Shifting the focus from fear, guilt, and indignation related to deteriorating environmental quality, the authors hypothesized that people who see greater potential for restorative experiences in natural environments also do more to protect them by behaving ecologically, as with recycling or reduced driving. University students rated a familiar freshwater marsh in terms of being away, fascination, coherence, and compatibility, qualities of restorative person-environment transactions described in attention restoration theory. They also reported on their performance of various ecological behaviors. The authors (...) tested a structural equation model with data from a randomly drawn subset of participants and then confirmed it with the data from a second subset. For the combined subsets, perceptions of the restorative qualities predicted 23% of the variance in general ecological behavior. As the only direct predictor, fascination mediated the influences of coherence, being away, and compatibility. (shrink)

People differ in their personal commitment to fighting climate change and protecting the environment. The question is, can we validly measure people’s commitment by what they say and what they claim they do in opinion polls? In our research, we demonstrate that opinions and reports of past behavior can be aggregated into comparable depictions of people’s personal commitment to fighting climate change and protecting the environment. In contrast to the commonly used operational scaling approaches, we ground our measure of people’s (...) environmental attitudes in a mathematically formalized psychological theory of the response process—the Campbell paradigm. This theory of the response process has already been extensively validated, and its relevance for manifest behavior has repeatedly been shown as well. In our secondary analysis of Eurobarometer data from 28 European countries, we apply the Campbell paradigm to a set of indicators that was not originally collected to be aggregated into a single scale. With our research, we propose a distinct way to measure behavior-relevant environmental attitudes that can be used even with a set of indicators that was originally atheoretically compiled. Overall, our study suggests that the Campbell paradigm provides a sound psychological measurement theory that can be applied to cross-cultural comparisons in the environmental protection domain. (shrink)

The goal of the following study is to investigate whether first-year students in STEM fields that have a low proportion of females (STEM-L) show vocational interests that fit their vocational aspirations. To place our investigation into a broader context, we compared students in STEM-L with students of STEM subjects with a medium proportion of women (STEM-M) as well as with other subjects with a medium or a high proportion of females. We analyzed their vocational interests, vocational aspirations and their interest (...) congruence. In both the comparison regarding interest profiles and the comparison of vocational aspirations, we focused on the things-orientation and people-orientation, all while taking respective gender differences into account. Following the suggestion from previous studies, in a further step we differentiated between subjects within STEM-L. Using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we analyzed the interest congruence of 5530 male and 7406 female students in STEM majors (with a low or medium proportion of women) and non-STEM majors (with a medium or high proportion of women). Students from different subjects showed different magnitudes regarding their things- and people-orientation. STEM-L students had a high things-orientation and a low people-orientation regarding both their interests and aspired occupations. Students of STEM-L and STEM-M showed a lower interest congruence than students from other subjects. With the exception of education, gender differences regarding the people- and things-orientation also existed within most of the subjects. Gender differences partly remain when distinguishing between the different subjects within STEM-L. And so, the result that not all STEM-L subjects are “created equal” is discussed in the context of their theoretical and methodological aspects. (shrink)

Grounding on Holland’s RIASEC model of vocational interests and the respective assumptions on person-environment fit, this paper focuses on how congruence is related to study outcomes, especially students’ persistence, performance, and satisfaction. The paper distinguishes the measure of congruence with respect to social congruence and aspirational congruence and also distinguishes the effects of congruence for gender and six different study areas including Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, medicine, economics, education, and languages. The paper analyses 10,226 university freshmen of the German National (...) Educational Panel Study and follows them longitudinally with respect to their study outcomes. The results show that students’ persistence was more related to SOC than to ASP, especially for male students. Furthermore, SOC was particularly important for students in STEM areas. Regarding performance, however, ASP was more important. Here, we notably found correlations for STEM subjects with a balanced proportion of female students. Regarding satisfaction, mainly marginal correlations could be found. The results indicate conceptual differences between social and aspirational congruence as well as specific effects for gender and study area. While research might take this into account by specifically developing their models for different study areas, career counseling may reflect on the different significance of the interest-based person-environment fit for different study areas. Initiatives for raising young people’s participation in STEM should therefore specifically focus on students that have high chances to develop interest profiles that are congruent to STEM rather than students who show profiles which already indicate a low congruence. (shrink)

The fields of machine learning (ML) and cognitive science have developed complementary approaches to computationally modeling human behavior. ML's primary concern is maximizing prediction accuracy; cognitive science's primary concern is explaining the underlying mechanisms. Cross-talk between these disciplines is limited, likely because the tasks and goals usually differ. The domain of e-learning and knowledge acquisition constitutes a fruitful intersection for the two fields’ methodologies to be integrated because accurately tracking learning and forgetting over time and predicting future performance based on (...) learning histories are central to developing effective, personalized learning tools. Here, we show how a state-of-the-art ML model can be enhanced by incorporating insights from a cognitive model of human memory. This was done by exploiting the predictive performance equation's (PPE) narrow but highly specialized domain knowledge with regard to the temporal dynamics of learning and forgetting. Specifically, the PPE was used to engineer timing-related input features for a gradient-boosted decision trees (GBDT) model. The resulting PPE-enhanced GBDT outperformed the default GBDT, especially under conditions in which limited data were available for training. Results suggest that integrating cognitive and ML models could be particularly productive if the available data are too high-dimensional to be explained by a cognitive model but not sufficiently large to effectively train a modern ML algorithm. Here, the cognitive model's insights pertaining to only one aspect of the data were enough to jump-start the ML model's ability to make predictions—a finding that holds promise for future explorations. (shrink)

The fields of machine learning (ML) and cognitive science have developed complementary approaches to computationally modeling human behavior. ML's primary concern is maximizing prediction accuracy; cognitive science's primary concern is explaining the underlying mechanisms. Cross-talk between these disciplines is limited, likely because the tasks and goals usually differ. The domain of e-learning and knowledge acquisition constitutes a fruitful intersection for the two fields’ methodologies to be integrated because accurately tracking learning and forgetting over time and predicting future performance based on (...) learning histories are central to developing effective, personalized learning tools. Here, we show how a state-of-the-art ML model can be enhanced by incorporating insights from a cognitive model of human memory. This was done by exploiting the predictive performance equation's (PPE) narrow but highly specialized domain knowledge with regard to the temporal dynamics of learning and forgetting. Specifically, the PPE was used to engineer timing-related input features for a gradient-boosted decision trees (GBDT) model. The resulting PPE-enhanced GBDT outperformed the default GBDT, especially under conditions in which limited data were available for training. Results suggest that integrating cognitive and ML models could be particularly productive if the available data are too high-dimensional to be explained by a cognitive model but not sufficiently large to effectively train a modern ML algorithm. Here, the cognitive model's insights pertaining to only one aspect of the data were enough to jump-start the ML model's ability to make predictions—a finding that holds promise for future explorations. (shrink)

Florian A.G. Lützen untersucht in dieser Studie den Religionsbegriff ( din) bei Aḥmad Ibn Aǧība (gest. 1224/1809), seine Synthese von Sufitum und Theologie. Den Religionsbegriff beschreibt er insbesondere anhand der im "Gabriel-Hadith" dargestellten Ebenen: islam, iman und i san - Hingabe, Glaube und Vervollkommnung. Dieses Stufengebilde, von vielen Gelehrten in der späten Phase der Islamischen Theologie (etwa 1400-1800) für fundamental erachtet, eignet sich zum einen dazu, die Religion aus der Perspektive der Theologie darzustellen, und zum anderen, um den Weg (...) des Menschen zu Gott zu beschreiben. In seiner Analyse macht der Autor deutlich, wie Ibn Agiba, aufbauend auf seiner Tradition, eine Theologie konzipiert, die das Sufitum ins Zentrum stellt, ohne die anderen Disziplinen der Theologie auszuklammern. (shrink)

Identification of propositions as the core of attitudes and beliefs (De Houwer, 2014) has resulted in the development of implicit measures targeting personal evaluations of complex sentences (e.g., the IRAP or the RRT). Whereas their utility is uncontested, these paradigms are subject to limitations inherent in their block based design, such as allowing assessment of only a single belief at a time. We introduce the Propositional Evaluation Paradigm (PEP) for assessment of multiple propositional beliefs within a single experimental block. Two (...) experiments provide first evidence for the PEP’s validity. In Experiment 1 endorsement of racist beliefs measured with the PEP was related to criterion variables such as explicit racism assessed via questionnaire and indicators of behavioral tendencies. Experiment 2 indicates that the PEP’s implicit racism scores may predict actual behavior over and above explicit, self-report measures. Finally, Experiment 3 tested the PEP's applicability in the domain of hiring discrimination. Whereas general PEP based gender stereotypes were not related to hiring bias, results suggest a possible role of female stereotypes in hiring discrimination. In the context of these findings, we discuss both the potential and possible challenges in adopting the PEP to different beliefs. In sum, these initial findings suggest that the PEP may offer researchers a reliable and easily administrable option for the indirect assessment of propositional evaluations. (shrink)

The question of ontological foundation has undergone a noteworthy revival in recent years: metaphysicians today quarrel about how exactly to understand the asymmetrical and hyperintensional relationship of grounding. One of the reasons for this revival is that the old quantificationalist meta-ontology inherited from Quine has been effectively criticised by leading philosophers favourable to a meta-ontology, the aim of which is to come to know “which facts/items ground (constitute the base of) which other facts/items”, thus to examine the relation of ontological (...) dependence between beings (e.g. chemical properties depend on physical properties, the economic situation on the behaviour of individuals etc.), i.e. to explore the hierarchical structure of reality. I shall not discuss here the relationship of grounding in itself, but make some historical-formal remarks on the properties of the ultimate ontological foundational item itself and its aporetic nature. To do so I explore various more or less exotic philosophical ecosystems in the following order: Heidegger (Seyn), Plato (ἕν), Wáng Bi (道, dào). On the way I shall propose a new interpretation both of certain hypotheses in the Parmenides and of the nature of the opposition between Wáng Bì and Guō Xiàng in regard to the logical grammar of the expression “nothing (無, wú)” (transl. J. Dudley). (shrink)

BackgroundBiobanking biospecimens and consent are common practice in paediatric research. We need to explore children and young people’s (CYP) knowledge and perspectives around the use of and consent to biobanking. This will ensure meaningful informed consent can be obtained and improve current consent procedures.MethodsWe designed a survey, in co-production with CYP, collecting demographic data, views on biobanking, and consent using three scenarios: 1) prospective consent, 2) deferred consent, and 3) reconsent and assent at age of capacity. The survey was disseminated (...) via the Young Person’s Advisory Group North England (YPAGne) and participating CYP’s secondary schools. Data were analysed using a qualitative thematic approach by three independent reviewers (including CYP) to identify common themes. Data triangulation occurred independently by a fourth reviewer.ResultsOne hundred two CYP completed the survey. Most were between 16–18 years (63.7%, N = 65) and female (66.7%, N = 68). 72.3% had no prior knowledge of biobanking (N = 73).Acceptability of prospective consent for biobanking was high (91.2%, N = 93) with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘potential benefits outweigh individual risk’, 'frugality', and ‘(in)convenience’.Deferred consent was also deemed acceptable in the large majority (84.3%, N = 86), with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘body integrity’ and ‘sample frugality’. 76.5% preferred to reconsent when cognitively mature enough to give assent (N = 78), even if parental consent was previously in place. 79.2% wanted to be informed if their biobanked biospecimen is reused (N = 80).ConclusionProspective and deferred consent acceptability for biobanking is high among CYP in the UK. Altruism, frugality, body integrity, and privacy are the most important themes. Clear communication and justification are paramount to obtain consent. Any CYP with capacity should be part of the consenting procedure, if possible. (shrink)

We use psychological concepts (e.g., intention and desire) when we ascribe psychological states to others for purposes of describing, explaining, and predicting their actions. Does the evidence reported by Knobe show, as he thinks, that moral evaluation shapes our mastery of psychological concepts? We argue that the evidence so far shows instead that moral evaluation shapes the way we report, not the way we think about, others' psychological states.

Rule-following is a normative doing and therefore needs to be reconsidered in a metaethical framework. Rule-following will be discussed in the light of cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It will be shown that neither cognitivism nor non-cognitivism are sufficiently good accounts for conceptualizing rule-following, because they are held captive by a quasi-mechanistical picture of rule-following. This idea stems from Stanley Cavell´s and John McDowell´s approach to rule-following. McDowell appeals to the idea that we participate in “shared forms of life” and therefore are (...) able to follow rules correctly. I believe that his quietist view can be amplified by conceptualizing different modes of following a rule. We can also follow a rule e.g. ironically and still grasp the conceptual content of the rule adequately. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that algorithmic decisions can reflect gender bias. The increasingly widespread utilization of algorithms in critical decision-making domains (e.g., healthcare or hiring) can thus lead to broad and structural disadvantages for women. However, women often experience bias and discrimination through human decisions and may turn to algorithms in the hope of receiving neutral and objective evaluations. Across three studies (N = 1107), we examine whether women’s receptivity to algorithms is affected by situations in which they believe that (...) their gender identity might disadvantage them in an evaluation process. In Study 1, we establish, in an incentive-compatible online setting, that unemployed women are more likely to choose to have their employment chances evaluated by an algorithm if the alternative is an evaluation by a man rather than a woman. Study 2 generalizes this effect by placing it in a hypothetical hiring context, and Study 3 proposes that relative algorithmic objectivity, i.e., the perceived objectivity of an algorithmic evaluator over and against a human evaluator, is a driver of women’s preferences for evaluations by algorithms as opposed to men. Our work sheds light on how women make sense of algorithms in stereotype-relevant domains and exemplifies the need to provide education for those at risk of being adversely affected by algorithmic decisions. Our results have implications for the ethical management of algorithms in evaluation settings. We advocate for improving algorithmic literacy so that evaluators and evaluatees (e.g., hiring managers and job applicants) can acquire the abilities required to reflect critically on algorithmic decisions. (shrink)

© 2016 Regents of the University of California.The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 3,062 new measurements from 721 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. All the particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We also give numerous (...) tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 117 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including those on Pentaquarks and Inflation. The complete Review is published online in a journal and on the website of the Particle Data Group. The printed PDG Book contains the Summary Tables and all review articles but no longer includes the detailed tables from the Particle Listings. A Booklet with the Summary Tables and abbreviated versions of some of the review articles is also available. (shrink)

The question of where, between theory and experiment, computer simulations (CSs) locate on the methodological map is one of the central questions in the epistemology of simulation (cf. Saam Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 48, 293–309, 2017). The two extremes on the map have them either be a kind of experiment in their own right (e.g. Barberousse et al. Synthese, 169, 557–574, 2009; Morgan 2002, 2003, Journal of Economic Methodology, 12(2), 317–329, 2005; Morrison Philosophical Studies, 143, 33–57, 2009; Morrison (...) 2015; Massimi and Bhimji Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 51, 71–81, 2015; Parker Synthese, 169, 483–496, 2009) or just an argument executed with the aid of a computer (e.g. Beisbart European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 2, 395–434, 2012; Beisbart and Norton International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 26, 403–422, 2012). There exist multiple versions of the first kind of position, whereas the latter is rather unified. I will argue that, while many claims about the ‘experimental’ status of CSs seem unjustified, there is a variant of the first position that seems preferable. In particular I will argue that while CSs respect the logic of (deductively valid) arguments, they neither agree with their pragmatics nor their epistemology. I will then lay out in what sense CSs can fruitfully be seen as experiments, and what features set them apart from traditional experiments nonetheless. I conclude that they should be seen as surrogate experiments, i.e. experiments executed consciously on the wrong kind of system, but with an exploitable connection to the system of interest. Finally, I contrast my view with that of Beisbart (European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 8, 171–204, 2018), according to which CSs are surrogates for experiments, arguing that this introduces an arbitrary split between CSs and other kinds of simulations. (shrink)

A recent no-go theorem (Frauchiger and Renner in Nat Commun 9(1):3711, 2018) establishes a contradiction from a specific application of quantum theory to a multi- agent setting. The proof of this theorem relies heavily on notions such as ‘knows’ or ‘is certain that’. This has stimulated an analysis of the theorem by Nurgalieva and del Rio (in: Selinger P, Chiribella G (eds) Proceedings of the 15th international conference on quantum physics and logic (QPL 2018). EPTCS 287, Open Publishing Association, Waterloo, (...) 2018), in which they claim that it shows the “[i]nadequacy of modal logic in quantum settings” (ibid.). In this paper, we will offer a significantly extended and refined reconstruction of the theorem in multi-agent modal logic. We will then show that a thorough reconstruction of the proof as given by Frauchiger and Renner requires the reflexivity of access relations (system T). However, a stronger theorem is possible that already follows in serial frames, and hence also holds in systems of doxastic logic (such as KD45). After proving this, we will discuss the general implications for different interpretations of quantum probabilities as well as several options for dealing with the result. (shrink)

It is still largely unclear which pathways explain the religion-health connection and how these mechanisms work. One such intervening mechanism, coherence, is the focus of this article. Based on database searches and a review of the literature retrieved, I differentiate between six meanings of coherence in religion-related research: 1) consistency; 2) credibility; 3) congruence; 4) confidence; 5) character; and 6) cohesion. In this article, this classification is utilized to analyse the conceptualizations and operationalizations of coherence within a particular strain of (...) research, namely the discourse on the so-called coherence hypothesis. In so doing, I accomplish three objectives: 1) the reconsideration of the classical coherence hypothesis launched by Idler in the mid-1980s; 2) the reconstruction of the history of the reception and modification of the hypothesis by using the example of the work of three influential scholars (Christopher G. Ellison, Linda K. George, and Sebastian Murken); and 3) the development of a new theoretical model of religion, coherence, and health. Since the review yielded that coherence was primarily used within the meaning of confidence and congruence and that personal and social factors have been widely neglected, one advantage of my model is the integration of all six conceptual varieties of coherence within a meaning-making coping framework. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel emphasises the importance of understanding consciousness and, even more so, self-consciousness. His lectures on aesthetics contain aesthetic theories for all forms of art (viz. architecture, painting, music or poetry), but critics use them only in significantly altered versions. The present paper attempts to give an in-depth analysis of a poem following one interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of self-consciousness. The poem analysed is not a German Romantic poem, but an Indian poem from the mid-20th century. The (...) explanatory force of Hegel's aesthetics is thus assessed with the needs of a global culture studies in mind. (shrink)

We take the potentialities that are studied in the biological sciences (e.g., totipotency) to be an important subtype of biological dispositions. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we want to provide a detailed understanding of what biological dispositions are. We claim that two features are essential for dispositions in biology: the importance of the manifestation process and the diversity of conditions that need to be satisfied for the disposition to be manifest. Second, we demonstrate that the concept of (...) a disposition (or potentiality) is a very useful tool for the analysis of the explanatory practice in the biological sciences. On the one hand it allows an in-depth analysis of the nature and diversity of the conditions under which biological systems display specific behaviors. On the other hand the concept of a disposition may serve a unificatory role in the philosophy of the natural sciences since it captures not only the explanatory practice of biology, but of all natural sciences. Towards the end we will briefly come back to the notion of a potentiality in biology. (shrink)

The Bellum ciuile has been the subject of three major editions in the past thirty years, attributable to D.R. Shackleton Bailey, R. Badalì and G. Luck. The existence of these three works highlights the resurgence of sustained interest surrounding Lucan as of the 1970s, with the publication of two significant works, Lucan: An Introduction by F. Ahl and the collective volume of Entretiens à la fondation Hardt, yet it also demonstrates the difficulty in establishing the text of the Pharsalia.

Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...) misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim, that all causal claims require laws, is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation and control. (shrink)

Mechanisms are said to consist of two kinds of components, entities and activities. In the first half of this chapter, I examine what entities and activities are, how they relate to well-known ontological categories, such as processes or dispositions, and how entities and activities relate to each other (e.g., can one be reduced to the other or are they mutually dependent?). The second part of this chapter analyzes different criteria for individuating the components of mechanisms and discusses how real the (...) boundaries of mechanisms are. (shrink)

Thought Experiments in Historiographic Function: Max Weber on Eduard Meyer and the Question of Counterfactuality. Max Weber’s remarks on his colleague Eduard Meyer regarding counterfactual reasoning in history reflects a significant shift during the Methodenstreit around 1900. The question of attributing historical change strictly to either individual causes or abstract general laws has been tackled in a new way: By counterfactual reasoning a historian should be able to detect the most significant (and therefore meaningful) cause, event, or action for a (...) certain historical outcome. Following Fritz Ringer, this paper argues that given the predominating methods of the natural sciences, scholars of the humanities conducted historical research by counterfactual thought experiments. This way, Weber pried open contemporary narratives (e.g. historicism), and by employing a unique historical causal analysis he made way for refined concepts to offer a model of interpretation that gave hope for a more feasible, practice‐oriented approach to historical research than the epistemological discussions had hitherto offered. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the concepts of a reductive (...) method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

Giorgia Pozzi’s feature article1 on the risks of testimonial injustice when using automated prediction drug monitoring programmes (PDMPs) turns the spotlight on a pressing and well-known clinical problem: physicians’ challenges to predict patient behaviour, so that treatment decisions can be made based on this information, despite any fallibility. Currently, as one possible way to improve prognostic assessments of patient behaviour, Machine Learning-driven clinical decision support systems (ML-CDSS) are being developed and deployed. To make her point, Pozzi discusses ML-CDSSs that are (...) supposed to deliver physicians an accurate estimation of the likelihood of narcotic, sedative and stimulant opioid misuse by a given patient (like, e.g., ‘NarxCare’). Regarding cases of deviating assessment between human evaluators and automated systems, the medico-ethical discussion has so far mainly focused on disagreement between clinicians and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms,2 for example in ‘second opinions’ that have been reconstructed as disagreements between physician testimony and ML-CDSS testimony.3 Examples such as those of PDMPs, by contrast, draw attention to situations in which patient testimony potentially contradicts ML-CDSS testimony. Pozzi examines decision-making situations in which ML-CDSS testimony factually overrides the testimony of the person affected. Thus, in the presented case of patient Kathryn, the testimony of her own physical and mental condition was insufficient to overturn the unfavourable outcome for …. (shrink)

Syntactic satiation is the phenomenon where some sentences that initially seem ungrammatical appear more acceptable after repeated exposures (Snyder 2000). We investigated satiation by manipulating two factors known to affect syntactic priming, a phenomenon where recent exposure to a grammatical structure facilitates subsequent processing of that structure (Bock 1986). Specifically, we manipulated (i) Proximity of exposure (number of sentences between primes and targets) and (ii) Lexical repetition (type of phrase repeated across primes and targets). Experiment 1 investigated whether acceptability ratings (...) of Complex-NP Constraint (CNPC) and Subject islands improve as consequence of these variables. If so, priming and satiation may be linked. When primes were separated from targets by one sentence, CNPC islands’ acceptability was improved by a preceding island of the same type, but Subject islands’ acceptability was not. When prime-target pairs were separated by five sentences, we found no improvement for either island type. Experiment 2 asked whether improvements in Experiment 1 reflected online processing or offline end-of-sentence effects. We used a self-paced reading paradigm to diagnose online structure-building and processing facilitation (Ivanova 2012) during processing. We found priming for Subject islands when primes and targets were close together, but not when they were further apart. No effects were detected when CNPC islands were close together, but there was a localized effect when sentences were further apart. The disjunction between Experiments 1 and 2 suggests repetition of the structure in Subject islands facilitated online processing but did not ‘spill over’ to acceptability ratings. Meanwhile, results for CNPC islands suggest that acceptability rating improvements in Experiment 1 may be driven by factors distinct from online processing facilitation. Together, our experiments show that satiation may not be a one-size-fit-all phenomenon but, instead, appears to manifest itself differently for different types of structures. Priming is possible and may be linked to satiation in some purportedly “unbuildable” structures (e.g. Subject islands), but not for all types (e.g. CNPC islands). Despite this, it appears that while the types of mechanisms targeting different island types are distinct, they are nevertheless similarly sensitive to the proximity between individual exposures. (shrink)

Figures of Simplicity explores a unique constellation of figures from philosophy and literature—Heinrich von Kleist, Herman Melville, G. W. Leibniz, and Alexander Baumgarten—in an attempt to recover alternative conceptions of aesthetics and dimensions of thinking lost in the disciplinary narration of aesthetics after Kant. This is done primarily by tracing a variety of “simpletons” that populate the writings of Kleist and Melville. These figures are not entirely ignorant, or stupid, but simple. Their simplicity is a way of thinking, one that (...) Birgit Mara Kaiser suggests is affective thinking. Kaiser avers that Kleist and Melville are experimenting in their texts with an affective mode of thinking, and thereby continue a key line within eighteenth-century aesthetics: the relation of rationality and sensibility. Through her analyses, she offers an outline of what thinking can look like if we take affectivity into account. (shrink)

We welcome the proposal to use forward models to understand predictive processes in language processing. However, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) miss the opportunity to provide a strong framework for future work. Forward models need to be pursued in the context of learning. This naturally leads to questions about what prediction error these models aim to minimize.

Evo-devo is a multidisciplinary field that investigates the interplay between evolutionary and developmental processes and brings together different kinds of explanatory strategies. This chapter examines the structure of paradigmatic explanations in evo-devo (e.g., the explanation of the origin of an evolutionary novelty) and raises philosophical questions about explanation in evo-devo. Much research in evo-devo is concerned with studying the developmental mechanisms that constrain and facilitate phenotypic evolution, which suggests that a distinctive feature of evo-devo is that it constructs mechanistic explanations. (...) In this chapter, I discuss three major challenges for thinking about evo-devo as providing mechanistic explanations. First, an explanation of an evolutionary novelty consists of several mechanistic explanations, rather than being a single one. Second, developmental mechanisms are ontogenetically and phylogenetically dynamic and thus difficult to individuate. Third, an explanation of an evolutionary novelty also has a non-mechanistic, historical part. Finally, I discuss whether evo-devo’s emphasis on mechanistic explanation promotes explanatory integration or results in a reductionist view of evolution. (shrink)

In the traditional conception of science one assumes that science produces results which are certain and precise. It is argued that this picture is flawed and needs to be replaced with a view where uncertainty and imprecision are an integral part of the scientific enterprise. Uncertainty is still poorly understood by many practising scientists. However, several developments in science indicate that some epistemological uncertainty, e.g. due to processes of abstraction and idealization, will always follow advances in scientific knowledge. There are (...) also other developments that indicate some principal ontological uncertainties, i.e. uncertainties that are due to how the world is. Complexity is one such example. Remarks on post-normal science are thus included. This paper argues, therefore, that scientific uncertainty is a multi-dimensional concept, and that it is unavoidable because it is often the result as much as the cause of new knowledge. (shrink)