This paper provides an experimental test of stochastic choice models of decisions. Models that admit Fechnerian structure are tested through the repeated pairwise choice problems. Results refute the Fechner hypothesis that characterizing the probability of selecting a given prospect increases in how strongly it is preferred to alternative choices. However, the experimental data lend support to characterizing an individual’s binary choice probability as some scalable functions of the von Neumann–Morgenstern utilities in the risky context.

This chapter examines the pioneering work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) on various number systems, in particular binary, which he independently invented in the mid-to-late 1670s, and hexadecimal, which he invented in 1679. The chapter begins with the oft-debated question of who may have influenced Leibniz’s invention of binary, though as none of the proposed candidates is plausible I suggest a different hypothesis, that Leibniz initially developed binary notation as a tool to assist his investigations in (...) mathematical problems that were exercising him at the time, namely those concerning the divisibility of composite numbers, primality, and perfect numbers. The chapter then explores Leibniz’s development of binary, his little-known work on binary fractions and expansions, his use of binary as a symbol for creation in his philosophical-theology, and his response to the suggestion that there was a correlation between binary numeration and the hexagrams of the ancient Chinese divinatory text, the Yijing. The chapter then focuses on Leibniz’s work on other number systems, in particular his invention and exploration of hexadecimal as well as his work on duodecimal. The chapter concludes by revealing a hitherto unknown practical application of binary that Leibniz devised in the last year of his life. (shrink)

Binary judgement on under-informative utterances is the most widely used methodology to test children’s ability to generate implicatures. Accepting under-informative utterances is considered a failure to generate implicatures. We present off-line and reaction time evidence for the Pragmatic Tolerance Hypothesis, according to which some children who accept under-informative utterances are in fact competent with implicature but do not consider pragmatic violations grave enough to reject the critical utterance. Seventy-five Dutch-speaking four to nine-year-olds completed a binary and a (...) ternary judgement task. Half of the children who accepted an utterance in Experiment A penalised it in Experiment B. Reaction times revealed that these children experienced a slow-down in the critical utterances in Experiment A, suggesting that they detected the pragmatic violation even though they did not reject it. We propose that binary judgement tasks systematically underestimate children’s competence with pragmatics. (shrink)

My project in Being For is both constructive and negative. The main aim of the book is to take the core ideas of meta-ethical expressivism as far as they can go, and to try to develop a version of expressivism that solves many of the more straightforward open problems that have faced the view without being squarely confronted. In doing so, I develop an expressivist framework that I call biforcated attitude semantics, which I claim has the minimal structural features required (...) in order to solve some of these open problems facing expressivism. I take biforcated attitude semantics to prove that expressivism is a coherent and interesting hypothesis about the semantics of natural languages.So much for the constructive part; having argued that biforcated attitude semantics incorporates the minimal moves required in order to solve a few of the more pressing open questions facing expressivism, I use it in order to productively constrain what an expressivist answer to further open questions must look like. The results, I end up arguing, are ultimately not promising; the very same structural features that expressivists need in order to answer so simple a problem as to explain why ‘P’ and ‘∼P’ are inconsistent sentences lead to a very general problem about how ordinary, non-moral sentences are to end up with the right truth-conditions, and though I show how to finesse this problem for some simple constructions – truth-conditional connectives and the quantifiers – I ultimately argue that it can’t be done for the full range of constructions in natural languages – including terms like modals, tense and binary quantifiers like ‘most’. So even if expressivism is coherent and interesting, it is an extremely unpromising hypothesis about the language that we actually speak.The main theme of the book is that the most fruitful way …. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to study the different combinations between temporality and the idea of totality in the beginning of Classical German Philosophy. In order to do that I will analyze the image of liberation in the philosophical and practical articulation of a new mythology in the manuscript “The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism”, and the outlines of a theory of the Spirit in the documents written by Hegel in the first part of his Jena stage, more specifically, (...) in the fragments of the period 1803/04. For this purpose I will take as specific objects the figures of an “eternal unity” [die ewige Einheit] to come and of an “absolute becoming” [das absolute Werden] of Spirit. The hypothesis I intend to develop holds that the confrontation of these two images can lead to duplicated consequences: on the one hand, this comparison would make it possible to relativize the binary readings that oppose as terms of a simple contradiction both conceptual lineages, Idealism and Romanticism. On the other hand it would express an insurmountable tension between two ways of thinking about the relationship between time and totality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FOR A NON-VIOLENT ACCORD: EDUCATING THE PERSON Marie-Louise Martinez Education has been criticized, no doubt justly, for the symbolic violence of its prohibitions and exclusionary rituals that mirror the violence of society (Bourdieu, etc.). But this criticism is short-sighted. When restraints are removed in teaching and education (in the family and in the school), violence wells up anew and produces at least the following two results: access to meaning (...) and knowledge is restricted; access to the law and its structure-inducing prohibitions is restricted. The result is that we foster vulnerable personalities who confuse fiction and reality, and who do not hesitate to turn their violence into acts of hostility directed toward themselves, other people, and society. A further consequence has been a certain violent non-differentiation that has tended in turn to produce a violent re-differentiation ofsociety. There is a nostalgia everywhere today for a return to discipline, to the rule oflaw, etc. One hears talk of the "sanctuary of the classroom" or again of the necessity of preserving a "symbolic cloister." We are not able, purely and simply, to feel remorse for having maintained the rule ofa violent symbolic order. One might ask in what the symbolic consists. How is it connected to teaching and education? Is there not a fundamental violence in the symbolic? Does there exist a less violent symbolic, or even a non-violent one? How might one define it and put it to work in teaching and education? Girardian theory can help us to reinterpret various contributions from a number of authors in the human sciences (Benveniste, Lacan, etc.) and from the personalist philosophy of language. I would like to propose the hypothesis that there are two stages ofthe symbolic: first, a violent symbolic accord and, second, a non-violent threshold within the symbolic, which alone can serve as an appropriate model for teaching and education. 56Marie-Louise Martinez I. The symbolic and its powers. We are not using symbolic in its specific sense as metaphorical or figurative language as it occurs in myth and poetry but in a more general sense, i.e., to refer to the totality ofthe sign and code systems employed by human beings, as that which allows for the production and deployment of significations within society. Stemming from the Greek symbolein (to throw or put together, to assemble), the symbolic is that type or order of signs that assembles. Much more than the pure language of linguistics, the symbolic is the totality ofverbal, non-verbal, and para-verbal conventions, of systems ofexchange, and ofrites. It also comprises the regulated use ofbodies and ofnature. Our definition ofthe symbolic is not idealist: more than simply the expression of ideas, it is also interaction and action, on oneself, on others, and the world. It includes technical and bodily activities to the degree that these have been codified. In this sense, the symbolic (in agreement with philosophers as diverse as Cassirer or Clifford Geertz) can be said to embrace the totality of what is called culture. But ifthe symbol throws orputs together, it is necessary to discuss what and why and how it does so. The modern science ofsigns (semiology) has shown that the sign or symbol serves to place in relation. Relying on the contemporary semiology that stems from the American philosopher Pierce, and also on the work of Francis Jacques in France, we can say that this relation, far from being a simple binary one (sign/referent or sign/signifier) is a complex relation which aligns signs with the objects to which they refer, but also with the people deploying those signs. This latter signifying relation, which is intersubjective and social, was invisible in Saussurean semiology. In itself, the symbolic is the product of a complex relation which links people among themselves and the things referred to by the agency of signs. In other words, the basis of the signifying relationship is not the dyad subject/object (relation to objects) but a triadic relation, subject/ subject/object (intersubjective and objectai). This triangular relationship, which traverses the intersubjective and the objectai, is a relationship of convention, underlined in antiquity by Plato in the Cratylus (for Hermogenes, a word... (shrink)

In the early 1880s, Henri Poincaré discovered an equilibrium figure for uniformly-rotating fluid masses—the pear, or piriform figure—and speculated that in certain circumstances the pear splits into two unequal parts, and provides thereby a model for the origin of binary stars. The contemporary emergence of photometric and spectroscopic studies of variable stars fueled the first models of eclipsing binaries, and provided empirical support for a realist view of equilibrium figures—including the pear—in the cosmic realm. The paper reviews astrophysical interpretation (...) of the Poincaré pear and the Poincaré-Darwin fission hypothesis with respect to research on variable stars from 1885 to 1901. (shrink)

In On the Genesis of Thought and Language, linguist Alexey Koshelev explores fundamental questions of how human concepts arise in a child, why concepts appear in a child before words, the genesis of language, and why there are so many languages. Chapter One introduces the fundamental dichotomy "visual (exogenous) vs. functional (endogenous)" cognitive units; these units are used to give non-verbal definitions of mental representations of various objects, actions, and situations. In particular, definitions of such concepts as GLASS, CHAIR, BANANA, (...) TREE, LAKE, RUN, and some others are given. Chapter Two discusses how children form concepts, hierarchical relationships, and propositions (conceptual 'utterances'). It is shown that the initial units of the child's representation of the world are pre-conceptual cognitive units--mental representations of whole situations. In the course of two consecutive cycles in the child's cognitive development, these units transform into (a) primary notions--object and motor concepts, and (b) binary role relationships. Together, they constitute the elementary language of thought which, in the process of thinking, is used to build conceptual structures--propositions. It is further demonstrated that, immediately after the formation of thought, the child begins to develop his native language in which concrete and motor concepts become initial meanings of nouns and verbs, while propositions become the meanings of the child's expressions. The chapter concludes with a contrastive analysis of the proposed approach and Aristotle's and Chomsky's views on thought and language. Chapter Three analyzes how a community's culture affects its language. It is demonstrated that the progress of a community, the main constituent of the civilizational component of its culture, enhances the development of the content component of language by extending the range of its lexical and grammatical meanings. In the context of this analysis, Daniel Everett's (2008) hypothesis that culture affects language structure is discussed. In the subsequent sections, models of the development of human and social activity are offered. These models comprise three components: Activity (main component), Thought, and Language (auxiliary components that ensure the successful realization of activities). The models are illustrated with examples of some concrete societies. (shrink)

We show how in the hierarchies${F_\alpha }$of Fieldian truth sets, and Herzberger’s${H_\alpha }$revision sequence starting from any hypothesis for${F_0}$ that essentially each${H_\alpha }$ carries within it a history of the whole prior revision process.As applications we provide a precise representation for, and a calculation of the length of, possiblepath independent determinateness hierarchiesof Field’s construction with a binary conditional operator. We demonstrate the existence of generalized liar sentences, that can be considered as diagonalizing past the determinateness hierarchies definable in (...) Field’s recent models. The ‘defectiveness’ of such diagonal sentences necessarily cannot be classified by any of the determinateness predicates of the model. They are ‘ineffable liars’. We may consider them a response to the claim of Field that ‘the conditional can be used to show that the theory is not subject to “revenge problems”.’. (shrink)

The LIGO-Virgo Collaboration achieved the first ‘direct detection’ of gravitational waves in 2015, opening a new “window” for observing the universe. Since this first detection (‘GW150914’), dozens of detections have followed, mostly produced by binary black hole mergers. However, the theory-ladenness of the LIGO-Virgo methods for observing these events leads to a potentially-vicious circularity, where general relativistic assumptions may serve to mask phenomena that are inconsistent with general relativity (GR). Under such circumstances, the fact that GR can ‘save the (...) phenomena’ may be an artifact of theory-laden methodology.This paper examines several ways that the LIGO-Virgo observations are used in theory and hypothesis testing, despite this circularity problem. First, despite the threat of vicious circularity, these experiments succeed in testing GR. Indeed, early tests of GR using GW150914 are best understood as a response to the threat of theory-ladenness and circularity. Each test searches for evidence that LIGO-Virgo’s theory-laden methods are biasing their overall conclusions. The failure to find evidence of this places constraints on deviations from the predictions of GR. Second, these observations provide a basis for studying astrophysical and cosmological processes, especially through analyses of populations of events. As gravitational-wave astrophysics transitions into mature science, constraints from early tests of GR provide a scaffolding for these population-based studies. I further characterize this transition in terms of its increasing connectedness to other parts of astrophysics and the prominence of reasoning about selection effects and other systematics in drawing inferences from observations.Overall, this paper analyses the ways that theory and hypothesis testing operate in gravitational-wave astrophysics as it gains maturity. In particular, I show how these tests build on one another in order to mitigate a circularity problem at the heart of the observations. (shrink)

A key issue in the philosophy of biology is evolutionary contingency, the degree to which evolutionary outcomes could have been different. Contingency is typically contrasted with evolutionary convergence, where different evolutionary pathways result in the same or similar outcomes. Convergences are given as evidence against the hypothesis that evolutionary outcomes are highly contingent. But the best available treatments of contingency do not, when read closely, produce the desired contrast with convergence. Rather, they produce a picture in which any degree (...) of contingency is compatible with any degree of convergence. This is because convergence is the repeated production of a given outcome from different starting points, and contingency has been defined without reference to the size of the space of possible outcomes. In small spaces of possibilities, the production of repeated outcomes is almost assured. This paper presents a definition of contingency which includes this modal dimension in a way that does not reduce it to the binary notion of contingency found in standard modal logic. The result is a conception of contingency which properly contrasts with convergence, given some domain of possibilities and a measure defined over it. We should therefore not ask whether evolution is contingent or convergent simpliciter, but rather about the degree to which it is contingent or convergent in various domains, as measured in various ways. (shrink)

We propose an axiomatization of aversion to incomplete preferences. Some prevailing models of incomplete preferences rely on the hypothesis that incompleteness is temporary and that by keeping their opportunity set open individuals reveal a preference for flexibility. We consider that the maintenance of incomplete preference is also aversive. Our model allows us to show how incompleteness induces an aversive attitude in two different ways: intrinsic and instrumental. Intrinsic aversion holds when one instance of incomplete preference in the set suffices (...) to decrease its utility. Instrumental aversion holds only insofar dominating options are affected by incompleteness. Given two partially overlapping sets of axioms on the binary relation over sets we formalize their consistency with the two types of aversion to incompleteness. Finally, we relate our model to the classical Sen’s distinction between tentative and assertive incompleteness. The spelling out of this distinction in the terms of our approach uncovers to what extent aversion to incompleteness may be compatible with a preference for flexibility. (shrink)

Alan M. Turing, pioneer of computing and WWII codebreaker, is one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume for the first time his key writings are made available to a broad, non-specialist readership. They make fascinating reading both in their own right and for their historic significance: contemporary computational theory, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and artificial life all spring from this ground-breaking work, which is also rich in philosophical and logical insight. An introduction (...) by leading Turing expert Jack Copeland provides the background and guides the reader through the selection. About Alan Turing Alan Turing FRS OBE, (1912-1954) studied mathematics at King's College, Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of King's in March 1935, at the age of only 22. In the same year he invented the abstract computing machines - now known simply as Turing machines - on which all subsequent stored-program digital computers are modelled. During 1936-1938 Turing continued his studies, now at Princeton University. He completed a PhD in mathematical logic, analysing the notion of 'intuition' in mathematics and introducing the idea of oracular computation, now fundamental in mathematical recursion theory. An 'oracle' is an abstract device able to solve mathematical problems too difficult for the universal Turing machine. In the summer of 1938 Turing returned to his Fellowship at King's. When WWII started in 1939 he joined the wartime headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire. Building on earlier work by Polish cryptanalysts, Turing contributed crucially to the design of electro-mechanical machines ('bombes') used to decipher Enigma, the code by means of which the German armed forces sought to protect their radio communications. Turing's work on the version of Enigma used by the German navy was vital to the battle for supremacy in the North Atlantic. He also contributed to the attack on the cyphers known as 'Fish'. Based on binary teleprinter code, Fish was used during the latter part of the war in preference to morse-based Enigma for the encryption of high-level signals, for example messages from Hitler and other members of the German High Command. It is estimated that the work of GC&CS shortened the war in Europe by at least two years. Turing received the Order of the British Empire for the part he played. In 1945, the war over, Turing was recruited to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London, his brief to design and develop an electronic computer - a concrete form of the universal Turing machine. Turing's report setting out his design for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was the first relatively complete specification of an electronic stored-program general-purpose digital computer. Delays beyond Turing's control resulted in NPL's losing the race to build the world's first working electronic stored-program digital computer - an honour that went to the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University, in June 1948. Discouraged by the delays at NPL, Turing took up the Deputy Directorship of the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory in that year. Turing was a founding father of modern cognitive science and a leading early exponent of the hypothesis that the human brain is in large part a digital computing machine, theorising that the cortex at birth is an 'unorganised machine' which through 'training' becomes organised 'into a universal machine or something like it'. He also pioneered Artificial Intelligence. Turing spent the rest of his short career at Manchester University, being appointed to a specially created Readership in the Theory of Computing in May 1953. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in March 1951 (a high honour). (shrink)

This paper proposes a social account for the origin of the truth value and the emergence of the first declarative sentence. Such a proposal is based on two assumptions. The first is known as the social intelligence hypothesis: that the cognitive evolution of humans is first and foremost an adaptation to social demands. The second is the function-first approach to explaining the evolution of traits: before a prototype of a new trait develops and the adaptation process begins, something already (...) existing is used for a new purpose. Applied to the emergence of declarative sentences (statements), this suggests something already existing––natural signs (such as indexical objects)––was used for the declarative function and thereby integrated into communication. I show that index display (such as the display of hunting trophies) can imply a conceptual structure similar to that informing the syntax of sentences. The view developed in this paper is broadly consistent with the argumentative theory of Mercier and Sperber, which suggests that reasoning is less adapted to decision making than to social purposes such as winning disputes. In this paper I extend this view to the evaluation of propositions expressed in declarative sentences. According to my proposal, the first declarative sentence emerged as the negation of the (implicit) negation of an implicit statement. Thereby, I suggest that the binary structure of the truth value underlying any declarative sentence is founded on disagreements based on conflicts of interests. (shrink)

For reasons that have more to do with the historiographical traditions of modern Jewish history and the history of critical thought than history itself, Georg Simmel – of Jewish descent – is rarely discussed within the frame of modern Jewish history. Bringing the two together as a theoretical contribution to Simmel studies and modern Jewish history alike, this article explores Simmel’s logic of contingency in the context of modern Jewish history. Which forms and types could Jews realistically seek to fulfill (...) from the perspective of Simmel’s thought? Which could they hope to escape and what could they expect from the future? The author suggests that in answering these questions we disclose a peculiar notion of ‘bounded contingency’ embedded in Simmel’s positing of a non-binary, ‘gray area’ between the necessary and the impossible. This hypothesis is tested in several distinct contexts: a letter on Zionism from around 1900; an odd passage on love in the excursus on ‘The Stranger’ ; and a letter on individuals of Jewish background in German academia. Simmel’s coherency lies in the ‘realist’ approach he adopts to reality as the domain of the contingently possible. When applied to Jewish history in general and Zionism in particular, this notion not only explains why Zionism is unfeasible but also demystifies its emergence as an attempt to escape the status of stranger in Europe. It also evinces why this Jewish national enterprise inevitably carried within it the seeds of the problem it sought to solve. (shrink)

Biomolecules and particularly proteins and DNA exhibit some mysterious features that cannot find satisfactory explanation by quantum mechanical modes of atoms. One of them, known as a Levinthal’s paradox, is the ability to preserve their complex three-dimensional structure in appropriate environments. Another one is that they possess some unknown energy mechanism. The Basic Structures of Matter Supergravitation Unified Theory (BSM-SG) allows uncovering the real physical structures of the elementary particles and their spatial arrangement in atomic nuclei. The resulting physical models (...) of the atoms are characterized by the same interaction energies as the quantum mechanical models, while the structure of the elementary particles influence their spatial arrangement in the nuclei. The resulting atomic models with fully identifiable parameters and angular positions of the quantum orbits permit studying the physical conditions behind the structural and bonding restrictions of the atoms connected in molecules. A new method for a theoretical analysis of biomolecules is proposed. The analysis of a DNA molecule leads to formulation of hypotheses about the energy storage mechanism in DNA and its role in the cell cycle synchronization. This permits shedding a light on the DNA feature known as a C-value paradox. The analysis of a tRNA molecule leads to formulation of a hypothesis about a binary decoding mechanism behind the 20 flavors of the complex aminoacyle-tRNA synthetases - tRNA, known as a paradox. (shrink)

We report two studies on the effect of implicitly versus explicitly conveying affirmation and denial problems about conditionals. Recently Evans and Handley (1999) and Schroyens et al. (1999b, 2000b) showed that implicit referencing elicits matching bias: Fewer determinate inferences are made, when the categorical premise (e.g., B) mismatches the conditional's referred clause (e.g., A). Also, the effect of implicit affirmation (B affirms not-A) is larger than the effect of implicit denial (B denies A). Schroyens et al. hypothesised that this interaction (...) is due to uncertainty in the case-wise affirmation of the contrast class of negated elements involved in implicit affirmations. In Experiment 1 we tested this hypothesis by manipulating the set size of the conditional clauses. The results confirm that binary sets, where the contrast class is a singleton, eliminate the differential effect of implicit affirmation and denial. With non-binary sets the interaction is not modulated by the scope of the contrast class (3, 5, 9 elements). Experiment 2 further investigated the role of contrast classes by using class inclusion to construct implicit affirmations (Mammal vs Mammal or Monkey) and implicit denial (No-Mammal vs Mammal or Monkey), in addition to the standard implicit problems mediated by contrast-class inclusion [(No-)Mammal/No-Mammal; Reptile; Snake). Findings indicate that class inclusion (Mammal/Monkey; Reptile/ Snake) only marginally affects performance, and is independent of the type of problem. This would suggest that the implicitness problem-type interaction is dependent on constructing contrast classes. However, the experiment failed to replicate the interaction, even on the subset of problems repeating the abstract letter/number format of Experiment 1. Moreover, with the natural binary set-sizes (vowels/consonants) the implicitness effect was eliminated entirely. (shrink)

It, is shown that Birkhoff –von Neumann quantum logic (i.e., an orthomodular lattice or poset) possessing an ordering set of probability measures S can be isomorphically represented as a family of fuzzy subsets of S or, equivalently, as a family of propositional functions with arguments ranging over S and belonging to the domain of infinite-valued Łukasiewicz logic. This representation endows BvN quantum logic with a new pair of partially defined binary operations, different from the order-theoretic ones: Łukasiewicz intersection and (...) union of fuzzy sets in the first case and Łukasiewicz conjunction and disjunction in the second. Relations between old and new operations are studied and it is shown that although they coincide whenever new operations are defined, they are not identical in general. The hypothesis that quantum-logical conjunction and disjunction should be represented by Łukasiewicz operations, not by order-theoretic join and meet is formulated and some of its possible consequences are considered. (shrink)

If someone claims that individuals behave as if they violate the independence axiom when making decisions over simple lotteries, it is invariably on the basis of experiments and theories that must assume the IA through the use of the random lottery incentive mechanism. We refer to someone who holds this view as a Bipolar Behaviorist, exhibiting pessimism about the axiom when it comes to characterizing how individuals directly evaluate two lotteries in a binary choice task, but optimism about the (...) axiom when it comes to characterizing how individuals evaluate multiple lotteries that make up the incentive structure for a multiple-task experiment. We reject the hypothesis about subject behavior underlying this stance: we find that preferences estimated with a model that assumes violations of the IA are significantly affected when one elicits choices with procedures that require the independence assumption, as compared to choices elicited with procedures that do not require the assumption. The upshot is that one cannot consistently estimate popular models that relax the IA using data from experiments that assume the validity of the RLIM. (shrink)

The article sketches an approach to the sociology of the stranger which is based on historical semantics, on comparative studies of social structures of premodern societies and on a reconsideration of the `classical sociology of the stranger' and of marginality (Simmel, 1908; Michels, 1929 and others; Schütz, 1944; Park, 1964). The guiding hypothesis of the article is that there is a discontinuity in the modern experience of the stranger which has not been reflected sufficiently in the classical sociology of (...) the stranger. Whereas in premodern societies membership criteria are binary codes such as `kin' vs. `stranger', `friend' vs. `enemy', and elaborate arrangements were then necessary for institutionalizing a third status (e.g. for internal strangers) between the binary alternatives, the modern experience is wholly different. Modern society is no longer a membership organization. The third status (i.e. being neither `friend' nor `stranger') has become constitutive of our everyday experience of other persons. And this everyday experience is that of indifference as our normal attitude towards most persons living in the world. A modern sociology of the stranger has to explore the facets of indifference. Indifference can be described as an interactional achievement in situations of fleeting contact. And it can be examined in its macrostructural consequences in a modern societal order in which motivations for societal engagements and therefore any willingness to care for the other are unavoidably scarce. (shrink)

This paper presents an experimental study of common consequence effects in binary choice, willingness-to-pay elicitation, and willingness-to-accept elicitation. We find strong evidence in favor of the fanning out hypothesis for both WTP and WTA. In contrast, the choice data do not show a clear pattern of violations in the absence of certainty effects. Our results underline the relevance of differences between pricing and choice tasks, and their implications for models of decision making under risk.

This research addresses equity in geographic access to financial services. As financial products and services continue to become more accessible and affordable, many low‐ to moderate‐income Americans remain unbanked and underbanked, relying instead upon informal, alternative financial service providers, including check cashing outlets and payday lenders. While geographic access to affordable financial products and services assists in the successful asset building strategies of economically vulnerable households, concerns that access to financial services is uneven persist. This article uses geographic information systems (...) and spatial binary logistic regression analysis to test the hypothesis that sociodemographic characteristics and mortgage lending variables have a predictive relationship on the presence of financial deserts—census tracts where check cashing outlets are more prevalent than banks—in southeastern Pennsylvania. Results of comparison of means and regression analysis reveal that these tracts are associated with higher than average population density, lower levels of median household income, a higher proportion of Black and Latinx residents, and higher levels of mortgage application denial. This article contributes to the ongoing debate over the emergence of a two‐tiered or dual financial service delivery system, whereby financial products and services are bifurcated based on socioeconomic status and geography. (shrink)

ABSTRACT When is it right to enforce medical treatment on a patient who is refusing that treatment? English law recognises two ethical principles as of paramount importance: the autonomy of the patient; and the consequences of not treating compared with treating. The law, by and large, operates these principles in succession. Thus, in the case of a patient refusing treatment, the law asks first, is the patient competent? Only if the answer is no, are the consequences considered. We criticise the (...) position taken by English law and argue, first, that competence is a graded and not a binary concept, and secondly, that the two ethical principles should be applied not sequentially but at the same time. These two ideas form what we have called the balance model. This model could be used for an empirical study of individuals’ ethical beliefs, and in particular to test the hypothesis that the ethical beliefs of most individuals conform to the balance model rather than to the position taken by English law. (shrink)

The interpretation given by Craik and Lockhart of the findings by Hyde and Jenkins involving supposed depth of incidental-task processing on subsequent word recall is brought into question by the tenets of logical learning theory. It is shown that Craik and Lockhart overlooked the possible role of oppositionality in this research. An alternative explanation relying on an oppositional context and predication is offered. Two experiments present evidence supporting the hypothesis that oppositionality in an incidental task facilitates subsequent word recall (...) . In both experiments, the importance of taking a subject's meaningful understanding of the task instruction into consideration is highlighted. The discussion contrasts Boolean "binary" disjunction with the logic of oppositionality. It is shown how oppositionality allows us to conceptualize a testable theory of human agency. (shrink)

This squib reports the results of two experimental studies, a binary choice and a self-paced reading study, that provide strong support for the hypothesis in Tunstall that the distinct scopal properties of each and every are at least to some extent the consequence of an event-differentiation requirement contributed by each. However, we also show that the emerging picture is more complex than Tunstall suggests: English speakers seem to fall into at least three groups regarding the scopal properties of (...) each and every. (shrink)

DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2018.1564697 When the editors of Basic and Applied Social Psychology effectively banned the use of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) from articles published in their journal, it set off a fire-storm of discussions both supporting the decision and defending the utility of NHST in scientific research. At the heart of NHST is the p-value which is the probability of obtaining an effect equal to or more extreme than the one observed in the sample data, given the null (...) class='Hi'>hypothesis and other model assumptions. Although this is conceptually different from the probability of the null hypothesis being true, given the sample, p-values nonetheless can provide evidential information, toward making an inference about a parameter. Applying a 10,000-case simulation described in this article, the authors found that p-values’ inferential signals to either reject or not reject a null hypothesis about the mean (α = 0.05) were consistent for almost 70% of the cases with the parameter’s true location for the sampled-from population. Success increases if a hybrid decision criterion, minimum effect size plus p-value (MESP), is used. Here, rejecting the null also requires the difference of the observed statistic from the exact null to be meaningfully large or practically significant, in the researcher’s judgment and experience. The simulation compares performances of several methods: from p-value and/or effect size-based, to confidence-interval based, under various conditions of true location of the mean, test power, and comparative sizes of the meaningful distance and population variability. For any inference procedure that outputs a binary indicator, like flagging whether a p-value is significant, the output of one single experiment is not sufficient evidence for a definitive conclusion. Yet, if a tool like MESP generates a relatively reliable signal and is used knowledgeably as part of a research process, it can provide useful information. (shrink)

While the HVTN 505 trial showed no overall efficacy of the tested vaccine to prevent HIV infection over placebo, markers measuring immune response to vaccination were strongly correlated with infection. This finding generated the hypothesis that some marker-defined vaccinated subgroups were partially protected whereas others had their risk increased. This hypothesis can be assessed using the principal stratification framework (Frangakis and Rubin, 2002) for studying treatment effect modification by an intermediate response variable, using methods in the sub-field of (...) principal surrogate (PS) analysis that studies multiple principal strata. Unfortunately, available methods for PS analysis require an augmented study design not available in HVTN 505, and make untestable structural risk assumptions, motivating a need for more robust PS methods. Fortunately, another sub-field of principal stratification, survivor average causal effect (SACE) analysis (Rubin, 2006) – which studies effects in a single principal stratum – provides many methods not requiring an augmented design and making fewer assumptions. We show how, for a binary intermediate response variable, methods developed for SACE analysis can be adapted to PS analysis, providing new and more robust PS methods. Application to HVTN 505 supports that the vaccine partially protected individuals with vaccine-induced T-cells expressing certain combinations of functions. (shrink)

The structuralist Andre-Weil–Claude-Levi-Strauss transformation formula (CF), initially applied to kinship systems, mythology, ritual, artistic design and architecture, was rightfully criticized for its rationalism and tendency to reduce complex transformations to analogical structures. I present a revised non-mathematical revision of the CF, a general transformation formula (rCF) applicable to networks of complementary semantic binaries in conceptual value-fields of culture, including comparative religion and mythology, ritual, art, literature and philosophy. The rCF is a rule-guided formula for combinatorial conceptualizing in non-representational, presentational mythopoetics (...) and other cultural symbolizations. I consider poststructuralist category-theoretic and algebraic mathematical interpretations of the CF as themselves only mathematical analogies, which serve to stimulate further revision of the logic model of the rCF. The rCF can be used in hypothesis-making to advance understanding of the evolution and prehistory of human symbolic behaviour in cultural space, philosophical ontologies and categories, definitions and concepts in art, religion, psychotherapy, and other cultural-value forms. (shrink)

In this research, the -dimensional variable-coefficient Caudrey–Dodd–Gibbon–Kotera–Sawada model used in soliton hypothesis and implemented by operating the Hirota bilinear scheme is studied. A few modern exact analytical outcomes containing interaction between a lump-two kink soliton, interaction between two-lump, the interaction between two-lump soliton, lump-periodic, and lump-three kink outcomes for the -D VC Caudrey–Dodd–Gibbon–Kotera–Sawada equation by Maple Symbolic packages are obtained. By employing Hirota’s bilinear technique, the extended soliton solutions according to bilinear frame equation are received. For this model, the (...) contemplated model can be got by multi-D binary Bell polynomials. In addition, the analytical analysis of the high-order soliton outcomes to present the discipline of outcomes. The effect of the free parameters on the behavior of acquired figures of a few obtained solutions for the nonlinear rational exact cases was also discussed. The above technique could also be employed to get exact solutions for other nonlinear models in physics, applied mathematics, and engineering. (shrink)

Forenames serve as proxies for gender labels that activate gender stereotypes and gender socialization. Unlike rigid binary gender categories, they differ in the degree to which they are perceived as “masculine” or “feminine.” We examined the novel hypothesis that the ability of a forename to signal gender is associated with gender role behavior in women and men as part of a larger study evaluating forenames used in resume research. Compared to individuals endorsing a “gender-strong” forename, those perceiving their (...) forename as relatively “gender-weak” reported less gender-typical childhood social behavior and a weaker expression of gender-linked personality traits. Our findings suggest that forenames strengthen or weaken gender socialization, gender identification, and so contribute to the variable expression of gender role behavior within binary gender groups. (shrink)

-/- For all that digital methods—including network visualization, text analysis, and others—have begun to show extensive promise in philosophical contexts, a tension remains between two uses of those tools that have often been taken to be incompatible, or at least to engage in a kind of trade-off: the discovery of new hypotheses and the testing of already-formulated positions. This paper presents this basic distinction, then explores ways to resolve this tension with the help of two interdisciplinary case studies, taken from (...) preregistration in contemporary science and the debate over whig history in the history of science. These case studies, the paper argues, refocus our attention from a mutually exclusive testing/discovery binary to the relationship between our background data or philosophical views and the empirical generalizations that we might draw from the data. Finally, it develops a set of three challenges for philosophers and corresponding avenues for future work that will, it is hoped, allow us to better justify our use of these methods. (shrink)

My project in Being For is both constructive and negative. The main aim of the book is to take the core ideas of meta-ethical expressivism as far as they can go, and to try to develop a version of expressivism that solves many of the more straightforward open problems that have faced the view without being squarely confronted. In doing so, I develop an expressivist framework that I call biforcated attitude semantics, which I claim has the minimal structural features required (...) in order to solve some of these open problems facing expressivism. I take biforcated attitude semantics to prove that expressivism is a coherent and interesting hypothesis about the semantics of natural languages.So much for the constructive part; having argued that biforcated attitude semantics incorporates the minimal moves required in order to solve a few of the more pressing open questions facing expressivism, I use it in order to productively constrain what an expressivist answer to further open questions must look like. The results, I end up arguing, are ultimately not promising; the very same structural features that expressivists need in order to answer so simple a problem as to explain why ‘P’ and ‘∼P’ are inconsistent sentences lead to a very general problem about how ordinary, non-moral sentences are to end up with the right truth-conditions, and though I show how to finesse this problem for some simple constructions – truth-conditional connectives and the quantifiers – I ultimately argue that it can’t be done for the full range of constructions in natural languages – including terms like modals, tense and binary quantifiers like ‘most’. So even if expressivism is coherent and interesting, it is an extremely unpromising hypothesis about the language that we actually speak.The main theme of the book is that the most fruitful way …. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to improve on the logical and measure-theoretic foundations for the notion of probability in the law of evidence, which were given in my contributions Åqvist [ (1990) Logical analysis of epistemic modality: an explication of the Bolding–Ekelöf degrees of evidential strength. In: Klami HT (ed) Rätt och Sanning (Law and Truth. A symposium on legal proof-theory in Uppsala May 1989). Iustus Förlag, Uppsala, pp 43–54; (1992) Towards a logical theory of legal evidence: semantic analysis (...) of the Bolding–Ekelöf degrees of evidential strength. In: Martino AA (ed) Expert systems in law. Elsevier Science Publishers BV, Amsterdam, North-Holland, pp 67–86]. The present approach agrees with the one adopted in those contributions in taking its main task to be that of providing a semantic analysis, or explication, of the so called Bolding–Ekelöf degrees of evidential strength (“proof-strength”) as applied to the establishment of matters of fact in law-courts. However, it differs from the one advocated in our earlier work on the subject in explicitly appealing to what is known as “Pro-et-Contra Argumentation”, after the famous Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. It tries to bring out the logical form of that interesting kind of reasoning, at least in the context of the law of evidence. The formal techniques used here will be seen to be largely inspired by the important work done by Patrick Suppes, notably Suppes [(1957) Introduction to logic. van Nostrand, Princeton and (1972) Finite equal-interval measurement structures. Theoria 38:45–63]. (shrink)

Mental representations remain the central posits of psychology after many decades of scrutiny. However, there is no consensus about the representational format(s) of biological cognition. This paper provides a survey of evidence from computational cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and social psychology, and concludes that one type of format that routinely crops up is the language-of-thought (LoT). We outline six core properties of LoTs: (i) discrete constituents; (ii) role-filler independence; (iii) predicate–argument structure; (iv) logical operators; (v) inferential (...) promiscuity; and (vi) abstract content. These properties cluster together throughout cognitive science. Bayesian computational modeling, compositional features of object perception, complex infant and animal reasoning, and automatic, intuitive cognition in adults all implicate LoT-like structures. Instead of regarding LoT as a relic of the previous century, researchers in cognitive science and philosophy-of-mind must take seriously the explanatory breadth of LoT-based architectures. We grant that the mind may harbor many formats and architectures, including iconic and associative structures as well as deep-neural-network-like architectures. However, as computational/representational approaches to the mind continue to advance, classical compositional symbolic structures – that is, LoTs – only prove more flexible and well-supported over time. (shrink)

Stephen Davies’s Adornment lays an admirable foundation upon which much fruitful philosophical discussion about the topic of adornment can—and likely, will—be b.

In some recent papers (G. ‘t Hooft and others), it has been argued that quantum mechanics can arise from classical cellular automata. Nonetheless, G. Shpenkov has proved that the classical wave equation makes it possible to derive a periodic table of elements, which is very close to Mendeleyev’s one, and describe also other phenomena related to the structure of molecules. Hence the classical wave equation complements Schrödinger’s equation, which implies the appearance of a cellular automaton molecular model starting from classical (...) wave equation. The other studies show that the microworld is constituted as a tessellation of primary topological balls. The tessellattice becomes the origin of a submicrospic mechanics in which a quantum system is subdivided to two subsystems: the particle and its inerton cloud, which appears due to the interaction of the moving particle with oncoming cells of the tessellattice. The particle and its inerton cloud periodically change the momentum and hence move like a wave. The new approach allows us to correlate the Klein-Gordon equation with the deformation coat that is formed in the tessellatice around the particle. The submicroscopic approach shows that the source of any type of wave movements including the Klein-Gordon, Schrödinger, and classical wave equations is hidden in the tessellattice and its basic exciations – inertons, carriers of mass and inert properies of matter. We also discuss possible correspondence with Konrad Zuse’s calculating space. (shrink)

The paper discusses recent proposals by Carroll and Chen, as well as Barbour, Koslowski, and Mercati to explain the arrow of time without a Past Hypothesis, i.e. the assumption of a special initial state of the universe. After discussing the role of the Past Hypothesis and the controversy about its status, we explain why Carroll's model - which establishes an arrow of time as typical - can ground sensible predictions and retrodictions without assuming something akin to a Past (...) Hypothesis. We then propose a definition of a Boltzmann entropy for a classical N-particle system with gravity, suggesting that a Newtonian gravitating universe might provide a relevant example of Carroll's entropy model. This invites comparison with the work of Barbour, Koslowski, and Mercati that identifies typical arrows of time in a relational formulation of classical gravity on shape space. We clarify the difference between this gravitational arrow in terms of shape complexity and the entropic arrow in absolute spacetime, and work out the key advantages of the relationalist theory. We end by pointing out why the entropy concept relies on absolute scales and is thus not relational. (shrink)

Gignac and Zajenkowski (2020) find that “the degree to which people mispredicted their objectively measured intelligence was equal across the whole spectrum of objectively measured intelligence”. This Comment shows that Gignac and Zajenkowski’s (2020) finding of homoscedasticity is likely the result of a recoding choice by the experimenters and does not in fact indicate that the Dunning-Kruger Effect is a mere statistical artifact. Specifically, Gignac and Zajenkowski (2020) recoded test subjects’ responses to a question regarding self-assessed comparative IQ onto a (...) linear IQ scale when a normal IQ scale would likely have been more appropriate. More generally, researchers studying self-assessed intelligence should be aware of potential measurement problems that may arise when transforming an ordinal scale onto an interval scale. (shrink)

In response to recent controversies about racial transitioning, I provide an argument that deceptions about ancestry may sometimes constitute fraud. In order to arrive at this conclusion, I criticize the arguments from analogy made famous by Rebecca Tuvel and Christine Overall. My claim is that we should not think of racial transitioning as similar to gender transitioning, because different identity groups possess different kinds of obstacles to entry. I then provide historical surveys of American racial categories and the various types (...) of passing common in American history, in order to distinguish the potentially fraudulent from the relatively innocent styles of passing. (shrink)

In guarding against inferential mistakes, experimental comparative cognition errs on the side of underattributing sophisticated cognition to animals, or what I refer to as the underattribution bias. I propose eliminating this bias by altering the method of choosing the default, or null, hypothesis. Rather than choosing the most parsimonious null hypothesis, as is current practice, I argue for choosing the best-evidenced hypothesis. Doing so at once preserves the risk-controlling structure of the current statistical paradigm and introduces a (...) sensitivity to probability-conferring empirical and theoretical information. This analysis illustrates how values like parsimony can covertly shape statistical-experimental design and inference. (shrink)

Conventional discussion of research methodology contrast two approaches, the quantitative and the qualitative, presented as collectively exhaustive. But if qualitative is taken as the understanding of lifeworlds, the two approaches between them cover only a tiny fraction of research methodologies; and the quantitative, taken as the routine application to controlled experiments of frequentist statistics by way of the Null Hypothesis Significance Testing Procedure, is seriously flawed. It is contrary to the advice both of Fisher and of Neyman and Pearson, (...) the two sources from which it is drawn. (shrink)

A notion of experimental series is developed, in which experiments or experimental sets are connected through experimental suggestions arising from previous experimental outcomes. To that end, the justification of Howard Temin's DNA provirus hypothesis is examined. The hypothesis originated with evidence from two exploratory experimental sets on an oncogenic virus and was substantiated by including evidence from three additional experimental sets. Collectively these sets comprise an experimental series and the accumulative evidence from the series was adequate to justify (...) the hypothesis by persuading the virology community of its veracity. The notion of crucial experiment is also discussed in terms of experimental series. (shrink)