When more information leads to greater willingness to sacrifice

When more information leads to greater willingness to sacrifice: moral dilemmas and utilitarian accessibility Can it be moral to kill? Can we sacrifice a life to save many others? Or is killing always wrong? This fundamental question looms large in the philosophy of ethics. On the one hand, deontologists such as Immanuel Kant, argue that the morality […]

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What are you looking at, cockatoo? Does social learning depend on social relationships?

As a lecturer, I know my students but I do find it hard to keep track of which students are doing which modules and who graduated one vs two years ago. Complex group living requires animals to know and keep track of various relations between themselves and others. These could be seen in the form […]

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Keeping Andromeda peripheral: tracking multiple targets out of the corner of your eye

We owe most of our visual acuity to our fovea, the area of the retina that is most densely packed with photo-receptive cones. Whenever we focus on an object, we move our eyes so that the image is projected onto this area that contains nearly 150,000 cone receptors per square millimeter. Anything that is projected onto […]

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Historical memories without (much) historical hatred?

We are all part of a culture: certain behaviors and practices are deeply ingrained in our society and, by implication, in all of us. For example, one strongly normative behavior in the United Kingdom is to queue politely for the bus or the checkout in the supermarket. (Apparently this norm is so strong that disproportionately […]

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Lifelong experience with video gaming confers enhanced cognitive benefits

Video games have gotten a bad rap. When googling “do video games”, the first results Google suggests are “rot your brain”, “make you dumber”, and then finally “make you smarter.” As far as the last option is concerned, evidence seems to be accumulating that shows that gaming does enhance visual processing and cognitive control skills. […]

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