Rob Sica
@robsica.bsky.social
Knowledge would have little allure if we did not have to overcome so much shame on the way to acquiring it. -Nietzsche
"I am willing to believe that Plato was aware of the fact that his view of the truth could only be his view."
Why Did Plato not Write the ‘Unwritten Doctrine’? Some Preliminary Remarks
This article asks the question “Why did Plato not write the ‘unwritten doctrine’?” and answers it by citing a combination of two obstacles. The first derives from the limitations of the episteme avail...
www.degruyterbrill.com
November 29, 2025 at 3:16 AM
"I am willing to believe that Plato was aware of the fact that his view of the truth could only be his view."
"We should think of disinformation as content that functions to degrade the value of information for the audience rather than content that combines with the audience's evidence to warrant reduced confidence in truths."
Clayton Littlejohn, Disinformation is for Degrading the Value of Information, not Confirming Falsehoods - PhilPapers
According to a recent account of disinformation, disinformation is content that “generates ignorance” (Simion 2024a; 2024b). The view improves upon previous accounts that focused upon the potential fo...
philpapers.org
November 29, 2025 at 1:22 AM
"We should think of disinformation as content that functions to degrade the value of information for the audience rather than content that combines with the audience's evidence to warrant reduced confidence in truths."
"As early as 1989 I was publishing stuff skeptical of the social sciences’ overweening emphasis on error and bias... fundamentally similar problems [...] characterized research on implicit bias, microaggressions, and stereotype threat"
Why Accuracy Dominates Bias and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
I recently discovered a terrific thread on X summarizing my 2012 book.
unsafescience.substack.com
November 29, 2025 at 12:29 AM
"As early as 1989 I was publishing stuff skeptical of the social sciences’ overweening emphasis on error and bias... fundamentally similar problems [...] characterized research on implicit bias, microaggressions, and stereotype threat"
"it's very important to be capable of indignation about the world... but don't spend more than 15 minutes per day"
EP #18 | Relevance & Communication | Dan Sperber
YouTube video by The Cognitations Podcast
www.youtube.com
November 29, 2025 at 12:25 AM
"it's very important to be capable of indignation about the world... but don't spend more than 15 minutes per day"
🎯"One good reason to get comfortable with being intellectually humble is that the phenomenon of pervasive intelligent disagreement shows that many of us know significantly less than we think we know, even when we manage to have true beliefs."
Philosophy as fact-based discipline: 200 philosophical facts - Philosophical Studies
Philosophical Studies -
link.springer.com
November 28, 2025 at 10:35 PM
🎯"One good reason to get comfortable with being intellectually humble is that the phenomenon of pervasive intelligent disagreement shows that many of us know significantly less than we think we know, even when we manage to have true beliefs."
"Ancient ruins can produce a sense of forebodingness, and this is rooted in their ability to make our own and our species’ relative vulnerability apparent to us."
Ancient Ruins and the Sublime
Abstract. Following a prominent eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tradition, some contemporary philosophers have appealed to the notion of the sublime as
academic.oup.com
November 28, 2025 at 9:57 PM
"Ancient ruins can produce a sense of forebodingness, and this is rooted in their ability to make our own and our species’ relative vulnerability apparent to us."
"the degree to which a belief is epistemic and the degree to which it is symbolic form two distinct dimensions, such that some beliefs can have both qualities but few beliefs can have neither... Darwin’s belief in evolution by natural selection appears to be both"
Martin Meyer & Joshua Knobe, Dimensions of identity-representing belief - PhilPapers
Recent work has proposed that there may be two kinds of beliefs: Symbolic beliefs which express the believer's identity and epistemic beliefs which represent facts. On this proposal, several disparate...
philpapers.org
November 28, 2025 at 8:29 PM
"the degree to which a belief is epistemic and the degree to which it is symbolic form two distinct dimensions, such that some beliefs can have both qualities but few beliefs can have neither... Darwin’s belief in evolution by natural selection appears to be both"
"The behavioural ecology approach has provided a conceptual coherence across several areas of human research, from anthropology to behavioural economics and evolutionary psychology"
Behavioural ecology in the twenty-first century - Nature Ecology & Evolution
This Perspective discusses how the field of behavioural ecology has contributed to fundamental science and tackling global challenges, ranging from understanding how natural selection leads to adaptat...
www.nature.com
November 28, 2025 at 5:18 PM
"The behavioural ecology approach has provided a conceptual coherence across several areas of human research, from anthropology to behavioural economics and evolutionary psychology"
Reposted by Rob Sica
“Murder is wrong, but I don’t disapprove of it”
Expressivist theories of moral language seem to suggest that this sentence should make no sense — but a new paper in Cognition finds that people actually *do* find this sentence largely acceptable
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Expressivist theories of moral language seem to suggest that this sentence should make no sense — but a new paper in Cognition finds that people actually *do* find this sentence largely acceptable
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
November 28, 2025 at 4:39 PM
“Murder is wrong, but I don’t disapprove of it”
Expressivist theories of moral language seem to suggest that this sentence should make no sense — but a new paper in Cognition finds that people actually *do* find this sentence largely acceptable
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Expressivist theories of moral language seem to suggest that this sentence should make no sense — but a new paper in Cognition finds that people actually *do* find this sentence largely acceptable
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Rob Sica
Many secular philosophers still want “moral laws” to be objectively true. But to get there they have to smuggle an unconditional ought out of pure is.
In spite of its appeal, the idea that there are objective moral truths "out there" is misguided.
www.optimallyirrational.com/p/there-are-...
In spite of its appeal, the idea that there are objective moral truths "out there" is misguided.
www.optimallyirrational.com/p/there-are-...
There are no moral laws out there
A criticism of moral realism
www.optimallyirrational.com
November 28, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Many secular philosophers still want “moral laws” to be objectively true. But to get there they have to smuggle an unconditional ought out of pure is.
In spite of its appeal, the idea that there are objective moral truths "out there" is misguided.
www.optimallyirrational.com/p/there-are-...
In spite of its appeal, the idea that there are objective moral truths "out there" is misguided.
www.optimallyirrational.com/p/there-are-...
"widespread trust would be an optimistic possibility only to the extent that the objects of trust are worthy of it"
Trusting Despite Oneself: Stated, Introspected, and Revealed Epistemic Trust
It is commonly claimed, based in large part on survey data, that we now face a crisis of trust characterised in part by a lack of epistemic trust in experts and mainstream media institutions. Such ...
www.tandfonline.com
November 28, 2025 at 1:46 PM
"widespread trust would be an optimistic possibility only to the extent that the objects of trust are worthy of it"
"Evolutionary psychology didn’t just help me understand a sexual norm I had never personally embodied—it also offered a kind of solace at a moment when my 'social fitness' was close to zero."
“Nothing Is to Be Feared. Everything Is to Be Understood.”
An interview with Peggy Sastre
quillette.com
November 28, 2025 at 5:32 AM
"Evolutionary psychology didn’t just help me understand a sexual norm I had never personally embodied—it also offered a kind of solace at a moment when my 'social fitness' was close to zero."
"We therefore encourage policymakers to consider designing interventions to maximize reductions in absolute poverty rather than focusing on inequality per se."
No meta-analytical effect of economic inequality on well-being or mental health - Nature
A meta-analysis of 168 studies reveals that economic inequality is not significantly associated with subjective well-being or mental health.
www.nature.com
November 28, 2025 at 4:31 AM
"We therefore encourage policymakers to consider designing interventions to maximize reductions in absolute poverty rather than focusing on inequality per se."
"But we could ask the question differently: how wide is the range of phenotypic plasticity, or rather, to what degree do cognitive technologies developed in different places and times expand our knowledge of the variability in human cognition?" doi.org/10.1111/tops...
November 28, 2025 at 1:23 AM
"But we could ask the question differently: how wide is the range of phenotypic plasticity, or rather, to what degree do cognitive technologies developed in different places and times expand our knowledge of the variability in human cognition?" doi.org/10.1111/tops...
"Much of what has happened to us in the past, and thus much of who we are now, was hoisted by contingencies that cannot themselves be hung on the hook of a functional explanation. Yet our contingencies are amenable to empirical forms of inquiry and understanding."
Genealogy, Empirical History, and Functional Teleology
Abstract. Growing interest in genealogy within analytical philosophy could bring a historical sensibility to a way of doing philosophy that has long been c
academic.oup.com
November 28, 2025 at 1:06 AM
"Much of what has happened to us in the past, and thus much of who we are now, was hoisted by contingencies that cannot themselves be hung on the hook of a functional explanation. Yet our contingencies are amenable to empirical forms of inquiry and understanding."
😇🔫"pragmatically, moral interventions tend to start with polite words and good intentions and tend to end with people looking down the barrel of a gun"
Trust the Process
How should be think about moral progress? In her book Progress and Regression , Rahel Jaeggi answers this question from the perspective of critical social theory. She claims that, if we want to avoid ...
www.degruyterbrill.com
November 27, 2025 at 8:58 PM
😇🔫"pragmatically, moral interventions tend to start with polite words and good intentions and tend to end with people looking down the barrel of a gun"
"Moral expertise would warrant deference to an expert's moral judgment whereas ethics expertise should be seen as an invitation to engage in deliberation and as support for one's own moral reasoning."
Ethics Communication in Journalism: Using Expert Sources with the Goal of Fostering Ethics Literacy - The Journal of Ethics
The last decades have seen a resurgence of ethicists in public discourse. In the news media, they are called upon to comment on current affairs and public policy. I argue that the epistemic status of ...
link.springer.com
November 27, 2025 at 8:48 PM
"Moral expertise would warrant deference to an expert's moral judgment whereas ethics expertise should be seen as an invitation to engage in deliberation and as support for one's own moral reasoning."
"The book, like their academic work, posits two different hypotheses... Without ever choosing between these two theories"
The Scientists Persecuted for Their Rape Research
For their research showing that rape is generally motivated by sexual desire, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer were subjected to death threats and hounded in their personal and professional lives. And...
quillette.com
November 27, 2025 at 7:02 PM
"The book, like their academic work, posits two different hypotheses... Without ever choosing between these two theories"
Reposted by Rob Sica
My article on Schopenhauer‘s alleged misanthropy is now available in early view - and it’s open access!
How Not to Hate Humanity: Schopenhauer's Response to Misanthropy
Abstract. Schopenhauer has a longstanding reputation for misanthropy. The reputation is warranted, but it is also potentially misleading. Privately, Schope
academic.oup.com
November 27, 2025 at 3:51 PM
My article on Schopenhauer‘s alleged misanthropy is now available in early view - and it’s open access!
"Men make up 81% of homicide victims globally, yet women make up 66% of IPH [intimate partner homicide] victims... Global homicide rates [began] a sustained decline [following the 1990s]... However, rates of IPH have remained relatively steady over time"
Intimate Partner Violence Against Women
Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is the most prevalent form of gender-based violence (GBV) and remains a pervasive global concern. This m…
www.sciencedirect.com
November 27, 2025 at 5:55 PM
"Men make up 81% of homicide victims globally, yet women make up 66% of IPH [intimate partner homicide] victims... Global homicide rates [began] a sustained decline [following the 1990s]... However, rates of IPH have remained relatively steady over time"
"but one thing they had in common was a spurious air of rectitude"
Larry Summers, Ken Starr, Jeffrey Epstein, and everyone else
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/11/27/l...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/11/27/l...
Larry Summers, Ken Starr, Jeffrey Epstein, and everyone else | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
November 27, 2025 at 5:26 PM
"but one thing they had in common was a spurious air of rectitude"
"rather than automatic agency detection, a more likely path to widespread supernatural agent beliefs is through a motivation to explain the unexplainable paired with the tendency to explain things with human-like mental states"
Belief as explanation: a motivation-based theory of agency and anthropomorphism in religious belief
Supernatural agent beliefs are ubiquitous across cultures, yet many theories aimed at explaining this fact have not held up to scrutiny. The most famous of these, the Hyperactive Agency Detection D...
www.tandfonline.com
November 27, 2025 at 5:02 PM
"rather than automatic agency detection, a more likely path to widespread supernatural agent beliefs is through a motivation to explain the unexplainable paired with the tendency to explain things with human-like mental states"
Reposted by Rob Sica
So, is "When Prophesy Fails"—the foundation of cognitive dissonance theory—debunked?
Unclear. The article making this claim is... odd.
It describes Festinger and Schachter as leftwing radicals, critiques the political slant of their funding, generally refers to their work as failed...
1/n
Unclear. The article making this claim is... odd.
It describes Festinger and Schachter as leftwing radicals, critiques the political slant of their funding, generally refers to their work as failed...
1/n
Wow - debunking “When Prophesy Fails” - the canonical foundation of cognitive dissonance theory onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
November 26, 2025 at 3:11 PM
So, is "When Prophesy Fails"—the foundation of cognitive dissonance theory—debunked?
Unclear. The article making this claim is... odd.
It describes Festinger and Schachter as leftwing radicals, critiques the political slant of their funding, generally refers to their work as failed...
1/n
Unclear. The article making this claim is... odd.
It describes Festinger and Schachter as leftwing radicals, critiques the political slant of their funding, generally refers to their work as failed...
1/n
"the current study tested whether 3- to 6-year-olds perceive those who perform costly rituals as more trustworthy than those who do not"
Costly ritualized actions induce trust in young children
The prevalence of costly rituals across different cultures could be viewed as confusing from an evolutionary perspective. Against this are suggestions they function as group-wide signals of commitm...
www.tandfonline.com
November 27, 2025 at 12:41 PM
"the current study tested whether 3- to 6-year-olds perceive those who perform costly rituals as more trustworthy than those who do not"