The validity of Dawkins's selfish gene theory and the role of the unconscious in decision making

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-149
Author(s):  
Tobias A. Mattei
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Goal Theory ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Selfish Gene ◽  
Gene Theory ◽  
Psychological Structure ◽  
Selfish Gene Theory

AbstractAlthough the proposed Selfish Goal Theory constitutes a major theoretical tour de force for addressing the issue of inconsistencies in human actions and the role of motivational goals in behavior, as it is based on an unproven biological paradigm (Dawkins's selfish gene theory) and overemphasizes the role of unconscious processes in decision making, it provides a questionable model of the underlying psychological structure of human agency.

The effect of the cognitive demands of the distraction task on unconscious thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Waroquier ◽  
Marlène Abadie ◽  
Olivier Klein ◽  
Axel Cleeremans
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Unconscious Thought ◽  
Cognitive Demands ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Distraction Task ◽  
Complex Decision Making ◽  
Complex Decision

AbstractThe unconscious-thought effect occurs when distraction improves complex decision making. Recent studies suggest that this effect is more likely to occur with low- than high-demanding distraction tasks. We discuss implications of these findings for Newell & Shanks' (N&S's) claim that evidence is lacking for the intervention of unconscious processes in complex decision making.

Sir Charles Dilke and the British Intervention In Egypt, 1882: decision making In a nineteenth-century cabinet

1976 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. Chamberlain
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Exact Role ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
William Gladstone ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Liberal Government

“There's Dilke that has done it all”, remarked Wilfrid Scawen Blunt to Lord Blandford as they watched Dilke walk down Piccadilly one day in July 1882.1 The “it” was the British intervention in Egypt which entangled Britain in Egyptian affairs for two generations. More soberly, Louis Mallet, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the India Office, wrote to Evelyn Baring a year later that the Liberal government of William Gladstone had made themselves “the unconscious, and some of them (not all) the unwilling instruments of a policy from which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury would have shrunk, and which is big with future disaster”. “Dilke and Chamberlain” he wrote, “I consider mainly responsible for the Egyptian war.” In The Trouble Makers, A. J. P. Taylor came to the conclusion, “The occupation of Egypt in 1882 marked Gladstone's decisive breach with Radicalism. Indeed it ruined Radicalism for more than a generation. It began modern British Imperialism…”. How ironic if the ruin of British radicalism was brought about by the two leading radicals of Gladstone's predominantly Whig administration. What do the Dilke and Chamberlain papers among others reveal about the exact role of the two men in the crisis ?

Better tests of consciousness are needed, but skepticism about unconscious processes is unwarranted

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Ogilvie ◽  
Peter Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Iowa Gambling Task ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Gambling Task ◽  
Unconscious Thought ◽  
Unconscious Processes

AbstractWhat people report is, at times, the best evidence we have for what they experience. Newell & Shanks (N&S) do a service for debates regarding the role of unconscious influences on decision making by offering some sound methodological recommendations. We doubt, however, that those recommendations go far enough. For even if people have knowledge of the factors that influence their decisions, it does not follow that such knowledge is conscious, and plays a causal role, at the time the decision is made. Moreover, N&S fail to demonstrate that unconscious thought plays no role at all in decision making. Indeed, such a claim is quite implausible. In making these points we comment on their discussion of the literature on expertise acquisition and the Iowa Gambling Task.

An Empathetic Psychological Perspective of Police Deadly Force Training

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodger E. Broomé
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
Deadly Force ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
The Real ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
Psychological Structure

Abstract Police officers must be able to make an accurate appraisal of a lethal encounter and respond with appropriate force to mitigate the threat to their own lives and to the lives of others. Contemporary police deadly force training places the cadet in mock lethal encounters, which are designed to simulate those occurring in the real lives of law enforcement officers. This Reality Base Training (RBT) is designed to provide cadets with experiences that require their reactions to be within the law, policies and procedures, and ethics while undergoing a very stressful, emotional, and physically dynamic situation (Artwohl & Christensen, 1997; Blum, 2000; Grossman, 1996; Miller, 2008; Murray, 2006). Three police cadets provided written accounts of their deadly force training experiences in the RBT format. The descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used to analyze the data and to synthesize a general psychological structure of their experiences. The results reveal the perceptions, thoughts, feelings and behaviors reflecting the role of consciousness and psychological subjectivity in the participants’ understandings and decision-making in the simulated situations.

Unnatural Selection

Philosophy ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Miles
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Genetic Code ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Selfish Gene ◽  
Gene Theory ◽  
Human Sociobiology ◽  
Selfish Gene Theory ◽  
George Williams

This paper shows how the last twenty-five years of vocal human Darwinism (human sociobiology and evolutionary psychology) directly rejects the ‘selfish gene’ theory it is supposedly based upon. ‘Evangelistic sociobiology’, as Dawkins has called it, argues that humans evolved to be ‘the altruistic ape’. Using selfish gene theory this paper shows that we are born just another selfish ape. Given the ‘gross immorality’ (George Williams) of natural selection, one implication is that modern genetics has yet to face up to our true genetic code. The ultimate conclusion of this paper is that culture makes civilisation possible because it overwrites, or ‘manipulates’, our genetic heritage. We are born ape, but made human.

scholarly journals The Role of Unconscious Awareness of Teachers within Teacher-child Relationship

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Elçin Gölbaşı ◽  
Alev Önder
Keyword(s):  
Preschool Teachers ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Knowledge Level ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
True Self ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Higher Level Thinking ◽  
Child Relationship

This article is a descriptive study which aims to investigate preschool teachers’ awareness of their own unconscious and the contribution of unconscious processes to educational activities. It presents a literary review on education as a meeting of the teacher and student at a certain point in time and space, not only at a knowledge level but also with their inner psychological processes. The classroom is an arena in which teachers question themselves via interaction, face their true self and unique characteristics. The educational environment can be purified with the search for the teacher’s awareness of the unconscious by eliminating ambitions, prejudices and negative psychological experiences. Only then does it transform into an environment of symbolism, higher level thinking and free thinking.

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