We present computational modeling results based on a self‐paced reading study investigating number attraction effects in Eastern Armenian. We implement three novel computational models of agreement attraction in a Bayesian framework and compare their predictive fit to the data using k‐fold cross‐validation. We find that our data are better accounted for by an encoding‐based model of agreement attraction, compared to a retrieval‐based model. A novel methodological contribution of our study is the use of comprehension questions with open‐ended responses, so that (...) both misinterpretation of the number feature of the subject phrase and misassignment of the thematic subject role of the verb can be investigated at the same time. We find evidence for both types of misinterpretation in our study, sometimes in the same trial. However, the specific error patterns in our data are not fully consistent with any previously proposed model. (shrink)

Moral intuitions are generally understood as automatic strong responses to moral facts. In this paper, I offer a metacognitive account according to which the strength of moral intuitions denotes the level of confidence of a subject. Confidence is a metacognitive appraisal of the fluency with which a subject processes information from a morally salient stimulus. I show that this account is supported by some empirical evidence, explains the main features of moral intuition and is preferable to emotional or quasi-perceptual views (...) of moral intuition. (shrink)

The notion of individualised evidence holds the key to solve the puzzle of statistical evidence, but there’s still no consensus on how exactly to define it. To make progress on the problem, epistemologists have proposed various accounts of individualised evidence in terms of causal or modal anti-luck conditions on knowledge like appropriate causation, sensitivity and safety. In this paper, I show that each of these fails as satisfactory anti-luck condition, and that such failure lends abductive support to the following conclusion: (...) once the familiar anti-luck intuition on knowledge is extended to individualised evidence, no single causal or modal anti-luck condition on knowledge can succeed as the right anti-luck condition on individualised evidence. This conclusion casts serious doubts on the fruitfulness of the move from anti-luck conditions on knowledge to anti-luck conditions on individualised evidence. I expand on these doubts and point out further aspects where epistemology and the law come apart: epistemic anti- luck conditions on knowledge do not adequately characterise the legal notion of individualised evidence. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has put a strain on the health system, as well as the social, economic, and cultural ones at the Global level. After the pandemic, the risk is that the process of inclusion of persons with disabilities is grinding to a halt. But the chance is to find new ideas. This paper will define a brief but significant framework of principles that should be taken into consideration in order to support strategies of inclusion of people with disabilities in (...) the fields of health care and cultural life, especially through the research. (shrink)

Dario Martinelli’s compact and enjoyable treatise on zoömusicology, _Of Birds, Whales and Other Musicians_ introduces musicologists, biologists, social scientists, and philosophers to a new theoretical model for studying how animal behavioral patterns relate to sound communication. Organized by musical trait rather than animal species, and drawing upon the work of such esteemed philosophers as Umberto Eco, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Thomas Sebeok, Martinelli’s analyses redefine the boundaries surrounding music and help readers—scholars and amateurs alike—to appreciate the relationship between animals (...) and musicological exchanges. (shrink)

Financial and prosocial biases in favor of attractive adults have been documented in the labor market, in social transactions in everyday life, and in studies involving experimental economic games. According to the taste-based discrimination model developed by economists, attractiveness-related financial and prosocial biases are the result of preferences or prejudices similar to those displayed toward members of a particular sex, racial, ethnic, or religious group. Other explanations proposed by economists and social psychologists maintain that attractiveness is a marker of personality, (...) intelligence, trustworthiness, professional competence, or productivity. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that attractive adults are favored because they are preferred sexual partners. Evidence that stereotypes about attractive people are causally related to financial or prosocial biases toward them is weak or nonexistent. Consistent with evolutionary explanations, biases in favor of attractive women appear to be more consistent or stronger than those in favor of attractive men, and biases are more consistently reported in interactions between opposite-sex than same-sex individuals. Evolutionary explanations also account for increased prosocial behavior in situations in which attractive individuals are simply bystanders. Finally, evolutionary explanations are consistent with the psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes that occur when individuals are exposed to potential mates, which facilitate the expression of courtship behavior and increase the probability of occurrence of mating. Therefore, multiple lines of evidence suggest that mating motives play a more important role in driving financial and prosocial biases toward attractive adults than previously recognized. (shrink)

Research with nonhuman primates can make important contributions to life history models of human attachment and reproductive strategies, such as: including parental responsiveness into female reproductive strategies, testing the assumption that adult attachment is a reproductive adaptation, assessing genetic and environmental effects on attachment and reproduction, and investigating the mechanisms through which early stress results in accelerated reproductive maturation.

This paper illustrates cognitive modeling constructs designed to make learning by instruction more robust, including (1) flexible grounding of language to execution, (2) inference of implicit instruction knowledge, and (3) interactive clarification of instructions during both learning and execution.

Today, digital piracy remains a growing challenge for both legislators and businesses operating in the entertainment industry. This study explores when and why consumers make trade-offs between illegal and legal streaming services. By drawing on protection motivation theory, we find that consumers' threat and coping appraisals increase their adaptive behavior, i.e., lower intention to consume illegal and higher intention to consume legal streaming services. We also show that the strength of consumers' inherent ethical (relativism) and political (economic liberalism) identities conditions (...) adaptive behavior through social identity theory. We find that low relativism strengthens the adaptive behavior through threat appraisal, while economic liberalism strengthens the adaptive behavior through coping appraisal. Our robustness checks show that these results hold when the model accounts for the level of consumers' digital piracy attitudes. We used a scenario-based approach to test our hypotheses and surveyed 244 consumers who use streaming services. Our study contributes to the literature by showing that consumers' adaptive behavior envisioned through protection motivation theory can be weakened or strengthened by their ethical and political identities. (shrink)

This study investigated sex differences in interest in infants among children, adolescents, young adults, and older individuals. Interest in infants was assessed with responses to images depicting animal and human infants versus adults, and with verbal responses to questionnaires. Clear sex differences, irrespective of age, emerged in all visual and verbal tests, with females being more interested in infants than males. Male interest in infants remained fairly stable across the four age groups, whereas female interest in infants was highest in (...) childhood and adolescence and declined thereafter, particularly for the responses to visual stimuli. The observed developmental changes in female interest in infants are consistent with the hypothesis that they represent a biological adaptation for parenting. (shrink)

​This contributed volume gives access to semiotic researches adopting a quantitative stance. European semiotics is traditionally based on immanent methodologies: meaning is seen as an autonomous dimension of human existence, whose laws can be investigated via purely qualitative analytical and reflexive analysis. Today, researches crossing disciplinary boundaries reveal the limitations of such an homogeneous practice. In particular, two families of quantitative research strategies can be identified. On the one hand, researchers wish to naturalize meaning, by making semiotic results interact with (...) those coming from Neurophysiological and psychological sciences. On the other hand, statistical and computational tools are adopted to work on linguistic and multimedia corpora. The book acts to put the two approaches into dialogue. (shrink)

Most putative cases of teaching in nonhuman animals involve parent-offspring interactions. The interpretation of these cases, particularly with regard to the cognitive processes involved, is controversial. Qualitative and quantitative observations made in nonhuman primates suggest that, in some species, mothers encourage their infants’ independent locomotion and that encouragement can be considered a form of instruction. In macaques, experience in raising previous offspring accounts in part for variability between mothers in propensity to encourage infant motor skills. Parsimony suggests that the cognitive (...) mechanisms underlying maternal encouragement of infant locomotion in primates as well as some other putative cases of animal teaching may involve first-order intentionality (i.e., goal-directed behavior) and not higher cognitive processes such as attribution of knowledge/ignorance or perspective-taking. Encouragement of infant independent locomotion early in life may have benefits to mothers later on, in terms of reduction of costs of infant carrying, earlier infant weaning, and increased probability of reproduction in the mating season. The elementary forms of teaching observed in nonhuman primates may have played an important role in the origin and evolution of human culture. (shrink)

We explore a notion of pseudofinite dimension, introduced by Hrushovski and Wagner, on an infinite ultraproduct of finite structures. Certain conditions on pseudofinite dimension are identified that guarantee simplicity or supersimplicity of the underlying theory, and that a drop in pseudofinite dimension is equivalent to forking. Under a suitable assumption, a measure-theoretic condition is shown to be equivalent to local stability. Many examples are explored, including vector spaces over finite fields viewed as 2-sorted finite structures, and homocyclic groups. Connections are (...) made to products of sets in finite groups, in particular to word maps, and a generalization of Tao's Algebraic Regularity Lemma is noted. (shrink)

Previous accounts of cognitive skill acquisition have demonstrated how procedural knowledge can be obtained and transformed over time into skilled task performance. This article focuses on a complementary aspect of skill acquisition, namely the integration and reuse of previously known component skills. The article posits that, in addition to mechanisms that proceduralize knowledge into more efficient forms, skill acquisition requires tight integration of newly acquired knowledge and previously learned knowledge. Skill acquisition also benefits from reuse of existing knowledge across disparate (...) task domains, relying on indexicals to reference and share necessary information across knowledge components. To demonstrate these ideas, the article proposes a computational model of skill acquisition from instructions focused on integration and reuse, and applies this model to account for behavior across seven task domains. (shrink)

As cognitive architectures move to account for increasingly complex real‐world tasks, one of the most pressing challenges involves understanding and modeling human multitasking. Although a number of existing models now perform multitasking in real‐world scenarios, these models typically employ customized executives that schedule tasks for the particular domain but do not generalize easily to other domains. This article outlines a general executive for the Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational (ACT–R) cognitive architecture that, given independent models of individual tasks, schedules and interleaves (...) the models' behavior into integrated multitasking behavior. To demonstrate the power of the proposed approach, the article describes an application to the domain of driving, showing how the general executive can interleave component subtasks of the driving task (namely, control and monitoring) and interleave driving with in‐vehicle secondary tasks (radio tuning and phone dialing). (shrink)

This article describes the path‐mapping theory of how humans integrate analogical mapping and general problem solving. The theory posits that humans represent analogs with declarative roles, map analogs by lower‐level retrieval of analogous role paths, and coordinate mappings with higher‐level organizational knowledge. Implemented in the ACT‐R cognitive architecture, the path‐mapping theory enables models of analogical mapping behavior to incorporate and interface with other problem‐solving knowledge. Path‐mapping models thus can include task‐specific skills such as encoding analogs or generating responses, and can (...) make behavioral predictions at the level of real‐world metrics such as latency or correctness. We show that the path‐mapping theory can successfully account for the major phenomena addressed by previous theories of analogy. We also describe a path‐mapping model that can account for subjects' incremental eye‐movement and typing behavior in a story‐mapping task. We discuss extensions and implications of this work to other areas of analogy and problem‐solving research. (shrink)

We introduce the concept of o-asymptotic classes of finite structures, melding ideas coming from 1-dimensional asymptotic classes and o-minimality. Along with several examples and non-examples of these classes, we present some classification theory results of their infinite ultraproducts: Every infinite ultraproduct of structures in an o-asymptotic class is superrosy of U^þ-rank 1, and NTP2 (in fact, inp-minimal).

There are basically two views about Hume on explanation. One is that Hume was the first methodological monist, that is, the first to believe that subsuming events under covering laws was the proper method for every scientific or simply rigorous empirical enquiry. A second view has it that Hume adopted two approaches to explanation. On the one hand, he is said to apply the covering-law approach in the context of natural philosophy and, on the other hand, he is said to (...) defend a Verstehen or quasi hermeneutical method in moral philosophy. (shrink)

Jacques Lafitte occupies an odd place in the philosophy of technology. He was a French engineer who made a significant and conceptually innovative contribution to this field, yet his influence has been elusive and largely ignored until relatively recently. Many of Lafitte’s ideas find echoes in the work of later philosophers, yet, notably in the case of Simondon, apparently without any direct line of influence. Lafitte placed the machine at the centre of his thinking about technology and articulated various layers (...) of analysis around it; for example, he considered machines in the broader context of an artificial world or “mechanosphere”, which encompassed certain aspects of philosophical anthropology. In this work we seek to reconstruct Lafitte’s ideas and briefly trace some of their later impact. We identify three dimensions in Lafitte’s analysis: epistemological, ontological and anthropological. We argue that the most remarkable fact about Lafitte’s thought is the way it inaugurates, and anticipates, the approach of later currents, not just in the “French tradition”, who also made an effort to integrate machine theory into broader philosophical, anthropological and political aspects, in terms that echo Lafitte’s. In particular, we will focus on Gilbert Simondon and cybernetics. (shrink)

In Mossio & Taraborelli (2008) we challenged the assumption according to which the ecological and sensorimotor approaches are mere conceptual variations on the same enactive theme. We showed, on the contrary, that they endorse substantially different notions of an 'action-dependent perceptual invariant' and we submitted that this distinction has interesting theoretical and empirical implications. This dissimilarity between ecological and sensorimotor theories stems, in our view, from a more fundamental divergence on the nature of perceptual information. Since Gibson's work, the ecological (...) approach has adopted a fundamentally realist stance, according to which this information is 'picked up', 'revealed', 'encountered' and 'exploited' by the organism (as a range of affordances) but not 'constituted' by the activity of the organism. In contrast, sensorimotor approaches take an explicit interactivist position, which sees the perceiver's motor activity as a determinant of perceptual information itself. Pascal & O'Regan (2008) suggest that our analysis of the relationship between ecological, sensorimotor and enactive theories would benefit from a further distinction. The original enactive approach (Varela et al. 1991; Maturana, 2002; Thompson, 2007), they argue, should not be lumped together with contemporary sensorimotor approaches to perception: whereas sensorimotor theories endorse an externalist view of perception, according to which 'perception can only be understood as a form of interaction of the organism with the environment', the original enactive approach by Varela and collaborators would have strong 'idealist underpinnings'. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of the critical remarks raised by Kristian Bankov in a notion called Bankov’s razor, about some foundational elements of the biosemiotic paradigm. The elaborated form of the “razor” includes three main questions on biosemiotic ideas, namely: 1) the philosophical grounds of the biosemiotic discourse, 2) the scientific output of biosemiotics, and 3) the ethical consequences of some biosemiotic presumptions (this latter, given its scopes and extension, is left for a future occasion). Such questions are commented (...) and challenged by Dario Martinelli, from a point of view that is primarily that of the zoosemiotician, therefore an insider of biosemiotics. In order to set the readers’ expectations in the right direction, it shall perhaps be fair to inform them that the style of the article is rather sui generis, and can hardly be classified within the genre of academic essays. Tones and terminology are more reminiscent of a philosophical pamphlet written in dialogical form. Hopefully, this choice will not compromise the scientific content of the article. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has witnessed a substantial opposition between two competing approaches to capturing the notion of non-accidentality in the analysis of knowledge: the explanationist and the modalist. According to the latest advocates of the former, S knows that p if and only if S believes that p because p is true. According to champions of the latter, S knows that p if and only if S's belief that p is true in a relevant set of possible worlds. Because Bogardus and (...) Perrin's explanationism promises to deliver a plausible analysis of knowledge without any need for modal notions, it is an elegant proposal with prima facie appeal. However, such version of explanationism ultimately does not live up to its promises: in this paper, I raise some objections to their explanationist analysis of knowledge while showing that modalism is in much better shape than they think. In particular, I argue that their explanationist condition generates the wrong results in Gettier cases and fake-barn cases. I also offer and defend a novel version of modalism: I introduce a refined safety condition which is shown to successfully handle the same Gettier cases that beset Bogardus and Perrin's version of explanationism. The paper concludes with a reassessment of the explanationist's initial ambition to provide an analysis of knowledge without modal notions. The upshot will be that even if the prospects for such analysis remain dim, our money should be on the modalist, not the explanationist. (shrink)

Despite the substantial appeal of the safety condition, Kelp (J Philos Res 34:21–31, 2009; Am Philos Q 53:27–37; Good Thinking. A Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology, Routledge, London, 2018) has raised a difficult challenge for safety-theoretic accounts of knowledge. By combining Gettier-style fake barn cases with epistemic Frankfurt cases, he concludes that no formulation of safety can be strong enough to predict ignorance in the former and weak enough to accommodate knowledge in the latter. In this note, my contribution is two-fold. (...) Firstly, I take up Kelp’s challenge and I show that, once properly understood, safety successfully rises to it. Secondly, I draw a more general lesson on the safety condition: a satisfactory solution to Kelp’s challenge calls for a revision of the standard formulation of safety, which must be indexed to both methods and environments. My conclusion will be that an environment-relative version of safety not only meets Kelp’s challenge, but it also advances our understanding of the safety condition on knowledge. (shrink)

In "My Own Life," Hume writes:1 During my retreat in France, first at Reims, but chiefly at La Fleche, in Anjou, I composed my Treatise of Human Nature. After passing three years very agreeably in that country, I came over to London in 1737. In the end of 1738, I published my Treatise, and immediately went down to my mother and my brother, who lived at his country house, and was employing himself very judiciously and successfully in the improvement of (...) his fortune. It is thus "chiefly" at La Flèche that Hume wrote one of the masterpieces of early modern philosophy. Hume's stay in France extended from July 1734 to August 1737. He spent a few weeks in Paris in the summer of 1734, hosted by Chevalier... (shrink)

Preface: The Review of Philosophy and Psychology Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s13164-010-0024-1 Authors Dario Taraborelli, University of Surrey Centre for Research in Social Simulation Guilford GU2 7XH United Kingdom Roberto Casati, Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure 29 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris France Paul Egré, Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure 29 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris France Christophe Heintz, Central European University Budapest Hungary Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158 Journal (...) Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 1. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of American history among adolescent Mexican Americans at the eight-grade level in a mid-west town's middle school. This qualitative study shows that multiple contexts influenced the process of teaching and learning history between and among a white teacher and adolescent Mexican Americans at Atkinson Middle School. Those overlapping contexts (the context of the education of minority language students, the context of social studies education, and the school's culture) created a unique (...) totality responsible for shaping the experiences of learning American history by Mexican-American students. These experiences were detrimental for the appreciation by Mexican-American students of American history's potential meanings and significance. (shrink)

In questo articolo si prendono in esame due Lares bronzei ritrovati negli scavi di Veleia, custoditi presso il locale Antiquarium. Le due statuette, molto diverse tra loro, presentano alcune peculiarità iconografiche: una sembra appartenere a una rara tipologia di Compitales con rhyton e kantharos; l’altra, vicina all’iconografia del Lar Familiaris, presenta gli attributi posti in posizione inversa. Nello studio si cerca di contestualizzare le due statuette nel panorama della piccola bronzistica della Cisalpina, e di approfondire le conoscenze relative a queste (...) due rare iconografie. (shrink)

Beccaria’s penal philosophy hinges on the doctrinal paradigm of liberty through law. Inconceivable in the absence of laws and unattainable in the presence of arbitrary powers, liberty is profiled as the legal situation of the person who may act, within the sphere of what is not forbidden and not bound, without suffering illicit interference from private individuals or organs of the state. Thus, the form of law becomes an essential matter in the construction of the political space suitable for free (...) living. In the analysis proposed in this article, the notion of “political liberty”–which Beccaria takes from Montesquieu–is declined in relation to the legal order, criminal law and the social contract. (shrink)