Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: (...) truth-conditionally equivalent clauses may be associated with different propositional alternatives, each of which counts as a separate counterfactual assumption. Second, we show that our results contradict the common idea that the interpretation of a counterfactual involves minimizing change with respect to the actual state of affairs. We propose to replace the idea of minimal change by a distinction between foreground and background for a given counterfactual assumption: the background is held fixed in the counterfactual situation, while the foreground can be varied without any minimality constraint. (shrink)

A unifying theory of general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness must explain the common mechanism through which various anesthetic agents produce unconsciousness. Functional-brain-imaging data obtained from 11 volunteers during general anesthesia showed specific suppression of regional thalamic and midbrain reticular formation activity across two different commonly used volatile agents. These findings are discussed in relation to findings from sleep neurophysiology and the implications of this work for consciousness research. It is hypothesized that the essential common neurophysiologic mechanism underlying anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is, as (...) with sleep-induced unconsciousness, a hyperpolarization block of thalamocortical neurons. A model of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is introduced to explain how the plethora of effects anesthetics have on cellular functioning ultimately all converge on a single neuroanatomic/neurophysiologic system, thus providing for a unitary physiologic theory of narcosis related to consciousness. (shrink)

The unsettling fear of COVID-19 infections has caused a new trend in consumer behavior in the food and beverage industry. The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has shifted consumers’ preferences from eat-in to online delivery. This research aims to measure the impact of consumers’ motivation to protect themselves from contracting COVID-19, which explains why people switch from eat-in to online food delivery. We adopted the theory of protection motivation to explain consumer switching behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study (...) investigated the mediating effect of switching intention on the relationship between vulnerability, altruistic fear, anticipated regret, and switching behavior. Simultaneously, we examined the role of brand awareness as a moderator of behavioral choices of consumers switching from eat-in to online delivery. We collected data from 681 eatery consumers in Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia, using scenario-based survey questionnaires. Then, the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. This new generation analysis was conducted using the analysis of moment structure and the statistical package for social science. The results indicated that consumer vulnerability, altruistic fear, and anticipated regret of COVID-19 increased consumers’ propensity to shift from eat-in to online food delivery. Allegedly, consumer behavioral control and intention of switching toward online delivery were pointedly affected by switching behavior. The results indicated that consumer vulnerability, altruistic fear, and anticipated regret of COVID-19 increased the shifting of restaurant dine-in patterns and made the intention to switch to online delivery. Consumers’ alleged behavioral control and their intention of switching toward online delivery were pointedly affected by switching behavior. We also found that brand awareness moderately affects switching behavior toward restaurant settings. The present research contributes to developing the consumer behavior model of switching from eat-in to online delivery. This study also provides eatery customers and the business community with a safer and healthier proposition of shifting to online food delivery during the pandemic. (shrink)

Theories of embodied cognition hold that the conceptual system uses perceptual simulations for the purposes of representation. A strong prediction is that perceptual phenomena should emerge in conceptual processing, and, in support, previous research has shown that switching modalities from one trial to the next incurs a processing cost during conceptual tasks. However, to date, such research has been limited by its reliance on the retrieval of familiar concepts. We therefore examined concept creation by asking participants to interpret modality-specific (...) compound phrases (i.e., conceptual combinations). Results show that modality switching costs emerge during the creation of new conceptual entities: People are slower to simulate a novel concept (e.g., auditory jingling onion) when their attention has already been engaged by a different modality in simulating a familiar concept (e.g., visual shiny penny). Furthermore, these costs cannot be accounted for by linguistic factors alone. Rather, our findings support the embodied view that concept creation, as well as retrieval, requires situated perceptual simulation. (shrink)

Recent advancements in developmental biology enable the creation of embryo-like structures from human stem cells, which we refer to as human embryo-like structures (hELS). These structures provide promising tools to complement—and perhaps ultimately replace—the use of human embryos in clinical and fundamental research. But what if these hELS—when further improved—also have a claim to moral status? What would that imply for their research use? In this paper, we explore these questions in relation to the traditional answer as to why human (...) embryos should be given greater protection than other (non-)human cells: the so-called Argument from Potential (AfP). According to the AfP, human embryos deserve special moral status because they have the unique potential to develop into persons. While some take the development of hELS to challenge the very foundations of the AfP, the ongoing debate suggests that its dismissal would be premature. Since the AfP is a spectrum of views with different moral implications, it does not need to imply that research with human embryos or hELS that (may) have ‘active’ potential should be completely off-limits. However, the problem with determining active potential in hELS is that this depends on development passing through ‘potentiality switches’ about the precise coordinates of which we are still in the dark. As long as this epistemic uncertainty persists, extending embryo research regulations to research with specific types of hELS would amount to a form of regulative precaution that as such would require further justification. (shrink)

This paper questions two prima facie plausible claims concerning switching in the presence of ambiguous figures. The first is the claim that reversing is an instantaneous process. The second is the claim that the ability to reverse demonstrates the interpretive, inferential and constructive nature of visual processing. Empirical studies show that optical and cerebral events related to switching protract in time in a way that clashes with its perceived instantaneity. The studies further suggest an alternative theory of (...) reversing: according to such alternative, seeing the same thing in multiple ways is a matter of uncovering what is already present to the senses through visual search. (shrink)

An explicitly frame related interpretation of a very general more for less result is used to establish a correspondingly general class of frame related switching results. These are used in turn to show how preference reversals of kinds found by Allais and others may not only be essentially non-paradoxical in character, but can be expected to be frequently observed, even under conditions of certainty and of complete information.

Organisations that design and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly commit themselves to high-level, ethical principles. However, there still exists a gap between principles and practices in AI ethics. One major obstacle organisations face when attempting to operationalise AI Ethics is the lack of a well-defined material scope. Put differently, the question to which systems and processes AI ethics principles ought to apply remains unanswered. Of course, there exists no universally accepted definition of AI, and different systems pose different ethical (...) challenges. Nevertheless, pragmatic problem-solving demands that things should be sorted so that their grouping will promote successful actions for some specific end. In this article, we review and compare previous attempts to classify AI systems for the purpose of implementing AI governance in practice. We find that attempts to classify AI systems proposed in previous literature use one of three mental models: _the Switch_, i.e., a binary approach according to which systems either are or are not considered AI systems depending on their characteristics; _the Ladder_, i.e., a risk-based approach that classifies systems according to the ethical risks they pose; and _the Matrix_, i.e., a multi-dimensional classification of systems that take various aspects into account, such as context, input data, and decision-model. Each of these models for classifying AI systems comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. By conceptualising different ways of classifying AI systems into simple mental models, we hope to provide organisations that design, deploy, or regulate AI systems with the vocabulary needed to demarcate the material scope of their AI governance frameworks. (shrink)

A certain skeptical strategy involves a skeptical hypothesis that closely mirrors the structure of our standard theory of the world; this strategy insulates the skeptical argument from attacks based on standard criteria of theory choice. A standard reply to this strategy is to claim that proffered alternative is just the standard theory expressed in a different notation. But this reply does not succeed, given plausible assumptions about semantics. However, there is an alternative strategy--also semantical--which can deal with (...) the problem, at least in those cases where, intuitively, the skeptic's challenge should fail. (shrink)

According to ‘standard histories’ of nanotechnology, the colorful pictures of atoms produced by scanning probe microscopists since the 1980s essentially inspired visions of molecular nanotechnology. In this paper, I provide an entirely different account that, nonetheless, refers to aesthetic inspiration, First, I argue that the basic idea of molecular nanotechnology, i.e., producing molecular devices, has been the goal of supramolecular chemistry that emerged earlier, without being called nanotechnology. Secondly, I argue that in supramolecular chemistry the production of molecular devices was (...) inspired by an aesthetic phenomenon of gestalt switch, by certain images that referred to both molecules and ordinary objects, and thus symbolically bridged the two worlds. This opened up a new way of perceiving and drawing molecular images and new approaches to chemical synthesis. Employing Umberto Eco’s semiotic theory of aesthetics, I analyze the gestalt switch and the inspiration to build molecular devices and to develop a new sign language for supramolecular chemistry. More generally, I argue that aesthetic phenomena can play an important role in directing scientific research and that aesthetic theories can help understand such dynamics, such that they need to be considered in philosophy of science. (shrink)

Culture-as-situated cognition theory provides insight into the system 1 monitoring algorithm. Culture provides people with an organizing framework, facilitating predictions, focusing attention, and providing experiential signals of certainty and uncertainty as system 1 inputs. When culture-based signals convey that something is amiss, system 2 reasoning is triggered and engaged when resources allow; otherwise, system 1 reasoning dominates.

This paper traces the shift from Marx’s labour theory of value to his later forms of value theory and attributes the change to Marx’s shift from agency to causation as the dominant dependent relationship in economic phenomena.

Search and switching costs are two market frictions that are well known in the literature for preventing people from switching to a new and cheaper provider. Previous experimental literature has studied these two frictions in isolation. However, field evidence shows that these two frictions frequently occur together. Recently, a theoretical framework has been developed (Wilson in Eur Econ Rev 56(6):1070–1086) which studies the interplay between these two costs. We report on an experiment testing this theory to see (...) if individual behaviour with search and switching costs is in line with the theoretical predictions derived from the optimal choice rule of Wilson. The results show the crucial role of the search strategy: not only, according to Wilson model, the search cost has a greater deterrent impact on search than the switching costs, but also the sub-optimality of the search strategy is the major source of sub-optimality in the switching behaviour. (shrink)

Suppose COVID-19 is the runaway tram in the famous moral thought experiment, known as the “Bystander at the Switch.” Consider the two differentiated responses of governments around the world to this new threat, namely the option of quarantine/lockdown and herd immunity. Can we contrast the hypothetical with the real scenario? What do the institutional decisions and strategies for dealing with the virus, in the beginning of 2020, signify in a normative moral framework? This paper investigates these possibilities in order to (...) highlight the similarities and, more importantly, the differences that exist between utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Analysis shows that the hypothetical scenario can never be fully compared to the complex multifactorial nature of the real world. But if a comparison is attempted, the most obvious difference between the two governmental strategies is the concept of duty within the Kantian perspective. Ultimately, it is a matter of comparing freedom and life. Attributing a moral “priority ticket” to one or the other can be analysed through interpersonal aggregation. (shrink)

Drawing on signaling theory, we suggest that a supplier’s enforcement of ethical codes sends signals about the supplier that affect a buyer’s decision to continue their commitment to the supplier. We then draw on side-bet theory to hypothesize how switching costs influence the importance of a supplier’s enforcement of ethical codes in predicting a buyer’s continuance commitment to a supplier. We empirically test our model with data from 158 purchasing managers across three manufacturing industries. Results confirm the (...) connection between ethical code enforcement and continuance commitment, but suggest that a supplier’s enforcement of ethical codes matter less when switching suppliers is perceived as too costly. (shrink)

heories of embodied cognition (e.g., Perceptual Symbol Systems Theory; Barsalou, 1999, 2009) suggest that modality specific simulations underlie the representation of concepts. Supporting evidence comes from modality switch costs: participants are slower to verify a property in one modality (e.g., auditory, BLENDER-loud) after verifying a property in a different modality (e.g., gustatory, CRANBERRIES-tart) compared to the same modality (e.g., LEAVES-rustling, Pecher et al., 2003). Similarly, modality switching costs lead to a modulation of the N400 effect in event-related potentials (...) (ERPs; Collins et al., 2011; Hald et al., 2011). This effect of modality switching has also been shown to interact with the veracity of the sentence (Hald et al., 2011). The current ERP study further explores the role of modality match/mismatch on the processing of veracity as well as negation (sentences containing “not”). Our results indicate a modulation in the ERP based on modality and veracity, plus an interaction. The evidence supports the idea that modality specific simula- tions occur during language processing, and furthermore suggest that these simulations alter the processing of negation. (shrink)

In this paper, dynamic behavior analysis has been discussed for a class of switched complex-valued neural networks with interval parameter uncertainties and impulse disturbance. Sufficient conditions for guaranteeing the existence, uniqueness, and global robust exponential stability of the equilibrium point have been obtained by using the homomorphism mapping theorem, the scalar Lyapunov function method, the average dwell time method, and M-matrix theory. Since there is no result concerning the stability problem of switched neural networks defined in complex number domain, (...) the stability results we describe in this paper generalize the existing ones. The effectiveness of the proposed results is illustrated by a numerical example. (shrink)

Sometimes people posit "beliefs" to explain mundane instrumental actions (e.g., Neil believes the switch is connected to the light, so he flipped the switch to illuminate the room). Sometimes people posit "beliefs" to explain group affiliation or identity (e.g., in order to belong to the Christian Reformed Church Neil must believe that God is triune). If we set aside the commonality of the word "belief," we can pose a crucial question: Is the cognitive attitude typically involved in the first "light (...) switch" sort of case the same as the cognitive attitude typically involved in the second "Trinity" sort of case? Or: Is mundanely believing the same cognitive relation as groupishly believing? In this essay, I argue that the answer is no. Mundane Beliefs play their instrumental roles well if they are true, and their manner of processing is accordingly sensitive to evidence. Groupish Beliefs play their identity-constituting roles well if they are distinctive, and their manners of processing accordingly allow for and often support distortions of evidence and truth. The manners of processing are thus so different that--despite the common word "belief"--philosophy of mind and epistemology would do well to recognize distinct cognitive attitudes. (shrink)

The very rules of our language games contain mechanisms of disregard. Philosophy of language tends to treat speakers as peers with equal discursive authority, but this is rare in real, lived speech situations. This paper explores the mechanisms of discursive inclusion and exclusion governing our speech practices, with a special focus on the role of gender attribution in undermining women’s authority as speakers. Taking seriously the metaphor of language games, we must ask who gets in the game and whose moves (...) can score. To do this, I develop an eclectic analysis of language games using basic inferential role theory and the concept of a semantic index, and develop the distinction between positional authority and expertise authority, which often conflict for members of oppressed groups. Introducing the concepts of master switches and sub-switches that attach to the index and change scorekeeping practices, I argue that women’s gender status conflicts with our status as authoritative speakers because sex marking in semantics functions as a master switch—“the F-switch”—on the semantic index, which, once thrown, changes the very game. An advantage of using inferentialism for understanding disregard of women’s discursive authority is that it locates the problem in the sanctioned moves, in the deontic structure of norms and practices of scorekeeping, and not primarily in the individual intentions of particular people. (shrink)

Many African American children make use of African American English in their everyday lives, and face academic barriers when introduced to Standard American English in the classroom. Research has shown that students who can adapt and use SAE for academic purposes demonstrate significantly better test scores than their less adaptable peers. Accordingly, AAE use and its confirmed inverse relationship to reading achievement have been implicated in the Black-White Test Score Gap, thus becoming the focus of intense research and practical interest. (...) This volume discusses dialectal code-switching from AAE to SAE and stresses the benefits and importance of African American students becoming bi-dialectal. It provides background theory and science supporting the most promising educational approach to date, Contrastive Analysis, a set of longstanding methods drawn from Second Language research and used effectively with students ranging from kindergarten through college. It offers a deeper knowledge of AAE use by students, the critical features of Contrastive Analysis, and detailed information about successful applications which teachers can apply in their own pedagogy. (shrink)

Wittgenstein formulates the paradox of gestalt switches thus: ‘What is incomprehensible is that nothing, and yet everything has changed, after all. That is the only way to put it’. In the course of isolating what I take to be the best of the various solutions to the paradox explored by Wittgenstein, the following claims are defended: (a) A significant strand in Wittgenstein’s own formulation of, and solution to, the paradox can best be understood as a response to three specific claims (...) made by the Gestalt psychologist Kohler. (b) The most promising avenue Wittgenstein explored in his many attempts to resolve the paradox gives perceptual attention a constitutive role in the solution (c) This role is best elaborated, partially, by appeal to information processing theories of attention. (d) There are good reasons to think that the kind of solution to the paradox this yields would have been welcomed by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Archaeological Theory in Dialogue presents an innovative conversation between five scholars from different backgrounds on a range of central issues facing archaeology today. Interspersing detailed investigations of critical theoretical issues with dialogues between the authors, the book interrogates the importance of four themes at the heart of much contemporary theoretical debate: relations, ontology, posthumanism, and Indigenous paradigms. The authors, who work in Europe and North America, explore how these themes are shaping the ways that archaeologists conduct fieldwork, conceptualize the (...) past, and engage with the political and ethical challenges that our discipline faces in the 21st century. The unique style of Archaeological Theory in Dialogue, switching between detailed arguments and dialogical exchange, makes it essential reading for both scholars and students of archaeological theory and those with an interest in the politics and ethics of the past. (shrink)

Like the Theory of Event Coding (TEC), theories of executive functions depict cognition as a flexible and goal-directed system rather than a reflex-like one. Research on task-switching, a dominant paradigm in executive control, has revealed complex and some apparently counterintuitive results. Many of these are readily explained by assuming, like TEC, that cognitive control is based on selecting information from commensurate representations of stimuli and actions.

Typical theory of mind tasks assess children’s ability to attribute a false belief in order to predict or explain an action. According to these standard tasks, young children do not represent the independent (mistaken) beliefs of others until the fourth year—yet long before this, children are able to track speakers’ intentions in order to learn new words. Might communication be a privileged domain for theory of mind? In the present study we explored pre‐schoolers’ ability to track a false (...) belief in order to acquire a novel word. A puppet labeled a novel object in a false belief condition (contents of a box had been switched without her knowledge), and a true belief condition (contents switched in her presence). Children were significantly better at tracking the puppet’s false belief in the word‐learning task than in a standard false belief test. Possible reasons for this advantage are discussed, and the suggestion made that representation of mental states may emerge precociously in the service of communication. (shrink)

The settler-colonial and republican principles of early U.S. politics tend to be studied as paradoxical ambitions of American nation-building. This article argues that early republican thought in the United States developed through what I call ‘ideological code-switching’, a vernacular practice that allowed popular actors to strategically vacillate between anti-colonial and neo-colonial discourses as complementary principles of revolutionary change. I illustrate these claims by tracing a genealogy of anti- and neo-colonial thought from the founding of the United States to its (...) transnational emergence in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I demonstrate that ideological code-switching first appeared as a rhetorical strategy among the Federalist debates, where Publius argued for the feasibility of expansionist republics via a hemispheric account of American exceptionalism. These appeals to hemispheric unity remained salient into the nineteenth century among groups like the ‘Republicans of ‘Nacogdoches’, a militia comprised of Indigenous, Mestizo, and White actors that mobilized an attack on Spain and founded the Republic of Texas in April of 1813. Drawing on archival research, I turn to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as an example of the way marginalized groups instrumentalized links between anti- and neo-colonial politics to envision their position in the rapidly evolving landscapes of transnational revolution. (shrink)

A human brain operates as a pattern of switching. An abstract definition of a quantum mechanical switch is given which allows for the continual random fluctuations in the warm wet environment of the brain. Among several switch-like entities in the brain, we choose to focus on the sodium channel proteins. After explaining what these are, we analyse the ways in which our definition of a quantum switch can be satisfied by portions of such proteins. We calculate the perturbing effects (...) of normal variations in temperature and electric field on the quantum state of such a portion. These are shown to be acceptable within the fluctuations allowed for by our definition. Information processing and unpredictability in the brain are discussed. The ultimate goal underlying the paper is an analysis of quantum measurement theory based on an abstract definition of the physical manifestations of consciousness. The paper is written for physicists with no prior knowledge of neurophysiology, but enough introductory material has also been included to allow neurophysiologists with no prior knowledge of quantum mechanics to follow the central arguments. (shrink)

Following Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s epistemological concept we show how a generic element of synthetic biology, the “biological switch”, can be integrated into an experimental system. Here synthetic biology is assumed to be a technoscience. Hence, the biological switch becomes a technoscientific research object. Consequently, the experimental system has to be analyzed in a technoscientific experimental setting, showing differences in comparison with the former. To work out the specific properties of the technoscientific experimental system, biological switching behavior is compared with the (...) scientific research object laser light in its classical setting. For the analyses, both the laser light and bistability, enabling a biological switch, are considered as epistemic things connected by the same theoretical concept of phase transitions. The so-called Schlögl model is used to model both biological switching behavior and induced emission of radiation and becomes an epistemic thing in itself. It becomes clear that the answer, whether one is dealing with the emission of laser light or with bistable switching behavior, is linked to the perspective taken. The technoscientific orientation towards applications and the development of basic scientific theories require different perspectives on one and the same epistemic thing, here also represented by the model. The research objects of synthetic biology as a technoscience thus also enter into the corresponding experimental systems as techno-epistemic objects. Their analysis leads to a more complete understanding of what constitutes synthetic biology. (shrink)