The amoral atheist? A cross-national examination of cultural, motivational, and cognitive antecedents of disbelief, and their implications for morality

AI and We in the Future in the Light of the Ouroboros Model: A Plea for Plurality

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to play an ever more important role in our lives and societies. Here, some boundary conditions and possibilities for shaping and using AI as well as advantageously embedding it in daily life are sketched. On the basis of a recently proposed cognitive architecture that claims to deliver a general layout for both natural intelligence and general AI, a coarse but broad perspective is developed and an emphasis is put on AI ethics. A number of findings, requirements, and recommendations are derived that can transparently be traced to the hypothesized structure and the procedural operation of efficient cognitive agents according to the Ouroboros Model. Including all of the available and possibly relevant information for any action and respecting a “negative imperative” are the most important resulting recommendations. Self-consistency, continual monitoring, equitable considerations, accountability, flexibility, and pragmatic adaptations are highlighted as foundations and, at the same time, mandatory consequences for timely answers to the most relevant questions concerning the embedding of AI in society and ethical rules for this.

“Breaking Free”: A Grounded Theory Study of Atheist Women in the United States

Using a critical, grounded theory approach, we interviewed 31 atheist-identified women to ascertain the ways in which women develop and navigate an atheist identity and how their experience is influenced by patriarchal, hegemonic Christianity in the United States using a concealable stigmatized identity framework. Qualitative analysis resulted in six core categories: (1) Embracing Atheism as Liberation, (2) Escaping Christian Patriarchy, Challenging Atheist Patriarchy, (3) Low Identity Salience Provides Protection from Anti-Atheist Discrimination, (4) Expectations to Conform to Christian Norms, (5) Disclosure Requires Thoughtfulness and Purpose, and (6) Connecting with Other Atheists is Valuable and Elusive. Although atheist women experienced sexism within atheist communities that made connecting with other atheists challenging, participants viewed atheism as liberating them from religious patriarchy. Anti-atheist discrimination was common early in women’s atheist identity development, but not as frequent or salient over time. Rather, Christian hegemony and the expectation to adapt to Christian norms were more distressing than individual acts of anti-atheist discrimination. Therefore, concealment and disclosure were used to reduce personal discomfort and protect others’ feelings, rather than to avoid overt anti-atheist stigma. Integration with previous concealable stigmatized identity and atheism literature is discussed. In the interest of more equitable and healthy atheist communities for women atheists, community members and leaders are encouraged to dismantle patriarchy within secular organizations and center women’s voices and experiences. Clinicians and researchers can increase awareness of how hegemonic, patriarchal Christianity influences their professional work and the women they serve and eradicate such bias from their methods.

Epistemic values and the Big Five: Personality characteristics of those who ascribe personal and moral value to epistemic rationality

People differ in how much personal importance, and moral relevance, they ascribe to epistemic rationality. These stable individual differences can be assessed using the Importance of Rationality Scale (IRS), and Moralized Rationality Scale (MRS). Furthermore, these individual differences are conceptually distinct, and associated with different cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. However, little is known about what signifies and differentiates people who score high (vs. low) on the IRS and MRS respectively, and where these individual differences stem from. In the present research we begin to address these questions by examining how these epistemic values relate to the Big Five personality traits. Two studies consistently show that both the IRS and MRS are positively related to Openness to experience. However, only the MRS is negatively associated with Agreeableness, and only the IRS is positively associated with Conscientiousness.