Explanatory perfectionism: A fresh take on an ancient theory

The ‘Big 3’ theories of well-being—hedonism, desire-satisfactionism, and objective list theory—attempt to explain why certain things are good for people by appealing to prudentially good-making properties. But they don’t attempt to explain why the properties they advert to make something good for a person. Perfectionism, the view that well-being consists in nature-fulfilment, is often considered a competitor to these views (or else a version of the objective list theory). However, I argue that perfectionism is best understood as explaining why certain properties are prudentially good-making. This version of perfectionism is compatible with each of the Big 3, and, I argue, quite attractive

Positive psychology is value-laden—It's time to embrace it

Evaluative claims and assumptions are ubiquitous in positive psychology. Some will deny this. But such disavowals are belied by the literature. Some will consider the presence of evaluative claims a problem and hope to root them out. But this is a mistake. If positive psychology is to live up to its raison d’être – to be the scientific study of the psychological components of human flourishing or well-being – it must make evaluative claims. Well-being consists in those things that are good for us, that make life go well. Thus, one cannot investigate this topic without making claims about what is good for people and what they have reason to do. It’s time, therefore, to embrace the fact that positive psychology is value-laden. Doing so would benefit the field by allowing for more rigorous theorizing, and – perhaps counterintuitively – increasing the field’s objectivity

Friendly Superintelligent AI: All You Need is Love

There is a non-trivial chance that sometime in the (perhaps somewhat distant) future, someone will build an artificial general intelligence that will surpass human-level cognitive proficiency and go on to become "superintelligent", vastly outperforming humans. The advent of superintelligent AI has great potential, for good or ill. It is therefore imperative that we find a way to ensure-long before one arrives-that any superintelligence we build will consistently act in ways congenial to our interests. This is a very difficult challenge in part because most of the final goals we could give an AI admit of so-called "perverse instantiations". I propose a novel solution to this puzzle: instruct the AI to love humanity. The proposal is compared with Yudkowsky's Coherent Extrapolated Volition, and Bostrom's Moral Modeling proposals

Besprechung: CHR. GASTGEBER - E. MITSIOU - I. A. POP - M. POPOVIĆ - J. PREISER-KAPELLER - A. SIMON (Hrsg.), Matthias Corvinus und seine Zeit. Europa am Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit zwischen Wien und Konstantinopel , Wien 2011

Besprechung:Chr. Gastgeber - E. Mitsiou - I. A. Pop - M. Popović - J. Preiser-Kapeller -  A. Simon (Hrsg.), Matthias Corvinus und seine Zeit. Europa am Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit zwischen Wien und Konstantinopel (= Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung, Bd. 27 = ÖAW. Phil.-hist. Klasse, Denschriften, Bd. 409), Wien 2011, 265 S. ISBN 978-3-7001-6891-1Besprechung:Chr. Gastgeber - E. Mitsiou - I. A. Pop - M. Popović - J. Preiser-Kapeller -  A. Simon (Hrsg.), Matthias Corvinus und seine Zeit. Europa am Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit zwischen Wien und Konstantinopel (= Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung, Bd. 27 = ÖAW. Phil.-hist. Klasse, Denschriften, Bd. 409), Wien 2011, 265 S. ISBN 978-3-7001-6891-

Going Green Is Good for You: Why We Need to Change the Way We Think about Pro-environmental Behavior

Awareness and concern about climate change are widespread. But rates of pro-environmental behavior are low. This is partly due to the way in which pro-environmental behavior is framed – as a sacrifice or burden that individuals bear for the planet and future generations. This framing elicits well-known cognitive biases, discouraging what we should be encouraging. We should abandon the self-sacrifice framing, and instead frame pro-environmental behavior as intrinsically desirable. There is a large body of evidence that, around the world, people who are living more environmentally lifestyles are happier than those not doing so. This is the message we should be spreading

Remnant "Family": the role of women in the media discourse on families

How does gender affect discourse processes, particularly regarding the coverage of family issues? In order to explore this question, we focus on media representations of women in their roles as mothers on the one hand and journalists on the other and we compare the reporting of male and female journalists covering families. We refer to gender theory to examine processes of gender construction by different actors in the media and we draw on journalism theory to explain different reporting styles and strategies by male and female authors regarding discourse strategies, framing, and gender-stereotyping. Our methodological approaches include quantitative and qualitative content analyses and 14 semi-structured interviews with journalists, family researchers, and lobbyists. The sample includes coverage of families in general and that of large families in particular in German print media in the years 2011 and 2012, for a total of 1,100 texts. One of the key findings, not surprisingly, is that most of the journalists reporting on families are female. Similar to male journalists, however, they focus on the traditional family type despite the fact that various alternative forms of family life are now a social reality

Why do evaluative judgments affect emotion attributions? The roles of judgments about fittingness and the true self

Past research has found that the value of a person's activities can affect observers' judgments about whether that person is experiencing certain emotions (e.g., people consider morally good agents happier than morally bad agents). One proposed explanation for this effect is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about fittingness (whether the emotion is merited). Another hypothesis is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about the agent's true self (whether the emotion reflects how the agent feels "deep down"). We tested these hypotheses in six studies. After finding that people think a wide range of emotions can be fitting and reflect a person's true self (Study 1), we tested the predictions of these two hypotheses for attributions of happiness, love, sadness, and hatred. We manipulated the emotions' fittingness (Studies 2a-b and 4) and whether the emotions reflected an agent's true self (Studies 3 and 5), measuring emotion attributions as well as fittingness judgments and true self judgments. The fittingness manipulation only impacted emotion attributions in the cases where it also impacted true self judgments, whereas the true self manipulation impacted emotion attribution in all cases, including those where it did not impact fittingness judgments. These results cast serious doubt on the fittingness hypothesis and offer some support for the true self hypothesis, which could be developed further in future work

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Besprechung: CHR. GASTGEBER - E. MITSIOU - I. A. POP - M. POPOVIĆ - J. PREISER-KAPELLER - A. SIMON (Hrsg.), Matthias Corvinus und seine Zeit. Europa am Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit zwischen Wien und Konstantinopel , Wien 2011

Besprechung:&lt;span style="line-height: 115%; font-variant: small-caps; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 11pt"&gt;Chr. Gastgeber - E. Mitsiou - I. A. Pop - M. Popović - J. Preiser-Kapeller - &lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;A. Simon&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 11pt"&gt; (Hrsg.), &lt;em&gt;Matthias Corvinus und seine Zeit. Europa am &amp;Uuml;bergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit zwischen Wien und Konstantinopel&lt;/em&gt; (= Ver&amp;ouml;ffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung, Bd. 27 = &amp;Ouml;AW. Phil.-hist. Klasse, Denschriften, Bd. 409), Wien 2011, 265 S. ISBN 978-3-7001-6891-1&lt;/span&gt;</jats:p