Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T09:15:26.247Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Non-instrumental belief is largely founded on singularity1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2010

George Ainslie
George Ainslie
Affiliation:
151 Coatesville VA Medical Center, Coatesville, PA 19320. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The radical evolutionary step that divides human decision-making from that of nonhumans is the ability to excite the reward process for its own sake, in imagination. Combined with hyperbolic over-valuation of the present, this ability is a potential threat to both the individual's long term survival and the natural selection of high intelligence. Human belief is intrinsically “unfounded” or under-founded, which may or may not be adaptive.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 6 , December 2009 , pp. 511 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ainslie, G. (2001) Breakdown of will. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ainslie, G. (2005) Précis of Breakdown of will. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28(5):635–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ainslie, G. (2010) Procrastination, the basic impulse. In: The thief of time: Philosophical essays on procrastination, ed. Andreou, C. & White, M.. pp. 11–27. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, P. (2004) Descartes' baby: How child development explains what makes us human. Arrow Books.Google Scholar
Gibbon, J. (1977) Scalar expectancy theory and Weber's law in animal timing. Psychological Review 84:279–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, L. & Myerson, J. (2004) A discounting framework for choice with delayed and probabilistic rewards. Psychological Bulletin 130:769–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Humphrey, N. (2004) The placebo effect. In: Oxford companion to the mind, 2nd edition, ed. Gregory, R. L., pp. 735–36. Oxford University Press. Available at: www.humphrey.org.ukGoogle Scholar
Kirby, K. N. (1997) Bidding on the future: Evidence against normative discounting of delayed rewards. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 126:54–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lea, S. E. G. & Webley, P. (2006) Money as tool, money as drug: The biological psychology of a strong incentive. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29:161–209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed