Regularization may be used as an alternative to dimensionality reduction when the number of variables in a model is much larger than the number of available observations. In a recent study from our group regularized regression was employed to quantify brain functional connectivity in a sample of healthy controls using a brain parcellation and resting state fMRI images. Here regularization is applied to evaluate resting state connectivity abnormalities at the voxel level in a sample of patients with schizophrenia. Specifically, ridge (...) regression is implemented with different degrees of regularization. Results are compared to those delivered by the weighted global brain connectivity method, which is based on averaged bivariate correlations and from the non-redundant connectivity method, a dimensionality reduction approach that applies supervised principal component regressions. Ridge regression is able to detect a larger set of abnormally connected regions than both GBC and NRC methods, including schizophrenia related connectivity reductions in fronto-medial, somatosensory and occipital structures. Due to its multivariate nature, the proposed method is much more sensitive to group abnormalities than the GBC, but it also outperforms the NRC, which is multivariate too. Voxel based regularized regression is a simple and sensitive alternative for quantifying brain functional connectivity. (shrink)

We develop a mathematical theory for comparative sorites, considered in terms of a system mapping pairs of stimuli into a binary response characteristic whose values supervene on stimulus pairs and are interpretable as the complementary relations 'are the same' and 'are not the same' (overall or in some respect). Comparative sorites is about hypothetical sequences of stimuli in which every two successive elements are mapped into the relation 'are the same', while the pair comprised of the first and the last (...) elements of the sequence is mapped into 'are not the same'. Although soritical sequences of this kind are logically possible, we argue that their existence is grounded in no empirical evidence and show that it is excluded by a certain psychophysical principle proposed for human comparative judgements in a context unrelated to soritical issues. We generalize this principle to encompass all conceivable situations for which comparative sorites can be formulated. (shrink)

How can the medium be addressed when it is always already saturated in religious over-determinations and ever marked by theological concerns (such as revelation and incarnation) while, at the same time, religion would not be practiced and theology not be done without using some such medium? We encourage methodological and conceptual shifts, first, from medium to mediality; second, from religion to its partial negation (or, perhaps, partial permeation); third, from theology to doing the theological differently. With these shifts we (...) desire to initiate, continue, and intensify debates, specifically between theologians and scholars of religious studies and media theory. (shrink)

With great sympathy for Roman Ingarden and his work, Edith Stein edited his book project The Literary Work Of Art. In the letters she exchanges with him shereflects on relationship between reality and ideality: she writes that those who do not see the world as a reality must be fools. The political events in the 1930s had an impact on phenomenology. While Edmund Husserl dissociates himself from his protégé Martin Heidegger with regard to the content of his philosophy as well (...) as with regard to his ideology, Edith Stein distances herself more and more from the phenomenological method, seeing it as removed from reality, and she eventually become a Carmelite nun. Roman Ingarden, on the other hand, reconsiders interpreting phenomenology as aesthetic theory. Literature and film are being re-analysed in terms of phenomenological mediality and as factors of human communication. (shrink)

Wittgenstein has a role for pointing out with grammar. Pointing is available as a potential resource in justifying and explaining grammar, the regular use of words. This chapter explores some of the foundational issues that frame the idea that pointing can play this role. It concentrates on the role of pointing in justifying the use of words and provides the beginnings of an account of how Wittgenstein's discussion in the opening sections of Philosophical Investigations can be integrated with on‐going (...) philosophical enquiry. The autonomy of grammar is a metaphysical thesis. Wittgenstein has a role for pointing that can contribute to an explanation and justification of linguistic regularities. The idea of grammar as linguistic regularity cuts across the received mythology of grammar as a body of norms, norms for the use of words. The idea of philosophical explanation surviving as an enterprise in Wittgenstein's work is contentious. (shrink)

One of the themes that has been widely addressed in both the implicit learning and statistical learning literatures is that of rule learning. While it is widely agreed that the extraction of regularities from the environment is a fundamental facet of cognition, there is still debate about the nature of rule learning. Rey and colleagues show that the comparison between human and non‐human primates can contribute important insights to this debate.

ZusammenfassungDie Molekulargenetik bietet seit ein paar Jahren völlig neue Zugänge zur menschlichen Vergangenheit. Das noch junge und sehr dynamische Forschungsfeld der Archäogenetik nimmt für sich in Anspruch, Geschichte schreiben zu können, und zwar über alte DNA. Durch zahlreiche beachtenswerte Veröffentlichungen hat es viel Aufmerksamkeit erzeugt und erfahren – nicht nur im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs, sondern auch in den Medien. Allerdings erfährt die mediale Berichterstattung von der Forschung bisher wenig Beachtung. Auch der Forumsbeitrag kann dieses Desiderat nicht beheben, sucht aber – mit (...) einem exemplarischen Blick auf die Presseberichterstattung – erste Tendenzen einzufangen. Dies geschieht anhand von drei Thesen, sie lauten: Erfolgsgeschichten erzählen, Grenzen ziehen und konformistisch schreiben.In recent years molecular genetics has provided a completely new approach/access to the human past. The still new and quite dynamic research field of archaeogenetics claims to be able to write history using ancient DNA. Through numerous remarkable publications it has generated and received much interest not only in scientific discourse but also in the media. So far, however, scientists have not paid much attention to this coverage–a research desideratum this paper cannot resolve. But by looking at selected press clippings it seeks to capture first trends according to the following three theses: telling success stories, drawing boundaries, and writing in a conformist manner. (shrink)

Regularity is the thesis that all contingent propositions should be assigned probabilities strictly between zero and one. I will prove on cardinality grounds that if the domain is large enough, a regular probability assignment is impossible, even if we expand the range of values that probabilities can take, including, for instance, hyperreal values, and significantly weaken the axioms of probability.

This paper focuses on the view that rationality requires that our credences be regular. I go through different formulations of the requirement, and show that they face several problems. I then formulate a version of the requirement that solves most of, if not all, these problems. I conclude by showing that an argument thought to support the requirement as traditionally formulated actually does not; if anything, the argument, slightly modified, supports my version of the requirement.Send article to KindleTo send (...) this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.REGULARITY REFORMULATEDVolume 9, Issue 4Weng Hong TangDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.23Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. REGULARITY REFORMULATEDVolume 9, Issue 4Weng Hong TangDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.23Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. REGULARITY REFORMULATEDVolume 9, Issue 4Weng Hong TangDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.23Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

One lingering, unresolved dimension of intermediality theory is the status of mediality itself. Typically, the concept of intermediality is offered as a challenge to the idea that media exist as “isolated monads” ; the task of the analyst then becomes that of thinking through the variety of relationships between them. The risk is that this conception of intermediality may work to hypostatize media as particular kinds of objects. In this hypostatization, work on intermediality has sometimes diverged in important ways (...) from the ongoing development of ideas about mediality itself. Mediality is best seen, I would argue, not as a permanent and definitive property of objects or forms but as the occasional.. (shrink)

Media. Mediality. Image. Media-Philosophical Investigation in the Image-Research. The concept of the media has been redefined many times; the medial interpretation of postmediality is only a critique of existing media-approaches and actuality. The concept of media is hardly going to disappear, its use has become increasingly popular, and the range of interpretation has become wider, the Media Studies brings together more and more sciences; it is not a limit science, but a cumulative science. In W. J.T. Mitchell’s approach, the (...) media is more than a medium, the media is a relation, there is no pure media, and all media are mixed. Breaking down the idea of the mixed media, we could make parallels/contrasts between the concept of total mediality and the concept of postmediality. Postmediality sees a way in the passing by overtaking of the concept of media (Manovich) in aesthetics, visual theory, art theory, media theory, but perhaps most of all the media concept should be sought as it is, just a different type of media use which has become commonplace in the digital-galaxy. Totalmediality is trying to point out the use of new media, and beyond this to the open media borders, overlappings, while the media is not just carrier material but also form. The study treats totalmediality as theoretical possibility for overcoming postmediality in Mitchell’s interpretation of media and emphasizing the dominance of visuality in the media-applications. (shrink)

As Foucault has argued persuasively, human sciences carry in themselves not only the danger of anthropologization, but, precisely because of their epistemic instability and hybridity, also the potential for its criticism. This criticism is all the more important in the current turn to the human being as living, sentient and affective being, which takes place under the sign of life- and brain-sciences. Thus, it serves as the starting point of the medial anthropology and its focus on the medium of the (...) game that this paper presents. (shrink)

Bei der Rezeption von Kunst treten vier Faktoren ins Spiel: Als Bedingungen der Wahrnehmung fungieren Wissensbestände, entsprechende Präsentationsbedingungen sowie - nicht zuletzt - das Medium des Geldes. Sie bilden ein Rahmensystem, durch das ein Werk erst in Erscheinung zu treten vermag. Einschliesslich des rezipierten Gegenstandes, der den vierten Faktor in diesem Geschehen abgibt, stehen alle Faktoren in stetiger Wechselwirkung.

The majority of the currently flourishing theories of actual causation are located in a broadly counterfactual framework that draws on structural equations. In order to account for cases of symmetric overdeterminiation and preemption, these theories resort to rather intricate analytical tools, most of all, to what Hitchcock has labeled explicitly nonforetracking counterfactuals. This paper introduces a regularity theoretic approach to actual causation that only employs material conditionals, standard Boolean minimization procedures, and a stability condition that regulates the behavior of causal (...) models under model expansions. Notwithstanding its lightweight analytical toolbox, this regularity theory performs at least as well as the structural equations accounts with their heavy appliances. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the relationship between the “Humean” regularity view of causation, the view that a cause is a necessary condition of its effect, and the asymmetry of causation—the principle that if an event e1 causes e2, then it is false that e2 causes e1. I argue that the regularity view, in combination with the view that a cause is a necessary condition of its effect, is inconsistent with the asymmetry of causation, and that the inconsistency can be (...) removed by a modification of the view that a cause is a necessary condition of its effect that captures what is plausible in that view. I defend Hume, then, against the objection that he cannot accommodate a cause as being a necessary condition of its effect without absurdly denying the asymmetry of causation. This is only a limited defense, though, for I do not address the issue on which the tenability of the regularity view ultimately depends: viz., whether it can distinguish between causal laws and accidental generalizations without appealing to natural necessity. (shrink)

Consider the regularity thesis that each possible event has non-zero probability. Hájek challenges this in two ways: there can be nonmeasurable events that have no probability at all and on a large enough sample space, some probabilities will have to be zero. But arguments for the existence of nonmeasurable events depend on the axiom of choice. We shall show that the existence of anything like regular probabilities is by itself enough to imply a weak version of AC sufficient to (...) prove the Banach–Tarski Paradox on the decomposition of a ball into two equally sized balls, and hence to show the existence of nonmeasurable events. This provides a powerful argument against unrestricted orthodox Bayesianism that works even without AC. A corollary of our formal result is that if every partial order extends to a total preorder while maintaining strict comparisons, then the Banach–Tarski Paradox holds. This yields an argument that incommensurability cannot be avoided in ambitious versions of decision theory. (shrink)

It is shown that all the assumptions for symmetric monoidal categories follow from a unifying principle involving natural isomorphisms of the type →, called medial commutativity. Medial commutativity in the presence of the unit object enables us to define associativity and commutativity natural isomorphisms. In particular, Mac Lane’s pentagonal and hexagonal coherence conditions for associativity and commutativity are derived from the preservation up to a natural isomorphism of medial commutativity by the biendofunctor . This preservation boils down to an isomorphic (...) representation of the Yang–Baxter equation of symmetric and braid groups. The assumptions of monoidal categories, and in particular Mac Lane’s pentagonal coherence condition, are explained in the absence of commutativity, and also of the unit object, by a similar preservation of associativity by the biendofunctor . In the final section one finds coherence conditions for medial commutativity in the absence of the unit object. These conditions are obtained by taking the direct product of the symmetric groups for 0≤i≤n. (shrink)

For a long time, regularity accounts of causation have virtually vanished from the scene. Problems encountered within other theoretical frameworks have recently induced authors working on causation, laws of nature, or methodologies of causal reasoning – as e.g. May (Kausales Schliessen. Eine Untersuchung über kausale Erklärungen und Theorienbildung. Ph.D. thesis, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, 1999), Ragin (Fuzzy-set social science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), Graßhoff and May (Causal regularities. In W. Spohn, M. Ledwig, & M. Esfeld (Eds.), Current issues in (...) causation (pp. 85–114). Paderborn: Mentis, 2001), Swartz (The concept of physical law (2nd ed.). http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/physical-law/, 2003), Halpin (Erkenntnis, 58, 137–168, 2003) – to direct their attention back to regularity theoretic analyses. In light of the latest proposals of regularity theories, the paper at hand therefore reassesses the criticism raised against regularity accounts since the INUS theory of causation of Mackie (The cement of the universe. A study of causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). It is shown that most of these objections target strikingly over-simplified regularity theoretic sketches. By outlining ways to refute these objections it is argued that the prevalent conviction as to the overall failure of regularity theories has been hasty. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley’s ‘dynamical approach’ to special relativity should be understood as what might be called an ontologically and ideologically relationalist approach to Minkowski geometry, according to which Minkowski geometrical structure supervenes upon the symmetries of the best-systems dynamical laws for a material world with primitive topological or differentiable structure. Fleshing out the details of some such primitive structure, and a conception of laws according to which Minkowski geometry could so supervene, has (...) been referred to by some as the ‘constructivist project’. Here, it is explained that Nick Huggett’s work on ‘regularity relationalism’ provides a framework for such an approach, and a relativistic version of Huggett’s regularity relationalism is outlined for that purpose. Finally, by way of examples, it is shown that this approach fails in the simplest cases. Still, reasons are given for which this should not necessarily discourage an advocate of this interpretation of the dynamical approach. _1_ Introduction to the Dynamical Approach _2_ Huggett’s Regularity Relationalism _3_ The Dynamical Approach as a Form of Regularity Relationalism _4_ A Simple Way to Set the Stage _5_ A First Attempt _5.1_ Complex-valued planewave solutions _5.2_ Real-valued planewave solutions _6_ More General Solutions _7_ Summary and Reflections. (shrink)

The thesis focuses on a quite recent research field lying in between Descriptive Set Theory and Automata Theory (for infinite objects). In both areas, one is often concerned with subsets of the Cantor space or of its homeomorphic copies. In Descriptive Set Theory, such subsets are usually stratified in topological hierarchies, like the Borel hierarchy, the Wadge hierarchy and the difference hierarchy; in Automata Theory, such sets are studied in terms of regularity, that is, the property of being recognised by (...) an automaton or, equivalently, of being expressible in Monadic Second-Order Logic. This double point of view leads to many interesting questions about the interplay and relationship between topological complexity and regularity. While we have a complete picture of what happens in the case of automata on words, the case of automata on trees is still a terra incognita. Some results have already been obtained for particular classes of languages, like Buchi languages, deterministic languages, ¨ and unambiguous languages. In this thesis we instead drop any restriction and prove some new results concerning arbitrary regular tree languages which belong to low levels of the Borel hierarchy and of the Wadge hierarchy. (shrink)

In light of developments within the field of media theory, a certain consensus has evolved in favour of approaches like mediatization and mediation. While these approaches above all focus on societal change from a media-dependent point of view, this article addresses the reverse side of these processes, asking about media users' appropriation of media in order to experience sociality that has only just been enabled by media-use. This awareness of medial terms and conditions is characterized as recipients' acknowledgment as well (...) as utilization of medial constraints, which is subsequently referred to as mediality. (shrink)

Can stable regularities be explained without appealing to governing laws or any other modal notion? In this paper, I consider what I will call a ‘Humean system’—a generic dynamical system without guiding laws—and assess whether it could display stable regularities. First, I present what can be interpreted as an account of the rise of stable regularities, following from Strevens [2003], which has been applied to explain the patterns of complex systems (such as those from meteorology and statistical mechanics). Second, since (...) this account presupposes that the underlying dynamics displays deterministic chaos, I assess whether it can be adapted to cases where the underlying dynamics is not chaotic but truly random—that is, cases where there is no dynamics guiding the time evolution of the system. If this is so, the resulting stable, apparently non-accidental regularities are the fruit of what can be called statistical necessity rather than of a primitive physical necessity. (shrink)

BackgroundRegularity effect can affect performance in prospective memory, but little is known on the cognitive processes linked to this effect. Moreover, its impacts with regard to aging remain unknown. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine regularity effect in PM in a lifespan perspective, with a sample of young, intermediate, and older adults.Objective and designOur study examined the regularity effect in PM in three groups of participants: 28 young adults, 16 intermediate adults, and 25 older adults. The (...) task, adapted from the Virtual Week, was designed to manipulate the regularity of the various activities of daily life that were to be recalled. We examine the role of several cognitive functions including certain dimensions of executive functions, short-term memory, and retrospective episodic memory to identify those involved in PM, according to... (shrink)

ABSTRACT It has recently been argued that Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley’s ‘dynamical approach’ to special relativity should be understood as what might be called an ontologically and ideologically relationalist approach to Minkowski geometry, according to which Minkowski geometrical structure supervenes upon the symmetries of the best-systems dynamical laws for a material world with primitive topological or differentiable structure. Fleshing out the details of some such primitive structure, and a conception of laws according to which Minkowski geometry could so supervene, (...) has been referred to by some as the ‘constructivist project’. Here, it is explained that Nick Huggett’s work on ‘regularity relationalism’ provides a framework for such an approach, and a relativistic version of Huggett’s regularity relationalism is outlined for that purpose. Finally, by way of examples, it is shown that this approach fails in the simplest cases. Still, reasons are given for which this should not necessarily discourage an advocate of this interpretation of the dynamical approach. 1 Introduction to the Dynamical Approach 2 Huggett’s Regularity Relationalism 3 The Dynamical Approach as a Form of Regularity Relationalism 4 A Simple Way to Set the Stage 5 A First Attempt 5.1 Complex-valued planewave solutions 5.2 Real-valued planewave solutions 6 More General Solutions 7 Summary and Reflections. (shrink)

Bilder haben seit je her das Vermögen, sich als Metamalerei reflexiv mit den Bedingungen ihrer eigenen Bildlichkeit auseinander zu setzen. In Momenten,medialer Vanitas’, wie sie der Beitrag nachvollzieht, ist es die Symbolik der Vanitas, welche gegen das Bild als solches gerichtet wird. Schon im Barock entstehen sie mit so unterschiedlichen Werken wie jenen Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts und Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggios, die als spezifisch,thanatologische Metamalerei‘ bezeichnet werden können. Sie zielen auf die mortifzierenden Strukturen bildlicher Repräsentation, ihre Medialität und Materialität. Doch (...) auch in zahlreichen zeitgenössischen Bildern von Marlene Dumas finden sich solch selbstreflexive Momente medialer Vanitas und damit moderne Transformationen eines vormodernen Topos. (shrink)

Say that α is an n-strongly c. e. real if α is a sum of n many strongly c. e. reals, and that α is regular if α is n-strongly c. e. for some n. Let Sn be the set of all n-strongly c. e. reals, Reg be the set of regular reals and CE be the set of c. e. reals. Then we have: S1 ⊂ S2 ⊂ · · · ⊂ Sn ⊂ · · · ⊂ (...) ⊂ Reg ⊂ CE. This gives a hierarchy of the c. e. reals. We also study the regularity of the d. c. e. reals. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to sketch an empiricist metaphysics of laws of nature. The key idea is that there are regularities without regularity-enforcers. Differently put, there are natural laws without law-makers _of a distinct metaphysical kind_. This sketch will rely on the concept of a natural pattern and more significantly on the existence of a network of natural patterns in nature. The relation between a regularity and a pattern will be analysed in terms of mereology. Here is the (...) road map. In section 2, I will briefly discuss the relation between empiricism and metaphysics, aiming to show that an empiricist metaphysics is possible. In section 3, I will offer arguments against stronger metaphysical views of laws. Then, in section 4 I will motivate nomic objectivism. In section 5, I will address the question ‘what is a regularity?’ and will develop a novel answer to it, based on the notion of a natural pattern. In section 6, I will raise the question: ‘what is a law of nature?’, the answer to which will be: a law of nature is a regularity that is characterised by the unity of a _natural_ pattern. (shrink)

We show a number of improvements in the use of Hidden Conditional Random Fields for phone classification on the TIMIT and Switchboard corpora. We first show that the use of regularization effectively prevents overfitting, improving over other methods such as early stopping. We then show that HCRFs are able to make use of non-independent features in phone classification, at least with small numbers of mixture components, while HMMs degrade due to their strong independence assumptions. Finally, we successfully apply Maximum a (...) Posteriori adaptation to HCRFs, decreasing the phone classification error rate in the Switchboard corpus by around 1% – 5% given only small amounts of adaptation data. (shrink)

We investigate the definability in monadic ∑11 and monadic Π11 of the problems REGk, of whether there is a regular subgraph of degree k in some given graph, and XREGk, of whether, for a given rooted graph, there is a regular subgraph of degree k in which the root has degree k, and their restrictions to graphs in which every vertex has degree at most k, namely REGkk and XREGkk, respectively, for k ≥ 2 . Our motivation partly (...) stems from the fact that REGkk and XREGkk are logspace equivalent to CONN and REACH, respectively, for k ≥ 3, where CONN is the problem of whether a given graph is connected and REACH is the problem of whether a given graph has a path joining two given vertices. We use monadic first - order reductions, monadic ∑11 games and a recent technique due to Fagin, Stockmeyer and Vardi to almost completely classify whether these problems are definable in monadic ∑11 and monadic Π11, and we compare the definability of these problems. (shrink)

Neutrosophic set is a new mathematical tool for handling problems involving imprecise, indetermi nacy and inconsistent data. Pseudo-BCI algebra is a kind of non-classical logic algebra in close connection with various non-commutative fuzzy logics. Recently, we applied neutrosophic set theory to pseudo-BCI al gebras. In this paper, we study neutrosophic filters in pseudo-BCI algebras. The concepts of neutrosophic regular filter, neutrosophic closed filter and fuzzy regular filter in pseudo-BCI algebras are introduced, and some basic properties are discussed. Moreover, (...) the relationships among neutrosophic regular filter, fuzzy filters and anti-grouped neutrosophic filters are prese nted, and the results are proved: a neutrosophic filter (fuzzy filter) is a neutrosophic regular filter (fuzzy regular filter), if and only if it is both a neutrosophic closed filter (fuzzy closed filter) and an anti-grouped neutrosophic filter (fuzzy anti-grouped filter). (shrink)

We show how the Full Bayesian Significance Test (FBST) can be used as a model selection criterion. The FBST was presented by Pereira and Stern as a coherent Bayesian significance test. Key Words: Bayesian test; Evidence; Global optimization; Information; Model selection; Numerical integration; Posterior density; Precise hypothesis; Regularization. AMS: 62A15; 62F15; 62H15.

Former discussions of biological generalizations have focused on the question of whether there are universal laws of biology. These discussions typically analyzed generalizations out of their investigative and explanatory contexts and concluded that whatever biological generalizations are, they are not universal laws. The aim of this paper is to explain what biological generalizations are by shifting attention towards the contexts in which they are drawn. I argue that within the context of any particular biological explanation or investigation, biologists employ two (...) types of generations. One type identifies causal regularities exhibited by particular kinds of biological entities. The other type identifies how these entities are distributed in the biological world. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a regularity theory of causation. The theory aims to be reductive and to align with our pre‐theoretic understanding of the causal relation. We show that our theory can account for a wide range of causal scenarios, including isomorphic scenarios, omissions, and scenarios which suggest that causation is not transitive.

Many philosophers insist that the most plausible solution to the exclusion problem is to adopt the so-called ‘autonomy approach’, which denies either upward or downward causation between mental and physical properties. But the question of whether the autonomy approach is compatible with respectable theories of causation has seldom been discussed in the literature. This paper considers two influential theories of causation, the counterfactual account and the regularity account. I argue that neither the counterfactual theory nor the regularity theory can support (...) the autonomy approach – while the counterfactual approach fails to block downward causation, the regularity approach is unable to refute upward causation. (shrink)

How regular do mechanisms need to be, in order to count as mechanisms? This paper addresses two arguments for dropping the requirement of regularity from the definition of a mechanism, one motivated by examples from the sciences and the other motivated by metaphysical considerations regarding causation. I defend a broadened regularity requirement on mechanisms that takes the form of a taxonomy of kinds of regularity that mechanisms may exhibit. This taxonomy allows precise explication of the degree and location of (...) regular operation within a mechanism, and highlights the role that various kinds of regularity play in scientific explanation. I defend this regularity requirement in terms of regularity’s role in individuating mechanisms against a background of other causal processes, and by prioritizing mechanisms’ ability to serve as a model of scientific explanation, rather than as a metaphysical account of causation. It is because mechanisms are regular, in the expanded sense described here, that they are capable of supporting the kinds of generalizations that figure prominently in scientific explanations. (shrink)

The notion of internalization put forth by Roger Shepard continues to be appealing and challenging. He suggests that we have internalized, during our evolutionary development, environmental regularities, or constraints. Internalization solves one of the hardest problems of perceptual psychology: the underspecification problem. That is the problem of how well-defined perceptual experience is generated from the often ambiguous and incomplete sensory stimulation. Yet, the notion of internalization creates new problems that may outweigh the solution of the underspecification problem. To support this (...) claim, I first examine the concept of internalization, breaking it down into several distinct interpretations. These range from well-resolved dynamic regularities to ill-resolved statistical regularities. As a function of the interpretation the researcher selects, an empirical test of the internalization hypothesis may be straightforward or it may become virtually impossible. I then attempt to cover the range of interpretations by drawing on examples from different domains of visual event perception. Unfortunately, the experimental tests regarding most candidate regularities, such as gravitational acceleration, fail to support the concept of internalization. This suggests that narrow interpretations of the concept should be given up in favor of more abstract interpretations. However, the latter are not easily amenable to empirical testing. There is nonetheless a way to test these abstract interpretations by contrasting internalization with the opposite concept: externalization of body dynamics. I summarize evidence for such a projection of body constraints onto external objects. Based on the combined evidence of well-resolved and ill- resolved regularities, the value of the notion of internalization has to be reassessed. Key Words: event perception; evolution; internalization. (shrink)