Matteo Colombo

Intellectual humility has attracted attention in both philosophy and psychology. Philosophers have clarified the nature of intellectual humility as an epistemic virtue; and psychologists have developed scales for measuring people’s intellectual humility. Much less attention has been paid to the potential effects of intellectual humility on people’s negative attitudes and to its relationship with prejudice-based epistemic vices. Here we fill these gaps by focusing on the relationship between intellectual humility and prejudice. To clarify this relationship, we conducted four empirical studies. The results of these studies show three things. First, people are systematically prejudiced towards members of groups perceived as dissimilar. Second, intellectual humility weakens the association between perceived dissimilarity and prejudice. Third, more intellectual humility is associated withmoreprejudice overall. We show that this apparently paradoxical pattern of results is consistent with the idea that it is both psychologically and rationally plausible that one person is at the same time intellectually humble, epistemically virtuous and strongly prejudiced.

Cognitive science began as a multidisciplinary endeavor to understand how the mind works. Since the beginning, cognitive scientists have been asking questions about the right methodologies and levels of explanation to pursue this goal, and make cognitive science a coherent science of the mind. Key questions include: Is there a privileged level of explanation in cognitive science? How do different levels of explanation fit together, or relate to one another? How should explanations at one level inform or constrain explanations at some other level? Can the different approaches to the mind, brain, and culture be unified? The aim of this issue of topiCS is to provide a platform for discussing different answers to such questions and to facilitate a better understanding between the different strands of thinking about the right levels of explanation in cognitive science.

Does language make moral cognition possible? Some authors like Andy Clark have argued for a positive answer whereby language and the ways people use it mark a fundamental divide between humans and all other animals with respect to moral thinking (Clark, Mind and morals: essays on cognitive science and ethics. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996; Moral Epistemol Nat Can J Philos Suppl XXVI, 2000a; Moral Epistemol Nat Can J Philos Suppl XXVI, 2000b; Philosophy of mental representation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 37–43 and discussion, 44–61, 2002). I take issue with Clark’s view and argue that language is probably unnecessary for the emergence of moral cognition. I acknowledge, however, that humans unlike other animals seem to posses what Haugeland in Philosophy of mental representation. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002) terms ‘norm-hungriness’: an idiosyncratic need or desire to create and abide by a multitude of norms. Our peculiar norm-hungriness, I suggest, depends on what can be called florid control rather than on language.

Computational approaches dominate contemporary cognitive science, promising a unified, scientific explanation of how the mind works. However, computational approaches raise major philosophical and scientific questions. In what sense is the mind computational? How do computational approaches explain perception, learning, and decision making? What kinds of challenges should computational approaches overcome to advance our understanding of mind, brain, and behaviour? The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind is an outstanding overview and exploration of these issues and the first philosophical collection of its kind. Comprising thirty-five chapters by an international team of contributors from different disciplines, the Handbook is organised into four parts: History and future prospects of computational approaches Types of computational approach Foundations and challenges of computational approaches Applications to specific parts of psychology. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of science, The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind will also be of interest to those studying computational models in related subjects such as psychology, neuroscience, and computer science.

The rise of Bayesianism in cognitive science promises to shape the debate between nativists and empiricists into more productive forms—or so have claimed several philosophers and cognitive scientists. The present paper explicates this claim, distinguishing different ways of understanding it. After clarifying what is at stake in the controversy between nativists and empiricists, and what is involved in current Bayesian cognitive science, the paper argues that Bayesianism offers not a vindication of either nativism or empiricism, but one way to talk precisely and transparently about the kinds of mechanisms and representations underlying the acquisition of psychological traits without a commitment to an innate language of thought.

There is widespread recognition at universities that a proper understanding of science is needed for all undergraduates. Good jobs are increasingly found in fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine (STEM), and science now enters almost all aspects of our daily lives. For these reasons, scientific literacy and an understanding of scientific methodology are a foundational part of any undergraduate education. Recipes for Science provides an accessible introduction to the main concepts and methods of scientific reasoning. With the help of an array of contemporary and historical examples, definitions, visual aids, and exercises for active learning, the textbook helps to increase students’ scientific literacy. The first part of the book covers the definitive features of science: naturalism, experimentation, modeling, and the merits and shortcomings of both activities. The second part covers the main forms of inference in science: deductive, inductive, abductive, probabilistic, statistical, and causal. The book concludes with a discussion of explanation, theorizing and theory-change, and the relationship between science and society. The textbook is designed to be adaptable to a wide variety of different kinds of courses. In any of these different uses, the book helps students better navigate our scientific, 21st-century world, and it lays the foundation for more advanced undergraduate coursework in a wide variety of liberal arts and science courses. Selling Points Helps students develop scientific literacy—an essential aspect of _any_ undergraduate education in the 21 st century, including a broad understanding of scientific reasoning, methods, and concepts Written for all beginning college students: preparing science majors for more focused work in particular science; introducing the humanities’ investigations of science; and helping non-science majors become more sophisticated consumers of scientific information Provides an abundance of both contemporary and historical examples Covers reasoning strategies and norms applicable in all fields of physical, life, and social sciences, _as well as_ strategies and norms distinctive of specific sciences Includes visual aids to clarify and illustrate ideas Provides text boxes with related topics and helpful definitions of key terms, and includes a final Glossary with all key terms Includes Exercises for Active Learning at the end of each chapter, which will ensure full student engagement and mastery of the information include earlier in the chapter Provides annotated ‘For Further Reading’ sections at the end of each chapter, guiding students to the best primary and secondary sources available Offers a Companion Website, with: For Students: direct links to many of the primary sources discussed in the text, student self-check assessments, a bank of exam questions, and ideas for extended out-of-class projects For Instructors: a password-protected Teacher’s Manual, which provides student exam questions with answers, extensive lecture notes, classroom-ready Power Point presentations, and sample syllabi Extensive Curricular Development materials, helping any instructor who needs to create a Scientific Reasoning Course, ex nihilo.

The free-energy principle states that all systems that minimize their free energy resist a tendency to physical disintegration. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, anatomy and function of the brain, and has been called a postulate, an unfalsifiable principle, a natural law, and an imperative. While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the relationship between environment, life, and mind, its epistemic status is unclear. Also unclear is how the free-energy principle relates to prominent theoretical approaches to life science phenomena, such as organicism and mechanism. This paper clarifies both issues, and identifies limits and prospects for the free-energy principle as a first principle in the life sciences.

Some naturalistic philosophers of mind subscribing to the predictive processing theory of mind have adopted a realist attitude towards the results of Bayesian cognitive science. In this paper, we argue that this realist attitude is unwarranted. The Bayesian research program in cognitive science does not possess special epistemic virtues over alternative approaches for explaining mental phenomena involving uncertainty. In particular, the Bayesian approach is not simpler, more unifying, or more rational than alternatives. It is also contentious that the Bayesian approach is overall better supported by the empirical evidence. So, to develop philosophical theories of mind on the basis of a realist interpretation of results from Bayesian cognitive science is unwarranted. Naturalistic philosophers of mind should instead adopt an anti-realist attitude towards these results and remain agnostic as to whether Bayesian models are true. For continuing on with an exclusive focus and praise of Bayes within debates about the predictive processing theory will impede progress in philosophical understanding of scientific practice in computational cognitive science as well as of the architecture of the mind.

Explanation is a central concept in human psychology. Drawing upon philosophical theories of explanation, psychologists have recently begun to examine the relationship between explanation, probability and causality. Our study advances this growing literature in the intersection of psychology and philosophy of science by systematically investigating how judgments of explanatory power are affected by the prior credibility of a potential explanation, the causal framing used to describe the explanation, the generalizability of the explanation, and its statistical relevance for the evidence. Collectively, the results of our five experiments support the hypothesis that the prior credibility of a causal explanation plays a central role in explanatory reasoning: first, because of the presence of strong main effects on judgments of explanatory power, and second, because of the gate-keeping role it has for other factors. Highly credible explanations were not susceptible to causal framing effects. Instead, highly credible hypotheses were sensitive to the effects of factors which are usually considered relevant from a normative point of view: the generalizability of an explanation, and its statistical relevance for the evidence. These results advance current literature in the philosophy and psychology of explanation in three ways. First, they yield a more nuanced understanding of the determinants of judgments of explanatory power, and the interaction between these factors. Second, they illuminate the close relationship between prior beliefs and explanatory power. Third, they clarify the relationship between abductive and probabilistic reasoning.

The question of how judgments of explanatory value inform probabilistic inference is well studied within psychology and philosophy. Less studied are the questions: How does probabilistic information affect judgments of explanatory value? Does probabilistic information take precedence over causal information in determining explanatory judgments? To answer these questions, we conducted two experimental studies. In Study 1, we found that probabilistic information had a negligible impact on explanatory judgments of event-types with a potentially unlimited number of available, alternative explanations; causal credibility was the main determinant of explanatory value. In Study 2, we found that, for event-token explanations with a definite set of candidate alternatives, probabilistic information strongly affected judgments of explanatory value. In the light of these findings, we reassess under which circumstances explanatory inference is probabilistically sound.

A widely shared view in the cognitive sciences is that discovering and assessing explanations of cognitive phenomena whose production involves uncertainty should be done in a Bayesian framework. One assumption supporting this modelling choice is that Bayes provides the best approach for representing uncertainty. However, it is unclear that Bayes possesses special epistemic virtues over alternative modelling frameworks, since a systematic comparison has yet to be attempted. Currently, it is then premature to assert that cognitive phenomena involving uncertainty are best explained within the Bayesian framework. As a forewarning, progress in cognitive science may be hindered if too many scientists continue to focus their efforts on Bayesian modelling, which risks to monopolize scientific resources that may be better allocated to alternative approaches.

Mechanist philosophers have examined several strategies scientists use for discovering causal mechanisms in neuroscience. Findings about the anatomical organization of the brain play a central role in several such strategies. Little attention has been paid, however, to the use of network analysis and causal modeling techniques for mechanism discovery. In particular, mechanist philosophers have not explored whether and how these strategies incorporate information about the anatomical organization of the brain. This paper clarifies these issues in the light of the distinction between structural, functional and effective connectivity. Specifically, we examine two quantitative strategies currently used for causal discovery from functional neuroimaging data: dynamic causal modeling and probabilistic graphical modeling. We show that dynamic causal modeling uses findings about the brain’s anatomical organization to improve the statistical estimation of parameters in an already specified causal model of the target brain mechanism. Probabilistic graphical modeling, in contrast, makes no appeal to the brain’s anatomical organization, but lays bare the conditions under which correlational data suffice to license reliable inferences about the causal organization of a target brain mechanism. The question of whether findings about the anatomical organization of the brain can and should constrain the inference of causal networks remains open, but we show how the tools supplied by graphical modeling methods help to address it.

The rise of Bayesianism in cognitive science promises to shape the debate between nativists and empiricists into more productive forms—or so have claimed several philosophers and cognitive scientists. The present paper explicates this claim, distinguishing different ways of understanding it. After clarifying what is at stake in the controversy between nativists and empiricists, and what is involved in current Bayesian cognitive science, the paper argues that Bayesianism offers not a vindication of either nativism or empiricism, but one way to talk precisely and transparently about the kinds of mechanisms and representations underlying the acquisition of psychological traits without a commitment to an innate language of thought.

According to the reward-prediction error hypothesis of dopamine, the phasic activity of dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain signals a discrepancy between the predicted and currently experienced reward of a particular event. It can be claimed that this hypothesis is deep, elegant and beautiful, representing one of the largest successes of computational neuroscience. This paper examines this claim, making two contributions to existing literature. First, it draws a comprehensive historical account of the main steps that led to the formulation and subsequent success of the RPEH. Second, in light of this historical account, it explains in which sense the RPEH is explanatory and under which conditions it can be justifiably deemed deeper than the incentive salience hypothesis of dopamine, which is arguably the most prominent contemporary alternative to the RPEH.

How does other people’s opinion affect judgments of norm transgressions? In our study, we used a modification of the famous Asch paradigm to examine conformity in the moral domain. The question we addressed was how peer group opinion alters normative judgments of scenarios involving violations of moral, social, and decency norms. The results indicate that even moral norms are subject to conformity, especially in situations with a high degree of social presence. Interestingly, the degree of conformity can distinguish between different types of norms.

Pete Mandik’s This is Philosophy of Mind is the latest addition to the “introduction to the philosophy of mind textbook” literature. It is a welcome addition, as Mandik offers readers an encompassing, up-to-date and engagingly written textbook. The objective of This is Philosophy of Mind is to communicate to a wider audience the fascinating and challenging ideas discussed in contemporary philosophy of mind. It is intended as a resource useful for both students taking a course and for anybody else who desires a painless tour through the philosophy of mind zoo.What’s on offer? The book’s 15 chapters breeze through all the traditional topics one would expect in a philosophy of mind course: the mind-body problem and the nature of mental properties, mental representation and intentionality, consciousness and qualitative experience. The chapters cover recent advances too, including contemporary work on perception, imagination and emotion, and less canonical topics like immortality and life a..

Modularity is one of the most important concepts used to articulate a theory of cognitive architecture. Over the last 30 years, the debate in many areas of the cognitive sciences and in philosophy of psychology about what modules are, and to what extent our cognitive architecture is modular, has made little progress. After providing a diagnosis of this lack of progress, this article suggests a remedy. It argues that the theoretical framework of network science can be brought to bear on the traditional modularity debate, facilitating our progress in articulating a good theory of the human cognitive architecture.

This paper brings together results from the philosophy and the psychology of explanation to argue that there are multiple concepts of explanation in human psychology. Specifically, it is shown that pluralism about explanation coheres with the multiplicity of models of explanation available in the philosophy of science, and it is supported by evidence from the psychology of explanatory judgment. Focusing on the case of a norm of explanatory power, the paper concludes by responding to the worry that if there is a plurality of concepts of explanation, one will not be able to normatively evaluate what counts as good explanation.

Despite the impressive amount of financial resources invested in carrying out large-scale brain simulations, it is controversial what the payoffs are of pursuing this project. The present paper argues that in some cases, from designing, building, and running a large-scale neural simulation, scientists acquire useful knowledge about the computational performance of the simulating system, rather than about the neurobiological system represented in the simulation. What this means, why it is not a trivial lesson, and how it advances the literature on the epistemology of computer simulation are the three preoccupations addressed by the paper.

A popular view in philosophy of science contends that scientific reasoning is objective to the extent that the appraisal of scientific hypotheses is not influenced by moral, political, economic, or social values, but only by the available evidence. A large body of results in the psychology of motivated-reasoning has put pressure on the empirical adequacy of this view. The present study extends this body of results by providing direct evidence that the moral offensiveness of a scientific hypothesis biases explanatory judgment along several dimensions, even when prior credence in the hypothesis is controlled for. Furthermore, it is shown that this bias is insensitive to an economic incentive to be accurate in the evaluation of the evidence. These results contribute to call into question the attainability of the ideal of a value-free science.

Life-science phenomena are often explained by specifying the mechanisms that bring them about. The new mechanistic philosophers have done much to substantiate this claim and to provide us with a better understanding of what mechanisms are and how they explain. Although there is disagreement among current mechanists on various issues, they share a common core position and a seeming commitment to some form of scientific realism. But is such a commitment necessary? Is it the best way to go about mechanistic explanation? In this article, we propose an alternative antirealist account that also fits explanatory practice in the life sciences. We pay special attention to mechanistic models, i.e. scientific models that involve a mechanism, and to the role of coherence considerations in building such models. To illustrate our points, we consider the mechanism for the action potential. 1 Introduction2 Some Core Features of Mechanistic Explanation3 Scientific Realism and Mechanistic Explanation4 Antirealist Mechanistic Explanation: The Case of the Action Potential5 Some Outstanding Issues for the Antirealist Mechanist6 Two Problems for the Realist Mechanist7 Conclusions.

How should we understand the claim that people comply with social norms because they possess the right kinds of beliefs and preferences? I answer this question by considering two approaches to what it is to believe (and prefer), namely: representationalism and dispositionalism. I argue for a variety of representationalism, viz. neural representationalism. Neural representationalism is the conjunction of two claims. First, what it is essential to have beliefs and preferences is to have certain neural representations. Second, neural representations are often necessary to adequately explain behaviour. After having canvassed one promising way to understand what neural representations could be, I argue that the appeal to beliefs and preferences in explanations of paradigmatic cases of norm compliance should be understood as an appeal to neural representations.

Bryce Huebner’s Macrocognition is a book with a double mission. The first and main mission is “to show that there are cases of collective mentality in our world”. Cases of collective mentality are cases where groups, teams, mobs, firms, colonies or some other collectivities possess cognitive capacities or mental states in the same sense that we individually do. To accomplish this mission, Huebner develops an account of macrocognition, where “the term ‘macrocognition’ is intended as shorthand for the claim that system-level cognition is implemented by an integrated network of specialized computational mechanisms”.The second mission of Huebner’s book is to elaborate an account of cognitive architecture that could set the groundwork for identifying under what conditions groups, and individuals indeed, are fruitfully and justifiably said to be minded. To this end, Huebner tackles several foundational issues in cognitive science, including traditional philosophical questions a..