As I detail in the book, there are several arguments as to why this account is dissatisfying. For example, one simple observation is that unlike a muscle, there is no evidence that we ever actually fully deplete our mental resources….
Let’s consider the extreme cases. If, say, the UK had vaccinated exactly the same percentage of people as the EU, there wouldn’t be any moral demand for the UK to share its vaccines. But if the UK had managed to…
Savulescu and Cameron previously proposed that selective liberty restrictions are more likely to be justified when those who have their liberty restricted are those who benefit most from the measures. In the case of COVID-19, with the marked difference in…
‘An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted’, wrote Arthur Miller. The illusion of the adequacy of materialism as an explanation for the nature of the world is exhausted, and a new era of real…
This task is appealing as a test of an inhibitory process. It requires initiation of a response on every trial, and so if it is successfully countermanded, this suggests that it has been suppressed (as opposed to never initiating the…
Policies for working memory gating can be learned through dopamine modulation of this system in the same way that we discussed for motor gating. In other words, they learn to gate contexts that have led to positive outcomes. Computational neural…
Pandemic policies inevitably require us to make decisions about whom to prioritize when it comes not only to saving lives, but also to promoting health, wellbeing, and life expectancy. When we talk about lives in this context, we are not…
If you are successful in controlling yourself in the car, then you must have in some way used a representation of your context, i.e., driving your car, to choose an appropriate action over the more habitual, but inappropriate one. To…
Prof Frances Stewart Professor emeritus of development economics, University of Oxford, and ex-president, Development Studies Association We urge the government to take three steps: first, to generously finance vaccine distribution in low-income countries and support distribution in ways that strengthen…
The flexibility of human behavior Scientists came to recognize cognitive control as its own class of function that links knowledge and action partly because of observations made of patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex. Early case reports were puzzling…
We are thrilled that David Badre will be blogging about their new book On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done (Princeton, 2020). You can find everything in one place here (as it becomes available). Related Posts
Opponents of immunity passports point out (correctly) that we do not know for certain the degree to which natural infection or vaccination reduces risk of transmission. However, it is a grave moral issue – verging on wilful ignorance – that…
One very simple way to prioritise fairness in the second phase would allocate vaccines using a lottery procedure. This would ensure equal access to all individuals not included in Phase One, without prioritising any particular group over any other. This…
“Seeing himself gradually consumed by the anxiety of not having a son, the king mounted his horse and just left for the dense forest alone. Not even the priests and brahmins of the palace knew where he had gone. In…
