Suchergebnisse

Contents -- CHAPTER 1 Introduction -- Intuitions -- Some Intuitions of Interest -- Common Patterns -- The Role of Psychology -- Consequences, Consequentialism, and Utilitarianism -- Summary and Outlook -- CHAPTER 2 All the Fish in the Sea -- The Tragedy of the Commons -- Unfairness -- Autonomy -- Wishful Thinking -- Ozone and Freon -- Global Warming -- Conclusion -- CHAPTER 3 Benefits and Burdens -- The Utilitarian Approach -- Can Equality Go Too Far? -- Taxation as Theft? -- Elasticity: Taxes to Change Behavior -- Self-destructive Behavior -- Taking Property -- Changing the Rules of the Game

The major problems in the world today are problems of government or the lack of it. Thus, the relevant parts of intelligence are those that make for good citizenship, such as supporting the best candidates and policies. I argue that dispositions, as well as capacities, are part of intelligence, and that some dispositions are the ones most crucial for citizenship, particularly the disposition to engage in actively open-minded thinking (AOT) and to apply it as a standard for the evaluation of the qualifications of authorities and leaders. AOT is a general prescriptive theory that applies to all thinking. It affects the aptness of conclusions and the accuracy of confidence judgments, and it reduces overconfidence when extreme confidence is not warranted. AOT may be affected by different factors from those that affect other components of intelligence and thus may undergo different changes over time. Whatever has happened in the past, we need more of it now.

Abstract
Protected values (PVs) are values protected from trade-offs with other values. They are absolute in this sense. People hold these values even when they do not necessarily abide by them in their behavior. I suggest that most of these values are a subset of deontological rules, defined by their absoluteness. Their origin may be understood by looking at the origin of deontological rules more generally, which includes religious (hence sacred) values among others. But PVs are usually maintained by lack of reflection of the sort that would see counterexamples to their absoluteness. PVs often have other characteristics that would lead to classification into other types of values: they are often moralistic (imposed on others regardless of the willingness of others to accept them); they are about morality rather than convention and thus independent of authority or social consensus; and they often concern second-order preferences (values for values). Especially in combination with these other properties, PVs can be harmful in the domain of politics. Education in the sort of reflection that would lead people to question them could improve the political situation around the world.

Kahan and Corbin suggest that the cognitive capabilities that constitute actively open-minded thinking (AOT) are used in the defense of favored positions, thus leading to polarization concerning global warming. Such a conclusion is contrary to the definition of AOT. I suggest, and dispute, two ways in which such a result could be consistent with the definition: the scale that measures AOT is correlated with other traits that do increase polarization; or AOT may itself not be a general trait, so that conservatives do not apply it to global warming. A third, more plausible, explanation is that part of the main result is based on a floor effect, a statistical artifact. It is also possible that the effect of AOT is exerted primarily on political identification. The substantial correlation between AOT and political liberalism also helps us interpret prior conflicting results concerning politics and cognitive style, especially in view of the total absence of any correlation between politics and the Cognitive Reflection Test in the same data set.

Web studies explored citizens' concepts of their duty as voters and their choices concerning actual policies. Some people see a moral duty to support their group (their nation) regardless of harmful effects on outsiders. One study supports the hypothesis that this duty avoids betrayal of the nation, which they see as granting the right to vote for the purpose of advancing national interest. Some also see a duty to defend their self-interest through voting; many think this is a rational way to pursue their interests. Another justification is, "If [the voter] does not look out for her own interests, nobody else will." I hypothesize a norm of responsibility for self-defense, part of the "culture of honor" (Cohen and Nisbett, 1994) in all of us. Yet politics is by design an inefficient way to pursue self-interest, although it is efficient for advancing the good of all.

People often sacrifice their self-interest for a group to which they belong, even when outsiders are harmed so that the sacrifice has no net benefit. Two experiments (conducted on the World Wide Web) suggest that people do this, in part, because they think that cooperation on behalf of the group is in their narrow self-interest; they show an enhanced self-interest illusion. One experiment found that the self-interest illusion is related to the enhanced tendency to cooperate on behalf of a group when the insiders' gain is the outsiders' loss. A second experiment found that the illusion (and the resulting parochial cooperation) was reduced when subjects were required to calculate all gains and losses.