Measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) has been fundamental to our understanding of how language is encoded in the brain. One particular ERP response, the N400 response, has been especially influential as an index of lexical and semantic processing. However, there remains a lack of consensus on the interpretation of this component. Resolving this issue has important consequences for neural models of language comprehension. Here we show that evidence bearing on where the N400 response is generated provides key insights into what it (...) reflects. A neuroanatomical model of semantic processing is used as a guide to interpret the pattern of activated regions in functional MRI, magnetoencephalography and intracranial recordings that are associated with contextual semantic manipulations that lead to N400 effects. (shrink)

Great advances have been made of late years in the understanding of ancient artillery, but the difference between the παλíντινιν and the εθτινιν seems to remain a riddle still inviting solution. In tentatively accepting the invitation, we are met at the outset by a certain amount of fog due to the fact that ancient guns were classed by two methods which produce a cross division. It will pay us to dispel this fog, or at any rate to find our bearings (...) in it as exactly as may be, before going further. (shrink)

Tomasello et al. provide a new account of cultural uniqueness, one that hinges on a uniquely human motivation to share intentionality with others. We favor an alternative to this motivational account – one that relies on a modular explanation of the primate intention-reading system. We discuss this view in light of recent comparative experiments using competitive intention-reading tasks.

BackgroundThe Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute is obligated to peer review and to post publicly “Final Research Reports” of all funded projects. PCORI peer review emphasizes adherence to PCORI’s Methodology Standards and principles of ethical scientific communication. During the peer review process, reviewers and editors seek to ensure that results are presented objectively and interpreted appropriately, e.g., free of spin.MethodsTwo independent raters assessed PCORI peer review feedback sent to authors. We calculated the proportion of reports in which spin was identified during (...) peer review, and the types of spin identified. We included reports submitted by April 2018 with at least one associated journal article. The same raters then assessed whether authors addressed reviewers’ comments about spin. The raters also assessed whether spin identified during PCORI peer review was present in related journal articles.ResultsWe included 64 PCORI-funded projects. Peer reviewers or editors identified spin in 55/64 submitted research reports. Types of spin included reporting bias, inappropriate interpretation, inappropriate extrapolation of results, and inappropriate attribution of causality. Authors addressed comments about spin related to 47/55 of the reports.Of 110 associated journal articles, PCORI comments about spin were potentially applicable to 44/110 articles, of which 27/44 contained the same spin that was identified in the PCORI research report. The proportion of articles with spin was similar for articles accepted before and after PCORI peer review.DiscussionJust as spin is common in journal articles and press releases, we found that most reports submitted to PCORI included spin. While most spin was mitigated during the funder’s peer review process, we found no evidence that review of PCORI reports influenced spin in journal articles. Funders could explore interventions aimed at reducing spin in published articles of studies they support. (shrink)

Social contract theory offers a powerful method and metaphor for the study of organizational ethics. This paper considers the variant of the social contract that has arguably gained the most attention among business ethicists: integrative social contracts theory or ISCT [Donaldson and Dunfee: 1999, Ties That Bind (Harvard Business School Press, Boston)]. A core precept of ISCT - that consent to membership in an organization entails obligations to follow the norms of that organization, subject to the moral minimums of basic (...) human rights - is a reasonable and appealing notion. One potential challenge for those attempting to apply this idea, however, lies in the dynamic nature of social norms. Organizational norms evolve, often through the conscious efforts of community members and leaders. As currently formulated, ISCT offers a framework that under-appreciates the evolving nature of moral norms. In this paper, we extend ISCT by considering the circumstances under which the terms of and parties to social contracts change. We also consider a number of principles that should be considered as the terms and parties to organizational social contracts change. (shrink)

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore students’ reactions to a case involving peer rating. We asked undergraduate and graduate students at a Midwestern liberal arts university to rate the performance of a close friend. To explore how role might impact the students’ decisions, we randomly assigned participants to one of two rating scenarios. In the first scenario, students rated a fellow student who had not completed his or her fair share of a group project. In the second (...) scenario, students were asked to play the role of a professor who had to rate a peer. We found significant differences in the overall quantitative ratings assigned by participants in the two scenarios. Participants’ answers also involved more justice considerations in the professor scenario than in the student scenario. The results suggest that students may have difficulty in being honest during peer evaluation processes. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the definition of religion. This definition is developed within a context which recognizes the impossibility of value-neutrality in the definition of words. The definition proposed is applied to three complex borderline cases: Spinozism, Marxism,and economism or free-market ideology.

Niche construction refers to the activities of organisms that bring about changes in their environments, many of which are evolutionarily and ecologically consequential. Advocates of niche construction theory (NCT) believe that standard evolutionary theory fails to recognize the full importance of niche construction, and consequently propose a novel view of evolution, in which niche construction and its legacy over time (ecological inheritance) are described as evolutionary processes, equivalent in importance to natural selection. Here, we subject NCT to critical evaluation, in (...) the form of a collaboration between one prominent advocate of NCT, and a team of skeptics. We discuss whether niche construction is an evolutionary process, whether NCT obscures or clarifies how natural selection leads to organismal adaptation, and whether niche construction and natural selection are of equivalent explanatory importance. We also consider whether the literature that promotes NCT overstates the significance of niche construction, whether it is internally coherent, and whether it accurately portrays standard evolutionary theory. Our disagreements reflect a wider dispute within evolutionary theory over whether the neo-Darwinian synthesis is in need of reformulation, as well as different usages of some key terms (e.g., evolutionary process). (shrink)

To properly understand behavior, we must obtain both ultimate and proximate explanations. Put briefly, ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works. These two types of explanation are complementary and the distinction is critical to evolutionary explanation. We are concerned that they have become conflated in some areas of the evolutionary literature on human behavior. This article brings attention to these issues. We focus on three specific areas: the evolution of (...) cooperation, transmitted culture, and epigenetics. We do this to avoid confusion and wasted effort—dangers that are particularly acute in interdisciplinary research. Throughout this article, we suggest ways in which misunderstanding may be avoided in the future. (shrink)

How far does a researcher’s responsibility extend when an incidental finding is identified? Balancing pertinent ethical principles such as beneficence, respect for persons, and duty to rescue is not always straightforward, particularly in neuroimaging research where empirical data that might help guide decision making are lacking. We conducted a systematic survey of perceptions and preferences of 396 investigators, research participants, and Institutional Review Board members at our institution. Using the partial entrustment model as described by Richardson, we argue that our (...) data supports universal reading by a neuroradiologist of all research MRI scans for incidental findings and providing full disclosure to all participants. (shrink)

This essay offers an immanent reading of Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future in terms of his theorization of a four-fold allegorical hermeneutic. On the literal level, the book explores science fictions; on the allegorical, Utopian representations; on the moral, or individual psychological, it serves as a “partial summing up” of a number of sequences in Jameson’s ongoing project; and on the anagogical, it contributes to a reinvention of Marxism for an era of globalization. Jameson’s recent writings also share an (...) interest in modernism, challenging late modernist ideology and recovering more radical forms. The essay concludes by exploring how Jameson’s discussion of Utopia serves as a figure for the problems of radical politics in the present. (shrink)

Listen to my tale: when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me. The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me.My Dear Friend:You remember the old fable of "The Man and the Lion," where the lion complained that he should not be so misrepresented "when the lions wrote history."I am so glad the time has (...) come when the "lions write history."In the closing of his preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, G. W. F. Hegel famously states, "Whoever asks for a royal road to Science will find it most comfortable to rely on healthy common sense; and, in order to keep in step with the... (shrink)

Selected as Outstanding Academic Book by Choice magazine.

I take the essence of relativism to be that reasoning is possible only given shared assumptions, and that there is a plurality of possible sets of assumptions between whose adherents no argument is possible. Crucial to relativism, thus conceived, is the existence of basic standards, which underlie the assertions human beings make. Philosophers who have taken relativism seriously have given the sources of such standards various names: I here settle on the word “frameworks.”.

This paper considers pick-the-winners contests as a simple method for harnessing the wisdom of crowds to produce probability forecasts. Pick-the-winners contests are those in which players pick the outcomes of selected future binary events with a prize going to the player with the most correct picks. In contrast to soliciting probability forecasts from experts, this paper shows that competition among players is to be encouraged because it improves the accuracy of the resulting crowd probability forecasts. This improvement comes because the (...) competition not only discourages the overbetting of favorites that occurs if prizes are awarded based on absolute performance, but also helps mitigate the public knowledge bias that occurs if everyone reports truthfully. In addition to the theoretical arguments, the paper analyzes picks from 6 years of pick-the-winners contests involving hundreds of players and 1037 college lacrosse games to find that the crowd proportions outperformed two benchmark sets of probabilities. (shrink)

After reading the research of Mexican anthropologists concerning the possible retention of traditional indigenous African beliefs in contemporary Mexican communities of African descent, I interviewed women of the region who migrated to Atlanta, Georgia about their spiritual beliefs and practices. I was surprised by the similarities in their reports to those recorded by Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, who worked in Mexico over 60 years ago. I traveled to the town of Chautengo in coastal Guerrero state in 2005 to talk with women (...) about their beliefs, especially those that relate to the existence of a relationship between humans and animal-tonos. The human–animal-tono relationship exemplifies a belief in an intimate relationship between humans and totem animals. The well-being of the human partner depends upon the well-being of the animal. Keeping the human–animal relationship balanced is key in the conceptualization of illness and informs related healing practices. I present an interview with a woman from Chautengo with an interpretation that exemplifies the persistence of ideas related to human–animal relationships that are possibly informed by traditional indigenous African cosmologies, brought by enslaved Africans over 500 years ago, and have been archetypally preserved in isolated communities along the Pacific coast of Mexico. (shrink)