Don Ross
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View article: Pathological complexity and African elephant consciousness
Pathological complexity and African elephant consciousness Open
Veit (2023) provides a framework for modelling and empirically investigating varieties of consciousness as a Darwinian phenomenon, based on abduction from life histories of animals. The alleged ‘hard problem’ is exposed as an artefact of i…
View article: Modeling Norm-Governed Communities with Conditional Games: Sociological Game-Determination and Economic Equilibria
Modeling Norm-Governed Communities with Conditional Games: Sociological Game-Determination and Economic Equilibria Open
Most social scientists agree that informal norms constrain available equilibria in most human interactions. However, they do not agree on how to model them: economists often make them derivative of individual preferences, while a broader t…
View article: Scientific metaphysics and social science
Scientific metaphysics and social science Open
Recently, philosophers have developed an extensive literature on social ontology that applies methods and concepts from analytic metaphysics. Much of this is entirely abstracted from, and unconcerned with, social science. However, Epstein …
View article: Models of Risk Preferences: Descriptive and Normative Challenges
Models of Risk Preferences: Descriptive and Normative Challenges Open
Behavioural economists have developed alternatives to Expected Utility Theory as descriptive and normative models of risk preferences. One popular view is that these alternative descriptive models are generally better descriptively, but th…
View article: Ostensive communication, market exchange, mindshaping, and elephants
Ostensive communication, market exchange, mindshaping, and elephants Open
Heintz & Scott-Phillips's hypothesis that the topic range and type diversity of human expressive communication gains support from consilience with prior accounts of market exchange as fundamental to unique human niche construction, and of …
View article: Comparative Cognitive Science and Convergent Evolution: Humans and Elephants
Comparative Cognitive Science and Convergent Evolution: Humans and Elephants Open
Comparative cognitive science of humans has tended to overwhelmingly emphasize similarities and differences between humans and other living hominids, particularly chimpanzees and bonobos. In thus under-emphasizing convergent evolution, thi…
View article: Economics is converging with sociology but not with psychology
Economics is converging with sociology but not with psychology Open
The rise of behavioral economics since the 1980s led to richer mutual influence between economic and psychological theory and experimentation. However, as behavioral economics has become increasingly integrated into the main stream in econ…
View article: Subjective beliefs and economic preferences during the COVID-19 pandemic
Subjective beliefs and economic preferences during the COVID-19 pandemic Open
The COVID-19 pandemic presents a remarkable opportunity to put to work all of the research that has been undertaken in past decades on the elicitation and structural estimation of subjective belief distributions as well as preferences over…
View article: A case study of an experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic: online elicitation of subjective beliefs and economic preferences
A case study of an experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic: online elicitation of subjective beliefs and economic preferences Open
We convey our experiences developing and implementing an online experiment to elicit subjective beliefs and economic preferences. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated closures of our laboratories required us to conduct an online experiment…
View article: Introduction: useful philosophy of economics
Introduction: useful philosophy of economics Open
The rationale for chapter commissions for Elgar's Modern Guide to Philosophy of Economics is explained, and contents of specific chapters are summarised. The Modern Guide encourages a philosophy of economics close to the practice of econom…
View article: Economic methodology for policy guidance
Economic methodology for policy guidance Open
Before reading two recent books of which David Colander is first author, I had thought of him as a unique gadfly who has been the best promoter of three loosely connected strands of work. He has do...
View article: Is resolve mainly about resisting hyperbolic discounting?
Is resolve mainly about resisting hyperbolic discounting? Open
Ainslie insightfully refines the concept of willpower by emphasizing low-effort applications of resolve. However, he gives undue weight to intertemporal discounting as the problem that willpower is needed to overcome. Nonhumans typically d…
View article: Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, The Mind Under the Axioms
Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, The Mind Under the Axioms Open
Insofar as decision theory is regarded as a device for application to empirical choice data, it might be thought odd that it is based on axioms. ‘Laws of nature’, after all, is just a metaphor unless we think, as perhaps Newton did, that u…
View article: Addiction is socially engineered exploitation of natural biological vulnerability
Addiction is socially engineered exploitation of natural biological vulnerability Open
Interdisciplinary study of addiction is facilitated by relative unification of the concept. What should be sought is not formal unification through literal analytic definition, which would undermine practical flexibility within disciplines…
View article: The Risk of Gambling Problems in the General Population: A Reconsideration
The Risk of Gambling Problems in the General Population: A Reconsideration Open
We examine the manner in which the population prevalence of disordered gambling has usually been estimated, on the basis of surveys that suffer from a potential sample selection bias. General population surveys screen respondents using see…
View article: Gambling Behavior in Controlled Laboratory Experiments
Gambling Behavior in Controlled Laboratory Experiments Open
We designed a slot machine interface to study gambling behavior over real monetary amounts in a controlled laboratory environment. The interface allowed us to study the effect of multiple playlines compared to single playlines, the use of …
View article: Special, radical, failure of reduction in psychiatry
Special, radical, failure of reduction in psychiatry Open
Use of network models to identify causal structure typically blocks reduction across the sciences. Entanglement of mental processes with environmental and intentional relationships, as Borsboom et al. argue, makes reduction of psychology t…
View article: Stability of democracies: a complex systems perspective
Stability of democracies: a complex systems perspective Open
The idea that democracy is under threat, after being largely dormant for at least 40 years, is looming increasingly large in public discourse. Complex systems theory offers a range of powerful new tools to analyse the stability of social i…
View article: Risk Preferences, Time Preferences, and Smoking Behavior
Risk Preferences, Time Preferences, and Smoking Behavior Open
There is a rich theoretical literature in economics which models habit‐forming behaviors, of which addiction is the exemplar, but there is a paucity of experimental economic studies eliciting and comparing the preferences that economic the…
View article: Do People Bundle Sequences of Choices?: An Experimental Investigation
Do People Bundle Sequences of Choices?: An Experimental Investigation Open
Economists and psychologists have sought to model and explain both impulsive behavior and the costly but often successful mechanisms by which people control it. Ainslie [1975][1992][2001] suggests that self-control is often achieved on acc…
View article: Smoking and Intertemporal Risk Attitudes
Smoking and Intertemporal Risk Attitudes Open
Atemporal risk preferences, time preferences, and intertemporal risk preferences are central to economic explanations of addiction, but have received little attention in the experimental economic literature on substance use. We conduct an …
View article: Two fallacies in comparisons between humans and non-humans
Two fallacies in comparisons between humans and non-humans Open
The hypothesis that humans are superior to non-humans by virtue of higher cognitive powers is often supported by two recurrent fallacies: (1) that any competence shown by humans but not by our closest living relatives (apes) must be unique…
View article: Small stakes risk aversion in the laboratory: A reconsideration
Small stakes risk aversion in the laboratory: A reconsideration Open
Evidence of risk aversion in laboratory settings over small stakes leads to a priori implausible levels of risk aversion over large stakes under certain assumptions. One core assumption in statements of this calibration puzzle is that smal…
View article: Disordered Gambling Prevalence: Methodological Innovations in a General Danish Population Survey
Disordered Gambling Prevalence: Methodological Innovations in a General Danish Population Survey Open
We study Danish adult gambling behavior with an emphasis on discovering patterns relevant to public health forecasting and economic welfare assessment of policy. Methodological innovations include measurement of formative in addition to re…
View article: Introduction to special issue on INEM 2015
Introduction to special issue on INEM 2015 Open
The International Network for Economic Methodology (INEM) held its first academic conference outside the OECD in Cape Town, South Africa, in November 2015. The conference was hosted by the School o...