Broad, subjective, relative: the surprising folk concept of basic needs.

Some normative theorists appeal to the concept of basic needs. They argue that when it comes to issues such as global justice, intergenerational justice, human rights or sustainable development our first priority should be that everybody is able to meet these needs. But what are basic needs? We attempt to inform discussions about this question by gathering evidence of ordinary English speakers' intuitions on the concept of basic needs. First, we defend our empirical approach to analyzing this concept and identify a number of its potential features. Then we present three preregistered empirical studies that were conducted to investigate the extent to which ordinary speakers endorse these features. The studies yield convergent evidence for the following three claims: (1) ordinary speakers sometimes apply the concept of basic needs to necessities for a flourishing (not just a minimally decent) life, (2) most ordinary speakers attribute at least some degree of subjectivity to the concept, and (3) most ordinary speakers attribute at least some degree of relativity to the concept. We discuss the implications of these findings for philosophical analyses of basic needs.

Attributing Mind to Groups and Their Members on Two Dimensions.

Psychological research has revealed that people attribute mental states to groups such as companies, especially to those groups that are highly entitative. Moreover, attributing a mind to a group results in the decreased attribution of mind to individual group members. Recent research has demonstrated that the minds of others are perceived in two dimensions-agency and experience. The present study investigated the possibility that this two-dimensional structure exists in mind attribution to groups, and group entitativity has different patterns of relations with these dimensions. A vignette experiment revealed that highly entitative groups were attributed both agency and experience to greater degrees compared to non-entitative groups, while group entitativity reduced only the attribution of agency to the individual group members. Individual members were attributed an equivalent amount of experience regardless of group entitativity. Mind attribution to individual members showed an unpredicted third factor of other-recognition, which was positively related to group entitativity. The implications of mind attribution to moral issues were discussed.