Journal of Cognition and Culture

Hauser, ; Tonnaer, ; Cima,

doi: 10.1163/156770909x12489459066147pmid: N/A

AbstractLegal scholars and philosophers have long debated the moral standing of the act-omission distinction, with some favoring the view that actions ought to be considered as morally different from omissions, while others disagree. Several empirical studies suggest that people judge actions that cause harm as worse than omissions that cause the same harm with the implication that our folk psychology commonly perceives this distinction as morally significant. Here we explore the robustness of people's moral intuitions, and in particular, whether the omission bias can be eliminated in the face of explicit and familiar laws that take away the moral standing of the distinction between actions and omissions. We show that although Dutch law allows both active and passive euthanasia, and although our Dutch participants were well aware of this law and supported it, they nonetheless showed a robust omission bias across a wide range of moral dilemmas. We conclude by discussing the relationship between our folk moral intuitions and explicit moral rules that are handed down by law and religion.

Hauser; Cima; Tonnaer

doi: 10.1163/156770909X12489459066147pmid: N/A

<jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Legal scholars and philosophers have long debated the moral standing of the act-omission distinction, with some favoring the view that actions ought to be considered as morally different from omissions, while others disagree. Several empirical studies suggest that people judge actions that cause harm as worse than omissions that cause the same harm with the implication that our folk psychology commonly perceives this distinction as morally significant. Here we explore the robustness of people's moral intuitions, and in particular, whether the omission bias can be eliminated in the face of explicit and familiar laws that take away the moral standing of the distinction between actions and omissions. We show that although Dutch law allows both active and passive euthanasia, and although our Dutch participants were well aware of this law and supported it, they nonetheless showed a robust omission bias across a wide range of moral dilemmas. We conclude by discussing the relationship between our folk moral intuitions and explicit moral rules that are handed down by law and religion.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Sousa, Paulo

doi: 10.1163/156770909x12489459066183pmid: N/A

AbstractMany theoretical claims about the folk concept of moral responsibility coming from the current literature are indeterminate because researchers do not clearly specify the folk concept of moral responsibility in question. The article pursues a cognitive approach to folk concepts that pays special attention to this indeterminacy problem. After addressing the problem, the article provides evidence on folk attributions of moral responsibility in the case a failed attempt to kill that goes against a specific claim coming from the current literature – that the dimension of causation is part of the structure of the folk concept of moral responsibility.

Sousa, Paulo

doi: 10.1163/156770909X12489459066183pmid: N/A

<jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Many theoretical claims about the folk concept of moral responsibility coming from the current literature are indeterminate because researchers do not clearly specify the folk concept of moral responsibility in question. The article pursues a cognitive approach to folk concepts that pays special attention to this indeterminacy problem. After addressing the problem, the article provides evidence on folk attributions of moral responsibility in the case a failed attempt to kill that goes against a specific claim coming from the current literature – that the dimension of causation is part of the structure of the folk concept of moral responsibility.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Nordin, Andreas

doi: 10.1163/156770909x12489459066228pmid: N/A

AbstractPilgrim journeys are popular religious phenomena that are based on ritual interaction with culturally postulated counterintuitive supernatural agents. This article uses results taken from an anthropological Ph. D. thesis on cognitive aspects of Hindu pilgrimage in Nepal and Tibet. Cognitive theories have been neglected in pilgrimage studies but they offer new perspectives on belief structures and ritual action and call into question some of the current assumptions in this research field. Pilgrim journeys often involve flows of substance of anthropomorphic character. Transferring substance in pilgrimage means leaving material at the pilgrimage site and then receiving other materials to take home. Pilgrim journeys imply ritual interaction, intuitions and ideas regarding the management of sin, impurity and evil. They also imply reception of blessings along with divine agency. This paper investigates how assumptions about agency, psychological essentialism and contagion connected to supernatural agents provides an important selective pressure in formation of beliefs related to pilgrimage. This paper shows that the transfer of substances is an operation on ritual instruments. It creates a supernatural immediacy effect in pilgrims, in the sense suggested by Lawson and McCauley.

Nordin, Andreas

doi: 10.1163/156770909X12489459066228pmid: N/A

<jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Pilgrim journeys are popular religious phenomena that are based on ritual interaction with culturally postulated counterintuitive supernatural agents. This article uses results taken from an anthropological Ph. D. thesis on cognitive aspects of Hindu pilgrimage in Nepal and Tibet. Cognitive theories have been neglected in pilgrimage studies but they offer new perspectives on belief structures and ritual action and call into question some of the current assumptions in this research field. Pilgrim journeys often involve flows of substance of anthropomorphic character. Transferring substance in pilgrimage means leaving material at the pilgrimage site and then receiving other materials to take home. Pilgrim journeys imply ritual interaction, intuitions and ideas regarding the management of sin, impurity and evil. They also imply reception of blessings along with divine agency. This paper investigates how assumptions about agency, psychological essentialism and contagion connected to supernatural agents provides an important selective pressure in formation of beliefs related to pilgrimage. This paper shows that the transfer of substances is an operation on ritual instruments. It creates a supernatural immediacy effect in pilgrims, in the sense suggested by Lawson and McCauley.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Murray, Michael; Moore, Lyn

doi: 10.1163/156770909x12489459066264pmid: N/A

AbstractCostly signaling theories of religion contend that religious belief and behaviors function as costly signals of cooperative intent. Such signals are evolvable because they allow likely cooperators to find one another, while excluding potential cheats or free riders that would be unwilling (or unable) to pay the price associated with sending the signal. As a result, under the right conditions, religious costly signaling can emerge as an evolutionary stable strategy. However, reliability certifying costly signaling can evolve and stabilize only when certain necessary conditions are satisfied. In this paper we argue that current versions of the theory do not adequately demonstrate that these conditions are met.

Murray, Michael; Moore, Lyn

doi: 10.1163/156770909X12489459066264pmid: N/A

<jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Costly signaling theories of religion contend that religious belief and behaviors function as costly signals of cooperative intent. Such signals are evolvable because they allow likely cooperators to find one another, while excluding potential cheats or free riders that would be unwilling (or unable) to pay the price associated with sending the signal. As a result, under the right conditions, religious costly signaling can emerge as an evolutionary stable strategy. However, reliability certifying costly signaling can evolve and stabilize only when certain necessary conditions are satisfied. In this paper we argue that current versions of the theory do not adequately demonstrate that these conditions are met.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Jones, Doug

doi: 10.1163/156770909X12489459066309pmid: N/A

<jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Psychological research in the USA and elsewhere suggests that race is regarded as an underlying, inherited “essential” trait, like membership in a biological species. Yet Brazil has often been regarded as very different from the USA: as a country in which racial variation is seen as more continuous than categorical, more a matter of appearance than descent. This study tests alternative theories of racial cognition in Bahia, Brazil. Data include racial classification of drawings and photographs, judgments of similarity – dissimilarity between racial categories, ideas about expected and possible race of offspring from inter-racial unions, heritability of racial and non-racial traits, and conservation of race through changes in appearance. The research demonstrates consensus over time in appearance-based classification, yet race is also thought of as an “essential” trait. However, racial essences can be mixed, with a person containing the hereditary potential of multiple races, so that race in Bahia does not define clear-cut groups or discrete “living kinds.” If essentialism is the shared core of folk theories of race, there may be more variability and room for social construction in the categorization of mixed-race individuals.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Jones, Doug

doi: 10.1163/156770909x12489459066309pmid: N/A

AbstractPsychological research in the USA and elsewhere suggests that race is regarded as an underlying, inherited “essential” trait, like membership in a biological species. Yet Brazil has often been regarded as very different from the USA: as a country in which racial variation is seen as more continuous than categorical, more a matter of appearance than descent. This study tests alternative theories of racial cognition in Bahia, Brazil. Data include racial classification of drawings and photographs, judgments of similarity – dissimilarity between racial categories, ideas about expected and possible race of offspring from inter-racial unions, heritability of racial and non-racial traits, and conservation of race through changes in appearance. The research demonstrates consensus over time in appearance-based classification, yet race is also thought of as an “essential” trait. However, racial essences can be mixed, with a person containing the hereditary potential of multiple races, so that race in Bahia does not define clear-cut groups or discrete “living kinds.” If essentialism is the shared core of folk theories of race, there may be more variability and room for social construction in the categorization of mixed-race individuals.