Recent findings in anthrozoologythe study of humananimal interactionsshed light on psychological and social aspects of cruelty. Here we briefly discuss four areas that connect animal cruelty and cruelty directed toward humans: (1) voices of perpetrators and their audiences, (2) gender differences in cruelty, (3) cruelty as play, and (4) the putative relationship between animal abuse and interpersonal violence.

In this response I discuss some of the key issues raised by the commentators on The Rational Imagination. I consider whether the imaginative creation of alternatives to reality is rational or irrational, and what happens in childhood cognition to enable a rational imagination to develop. I outline how thoughts about causality, counterfactuality, and controllability are intertwined and why some sorts of possibilities are more readily imagined than others. I conclude with a consideration of what the counterfactual imagination is for.

May argues that framing effects do not undermine moral beliefs, because they affect only a minority of moral judgments in small ways. We criticize his estimates of the extent of framing effects on moral judgments, and then we argue that framing effects would cause trouble for moral judgments even if his estimates were correct.

O'Regan & Noë (O&N) argue that there is no need of internal, more or less picture-like, representation of the visual world in the brain. They propose a new approach in which vision is a mode of exploration of the world that is mediated by knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies. Data obtained in “change blindness” experiments support this assumption.

According to embodied cognition theory, our physical embodiment influences how we conceptualize entities, whether natural or supernatural. In serving central explanatory roles, supernatural entities (e.g., God) are represented implicitly as having unordinary properties that nevertheless do not violate our sensorimotor interactions with the physical world. We conjecture that other supernatural entities are similarly represented in explanatory contexts.

We consider a computational model comparing the possible roles of “association” and “simulation” in phonetic decoding, demonstrating that these two routes can contain similar information in some “perfect” communication situations and highlighting situations where their decoding performance differs. We conclude that optimal decoding should involve some sort of fusion of association and simulation in the human brain.

We offer two kinds of constructive criticism in the spirit of support for Doris's socially scaffolded pluralism regarding agency. First: The skeptical force of potential “goofy influences” is not as straightforward as Doris argues. Second: Doris's positive theory must address more goofy influences due to social processes that appear to fall under his criteria for agency-promoting practices. Finally, we highlight “arms race” phenomena in Doris's social dynamics that invite closer attention in further development of his theory.

The authors O'Regan & Noë (O&N) have ignored the case for the visual field as being non-epistemic evidence internal to the brain, having no pictorial similarity to the external input, and being material in ontological status. They are also not aware of the case for the evolutionary advantage of learning as the perceptual refashioning of such non-epistemic sensory evidence via motivated feedback in sensorimotor activity.

Evidence accumulates that pre- and postnatally circulating estrogens play an active role in the differentiation of the female brain: the susceptible period for feminization of the brain seems to extend far beyond the period during which masculinization of the brain occurs. Thus, there is a need to reevaluate the widely accepted “concept of basic femaleness” in sexual brain differentiation.

The special sense in which the concept of “selfishness” is defined in Dawkins's popularization of basic evolutionary theory is analyzed with regard to its applicability to the relation between goals and those who entertain and pursue them. It is concluded that grounds analogous to those on which independent self-interest vis-á-vis their hosts is attributed to genes in Dawkins's sense are lacking in the case of goals in their relation to those who entertain and pursue them.

Commentators agree that the Perception and Attention Deficit (PAD) model is a promising model for accounting for recurrent complex visual hallucinations (RCVH) across several disorders, though with varying detailed criticisms. Its central tenets are not modified, but further consideration of generative models of visual processing and the relationship of proto-objects and memory systems allows the PAD model to deal with variations in phenomenology. The commentaries suggest new ways to generate evidence that will test the model.

It appears that knappers intentionally produced symmetrical stones. Use of the dorsal pathways in knapping does not preclude shape perception, nor does it obviate use of ventral pathways in other tasks in Homo sapiens 400,000 years ago. Shape perception precedes production in present-day human infants, suggesting that symmetry perception was used by knappers of symmetrical stones.

A view of inequality as a relationship between the advantaged and the disadvantaged has gained considerable currency in psychological research. However, the implications of this view for theories and interventions designed to reduce inequality remain largely unexplored. Drawing on the literature on close relationships, we identify several key features that a relational theory of social change should include.

The adaptive trade-offs between long- and short-term matings may be mediated or at least reflected partially by the trade-offs between the relative reinforcement obtained through a greater frequency of intercourse (typically greater among cohabitants) versus a greater frequency of partner change. The differing correlates of each approach and meshing with the Sexual Strategies Theory of Gangestad & Simpson are discussed.