positions at EP and committee level. One dimension of legislative performance, report writing, is associated with a larger share of preference votes but only for incumbents of parties assigning high salience to the EU. While MEPs win a higher share of preference votes when they face limited co‐partisan incumbent competition, this factor does not moderate the electoral connection.

Edukacja w trosce o „efekt pogranicza” międzykulturowego (panorama tropów i profili humanistycznych w retrospekcji)

The text comprises a normative concern for the educational “borderland effect”. Within the hermeneutical circle, there are: (1) M. Bakhtin’s semiotics of culture and the idea of “borderland effect” as a developmental mechanism increasing the polyphonic dynamics and value of the Other; (2) an analogy to the “decentration” mechanism according to J. Piaget and J. Habermas and the idea of dialogue inspired by H.–G. Gadamer; (3) M. Buber’s idea of two types of faith and difficulties of ecumenism; (4) H. Hesse’s idea of spiritual awakening and inner transformation; (5) the types of adaptation to the complexity of interactions and the vision of identity as “the third value”, following D. Mostwin’s analysis of the Polish emigration in the USA; (6) difficulties with the borderland effect in creating Polish schools in Latvia in D. Urlińska’s experiment; (7) F. Znaniecki’s concern to eliminate intercultural antagonisms; (8) normative strategies towards tradition, freedom and change, as diversified attitudes towards differences and the “borderland effect”; (9) the coupling of interests of the disabled in integrated schools as a borderland problem; (10) the concept of the “borderland order” as a mechanism of sustainability and oscillation in dual integration with shifting the local dominants; (11) B. Skarga’s cultural attitude open to irony, withdrawing cultural persuasiveness. The “borderland effect” brings change of the cultural “meta-pattern” for education. The analyses conducted by M. Mead and F. Znaniecki imply the intercultural education open to differences between the young, against the pressure of antagonisms of the world of adult people.

STATE OF INDIAN DEMOCRACY AND US-INDIA STRATEGIC COOPERATION: AN UNEASY CONVERGENCE?

US-India strategic convergence is likely to continue as Washington considers New Delhi a counterweight to Beijing. However, rising right-wing authoritarianism in India under BJP, marked by the erosion of democratic standards, has created a policy paradox for Biden Administration- how to balance geopolitical interests with democratic ideals. The paper argues that adhering to the norms of democracy is not just a normative concern but also a strategic concern for the US as democracy is one of the core pillars that sustains US- led liberal world order. However, the Biden administration does not appear to emphasize democratic values and human rights performance to the point where strategic convergence would seem at risk. Thus Biden administration is likely to emphasize democratic values and human rights performance to the point where strategic convergence would not seem at risk. Keywords: Democracy, Human Rights, Balancing, US, India, China

Perceived Exposure and Concern for Misinformation in Different Political Contexts: Evidence From 27 European Countries

Political misinformation is becoming an increasingly central topic in both public and academic debate. The main normative concern is that the diffusion of false political news might lead to distorted perceptions of the social and political reality. Indeed, existing research largely focuses on the determinants of public misinformation and the spread of false news. However, the mere awareness of the diffusion of fake news might have important implications, by reducing the public trust in the information environment. This study aims at explaining the contextual variation in citizens’ perceived exposure to false information and their concerns for the impact of false information on society and democracy. We focus on two properties of the context: party polarization, as a proxy for the degree of political conflict, and media accuracy. We provide empirical evidence for our claims using a mix of data from Eurobarometer, the European Election Studies, the European Media System Survey, and Freedom House. We find that polarization and media accuracy are not related to the citizens’ self-assessed exposure to false information, but they are significantly associated with their concerns. We also find that citizens’ perceived exposure to false news is better explained by the degree of media freedom in the country.

The Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence: Some Normative Concerns

Abstract The creation of increasingly complex artificial intelligence (AI) systems raises urgent questions about their ethical and social impact on society. Since this impact ultimately depends on political decisions about normative issues, political philosophers can make valuable contributions by addressing such questions. Currently, AI development and application are to a large extent regulated through non-binding ethics guidelines penned by transnational entities. Assuming that the global governance of AI should be at least minimally democratic and fair, this paper sets out three desiderata that an account should satisfy when theorizing about what this means. We argue, first, that an analysis of democratic values, political entities and decision-making should be done in a holistic way; second, that fairness is not only about how AI systems treat individuals, but also about how the benefits and burdens of transformative AI are distributed; and finally, that justice requires that governance mechanisms are not limited to AI technology, but are incorporated into a range of basic institutions. Thus, rather than offering a substantive theory of democratic and fair AI governance, our contribution is metatheoretical: we propose a theoretical framework that sets up certain normative boundary conditions for a satisfactory account.

Can Social Groups Be Units of Normative Concern?

In social justice theory, it seems both important, but also potentially normatively and metaphysically suspect, to treat social groups as units of normative concern. This is also the source of much current controversy surrounding social justice politics. I argue that normative individualism is a (correct) metaethical clarification, but not necessarily a binding guide for all other (non-metaethical) normative theory or practice in the way we might assume. Supra-individual social entities can, in fact, be the irreducible subjects of concern in valid normative evaluations or prescriptions, owing to future-relevant causal properties. However, this idea is complex and requires careful elucidation. I address likely objections pertaining to group definitions, social ontology, conceptions of causation, counterfactuals, and the non-identity problem.

Collaboration increases children’s normative concern for fairness

Collaboration increases equity in young children, but whether this precocious equity has a normative foundation or is primarily an interpersonal concern between collaborators remains an open question. Participants in this study were 3- to 7-year-old children (N = 104) from a rural community in Canada. In a novel third-party intervention game, children could intervene against inequitable sharing between third parties who earned resources collaboratively or individually. When resources were earned collaboratively, children intervened against inequity more often at an earlier age compared with when resources were earned individually. Children referenced equity or fairness to justify their decisions at a similar rate across the two resource acquisition contexts. These findings contribute to a growing body of evidence supporting the foundational role of collaboration in the development of fairness, providing novel evidence that this concern for fairness is indeed normative.

Negative Third-Party Reactions to Male and Female Victims of Rape: The Influence of Harm and Normativity Concerns.

Male and female victims of sexual violence frequently experience secondary victimization in the form of victim blame and other negative reactions by their social surroundings. However, it remains unclear whether these negative reactions differ from each other, and what mechanisms underlie negative reactions toward victims. In one laboratory study (N = 132) and one online study (N = 421), the authors assessed participants' reactions to male and female victims, and whether different (moral) concerns underlay these reactions. The reactions addressed included positive and negative emotions, behavioral and characterological blame, explicit and implicit derogation, and two measures of distancing. It was hypothesized that male victimization would evoke different types of (negative) reactions compared with female victimization, and that normative concerns would predict a greater proportion of the variance of reactions to male victims than female victims. Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) were conducted to test whether reactions to male and female (non-)victims differed. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to test the influence of gender traditionality, homonegativity, as well as binding and individualizing moral values on participants' reactions. Results revealed that participants consistently reacted more negatively to victims than to nonvictims, and more so to male than to female targets. Binding values were a regular predictor of negative reactions to victims, whereas they predicted positive reactions to nonvictims. The hypothesis that different mechanisms underlie reactions to male versus female victims was not supported. The discussion addresses implications of this research for interventions targeting secondary victimization and for future research investigating social reactions to victims of sexual violence. It also addresses limitations of the current research and considerations of diversity.

Halliday, Daniel. The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, Equality, and the Right to Bequeath. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 256. $42.95 (cloth).

Halliday, Daniel. <i>The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, Equality, and the Right to Bequeath</i>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 256. $42.95 (cloth).

Justice is in the Eyes of the Beholder – Eye Tracking Evidence on Balancing Normative Concerns in Torts Cases

Judicial decision making is not a mechanical activity. It requires a voluntary act. In the abstract, the judge must strike a balance between incompatible normative goals, like backward looking compensation and forward looking deterrence. In the concrete, the decision-maker must weigh conflicting facets of the conflict of life. As a rule, judicial decisions come with explicit reasons. These reasons rationalize the decision. In this paper, we use eye tracking as a window into the – consciously not fully accessible – process of making the decision, testing laypersons on a run-of-the-mill torts case. We manipulate the degree of normative conflict, and either have participants decide as judges, or plead as attorneys. Against expectations, attention is not chiefly directed towards items that support the final outcome. Rather outcome is predicted by attention on potentially conflicting items. Explicit reasons and fixations on items are essentially uncorrelated. Decision-makers are not aware of the elements of the evidence that have been critical for their decision.

The Emergence of Human Altruism:Preschool Children Develop a Norm for Empathy-based Comforting

ABSTRACTThe study examined whether preschool children conceive of empathy-based comforting as being an obligatory reaction toward others in emotional need. We presented 3- and 5-year-old children with three scenarios in which protagonists showed different reactions toward an agent who has hurt herself. One protagonist reacted antisocially by laughing at the agent, one ignored the agent, and one demonstrated empathy-based comforting. The 3-year-olds only protested against the antisocial protagonist. In contrast, the 5-year-olds protested against the protagonists who either acted antisocially or ignored the needy other while they selectively affirmed the protagonist who showed empathy-based comforting. The findings indicate that a norm for empathy-based comforting develops in the preschool years. Overall, our study demonstrates the emergence of a normative concern with the well-being of others, a central aspect of human altruism.

Intrinsic Goods and Distributive Justice in Education

AbstractWhat is the relationship between the fair distribution of goods in general, and the intrinsic, or distinctive, value of educational goods in particular? In this article, Christopher Martin and Tal Gilead argue that clarifying this relationship has significant importance for educational justice, and they aim to accomplish this by focusing on questions of resource allocation. In particular, the authors draw on Michael Walzer's theory of “spherical” justice in order to argue that intrinsic goods are important enough that they should be of normative concern for any theory of educational justice. That is to say, a conception of educational justice that takes distributive relationships seriously should account for how the nonpositional values of education are served by resource allocation, and not only socioeconomic or other positional goods. However, Martin and Gilead also claim that such a pluralist theory of educational justice should not open the door to educational policies and practices that are plainly “antiegalitarian.” They address this concern by proffering a distinction between, and criteria for adjudicating, legitimate and illegitimate judgments of justice that aim to protect or promote intrinsic educational goods.

Critical Social Ontology as a Foundation for Ethics: Marx, Lukács and Critical Judgment

In this paper, I outline a theory of critical social ontology derived from the fundamental ideas of Marx and the later work on the ontology of social being by Georg Lukács. I argue that we can discern categories of social being that can aid in the project of diagnostic social critique, but also that these categories can be used to formulate an ethical theory that we can ground in this critical social ontology. I therefore defend the thesis, against postmetaphysical thinkers that have argued to the contrary, that a satisfactory and critical theory of ethics can and indeed must be rooted in a theory of ontology. I end with some reflections on how critical social ontology can help combat the problem of reification and help us think through issues of ethical or normative concern.

What is the role of epistemic communities in shaping local environmental policy? Managing environmental change through planning and greenspace in Fukuoka City, Japan

This paper evaluates the role of epistemic communities in shaping local environmental policy, through the case of management of environmental change through planning and greenspace in Fukuoka City, Japan. Amidst increasing global interest in the role of evidence-based policy and urban science in responding to environmental issues in cities, Fukuoka is distinctive. Locally-situated scholars in Fukuoka have, for several decades, sought to shape local responses to environmental change by influencing policy for the built environment and greenspace. Through analysis of scholarly outputs produced by scholars working at universities and research institutes within Fukuoka and policy documentation produced by the city government, we characterise the development of Fukuoka’s urban environmental change epistemic community. We suggest that built environment and greenspace policy to respond to environmental change in Fukuoka has been shaped by an epistemic community in three ways. These are: (a) a common belief in techno-scientific evidence derived from empirical observation; (b) a shared interest in urban planning and greenspace as a vehicle for realising change; and (c) a common normative concern with citizen wellbeing, rooted in negative historical experiences with pollution. We argue that policy formation driven by scholarly expertise in cities may have a greater chance of taking root if there is a favourable historical context of locally-led environmental science research, personal investment of the epistemic community members in the city, and regular dialogue between the epistemic community and wider society in the city. We conclude that a strong and reflexive epistemic community, working in collaboration with environmental and civil society actors, is important in understanding an appropriate response to current urban environmental challenges.

Justice in the Tea Estate Community in Sri Lanka: An Explanation through Freedom-based Capability Approach

Sustainability in economic development is fundamentally linked to human well-being which should be fairly reflected in freedom. This normative concern has been the thematic phenomenon in scholarly discussions advocated by many egalitarians. The well-being of tea estate community in Sri Lanka has been in various stakeholder discussions as their socio-economic freedom is exogenously determined and controlled. Ironically, this situation has evidenced a substantial adverse impact on their present work performance and future workforce participation symbolizing the labor problem within the tea estate community. Grounded on the theoretical foundation of Amartya Sen’s capability approach and, authors’ mixed method field surveys, this paper discusses the importance of enhancing justice within this community by improving their freedom to access better complex capabilities such as social status and independence. Although, the outcomes of the positivistic study provided with adequate evidence for the above claim, our qualitative inquiry confirmed and witnessed the aforementioned subjective reality.

Capture and crush: Gas companies in the fracking dispute and deliberative depoliticization

Multi-stakeholder governance arrangements involving co-operation between public and non-state actors are a vital part of the governance landscape for addressing social impacts resulting from resources development. Yet, the current mantra for ‘collaboration’ has gained relative credibility and legitimacy without scrutiny of the democratic characteristics and quality of these institutional arrangements. This article responds to this normative concern by examining the implications for the democratic legitimacy of multi-stakeholder governance arrangements in cases where private resource extraction companies, who do not necessarily act in the public interest, exercise a ‘metagovernance’ role. We explore this topic through a qualitative case-study comparison of affordable housing governance in regions impacted by unconventional gas development in Australia and the United States. We argue that while multi-stakeholder governance arrangements convened by resource extraction companies can support situations of democracy under certain conditions, resource extraction companies structure the processes within these collaborative arrangements to the benefits of specific actors, notably the extractive companies themselves and other profit-orientated actors. In particular, we illustrate the depoliticizing effects of these institutions, whereby in some cases, they are used to constrain debates about the social impacts of extractives development, and circumscribe certain types of actors from participation in deliberative debate and decision-making. We underscore the importance of state intervention in ensuring communicative processes induced by corporate actors proceed according to the principles of deliberative democracy.

Narcissus’ Reflection in the Lake: Untold Narratives in Environmental Law beyond the Anthropocentric Frame

The ‘environment’ is a substantively indeterminate concept that has borne different meanings throughout time and translated different visions of the (legal) relationship between Man and Nature. Over the past centuries, the normative concern for environmental protection emanated from distinct legal, cultural and socio-economic narratives. In providing a genealogy of these multiple and overlapping frames, this article not only sharpens our historical understanding of the legal nexus between two proliferating regimes in international law (environmental law and human rights law), but also critically engages with how environmental protection was progressively translated as an anthropocentric conceptual and operational legal framework. Like Narcissus, humans have been obnibulated by their own interests when thinking about environmental protection. The anthropocentric focus has led environmental law to gradually align and intertwine with human rights, resulting in a synergistic conceptualization of their interactions. Through this prism, environmental protection automatically reinforces human rights. This synergistic mantra has allowed environmental protection to gain momentum by associating it with a grander moral scheme. The focus on synergies, however, overshadowed the existence of conflicts inherent to the relationship between environmental protection and human rights.