Decades of psychological research have been aimed at modeling how people learn features and categories. The empirical validation of these theories is often based on artificial stimuli with simple representations. Recently, deep neural networks have reached or surpassed human accuracy on tasks such as identifying objects in natural images. These networks learn representations of real‐world stimuli that can potentially be leveraged to capture psychological representations. We find that state‐of‐the‐art object classification networks provide surprisingly accurate predictions of human similarity judgments for (...) natural images, but they fail to capture some of the structure represented by people. We show that a simple transformation that corrects these discrepancies can be obtained through convex optimization. We use the resulting representations to predict the difficulty of learning novel categories of natural images. Our results extend the scope of psychological experiments and computational modeling by enabling tractable use of large natural stimulus sets. (shrink)

This book is a collection of edited interviews from The Free Will Show-a podcast that provides a beginner-friendly introduction to free will while also highlighting recent developments on the topic. The book includes original material as well, including an introduction to the interviews and an afterward with reflections on the podcast by the authors (who are cohosts of The Free Will Show). The book also includes a bibliography and suggestions for further reading after each interview and a glossary of terms (...) at the end of the book. The book will serve well either as a textbook or as an accessible entry-point to the free will debate, whether for an interested non-specialist or a philosopher who works in another area. The first half of this book introduces the main issues and arguments in philosophical debates about free will, including various apparent threats to free will (fatalism, foreknowledge, and determinism), the Consequence Argument, and the problem of luck, among others. The second half of this book introduces the main positions in the debate about free will and determinism, including several varieties of libertarianism and compatibilism, a version of free will skepticism, and some other positions that do not fit neatly into these categories. (shrink)

Critics of synergism often complain that the view entails Pelagianism, and so, critics think, monergism looks like the only live option. Critics of monergism often claim that the view entails that the blame for human sin ultimately traces to God. Recently, several philosophers have attempted to chart a middle path by offering soteriological accounts which are monergistic but maintain the resistibility of God’s grace. In this paper, we present a challenge to such accounts of the resistibility of grace, namely that (...) they imply that human beings are praiseworthy for omitting to resist God’s grace. Even if such views escape Pelagianism as it is typically defined, they fail to avoid the worry at the heart of prominent criticisms of Pelagianism concerning the praise for a human being’s salvation. At the end of the paper, we suggest three possible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

First published in 1975, this is a book of general intellectual interest about the role of the university in contemporary society and that of university teachers in relation to their subjects, their students, and their wider political commitments. Alan Montefiore offers preliminary analyses of the family of concepts most often invoked in discussions of these problems, taking the central dispute to be between those who hold a 'liberal' view of the university and those who regard this notion as illusory, dishonest (...) or undesirable. Six academics, representing, discuss issues of substantive conflict in light of Montefiore's initial distinctions. The volume is of particular interest to students of political and social philosophy, and political and educational theory. It is also intended for a wider readership among those who care about the political status of the universities and recognize the importance and difficulty of the problems involved in this. (shrink)

Equilibrium explanations use an equilibrium to represent and explain a system’s dynamic behavior. They provide a system with the property of global stability: a system will converge towards and remain in equilibrium regardless of its initial conditions and dynamic process. Thus, equilibrium explanations are generally treated as non-causal explanations. There are two claims subsumed under that comprehensive thesis. The first claim is that equilibrium explanations do not identify any causes because a system with global stability resists manipulation. The second claim (...) is that even if equilibrium explanations do identify causes by manipulation, those causes are embedded in a system’s deeper, underlying structural relationships, and those causes are irrelevant to explaining a system’s behavior. Only the system’s structural relationships are relevant. But equilibrium explanations are not monolithic. I compare dynamic systems with multiple, competing equilibria to systems with a globally stable equilibrium. Equilibrium explanations of the former use intervention on a system’s initial conditions and dynamic process to manipulate equilibria, which identifies causes. Furthermore, a system’s initial conditions and dynamic process are relevant to explaining why one equilibrium is selected instead of another. I then apply these lessons to systems with a globally stable equilibrium and discuss when their corresponding equilibrium explanations have a proper role in the parent sciences. (shrink)

In his stimulating article on this topic Mr. Christopher Ehrhardt sought to show that there is no good reason to believe in any intervention by Philip of Macedon in Thessaly earlier than his campaign of 353. The second half of his paper is devoted to the date of Philip's capture of Pagasae, which Diodorus appears to put in the Athenian archon year 354/3 after the fall of Methone, a date adopted by most modern interpreters accepting the emendation for the unidentifiable (...) in the text of Diodorus. Ehrhardt shows well the difficulties of believing in any capture of Pagasae, the port of Pherae, earlier than the capture of Pherae itself, and concludes that the emendation is to be rejected. In this I think he is right, and I am joining him in dating the capture of Pagasae in 352 after Pherae itself had fallen. The first half of his paper, however, rejecting all the evidence suggesting other interventions by Philip in Thessaly earlier than 353, is much harder to accept, for two reasons. (shrink)

Normative game theory unsatisfactorily explains rational behavior. Real people do not behave as predicted, and what is prescribed as rational behavior is normally unattainable in real-life. The problem is that current normative analysis does not account for people's cognitive limitations – their bounded rationality. However, this paper develops an account of bounded rationality that explains the rationality of more realistic behavior. I focus on the Centipede Game, in which boundedly rational players explore and test others' immediate behavior, until they can (...) apply limited backward induction. The result is that the game has a solution in the form of a subjective Nash equilibrium, which boundedly rational players can possibly realize. (shrink)

Policies promoted and adopted for allocating ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic have often prioritised healthcare workers or other essential workers. While the need for such policies has so far been largely averted, renewed stress on health systems from continuing surges, as well as the experience of allocating another scarce resource—vaccination—counsel revisiting the justifications for such prioritisation. Prioritising healthcare workers may have intuitive appeal, but the ethical justifications for doing so and the potential harms that could follow require careful analysis. Ethical (...) justifications commonly offered for healthcare worker prioritisation for ventilators rest on two social value criteria: instrumental value, also known as the ‘multiplier effect’, which may preserve the ability of healthcare workers to help others, and reciprocity, which rewards past usefulness or sacrifice. We argue that these justifications are insufficient to over-ride the common moral commitment to value each person’s life equally. Institutional policies prioritising healthcare workers over other patients also violate other ethical norms of the healthcare professions, including the commitment to put patients first. Furthermore, policy decisions to prioritise healthcare workers for ventilators could engender or deepen existing distrust of the clinicians, hospitals and health systems where those policies exist, even if they are never invoked. (shrink)

This article is a theoretical and empirical exploration of the meaning that accompanies contractual agreements, such as the End-User License Agreements (EULAs) that participants of online communities are required to sign as a condition of participation. As our study indicates, clicking “I agree” on the often lengthy conditions presented during the installation and updating process typically permits third parties (including researchers) to monitor the digitally-mediated actions of users. Through our small-scale study in which we asked participants which terms of EULAs (...) they would find agreeable, the majority confirmed that they simply clicked through the terms presented to them without much knowledge about the terms to which they were agreeing. From a research ethics standpoint, we reflect upon whether or not informed consent is achieved in these cases and pose a challenge to the academic research community to attend to the socio-technical shift from informed consent to a more nebulous concept of contractual agreement, online and offline. (shrink)

Sustained attention, a key cognitive skill that improves during childhood and adolescence, tends to be worse in some emotional and behavioural disorders. Sustained attention is typically studied in non-affective task contexts; here, we used a novel task to index performance in affective versus neutral contexts across adolescence (N = 465; ages 11–18). We asked whether: (i) performance would be worse in negative versus neutral task contexts; (ii) performance would improve with age; (iii) affective interference would be greater in younger adolescents; (...) (iv) adolescents at risk for depression and higher in anxiety would show overall worse performance; and (v) would show differential performance in negative contexts. Results indicated that participants performed more poorly in negative contexts and showed age-related performance improvements. Those at risk of depression performed more poorly than those at lower risk. However, there was no difference between groups as a result of affective context. For anxiety there was no difference in performance as a function of severity. However, those with higher anxiety showed less variance in their reaction times to negative stimuli than those with lower anxiety. One interpretation is that moderate levels of emotional arousal associated with anxiety make individuals less susceptible to the distracting effects of negative stimuli. (shrink)

Most cognitive psychology experiments evaluate models of human cognition using a relatively small, well-controlled set of stimuli. This approach stands in contrast to current work in neuroscience, perception, and computer vision, which have begun to focus on using large databases of natural images. We argue that natural images provide a powerful tool for characterizing the statistical environment in which people operate, for better evaluating psychological theories, and for bringing the insights of cognitive science closer to real applications. We discuss how (...) some of the challenges of using natural images as stimuli in experiments can be addressed through increased sample sizes, using representations from computer vision, and developing new experimental methods. Finally, we illustrate these points by summarizing recent work using large image databases to explore questions about human cognition in four different domains: modeling subjective randomness, defining a quantitative measure of representativeness, identifying prior knowledge used in word learning, and determining the structure of natural categories. (shrink)

Canadian and American population-based research concerning sexual and/or gender minority populations provides evidence of persistent breast and gynecologic cancer-related health disparities and knowledge divides. The Cancer's Margins research investigates the complex intersections of sexual and/or gender marginality and incommensurabilities and improvisation in engagements with biographical and biomedical cancer knowledge. The study examines how sexuality and gender are intersectionally constitutive of complex biopolitical mappings of cancer health knowledge that shape knowledge access and its mobilization in health and treatment decision-making. Interviews were (...) conducted with a diverse group of sexual and/or gender minority breast or gynecologic cancer patients. The LGBQ//T2 cancer patient narratives we have analyzed document in fine grain detail how it is that sexual and/or gender minority cancer patients punctuate the otherwise lockstep assemblage of their cancer treatment decision-making with a persistent engagement in creative attempts to resist, thwart and otherwise manage the possibility of discrimination and likewise, the probability of institutional erasure in care settings. Our findings illustrate the demands that cancer places on LGBQ//T2 patients to choreograph access to, and mobilization of knowledge and care, across significantly distinct and sometimes incommensurable systems of knowledge. (shrink)

The present studies examined whether implied tactile properties during language comprehension influence subsequent direct tactile perception, and the specificity of any such effects. Participants read sentences that implicitly conveyed information regarding tactile properties (e.g., Grace tried on a pair of thick corduroy pants while shopping) that were either related or unrelated to fabrics and varied in implied texture (smooth, medium, rough). After reading each sentence, participants then performed an unrelated rating task during which they felt and rated the texture of (...) a presented fabric. Results demonstrated that the texture properties implied in sentences influence direct tactile perception. Specifically, after reading about a smooth or rough texture, subsequent fabric ratings became notably smoother or rougher, respectively. However, we also show that there was some specificity to these effects: Fabric-related sentences elicited more specific and interactive effects on subsequent ratings. Together, we demonstrate that under certain circumstances, language comprehension can prime tactile representations and affect direct tactile perception. Results are discussed with regard to the nature and scope of multimodal mental simulation during reading. (shrink)

A limiting factor in ethics education in medical training has been difficulty in assessing competence in ethics. This study was conducted to test the concept that content analysis of pediatric residents’ personal reflections about ethics experiences can identify changes in ethical sensitivity and reasoning over time. Analysis of written narratives focused on two of our ethics curriculum’s goals: 1) To raise sensitivity to ethical issues in everyday clinical practice and 2) to enhance critical reflection on personal and professional values as (...) they affect patient care. Content analysis of written reflections was guided by a tool developed to identify and assess the level of ethical reasoning in eight domains determined to be important aspects of ethical competence. Based on the assessment of narratives written at two times (12 to 16 months/apart) during their training, residents showed significant progress in two specific domains: use of professional values, and use of personal values. Residents did not show decline in ethical reasoning in any domain. This study demonstrates that content analysis of personal narratives may provide a useful method for assessment of developing ethical sensitivity and reasoning. (shrink)

In Democracy and the Claims of Nature, the leading thinkers in the fields of environmental, political, and social theory come together to discuss the tensions and sympathies of democratic ideals and environmental values. The prominent contributors reflect upon where we stand in our understanding of the relationship between democracy and the claims of nature. Democracy and the Claims of Nature bridges the gap between the often competing ideals of the two fields, leading to a greater understanding of each for the (...) other. (shrink)

Although the popularity of Humane Education Programs as a method of teaching compassion and caring for all living beings is increasing, there is a need for rigorous, methodologically sound research evaluating the efficacy of HEP. Recent calls for the inclusion of HEP within broader humanistic, environmental, and social justice frameworks underline the importance of HEP beyond a simple “treatment of animals” model. Lack of methodological rigor in the majority of published HEP studies and dispersal across disparate fields , however, means (...) that there is a potential for the popular use of HEP to outstrip our understanding of the variables that impact efficacy. The current study discusses some of these issues and presents a pilot study of a literature-only HEP intervention. Comparisons with an age-matched control group indicated that the four-week HEP resulted in an increase in measures of empathy and treatment of animals, although only the increase in empathy levels was significant. This paper discusses the implications of the current results and areas in need of future consideration. (shrink)