The study of decision making has traditionally been dominated by axiomatic utility theories. More recently, an alternative approach, which focuses on the micro-mechanisms of the underlying deliberation process, has been shown to account for several "paradoxes" in human choice behavior for which simple utility-based approaches cannot. Decision field theory (DFT) is a cognitive-dynamical model of decision making and preferential choice, built on the fundamental principle that decisions are based on the accumulation of subjective evaluations of choice alternatives until a threshold (...) criterion is met. This article extends the basic DFT framework to the domain of dynamic decision making. DFT-Dynamic is proposed as a new alternative to normative backward induction. Through its attention to the processes underlying planning and deliberation DFT-D provides simple, emergent explanations for violations of choice principles traditionally taken as evidence of irrationality. A recent multistage decision making study is used to showcase the model's efficacy for developing cognitive models of individual strategies. (shrink)

The verbs cause, enable, and prevent express beliefs about the way the world works. We offer a theory of their meaning in terms of the structure of those beliefs expressed using qualitative properties of causal models, a graphical framework for representing causal structure. We propose that these verbs refer to a causal model relevant to a discourse and that “A causes B” expresses the belief that the causal model includes a link from A to B. “A enables/allows B” entails that (...) the model includes a link from A to B, that A represents a category of events necessary for B, and that an alternative cause of B exists. “A prevents B” entails that the model includes a link from A to B and that A reduces the likelihood of B. This theory is able to account for the results of four experiments as well as a variety of existing data on human reasoning. (shrink)

Abstract:Ecofeminism refers to a broad range philosophical and political movements that call attention to the link between social oppression and environmental destruction. Despite their relevance and potential theoretical and practical utility, ecofeminisms are largely absent from extant approaches to environmental governance (E-Governance). In addition to calling attention to the absence of ecofeminist voices in this arena, this paper explores the consequences of said exclusion and assesses the potential for ecofeminism to inform and ultimately improve E-Governance initiatives. I find that E-Governance (...) research often disregards or fails to explicitly acknowledge and incorporate the inseparable and mutually reinforcing nature of social and environmental forms of domination and oppression. The consequences of this are twofold. First, many extant approaches forgo any opportunity to leverage the resolution of social inequities as a potential mechanism for reducing environmental harm. Second, initiatives that appear to be equity-driven often emerge as paternalistic and perpetuate the marginalization of oppressed groups. Accordingly, I develop and apply a novel collection of ecofeminist-informed design principles for evaluating, informing, and improving existing E-Governance initiatives. Ultimately, this paper yields fresh insight into the way ecofeminist voices can help researchers, communities, and societies transform how they think about societal interactions with the environment and equips E-Governance with the capacity to challenge social and environmental exploitation simultaneously. (shrink)

Motivation: There is an ongoing search for definitive and reliable biomarkers to forecast or predict imminent seizure onset, but to date most research has been limited to EEG with sampling rates <1,000 Hz. High-frequency oscillations have gained acceptance as an indicator of epileptic tissue, but few have investigated the temporal properties of HFOs or their potential role as a predictor in seizure prediction. Here we evaluate time-varying trends in preictal HFO rates as a potential biomarker of seizure prediction.Methods: HFOs were (...) identified for all interictal and preictal periods with a validated automated detector in 27 patients who underwent intracranial EEG monitoring. We used LASSO logistic regression with several features of the HFO rate to distinguish preictal from interictal periods in each individual. We then tested these models with held-out data and evaluated their performance with the area-under-the-curve of their receiver-operating curve. Finally, we assessed the significance of these results using non-parametric statistical tests.Results: There was variability in the ability of HFOs to discern preictal from interictal states across our cohort. We identified a subset of 10 patients in whom the presence of the preictal state could be successfully predicted better than chance. For some of these individuals, average AUC in the held-out data reached higher than 0.80, which suggests that HFO rates can significantly differentiate preictal and interictal periods for certain patients.Significance: These findings show that temporal trends in HFO rate can predict the preictal state better than random chance in some individuals. Such promising results indicate that future prediction efforts would benefit from the inclusion of high-frequency information in their predictive models and technological architecture. (shrink)

The success of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders and the improved understanding of the neurobiologic and neuroanatomic bases of psychiatric diseases have led to proposals to expand current DBS applications. Recent preclinical and clinical work with Alzheimer's disease and obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example, supports the safety of stimulating regions in the hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens in humans. These regions are known to be involved in addiction and overeating associated with obesity. However, the use of DBS targeting these areas (...) as a treatment modality raises common ethical considerations, which include informed consent, coercion, enhancement, threat to personhood, and manipulation of the reward center. Pilot studies for both of these conditions are currently investigational. If these studies show promise, then there is a need to address the ethical concerns related to the initiation of clinical trials including the reliability of preclinical evidence, patient selection, study design, compensation for participation and injury, cost-effectiveness, and the need for long-term follow-up. Multidisciplinary teams are necessary for the ethical execution of such studies. In addition to establishing safety and efficacy, the consideration of these ethical issues is vital to the adoption of DBS as a treatment for these conditions. We offer suggestions about the pursuit of future clinical trials of DBS for the treatment of addiction and overeating associated with obesity and provide a framework for addressing ethical concerns related to treatment. (shrink)

In this article, the insertion of a two-staged highly interesting question in an online, survey-based field experiment is shown to produce better survey completion rate (i.e., decreases completion refusal by 8%) and sample representativeness (increases the number of moderate answer patterns by 12%) than a typical (same) highly interesting question at the beginning of a survey only. Using nonparametric tests and subgroup probability analysis, measured effects include survey completion rates, response bias and reported demographic differences. In regards to sample representativeness, (...) the results also raise questions about the sensitivity of the conventional practice of comparing early to late respondent means scores as a method of investigating nonresponse bias in marketing research. Alternative approaches to measuring potential non-response bias are compared with the tradition of comparing early-wave verses late-wave mean respondent differences. The results indicate that the conventional mean test fails to identify differences in nonresponse bias; the scores of highly interested or opposed respondents in the first waves produce equivalent means to the scores of the less interested or opposed respondents in the latter wave between the surveys (e.g., 1's and 5's vs. 2's and 4's, both averaging to 3's) that are identifiable through kurtosis and probability analysis. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) integrated model of production and comprehension includes no explicit role for nonlinguistic cognitive processes. Yet, how domain-general cognitive functions contribute to language processing has become clearer with well-specified theories and supporting data. We therefore believe that their account can benefit by incorporating functions like working memory and cognitive control into a unified model of language processing.

Cognitive control refers to the regulation of mental activity to support flexible cognition across different domains. Cragg and Nation (2010) propose that the development of cognitive control in children parallels the development of language abilities, particularly inner speech. We suggest that children’s late development of cognitive control also mirrors their limited ability to revise misinterpretations of sentence meaning. Moreover, we argue that for certain tasks, a tradeoff between bottom-up (data-driven) and top-down (rule-based) thinking may actually benefit performance in both children (...) and adults. Specifically, we propose that a lack of cognitive control may promote important aspects of cognitive development, like language acquisition and creativity. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from the contentReligion and Human Rights: An Introductionby John Witte and M. Christian Green, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011Religion and Development: Ways of Transforming the Worldby Gerrie ter Haar London: Hurst & Co., 2011The question of religion in either human rights or development has sparked long and loud debate in the wake of the Cold War. This discourse focuses on whether or not religion is needed in a post-Enlightenment world, and if it is what its (...) role should be, or whether or not religions must jettison articles of faith for a new humanistic social order. The two books reviewed here, Religion and Human Rights: An Introduction, edited by John Witte and M. Christian Green, and Religion and Development: Ways of Transforming the World, edited by Gerrie ter Haar, meet this question head on and attempt to provide recommendations for including religion in the great struggle to bring freedom and justice to all people. The collected essays are stunning in their depth and breadth of per. (shrink)

GIS for Science presents a collection of real-world stories about modern science and a cadre of scientists who use mapping and spatial analytics to expand their understanding of the world. The accounts in this book are written for a broad audience including professional scientists, the swelling ranks of citizen scientists, and people generally interested in science and geography. Scientific data are brought to life with GIS technology to study a range of issues relevant to the functioning of planet Earth in (...) a natural sense as well as the impacts of human activity. In a race against the clock, the scientists profiled in this volume are using remote sensing, web maps within a geospatial cloud, Esri StoryMaps, and spatial analysis to document and solve an array of issues with a geographic dimension, ranging from climate change, natural disasters, and loss of biodiversity, to homelessness, loss of green infrastructure, and resource shortages. These stories present geospatial ideas and inspiration that readers can apply across many disciplines, making this volume relevant to a diverse scientific audience. See how scientists working on the world's most pressing problems apply geographic information systems--GIS. -- "Mike Goodchild". (shrink)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a tortured concept. In this paper, we reframe CSR into a number of discrete Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR’s), each of which can have a positive or negative social impact, and each of which has an endogenous managerially driven component, and an exogenous stakeholder driven component. Using an industry-level sample drawn from the KLD data base, we test the impact of hypothesized drivers of CSR on various CSR’s.

Children are vulnerable to adverse effects of food advertising. Food commercials are known to increase hedonic, taste-oriented, and unhealthy food decisions. The current study examined how promoting resilience to food commercials impacted susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making in children. To promote resilience to food commercials, we utilized the food advertising literacy intervention intended to enhance cognitive skepticism and critical thinking, and decrease positive attitudes toward commercials. Thirty-six children aged 8–12 years were randomly assigned to the food advertising literacy intervention or (...) the control condition. Eighteen children received four brief intervention sessions via video over 1 week period. In each session, children watched six food commercials with interspersed embedded intervention narratives. While watching food commercials and narratives, children were encouraged to speak their thoughts out loud spontaneously (“think-aloud”), which provided children's attitudes toward commercials. Eighteen children in the control condition had four control sessions over 1 week, and watched the same food commercials without intervention narratives while thinking aloud. The first and last sessions were held in the laboratory, and the second and third sessions were held at the children's homes. Susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making was indicated by the decision weights of taste attributes, taste perception, food choices,ad libitumsnacking, and cognitive and affective attitudes toward food commercials. As hypothesized, the intervention successfully decreased susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making evidenced by reduced decision weights of the taste in food decisions, decreased tasty perception of unhealthy foods, and increased cognitive skepticism and critical thinking toward food commercials. In addition, as children's opinions assimilated to intervention narratives, their cognitive skepticism and critical thinking toward commercials increased. The aforementioned results were not shown in the control condition. However, this brief intervention was not enough to change actual food choices or food consumption. Results of this study suggest that promoting resilience to food commercials by enhancing cognitive skepticism and critical thinking effectively reduced children's susceptibility to unhealthy food-decision making. (shrink)

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive neurostimulatory and neuromodulatory technique increasingly used in clinical and research practices around the world. Historically, the ethical considerations guiding the therapeutic practice of TMS were largely concerned with aspects of subject safety in clinical trials. While safety remains of paramount importance, the recent US Food and Drug Administration approval of the Neuronetics NeuroStar TMS device for the treatment of specific medication-resistant depression has raised a number of additional ethical concerns, including marketing, off-label use (...) and technician certification. This article provides an overview of the history of TMS and highlights the ethical questions that are likely arise as the therapeutic use of TMS continues to expand. (shrink)

We propose a coevolutionary model of secrecy and stigmatization. According to this model, secrecy functions to conceal potential fitness costs detected in oneself or one’s genetic kin. In three studies, we found that the content of participants’ distressing secrets overlapped significantly with three domains of social information that were important for inclusive fitness and served as cues for discriminating between rewarding and unrewarding interaction partners: health, mating, and social-exchange behavior. These findings support the notion that secrecy functions primarily as a (...) defense against stigmatization by suppressing information about oneself or one’s kin that evolutionarily has been devalued in mating and social exchange. (shrink)

Political corruption imposes substantial costs on shareholders in the U.S. Yet, we understand little about the basic factors that exacerbate or mitigate the value consequences of political corruption. Using federal corruption convictions data, we find that firm-level economic rents and monitoring mechanisms moderate the negative relation between corruption and firm value. The value consequences of political corruption are exacerbated for firms operating in low-rent product markets and mitigated for firms subject to external monitoring by state governments or monitoring induced by (...) disclosure transparency. Our results should inform managers and policymakers of the tradeoffs imposed on firms operating in politically corrupt districts. (shrink)

Differing worldviews give interdisciplinary work value. However, these same differences are the primary hurdle to productive communication between disciplines. Here, we argue that philosophical issues of metaphysics and epistemology subserve many of the differences in language, methods and motivation that plague interdisciplinary fields like educational neuroscience. Researchers attempting interdisciplinary work may be unaware that issues of philosophy are intimately tied to the way research is performed and evaluated in different fields. As such, a lack of explicit discussion about these assumptions (...) leads to many conflicts in interdisciplinary work that masquerade as more superficial issues. To illustrate, we investigate how philosophical assumptions about the mind may influence researchers in educational neuroscience. The methods employed by researchers in this field are shaped by their metaphysical beliefs, and arguments around these issues can threaten accepted disciplinary ontologies. Additionally, how a researcher understands reduction in the special sciences and how they place their colleagues in this ontology constrains the scope of interdisciplinary projects. In encouraging researchers to explicitly discuss the philosophical assumptions underlying their research we hope to alleviate some of the conflict and establish realistic expectations for collaborative projects. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecognising a facial expression is more difficult when the expresser's body conveys incongruent affect. Existing research has documented such interference for universally recognisable bodil...

Culture can be said to be about the business of 'self-replication'. From the moment of conception, it impresses its patterns and rhythms on the developing, infinitely plastic neuronal substrate of the fetal organism. It shapes this substrate to become preferentially sensitive to its patterns and thus to seek to replicate them as an adult. This process of neural shaping continues throughout life as the capacity of the brain to reorganize itself according to the uses to which it addresses itself never (...) ceases. The extraordinary capacity of culture to extract different abilities from the biological form is clearly manifest in the lexical, vocal, tool manufacture, and writing capabilities emerging in bonobos raised in a Pan/Homo culture. These findings render moot old questions regarding the innate limits of the ape brain. They raise instead far more productive questions about the form and function of the perpetual dance that is constantly taking place between plastic neuronal systems and their external culturally devised ways of being. (shrink)

Our relationship to the infinite is controversial. But it is widely agreed that our powers of reasoning are finite. I disagree with this consensus; I think that we can, and perhaps do, engage in infinite reasoning. Many think it is just obvious that we can't reason infinitely. This is mistaken. Infinite reasoning does not require constructing infinitely long proofs, nor would it gift us with non-recursive mental powers. To reason infinitely we only need an ability to perform infinite inferences. I (...) argue that we have this ability. My argument looks to our best current theories of inference and considers examples of apparent infinite reasoning. My position is controversial, but if I'm right, our theories of truth, mathematics, and beyond could be transformed. And even if I'm wrong, a more careful consideration of infinite reasoning can only deepen our understanding of thinking and reasoning. -/- (Note for readers: the paper's brief discussion of uniform reflection and omega inconsistency is misleading. The imagined interlocutor's argument makes an assumption about the PA-provability of provability generalizations that, while true for the Godel sentence's instances, is unjustified, in general. This means my position is stronger against this objection than the paper suggests, since omega inconsistent theories are not automatically inconsistent with their uniform reflection principles, you also need to assume the arithmetically true Pi-2 sentences.). (shrink)

To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Harvard University professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry, seeks to "rediscover" Martin Luther King, Jr. This is an important and appropriate task for a figure who has achieved mythic status in American political culture, whose words have at times become aphorized in morally bankrupt speeches and corporate campaigns and whose subtly argued theoretical positions have often been diminished in order to "amplify an idea (...) or advance a cause that King actually opposed". King's work and activism developed in concert within a groundswell of grassroots political action and contestation (a point put on fine display perhaps... (shrink)

In Nietzsche's Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects, Justin Remhof argues that Nietzsche was a constructivist about material objects. That is, Nietzsche held that material objects—like hammers, planets, and dinosaurs—are "constitutively dependent" for their existence on our conceptual practices. Planets exist in part because we deploy the concept planet. Remhof defends this interpretation against its competitors, argues that it helps us understand other areas of Nietzsche's thought, and shows how it relates to the views of certain pragmatists and to contemporary (...) disputes in metaphysics. Although I'm not convinced by the arguments for the constructivist reading, there is much of value in the work... (shrink)

We provide an overview of a transdisciplinary project about sustainable forest management under climate change. Our project is a partnership with members of the Menominee Nation, a Tribal Nation located in northern Wisconsin, United States. We use immersive virtual experiences, translated from ecosystem model outcomes, to elicit human values about future forest conditions under alternative scenarios. Our project combines expertise across the sciences and humanities as well as across cultures and knowledge systems. Our management structure, governance, and leadership behaviors have (...) both fostered and constrained our work and must be continuously responsive to changing group dynamics. Our project presents opportunities for substantial contributions to society, including insights and knowledge about complementary ways of knowing, skills training, and professional development, and opportunities for reflexive learning about effective transdisciplinary, translational, and transformative scientific processes. (shrink)

This is a magazine article discussing the philosophy of mathematics and arguing for mathematical conventionalism, written for a non-academic audience. (As often happens with popular articles, the editors made some changes that I'm not completely happy with, e.g., the titled section headings and sub-title).

According to Aristotle, wisdom orchestrates all other virtues and therefore leads to eudaimonia, which can be translated as flourishing or psychological well-being. Wisdom guides people to take the morally right course of action in concrete situations to benefit themselves and others. If Aristotle’s theory is correct, then wisdom should be related to different moral virtues and wisdom, rather than individual virtues, should predict eudaimonic well-being, establishing wisdom as the driving force behind human flourishing. Survey data were collected from 230 undergraduate (...) students (M = 21 years, median age = 20 years) attending five different classes in the social sciences at a university in the Southeast of the United States at the beginning and end of the fall semester in 2016. Bivariate correlations, regression analyses, and a structural equation model were utilized to analyze the data. Three-dimensional wisdom (3D-WS) at the beginning of the semester (T1), consisting of the average of cognitive, reflective, and compassionate personality qualities, was significantly positively related to gratitude, forgiveness, morality/fairness, modesty, greed avoidance, and sincerity at T1. Wisdom at T1 predicted flourishing at the end of the semester (T2), assessed by self-acceptance, mastery, purpose in life, and orientation toward personal growth. Among the virtues, only gratitude at T1 significantly predicted flourishing at T2. It appears that Aristotle was correct! Wisdom, at least as measured by the 3D-WS, seems to orchestrate moral virtues and result in human flourishing. This implies that cultivating the development of wisdom will lead to a better and more flourishing life. (shrink)

This essay presents a fully inferentialist-expressivist account of scientific representation. In general, inferentialist approaches to scientific representation argue that the capacity of a model to represent a target system depends on inferences from models to target systems. Inferentialism is attractive because it makes the epistemic function of models central to their representational capacity. Prior inferentialist approaches to scientific representation, however, have depended on some representational element, such as denotation or representational force. Brandom’s Making It Explicit provides a model of how (...) to fully discharge such representational vocabulary, but it cannot be applied directly to scientific representations. Pursuing a strategy parallel to Brandom’s, this essay begins with an account of how surrogative inference is justified. Scientific representation and the denotation of model elements are then explained in terms of surrogative inference by treating scientific representation and denotation as expressive, analogous to Brandom’s account of truth. The result is a thoroughgoing inferentialism: M is a scientific representation of T if and only if M has scientifically justified surrogative consequences that are answers to questions about T. (shrink)

A response to Gschwandtner focused on the spatial and temporal aspects of liturgical experience, especially as relates to textual tradition and interpretation.

In this introduction to the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means,” the journal's editor questions the assumptions that underwrite standard approaches in the social sciences to the issue of how non-state, tribal societies have dealt with matters of war and peace. He in particular examines and finds wanting the approach that Jared Diamond takes in The World until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?. Whereas Diamond's theme is that modern states can learn (...) much about many things from traditional hunter-gatherer societies, with respect to peacemaking and peace-keeping he finds traditional societies distinctly inferior, and the arguments by which he reaches this conclusion are tautological and also beg the question. This prefatory essay explains that “Peace by Other Means” will analyze and detail non-Western and premodern European means of keeping peace that modern theorists of conflict resolution are reluctant to credit or incompetent to assess. (shrink)

Like other epistemic activities, inquiry seems to be governed by norms. Some have argued that one such norm forbids us from believing the answer to a question and inquiring into it at the same time. But another, hither-to neglected norm seems to permit just this sort of cognitive arrangement when we seek to confirm what we currently believe. In this paper, I suggest that both norms are plausible and that the conflict between them constitutes a puzzle. Drawing on the felicity (...) conditions of confirmation requests and the biased interrogatives used to perform them, I argue that the puzzle is genuine. I conclude by considering a response to the puzzle that has implications for the debate regarding the relationship between credences and beliefs. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained is probably the most widely read book about consciousness ever written by a philosopher. Despite this, the book has had a surprisingly small influence on how most philosophers of mind view consciousness. This might be because many philosophers badly misunderstand the book. They claim it does not even attempt to explain consciousness, but instead denies its very existence. Outside of philosophy the book has had more influence, but is saddled by the same misunderstanding. Now, 30 years (...) after publication, Consciousness Explained deserves reconsideration from anyone interested in consciousness. Here I make a case for this. To start, I will clear up the central misunderstanding of the book. With that done, I will explain and update Dennett’s tantalizing approach to consciousness and the mind. The result brings us very, very close to explaining consciousness. Or so I will argue. (shrink)

The article discusses in a broader historical context the well-known thesis of V. I. Lenin that capitalism was formed as a result of a change in the behavior of large merchants, who, after the state achieves political unity and forms a unified market, switch from trade to the organization of production. Researchers of the 17th century Siberia do not find historical confirmation of Lenin’s scheme, however, it is quite applicable to other countries of the early modern period and to the (...) mechanism of the early stage of the colonial expansion of European powers (I. R. Sokolovsky, 2019). At the same time, J. Diamond’ research pointed out the boundary between “normal” human behavior in the new lands and the behavior of the colonizers of the early modern period. This boundary is a rational or quasi-rational accounting of one’s actions. M. Heidegger calls this approach Gestell. Gestell considers the surrounding world as a calculated resource for self-increasing profit. Using the example of a Swiss wine merchant who died in North America in 1736, the Italian micro-historian K. Ginzburg showed how the merchants and “capitalists” actually acted and what the Gestell that determined their actions looked like in everyday life: predatory appropriation of material and labor resources is gradually getting a solid base of rational calculation. (shrink)

Once upon a time, logical conventionalism was the most popular philosophical theory of logic. It was heavily favored by empiricists, logical positivists, and naturalists. According to logical conventionalism, linguistic conventions explain logical truth, validity, and modality. And conventions themselves are merely syntactic rules of language use, including inference rules. Logical conventionalism promised to eliminate mystery from the philosophy of logic by showing that both the metaphysics and epistemology of logic fit into a scientific picture of reality. For naturalists of all (...) stripes, this was paradise. Alas, paradise was lost. By the end of the twentieth century, logical conventionalism had been almost universally abandoned. But more recently, it has been revitalized. This chapter provides an overview of logical conventionalism and its history, clears away misunderstandings, and briefly responds to both the canonical objections to conventionalism (from Quine, Dummett, Boghossian, and many others) as well as new objections (from Field and Golan). From paradise lost, to paradise regained: logical conventionalism is back. (shrink)