Three studies examined the co-existence of natural and supernatural explanations for illness and disease transmission, from a developmental perspective. The participants (5-, 7-, 11-, and 15-year-olds and adults; N = 366) were drawn from 2 Sesotho-speaking South African communities, where Western biomedical and traditional healing frameworks were both available. Results indicated that, although biological explanations for illness were endorsed at high levels, witchcraft was also often endorsed. More important, bewitchment explanations were neither the result of ignorance nor replaced by biological (...) explanations. Instead, both natural and supernatural explanations were used to explain the same phenomena, and bewitchment explanations were highest among adults. Taken together, these data provide insight into how diverse, culturally constructed belief systems about illness co-exist across development. (shrink)

Reestablishing feelings of control after experiencing uncertainty has long been considered a fundamental motive for human behavior. We propose that rituals (i.e., socially stipulated, causally opaque practices) provide a means for coping with the aversive feelings associated with randomness due to the perception of a connection between ritual action and a desired outcome. Two experiments were conducted (one in Brazil [n = 40] and another in the United States [n = 94]) to evaluate how the perceived efficacy of rituals is (...) affected by feelings of randomness. In a between-subjects design, the Scramble Sentence Task was used as a priming procedure in three conditions (i.e., randomness, negativity, and neutral) and participants were then asked to rate the efficacy of rituals used for problem-solving purposes. The results demonstrate that priming randomness increased participants' perception of ritual efficacy relative to negativity and neutral conditions. Implications for increasing our understanding of the relationship between perceived control and ritualistic behavior are discussed. (shrink)

Competing Explanations of Competing Explanations: Accounting for Conflict Between Scientific and Folk ExplanationsThis paper focuses on the level of people’s explanatory reasoning. It examines why laypeople prefer folk explanations of various physical or biological phenomena to alternative, well‐understood scientific explanations. Shtulman and Legare call this psychological phenomenon “explanatory co‐existence.” On the basis of new experimental data, they evaluate two possible accounts of explanatory co‐existence, a theory‐based and an associative account, and argue that a theory‐based account is the better supported.

Innovation is fundamental to cumulative culture, allowing progressive modification of existing technology. The authors define innovation as an asocial process, uninfluenced by social information. We argue that innovation is inherently social – innovation is frequently the product of modifying others' outputs, and successful innovations are acquired by others. Research should target examination of the cognitive underpinnings of socially-mediated innovations.

Two studies examined the specificity of effects of explanation on learning by prompting 3- to 6-year-old children to explain a mechanical toy and comparing what they learned about the toy’s causal and non-causal properties to children who only observed the toy, both with and without accompanying verbalization. In Study 1, children were experimentally assigned to either explain or observe the mechanical toy. In Study 2, children were classified according to whether the content of their response to an undirected prompt involved (...) explanation. Dependent measures included whether children understood the toy’s functional-mechanical relationships, remembered perceptual features of the toy, effectively reconstructed the toy, and (for Study 2) generalized the function of the toy when constructing a new one. Results demonstrate that across age groups, explanation promotes causal learning and generalization, but does not improve (and in younger children, can even impair) memory for causally-irrelevant perceptual details. (shrink)

Mounting evidence suggests that endorsement of psychological continuity and the afterlife increases with age. This developmental change raises questions about the cognitive biases, social representations, and cultural input that may support afterlife beliefs. To what extent is there similarity versus diversity across cultures in how people reason about what happens after death? The objective of this study was to compare beliefs about the continuation of biological and psychological functions after death in Tanna, Vanuatu, and the United States. Children, adolescents, and (...) adults were primed with a story that contained either natural or supernatural cues. Participants were then asked whether or not different biological and psychological processes continue to function after death. We predicted that across cultures individuals would be more likely to endorse the continuation of psychological processes over biological processes and that a theistic prime would increase continuation responses regarding both types of process. Results largely supported predictions; U.S. participants provided more continuation responses for psychological than biological processes following both the theistic and non-theistic primes. Participants in Vanuatu, however, provided more continuation responses for biological than psychological processes following the theistic prime. The data provide evidence for both cultural similarity and variability in afterlife beliefs and demonstrate that individuals use both natural and supernatural explanations to interpret the same events. (shrink)

Natural and supernatural explanations are used to interpret the same events in a number of predictable and universal ways. Yet little is known about how variation in diverse cultural ecologies influences how people integrate natural and supernatural explanations. Here, we examine explanatory coexistence in three existentially arousing domains of human thought: illness, death, and human origins using qualitative data from interviews conducted in Tanna, Vanuatu. Vanuatu, a Melanesian archipelago, provides a cultural context ideal for examining variation in explanatory coexistence due (...) to the lack of industrialization and the relatively recent introduction of Christianity and Western education. We argue for the integration of interdisciplinary methodologies from cognitive science and anthropology to inform research on explanatory coexistence. (shrink)

Examining variation in reasoning about sustainability between diverse populations provides unique insight into how group norms surrounding resource conservation develop. Cultural institutions, such as religious organizations and formal schools, can mobilize communities to solve collective challenges associated with resource depletion. This study examined conservation beliefs in a Western industrialized (Austin, Texas, USA) and a non‐Western, subsistence agricultural community (Tanna, Vanuatu) among children, adolescents, and adults (N = 171; n = 58 7–12‐year‐olds, n = 53 13–17‐year‐olds, and n = 60 18–68‐year‐olds). (...) Participants endorsed or rejected four types of justifications for engaging in land and animal conservation: sustainability, moral, religious, or permissible. In both populations, participants endorsed sustainability justifications most frequently. Religious justifications increased with age in Tanna and decreased with age in Austin. Tannese participants were also more likely to endorse multiple justifications for conservation than Austin participants. Data across all justification types show a main effect of age in both communities; endorsement of conservation decreased with age in Austin, but increased with age in Tanna. Across age groups, participants were more likely to endorse the conservation of animals than land in Austin, yet equally as likely to endorse the conservation of land and animals in Tanna. Overall, these results reveal similarities and differences in the beliefs that support the conservation of natural resources across populations. (shrink)

Cross-cultural research provides invaluable information about the origins of and explanations for cognitive and behavioral diversity. Interest in cross-cultural research is growing, but the field continues to be dominated by WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) researchers conducting WEIRD science with WEIRD participants, using WEIRD protocols. To make progress toward improving cognitive and behavioral science, we argue that the field needs (1) data workflows and infrastructures to support long-term high-quality research that is compliant with open-science frameworks; (2) process and (...) participation standards to ensure research is valid, equitable, participatory, and inclusive; (3) training opportunities and resources to ensure the highest standards of proficiency, ethics, and transparency in data collection and processing. Here we discuss infrastructures for cross-cultural research in cognitive and behavioral sciences which we call __Cross-Cultural Data Infrastructures (CCDIs).__ We recommend building global networks of psychologists, anthropologists, demographers, experimental philosophers, educators, and cognitive, learning, and data scientists to distill their procedural and methodological knowledge into a set of community standards. We identify key challenges including protocol validity, researcher diversity, community inclusion, and lack of detail in reporting quality assurance and quality control (QAQC) workflows. Our objective is to help promote dialogue and efforts towards consolidating robust solutions by working with a broad research community to improve the efficiency and quality of cross-cultural research. (shrink)

The target article elaborates upon an extant theoretical framework, “Imitation and Innovation: The Dual Engines of Cultural Learning.” We raise three major concerns: (1) There is limited discussion of cross-cultural universality and variation; (2) overgeneralization of overimitation and omission of other social learning types; and (3) selective imitation in infants and toddlers is not discussed.

What explains the unique features of human culture? Culture is not uniquely human, but human culture is uniquely cumulative. Cumulative culture is a product of our collective intelligence and is supported by cognitive processes and learning strategies that enable people to acquire, transform, and transmit information and technologies within and across generations. Technological and social innovations are currently driving unprecedented changes in cultural complexity and diversity. Innovation is a cognitively and socially complex, multistep process that typically requires (cumulative) cultural learning (...) to achieve. I argue that the technological solutions that characterize twenty-first-century innovation can only be explained by understanding both the capacity to learn from and build upon the insights of others and the transmission systems that store the knowledge and technologies of previous generations. Human uniqueness is a product of cumulative cultural learning, transmission, and innovation. (shrink)

Cognitive flexibility, the adaptation of representations and responses to new task demands, improves dramatically in early childhood. It is unclear, however, whether flexibility is a coherent, unitary cognitive trait, or is an emergent dimension of task-specific performance that varies across populations with divergent experiences. Three-to 5-year-old English-speaking U.S. children and Tswana-speaking South African children completed two distinct language-processing cognitive flexibility tests: the FIM-Animates, a word-learning test, and the 3DCCS, a rule-switching test. U.S. and South African children did not differ in (...) word-learning flexibility but showed similar age-related increases. In contrast, U.S. preschoolers showed an age-related increase in rule-switching flexibility but South African children did not. Verbal recall explained additional variance in both tests but did not modulate the interaction between population sample (i.e., country) and task. We hypothesize that rule-switching flexibility might be more dependent upon particular kinds of cultural experiences, whereas word-learning flexibility is less cross-culturally variable. (shrink)

Our paper studies the anatomy of the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider and its influence on the broader model landscape of particle physics. We investigate the phases of this discovery, which led to a crucial reconfiguration of the model landscape of elementary particle physics and eventually to a confirmation of the standard model. A keyword search of preprints covering the electroweak symmetry breaking sector of particle physics, along with an examination of physicists own understanding of (...) the discovery as documented in semiannual conferences, has allowed us an empirical investigation of its model dynamics. From our analyses we draw two main philosophical lessons concerning the nature of scientific reasoning in a complex experimental and theoretical environment. For one, from a confirmation standpoint, some SM alternatives could be considered even more confirmed by the Higgs discovery than the SM. Nevertheless, the SM largely remains the commonly accepted account of EWSB. We present criteria for comparing degrees of confirmation and expose some limits of a purely logical approach to understanding the Higgs discovery as a victory for the SM. Second, we understand the persistence of SM alternatives in the face of disfavourable evidence by borrowing the Lakatosian concept of a research programme, where the core idea behind a group of models survives, while other aspects adapt to incoming data. In order to apply this framework to the model landscape of EWSB, we must introduce a new category of research programme, the model-group, and we test its viability using the example of composite Higgs models. (shrink)

Dawid's account of non-empirical theory assessment is meant to complement traditional theory assessments. I contend that his arguments don't provide support for this account. His three arguments, the no alternatives argument, the unexpected explanatory connections argument, and the meta-inductive argument from prior theories' success, are all problematic, particularly for an assessment of string theory. In particular, I argue that the meta-inductive argument is idle, because it's role in underwriting the future predictive success of a theory is subsumed by the normal (...) accounting of its predecessor's predictions in theory growth and testing. Dawid's arguments are interdependent, so showing that one fails is sufficient to cast doubt on his entire account. (shrink)

O objetivo do estudo é revisar a literatura brasileira sobre a problemática de desenvolvimento de crianças assistidas em clínicas-escola de 1980 a 2008, para avaliar mudanças nos problemas desenvolvimentais em relação ao sexo da criança. Os artigos são oriundos das bases eletrônicas Bvs, Indexpsi, L..

Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programmes centres around series of theories, with little regard to the role of models in theory construction. Modifying it to incorporate model-groups, clusters of developmental models that are intended to become new theories, provides a description of the model dynamics within the search for physics beyond the standard model. At the moment, there is no evidence for BSM physics, despite a concerted search effort especially focused around the standard model account of electroweak symmetry breaking. Using (...) the framework provided by Lakatosian research programmes, we can capture the way the periphery of a model-group changes as the available parameter space shrinks, while its central tenets remain untouched by unfavourable experimental findings. By way of motivation, I provide two case studies of model-groups that offer alternative mechanisms for electroweak symmetry breaking: supersymmetry and composite-Higgs models. Both of these model-groups are under pressure from the discovery of the Higgs boson, yet they have both been active research projects in the years after the Higgs discovery. However, a proper assessment of the progress of an ongoing research programme is impossible through a purely Lakatosian lens, so I propose replacing it with Laudan’s problem-solving account, which provides ongoing assessment, while offering normative guidance concerning the pursuit-worthiness of research programmes. My incorporation of model-groups into Lakatosian research programmes captures the developments of two attempts to expand our physical description of the world, and Laudan’s problem-solving rationality allows us to assess their pursuit-worthiness. (shrink)

A report on the 2019 Bonn “Simplicities and Complexities” Conference, organized by "The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider" research unit.

Experiments in particle physics have hitherto failed to produce any significant evidence for the many explicit models of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) that had been proposed over the past decades. As a result, physicists have increasingly turned to model-independent strategies as tools in searching for a wide range of possible BSM effects. In this paper, we describe the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SM-EFT) and analyse it in the context of the philosophical discussions about models, theories, and (bottom-up) (...) effective field theories. We find that while the SM-EFT is a quantum field theory, assisting experimentalists in searching for deviations from the SM, in its general form it lacks some of the characteristic features of models. Those features only come into play if put in by hand or prompted by empirical evidence for deviations. Employing different philosophical approaches to models, we argue that the case study suggests not to take a view on models that is overly permissive because it blurs the lines between the different stages of the SM-EFT research strategies and glosses over particle physicists' motivations for undertaking this bottom-up approach in the first place. Looking at EFTs from the perspective of modelling does not require taking a stance on some specific brand of realism or taking sides in the debate between reduction and emergence into which EFTs have recently been embedded. (shrink)

Terence Irwin's edition of the Nicomachean Ethics offers more aids to the reader than are found in any modern English translation. It includes an Introduction, headings to help the reader follow the argument, explanatory notes on difficult or important passages, and a full glossary explaining Aristotle's technical terms. The Third Edition offers additional revisions of the translation as well as revised and expanded versions of the notes, glossary, and Introduction. Also new is an appendix featuring translated selections from related texts (...) of Aristotle. (shrink)

Leibniz occupe une position centrale dans la pensee de Husserl, surtout en ce qui concerne la determination phenomenologique du probleme de l'intersubjectivite, mais ii joue un rdle important tout le long du parcours de Husserl. Ce rdle de Leibniz a peut-£ tre ete neglige, parce que avec lui on introduirait dans la phenomenologie une conception monadologique qui contrasterait avec l'idee de science rigoureuse. Au contraire, Husserl ne craint pas d'utiliser les concepts de Leibniz de monade et harmonie, toutefois il envisage (...) justement une phenomenologie de Tintersubjectivite vue comme harmonie cognitive des sujets et communaute intermonadique. Cette comparison avec Leibniz non seulement revet une importance historiographique en ce qui concerne la genese et le developpement de la pensee de Husserl, mais elle peut aussi se reveler utile du point de vue theorique, pour indiquer une des lignes de developpement de la phenomenologie. (shrink)

Heidegger holds that our age is dominated by the ambition of reason to possess the world. And he sees in Leibniz the man who formulated the theorem of our modern age: nothing happens without a reason. He calls this attitude `calculating thought' and opposes to it a kind of thought aimed at preserving the essence of things, which he calls `meditating thought'. Cristin's book ascribes great importance to this polarity of thinking for the future of contemporary philosophy, and thus compares (...) the basic ideas of the two thinkers. Leibniz announces the conquest of reason; Heidegger denounces the dangers of reason. Their diversity becomes manifest in the difference between the idea of reason and the image of the path. But is Leibniz's thought really only `calculating'? And do we not perhaps also encounter the traces of reason along Heidegger's path? With these questions in mind we may begin to redefine the relation between the two thinkers and between two different conceptions of reason and philosophy. The hypothesis is advanced that Heidegger's harsh judgment of Leibniz may be mitigated, but it also becomes clear that Heidegger's rewriting of the code of reason is an integral part of our age, in which many signs point to new loci of rationality. With his original interpretation, aware of the risks he is taking, Renato Cristin offers a new guide to the understanding of reason: he shows forth Leibniz as one who defends the thought of being in the unity of monadology, and Heidegger as a thinker who preserves the sign of reason in his meditating thought. (shrink)

Der Autor folgt der Hypothese, dass Husserls Denken der Krisis auf den folgenden Bezug gebaut ist: einerseits beeinflusst die Lebenswelt als Fluss die Art der Wissenschaft, die das Subjekt von ihr haben kann, andererseits beansprucht die transzendentale Subjektivitat die Relativierung der ganzen Lebenswelt. Der Fluss und das Bewusstsein werden Metaphern dieses Bezuges, indem sie die Paradoxien des Weltratsels ausdrucken. Aus der Moglichkeit, die Welt als wirkliche Lebenswelt zu denken, erscheint die Phanomenologie der Lebenswelt als eine Umwalzung des Rationalismus zu einem (...) Relationismus. (shrink)

La critique de Heidegger à l'endroit de Leibniz est connue et il suffit de renvoyer à la Marburger Vorlesung de 1928 et à Der Satz vom Grund de 1957. Mais l'ensemble de l'interprétation de Heidegger révèle une double attitude: d'une part une attaque contre le rationalisme , d'autre part une défense du sens de l'être-là contenu dans le principe de la raison suffisante. Sur la base de cette ambiguïté on peut reconsidérer l'influence de Leibniz sur la pensée de Heidegger, revoir (...) l'interprétation unilatéral et montrer que, d'une certaine façon, Heidegger s'approche à certains thèmes monadologiques fondamentaux. Tout ceci peut amener a entrevoir la présence de Leibniz aussi bien chez Heidegger même que dans la phénoménologie de la période après-Husserl, surtout pour ce qui concerne les problèmes de l'intersubjectivité et du rapport au monde. (shrink)