On the basis of neuroiinaging studies, Posner & Raichle summarily report that the prefrontal cortex is involved in executive functioning and attention. In contrast to that superficial view, we briefly describe a testable model of the kinds of representations that are stored in prefrontal cortex, which, when activated, are expressed via plans, actions, thematic knowledge, and schemas.

Humans can follow different social learning strategies, sometimes oriented toward the models’ characteristics. The goal of the present study was to explore which who-strategy is preferentially followed in the technological context based on the models’ psychological characteristics. We identified three potential who-strategies: Copy the pedagogue, copy the engineer, and copy the friend. We developed a closed-group micro-society paradigm in which participants had to build the highest possible towers. Participants began with an individual building phase. Then, they were gathered to discuss (...) the best solutions to increase tower height. After this discussion phase, they had to make a new building attempt, followed by another discussion phase, and so forth for a total of six building phases and five discussion rounds. This methodology allowed us to create an attraction score for each participant. We also assessed participants’ theory-of-mind skills, technical-reasoning skills, and prosocialness to predict participants’ attraction scores based on these measures. Results show that we learn from engineers because they are the most successful. Their attraction power is not immediate, but after they have been identified as attractors, their technique is copied irrespective of their pedagogy or friendliness. These findings open avenues for the study of the cognitive bases of human technological culture. (shrink)

We address the problem of musical variation (identification of different musical sequences as variations) and its implications for mental representations of music. According to reductionist theories, listeners judge the structural importance of musical events while forming mental representations. These judgments may result from the production of reduced memory representations that retain only the musical gist. In a study of improvised music performance, pianists produced variations on melodies. Analyses of the musical events retained across variations provided support for the reductionist account (...) of structural importance. A neural network trained to produce reduced memory representations for the same melodies represented structurally important events more efficiently than others. Agreement among the musicians' improvisations, the network model, and music‐theoretic predictions suggest that perceived constancy across musical variation is a natural result of a reductionist mechanism for producing memory representations. (shrink)

An overview of the latest interdisciplinary research on human morality, capturing moral sensibility as a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms. Over the past decade, an explosion of empirical research in a variety of fields has allowed us to understand human moral sensibility as a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms shaped through evolution, development, and culture. Evolutionary biologists have shown that moral cognition evolved to aid cooperation; developmental psychologists have demonstrated that the elements that underpin (...) morality are in place much earlier than we thought; and social neuroscientists have begun to map brain circuits implicated in moral decision making. This volume offers an overview of current research on the moral brain, examining the topic from disciplinary perspectives that range from anthropology and neurophilosophy to justice and law. The contributors address the evolution of morality, considering precursors of human morality in other species as well as uniquely human adaptations. They examine motivations for morality, exploring the roles of passion, extreme sacrifice, and cooperation. They go on to consider the development of morality, from infancy to adolescence; findings on neurobiological mechanisms of moral cognition; psychopathic immorality; and the implications for justice and law of a more biological understanding of morality. These new findings may challenge our intuitions about society and justice, but they may also lead to more a humane and flexible legal system. Contributors Scott Atran, Abigail A. Baird, Nicolas Baumard, Sarah Brosnan, Jason M. Cowell, Molly J. Crockett, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, Andrew W. Delton, Mark R. Dadds, Jean Decety, Jeremy Ginges, Andrea L. Glenn, Joshua D. Greene, J. Kiley Hamlin, David J. Hawes, Jillian Jordan, Max M. Krasnow, Ayelet Lahat, Jorge Moll, Caroline Moul, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Alexander Peysakhovich, Laurent Prétôt, Jesse Prinz, David G. Rand, Rheanna J. Remmel, Emma Roellke, Regina A. Rini, Joshua Rottman, Mark Sheskin, Thalia Wheatley, Liane Young, Roland Zahn. (shrink)

Up Against Foucault offers both a feminist critique of Foucauldian theories as well as an attempt to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable perspectives. Feminists are often "up against Foucault" because he questions key conclusions in feminism regarding the nature of gender relations, and men's possession of power. This book, however, fills the gap in literature about Foucault by showing how his theories of sexuality and power relations are often applicable to the everyday realities of women's lives. Drawing upon their diverse backgrounds (...) in social theory and philosophy, the contributors discuss the ways in which Foucault provokes feminists into questioning their grasp of power relations, and examines the implications of his decision to overlook categories of gender in his discussion of sexuality and power relations. They also show that in spite of his lack of interest in gender, Foucault's ways of understanding the control of women and female sexuality ultimately have much to offer feminism. (shrink)

Although Sign Languages are gestural languages, the fact remains that some linguistic information can also be conveyed by spoken components as mouthing. Mouthing usually tend to reproduce the more relevant phonetic part of the equivalent spoken word matching with the manual sign. Therefore, one crucial issue in sign language is to understand whether mouthing is part of the signs themselves or not, and to which extent it contributes to the construction of signs meaning. Another question is to know whether mouthing (...) patterns constitute a phonological or a semantic cue in the lexical sign entry. This study aimed to investigate the role of mouthing on the processing of lexical signs in French Sign Language (LSF), according the type of bilingualism (intramodal vs. bimodal). For this purpose, a behavioral sign-picture lexical decision experiment was designed. Intramodal signers (native deaf adults) and Bimodal signers (fluent hearing adults) have to decide as fast as possible whether a picture matched with the sign seen just before. Five experimental conditions in which the pair sign-mouthing were congruent or incongruent were created. Our results showed a strong interference effect when the sign-mouthing matching was incongruent, reflected by higher error rates and lengthened reaction times compared with the congruent condition. This finding suggests that both groups of signers use the available lexical information contained in mouthing during accessing the sign meaning. In addition, deaf intramodal signers were strongly interfered than hearing bimodal signers. Taken together, our data indicate that mouthing is a determining factor in LSF lexical access, specifically in deaf signers. (shrink)

The current experiments examine mental health clinicians’ beliefs about biological, psychological, and environmental bases of the DSM‐IV‐TR mental disorders and the consequences of those causal beliefs for judging treatment effectiveness. Study 1 found a large negative correlation between clinicians’ beliefs about biological bases and environmental/psychological bases, suggesting that clinicians conceptualize mental disorders along a single continuum spanning from highly biological disorders (e.g., autistic disorder) to highly nonbiological disorders (e.g., adjustment disorders). Study 2 replicated this finding by having clinicians list what (...) they thought were the specific causes of nine familiar mental disorders and rate their bio–psycho–environmental bases. Study 3 further found that clinicians believe medication to be more effective for biologically based mental disorders and psychotherapy to be more effective for psychosocially based mental disorders. These results demonstrate that even expert mental health clinicians make strong distinctions between psychological and biological phenomena. (shrink)

Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis asserts that the concept of medical disorder includes a naturalistic component of dysfunction and a value component, both of which are required for disorder attributions. Muckler and Taylor, defending a purely naturalist, value-free understanding of disorder, argue that harm is not necessary for disorder. They provide three examples of dysfunctions that, they claim, are considered disorders but are entirely harmless: mild mononucleosis, cowpox that prevents smallpox, and minor perceptual deficits. They also reject the proposal that dysfunctions (...) need only be typically harmful to qualify as disorders. We argue that the proposed counterexamples are, in fact, considered harmful; thus, they fail to disconfirm the harm requirement: incapacity for exertion is inherently harmful, whether or not exertion occurs, cowpox is directly harmful irrespective of indirect benefits, and colorblindness and anosmia are considered harmful by those who consider them disorders. We also defend the typicality qualifier as viably addressing some apparently harmless disorders and argue that a dysfunction’s harmfulness is best understood in dispositional terms. (shrink)

Cher, T-Pain, Saez, Châton, Booba, Benjamin Biolay, Bon Iver, Yung Beef, Lady Gaga, Neil Young ou encore PNL, tous ces artistes ont en commun l’usage de l’Auto-Tune. Ce dernier désigne un logiciel permettant d’ajuster, de corriger la voix à la suite d’un enregistrement ou durant une performance. Si initialement, l’Auto-Tune permet de chanter juste, cela est également utilisé pour produire des modulations sonores donnant un caractère artificiel, robotique, non linéaire à la voix humaine. Le premier titre avec une présence marquée (...) de l’Auto-Tune est « Believe » de Cher sorti en 1998 qui connaît un succès retentissant. Depuis, si quelques artistes – à l’image de Jay-Z et son titre D.O.A. pour « Death of Auto-Tune » (2009) – dénoncent cette pratique, l’Auto-Tune a conquis l’industrie musicale et serait utilisé dans la quasi-totalité des productions (Reynolds, 2019), toutes les esthétiques confondues. Malgré cette diffusion, encore peu de recherches académiques abordent cette question. Quels sont les enjeux liés à l’Auto-Tune? (shrink)

to be published in the Proceedings of the 18. International Conference of Linguistics, Seoul, Korea.

Rational actions reflect beliefs and preferences in certain orderly ways. The problem of theory is to explain which beliefs and preferences are relevant to the rationality of particular actions, and exactly how they are relevant. One distinction of interest here is between an agent's beliefs and preferences just before an action's time, and his beliefs and preferences at its time. Theorists do not agree about the times of beliefs and desires that are relevant to the rationality of action. Another distinction (...) is between actions that would, in one sense or another, maximize expected utilities given relevant beliefs and desires, and actions, decisions for which would, in one sense or another, be stable. There is disagreement about the relevance of these things to the rationality of actions. Here, in the first part below, several possible positions on these issues are explained and compared. In the second part, I contrast perspectives on these issues, and comment on arguments that might be brought against the position I favor. In the third part, I restate and elaborate on this position. (shrink)

Probing semantic relations Exploration and identification in specialized texts Alain Auger and Caroline Barrière In recent years, several scientific ...

Can humans truly be the measure of all things? Is relativism a corrosive concept, undermining any chance we have of getting clear about things? Should we seek foundations for our values, or is such an effort a waste of time? With David Gallagher, Shannon Jordan, and Joshua Halberstam.

To resolve putative liar paradoxes it is sufficient to attend to the distinction between liar-sentences and the propositions they would express, and to exercise the option of turning would-be deductions of paradox (of contradictions) into reductions of the existence of those propositions. Defending the coherence of particular resolutions along these lines, leads to recognition of the non-extensionality of some liar-sentences. In particular, it turns out that exchanges of terms for identicals in the open-sentence '- does not expression a true proposition' (...) are not invariably truth-preserving because they are not invariably proposition-expression preserving. All of this recommends propositions as fruitful subjects of interesting renewed research. (shrink)

Donald Regan's book is a study of forms of utilitarian theory and of properties to which these forms may aspire. He deals exclusively with “fully objective” theories that seek to systematize and set conditions for obligations that an agent is supposed to lie under as a consequence of features of situations in which he finds himself, with no dependence on his possibly defective beliefs, attitudes, and values. Metaethical questions concerning the nature of these obligations are not raised. And practical problems (...) that could be encountered in attempts to apply these theories receive very little attention. They are said to lie outside the main project of the book which is to explain and then to circumvent a certain apparent logical impasse that utilitarianisms ca. 1980 are supposed to confront. The book consists for the most part of abstract, often very long and difficult, arguments, and detailed elaborations of a small number of minimally specified, highly artificial cases of the sort now common in semi-formal utilitarian theory. In the present note, while leaving unquestioned and unstated the presuppositions of Regan's book, I first outline its central two-stage “argument”. Next I explain several distinctions important to issues it addresses and relate these distinctions to several of Regan's theses. I then discuss prima facie cases against his main claim, according to which the apparent impasse that utilitarianisms confront is circumvented by a new utilitarian theory designed for the task. (shrink)

An accessible survey of the most important thinkers on Religion, from Aquinas, through Kant to William James.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

It is plausible that Newcomb problems in which causal maximizers and evidential maximizers would do different things would not be possible for ideal maximizers who are attentive to metatickles. An objection to Eells’s first argument for this makes welcome a second. Against it I argue that even ideal evidential and causal maximizers would do different things in some non-dominance Newcomb problems; and that they would hope for different things in some third-person and non-action problems, which is relevant if a good (...) theory of rational choices of acts should fit smoothly into a good theory of rational desires for facts. (shrink)

Maximizers in isolated Prisoner's Dilemmas are doomed to frustration. But in Braybrooke's view maximizers might do better in a series, securing Pareto-optimal arrangements if not from the very beginning, at least eventually. Given certain favourable special conditions, it can be shown according to Braybrooke and shown even without question-begging motivational or value assumptions, that in a series of Dilemmas maximizers could manage to communicate a readiness to reciprocate, generate thereby expectations of reciprocation, and so give rise to optimizing reciprocations which, (...) in due course, would reinforce expectations, the net result of all this being an increasingly stable practice to mutual benefit. In this way neighbours could learn to be good neighbours: they could learn to respect each other's property, to engage in reciprocal assistance, and perhaps even to make and keep promises covering a range of activities. So maximizers are, Braybrooke holds, capable of a society of sorts. Out of the ashes they might build something. But even under favourable conditions they could not build much and most conditions would defeat them almost entirely, for many-person Dilemmas whether isolated or in series would be quite beyond them, question-begging motivational assumptions aside. In settings at all like those in which we live, utility maximization assuming only ‘traditional’ motivation is self-defeating without remedy, and most certainly not an adequate basis for social life.' The probable inference from as a conception of individual rationality: for surely truly rational agents would be if not perfectly well designed at least better designed for communal living than utility maximizers would be assuming only ‘traditional’, non-question-begging values or motivation. Or, if this inference is denied and maximization is not challenged as a conception of rationality, we can conclude instead, Braybrooke has more recently suggested, that the advice, ‘Be rational,’ is incomplete, and when addressed to groups should be supplemented by, ‘And be somewhat ‘untraditional’ in your values; respect at least some rules that would make coordination and cooperation possible even in many-person interaction problems.’. (shrink)

This paper describes a tool for assisting lawyers and paralegal teams during document review in eDiscovery. The tool combines a machine learning technology (CategoriX) and advanced multi-touch interface capable of not only addressing the usual cost, time and accuracy issues in document review, but also of facilitating the work of the review teams by capitalizing on the intelligence of the reviewers and enabling collaborative work.

A text for normal schools and teachers' colleges.

Nietzsche's remarks about women and femininity have generated a great deal of debate among philosophers, some seeing them as ineradicably misogynist, others interpreting them more favorably as ironic and potentially useful for modern feminism. In this study, Kay Picart uses a genealogical approach to track the way Nietzsche's initial use of "feminine" mythological figures as symbols for modernity's regenerative powers gradually gives way to an increasingly misogynistic politics, resulting in the silencing and emasculation of his earlier configurations of the "feminine." (...) While other scholars have focused on classifying the degree of offensiveness of Nietzsche's ambivalent and developing misogyny, Picart examines what this misogyny means for his political philosophy as a whole. Picart successfully shows how Nietzsche's increasingly derogatory treatment of the "feminine" in his post-Zarathustran works is closely tied to his growing resentment over his inability to revive a decadent modernity. (shrink)

By using religion to get at the core concepts of Michel Foucault's thinking, this book offers a strong alternative to the way that the philosopher's work is read across the humanities. Foucault was famously interested in Christianity as both the rival to ancient ethics and the parent of modern discipline and was always alert to the hypocrisy and the violence in churches. Yet many readers have ignored how central religion is to his thought, particularly with regard to human bodies and (...) how they are shaped. The point is not to turn Foucault into some sort of believer or to extract from him a fixed thesis about religion as such. Rather, it is to see how Foucault engages religious _rhetoric_ page after page—even when religion is not his main topic. When readers follow his allusions, they can see why he finds in religion not only an object of critique, but a perennial provocation to think about how speech works on bodies—and how bodies resist. Arguing that Foucault conducts experiments in writing to frustrate academic expectations about history and theory, Mark Jordan gives equal weight to the performative and theatrical aspects of Foucault's writing or lecturing. How does Foucault stage possibilities of self-transformation? How are his books or lectures akin to the rituals and liturgies that he dissects in them? _Convulsing Bodies_ follows its own game of hide-and-seek with the agents of totalizing systems and gives us a Foucault who plays with his audiences as he plays for them—or teaches them. (shrink)

In this position paper, we would like to promote the alternative approach positioned between the two extreme positions consisting in refusing any innovation or in adopting technology without questioning it. This approach proposes a reflexive and responsible innovation based on a compromise between industrial and economic potentialities and a common respect of our human rights and values. We argue that the “silence of the chips right” is timely, relevant and sustainable to face ethical challenges raised by IoT such as protecting (...) privacy, trust, social justice, autonomy or human agency. We believe this technical solution may support establishing an ethics of IoT embedded in the technology itself. Our position is not ‘technocratic’: we do not agree with discourses arguing technology can fix problems. Through the responsible research and innovation approach we promote the idea that only human agency and user empowerment constitute a valid answer to the ethical, legal and social issues raised by IoT. (shrink)

The orthodoxy that conditional probabilities reflect what are for a subject evidential bearings is seconded. This significance suggests that there should be principles equating rationally revised probabilities on new information with probabilities reached by conditionalizing on this information. Several principles, two of which are endorsed, are considered. A book is made against a violator of these, and it is argued that there must be something wrong with a person against whom such books can be made. Appendices comment on Popper-functions, elaborate (...) on bets and odds, and relate dutch books and strategies to conditions of inconsistency (Ramsey's idea) and imperfection. (shrink)