Comparative psychology is a strongly interdisciplinary field that shares many of its experimental methods and observational techniques with ethology and developmental psychology. The great variety of theories that comparative psychology evokes to explain behavior generates a wide array of exciting and potentially fruitful accounts, but is also problematic. It increases the risk of error in the forms of inconsistent background assumptions, conceptual misunderstandings, unfalsifiable hypotheses and incoherent explanations, which in spite of perhaps being minor by themselves will impede scientific progress (...) in the long run. Moreover, similarly to psychology at large, comparative psychology tends to emphasize empirical investigations to the disadvantage of the analysis and development of theories and concepts. Consequently, disagreements that have their roots elsewhere than in methodology and experimental design do not receive sufficient attention. Furthermore, while evidence about biological evolution is notoriously hard to find, the methodology for comparing the capacities of different species is under continuous development. This forces comparative psychology to rely on the adequacy of the theoretical and conceptual framework to a greater extent than normally in the empirical sciences. In view of investigating the background of the problems that contemporary comparative psychology is facing, the present chapter examines central parts of the methodology and explanatory framework of comparative psychology as well as its global objective. (shrink)

Papers presented in three conferences, supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Excellence Cluster 16: 'Cultural Foundation of Integration' at the University of Konstanz, and the Institute of German Studies and the Forum Scientairum at the Univesity of Tubingen.

Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, (...) it is argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radical enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics. (shrink)

When a circular coin is rotated in depth, is there any sense in which it comes to resemble an ellipse? While this question is at the center of a rich and divided philosophical tradition (with some scholars answering affirmatively and some negatively), Morales et al. (2020, 2021) took an empirical approach, reporting 10 experiments whose results favor such perspectival similarity. Recently, Burge and Burge (2022) offered a vigorous critique of this work, objecting to its approach and conclusions on both (...) philosophical and empirical grounds. Here, we answer these objections on both fronts. We show that Burge and Burge’s critique rests on misunderstandings of Morales et al.’s claims; of the relation between the data and conclusions; and of the philosophical context in which the work appears. Specifically, Burge and Burge attribute to us a much stronger (and stranger) view than we hold, involving the introduction of “a new entity” located “in some intermediate position(s) between the distal shape and the retinal image.” We do not hold this view. Indeed, once properly understood, most of Burge and Burge’s objections favor Morales et al.’s claims rather than oppose them. Finally, we discuss several questions that remain unanswered, and reflect on a productive path forward on these issues of foundational scientific and philosophical interest. (shrink)

Public speakers like politicians carefully craft their words to maximize the clarity, impact, and persuasiveness of their messages. However, these messages can be shaped by more than words. Gestures play an important role in how spoken arguments are perceived, conceptualized, and remembered by audiences. Studies of political speech have explored the ways spoken arguments are used to persuade audiences and cue applause. Studies of politicians’ gestures have explored the ways politicians illustrate different concepts with their hands, but have not focused (...) on gesture's potential as a tool of persuasion. Our paper combines these traditions to ask first, how politicians gesture when using spoken rhetorical devices aimed at persuading audiences, and second, whether these gestures influence the ways their arguments are perceived. Study 1 examined two rhetorical devices—contrasts and lists—used by three politicians during U.S. presidential debates and asked whether the gestures produced during contrasts and lists differ. Gestures produced during contrasts were more likely to involve changes in hand location, and gestures produced during lists were more likely to involve changes in trajectory. Study 2 used footage from the same debates in an experiment to ask whether gesture influenced the way people perceived the politicians’ arguments. When participants had access to gestural information, they perceived contrasted items as more different from one another and listed items as more similar to one another than they did when they only had access to speech. This was true even when participants had access to only gesture (in muted videos). We conclude that gesture is effective at communicating concepts of similarity and difference and that politicians (and likely other speakers) take advantage of gesture's persuasive potential. (shrink)

Shepard has argued that a universal law should govern generalization across different domains of perception and cognition, as well as across organisms from different species or even different planets. Starting with some basic assumptions about natural kinds, he derived an exponential decay function as the form of the universal generalization gradient, which accords strikingly well with a wide range of empirical data. However, his original formulation applied only to the ideal case of generalization from a single encountered stimulus to a (...) single novel stimulus, and for stimuli that can be represented as points in a continuous metric psychological space. Here we recast Shepard's theory in a more general Bayesian framework and show how this naturally extends his approach to the more realistic situation of generalizing from multiple consequential stimuli with arbitrary representational structure. Our framework also subsumes a version of Tversky's set-theoretic model of similarity, which is conventionally thought of as the primary alternative to Shepard's continuous metric space model of similarity and generalization. This unification allows us not only to draw deep parallels between the set-theoretic and spatial approaches, but also to significantly advance the explanatory power of set-theoretic models. Key Words: additive clustering; Bayesian inference; categorization; concept learning; contrast model; features; generalization; psychological space; similarity. (shrink)

Similarity is one of the most important relations humans perceive, arguably subserving category learning and categorization, generalization and discrimination, judgment and decision making, and other cognitive functions. Researchers have proposed a wide range of representations and metrics that could be at play in similarity judgment, yet have not comprehensively compared the power of these representations and metrics for predicting similarity within and across different semantic categories. We performed such a comparison by pairing nine prominent vector semantic representations (...) with seven established similarity metrics that could operate on these representations, as well as supervised methods for dimensional weighting in the similarity function. This approach yields a factorial model structure with 126 distinct representation‐metric pairs, which we tested on a novel dataset of similarity judgments between pairs of cohyponymic words in eight categories. We found that cosine similarity and Pearson correlation were the overall best performing unweighted similarity functions, and that word vectors derived from free association norms often outperformed word vectors derived from text (including those specialized for similarity). Importantly, models that used human similarity judgments to learn category‐specific weights on dimensions yielded substantially better predictions than all unweighted approaches across all types of similarity functions and representations, although dimension weights did not generalize well across semantic categories, suggesting strong category context effects in similarity judgment. We discuss implications of these results for cognitive modeling and natural language processing, as well as for theories of the representations and metrics involved in similarity. (shrink)

The concept of similar systems arose in physics, and appears to have originated with Newton in the seventeenth century. This chapter provides a critical history of the concept of physically similar systems, the twentieth century concept into which it developed. The concept was used in the nineteenth century in various fields of engineering, theoretical physics and theoretical and experimental hydrodynamics. In 1914, it was articulated in terms of ideas developed in the eighteenth century and used in nineteenth century mathematics and (...) mechanics: equations, functions and dimensional analysis. The terminology physically similar systems was proposed for this new characterization of similar systems by the physicist Edgar Buckingham. Related work by Vaschy, Bertrand, and Riabouchinsky had appeared by then. The concept is very powerful in studying physical phenomena both theoretically and experimentally. As it is not currently part of the core curricula of STEM disciplines or philosophy of science, it is not as well known as it ought to be. (shrink)

When people must either save a greater number of people from a smaller harm or a smaller number from a greater harm, do their choices reflect a reasonable moral outlook? We pursue this question with the help of an experiment. In our experiment, two-fifths of subjects employ a similarity heuristic. When alternatives appear dissimilar in terms of the number saved but similar in terms of the magnitude of harm prevented, this heuristic mandates saving the greater number. In our experiment, (...) this leads to choices that are inconsistent with all standard theories of justice. We argue that this demonstrates the untrustworthiness of distributive judgments in cases that elicit similarity-based choice. (shrink)

Similarity‐based theories of concepts have a broad intuitive appeal and have been successful in accounting for various phenomena related to the formation and application of concepts. Their adequacy as theories of concepts has been questioned, however, as similarity is often taken as too flexible, too unconstrained, to be explanatory of categorization. In this article, I propose an account of similarity that takes the “foil” against which the target items are measured as integral to the process of comparison, (...) making the similarity relation a fundamentally triadic one. I argue that this account delivers more internal constraints on the process of comparison than the traditional, dyadic account of similarity does. Finally, I propose that this account is advantageous for a similarity‐based theory of concepts, as it easily integrates with the notion of conceptual taxonomy and uses it to deliver additional constraints on categorization. On such a theory of concepts, the foil, whose variability is in large part responsible for the flexible nature of similarity judgements, is turned within the framework of conceptual taxonomy to the very element that constrains similarity judgements in categorization. Therefore, this notion of similarity mitigates the worry that similarity is too flexible to be explanatory of categorization. (shrink)

This paper investigates the interpretation of counterfactual conditionals. The main goal of the paper is to provide an account of the semantic role of similarity in the evaluation of counterfactuals. The paper proposes an analysis according to which counterfactuals are treated as predications “ de re ” over past situations in the actual world. The relevant situations enter semantic composition via the interpretation of tense. Counterfactuals are treated as law-like conditionals with de re predication over particular facts. Similarity (...) with respect to particular facts is ensured by the semantics of tense in interaction with the modal, while the modal itself is responsible for invoking laws. In the paper, various arguments are provided to support a local view of similarity over the global approach found in semantics along the line of Lewis’s and Stalnaker’s. Arguments are also provided tying the evaluation of similarity to the interpretation of tense. Finally, arguments are provided to show that in key cases, the approaches make comparable predictions. (shrink)

I call anti-resemblism the thesis that independently of any contextual specification there is no determinate fact of the matter about the comparative overall similarity of things. Anti-resemblism plays crucial roles in the philosophy of David Lewis. For instance, Lewis has argued that his counterpart theory is anti-essentialist on the grounds that counterpart relations are relations of comparative overall similarity and that anti-resemblism is true. After Lewis committed himself to a form of realism about natural properties he maintained that (...) anti-resemblism is true about the relations of overall similarity that enter his counterpart theory and his analysis of counterfactuals. However, in this article I argue that Lewis’s account of degrees of naturalness for properties combined with his modal realism entails that anti-resemblism is false. The Lewisian must amend Lewis’s system if she aims to benefit from the alleged virtues of anti-resemblism. I consider two ways of amending it, neither of which is a free lunch. (shrink)

In this paper we present a concept of similarity in games, on which to ground alternative solution concepts, some of which differ from the classical notions in the field. In order to do this we impose a constraint on players’ beliefs that amounts to a variant of the well-known symmetry principle in classical bargaining theory. We show how this similarity relation helps to identify different Nash equilibria in games, and how these “similar Nash equilibria” can be extended to (...) non-symmetric games. While the notion is normative, it is nonetheless inspired by phenomena in which similarities between players lead to outcomes detected in behavioral studies. We study the strategic properties of the concept of similarity and discuss its relationships with Hofstadter’ notion of superrationality. (shrink)

Empiricist modal epistemologies can be attractive, but are often limited in the range of modal knowledge they manage to secure. In this paper, I argue that one such account – similarity-based modal empiricism – can be extended to also cover justification of many scientifically interesting possibility claims. Drawing on recent work on modelling in the philosophy of science, I suggest that scientific modelling is usefully seen as the creation and investigation of relevantly similar epistemic counterparts of real target systems. (...) On the basis of experiential knowledge of what is actually the case with the models, one can draw justified conclusions about what is de re possible for the target systems. (shrink)

one takes to be the most salient, any pair could be judged more similar to each other than to the third. Goodman uses this second problem to showthat there can be no context-free similarity metric, either in the trivial case or in a scientifically ...

In this paper, we define a new cosine similarity between two interval valued neutrosophic sets based on Bhattacharya’s distance [19]. The notions of interval valued neutrosophic sets (IVNS, for short) will be used as vector representations in 3D-vector space. Based on the comparative analysis of the existing similarity measures for IVNS, we find that our proposed similarity measure is better and more robust. An illustrative example of the pattern recognition shows that the proposed method is simple and (...) effective. (shrink)

Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, (...) it is argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radical enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics. (shrink)

Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, (...) it is argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radical enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics. (shrink)

The claim that similarity plays a role in representation has been philosophically discredited. Psychologists, however, routinely analyse the success of mental representations for guiding behaviour in terms of a similarity between representation and the world. I provide a foundation for this practice by developing a philosophically responsible account of the relationship between similarity and representation in natural systems. I analyse similarity in terms of the existence of a suitable homomorphism between two structures. The key insight is (...) that by restricting attention to only those homomorphisms induced by causal processes, we can solve two philosophical problems with a single assumption. First, causal structure provides an adequate source for the bias required to ensure the similarity relation is non-trivial; second, it provides an adequate source for the directionality required to move from similarity to representation. I defend this account against objections by Goodman and van Fraassen and demonstrate that it is indeed the account of similarity’s role in representation assumed by psychological practice. (shrink)

In the philosophy of the analytical tradition, set theory and formal logic are familiar formal tools. I think there is no deep reason why the philosopher’s tool kit should be restricted to just these theories. It might well be the case—to generalize a dictum of Suppes concerning philosophy of science—that the appropriate formal device for doing philosophy is mathematics in general; it may be set theory, algebra, topology, or any other realm of mathematics. In this paper I want to employ (...) elementary topological considerations to shed new light on the intricate problem of the relation of qualities and similarity. Thereby I want to make plausible the general thesis that topology might be a useful device for matters epistemological. (shrink)

In a famous critique, Goodman dismissed similarity as a slippery and both philosophically and scientifically useless notion. We revisit his critique in the light of important recent work on similarity in psychology and cognitive science. Specifically, we use Tversky’s influential set-theoretic account of similarity as well as Gärdenfors’s more recent resuscitation of the geometrical account to show that, while Goodman’s critique contained valuable insights, it does not warrant a dismissal of similarity.

Abstract. The notion of similarity has been studied in many areas of Computer Science; in a general sense, this concept is defined to provide a measure of the semantic equivalence between two pieces of knowledge, expressing how “close” their meaning can be regarded. In this work, we study similarity as a tool useful to improve the representation of arguments, the interpretation of the relations between arguments, and the semantic evaluation associated with the arguments in the argumentative process. In (...) this direction, we present a novel mechanism to determine the similarity between two arguments based on descriptors representing particular aspects associated with these arguments. This mechanism involves a comparison process influenced by the context in which the process develops, where this context provides the relevant aspects that need to be analyzed in the application domain. Then, we use this similarity measure as a quantity to compute the result of attacks and supports in the argumentation process. These valuations, applied to a Bipolar Argumentation Frameworks, allowed us to refine the argument relations, providing the tools to establish a family of new argumentation semantics that considers the similarity between arguments as a crucial part for the argumentation process. (shrink)

Perceptual similarity is one of the most fiercely debated topics in the philosophy and psychology of perception. The documented history of the issue spans all the way from Plato – who regarded similarity as a key factor for human perceptual experience and cognition – through to contemporary psychologists – who have tried to determine whether, and if so, how similarity relationships can be established between stimuli both within and across the senses. Recent research on cross-sensory associations, otherwise (...) known as crossmodal correspondences – that is, the existence of observable consensual associations, or mappings, between stimuli across different senses – represents an especially interesting field in which to study perceptual similarity. In fact, most accounts of crossmodal association that have been put forward in the literature to date evoke perceptual similarity as a key explanatory factor mediating the underlying association. At the same time, however, these various accounts raise several important theoretical questions concerning the very nature of similarity, with, for example, the sensory, affective, or cognitive underpinnings of similarity judgements remaining unclear. We attempt to shed light on these questions by examining the various accounts of crossmodal associations that have been put forward in the literature. Our suggestion is that perceptual similarity varies from being phenomenologically-based to conceptually-based. In particular, we propose that the nature of the associations underlying similarity judgements – whether these associations are phenomenologically-, structurally-, emotionally-, or conceptually-based – may be represented in a two-dimensional space with associative strength on one axis, and cognitive penetrability on the other. (shrink)

There is an interesting and instructive problem with Richard Fumerton's acquaintance theory of noninferential justification. Fumerton's explicit account requires acquaintance with the truth-maker of one's belief and yet he admits that one can have noninferential justification when one is not acquainted with the truthmaker of one's belief but instead acquainted with a very similar truth-maker. On the face of it this problem calls for clarification. However, there are skeptical issues lurking in the background. This paper explores these issues by developing (...) a dilemma for an acquaintance theory. (shrink)

Functional neuroimaging is sometimes criticized as showing only where in the brain things happen, not how they happen, and thus being unable to inform us about questions of mental and neural representation. Novel analytical methods increasingly make clear that imaging can give us access to constructs of interest to psychology. In this paper I argue that neuroimaging can give us an important, if limited, window into the large-scale structure of neural representation. I describe Representational Similarity Analysis, increasingly used in (...) neuroimaging studies, and lay out desiderata for representations in general. In that context I discuss what RSA can and cannot tell us about neural representation. I compare RSA with fMRI to a different experimental paradigm which has been embraced as being indicative of representation in psychology, and argue that it compares favorably. (shrink)

Although the mapping between form and meaning is often regarded as arbitrary, there are in fact well-known constraints on words which are the result of functional pressures associated with language use and its acquisition. In particular, languages have been shown to encode meaning distinctions in their sound properties, which may be important for language learning. Here, we investigate the relationship between semantic distance and phonological distance in the large-scale structure of the lexicon. We show evidence in 100 languages from a (...) diverse array of language families that more semantically similar word pairs are also more phonologically similar. This suggests that there is an important statistical trend for lexicons to have semantically similar words be phonologically similar as well, possibly for functional reasons associated with language learning. (shrink)

The similarity view of scientific representation has recently been subjected to strong criticism. Much of this criticism has been directed against a ?naive? similarity account, which tries to explain representation solely in terms of similarity between scientific models and the world. This article examines the more sophisticated account offered by the similarity view's leading proponent, Ronald Giere. In contrast to the naive account, Giere's account appeals to the role played by the scientists using a scientific model. (...) A similar move is often made by defenders of resemblance theories of depiction, who invoke the role played by the artist, or by the viewers of a painting. In this article I look to debates over depiction to assess the difficulties facing those who wish to defend the similarity view of scientific representation. I then turn to examine Giere's account. Ultimately, I argue, this account is unsuccessful: while appealing to the role of scientists offers a promising way to defend the similarity view, Giere's own account does not capture what it is that scientists do when they use a model to represent the world. (shrink)

Different similarity relations on sets are introduced, and their logical properties are investigated. Close relationships are shown to hold between similarity relations that are based on symmetrical difference and operators of belief contraction that are based on relational selection functions. Two new rationality criteria for minimal belief contraction, the maximizing property and the reducing property, are proposed.

Empathy is an important human ability associated with successful social interaction. It is currently unclear how to optimally measure individual differences in empathic processing. Although the Big Five model of personality is an effective model to explain individual differences in human experience and behavior, its relation to measures of empathy is currently not well understood. Therefore, the present study was designed to investigate the relationship between the Big Five personality concept and two commonly used measures for empathy (Empathy Quotient (EQ), (...) Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI)) in four samples from China, Germany, Spain and the United States of America. This approach was designed to advance the way the Big Five personality model can be used to measure empathy. We found evidence of medium effect sizes for associations between personality and empathy, with agreeableness and conscientiousness as the most important predictors of affective and cognitive empathy (measured by the respective IRI subscales) as well as a for a one-dimensional empathy score (measured by the EQ). Empathy in a fictional context was most closely related to openness to experience while personal distress was first of all related to neuroticism. In terms of culture, we did not observe any distinct pattern concerning cultural differences. These results support the cross-cultural applicability of the Empathy Quotient and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and indicate structurally similar associations between personality and empathy across cultures. (shrink)

In this paper I present some difficulties for Lewis’s and similar theories of counterfactuals, and suggest that the problem lies in the notion of absolute similarity. In order to explain the problem, I discuss the relation between Lewis’s and Goodman’s theory, and show that the two theories are not related in the way Lewis thought they were.

The partitions of a given set stand in a well known one-to-onecorrespondence with the equivalence relations on that set. We askwhether anything analogous to partitions can be found which correspondin a like manner to the similarity relations (reflexive, symmetricrelations) on a set, and show that (what we call) decompositions – of acertain kind – play this role. A key ingredient in the discussion is akind of closure relation (analogous to the consequence relationsconsidered in formal logic) having nothing especially to (...) do with thesimilarity issue, and we devote a final section to highlighting some ofits properties. (shrink)

The concept of emergence is commonly invoked in modern physics but rarely defined. Building on recent influential work by Jeremy Butterfield, I provide precise definitions of emergence concepts as they pertain to properties represented in models, applying them to some basic examples from space-time and thermostatistical physics. The chief formal innovation I employ, similarity structure, consists in a structured set of similarity relations among those models under analysis—and their properties—and is a generalization of topological structure. Although motivated from (...) physics, this similarity-structure-based account of emergence applies to any science that represents its possibilia with models. (shrink)

According to N. Goodman, the Carnapian notion of similarity is useless in science and without interest for philosophy. In our paper we suggest that, given the current role that the notion of similarity has in managing biomedical big data, this drastic position should be revised, and similarity should be provided a scientifically useful philosophical interpretation. With the advent of the new sequencing technologies, imaging technologies and with the improvements of health records, the number of genomics, post-genomics and (...) clinical data has exponentially increased. The deluge of data has urged, among others, to devise a new way of stratifying patients. A solution has been found and it is based exactly on the notion of similarity. By discussing two examples focusing on similarity among breast cancer patients, in the paper we illustrate such a use, and analyze it from a philosophical standpoint by resorting to A. Tversky’s features matching approach. We believe that the latter can foster some better understanding of the meaning and current use of similarity in the context of biomedical big data, and that, therefore, be the focus of further reflections in the philosophy of science, in particular in the philosophy of biomedicine. (shrink)

On average, women make up half of introductory-level philosophy courses, but only one-third of upper-division courses. We contribute to the growing literature on this problem by reporting the striking results of our study at the University of Oklahoma. We found that two attitudes are especially strong predictors of whether women are likely to continue in philosophy: feeling similar to the kinds of people who become philosophers, and enjoying philosophical puzzles and issues. In a regression analysis, they account for 63% of (...) variance. Importantly, women are significantly less likely to hold these attitudes than men. Thus, instructors who care about improving the retention of women undergraduates should find ways to improve these attitudes – for instance, by demonstrating the ways in which professional philosophers are like them. We will discuss some tentative but intuitively plausible suggestions for interventions, though further research is required to establish the effectiveness of those interventions. (shrink)

In this paper, it is shown (1) that there are two schemes for argument from analogy that seem to be competitors but are not, (2) how one of them is based on a distinctive type of similarity premise, (3) how to analyze the notion of similarity using story schemes illustrated by some cases, (4) how arguments from precedent are based on arguments from analogy, and in many instances arguments from classification, and (5) that when similarity is defined (...) by means of episode schemes, we can get a clearer idea of how it integrates with the use of argument from classification and argument from precedent in case-based reasoning by using a dialogue structure. (shrink)

Stephen Hawking, among others, has proposed that the topological stability of a property of space-time is a necessary condition for it to be physically significant. What counts as stable, however, depends crucially on the choice of topology. Some physicists have thus suggested that one should find a canonical topology, a single ‘right’ topology for every inquiry. While certain such choices might be initially motivated, some little-discussed examples of Robert Geroch and some propositions of my own show that the main candidates—and (...) each possible choice, to some extent—faces the horns of a no-go result. I suggest that instead of trying to decide what the ‘right’ topology is for all problems, one should let the details of particular types of problems guide the choice of an appropriate topology. (shrink)

Does y obtain under the counterfactual supposition that x? The answer to this question is famously thought to depend on whether y obtains in the most similar world in which x obtains. What this notion of ‘similarity’ consists in is controversial, but in recent years, graphical causal models have proved incredibly useful in getting a handle on considerations of similarity between worlds. One limitation of the resulting conception of similarity is that it says nothing about what would (...) obtain were the causal structure to be different from what it actually is, or from what we believe it to be. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using graphical causal models to resolve counterfactual queries about causal structure by introducing a notion of similarity between causal graphs. Since there are multiple principled senses in which a graph G* can be more similar to a graph G than a graph G**, we introduce multiple similarity metrics, as well as multiple ways to prioritize the various metrics when settling counterfactual queries about causal structure. (shrink)

Smarandache (1995) defined the notion of neutrosophic sets, which is a generalization of Zadeh's fuzzy set and Atanassov's intuitionistic fuzzy set. In this paper, we first develop some similarity measures of neutrosophic sets. We will present a method to calculate the distance between neutrosophic sets (NS) on the basis of the Hausdorff distance. Then we will use this distance to generate a new similarity measure to calculate the degree of similarity between NS. Finally we will prove some (...) properties of the proposed similarity measures. (shrink)

Autonomous sensory meridian response is a complex sensory-emotional experience characterized by pleasant tingling sensations initiating at the scalp. ASMR is triggered in some people by stimuli including whispering, personal attention, and crisp sounds. Since its inception, ASMR has been likened to synesthesia, but convincing empirical data directly linking ASMR with synesthesia is lacking. In this study, we examined whether the prevalence of synesthesia is indeed significantly higher in ASMR-responders than non-responders. A sample of working adults and students were surveyed about (...) their experience with ASMR and common types of synesthesia. The proportion of synesthetes who were classified as ASMR-responders was 52%, whereas 22% of ASMR-responders were also synesthetes. These results suggest that: over half of those identifying as synesthetes also experience ASMR, and that synesthesia is up to four times as common among ASMR-responders as among non-responders. Findings also suggest a prevalence rate for ASMR of approximately 20%. Overall, the co-occurrence of ASMR and synesthesia lends empirical support to the idea that ASMR may be driven by synesthetic mechanisms, but future research would benefit from examining how ASMR and synesthesia are different, as well as similar. (shrink)

The book takes as its point of departure the notion that similarity and contiguity are fundamental to meaning. It shows how they manifest in oral, literate, print and internet cultures, in language acquisition, pragmatics, dialogism, classification, the semantics of grammar, literature and, most centrally, metaphor and metonymy. The book situates these reflections on similarity and contiguity in the interplay of language, cognition, culture, and ideology, and within broader debates around such issues as capitalism, biodiversity, and human control over (...) nature. Positing that while similarity-focused systems can be reductive, and have therefore been contested in social science, philosophy and poetry, and contiguity-based ones might disregard useful statistical and scientific evidence, Andrew Goatly argues for the need for humans to entertain diverse metaphors, models, and languages as ways of understanding and acting on our world. The volume also considers the cognitive connections between the similarity-contiguity duality and the noun-verb distinction. This innovative volume will appeal to scholars involved in wider debates on meaning, within the fields of cognitive semantics, pragmatics, metaphor and metonymy theory, critical discourse analysis, and the philosophy of language. Equally, the motivated and intelligent general reader, interested in language, philosophy, culture and ecology, should find the later chapters of the book fascinating, and the earlier technical chapters accessible. (shrink)

P. Kyle Stanford (2000) attempts to offer a truth-linked explanation of the success of science which, he thinks, can be welcome to antirealists. He proposes an explanation of the success of a theory T1 in terms of its predictive similarity to the true theory T of the relevant domain. After raising some qualms about the supposed antirealist credentials of Stanford's account, I examine his explanatory story in some detail and show that it fails to offer a satisfactory explanation of (...) the success of science. (shrink)

This paper introduces a refined single-valued neutrosophic set (RSVNS) and presents a similarity measure of RSVNSs. Then a multicriteria decision-making method with RSVNS information is developed based on the similarity measure of RSVNSs. By the similarity measure between each alternative and the ideal solution (ideal alternative), all the alternatives can be ranked and the best one can be selected as well. Finally, an actual example on the selecting problems of construction projects demonstrates the application and effectiveness of (...) the proposed method. (shrink)

Category-specific impairments of object recognition and naming are among the most intriguing disorders in neuropsychology, affecting the retrieval of knowledge about either living or nonliving things. They can give us insight into the nature of our representations of objects: Have we evolved different neural systems for recognizing different categories of object? What kinds of knowledge are important for recognizing particular objects? How does visual similarity within a category influence object recognition and representation? What is the nature of our semantic (...) knowledge about different objects? We review the evidence on category-specific impairments, arguing that deficits even for one class of object cannot be accounted for in terms of a single information processing disorder across all patients; problems arise at contrasting loci in different patients. The same apparent pattern of impairment can be produced by damage to different loci. According to a new processing framework for object recognition and naming, the hierarchical interactive theory, we have a hierarchy of highly interactive stored representations. HIT explains the variety of patients in terms of lesions at different levels of processing and different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and for particular categories of object. Key Words: category-specific deficits; functional imaging; hierarchical models; interactive activation models; neuropsychology; object recognition; perceptual and functional knowledge. (shrink)

Matthen (Philos Sci 76(4):464–487, 2009) argues that explanations of evolutionary change that appeal to natural selection are statistically abstractive explanations, explanations that ignore some possible explanatory partitions that in fact impact the outcome. This recognition highlights a difficulty with making selective analyses fully rigorous. Natural selection is not about the details of what happens to any particular organism, nor, by extension, to the details of what happens in any particular population. Since selective accounts focus on tendencies, those factors that impact (...) the actual outcomes but do not impact the tendencies must be excluded. So, in order to properly exclude the factors irrelevant to selection, the relevant factors must be identified, and physical processes, environments, and populations individuated on the basis of being relevantly similar for the purposes of selective accounts. Natural selection, on this view, becomes in part a measure of the robustness of particular kinds of outcomes given variations over some kinds of inputs. (shrink)

In this paper a hybrid model of argument from analogy is presented that combines argumentation schemes and story schemes. One premise of the argumentation scheme for argument from analogy in the model claims that one case is similar to another. Story schemes are abstract representations of stories (narratives, explanations) based on common knowledge about how sequences of actions and events we are familiar with can normally be expected to unfold. Story schemes are used (a) to model similarity between two (...) cases, and (2) as the basis of evidence to support the similarity premise of an argument from analogy. Four examples of argument from analogy are used to test the theory. (shrink)

People frequently entertain counterfactual thoughts, or mental simulations about alternative ways the world could have been. But the perceived plausibility of those counterfactual thoughts varies widely. The current article interfaces research in the philosophy and semantics of counterfactual statements with the psychology of mental simulations, and it explores the role of perceived similarity in judgments of counterfactual plausibility. We report results from seven studies (N = 6405) jointly supporting three interconnected claims. First, the perceived plausibility of a counterfactual event (...) is predicted by the perceived similarity between the possible world in which the imagined situation is thought to occur and the actual world. Second, when people attend to differences between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as less similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as less plausible. Lastly, when people attend to what is identical between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as more similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as more plausible. We discuss these results in light of philosophical, semantic, and psychological theories of counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

The similarities and differences in dream content at the cross-cultural, gender, and individual levels provide one starting point for carrying out studies that attempt to discover correspondences between dream content and various types of waking cognition. Hobson and Kahn’s . Dream content: Individual and generic aspects. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, 850–858.) conclusion that dream content may be more generic than most researchers realize, and that individual differences are less salient than usually thought, provides the occasion for a review of findings (...) based on the Hall and Van de Castle . The content analysis of dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.) coding system for the study of dream content. Then new findings based on a computationally intensive randomization strategy are presented to show the minimum sample sizes needed to detect gender and individual differences in dream content. Generally speaking, sample sizes of 100–125 dream reports are needed because most dream elements appear in less than 50% of dream reports and the magnitude of the differences usually is not large. (shrink)