The present study investigated how knowledge-gaps, measured by feeling-of-knowing, and individual differences in epistemic curiosity contribute to the arousal of state curiosity and exploratory behaviour for 265 (210 women, 55 men) university students. Participants read 12 general knowledge questions, reported the answer was either known (“I Know”), on the tip-of-the-tongue (“TOT”), or unknown (“Don't Know”), and indicated how curious they were to see each answer, after which they could view any answers they wanted. Participants also responded to the Epistemic Curiosity (...) (EC) and Curiosity as a Feeling-of-Deprivation (CFD) scales. “TOT” was associated with the smallest knowledge-gap, most curiosity and exploration, and feelings of uncertainty and tension as measured by the CFD scale. “Don't Know” corresponded with the largest knowledge-gap, less curiosity and exploration, and positive feelings of interest as measured by the EC scale. “I Know” states, which reflected the absence of a knowledge-gap, involved the least curiosity and exploration. (shrink)

Previous plan‐based models of dialogue understanding have been unable to account for many types of subdialogues present in naturally occurring conversations. One reason for this is that the models have not clearly differentiated between the varoius ways that an utterance can relate to a plan structure representing a topic. In this paper we present a plan‐based theory that allows a wide variety of utterance‐plan relationships. We introduce a set of discourse plans, each one corresponding to a particular way that an (...) utterance can relate to a discourse topic, and distinguish such plans from the set of plans that are actually used to model the topics. By incorporating knowledge about discourse into a plan‐based framework, we can account for a wide variety of subdialogues while maintaining the computational advantages of the plan‐based approach. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to prove strengthenings of three theorems appearing in Jensen [1].

The aim of this paper is to prove strengthenings of three theorems appearing in Jensen [1].

Typical approaches to resolving the sorites paradox attempt to show, in one way or another, that the sorites argument is not paradoxical after all. However, if one can show that the sorites is not really paradoxical, the task remains of explaining why it appears to be a paradox. Our approach begins by addressing the appearance of paradox and then explores what this means for the paradox itself. We examine the sorites from the perspective of the various brain systems that are (...) intuitively comfortable with the key features of the premises of the sorites argument. We suggest that the explicit and implicit cognitive systems are separately responsible for the initial plausibility of the categorical and inductive premises. The appearance of paradox is a function of our brain’s architecture and arises from the conflicting interactions of neurologically distinct systems. (shrink)

For commercial purveyors of digital speech, information and entertainment, the biggest threat posed by the Internet isn''t the threat of piracy, but the threat posed by free speech -- speech that doesn''t cost any money. Free speech has the potential to squeeze out expensive speech. A glut of high quality free stuff has the potential to run companies in the business of selling speech out of business. We haven''t had to worry about this before, because speaking in a meaningful way (...) to a large audience was expensive, and people couldn''t afford to do serious mass speaking for free for very long. The Internet has made it much cheaper. It doesn''t take much to give out information to the whole world, every day, for free, for years. And people do. If we are trying to increase the abundant dissemination of information, free speech is good. If we are trying to increase commerce in information, free speech is arguably bad, in that it competes with pay speech. Information merchants would obviously prefer that the only speech in the marketplace be pay speech. In the past two years, commercial content owners have scored significant progress in herding free speakers off the Net. There''s an important synergy between persuading the government to give your industry some friendly new laws or regulations, and using new and old legal tools to make life more difficult or expensive for inconvenient competitors who aren''t necessarily doing anything illegal. Recently, businesses have been able to combine the two strategies to make the Internet a much safer place to sell speech, by making the Internet a less friendly, more dangerous place to give away speech for free. (shrink)

Perruchet & Vinter's article, for all its breadth and scope, has several deep problems: specifically, an eccentric notion of rule, a narrow notion of what it means for a mental instantiation to be abstract, and a failure to take into account fundamental principles of evolutionary biology. While not the only problems, these three are sufficient to seriously weaken their arguments.