Statistical learning refers to the ability to identify structure in the input based on its statistical properties. For many linguistic structures, the relevant statistical features are distributional: They are related to the frequency and variability of exemplars in the input. These distributional regularities have been suggested to play a role in many different aspects of language learning, including phonetic categories, using phonemic distinctions in word learning, and discovering non-adjacent relations. On the surface, these different aspects share few commonalities. Despite this, (...) we demonstrate that the same computational framework can account for learning in all of these tasks. These results support two conclusions. The first is that much, and perhaps all, of distributional statistical learning can be explained by the same underlying set of processes. The second is that some aspects of language can be learned due to domain-general characteristics of memory. (shrink)

We analyze naturally occurring datasets from student use of educational technologies to explore a long-standing question of the scope of transfer of learning. We contrast a faculty theory of broad transfer with a component theory of more constrained transfer. To test these theories, we develop statistical models of them. These models use latent variables to represent mental functions that are changed while learning to cause a reduction in error rates for new tasks. Strong versions of these models provide a common (...) explanation for the variance in task difficulty and transfer. Weak versions decouple difficulty and transfer explanations by describing task difficulty with parameters for each unique task. We evaluate these models in terms of both their prediction accuracy on held-out data and their power in explaining task difficulty and learning transfer. In comparisons across eight datasets, we find that the component models provide both better predictions and better explanations than the faculty models. Weak model variations tend to improve generalization across students, but hurt generalization across items and make a sacrifice to explanatory power. More generally, the approach could be used to identify malleable components of cognitive functions, such as spatial reasoning or executive functions. (shrink)

A Dictionary of Medieval Judeo-Arabic in the India Book Letters from the Geniza and in Other Texts. By Mordechai Akiva Friedman. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2016. Pp. xxii + 1017. $37.A Unique Hebrew Glossary from India: An Analysis of Judeo-Urdu. By Aaron D. Rubin. Gorgias Handbooks. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 134. $48.

The target articles in this issue advance our understanding of bioethical considerations in pragmatic trials (Garland, Morain, and Sugarman 2023; Morain and Largent 2023). Both articles appreciate...

Few studies have examined how trait emotion dysregulation relates to momentary affective experiences and the emotion regulation strategies people use in daily life. In the current study, 112 c...

Seminal work in moral neuroscience by Joshua Greene and colleagues employed variants of the well-known trolley problems to identify two brain networks which compete with each other to determine moral judgments. Greene interprets the tension between these brain networks using a dual process account which pits deliberative reason against automatic emotion-driven intuitions: reason versus passion. Recent neuroscientific evidence suggests, however, that the critical tension that Greene identifies as playing a role in moral judgment is not so much a tension between (...) reason and passion, but a tension between distinct forms of deliberative reasoning: analytic versus empathetic. In this paper we present results from several new studies supporting this alternative hypothesis. (shrink)

Cognitive science is shamelessly materialistic. It maintains that human beings are nothing more than complex physical systems, ultimately and completely explicable in mechanistic terms. But this conception of humanity does not ?t well with common sense. To think of the creatures we spend much of our day loving, hating, admiring, resenting, comparing ourselves to, trying to understand, blaming, and thanking -- to think of them as mere mechanisms seems at best counterintuitive and unhelpful. More often it may strike us as (...) ludicrous, or even abhorrent. We are. (shrink)

Building on the long-standing tradition of challenging oppression and questioning whose interests are being served in the field of language education, we report on a study that involved a group of U.S.-based graduate students who collaborated with a ninth-grade English teacher in Nepal. The study comes out of a larger project that sought to internationalize the curriculum of a graduate educational linguistics course at a U.S. university. At the heart of this internationalizing curriculum endeavour was a commitment to expose graduate (...) students in the U.S. to the issues of language teaching outside of the U.S. This was done through co-designing of a unit of lessons, with six graduate students meeting virtually with their teacher partner, Ditya, in Nepal over the course of a semester. The graduate students and Ditya constitute our research participants. The graduate student participants learned about the need to develop pedagogical materials that were relevant to the local context in Nepali classroom, and not attempt to transplant a Western-centric curriculum onto the Nepali classroom. In keeping with recent calls to decolonize higher education, we illustrate how critical theory in general and decolonizing pedagogy in particular can be infused into a U.S. graduate curriculum by drawing on the rich, indigenous knowledge and resources of a teacher collaborator from the Global South. We do this by reporting how this critical, decolonizing goal was realized through collaborative professionalism, which is characterized by the sharing of knowledge, skills, and experience to improve student achievement, reflection, dialogue and collective responsibility. (shrink)

Bering contends that belief in the afterlife is explained by the simulation constraint hypothesis: the claim that we cannot imagine what it is like to be dead. This explanation suffers from some difficulties. First, it implies the existence of a corresponding belief in the “beforelife.” Second, a simpler explanation will suffice. Rather than appeal to constraints on our thoughts about death, we suggest that belief in the afterlife can be better explained by the lack of such constraints.

All organisms live in close association with microbes. However, not all such associations are meaningful in an evolutionary context. Current debate concerns whether hosts and microbes are best described as communities of individuals or as holobionts (selective units of hosts plus their microbes). Recent reports that assortative mating of hosts by diet can be mediated by commensal gut microbes have attracted interest as a potential route to host reproductive isolation (RI). Here, the authors discuss logical problems with this line of (...) argument. The authors briefly review how microbes can affect host mating preferences and evaluate recent findings from fruitflies. Endosymbionts can potentially influence host RI given stable and recurrent co‐association of hosts and microbes over evolutionary time. However, observations of co‐occurrence of microbes and hosts are ripe for misinterpretation and such associations will rarely represent a meaningful holobiont. A framework in which hosts and their microbes are independent evolutionary units provides the only satisfactory explanation for the observed range of effects and associations. (shrink)

The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the (...) covering law model. (shrink)

Engineers are traditionally regarded as trustworthy professionals who meet exacting standards. In this chapter I begin by explicating our trust relationship towards engineers, arguing that it is a linear but indirect relationship in which engineers “stand behind” the artifacts and technological systems that we rely on directly. The chapter goes on to explain how this relationship has become more complex as engineers have taken on two additional aims: the aim of social engineering to create and steer trust between people, and (...) the aim of creating automated systems that take over human tasks and are meant to invite the trust of those who rely on and interact with them. (shrink)

In this article, we present evidence of a bidirectional coupling between moral concern and the attribution of properties and states that are associated with experience (e.g., conscious awareness, feelings). This coupling is also shown to be stronger with experience than for the attribution of properties and states more closely associated with agency (e.g., free will, thoughts). We report the results of four studies. In the first two studies, we vary the description of the mental capacities of a creature, and assess (...) the effects of these manipulations on moral concern. The third and fourth studies examine the effects of variations in moral concern on attributions of mindedness. Results from the first two studies indicate that moral concern depends primarily on the attribution of experience, rather than the attribution of agency. The results of the latter two studies demonstrate that moral concern increases attributions of mindedness, and that this effect is stronger for attributions of experience than for attributions of agency. (shrink)

This paper has two goals: (1) to defend a particular response to the problem of resultant moral luck and (2) to defend the claim that we are only responsible for what we could have avoided. Cases of overdetermination threaten to undermine the claim that we are only responsible for what we could have avoided. To deal with this issue, I will motivate a particular way of responding to the problem of resultant moral luck. I defend the view that one's degree (...) of responsibility is immune to moral luck but the scope of events for which one is responsible is subject to moral luck. I will then argue that this view allows us to explain away certain intuitions about responsibility and overdetermination (as well as similar intuitions regarding Frankfurt Cases). As a result, the claim that we are only responsible for what we could have avoided becomes significantly more plausible. (shrink)

Cognitive neuropsychiatry (CN) is the explanation of psychiatric disorder by the methods of cognitive neuropsychology. Within CN there are, broadly speaking, two approaches to delusion. The first uses a one-stage model, in which delusions are explained as rationalizations of anomalous experiences via reasoning strategies that are not, in themselves, abnormal. Two-stage models invoke additional hypotheses about abnormalities of reasoning. In this paper, I examine what appears to be a very strong argument, developed within CN, in favor of a twostage explanation (...) of the difference in content between the Capgras and Cotard delusions. That explanation treats them as alternative rationalizations of essentially the same phenomenology. I show, however, that once we distinguish the phenomenology (and the neuroetiology), a one-stage model is adequate. In the final section I make some more general remarks on the oneand two-stage models. (shrink)

There has recently been a revival of interest in panpsychism as a theory of consciousness. The hope of the contemporary proponents of panpsychism is that the view enables us to integrate consciousness into our overall theory of reality in a way that avoids the deep difficulties that plague the more conventional options of physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. However, panpsychism comes in two forms — strong and weak emergentist — and there are arguments that seem (...) to show that weak emergentist panpsychism faces problems analogous to those of physicalism whilst strong emergentist panpsychism faces problems analogous to those of dualism. In this paper, I will develop a new hybrid of the strong and weak emergentist forms of panpsychism, a view according to which subjects of experience are strongly emergent but their phenomenal properties are weakly emergent. I will argue that this hybrid view manages to avoid the challenges facing both physicalism and dualism, and the analogues of those challenges that seem to undermine standard forms of panpsychism. (shrink)

Wegner's thesis that the experience of will is an illusion is not just wrong, it is an impediment to progress in psychology. We discuss two readings of Wegner's thesis and find that neither can motivate his larger conclusion. Wegner thinks science requires us to dismiss our experiences. Its real promise is to help us to make better sense of them.

Motivated by accounts of concept use in autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and a computational model of weak central coherence (O'Loughlin and Thagard, 2000) we examined comprehension and production vocabulary in typically-developing children and those with ASD and Down syndrome (DS). Controlling for frequency, familiarity, length and imageability, Colorado Meaningfulness played a hitherto unremarked role in the vocabularies of children with ASD. High Colorado Meaningful words were underrepresented in the comprehension vocabularies of 2- to 12-year-olds with ASD. The Colorado Meaningfulness of (...) a word is a measure of how many words can be associated with it. Situations in which high Colorado Meaningfulness words are encountered are typically highly variable, and words with High Colorado Meaningfulness often involve extensive use of context. Our data suggest that the number of contexts in which a particular word can appear has a role in determining vocabulary in ASD. This suggestion is consistent with the weak central coherence theory of autism. (shrink)

It is intuitive that free action depends on consciousness in some way, since behavior that is unconsciously generated is widely regarded as un-free. But there is no clear consensus as to what such dependence comes to, in part because there is no clear consensus about either the cognitive role of consciousness or about the essential components of free action. I divide the space of possible views into four: the Constitution View (on which free actions metaphysically consist, at least in part, (...) in phenomenally conscious episodes of a special sort), the Causal-Dependence View (on which free actions are necessarily caused by conscious episodes), the Counterfactaul-Dependence View (on which free actions necessarily counterfactually dependent on conscious episodes of certain types), and the Independence View (on which there are no necessary dependence-relations that hold between free action and conscious episodes). After surveying recent empirical literature that purports to show that consciousness plays a smaller role in generating action than is usually supposed, I conclude that it is plausible that free action depends on consciousness in two ways. First, free action causally depends on consciousness control. Second, free action counterfactually depends on the agent's being responsive to certain reasons. (shrink)

There is broad agreement that child labor is wrong and should be eliminated. This chapter examines the three main moral objections to child labor and considers their limitations: harm-based objections, objections from failing to benefit children, and objections from exploitation. Harm-based objections struggle with baselines for comparison and difficulties with Non-Identity problems. Even if child labor is not harmful, it may be wrong because it prevents children from enjoying other benefits, such as schooling. However, is schooling necessarily more beneficial for (...) children than work? Some kinds of child labor may not be harmful, and may benefit children, but they may still be wrong because they are exploitative. I consider some ways to address exploitative child labor, inspired by campaigns led by child workers. The chapter ends with a surprising conclusion that challenges the broad consensus with which we began: we may have duties to promote child labor. (shrink)

Masarykovy a Brentanovy snahy o překonání Humova skepticismu prostřednictvím počtu pravděpodobnosti lze chápat jako svého druhu "třetí cestu" mezi kantovským apriorismem a kapitulací před subtilními Humovými argumenty. U Masaryka je ono snažení součástí jeho projektu nové induktivní logiky, která (v návaznosti na Leibnize) by měla být logickým základem pro "umění vynalézat" (ars inveniendi). Masaryk akceptuje Humovu koncepci analytických soudů, ale zároveň inklinuje i ke koncepci Adolfa Ficka, v souladu s níž mají věty počtu pravděpodobnosti charakter syntetických soudů a priori; kromě (...) toho odkazuje pozoruhodným způsobem k Bernoulliho zákonu velkých čísel. Masarykovy úvahy vedou k závěru, že zákon velkých čísel zaručuje shodu mezi apriorními tvrzeními počtu pravděpodobnosti a empirickou skutečností, což podle Masaryka vyvrací "tresť" Humova skepticismu, spočívající v tvrzení, že rozum a zkušenost se vylučují. Vzhledem k tomu, že hlavním objektem Humovy kritiky byl pojem kauzality, je však nutno konstatovat, že Masarykovo snažení bylo neúspěšné, neboť žádná aplikace počtu pravděpodobnosti, jenž se zabývá náhodnými jevy, nemůže vést k založení kauzálního zákona (pokud tento zákon zahrnuje také tezi uniformity kauzální determinace). (shrink)

Tremendous agricultural potential in Colombia has gone untapped for decades due to: i) civil strife and the criminal drug trade; ii) uncertain property rights; iii) inadequate infrastructure; iv) lack of innovation and technological development; v) lack of funding, vi) lack of investment; and vii) misallocation of resources within the sector. Proof of this is the relatively lower growth of the value of Colombia’s agriculture versus other countries in the region during the agricultural prices booms (FAO, 2015). This paper analyzes whether (...) Colombia’s weak agricultural performance was due to low productivity growth rather than input accumulation. Using econometric specifications, this paper finds that Colombia’s agricultural productivity grew on average between 0.8% and 1.3% annually from 1975 and 2013. This growth was mainly driven by livestock and poultry productivity, which grew between 1.6% and 2.2%, while crop productivity grew between 0% and 0.8%. Likewise, this paper finds biased technical and scale effects whenever the models are able to test their presence. In addition, it finds evidence that Colombia’s agricultural productivity growth was affected by changing economic circumstances. These results are significant for post-conflict rural investment because they provide information about the returns on future government investment options in the rural sector of Colombia. (shrink)

A recent strand in the philosophical literature on addiction emphasizes problems with diachronic self-control. Hanna Pickard, for example, argues that an important aspect of addiction consists in inability to identify with a non-addicted future self. This literature sits alongside another that treats addiction as the product of neural changes that “hijack” mechanisms of reward prediction, habit formation decision making and cognitive control. This hijacking literature originates in accounts that treat the neural changes characteristic of addiction as a brain disease. This (...) paper provides a framework based on predictive processing accounts of self-awareness that integrates the hijacking and diachronic accounts. I discuss a hijacking account proposed to explain disruption of addiction following lesion to the anterior insula cortex. I show how insula activity contributes to the type of identification implicated in diachronic accounts and how deactivation of the anterior insula can disrupt addiction by alienating the subject from her addictive tendencies. This is consistent with neural evidence but also incorporates the personal level features of addiction that are opaque to neural level explanation. (shrink)

Poté, co je ve studii podán obraz Humovy osobnosti na pozadí jeho doby, jsou v ní rozvíjeny následující teze: I. Smyslem a cílem veškerého Humova filosofování (zejména jeho popření ontologického statusu kategorií substance a kauzality a jeho teorie mravních citů) je připravit půdu pro skeptickou destrukci veškerých tvrzení týkajících se existence a přirozenosti Boží a pro zdůvodnění pojetí, v souladu s nímž může člověk žít mravně bezúhonným životem i bez jakékoliv opory v náboženském transcendentnu. II. Všechny silně nekonsistentní momenty Humovy (...) filosofie jsou sjednoceny (obvykle perfidně utajovaným) účelem, jímž je vyvrátit náboženství z kořene; právě z onoho vrcholného bodu "syntézy" lze uchopit jejich smysl a - zároveň také jinak neuchopitelnou jednotu Humovy filosofie. III. Popření ontologického statutu kategorie substance traktované v kontextu řešení problematiky teleologického důkazu Boží existence, rezultuje u Huma (takřka s železnou logikou) v anticipační nástin fundamentálních myšlenek evolučního přístupu a teorie samoorganizace, které s velkou pravděpodobností přímo ovlivnily pojetí Charlese Darwina. (shrink)

I attempt to respond to the many questions and objections raised by the commentaries. The responses are grouped by themes, rather than focusing on the essays in sequence. So there are sections on worries about my analytical history, concerns about my meta-ethical perspective, doubts about my normative stance and complaints about my perpetration of a ‘naturalistic fallacy’.

A brief review is given of the continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) model, in which a classical field interacts with quantized particles to cause dynamical wavefunction collapse. One of the model's predictions is that particles “spontaneously” gain energy at a slow rate. When applied to the excitation of a nucleon in a Ge nucleus, it is shown how a limit on the relative collapse rates of neutron and proton can be obtained, and a rough estimate is made from data. When applied (...) to the spontaneous excitation of 1s electrons in Ge, by a more detailed analysis of more accurate data than given previously, an updated limit is obtained on the relative collapse rates of the electron and proton, suggesting that the coupling of the field to electrons and nucleons is mass proportional. (shrink)

In this chapter I discuss the role of mind perception in the categorization of individuals as moral agents and moral patients. Moral agents are defined as individuals that can commit morally wrong actions and deserve to be held accountable for those actions; moral patients are defined as individuals that can be morally wronged and whose interests are worthy of moral consideration. It is generally agreed that the attribution of moral agency and moral patiency is linked to the attribution of mental (...) capacities and traits. The chapter surveys a variety of models of mind perception, some of which focus on the representation of mental capacities, some of which focus on the representation of mental traits. The dominant model of mind perception in moral psychology is the experience-agency model (Gray et al., 2007), which divides the space of mindedness into experiential capacities like sentience and self-awareness, and agentic capacities like deliberative reasoning and self-control. Reviewing the empirical literature on moral categorization, I argue that neither the experience-agency model nor any of the major alternatives to it (i.e., the warmth-competence model, the agency-communion model, and the human nature–human uniqueness model), captures the full panoply of mental features to which everyday attributions of moral agency and moral patiency are sensitive. (shrink)

Western society is steeped in a legacy of white supremacy and colonialism--a worldview that pits humans against nature and that has created numerous pressing social and environmental challenges. So great are these challenges that many of us have come to believe that our species is fundamentally flawed and that our story is destined to be nasty, brutish, and short. In Finding Our Niche I explore these tragedies of western society while offering the makings of an alternative: a set of metaphors (...) and examples that can guide us in reconciling our settler-colonial histories in favor of a new and more sustainable vision for humanity and our natural world. Drawing on a variety of compelling stories from my personal life and research experiences around the world, I bring the reader through the difficult journey of reconciliation, a journey that leads to a more optimistic understanding of human nature and the prospects for our future. Drawing from my fifteen years of experience as an anthropologist and ecologist working with people around the world, I share exceptional stories of local people rejecting the oppressive, industrial logic of progress and creating win-win scenarios, where both people and nature thrive together. These stories include cattle ranching on the Burren in Ireland, clam gardening in coastal British Columbia, and the conservation of an accidental wetland in Northwest Mexico. I structure my telling of these stories with a series of ecological metaphors--including keystone, engineer, and sentinel--that collectively provide a basis for more sustainable ways of living. In tandem with these stories, I weave a series of personal vignettes, drawing from my own struggle to reconcile my identity as a white settler on stolen Indigenous lands. As a whole, the book develops a thesis about how we can reimagine our nature and identity, and in so doing, address issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity by building more healthful and fulfilling relationships with our neighbors and the land- and seascapes around us. Finding our Niche is a timely piece that offers confidence in a time when the realities of ecological disaster are becoming a daily reminder that something has to give. It engages with the critical but thorny problems of sustainability, white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism in a fresh and productive way, making it a perfect fit for Fernwood's portfolio and critical readership. At once a primer on paradigm shift, it is an accessible and personal book that seeks to offer tangible examples of hope to the countless people who are concerned about the sustainability and future of our societies and planet. (shrink)

Introduction -- Constructing social identity through discourse : a socio-rhetorical approach for the study of Valentinian paraenesis -- Defining paraenesis I : historical phases within the academic study of paraenesis -- Defining paraenesis II : towards a functional understanding of paraenesis -- Literary aspects of paraenesis : indicators of moral exhortation from the Greco-Roman world within Valentinianism -- Two schools and the call to reconciliation : literary and social aspects of moral exhortation in the Interpretation of knowledge -- Existing in (...) error : literary and social aspects of moral exhortation in the Gospel of truth -- Conclusion. (shrink)

I defend a view of the species category, pluralistic realism, which is designed to do justice to the insights of many different groups of systematists. After arguing that species are sets and not individuals, I proceed to outline briefly some defects of the biological species concept. I draw the general moral that similar shortcomings arise for other popular views of the nature of species. These shortcomings arise because the legitimate interests of biology are diverse, and these diverse interests are reflected (...) in different legitimate approaches to the classification of organisms. In the final section, I show briefly how the pluralistic approach can help to illuminate some areas of biological and philosophical dispute. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker, moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the harm account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the qualified harm account, there is no (...) harm in cases where moral uncertainty is related to innovation that is “for the best” in historical perspective or where uncertainty is the expression of a deliberative virtue. The two accounts are compared by applying them to Baker’s historical case of the introduction of mechanical ventilation and organ transplantation technologies, as well as the present-day case of mass data practices in the health domain. (shrink)

This paper sets out an account of trust in AI as a relationship between clinicians, AI applications, and AI practitioners in which AI is given discretionary authority over medical questions by clinicians. Compared to other accounts in recent literature, this account more adequately explains the normative commitments created by practitioners when inviting clinicians’ trust in AI. To avoid committing to an account of trust in AI applications themselves, I sketch a reductive view on which discretionary authority is exercised by AI (...) practitioners through the vehicle of an AI application. I conclude with four critical questions based on the discretionary account to determine if trust in particular AI applications is sound, and a brief discussion of the possibility that the main roles of the physician could be replaced by AI. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

A person sometimes forms moral beliefs by relying on another person''s moral testimony. In this paper I advance a cognitivist normative account of this phenomenon. I argue that for a person''s actions to be morally good, they must be based on a recognition of the moral reasons bearing on action. Morality requires people to act from an understanding of moral claims, and consequently to have an understanding of moral claims relevant to action. A person sometimes fails to meet this requirement (...) when she relies on another person''s moral testimony, and so there are moral limits on such reliance. (shrink)