•  574
    A plea for minimally biased naturalistic philosophy
    Synthese 196 (9): 3841-3867. 2019.
    Naturalistic philosophers rely on literature search and review in a number of ways and for different purposes. Yet this article shows how processes of literature search and review are likely to be affected by widespread and systematic biases. A solution to this problem is offered here. Whilst the tradition of systematic reviews of literature from scientific disciplines has been neglected in philosophy, systematic reviews are important tools that minimize bias in literature search and review and …Read more
  •  377
    This paper examines a constellation of ethical and editorial issues that have arisen since philosophers started to conduct, submit and publish empirical research. These issues encompass concerns over responsible authorship, fair treatment of human subjects, ethicality of experimental procedures, availability of data, unselective reporting and publishability of research findings. This study aims to assess whether the philosophical community has as yet successfully addressed such issues. To do so,…Read more
  •  58
    Gigerenzer’s ‘external validity argument’ plays a pivotal role in his critique of the heuristics and biases research program (HB). The basic idea is that (a) the experimental contexts deployed by HB are not representative of the real environment and that (b) the differences between the setting and the real environment are causally relevant, because they result in different performances by the subjects. However, by considering Gigerenzer’s work on frequencies in probability judgments, this essay …Read more
  •  43
    Rationality and the Reflective Mind
    Philosophical Psychology 27 (5): 760-764. 2014.
    No abstract
  •  39
    Adaptive Rationality, Biases, and the Heterogeneity Hypothesis
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (4): 787-803. 2016.
    Adaptive rationality theorists question the manner in which psychologists have typically assessed rational behavior and cognition. According to them, human rationality is adaptive, and the biases reported in the psychological literature are best seen as the result of using normative standards that are too narrow. As it turns out, their challenge is also quite controversial, and several aspects of it have been called into question. Yet, whilst it is often suggested that the lack of cogency comes …Read more
  •  33
    Reporting in Experimental Philosophy: Current Standards and Recommendations for Future Practice
    with Mariana Vega-Mendoza, Brittany Blankinship, and David Carmel
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (1): 49-73. 2018.
    Recent replication crises in psychology and other fields have led to intense reflection about the validity of common research practices. Much of this reflection has focussed on reporting standards, and how they may be related to the questionable research practices that could underlie a high proportion of irreproducible findings in the published record. As a developing field, it is particularly important for Experimental Philosophy to avoid some of the pitfalls that have beset other disciplines. …Read more
  •  30
    New Issues for New Methods: Ethical and Editorial Challenges for an Experimental Philosophy
    Science and Engineering Ethics 23 (4): 1009-1034. 2017.
    This paper examines a constellation of ethical and editorial issues that have arisen since philosophers started to conduct, submit and publish empirical research. These issues encompass concerns over responsible authorship, fair treatment of human subjects, ethicality of experimental procedures, availability of data, unselective reporting and publishability of research findings. This study aims to assess whether the philosophical community has as yet successfully addressed such issues. To do so,…Read more
  •  28
    Stanovich's arguments against the “adaptive rationality” project: An assessment
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 49 55-62. 2015.
    This paper discusses Stanovich's appeal to individual differences in reasoning and decision-making to undermine the “adaptive rationality” project put forth by Gigerenzer and his co-workers. I discuss two different arguments based on Stanovich's research. First, heterogeneity in the use of heuristics seems to be at odds with the adaptationist background of the project. Second, the existence of correlations between cognitive ability and susceptibility to cognitive bias suggests that the “standard…Read more
  •  26
    Evolution, Rationality, and Coherence Criteria
    Biological Theory 9 (3): 309-317. 2014.
    How much irrationality should we ascribe to human cognition? Psychological evidence suggests that people’s reasoning is largely inaccurate, but according to an evolutionary argument for rationality, we have good reasons to believe that this is not so. To solve the conflict between psychological evidence and EAR, commentators have usually put the blame either on the psychological evidence, arguing that inaccurate reasoning appears only in the context of lab studies, or on the premises of EAR, cha…Read more
  •  23
    De Marchi and Lorenzetti :253-261, 2016) have recently argued that in fields where the journal impact factor is not calculated, such as in the humanities, it is key to find other indicators that would allow the relevant community to assess the quality of scholarly journals and the research outputs that are published in them. The authors' suggestion is that information concerning the journal's rejection rate and the number of subscriptions sold is important and should be used for such assessment.…Read more
  •  23
    Blame It on the Norm: The Challenge from “Adaptive Rationality”
    Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (2): 131-150. 2014.
    In this paper, I provide a qualified defense of the claim that cognitive biases are not necessarily signs of irrationality, but rather the result of using normative standards that are too narrow. I show that under certain circumstances, behavior that violates traditional norms of rationality can be adaptive. Yet, I express some reservations about the claim that we should replace our traditional normative standards. Furthermore, I throw doubt on the claim that the replacement of normative standar…Read more
  •  20
    The Ethics of Online Controlled Experiments (A/B Testing)
    with Riccardo Ghioni, Ciro Greco, Prathm Juneja, Jacopo Tagliabue, David Watson, and Luciano Floridi
    Minds and Machines 33 (4): 667-693. 2023.
    Online controlled experiments, also known as A/B tests, have become ubiquitous. While many practical challenges in running experiments at scale have been thoroughly discussed, the ethical dimension of A/B testing has been neglected. This article fills this gap in the literature by introducing a new, soft ethics and governance framework that explicitly recognizes how the rise of an experimentation culture in industry settings brings not only unprecedented opportunities to businesses but also sign…Read more
  •  17
    Mark Kelman’s recent book, The Heuristics Debate , has two main goals. First, it seeks to reconstruct the controversy in decision science between Kahneman et al.’s heuristics-and-biases approach and Gigerenzer et al.’s fast-and-frugal heuristics approach. Second, it tries to discuss its implications for jurisprudence and policy-making. This study focuses on the first task only. The study attempts to show that, although HD has several important merits, its interpretation of the controversy misses…Read more
  •  17
    Naturalistic philosophers rely on literature search and review in a number of ways and for different purposes. Yet this article shows how processes of literature search and review are likely to be affected by widespread and systematic biases. A solution to this problem is offered here. Whilst the tradition of systematic reviews of literature from scientific disciplines has been neglected in philosophy, systematic reviews are important tools that minimize bias in literature search and review and …Read more
  •  12
    The idea that humans are prone to widespread and systematic biases has dominated the psychological study of thinking and decision-making. The conclusion that has often been drawn is that people are irrational. In recent decades, however, a number of psychologists have started to call into question key claims and findings in research on human biases. In particular, a body of research has come together under the heading of adaptive rationality. AR theorists argue that people should not be assessed…Read more
  • Recent Trends in Neuroethics: A Selected bibliography
    Etica E Politica 11 (2): 68-87. 2009.
    This article is concerned with major current developments in moral psychology, deriving from the study of the neurobiological bases of our responses to moral dilemmas. I briefly illustrate the most important research programs and outline the burning issues in neuroethics, both empirical and conceptual